Right. Or, in the opposite direction, aggressive cancer treatments might not be in your best interest (as you conceive it) but be medically helpful. — J

That's a good example. Medically assisted suicide is an even better one. It is (normally regarded as) medically unhelpful (even in contradiction with) standard medical ethics. nevertheless, it may be in one's best interests, IMO.

Further to our exchange about music, you may or may not have encountered the classic piece in traditional philosophy for this - Hume - Standard of Taste. It puts his analysis into a different context from the usual subjectivist interpretation. On the other hand, it is based on a naive empiricism that doesn't attend to the extent to which social and cultural context affects these questions.

We cannot use the terms "healthy" or "good" univocally, yet neither does that mean that each use of "good" is entirely equivocal. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for this reply. I must apologize that I don't have time to do it justice right now. But this is true. In fact, I would say that in order to ensure clarity of use, "good" should always be thought of in its context - especially the context of the noun to which the adjective is attached.

But since the truth of "2+2=4" is something not changing, then it cannot be something in the world so it ends up being nothing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, what you say is not wrong, of course. But I would have put it differently. That I prefer to say that "2+2=4" is a statement in what grammarians call the timeless present just shows that I'm uncomfortable with metaphysics. So let that pass. When I said it signified nothing, I was taking advantage of an ambiguity in the meaning of "signified". The traditional structure of signifier and signified articulates the two terms as inherently relational - two objects in a relationship. I don't think it necessarily is. For example, does a road sign saying "Road closed" stand in any necessary relation to anything that you would want to call an object, in the sense that the sign itself is an object. I don't think so. But the sign has a clear meaning, nonetheless.

We can say that there is something called "meaning", — Metaphysician Undercover

We can say that, but we do well to pause for a moment and work out the meaning of what we just said. If we post the meaning (significance) of a term as an object and think things through, we may realize that no object could possibly do the things that we require meaning to do. So we have to park that idea and think more carefully about what we actually mean by meaning.

The issue with this particular thread is that it grants too much to start with in granting that Gettier cases are examples of true belief. Issues with change/flux are irrelevant with respect to that. — creativesoul

Yes. I don't usually think of the Gettier cases as all alike. Most of the later ones avoid the (rather obvious) mistakes that the actual Gettier cases make. But it is not unfair to say that they turn on a proposition (belief) which is ambigous and is interpreted (applied) differently in two different contexts - the subject's belief/knowledge and the context of what we might call objectivity.
Most people make a further mistake when they accept his conventional and orthodox view that a proper definition will always return a final answer with the information available at any given time (in a any given context). When this turns out not to be true, this is regarded as a fatal flaw in the definition. But it is not. Somtimes we make mistakes because of our inevitable limitations. When we do, the world does not fall apart, we just withdraw our claim adopt the correct view and carry on. There's no need to fuss about it.

Good afternoon! :smile:

If a change in physical constituency demands different identity, then it would be impossible to name things fast enough. — creativesoul

That's likely true. As it is, we can name a process, such as a river, and it persists for long enough for our purposes - over generations. Mind you, I don't even accept the physical components are the same thing as the ship. This is demonstrated by the fact that the collection of all the pieces of Theseus' ship in Hobbes' problem need to be assembled before they constitute a ship. I expect you know all about that.

My wording was chosen deliberately and corresponds precisely to the intended meaning. Had I meant to say “identical,” “equivalent,” or intended another specific distinction, I would have expressed it explicitly. — DasGegenmittel

Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way. I was telling you that that I had a different view.

The objective measure, insofar as we can achieve one, lies in having the most information and processing it adequately. This is what we often see in Gettier cases: the observer knows more than the individual making the assertion.
Moreover, there might be concurrent JTBs (Justified True Beliefs) that cannot be reliably judged—this is what the Rashomon effect illustrates. — DasGegenmittel

You are right about the Gettier cases, though I suggest they need more than that. They need an ambiguous proposition that can seem to justify two cases at the same time. But they are not difficult to sort out when we discover what is going on. The problem here is the insistence that we be always able to tell, once and for all, and at any given time, which propositions are true and well-established and which are not. Sometimes it takes time for the truth to be discovered. Sometimes we have to withdraw claims that we thought were true. That isn't a crisis, it's normal business.
Don't forget that when it is possible that a given proposition is not true, it is also possible that it is true and that we can usually tell which possibility is actual, even if it takes some time to do so.

"2+2=4" actually signifies, represents, or corresponds with nothing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but representing and corresponding are not the only ways to mean something. If we can calculate and apply our equations to the world, we know what they mean even if the signify nothing.

Hobbes intensifies the thought experiment by suggesting that the original, removed parts are reassembled into a second ship – resulting in two ships, each of which could claim to be the original. — DasGegenmittel

Yes. Hobbes' variant is interesting and very ingenious. But I would argue that neither ship has a good claim to "be" the original. I would say that the ship in the original puzzle is a reconstruction of the old ship and the ship in Hobbes ship is a replica. The original puzzle is a sorites puzzle, based on the vague border between maintenance and renewal. Our common sense has not developed in a context in which these puzzles were a problem and is not well adapted to deal with them. We just need to make up our minds about how to apply them. Once we are agreed, there will be no problem.

Couple of things: Within a given practice or style, there are indeed objective measures of whether a piece of music is aesthetically better. But no doubt you mean aesthetic comparisons in which the stylistic "rules" differ. — J

I didn't write what I said accurately enough. I was thinking only of judgements within an established practice, not of comparisons between styles.

Electronic devices can tell you whether a note is in tune. They can't tell you whether some degree of out-of-tuneness is desirable or not, aesthetically. So yes, a tuner can overrule a subjective judgment like "that passage was played in tune," but not a subjective aesthetic judgment. That requires some stylistic agreement about tuning in a particular genre. — J

I agree with that. Just to cover some other possible comments, disagreements within a style are not impossible, indeed, they are likely common place, but they require agreements in the background. This is was distinguishes aesthetics and ethics from questions of taste. About those, it has been know for at least two thousand years, there is no disputing. (Normally). This is why I think that to classify these judgements as subjective just because they don't conform to the paradigms of objectivity just confuses them with questions of taste.

BTW -- if you ever heard a piece of music, in any genre, played constantly and strictly in tune, you'd hate it! Robot music. — J

I'm pretty sure I have, although it can be hard to be sure. The same is true for a robotic beat. Yet that can be used for effect, as well. People are work so hard to keep the beat and keep the tuning and yet we find that we relish those tiny irregularities that give life to the music.

Out of tune notes can be detected by electronic devices. We all think some music is better (aesthetically) than other music, but it remains that there is no objective measure. — Janus

The catch is in "objective". We all think we know what it means. Can we say that electronic devices provide a bridge between the objective and the subjective in this case? Or do they supersede the subjective opinions? Who's to say?

So, again there is no absolute measure. We can identify someone's state off mind, but there is always the possibility of convincing fakery. Same for identifying enlightenment. Also, it's not clear exactly what the purported enlightened state consists in. — Janus

This time the catch is in "absolute". It looks as iif you are looking for a measure that cannot be "faked", or perhaps a measure that cannot be wrong. The only measure that cannot be wrong is one that is true by definition. But since anyone can make a definition, could that not be considered at best arbitrary and very likely subjective.

So, I would say there is no way of definitively identifying whether someone is enlightened or even what enlightenment is. That's not so different from identifying whether something really is the word of god as far as I can tell. — Janus

My problem here is "definitively". But there's a deeper problem, that being unenlightended and incompetent, I don't see any basis for over-ruling the practices of those who are enlightened and competent.

I remember reading a quote from a famous poet. I can't remember who it was, but he was addressing a question from one of his students: 'How can I tell whether my poetry is any good?". The answer was, "If you need to know that then being a poet is not for you". — Janus

That's a good start to a philosophical discussion about the question. Whether that was the poet's intention is unanswerable without more information.

My intuition tells me there must be (sc. moral facts). It is not an easy thing to have both of these things floating around. — AmadeusD

But don't we at least know that if there are moral facts, they must be a different kind/category/language game from factual/scientific facts? That would be a possible basis for making progress with this.

First, that stomping babies is bad for them is not a scientific fact; it's probably a medical one. Science is to some degree at least supposed to be as value neutral as possible,

Yes. But that value neautrality has moral implications. So it might well lead people to think that describing animals that are screaming in pain as "vocalizing" is more objective because morally neutral. But being morally neutral about that fact has moral implications, because it implies indifference.

I would need to be convinced that a study of the human good cannot involve empirical facts. You seem to be taking "there are no facts about (ethical) values" as a starting point." But that seems just be assuming the very thing in question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. It does seem to be a fact that human beings evaluate (attribute values to) certain objective facts. But they do select which facts to attribute moral values to, and so distinguish within the domain in ways that are not defined within the domain.

While I'm not certain in how you intend the term "aporia" in this context — javra

I would include insoluble contradiction (normally) as one kind of aporia. I would also include a simple case of ignorance (of the facts in a particular debate). So I understand it as "not knowing how to go on".

If it is the case that both Gettier examples are cases of JFB, then the Gettier problem dissolves completely. Barn facades, sheets blowing in the wind, and broken clocks all suffer much the same fate. They dissolve when S's belief is more accurately put and then reexamined. — creativesoul

I would agree that they are cases of false belief, but a rather specialized kind, because they depend on the ambiguity of a proposition. That why I prefer not to count the clock as a Gettier problem. I do so, because those kinds of case turn on an assumption which is generally reasonable, but which is false in the particular circumstances of each case. (Harman-Vogel paradox). They are much less spectacular than Getter cases, but much more difficult. (Rusell didn't find the clock case difficult - with his usual decisiveness, he is clear that S does not know the time.)
Thanks for asking. I am as settled as one can expect in this unsettled world. But, as they say, one mustn't grumble - even though that is one of the most popular pastimes in the world.

The two different ways correspond with two distinct aspects of the world. If it was simply a matter of two different ways of describing the same thing, we'd choose the best for the purpose at hand. But the two different ways correspond with two different aspects, that which stays the same as time passes, and that which does not stay the same as time passes. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, I see - aspects. That makes a difference. I think of Wittgenstein on "seeing as.." and the puzzle pictures. I can buy that - with some qualifications in this particular case. (See below)

The important thing here in the context of this discussion is that my belief is not based on any specifical evidence or reasoning. — T Clark

I agree. The philosophers paint a particular picture of knowledge to suit their project(s). They think of people discovering things - the origins of knowledge in an ideal world.

I think most of what we know is not specifically justified. — T Clark

Quite so.

Incidentally, this is also where the Ship of Theseus paradox becomes relevant—something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same. In that sense, this is not just a side topic, but a foundational philosophical theme. — DasGegenmittel

You are right that it is an important philosophical theme. I don't think that you describe Theseus' ship correctly. Theseus' ship is not something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same, because that implies that the ship does not stay the same. Theseus' ship really changes and remains the same. It remains Theseus' ship throughout - until it is dismantled or sold - neither of which are the kinds of change envisaged in the example. We pay attention to the change or the stasis as suits our project at the time. You are adopting what you probebly call a strict sense of "same". But it applies to almost nothing in that sense. Most things change in some respects while remaining the same in other respects. They are a "mixture".

That's apparent. But seems to me that someone's preference for chocolate over vanilla is different to their thinking it wrong to kick pups. Part of that is that folk do not generally try to force their preference for chocolate on to others. Ethics inherently involves other folk. — Banno

It's certainly true that judgements of moral value are different from tastes. Part, at least, of the difference is that we don't censure people who disagree with our tastes in the way that we censure those who disagree with us about moral values - and, yes, sometimes we enforce our values on others. But I've been wondering for a while now what happened to tolerance? It's all very well to discuss what "we" (humanity in general, people in Western Democracies, "right-thinking" people) agree on. But disagreements about moral are very common. Surely, sometimes, it is perfectly reasonable to accept differences of opinion? How do we distinguish those cases from simple questions of taste?

The dedicated emotivist is only committing to rejecting an objective claim to wrongness. — AmadeusD

So how do you distinguish between moral values and questions of taste? We happily accept that some people prefer red to white wine and vice versa, but we don't allow the same liberty to puppy-kickers. The objectivist will have an explanation. Does an emotivist even recognize the question?

If someone else believes something, and they call that belief 'knowledge', you're going to judge that statement by the same criteria as your own so-called "knowledge", which is to say, you're going to judge the justifications for it being true. You don't have access to the T, you can only access the J. — flannel jesus

Well, at worst, you're going to get two evaluations of the same justification or of two different justifcations. Two evaluations of the same by the same person is not very convincing. ("Marking your own homework")
A justification that can't get us to truth or at least towards the truth is no justification at all.
But sometimes, there is no gap - as in conclusive justification.
I include in "justification" here includes questions about the skills and competences of the knower, not to mention their good faith.

perhaps so affirming that "real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths" is of itself a gross misattribution of what of what Plato, an Ancient Skeptic, in fact described. Here granting that epistemic truths - prone to the possibility of being wrong as they all ultimately are - nevertheless do occur in the world. — javra

That's putting it a bit strong. But the Theaetetus is indeed striking in that it does seem to include truths about the world we live in as not mere illusions. It is also striking that the dialogue is aporetic; people don't often recognize that.

Perhaps this is the somewhat positive conclusion Plato reaches in the Theaetetus, suggesting that absolute knowledge requires a metaphysical framework that even the best and truest logoi can only approximate. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-theaetetus/#Con

That paragraph is a brave attempt to extract something positive from the aporia and the suggestions are quite plausible. But I don't find them in the text and it's really not necessary to find a positive conclusion in an aporetic dialogue. Socrates was, in a sense, quite happy to end with aporia.

The act of faith here is not believing in specific rules, but belief in the relevant institution's (IFAB here) authority to will rules in and out of being, and for their intercessors, ritually outfitted with uniform, cards and whistle, to arbitrate them.
Similarly, faith is not in a rule that stomping babies is bad, but in the belief that underpins that rule, be it God/Gods, religions institutions, or the sanctity of human life. — hypericin

Games come about as a result of constitutive rules.
See John Searle’s work on speech acts, where he differentiates between constitutive rules that create the possibility of a certain activity, like "checkmate ends the game of chess", and regulative rules that manage existing activities, such as traffic laws. Constitutive rules create the game as such—without them, the game wouldn’t exist. — Banno

I found these quite thought-provoking.
I'm inclined to think that faith in institutions or people is trusting that they are doing the right or appropriate institutions thing. That implies a criterion for rightness or appropriateness. One doesn't have faith in rules (whether they are constitutive or regulative rules), unless there is a criterion for assessing whether they are right or appropriate.
I think that faith that a proposition/statement is correct or true is different from that. One doesn't trust or mistrust a proposition, but one can believe it or not on grounds or not; either way faith that it is true implies that there is a criterion of truth or correctness.

I mean, what does J mean? Obviously justified, but justified in what? Justified in thinking the belief is true. — flannel jesus

Yes, but there's a wrinkle. Obviously, if the justification in question is conclusive, then it follows that the belief is true. But what if the justification is not conclusive? It follows that you may be justified in believing, but wrong. Are you then justified in believing or not? For me, you are still justified in believing, but the T clause means that I can't be said to know. Without this clause, knowledge simply becomes equivalent to belief. I don't think any philosopher would buy that. (Gettier says you can be, and that's the basis for his paradoxes.)

Maybe knowledge should be SJB, sufficiently justified belief. — flannel jesus

But does sufficiently justified mean that the belief cannot possibly be false? Anything less than that leaves you open to thinking that you know, when you merely believe.

So what work is T doing in JTB, since the only access to truth you just laid out is a matter of justification, and not truth itself? — flannel jesus

You are right to think that the T clause is not doing any work if you are asking yourself whether you know that p, given that you believe it. But if you believe it, then you have already decided that the belief is true, and justified, so yhe T clause is indeed redundant.
But when you are asking whether someone knows that p, it is a different ball game. You might endorse S's justification, but that's not automatic; you might disagree with them. You have to decide for yourself, and when you say that they know that p, you commit to asserting that p is true. When you say that they believe that p, you are witholding that commitment. (If you say that someone thinks that p, you are (normally) asserting that p is false, or that S's justification is invalid or unsound.)
Granted that there are problems about the J clause, I can't see that SJB any of the problems about the J clause, but just collapses knowledge into believe. Your point that a T clause is always in practice applied by individuals in the light of their own judgements is a general comment on the concept of truth, and so has no special force in this context.

Therefore we cannot ever adequately describe active change, or becoming, in terms of states-of-being. — Metaphysician Undercover

You seem to leave open the possibility that we might adequately describe change in some other way. It occurs to me that we do already describe change in terms of processes.

The solution to this problem is dualism. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think that's a solution - especially as I'm not clear what the problem is. We have two different ways of describing the world. End of story.

We could all be dreaming - so what? Without an indication that's happening, and plenty that it's not, why question? — AmadeusD

Yes. "We might all be dreaming" implies "We might all not be dreaming" or even "We might all be awake". If the weight of all the evidence is in favour of the latter, it is not rational to believe the former. To put the point another way, to acknowledge a possibility imples recognizing the ability to distinguish what is possible from what is the case.

A student looks at a broken clock and says, “The bus will come in three minutes,” because the clock coincidentally shows the right time. The bus does come — but not because the reasoning was valid. — DasGegenmittel

Well, if the clock was working, it would still not come because the student correctly predicted it's arrival. What this case does show is that there are almost always many unspoken and unthought-of assumptions in any reasoning. In this case, suppose that the clock was working. The student's assumption was valid. Is that any more or less a bit of luck? Do we say that the student didn't know?

“The sun will rise tomorrow” is contingent, dependent on temporal and physical conditions. In contrast, real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths. — DasGegenmittel

So are you endorsing Plato's definition of knowledge?

The proposition “2 + 2 = 4” is true in all places and at all times. — DasGegenmittel

I've never understood the concept of a proposition. But I don't see how "2+2=4" could be either true or false in a world in which it didn't exist, couldn't be formulated*. We are able to do that, and we apply it retrospectively.

This unpredictability introduces a layer of epistemic risk that undermines absolute claims. — DasGegenmittel

If you mean by this the situation in your shattered bottle example, I don't see any epistemic risk at all. At 12:00, I knew that the bottle on the table. At 12:02, the bottle wasn't on the table and I had heard it fall. I knew that it was no longer on the table.
However, at 12:00 I was probably assuming that it would be there when I returned. Given that I didn't know about the forthcoming crash, did I know it would be there when I return? That does need thinking about. This a variety of Russell's clock and of the Harman-Vogel paradoxes, and probably relates to Aristotle's point that judgements about the future are contingent (which you mentioned on page 1 pf this thread).

A massive volcanic eruption could darken the sky globally. The sun might rise, physically — but it would not be perceived. In this case, the meaning of “sunrise” itself becomes unstable. — DasGegenmittel

That doesn't impact what we know about the sun in current circumstances. BTW, Hume's response was to say that we will continue to rely on the past, whatever the sceptic says. After all, there is - there can be - no more rational alternative. So it is not irrational to do so.

Conclusion: Although our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is highly reasonable, it fails to meet the strict criteria of knowledge due to its reliance on induction, vulnerability to coincidence, temporal contingency, and the unpredictability of the world. What we have is not certainty — but a well-grounded expectation that remains, in the end, fallible. — DasGegenmittel

So perhaps it is not appropriate to apply your strict criteria for knowledge.

From the standpoint of Justified True Crisis (JTC), the expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow qualifies not as infallible knowledge of a future fact, but as conceptual knowledge: the justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, while remaining open to epistemic revision. Within this framework, knowledge is not about asserting timeless metaphysical truths, but about maintaining orientation through conceptual structures that are coherent, context-sensitive, and situationally valid. — DasGegenmittel

If "the sun will rise tomorrow" is a justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, it is knowledge of a fact. To be sure, it holds under current conditions, but that just means that it is true here and now. Things may change, and we will revise our opinions as required in the new circumstances and it is not inconceivable that such things may happen. But those are just possibilities. That it is true now will not change.

JTC acknowledges the limits of what is known, and treats conceptual knowledge as both actionable and self-limiting — true not in spite of its limits, but because it defines them. — DasGegenmittel

I can see that this is different from a platonic view of knowledge. But I don't see any radical difference from "our" concept of knowledge. It certainly reflects our practice better than the platonic view. Are you sure that you are not criticizing a straw concept of knowledge?

The point remains that the enlightenment of the guru must be taken on faith, whereas a note's being out of tune can be rigorously determined. Perhaps the aesthetic quality of a piece of music or performance would be a better analogy. — Janus

Perhaps so. Yet rigorously identifying an out-of-tune note still depends on someone knowing how to do it. And identifying the aesthetic quality of music is learnt and requires practice.

As I see it to be enlightened is not to know any extraordinary propositional thing about anything but rather to be in an altered state...of equanimity for example. — Janus

That's my impression as well. So I would have thought that identifying Enlightened people was a special case of identifying someone state of mind (mood) - anxiety, joy, etc. That's not like identifying the Word of God. And you need to learn how to do that from someone else who knows. It's a social/cultural tradition.

But then it remains questionable that those in such states know how to guide others to personal transformation. As an analogy, aesthetic judgement and creative vision cannot be taught. — Janus

They cannot be taught like a mathematical calculation, which is a matter of drills and habits. But they are certainly learned and the reports of practitioners is that some people can help that process. It's a different kind of teaching for a different kind of skill. Perhaps we should not say that they are taught, but acquired through practice and that more experienced or expert practitioners can foster that process.

Ultimately the idea of God as authority must come down to considering some humans to be authorities, if not infallible, in their interpretations. We see the Catholic notion of the infallibility of the pope for example. I can't see how the same would not apply to the Eastern idea of spiritual enlightenment. — Janus

That's correct. Though I don't know enough to pronounce on Eastern ideas, interesting though they are. I got the impression that the idea was that a guru (who is himselt Enlightened) is able to discern whether someone else is Enlightened. I think of it as something like the idea that a trained musician is better able to detect when a note is out of tune than a member of the public.

I don't think I've ever considered the idea of a "moral force" before. It's an interesting concept, but after reflecting on it, I don't see how it provides the religious with a stronger moral foundation than the non-religious. — praxis

There's something odd about the idea of a moral force, if that means something that forces one to obey it. The whole point of morality is that one must obey the rules of one's own free will. But it might be more like the meaning of a moral rule.
The idea that religious people are more moral than irreligious people has been endorsed by some religious people for a long time. It is obviously very convenient for believers who wish to demonize people who disagree with them. But I don't think there is any decisive empirical evidence that it is true.

Anyway, regardless of what the Bible says, is it a hinge belief or not? — Hanover

I'm not very clear about hinge propositions, though I know they are quite popular these days. Wittgenstein doesn't give us much to go on. But my understanding is that we can choose what propositions we make the hinges of our debates. Presuppoisitionalist theologians, apparently, arbitrarily decide to mke the truth of the Bible a hinge of their reflextions and debates. That seems rather extreme, especially as it is open to anyone who disagrees with them to make a different choice. I guess they are not much interested in missionary work.

Do we need "Moral Jedi" to do the interpretation? — Banno

We've already got them. They come in two flavours, religious and secular. The former are called priests. The latter are called ethicists.

The prohibition against eating from the tree of knowledge is indeed puzzling. I think though, that we can zoom out, and say that the eden story presents us with a conception of reality where reality really is wonderful and it's here for mankind to enjoy and to flourish, yet there are certain rules that one must follow for it to endure. — BitconnectCarlos

That's a very attractive view. I wouldn't deny that sometimes people make their own hell, in one way or another, but I can't accept that everyone who is having a bad time has brought it on themselves. In addition, I would want empirical evidence that following the ten commandments (or any other set of rules) always or even mostly has good results.

Song of solomon, which is love poetry, uses much edenic imagery, so perhaps through love we re-enter Eden in a way. — BitconnectCarlos

That's a possible view, though I would have to treat it as a metaphor. But can we live our whole lives in that way?

There's a lot to unpack here. — BitconnectCarlos

Everything gets more complicated when you look at it closely. I wouldn't know how to unpack this.
I suppose the idea that God only realized that moral laws were necessary when people began to behave badly is ridiculous.
The rule in Eden is puzzling. Is there really supposed to be some moral lesson to be drawn from that story - presumably about some knowledge being forbidden? After all, it is hard to believe that knowledge of good and evil is a Bad Thing. It is the foundation of morality. Or is that knowledge the part of the punishment inflicted on us as a result of the transgression by Adam and Eve?

That's what taxes are all about, right? One's giving of one's own profits for the common good, this at least within genuine democracies. Here, I tend to agree with Mr. Franklin when he said: — javra

That's true. But unless you realize that you are included in the common good, you will mistake your taxea for some kind of charity or protection money. But if one has some money, it is the result of the social structures that you live by. So your taxes give you the opportunity to make money. (And money itself is the result of the social structures you live by.)

Following the commandments generally does yield good results. — BitconnectCarlos

But does God command them because they yield good results or do they only yield good results because God comannded them? Or, perhaps, are they a set of criteria for assessing what a good life is?

I wasn't thinking of taxes. I had in mind the idea that the "moral" thing to do is to maximize the pleasure/utility of the masses and to give no special regard for e.g. one's own family. It is to demand the impossible - complete impartiality towards the entire world. To regard even one's own son or daughter as simply another moral unit no different from a stranger. — BitconnectCarlos

That is a real problem, sadly neglected in conventional philosophy. I don't know how to resolve it, but I am sure that a moral/legal system that does not acknowledge and deal with it is trying to ignore fundamental aspects of human nature.

Does that make our agreement subjective? Is our agreement relative? Or is this talk of subjective/objective relative/(...absolute?) just fluff? — Banno

I wouldn't say it is fluff, exactly. But I do suspect that it is a false dilemma that prevents us from paying attention to what actually matters, which is the interaction between the two.

I would be surprised if many of you haven’t heard of the placebo effect; simply believing, and having faith, in the helpful and good nature of a desired outcome, that may manifest from one's actions, can affect and improve your health and healing, the outcome; and likewise, so does faith help all other conceivable preferences, goals, and desires. — loveofsophia

Yes, the placebo effect is real. Believe it or not, it works even if the doctor expresses some uncertainty about whether the placebo will work or not; which is good, because it means that you don't have to deceive patients in order to administer it. There's a theory that what really does the work is the sympathetic attention.

But over-confidence can wreck your attempts just as much as under-confidence. Telling the difference is hard.

The status of murder on this view, is not an inherent property of the act but a reflection of how people feel about the act. — Tom Storm

Provided one accepts that morality is about how people feel, that's perfectly true. That means that the concept of murder has two components - a description of the act and the evaluation of it. It is wrongful intentional killing. "Boo-word" does not capture the description, though "boo-stealing" does.

I don't think morality can be derived from any logical arguments. In fact, logic is as likely to be the ally of evil as much as good. — frank

That shouldn't be surprising. Logic is about truth and falsity. Morality is about good and bad. Yet moral principles can be consistent or inconsistent with each other. But that doesn't mean they can't both be true at the same time; it means that one cannot conform to both at the same time. Compare "Bring me a red flower" and "Bring me a blue flower".

Personally, the notion of being adequately compensated/"rewarded" after one's family dies seems absurd to me so I always took it as perhaps some reward in the next life. — BitconnectCarlos

That's very generous of you. For me, the promise of a reward in the next life is not an incentive. But I rather think that Job, as a believer, might well have been incentivised by such a promise - or perhaps by the expectation of such a reward, even if it was not promised. I've noticed that the OT frequently mentions the rewards that one who keeps God's commandments can expect (and the punishments that are frequently dished out). It's old-fashined stick and carrot persuasion.

That makes sense. It is not fundamentalism, The question it seems to leave me with though is: 'What use is an authority if you don't know what they want you to do?" — Janus

The answer is, of course, that such an authority is not much use. Do you think that applies to God? I fear it does. The ancient Greeks understood that oracles were unreliable, in the sense that the interpretation of them was not always easy. Curiously, they don't seem to have regarded that as a problem - it was just how things were.

In other words, as already mentioned, expressions of emotions aren’t truth-bearing. These statements fail where they must function as propositions to maintain meaning and inferential coherence. (This was pointed out in the Frege-Geach Problem.) These kinds of statements (“Stealing is wrong” akin to “Boo to stealing,”) cannot account for the logical role moral statements play in our ethical reasoning. Emotional statements lack what’s needed for validity. Emotional statements, again, lack a truth value. — Sam26

Expressions of emotions aren't truth-bearing. But the terms for emotions are not just expressions. They contain a description as well. Anger at a late train is about the proposition that the train is late; if it turns out that the train is not late, the emotion does not necessarily disappear, but it become inappropriate and quite likely to disappear when the truth is revealed. And so on. On my view, moral statements normally include an expression of disapproval and an imperative to do or not do the action they are are about. Three distinct components, each which can be assessed in its own appropriate way. Expressions can be appropriate or inappropriate; commands can be obeyed or not; descriptions, of course, can be true or not.
Emotions are more complex than descriptions, and moral statement are more complex than emotions.

Hence non-cognitivism rather then emotivism, and the implication that one must think about the situation and not only about one's emotional response. One doesn't just feel, one thinks about consequences, and hence about what one wants to be the case. Setting this out as just (no more than...) an emotional response does not do it justice. — Banno

We could perhaps say that moral statements are logically more complex than emotions.

Yes, changing a nappy might be disgusting, but if you care about the child, that feeling of care outweighs the disgust. The "ought" in that case is just another emotional response. One that wins out over revulsion. — Tom Storm

You could describe it like that. But the reason that the feeling of care outweighs the disgust is that changing the nappy is more important than one's disgust. One doesn't just throw the disgust and the care into a set of scales and see which wins.

Looking at these issues in terms of intent and action and consequences gives us a much more viable framework than "emotion". It moves from doing what you want to doing what you should, and hence away from mere egoism. — Banno

Yes, there is a logic to morality. It's just not the logic of truth and falsity - though it does depend on it. The facts of the case make a different and those are to be established in the way that is appropriate to facts.

How we understand the doing -- the action -- is tied to the thoughts and feelings of the doer. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes. That's true. Thinking and feeling and doing are all part of what the action is. So is the on-looker's reaction.

Would you not say that one must first have faith that the authority is absolute before one could presume to serve it? — Janus

Yes. I had in mind the possibility, for example, of someone believing that God is the final authority, but suitably cautious about thinking that they know the mind of God when it comes to what to do.

That seems about right.

Your description of screams and reactions illustrates the observable consequences of the act, but it is our emotional reaction to these consequences—our feelings of horror and disapproval—that ultimately drives our moral judgment. In other words, while the physical harm is objective, the construction of this act as immoral is not derived from the harm itself but from the shared emotional attitudes that society cultivates in response to such violence. And humans (within time and place), seem to share fears, horrors, anxieties. — Tom Storm

I would argue that as soon as you describe the physical consequences of the act as harmful, you have made a moral judgement - or at least a value judgment. Harm is deleterious, by definition.
I suppose you would say that fears, horrors etc. are shared, you would say that they are not objective, but inter-subjective. But that sharing is one of the features of objectivity, so that seems like a cop-out,

But we can also say that the world of the happy man A is quite different from the happy man B. — Tom Storm

I suppose we can. But the point that happiness and sadness are attitudes that shape our judgements stands.

I am suggesting that emotion shapes our identify and may be the foundational platform over which our identity (choices, decisions, preferences) is constructed. — Tom Storm

I don't think that emotion is one thing. It is a collection of different reactions to the world we live in. It seems very odd to deny that the world we live is not the foundation of your choices, etc.

Maybe, but I’m not sure. For me, emotional reactions are likely to be preconcpetual, prelinguistic experiences to which we apply post-hoc rationalizations. "I am angry because..." what follows is the post-hoc part. I've often held that human preferences are primarily directed by affective states, with rational deliberation serving as a post-hoc justification rather than the initial determinant of choice. — Tom Storm

I have a somewhat different idea of emotions. Emotional reactions are reactions to something, some state of affairs, fact, whatever. That's what I call the object of the emotion - what it is about. So, for me, emotional reactions are the emotions. (You seem to be positing that the emotion is something orther than the reactions). If I react to the scoring of a goal with joy or disappointment, the goal is neither post-hoc nor a rationalization.
I disintinguish betweem emotions and moods. Anxiety and depression sometimes have emotions - some specific thing that I am anxious or depressed about. But sometimes they do not, and then they influence how I respond to specific objects or events. They affect how we interpret everything. As Wittgenstine said "The world of the happy man is quite different from the world of a sad man".

I'm not sure what your points mean in relation to emotivism. Can you clarify this? — Tom Storm

Looking at it again, I'm not sure that it really makes sense. It was just an off-the-cuff thing.

Ok, but then my point still stands. One can't derive any consequent from "boo stealing!". At the very least a moral statement worthy of the name needs to apply to more than just oneself. — Banno

Isn't there a complication about this, that the emotions have two functions, one is to express how we feel
(*Boo!", "Hurrah!") and the other to describe what it provoking the feeling - the object of the emotion. One could compare the concept of stealing which describes an action, but also expresses an evaluation of it.

Yes. It's about how we want things to be. It's not that emotivism is wrong so much as that it doesn't properly recognise the difference between what I want and what we want. — Banno

Yes. And if it is about how we want things to be, then it is about our values.

No, it really is not. "one ought not kick puppies" means "I think one ought not kick puppies". Nothing more. It means the speaker believes it to be true, referring to nothing further. — AmadeusD

For example, know why Moses never entered the promised land? The Jews questioned whether it was safe because their scouts saw Nephilim there and it pissed God off that they would question the soundness of his directive to enter. — Hanover

I didn't know that. I shall add it to my list of justifications of God's action in the OT, together with his reason for forbidding Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge, for the Flood, for punishing Job. No doubt there are others. The God of the OT is a rather different creature from the God of the NT.

which I think clearly shows that what I had in mind were dogmatic ideologies, whether atheistic or theistic. It is the belief in absolute authority whether human or divine and the imposition of dogma on others which is the problem. — Janus

Yes. Perhaps more cautiously, it is the confidence that one knows what the absolute authority is telling us that is the danger.

On the contrary, such an ad hoc approach to social engineering is quite rational, as Popper argued in The Poverty of Historicism. By not adhering to a fixed constitution, the British system allows for more responsive, piecemeal reforms rather than trying to impose a grand, all-encompassing plan. — Banno

Good point. I should have thought of it.

So I more than greatly doubt your claim that these two criteria distinguish tyrants from sovereigns in practice - if that is indeed what you intended to say. — javra

I would agree with you. There's a tendency to use "tyrant" and "sovereign" as boo/hoorah words. I was reporting what people have said. I did not intend to endorse it.

It's just that if someone is told not to kick the pup, and they ask "Why not?", they are missing something important, which is not found in "Becasue bullying is wrong" but seen in what they think it OK to do. — Banno

I take your point. But I think it is a bit more complicated than you seem to think. I agree that it is probably true that most people do refrain from kicking puppies without being explicitly taught not to. On the whole, it seems that people do manage to understand what the rules are without explicit instruction, from observing what goes on around them.

However, there used to be a practice, I'm told, of some children, of picking the wings off flies and then watching their futile buzzing with amusement. Suppose we came across such a case. They are deficient in their understanding. Or, small children often treat their siblings or companion animals in ways that are cruel, not because they are wicked, but because they don't understand what they are doing. So we need to teach them. That might be authoritarian - "don't do that, or else" - or it might be persuasive - and that's where the arguments/justifications come in.

But stealing may be permissible in certain circumstances or not harmful and even do good. How do you make the journey from such a statement (which seems to reflect context, preference and emotion) into truth? — Tom Storm

I'm not sure about preference and emotion, but truth is certainly context-dependent.

Bedrock for me refers to hinges that are more fixed than other hinges. Hinges are layered, some more fixed than others, but the riverbed works well too. — Sam26

It's not unusual for Wittgenstein to express a point in several different ways. I'm never sure that's because he is drawing our attention to subtleties or because he wants to avoid getting trapped into a fixed form dogma. So I don't have a problem with what you say.

“Absolute“ is pretty ill defined, and probably a nonsense word. — Banno

I agree. I expressed my point badly.

The consequence of denying the higher power is to be a complex wolf or chicken though. That worldview is lesser i'd submit. — Hanover

By what criterion? What's wrong with being a complex wolf or chicken? Why do you have to create a hierarchy here?

The statement "stealing is illegal" is true, verifiable by looking the law up to see see what it says. — Hanover

Yes. That and the prospect of enforcement are the difference between law and morality. Yet I agree that they blur into each other - as in "you ought to obey the law" as a moral, not just a prudential, rule.

if the statement 'stealing is wrong' amounts to no more than the emotivist's "boo stealing!" This can't be truth-apt. — Tom Storm

Emotions are not simply "expressions" like "ouch!" or "boo". They include a cognitive element, which is identified when we say "I am angry because..." or "I am afraid of..." "boo stealing" includes the belief that the addressee has taken possession of something that does not belong to them. Yet if I were to characterize your anger as true, I would be understood as saying, not that your anger is justified, but that it is real, not pretended. When the belief driving an emotion is false, we talk of the emotion as irrational or inappropriate. So emotions are indeed not themselves true or false, but have are validated or not by a claim that is true or false.

I don't like emotions or descriptions as an understanding of moral rules. Yet they include - are related to both. So a compatibilist answer is required. Perhaps something ike this. Moral rules encode our expectations and requirements of people's behaviour. There are facts of the matter whether certain rules do encode our expectations and requirements. But we do not respond to people following or violating those rules in the same way as we respond to "plain" - morally neutral - facts of the matter.

Seems the thread has moved off topic to attempts to explain or even justify totalitarianism... I wonder why that is topical? Seems to be a common theme on the fora at present. — Banno

A lot of people are running around claiming that democracy is broken. There is a suggestion that we need a "strong man" leader. I could write a bitter speech about that, and about the strong men who have so far emerged. None of them seem to be strong enough to stand up to democractic scrutiny, so they are not strong enough to satisfy me.

There are moral truths, at least, in that some statements are both moral and true. I usually use "Don't kick puppies for fun" as a trite example. "Don't kick puppies for fun" is true. If someone disagrees, that's not so much about the truth of the sentence as about their moral character - that is, they are wrong. — Banno

It seems that there are indeed moral truths. On the other hand, while I agree that anyone who disagrees shows something about their moral character, I don't think the same applies to a statement like "Water consists of H2O". Someone who disagrees with that reveals their cognitive incompetence.
Moral truths, we could say, are in a different category from facts of the matter. The difference is that moral truths have an illocutionary (?) force. "One ought not to kick puppies" implies "Do not kick puppies". Hume was not wrong IMO. If you doubt him, see Aristotle "Reason, by itself, moves nothing" (NE VI, I think). Moral values, like other kinds of value, are what move human beings.
That might reconcile the argument between you and @frank.

By the same reasoning, the sentence is not something that needs justification. ↪Sam26 might count it as a given, a hinge, or a bedrock belief.
We might, heading back to the topic of this tread, ponder if it is an act of faith. I think it more an act of common decency. Thoughts? — Banno

I really don't follow the idea that "one ought not kick puppies" needs no justification. I would agree that a more general principle such as "one ought not to torment beings weaker than oneself" or "bullying is wrong" is not subject to justification.

The terms "given" and "bedrock" and "hinge" are all different. The latter, on my understanding are protected in a given debate, but might not be protected in a differently framed debate. The same applies fo "given", except that, like an axiom, it usually means a starting-point for a ratiocination. "Bedrock" seems more like an absolute to me - unquestionable in all contexts. So I'm broadly with you and @Sam26 on this.

I hesitate to say that accepting such statements is an act of faith, although they do seem to be related. Basic religious beliefs do seem to be functioning in this territory, but doubt and disbelief are not ruled out, which would make them different from "given" and "bedrock" and "hinge". But, since one can be true to (faithful to?) one's principles or not, I'm inclined to think that they fit in well with faith.

PS I have to sign out now.

Hence, a non-tyrannical monarchy being akin to a triangular square, or a married bachelor - this even if the “sole absolute ruler” is taken to be benevolent (by some of his/her subjects at least). — javra

It depends how you define your terms. There's a tricky problem here about sovereignty, specifically about the status of the person or body that makes the law. That person or body, it seems, cannot be subject to the law, because what it says or decides is the law (by definition). So you could say that the body that makes the law, is sovereign and therefore tyrannical. That leads to the conclusion that all societies that have a legal system are tyrannies. That is very problematic, unless one is an anarchist. There are two criteria that are used to distinguish between tyrants and sovereigns. One is that they are benevolent, at least in the sense that they try to do what is right. The other is that they are subject to the law.
The other issue here is that the British Constitution is uniquely (so far as I know) idiosyncratic. Nothing quite fits the standard categories. That's because there is no constitution - single coherent structure - that arranges everything. There is a collection of laws and customs, created in response to specific problems, that sort of manage to keep everything more or less working together. Nobody thinks it is a rational system. It depends entirely on everybody involved making the system work. Trump would have a field day with it.

given the way you so far put things, it all sounds a bit too much like freeloading to me. — javra

There are arguments that it is not just ree-loading. The British monarch is an embodiment or symbol of the continuity of the state. That means that Governments can come and go, but there is always continuity underpinning the changes. The monarch also has many ceremonial duties, demonstrating that the state is above and beyond the government of the day. Some countries assign that role to a President. Ireland (Eire), I believe, is one of them.

But the British “constitutional monarchy” is such that the mon-arch (the sole ruler) is a figurehead which has no real power to rule anything. Sort of nullifying the “sole rulership” aspect of the political enterprise. — javra

You already did that when you specified "non-tyrannical", didn't you?
You are looking at it through the wrong lens. The elected Government is a buffer, taking the risk of popular unpopularity and taking the rap when the populace want a change of Government. In exchange, the monarchy gets security and lots and lots of influence and money - oh, and avoids all the boring part of running the country.
The people are enabled to get rid of unpopular rulers without a revolution.
Managed democracy. Perfect. What's not to like?
Just a thought-experiment for fun.

Suppose you have a non-tyranical monarchy, would it be a democracy? — Hanover

That sounds like the British "constitution".

Well, that the cat ought be on the mat is either true, or it is false... unless you have some alternative? — Banno

If that's true, then there is at least one moral fact. So I would have to defuse it somehow. I can think of various tactics which might answer.
EDIT: I should have said "Whether it is true or false, there is at least one moral fact."

It would be interesting to juxtapose Nussbaum's comment with Arendt's banality of evil. — Banno

Yes, indeed. It would certainly make one think.

Another thread, perhaps. — Banno

I agree.

Perhaps the point might have been expressed better. If someone says the cat is on the mat, there is a fact of the matter that we can check against - take a look and see. If someone says that cat ought be on the mat, there is no similar process available for us. We must instead decide. — Banno

Ah, yes - the fact of the matter. To be sure, if it is a question whether the cat ought to be on the mat, there is no fact of the matter. How could there be? But we (each of us) have to decide both, for ourselvees. Nussbaum remarks somewhere in "The Fragility of Goodness" that if someone does something seriouslly morally appalling, we do not understand them - their actions make no sense. The penalty of breaking the laws of logic is nonsense. That is also the penalty of breaking the moral laws. There's another parallel. (I'm paraphrasing, not quoting. I've mislaid my copy of Nussbaum's book).

Some religious people view belief in God as a kind of Wittgensteinain hinge that's foundational to their belief system. To some, it's an arrational bedrock belief. — Sam26

Yes. I would have cited that case and perhaps added the presuppositonalists. But I understand that there are also Christians who think that the existence of God is an empirical proposition - as does Dawkins. There's also the question how these propositions fit alongside the classical a priori beliefs - are they the same or a distinct class. It all gets very muddy.

Oh. But in the ancient world people usually respected foreign gods. If you visited a foreign town, you would first go pay respect to their gods and then go about your business.
Religious intolerance (the idea of false gods) came later. It's not so much about knowing divine will as believing that there is only one true divinity, which might be related to psychological integration. — frank

It is true that pagan polytheism was a lot more hospitable than monotheism is. Sometimes they found parallels, as in Jupiter/Zeus, Poseidon/Neptune, Aphrodite/Venus. Sometimes they adopted foreign gods. Atheism wasn't the main problem then - though some mad philosophers denied they were real. On the other hand, the Romans eradicated the old Druidical religion in Britain and Gaul. But that was because they were so dead set on resisting them. I agree that monotheism seems to be more radical. Whether that belief is a matter of psychological integration is a question far beyond me. The Jews were very special, even unique in the ancient world.

I assure you that I'm reading it as a collection of ancient texts written over a ~1000 year period. Maybe once in a while I see an interesting bit that captures my attention and gets me thinking about how the authors could have written such a thing, but overall it is absolutely a collection of texts written over that time. And if we follow that historical view, we see that "God is love" is at an the tail end of that timeline. Initially, God is quite a bit terrifying because, let's face it, reality is often be terrifying -- and man has the potential to make it even more terrifying than it needs to be through his actions. — BitconnectCarlos

OK. We are on the same page, in that respect at least. I can even see that the New Testament presents a rather different conception of God from the one in the Old Testament. It's how Christians fit the two testaments together. I get the point that reality is terrifying and gods that reflect that aspect of reality seem entirely appropriate in any pantheon. But the terrors in reality do not reflect any moral laws, so is it likely that such a god would play a part in these stories in these books?

I'm interested in this business about total obedience and total trust. Both Abraham and Job raise it. The fact that both are rewarded muddies the issue, I think. Risking something for massive rewards is different from risking something irrespective of any possible reward. I also am deeply suspicious of a God who feels the need to subject his followers to such extreme tests.
I think it comes back to the Euthyphro problem. Do the gods love piety because it is good, or is it just that piety is what the gods love. Putting it another way, if God asks me to do something, should I do it because God knows what is good better than me? That is faith, but conditional faith. Or should I do it because anything that God asks is good just because he asks it? That is total (blind) faith. I'm with @Banno on this. Blind faith is not a good idea.
Even if you take a strong line and stipulate that anything that God asks is, by necessity, good, one has to bear in mind that one may be deceived in thinking that it is God and not some demon that is asking you to sacrifice your son.

The conviction that one knows the will of God is the most dangerous religious belief of them all.
— Ludwig V
Dangerous? — frank

If someone disagrees with you about doctrine, we do not just have a disagreement. The other is a heretic and any means to change their tune are justified. If someone does not accept Christ, say, the difference is not just a difference, but justifies any means to convert them. Do I have to recount examples?
I'm not saying there are not non-religious examples of the same behaviour. Any radical conviction (faith) can be the basis violence and cruelty.

That's the odd thing about "ought" - even if someone else tells you how things "ought" be, it is up to you to decide if they are right. — Banno

It's not all that odd. If someone tells you how things are, it is up to you to decide whether to believe them.
('m not suggesting that the two decisions are the same - just that there is a parallel between the "is" and "ought" in these language-games.

many religious people maintain that complete faith in God erases these fears and doubts. The Abraham story pushes this to the limit. Could a father feel any faith in God under such circumstances? — J

Erasing fears and doubts is always tempting but not always appropriate. One the whole, I would think that a father that didn't feel such doubts wouldn't be a very good test for God and, perhaps, not a very good father - and we are told that Abraham loved Isaac very much.

Book of Job also puts humanity in its place epistemically. As humans our perspectives are limited and biased and to draw such broad and universal judgments such as which suffering is ultimately "justified" and which is "unjustified" is beyond us. The book stands against man's hubrism and his tendency of all encompassing judgment. In the end Job is rewarded. — BitconnectCarlos

That does make some sense. Still, I balk at a story of a supposedly loving God destroying the life of one of their followers for a bet? But I think it's unlikely that we could possibly agree on an intepretation of this, or any other story, in the Bible. I'm reading a collection of ancient texts written over a period of 1,000 years in various circumstances and for various purposes. You are reading the Word of God. But I have to say, some of the stories in the Old Testament remind me of some of the Greek stories, in which the gods do not behave in a particularly moral way and from which the lesson seems to be that the gods frequently mess about with us, either because they don't care or because they are actively hostile.

If you're convinced that you're all good, how will you notice the signs that you're starting to turn into a Nazi due to bitterness or whatever. It's better to know that you're capable of becoming a monster so you can take steps to change course. You have to start with accepting that you have that dark side. Kierkegaard was right. — frank

I'll sign up to that. Kierkegaard was very perceptive in many ways. The conviction that one knows the will of God is the most dangerous religious belief of them all. Perhaps God was right to try to prevent us from coming to know (or think we know) good and evil.

Really? You’ve conducted this survey and know that’s a fact? I know a bunch of real softies, no danger at all, who would say they know what God wants. — Fire Ologist

From the fact that some religious people have conducted horrors because they believed in God. I don't think anyone would argue that it follows that all religious have, or ever would, conduct horrors because they believe in God. But I do think it follows that religious belief does not prevent people from conducting horrors and can provide a motivation for them to do so.

There are few folk as dangerous as those who are certain there is no God. How many of those folks turned up on your survey of people who know the will of God? — Fire Ologist

There are plenty of other, similar motivations for conducting horrors - nationalism/patriotism, for example. I'm aware that some religious people think that atheists are more likely to conduct horrors than religious people. But I don't know of empirical evidence that that's the case.

Faith is not opposed to reason. — Fire Ologist

I agree with that if you mean by faith the starting-point of reason. So I wouldn't say that theology is irrational, since it starts from belief in God and attempts work out rational doctrines from there. Even astrology includes a certain rationality. But that makes both doctrines vulberable to rational criticism.

Which is all to say, stop with the literalism. — Hanover

The trouble with these stories is that they hover between the literal and the metaphorical. That's what makes them myths.

These stories were not meant for such analysis. And stop with the sympathy for the characters. They aren't real. — Hanover

If we don't sympathize with the characters, the story becomes pointless.

Topics such as this require that we take great care with the language we use. So even if faith were necessary - and it isn't - that would not make it a virtue; and somethings being justified is not the same as it's being determined. — Banno

I'm not quite sure what you are getting at here. But it is true that I have been neglecting the approval rating that is usually implicit in classifyinng some commitment as a faith. For myself, I am happy to say that whether faith is a virtue depends on what you have faith in and/or what your faith leads you to do. That requires some common basis for assessment. But it doesn't seem too much to say that actions like the ritual murder of one's son, the pointless infliction of suffering on an innocent person, or the wanton destruction of a civilization fall into that category.
There's a group of related words here which it would be good to sort out. Faith, trust, loyalty commitment. All of them have a dark side, which perhaps should have correlated terms. Obsession might be one of them.

So the stories are indeed preposterous, as you say. The lesson one is supposed to take away is, as ↪praxis says, thoughtless obedience. This is not admirable. — Banno

The let-out clauses (Abraham didn't believe God would make him do it, God never intended him to do it) undermine the idea that the take-away is total obedience. But it may be that the point of the story lies completely elsewhere:-

Many Bible scholars have suggested this story's origin was a remembrance of an era when human sacrifice was abolished in favour of animal sacrifice.

If the intended take-away is that God does not require human sacrifice, the story makes sense. The message is reinforced in later books.

Two kings of Judah, Ahaz and Manassah, sacrificed their sons. Ahaz, in 2 Kings 16:3, and King Manasseh in 2 Chronicles 33:6.

Both accounts seriously criticize the action.
See Wikipedia - Human Sacrifice

I can find no way out of believing that the story of Job is outrageous. God inflicts all that suffering on him because of a bet with Satan, to show off how faithful his believers are. Truly, not acceptable. Is it possible that it would have been acceptable in the culture of his time? Even so, not acceptable.
The Flood at least has a comprehensible reason, though it still seems to me to be a gross over-reaction.

I'll venture the notion that faith is about a certain form of trust - a trust in X that can neither be empirically nor logically evidenced. Belief (also closely associated to the notion of trust) can and most always should be justifiable in order to be maintained - as is the case in JTB. But faith eludes this possibility in practice.
Form there, the concept or else experience of faith can then bifurcate into authoritarian doctrines and usages, one the one hand, and on the other into a certain sense of hope-as-acted-upon-conviction regarding what is and will be, one for which one cannot find any steady ground to provide justification for. — javra

That makes sense.

To me taking an informed risk is not faith. Mostly it's taking a punt, that the skills, training, equipment, knowledge and physical strength you have as a fireman or solider will make the activity a success, knowing full well that you could die. I don't see this functioning as faith, but I can see how poetically it can be made to fit. — Tom Storm

H'm I'm not sure what to make of the last sentence there. But I think you are missing my point. The fireman (person?) heading into a burning building has lots of equipment and training, not to mention protocols behind him. They cannot sort all that out for themselves. They need to have faith - to trust, if you prefer - that all of that is as it should be and that their project is worthwhile. You and I might want to say that they need to trust in science and reason. My point is that, so far as I can see, that trust is hard to distinguish from the trust of a believer in whatever they believe, whether it be God, or luck, or the stars. I realize that's heretical, but the question does not just go away.

For me using the word "faith" outside of a Christian or Islamic religious contexts is problematic.
— Tom Storm
Why so? That makes no sense to me.
— Ludwig V
For reasons I have explained: that it is not properly comparable. I understand that you disagree, many do, particularly those from Christian backgrounds. — Tom Storm

Could you possibly steer me to where you explained? I would very much like to see what you say.

Faith, understood as belief without or even despite the evidence, is not a virtue. — Banno

I think you are over-simplifying, or at last taking for granted the context in which we evaluate beliefs. First, there is an issue about what counts as evidence. Classic example, belief in a creator God. Someone like Dawkins will not agree with his religious opponent about what is to count as evidence. Who decides? Second, evidence does not grow on trees. We have to learn what counts as evidence for what. If we don't trust what we have learnt, we are sunk. Second, not all propositions can be neatly parcelled with their evidence. Methodological principles, such as the experimental method or the principle of sufficient reason come to mind. In addition, scientists don't approach their issues with a blank sheet of paper. They take for granted, trust, well-established part of science and build on them to refine, extend or revise what is known.

Faith, understood as trust, might foster commitment or dedication and these are (perhaps) virtues. — Banno

Well, I'm not clear about the differences here. I'm inclined to go further and say that faith just is commitment, But either way, I agree that whether faith, trust, commitment, dedication are good or bad things depends on what they are in or to. Evaluating cases - given the absence of the usual processes of evidence, etc. will come down to evaluating outcomes. This can be tricky, but we seem to be able to carry out evaluations quite effectively in some cases at least. The "not in my name" defence is a complication, however.

All of the pain and suffering and barbarity and lies and badness - it was always already there as it remains. Faith didn’t cause it. Science doesn’t cause it either. Science helps some of it; faith does too. — Fire Ologist

I would agree with that. But saying that neither faith nor science didn't cause the bad things that have been done in their name does concede much to the claims of those who have faith. Some Christians, at least, do claim that their faith enables them to lead better lives. Similarly with science. More than that, people do claim their faith, whether in religion or science, is the motivation for their actions. Others of the same faith may reject that claim on the grounds that their understanding of their faith is not "true". But can we necessarily accept that excuse?

We have no choice but to act. And I have been at pains to say that our actions are not determined by reason and science. — Banno

I agree with the first sentence. But given the difficulty in establishing everything required to provide a full justification of what we do, don't we have to trust our authoritative sources and/or our common sense in order to act at the time we need to? For the second sentence, I'm not sure what you mean. People do cite reason and science as well as their religion as justifications for their actions. Do you mean that they are always mistaken? Or do you mean that there is some additional element - perhaps something like motivation - that is needed?

And this is the culpability of faith, when it encourages folk to cruelty.
— Banno
Which is pretty much my problem with faith. There is no act so barbaric that it can't be justified by an appeal to faith. As a way of deciding action, it is very poor and entirely unaccountable. — Tom Storm

There is no way to asses a faith, so far as I can see, but by its fruits. Religious faiths come out with a pretty mixed record. Are we sure that science and reason (Enlightenment) comes out much better?

For me using the word "faith" outside of a Christian or Islamic religious contexts is problematic. — Tom Storm

Why so? That makes no sense to me.

People, are forever trying to fit faith into secular choices so I am bound to disagree. — Tom Storm

Well, I don't care that much about the word. I would happily talk about commitment, but then insist of calling whatever you think Christians and Muslims have by the same name. Because I don't see what makes those specific religious contexts special, philosophically speaking.

Mostly it's taking a punt, that the skills, training, equipment, knowledge and physical strength you have as a fireman or solider will make the activity a success, knowing full well that you could die. — Tom Storm

Sometimes people take a punt against the odds, or not knowing (or caring) what the odds are. On the other hand, the people we are talking about consider their choice to be well founded and likely to succeed. That's what faith does.

My own personal stance is that I don't respect people's choices if I consider the choice to be poorly founded and certain to fail. — Tom Storm

But will you allow them to make their choices? Or, better, at what point are you prepared to intervene and prevent people acting in accordance with their faith, even if you consider their choices to be poorly founded and certain to fail? (There are problems like vaccine scepticism, where private choices affect the rest of us.)

Which is pretty much my problem with faith. There is no act so barbaric that it can't be justified by an appeal to faith. As a way of deciding action, it is very poor and entirely unaccountable. — Tom Storm

Well, that is indeed a serious issue. Private choices, like refusing medical treatment, are one thing. Forbidding medical treatment to others, is another.

If you've found meaning in science, then you don't need to be told you're missing out. — Hanover

I didn't say I found meaning in science - just wonder, and a satisfaction that there is some order in the world. But I certainly do not feel that I'm missing out. On the contrary, I think that those who think that scientific explanations obscure the wonder in the world are missing out.

I'm just trying to stop the responders who will insist upon pointing out the obvious literal absurdities before they begin. — Hanover

I'm glad that stuff was not to be taken seriously. But now I don't know what to make of your repeating it. Ah well, perhaps I'll just enjoy the mystery.

Yes, I’ve watched a few people die because they refused treatment, believing that their faith in God would heal them. One of these people, Malcolm, was a homeless man who had gangrene in his knee. He refused treatment even after his bones snapped and he was admitted to the hospital unable to walk. 'I pray and have faith,' he would tell me. He died. — Tom Storm

So have I, including some people quite close to me. I was a believer at first. Then I started asking questions that were deemed to be "unhelpful". It took a few years, but that was that, in the end. Now look at me!
Two (possibly unhelpful) comments. First, I still have to respect the choice they made. The people close to me who made that choice caused me pain and anger at the time, but still, they have the right to choose. Does a child of 8 have the same right, I wonder? But the people who watched and sang were not merely bystanders in the grip of apathy.
Second, it seems to me that the soldier or fireman who chooses to risk death to save someone must have some faith on a similar level. A faith that the risk is worth it, perhaps. At some level, if there is something that we live for and that we will face death for, it may not be the same as religious faith, but it occupies the same place in our lives. Even to have no faith in anything (if that's possible) is to have a faith of a kind. Is this what the existentialists meant by commitment.
Rational? Pre-rational? Certainly faith is not a choice like choosing the right car or which item on the menu one fancies this evening. Perhaps it's not a choice at all, but the ground of all choices - the values within which reason can sift the options.

If you experience a fantastical event and use it to provide meaning to your life or to inspire you to be a better person, how is your mind lesser than the one who explains the event away as a statistical anomaly? Is the fidelity to science the measure of the better mind? — Hanover

"Explaining away" is not necessarily what science does, but what science is sometimes used to do. The wonder of a rainbow is not lessened, but increased by knowing the scientific accound of it.

In what way is the invention of a mathematical rule different from the creation of a language game/form of life? — Joshs

That's a very hard question to answer. My best short answer is, I think, that what I'm saying is meant as a refinement of what Wittgenstein said, not a contradiction. So I'm pretty sure that the distinction between invention and discovery here (in mathematics) can be expected to apply (be useful) wherever we are talking/thinking about rules, language games, practices and forms of life. (Is it forms of life, or ways of life? I'm not sure). More than that, it is reflected in philosophy, as competing theories about mathematics. I've come to the tentative conclusion that neither realism nor constructivism are true, though both have some truth.
The difference is that a language game consists of rules (at least one, and often more), so one can add or modify one of the rules of the game without thereby necessarily creating a new game. I don't pretend that any of the relevant concepts (rule, game, practice, form/way of life) are well-defined. But I'm inclined to think that's a feature, not a bug.

When Moore says ‘this is my hand’, Wittgenstein argues that he confuses an empirical assertion with a grammatical proposition. — Joshs

Yes, but isn't there a rider here, in that W eventually sees the distinction between empirical assertion and a grammatical remark as a matter of what sentences/statements/propositions are used to do - (which, after all, is what meaning means). So "This is red" can be an empirical proposition and an ostensive definition.

Moore’s gesture is pointing to the grammar , the rules, of a language game that Moore ‘inherited’ from his entanglement with his culture, but which rules are invisible to him. Moore ‘discovers’ that this is his hand, but doesn’t realize that his discovery only makes sense within the language game. — Joshs

Well, "discovers" is a bit odd here. What could count as Moore not knowing that that this is his hand? (I can imagine circumstances in which we might not realize that that is his hand, but they are quite special.) However, Moore thinks he is making an empirical statement and that's not wrong. But it seems to leave (does leave) room for sceptical doubt. Wittgenstein wants to eliminate doubt, so I take him to be pointing out that this case, when we attend to it properly, also draws our attention to the conditions for the possibility of doubt.
I sometimes think that Witgenstein was a bit condescending to Moore, though to be condescended to by Wittgenstein is something to be proud of. Moore found a game-changing move against sceptism, even if he didn't have the philosophy to press it home. Nor did Wittgenstein at the time.

Isnt this form of life an invention, but one that Moore was not ‘in charge of’? — Joshs

Philosophers almost always speak as if we are in charge (control) of language - and practices. (I think they hesitate a bit about "forms of life" and that does seem to gesture at something that we are lumbered with, rather than something we invent or are in charge of). But we learn language as something given - how could we not? After we have learnt language we realize, with Humpty-Dumpty's remark in Alice (in Wonderland or through the looking-glass? I don't remember.) that "Words mean what I want them to mean. It's a question of who's in charge." But although in practice we can modify language in some ways, much (most) of what goes on is not under anybody's control. Words don't mean what I, or anybody else, wants them to mean, even though thousands, even millions, of individual decisions make up what goes on.
So it's complicated.

Couldn’t we say that scientific paradigms are invented , and the facts that show up within them are discovered? — Joshs

Mathematics etc. are not quite the same kind of thing as our everyday conceptions of the world. They are more "artificial" than natural language. So I'm happy to agree that we can and we should say exactly that. But I'm after a third category. Our agreement about how to apply a rule defines the rule. So you would think that no difficulty could arise. But sometimes we don't agree, and sometimes our rule throws up peculiar results. (And we can agree when either of those things happen). Negotiation is necessary - changes to the rules, additional rules, etc. These situations do not neatly fit into the usual disctingction between the rules (concepts) and applications of the rules (experience).

I hope at least some of that is helpful or at least not unhelpful.

I like "invent" better because it underlines the fact that, as I see it, mathematics is a human invention, a language, and not a fundamental aspect of the universe. — T Clark

If we're talking about mathematics as a whole, I agree with you. I'm just suggesting that a bit of flexibility in our language within mathematics is helpful. The important point is that when we develop/invent rules and make decisions about how to apply them, we are not totally "in charge". Put it this way - our agreements can lead to undesired consequjences and disagreements, which need to be resolved. We don't invent those - we would much rather they didn't happen, so we don't invent them. We do resolve them. That's not a problem, in itself; it's just part of our practice.

As for the rest of the quoted passage, — T Clark

Thanks.

There's no fact regarding which rules. It's a mind bender for sure. — frank

Yes, it can bend your mind. But it doesn't have to. Plus and quus are the same in some instances and not in others. So you can tell which is being followed, provided you consider the full scope of the rule, not just a selected part of it.

There's a classic piece of misdirection going on here. Kripke keeps saying "there's no fact of the matter" and he means that there's no fact of the matter as long as we think only of applications where x,y < 57.

His rule is "x ⊕ y = x + y, if x, y < 57 and = 5 otherwise". It reads rather differently if you write it out in full. Then it is "x ⊕ y = x + y, if x, y < 57" and "x ⊕ y = 5, if x, y => 57".

Don't just pay attention to what conjurers are drawing your attention to. Pay attention to what they are trying to get you to ignore.

There is no fact of the matter if a fact is something we discover. Not if a fact can be something we do. You know how to do plus, as opposed to quus. If you want, you might say that it is a fact that you do 2 plus 2 and not 2 quus 2 — Banno

I don't think we really conflict. I do want to say that it is a fact that someone doing 2+2 is doing something different from someone who is doing 2⊕2. It is true that there is no difference in that application. But if you consider the range of the applications, the full facts of the matter become apparent. To consider that individual case or even a limited range of cases is misdirection.

If you and I are walking down Main Street, and I am going from A to B, but you are going from A to C, our different journeys are not apparent. You have to consider the whole journey to see the difference.

I was writing this while you were writing your comment. I'm happy to leave it here. :smile:

It’s not human agreement , as though each individual voices their opinion and then the group arrives at a consensus. Socially normative meanings function prior to and already within individual experiences of rules and criteria of action. At the same time that such social norms allow us to make sense of our own perspective within them, we can differ among one another within shared language games as to how to proceed. And whether or not we agree on how to apply our rules, those rules never are enough to tell us how to go on. It is only within the actual context of the situation that we ‘intuit’ the specific sense and use of a rule. This intuitive knowing is the solution, not waiting for a consensus from a group. — Joshs

I agree with every word of that, except the word "intuit". But it's just a fancy name for the fact that we agree and usually, but not always, can resolve our disagreements on the basis of reasons, which, again, are reasons only because we are persuaded by them.
I would comment, though, that social norms, in this context, are not norms because they tell us what to do - that would make them just more rules; they are norms in the sense that we do in fact follow them for the most part. When we don't follow them, they cease to be norms.

There's just nothing you can point to and say, "See, this is the rule I've been following for the use of this phrase." — frank

If one could, it would just be another rule, and so not explain anything.
Yet, there are things we can point to and say "See, this is the rule I've been following". But that's because we have learnt the human practice of following rules, not because the rule tells us anything - apart from the words we put into its mouth.

Exactly, especially about Kripke.
In the end, it comes down to "This is what I do".

If the rules of a language game make rational numbers intelligible, then isnt it a new set of rules that make irrationals intelligible? In other words, don’t we have to invent irrationals as well as rationals? — Joshs

The Pythagoreans denied their existence for a long time after they realized the problem. No doubt they were working on arguments to establish that. They failed. It seems odd to describe that process as "inventing the irrationals". I don't know enough history to even comment on whether the rationals were invented or discovered. The number <omega> for the limit to an infinite series does look more like an invention to me. I don't know whether Cantor would agree with me.

It's a fiction that meaning arises from rule-following. There's no fact of the matter regarding what rules you've followed up til now. — frank

That's true, in a sense. But not the whole story.

If we’re talking about Wittgenstein on rule-following here, then there is no intelligible meaning without rules, criteria, forms of life. But at the same time, in applying those concepts, criteria and rules, we don’t simply refer to them as a picture determining in advance how to go on. The rules underdetermine what to do in each new situation. There is an element of invention in following rules. — Joshs

You state the problem nicely, but don't mention Wittgenstein's solution.

The Private Language argument indicates that there's no way for you to know what rules you've been following up till now. Check out Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language by Saul Kripke. — frank

The PLA (insofar as it is an argument) establishes, IMO, that there is no way for you to know what rules you have been following up to now, if they are private rules. "Private" means that your say-so determines what is correct and what is not. So "correct" and "incorrect" have no application - no meaning.

What gives meaning to rules is human agreement in the context of human life. Think of how the fact that we agree on how to use words is enough to make them words. (This fact is, perhaps, not a fact of the matter, but it is a fact nonetheless.) What often gets left out of this is that we sometimes find that we don't agree on how to apply our rules; so we have to make a decision about how to go on.