So you'd agree that our motives for action come down to feelings, Humean "passions." Is that a psychological fact about human beings, such that someone who claimed not to have feelings motivating their actions would be self-deceived?

This strain in Habermas's thinking is often presented out of context. The NY Times quote is from a Habermas paper called "An awareness of what is missing: faith and reason in a post-secular age" [2010]. This also came out as a short book, which I don't have, but you can find a short summary here.

The following two quotes from that paper give a more nuanced sense of what Habermas thinks is at stake. The problem, as he sees it, is mutual, between secular and religious traditions:

“The religious side must accept the authority of ‘natural’ science as the fallible results of the institutionalized sciences and the basic principles of universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality. Conversely, secular reason may not set itself up as the judge concerning truths of faith, even though in the end it can accept as reasonable only what it can translate into its own, in principle universally acceptable discourses.”

“The constitutional state must not only act neutrally towards worldviews but it must also rest on normative foundations which can be justified neutrally towards worldviews—and that means in postmetaphysical terms. The religious communities cannot turn a deaf ear to this normative requirement. This is why those complementary learning processes in which the secular and the religious sides involve one another come into play here.”

So it is not just that secular reason is "unenlightened about itself" -- though Habermas thinks that is true. Enlightened or not, the liberal state's normative requirement of neutrality is legitimate, and must be acknowledged by religious communities.

OK. What do you think of the self-sacrifice example we've been discussing?

If you want to describe the value with respect to rationality, rational choice can probably achieve that, but they'd need recourse to other values. And there are pretty much only two options open I can see: some sort of structuralism - it's all circular, values feed into other values etc. Or values come from something other than rational thought (e.g. we are "social animals"). — Dawnstorm

I'd have to think about whether these are indeed the only two options, but in any case I'm happy to go with the second: Values are discovered, not deduced. The idea, which is common among many philosophers, that values can be apodictically derived from first principles or definitions, doesn't seem plausible to me. The only thing that might come close would be the Kantian notion that the process of practical reason may be deduced from a metaphysics of autonomy, but that isn't quite the same thing. Also, the example of "we are social animals" is usually meant in a reductionist way (values aren't what we think they are, but rather reduce to . . . ), and I'm not speaking of that sort of discovery, if it is one, at all.

So take what I say with a grain of salt. — Dawnstorm

Take mine with pepper!

if making other people feel good didn't make you feel good, would you be "genuinely altruistic"? — Dawnstorm

That's an important question. It harks back to the distinction I was making between the various ways we can understand "what I like" or "feeling good." I might derive no pleasure whatsoever from doing something altruistic that I believe it's my responsibility to do. But in the wider, quality-of-my-life sense, trying to do this sort of thing is "what I like." Trouble is, I don't like it because of any specific feeling I expect to arise from it. I like it because I believe it's morally right. It accords with my values. That's where I think the whole "ultimately it's feelings" view breaks down. (Not to say that being kind never feels good. Of course it does!)

Let's say that's a description of "genuine altruism." Would your view entail that such a person couldn't actually exist -- or at best would be in denial about what they were feeling?

I thought "joy" was just the word used in the context of Beethoven vs. Bach, while "good feelings" vs. "bad feelings" is the more general model. I'd like to append that in situations where there are no good feelings involved, it's likely "bad feelings" vs. "worse feelings". — Dawnstorm

Yes, that's reasonable, otherwise you start thinking in terms of joyous martyrdom or some such. But even "bad" vs. "worse" is problematic. Should we imagine a self-sacrificing hero (with, as you say, a bit more time to cogitate than a grenade would allow) saying to herself, "I'll feel really bad if these innocent people die. I will feel nothing at all if I sacrifice myself to save them, since I'll be dead. So I'm choosing to feel nothing rather than feel really bad"? Maybe. But it would be a very subterranean level of cogitation, as it were; what usually goes through a hero's mind is thoughts of duty and compassion, I would imagine, not how rotten they'll feel if they funk it. I'm inclined to say that it's only plausible if, for independent reasons, we've already decided to rule out genuinely altruistic motives as incompatible with the "what I choose = what I like" equation. Then we can say, "She thinks she's acting from altruistic motives but here's what's really going on -- it's what she likes, even if she doesn't realize it."

One other point: "what I like" doesn't have to be construed as "what makes me happy" or "what feels good." It can also mean "what I value and stand for in my life, on grounds quite other than pleasant sensations." People do like doing the right thing, as they conceive it. On this construal, we can almost make sense of the situation above as being about "what she likes": She is so committed to living her life as a certain sort of person -- the sort who will make the heroic choice here -- that she would find that life literally unlivable if she fails to do so. So it's no longer a choice between "feeling really bad" and "not feeling anything." It's now between two sorts of unlivability -- death, and moral disgrace -- one of which at least will spare the innocents.

When we start to describe ethical actions with this sort of language, though, I think it's time to just drop the whole "what I like" idea, and go back to the usual discourse about values, right and wrong, etc.

Agreed. Plus, it also tends to generate an inappropriate tautology where "whatever one does" is "what gives one the most positive sentiment/pleasure." This will tend to exclude the very apparent phenomena of "weakness of will," or "losing one's temper," etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think we could acknowledge that losing one's temper, and other semi-involuntary acts, are not covered by the thesis "we always choose what we like," on the grounds that they aren't really choices. This would just involve changing "whatever one does" to "whatever one does deliberately/thoughtfully/ voluntarily" et al. But it leaves unresolved the general problem you point out. It's very hard to get clear on whether the "what I choose = what I like" equivalence is supposed to be a discovery of empirical psychology, or a stipulation about how to use the words. @Quk's response, if they make one, to the question about altruism may help clarify how they mean that equation.

every factor refers to what I like the most. I like good feelings and dislike bad feelings. — Quk

It's tough to make this work with examples of altruism and self-sacrifice. You'd have to stretch the meaning of "joy" awfully far. Jane throws herself on a grenade to save innocent others. Does this have to be irrational, given that "good feelings" hardly enter into the picture? And yet it's the sort of action we admire as an outcome of practical moral reasoning.

Why don't you explain what you think makes a choice "rational?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Whew, you don't ask much, do you? :wink:

Let's say I could do this, cogently and succinctly, in a paragraph or two. (I don't think I could -- I doubt if there is a single answer -- but let's say I succeeded.) And let's say you then explained your own answer, perhaps derived from the Aristotelian tradition. We might find that the two explanations differed in some substantial ways.

What would you suggest we do then, given these differing explanations?

Is slamming your own hand in a car door over and over until every bone in it is broken "rational?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course there are limit cases, examples of behavior that is so contrary to good judgment that we would call it irrational even if the person involved claimed to have good reasons for it. But to deny objective ethical values is not such an example -- if it is even a behavior at all. In what way is the moral anti-realist engaging in what we could only call crazy behavior, such as doing a horrible and unnecessary injury to oneself, over and over? This example is hopelessly tendentious, and makes the moral anti-realist out to be either stupid or insane. I know you don't really believe that, you have too much good sense yourself!

This just seems like: "you must default to the deflated "rationality" of "informed consent" or else you will be guilty of 'metaphysics' and not being polite. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Let me repeat a sentence from above:

Neither side can simply legislate that the other is wrong about ontology.

You seem to have taken this to mean that we can't argue about metaphysics, and must simply agree with any ontological position anyone takes. This isn't what I meant. I meant that I, as a realist about values, can't declare, without argument (legislate), to the anti-realist, "Your position doesn't hold up because you don't countenance objective values." Nor can the anti-realist say to me, "Your position doesn't hold up because you believe in items that don't exist," and expect me simply to accept it. For either of us to take such a stance, we'd just be claiming, without argument, that the other is working from false premises. And this may be true. But to show that it is true, we must (temporarily!) move away from ethical argument and talk metaphysics and ontology.

Indeed, that's what I would recommend in this conversation, should we pursue it. I think you're saying that the moral anti-realist has accepted mistaken premises about what is rational, and what sorts of items exist. Their metaphysics, in short, is faulty. I'm not sure about their version of rationality being wrong, thought it is certainly different from yours. And I quite agree that they fail to countenance entities -- more-or-less objective ethical values -- that I believe exist. So isn't this what we'd need to discuss with them? And in a manner that doesn't simply repeat, over and over, how wrong they are?

But you seem to just be using loose synonyms for good here, and having your anti-realist appeal to those. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In a way, that's right. From the point of view of moral realists like you and me, these terms are barely adequate, and don't go far enough to capture what seems vital to the moral uses of "good" and "right." But the anti-realist doesn't have to grant us that conceptual ontology. They don't see objective moral values as real. So "loose synonyms" from our point of view would be "what there is in the realm of moral discourse" for them. It's the best available, as they see it. And to be fair, we can hardly claim that every moral anti-realist must therefore make a botch of their ethical life. I've seen far too many examples to the contrary, and I'm sure you have too.

This highlights a really important point about the divide between realists and anti-realists. Neither side can simply legislate that the other is wrong about ontology. That would take us way outside of ethics. And I'd further claim that, this being so, each can maintain that their stance is reasonable/rational. The rationality -- or lack of it -- is not the problem.

So how do bedrock disputes about the ontology of values get settled, if not by rational argument? Well, as I was saying before . . . this calls for metanoia, not dialectics.

Bedtime here . . . be well!

it's in the quote right below the section you quoted if that wasn't clear. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh, OK, I thought that was a quote from somebody else!

I think this argument runs into trouble from the start, with this:

On such a view, every end can only be judged good relative to the pleasure or positive sentiment we associate with it.

But why? Why assume that, absent a belief in objective moral values, all the anti-realist is left with is pleasure or positive sentiment? Bottoming out in irrational impulse? Why can't the judgment that an end is good, although relative, be rooted in rational argument? True, at a certain point they will have to say some version of "Here my spade is turned" . . . but so does the moral realist. I don't see how this is less rational, more sentiment-based. And remember, the anti-realist doesn't countenance bringing in "ultimate" values at all. For them, that is irrational and sentiment-based. As you say:

there is no definitive standard by which to choose between different potential "ultimate" or even "benchmark" ends in a rational manner.

But surely the anti-realist can simply agree with this, but insist that the whole process is not therefore rendered irrational. The anti-realist doesn't acknowledge these entities at all, so can hardly be called to task for being "irrational" by not adding them into the calculative mix. Wrong, perhaps (I think so) -- but not irrational.

We both know that a great deal depends on how "rationality" is construed. You have a picture of what it means to be rational that is extremely specific, and tightly bound to one particular philosophical tradition. I don't think we should assume that the anti-realist shares this picture, nor (and I hope you agree) that this picture is uncontroversially the correct one.

Help me see this. Why does the moral anti-realist not know why they act as they do?

Take sex. They want to have sex. Why? If they haven't totally erased any sense of human nature they might appeal to this. But this is just awareness that one has a desire and that one plans to act on it. It isn't a self-reflective conscious understanding of the act as truly good. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have to say, this sounds like a straw man. I suppose there are some immoral or amoral people who are this clueless, but an intelligent and compassionate moral anti-realist can do much better. "I have a desire to have sex with this person. Will this desire lead to healthy and harmonious consequences? Will it hurt others? Does it fit the other priorities of my life? Why do I want to act as I do?" In other words, you can be self-reflective and try to consciously understand the meaning and consequences of your actions without even asking the question, Is it truly good?

I'm probably being repetitive now, but I'll say again: To truly understand what the moral anti-realist is saying, you have to start by understanding that they don't believe in something called "the truly good." Just for the sake of comprehension, try granting them that position and then seeing whether you still think their actions are "irrational impulses."

If we understand the realist's beliefs as having a causal explanation in terms of the realist's psychological conditioning and sensory input . . . — sime

But why need we do this? I myself don't view realism as a fancy sort of physicalism. There are all kinds of ways to get reasons, ideas, intentions, propositions, what have you, into realism. (Which of these might be mind-independent is a different, and complicated, question.) But now I understand what you meant. If the metaphysical realist doesn't countenance reasons, as opposed to psychological and physical causes, then their case is much harder to make. A typical self-referential paradox would seem to result.

I don't know what you mean, I included the argument right below the quoted section. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sorry if I missed it. Do you mean this?:

If we are incapable of desiring the good because it is known as good . . . then it seems to follow that all actions bottom out in irrational impulse. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't see an argument here, just an assertion. How do we get from "not desiring the good because it is known as good" to "all actions bottom out [are motivated by] irrational impulse"?

Apparently "rational action" for them won't entail knowing why one acts and believing it to be truly best. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Help me see this. Why does the moral anti-realist not know why they act as they do?

First we have to consider the meta-metaphysics of "mind-independence"; should mind-independence be understood to be an existential claim that the world literally exists independently of the senses? Or should mind-independence be understood as merely a semantic proposal that physical concepts are definitionally not reducible to the senses? — sime

This is good. I don't know what @noAxioms has in mind, but I take "mind-independence" to express the former, existential thesis. The semantic proposal would follow.

And even if an apparently dogmatic realist insists upon the former interpretation, should we nevertheless interpret him to be a semantic realist? For can we really entertain the idea that the realist is conceiving the world as existing independently of his senses? — sime

(I think the realist can be one without being dogmatic!) Not sure what seems un-entertainable about that idea. Could you expand? As best I can tell, the sort of nuanced realism I was laying out earlier does allow me to conceive a world independent of my senses, if by this we mean "existing independently but not necessarily known independently." In the case of math and logic, I would say it's also known independently of the senses, though we may need the senses as a jumping-off place for noetic investigation.

they are denying the very possibility of rational freedom and rational action, at least as classically conceived. If we are incapable of desiring the good because it is known as good (i.e. a denial of the existence of Aquina's "rational appetites," or Plato's "desires of the rational part of the soul) then it seems to follow that all actions bottom out in irrational impulse. — Count Timothy von Icarus

How is this an argument for the ethical non-realist to become a realist? They merely reply, "Not at all. Nothing of the sort 'seems to follow.' My actions are neither irrational nor impulsive. I'm not aware of 'denying the very possibility of rational freedom' -- how so? Such a view of my actions comes with extremely heavy philosophical baggage, and you would have to show me why this must be the case. On the contrary, I choose what I rationally believe is best for me. Certainly I may be wrong, in any given instance. But how is that either irrational or immoral?"

There is also the phenomenological argument for the fact that man does possess an infinite appetite for goodness. We cannot identify any finite end to which we say "this is it, this is where I find absolute rest." This finding is, at the very least, all over phenomenology (including atheist phenomenology). — Count Timothy von Icarus

This isn't ringing any bells. Where would I find it? Or could you give the argument, briefly?

I really don't think it's that. The anti-realist is happy to acknowledge the fact that suffering is bad for the beings concerned.

If an "anti-realist" re values acknowledges that there are objective facts about values then they are not an anti-realist. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But you've introduced the term "values" into my quote, and that's something which the anti-realist doesn't countenance. The anti-realist doesn't think there are objective facts about values, simply because something is conducive to happiness or its opposite. Of what value are those? they might ask. The anti-realist understands the moral realist (I think correctly) to be speaking about a type of value that can be seen to be good for everyone -- indeed, obligatory. It is this that the anti-realist denies.

Now I suppose that you could redefine an anti-realist as (only) someone who not only denies objective facts about moral values, but objective facts about the value of anything whatever. But that seems way too stringent. I think the classic anti-realist position would be that lots of things are good and bad for various people, given various considerations, but there are no over-arching values that would mandate, or even allow, a choice among them.

But I think you struggle with getting beyond egoism in particular because you think that, provided the egoist keeps on affirming that they are better off being an egoist, then this simply must be true (i.e. they are infallible about what is to their own benefit). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Personally, I don't agree with the egoist at all. I agree with you: No one is infallible about what is to their own benefit, as human history sadly attests. But what I'm claiming is that the egoist/moral anti-realist is not being irrational, and there is no argument you can make to the contrary, on the basis of objective values. It's not that the anti-realist has to say, "I know for a fact that my egoism is good for me. I can't be wrong about that." They can just say, "Well, this is the way it looks to me, and you have yet to show me an argument for all these 'common values' and 'human flourishings' and 'ethics that extend beyond the personal.' All you're doing is asserting your belief in them and claiming that, if I could only see them, I'd like them too. Perhaps, perhaps not."

Let me be clear, again: I think this character is dead wrong. But they're not going to find out they're wrong through philosophy or argumentation. I think you hold some spiritual beliefs? Then you know what I'm talking about. Jesus, to pick an example we both know, did not offer the Seminar on the Mount, providing his followers with knockdown arguments for being virtuous. Insofar as he discussed praxis at all, he seems to have recommended metanoia as a priority.

Just because someone is a moral anti-realist doesn’t mean they are unconcerned with the suffering of people or animals."

Sure. They just deny that the suffering of people or animals can actually be bad for them as a matter of fact — Count Timothy von Icarus

I really don't think it's that. The anti-realist is happy to acknowledge the fact that suffering is bad for the beings concerned, in the sense that it's painful, undesirable, etc., but only in that sense. The anti-realist denies that this makes a difference to him/her, i.e., there is no further moral conclusion to be drawn. The words "bad/good" carry no ethical implications, on this view; there are particular facts about what is bad or good for X in the sense specified above, but no moral facts about how this may generalize, or how we ought to behave as a result.

I guess the philosophical world is divided between those who believe that "good/beneficial/conducive to happiness/healthful/pleasurable for me" is what "morally good" means, and those who conceive of moral good as above and beyond the personal. I'm not sure how to bridge the division.

Is anyone willing to defend a mind-independent view? — noAxioms

Yes. I would defend the following, more or less from Frege (and paraphrased by Michael H. McCarthy):

1. There is an objective reality, independent of, but accessible to human knowledge.

2. Though human error is abundant, and it's often hard to discriminate between mind-independent and mind-dependent reality, we do in fact possess much genuine knowledge of this reality, including the standard parts of mathematics.

3. Not only the natural sciences, but logic and mathematics have objective truths as their subject matter.

Frege wrote:

If we want to emerge from the subjective at all, from the realm of ideas, we must conceive of knowledge as an activity that does not create what is known but grasps what is already there. — Basic Laws of Arithmetic, 23

I think this is too strong. I would replace "grasps" with "interacts with and displays," to allow for the role of human cognition in this process.

Here's what I would not defend:

1. A use of the term "objective" to mean "out there in a timeless, changeless way that is not only independent of how human consciousness pictures it, but also somehow identical to it." (Frege probably did believe this.)

2. A meta-vocabulary in which human knowledge is itself defended as knowably objective and certain. We don't have any such knowledge or certainty. My beliefs -- and yours -- about mind-independent reality are not verifiable in the way that statements in science are.

3. An either/or conception of objectivity and subjectivity, leading to the view that if mind-independent reality is apprehended by a subject, it has therefore been transformed into non-mind-independent reality, and is hence "only subjective."

But nothing but the person's opinion makes their disapproval hold any water, I'd think. — AmadeusD

This is the dividing line between subjectivism and objectivism in ethics. The subjectivist (you, perhaps?) wants to say that the usage of words like "worthy" or "good" or "right" can be correct only when they express personal opinions. Someone who uses these words to refer to alleged standards that "arbitrate," as you put it, between preferences is using them incorrectly. The objectivist, on the other hand (me, for instance), believes that both subjective and objective usages of value words are fine; both have their contexts; both say meaningful things. The objectivist believes, as the subjectivist does not, that when value words are used in a specifically ethical context (as opposed to "I prefer this ice cream" contexts), they refer to actual objective (or intersubjective) realities that can influence preferences, not merely reflect them.

You think it wasn't choice-worthy and in this case for someone else so there's a second level of preference involved there. — AmadeusD

We can change the example to the 1st person to avoid this: "I made X choice; it was not a worthy choice; I should not have made it." But again, I much prefer using more value-oriented words than "choice-worthy", for the reasons we've already discussed. Better to say, "It was wrong; I shouldn't have done it."

A preference is, definitionally, something subjectively preferred. Not something 'chosen'. That may be why you're seeing a cross-reading available where I do not. — AmadeusD

Well, yeah, but language isn't that easily corralled. Consider the similar case of "want". Some people argue that "You did X because you wanted to do X" is always the case (in non-coercive circumstances), because we only do what we want to do. But in real life it's much more subtle, hence the distinction between "want" and "will," or "want" and "choose." I can will something, or choose something, as my final decision in a complicated matter, without in the least "wanting" to do it. I may not even necessarily want to do the "right thing", as a category -- I just believe I should.

So, the distinction between "prefer" and "choose" follows a similar course. We often have to discriminate between something we'd prefer, subjectively, all things being equal, versus something we would never feel that way about, all things being equal, but feel we must choose, under these circumstances. Perhaps there's a better pair of words to use that reflects the distinction, but at any rate I believe the distinction is an important one.

I'd be interested to know whether you think this sort of distinction can be preserved from an ethical-subjectivist point of view. It seems to me that it can, but tell me what you think.

I cannot understand "choice-worthy" as anything other than an expression of preference. Nothing besides seems to arbitrate what would and wouldn't come under that head. — AmadeusD

If we do stick with ordinary usage, we can find examples on both sides. Sometimes we say, "This non-dairy ice cream is worthy of my choice because it's especially creamy and gooey and that's what I like." Or we might say, "You betrayed your partner. That was not a worthy choice, and you shouldn't have made it." I don't know how far we can push this kind of analysis, other than to point out that the "worth" part of "worthy" can, and does, have more than one meaning.

"Preference" is problematic in the same way. You can stipulate that it means "something I like to choose," or you can say it means "what I do in fact choose, regardless of my personal preferences." You'll find usages supporting either interpretation.

I'm not sure I buy it either. I want to put the best possible construction on it, though. I think we have to understand "worthy" simply to mean "ought to be chosen." If that's not what it means, then the whole attempt to elevate "choice-worthy" into the ethical lexicon wouldn't make sense.

But granted that its proponents do make that equation, we can see how the pieces are arranged on the board. I wouldn't say it's wrong, just not very perspicuous.

Your question, I believe, is more from the point of view of ordinary language: How come something that's worthy of choice therefore ought to be chosen? Don't we need an additional factor to take us over the bridge between "worthy" and "obligatory"? If "choice-worthy" isn't defined as above, then I agree with you.

Understood. Or the way I would say it, calling something "worthy of choice" is the same as calling it "good" or "right," but focusing on the action of choosing rather than the content of what's being chosen. So it doesn't inform us as to the values involved, only that they are "worthy" and therefore ought to be chosen.

I think J is on the right track. — AmadeusD

Thank you, but although we agree that "choice-worthy" isn't helpful, it doesn't follow from this that:

arbiters of 'good' and 'bad' are literally nowhere to be seen, except within agreements between people. — AmadeusD

That's a whole other question.

To understand what is meant, we need to consider the context. The PSR says that everything has a reason. So "unknowable" in this context means having no reason. Having no reason would make it fundamentally unknowable. — Metaphysician Undercover

The context is helpful. You’re not concerned so much with things that might be unknowable in principle, such as the complete decimal expansion of pi. What you want to know is, Is there a class of things that a) have reasons which b) must remain unknowable by us? And if such a class exists, how would we know what the members were? I wonder, though, whether you’ve defined such a possibility out of existence, by stipulating that the PSR is and must be true, so that the idea of a thing without a reason is already impossible.

I guess I’m not sure whether you’re offering this connection of reasons with what can be known as a demonstration that the PSR must be true, or as an entailment of what must follow if the PSR is true.

BTW: There’s a provocative book called No Way: The Nature of the Impossible, edited by a mathematician and a physicist, that collects instances of the debate over what’s possible (including in epistemology) from a wide variety of disciplines, from medicine to music. With a question as big as this, it’s really helpful to hear from people who’ve encountered the problem in a specific situation related to their expertise. Well worth finding a copy if you can.

OK, I did think that by "unknowable" you meant "unknowable by us humans". I admit I'm confused about what "unknowable, period" or "not capable of being known by anyone or anything" might mean. Could you clarify that? Would, for instance, the decimal expansion of pi be an example of this? Or, as your post seems to suggest, do we need to understand what alien forms of life might be capable of knowing? That seems an awfully high bar to settle the question.

How do you think it could be possible to discover that something is not knowable? I think it is impossible to know something as not knowable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, a valid question. Depends how much certainty you want to pack in to the concept of "knowing" something. I can say I'm certain that my cat will never comprehend general relativity (I barely do myself), though I can't prove it. Likewise, we may discover the limits of our own comprehension -- not provably, perhaps, but beyond a reasonable doubt. We would then know that something is not knowable.

I bolded "is" and "as" in your quote because I think what you're pointing to may be the idea that to know "something" as unknowable, is already to know something about it, hence a sort of contradiction. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that, but there are other ways of being unknowable.

The philosophical mind seeks knowledge of all things, and the proposition that some things may not be knowable implies that philosophy is misdirected. — Metaphysician Undercover

This statement caught my eye, looking over this thread. Isn't it too strong? If philosophy should discover that some things aren't knowable, at least by us, wouldn't that be worth knowing, part of "all things" philosophy is interested in? Maybe the word you want is "limited" rather than "misdirected."

I thought that was probably what you meant. What other values, then, other than "life is good," would we need in order to generate an ethics, do you think? The problem is that we can't promote all life, unequivocally. Choices have to be made, preferences shown. My very first philosophy teacher opened our first class by asking, "Why do you believe your life is worth more than a Swiss chard's?" Lively discussion ensued! But no one, as best I recall, was willing to argue that there was no difference in value.

"Life = Good" — James Dean Conroy

Whose life?

(And welcome to the forum!)

A correct expression according to my theory would be, "In-form me!" — JuanZu

Sure, that makes sense. I was trying to disambiguate the uses of "information" as a noun, based on @wonderer1's comment, which I understand wasn't the main thrust of your OP.

The interesting question now becomes, if Joe and Jane are both "in-formed" in the same way, or with the same result, what fact about the interpreted (document, e.g.) allows this to be so?

I think @JuanZu's idea is that information only comes into existence in the context of someone for whom it is information. You can of course use "information" to refer to the things (such as electrical charges) that bear the information (on @JuanZu's understanding), but then you're just disagreeing about what terms to use. Both uses of "information" are common in everyday speech. "Give me the information!" i.e., Hand over that document! vs. "What information does that document contain?" i.e., What do the symbols mean?

On a personal note - — Wayfarer

Thank you for this. I believe many of us have had similar experiences and journeys. It points up something important -- the choice of a specific spiritual path may have less to do with an exclusive truth than with a constellation of images and associations that unlock the deepest parts of ourselves. And that will be different for everyone.

Just to be clear: I'm using "spiritual path" very broadly, but not so broadly as to include, say, ethnic cleansing. The word "spiritual" has to carry with it certain presumptions about values. But not necessarily about God or gods.

My feeing is that deity is ‘personal’ only insofar as not being not an ‘it’ or an impersonal force or mere principle — Wayfarer

That's my view as well, but I still want to add "conscious" because this force has to have, at the very least, the same capacities I do. The Suzuki passage captures this very well: "a willing and knowing being, one that is will and intelligence, thought and action. . . . an inexhaustible fountainhead of love and compassion."

If more personalism is wanted, there are many spiritual paths that emphasize a relationship with an avatar or bodhisattva, Christianity being the most familiar example.

I think we need to pose C. S. Lewis's question: Is it conscious?
— J

Not ‘it’. That is what the (regrettably gender-specific) ‘He’ is intended to convey. — Wayfarer

Fine. I used "it" to avoid gender also, but it sounds like this definition of God is intended to describe a conscious being -- a person, for lack of a better term.

Still, if the Rawlsian lottery were extended to the entire Earth, I'd still pick the year 2025
— J

Presumably being born into middle-class society in the developed world would have some bearing on that. Being born into Gaza might be a different matter. — Wayfarer

Yes, but the lottery doesn't allow that kind of choice. We're supposed to calculate the overall odds of winding up in a life-enhancing situation, given everything we know about planetary conditions everywhere. And even so, I think I have better shot in 2025 than at any other time.

, through a sort of neat accounting trick, we have decided that the slaves mining metals for Westerner's phones, the child laborer who sewed their clothes in a sweltering Dhaka factory, or the migrant workers who picked their food out in the fields, are each not "part of the Westerner's society. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A valid point. Still, if the Rawlsian lottery were extended to the entire Earth, I'd still pick the year 2025. I think I'd have by far the best shot at a decent life. Remember, odds are I'd be born a woman. Up till, generously, 100 years ago, that would have been a kind of chattel slavery, with death in childbirth all too likely.

Hart's definition - and it's a word that should be treated with extreme caution in this matter - is that God is 'the one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things.' — Wayfarer

OK, but I think we need to pose C. S. Lewis's question: Is it conscious? Or perhaps Hart meant this to be obvious by including "omniscient".

I agree that totalitarianism is bad per se, but is mechanization bad as such? Are humans not material beings with needs and goals, some of which are arbitrary and others pretty much necessary (and by necessary I don't mean the need for consolation, I count that as one of the "arbitrary needs")? — Janus

Yes. I was thinking of mechanization as an improper model for understanding how humans -- and other forms of life -- coexist with each other. Otherwise, it has its uses. Technology, as you say, is neither good nor bad.

. . . modernity, for all of its marvellous progress, has a shadow side — Wayfarer

Amen. Totalitarianism, mechanization, and, as you discuss so well, the tendency to treat humans as sophisticated bits of matter with "needs" and "goals" that must be arbitrary.

Interesting. Then you certainly know more about it than I do. I see the connection with hermeneutics.

This is a little risky on TPF, but I'll go ahead and say that my main reason for standing a bit aloof from the historical-analysis perspective is that I associate it with various pessimistic (and moralistic) accounts of the decline of Western civilization, which I disagree with. ("We gave up the Greeks and we gave up Catholicism and now we're fucked!"). I see the opposite: intellectual and moral progress (often up-and-down, of course), astounding flourishing of the arts, to say nothing of the incomparably higher quality of life and education now available to the average denizen of Western civilization. (And denied, shamefully, to all those millions who are still "below average."). But this is a vast and controversial topic. All I can say is, if I were offered a Rawlsian "original position" lottery, and asked to pick a time and place to be incarnated over the past 3,000 years, while not knowing my sex, ethnicity, amount of economic power, physical health, education, et al., the choice would be obvious to me: right here, right now ("here" being understood as any European country with universal health care and good public libraries :smile: ).

Good, this all provides a much more nuanced view, and helps me understand what you're saying. In particular, you're right that popular views, or assumptions, about what "science says" often lag behind philosophical accounts but are still very influential.

Concerning the Nagel quote, it sounds spot on to me, concerning analytic vs. continental, and of course I respect Nagel's views enormously. But I don't think we should reduce this question to "who's got a religious temperament." That longing for something to replace the religious consolations may be an important marker of those philosophers who aren't satisfied to be "modern" (using that word as I think you do), but it's not the whole story. For me, any philosopher who is unwilling to accept the apparent consequences of physicalism or reductionism, who wants an account of subjectivity that is at least as compelling as our beliefs about objectivity, should be considered part of a long tradition. For every Mill, there is a Schopenhauer. For every Carnap, there is a Cassirer. Point is, chronological analysis seems quite unimportant to me in this story. But as I've said before, I know others find more to ponder here than I do.