And as I said, that's ethical naturalism. Those kinds of explanations are impossible for ethical non-naturalism. — Michael

I understand. I'm not quite sure where we're getting wires crossed.

I'm aware that is the naturalist position - but my position is that: that is factually wrong. There are further explanations available and to just ignore them doesn't constitute it being impossible. Unsure if i can clarify that further.

What "deep facts"? — Michael

I've given you an example, which you've quoted. To be noted, though, is that this concept can apply to any claim.

Do you recall the below?

"One ought not kick puppies for fun"

Why?

"Because it hurts the puppy"

And then there's a further conversation.

The bold and underlined, and italicised is a deeper fact about why kicking puppies for fun is wrong. The moral realists I've encountered (particularly here) don't seem to think either that A. those facts exists; or B. are relevant to supporting the statement itself.

I think both are mistaken. Therefore, my position is that the moral realist has work to do. They may not believe those explanations are required, but they are available - and so their position can be reduced to deeper facts. Why aren't they engaging them? This is my issue.

All you seem to be saying here is that moral realism is incorrect, and so moral realists are ignorant (in the literal sense). — Michael

Luckily for me, you've actually quoted my saying more than that. And giving a reason why that's the case - because the deep facts in regard to any claim are necessarily left untouched to support the view that there aren't any - which is obviously the claim of a moral realist if they believe their moral statements are brute. It begs no question.

why can't there be brute moral facts? — Michael

Because that position is ignorant of the deeper facts related to any moral claim.

Edit: my current position, above. Not a be-all-end-all. But, in these recent conversations this seems true of all moral claims made. The ethical naturalist may not want to explore those deeper bits of data, but they exist, so, it's a flaw.

That's ethical naturalism. Ethical non-naturalism, by definition, cannot offer this kind of explanation. — Michael

Yes. I am pointing out the flaw in that notion. I'm not disagreeing with your possible view points at all. I'm merely pointing out that that position is an ignorant one.

Nice.. that's a good place to start! Even if we never go further lol

So what sort of explanation do you expect from then? — Michael

You've not at all understood what i actually said - which is that there are further explanations that they choose not to engage.

"One ought not kick puppies for fun"

Why?

"Because it hurts the puppy"

And then there's a further conversation. The old mates making moral claims around here seem to think that after the claim, nothing comes.

That's more about your inability to understand an unexpected point of view than about ethics. — Banno

No. It's about exactly what i said it was about - further proclamations without support don't help. Hope this helps :)

If moral facts are brute facts then there is no explanation. — Michael

This is true - But i think the fundamental problem you, Bob Ross, and I have all come across these last weeks - is that it may not be the case that there is no explanation - but that realists can't grok/don't notice the deeper facts that explain their position, or the competing position. When a moral claim is made and called Brute, I can recognize the deeper facts it rests on, generally. It is the plum non-engagement with them that frustrates the discussion, from my view.

Brute facts seem more reasonable to me than an infinite regress. — Michael

That's a fair thing to intuit. I intuit the other way. Any interest in hashing that out?

No problem, AmadeusD. You don't have to apologize. Esp., not in advance! :smile: — Alkis Piskas

Thank you; I appreciate that. At risk of sounding preening, it's actually pretty neat to come across good-faith disagreement and helpful responses when i make mistakes!

That's why only sentient things can have C. That is, all living things — Alkis Piskas

I doin't think all living things are sentient. All living things could be considered conscious, but i would say sentience is reserved for some benchmark higher up the organisational ladder that I don't know specifically.

Well, how can it perceive flies?
If you drug it --I don't know, with an injection and some special substance a botanist woul know-- would it be able to perceive the fily? Wouln't it be become "unconscious" in some way? Isn't this what happens with humans and animals too? — Alkis Piskas

Well, i don't know. That's an interesting proposition, but you'd have to work out whether the effect was 'mental' or physical. We can take anesthetics which alter our conscious experience, but act on some physical element of the body (i.e C-fibres no longer firing or some such). I guess you'd need to establish that the perceived the fly in the first place, as opposed to perceiving merely air pressure changes triggering non-choice-drive reactions in the body of the plant that result in the 'snapping out' at the fly (which is actually snapping at a non-consciously-recognised area of statistically significant difference in air pressure vs the 'background' air pressure)

For the VFT, if their behaviour is adjusted because, for argument sake, there are cilia on their surface which are now depressed by hte drug, and so not sensitive to changes in air pressure, that may change the behaviour of a VFT but does is have any cognitive effect? As i say, I don't know, but my guess would be not. I don't think a VFT has any sensation of 'hunting' and 'being unable to hunt' the way a human would, under similar experiment.

and by extension seek to mark ethical statements as not truth-apt; as being mere opinion or taste or some such, and hence (somewhat inconsistently) as being neither true nor false. — Banno

That's true of moral statements, and it is not inconsistent. It is true of all moral statements.

The cool thing about the position i hold is, is that nothing you or Leontiskos have asserted has any affect on the premise that 'There are no objective moral standards'. So, without a 'chosen' system there literally are no true moral statements, and that hasn't even been addressed by continually just stating that kicjking puppies for fun is wrong. Yep, that's your view.

On with yee. LOL

Its you realists that struggle, that are throw up your hands and say "whelp, its a brute fact, what else can I say! Explanation's gotta stop somewhere!". This is an anti-scientific, anti-philosophical attitude. — hypericin

:ok: It always amounts to this. I wonder if Banno is actually a secret theist.

Its therefore probably not a kind of realism that is problematic for an anti-realist. — Apustimelogist

I would whole-heartedly agree. But his persistence in pretending his proclamations amount to 'truth-making statements' is absurd, and in service to pretending moral realism is a done deal. At least, that's his version.

Presupposing something you didn’t need. What might that be? — Mww

No idea what you think you're asking, soz.

Yeah, okay, but what do you mean???

That he thinks this object is bigger than that object, merely from its greater degree of extension in space, all he’s done is manufacture a means by which the relation he perceives accords with the relation he thinks. — Mww

mmm. Good. I needed this.

↪AmadeusD I'll repeat the simple point that I am not here attempting anything like a coherent, complete theory of ethics, but simply pointing out that there are true moral statements.

Those who have disagreed have either claimed that it is false that one ought not kick puppies for fun, or engaged in the special pleading that despite common usage it is neither true nor false.

Neither reply is tenable. — Banno

It's not true. You've done nothing other than basically saying you believe it and it should be true (ding ding bloody ding lol).
Your point, is exactly as i outlined it, and fails just as spectacularly.

Your claim of 'untenable' is supported by what?? Your imagination that no one is capable of making that claim?

it isn't true. It's normative. Go ahead and beat hte argument, instead of just making a claim.

this is garbled nonsense.

Take care.

Thank you; appreciate that and the link-to-post.

I have never encountered someone who believes it is rationally justifiable to impose tastes. — Leontiskos

This question isn't a piggy-back, its totally askance from the thread - Are you using the word 'impose' here to include 'encourage', or is it more definite?

It matters not, it was just a function of Quoting and bad organization, move it to the correct spot, as I did in my post. Which weighs nothing on my argument. — Vaskane

I allowed for that possibility - thanks for confirming.

If you don't think moral anti-realism lost the day in this thread, then you simply don't understand the OP or the purpose of this thread. — Leontiskos

Or, and forgive me for this, you're wrong.

In either case, it appears you've made your conclusions and that's fine :)

Not quite sure what that means? — Vaskane

It's a known turn of phrase. I'm sure you can clarify for yourself ;) .

You've quoted my first response, and your second response, in reverse order. Whether that matters, I don't know, but it's incorrect.

To which you even admit that you're too afraid to venture into using your own judgement because you're afraid to convey your own solipsistic machinations: — Vaskane

Nothing in the quoted piece suggests anything of the sort.
And in fact, I feel no need to clarify as the comment stands on it's own.

You've not shown me any reasoning for hte quote I questioned.

Your quote/s from Bob don't touch what i've said.

adjust one's position for new objections isn't a failure, nor is refining ones position or language. Neither of us have ceded the ground of anti-realism. We've just come up against the same problem with new words or objections every time - but the problem amounts to just saying 'It's true, give up'.

That's much better! Why didn't you talk about that in the first place? — Alkis Piskas

It was my intention (as noted, right there) - I'm just not yet that good at writing what I think. This has, and i imagine, will lead to many weird disagreements that don't actually exist between myself an other posters so i apologise in advance for anything points in future this happens between us again. I think it'll be an issue for some time, given my wet-behind-the-earsness.

Now, I don't know what does sentience mean to you. You can tell me next time — Alkis Piskas

My understanding of sentience is that it is held universally apart from consciousness in that it requires the further fact of 'feeling'. Subjective experience+feeling (hedonic).

In this way, I have no problem talking about the two separately. A VFT would have no sentience, but would have consciousness.

Hi mate,

Suffice to say nothing there has an effect on what i've said. I think it's far more to do with your affectations than much else. Shall leave this one be :)

In this thread I'd say we see a large number of failed attempts to establish moral anti-realism, and a large number of failed attempts to overthrow moral realism. — Leontiskos

From Bob and I's perspective, the exact opposite is true.

That's kind of the entire point of our lines of questioning. Nothing, whatsoever, has been presented to support moral realism. The closest anyone has got is Banno's weirdo move of just claiming 'brute fact' without anything whatsoever to establish that claim.

You've not done anything more. Sorry to say. But this is the nature or differing perspectives. I just can't grasp why anyone is being a dick about it (Banno's obtuseness mainly, but you've devolved a couple of times too).

In fact you're attempting to use my very argument against you against me. — Vaskane

It is not my problem if the emperor has no clothes, Vaskane.

That you can't shows you're probably being dishonest about something. — Vaskane

Bizarre. Can you let me know your reasoning for this? Rather htan your claim?

ust say the other possibilities out loud. — Vaskane

I have. Multiple times. But your job here, it seems, is ignoring everything relevant to maintain a position of both superiority, and aloofness which allows you to avoid, altogether, speaking without extreme affectation.

Again, Not my vibe. Enjoy :)

That you don't understand that is because of exactly as what Bella says, Your perception bars your perception of other perceptions. — Vaskane

It appears you are firmly incapable of considering other, polite, possibilities.

That said:

No, like now, I could have asked you to elaborate, as you did of me, by asking you to clarify what exactly you mean, but instead of being afraid of perhaps embarrassing myself by misinterpreting the definitions of the words used (that's why words have definitions in the first place: for clarity; my apologies for using a combination that appeared like hieroglyphics to you) I merely trust my judgement, and hold my self accountable for any accidental fallacy of equivocation that may occur during the use of words with multiple meanings. I've long overcome the fear and embarrassment that occurs on the route to knowledge. It's as simple as saying "Oh! That's what you meant!" And move on, all the while, I'm continuing the discussion, and even allowing myself to be vulnerable with the other party. — Vaskane

Ignoring your continuous ad hominem,

Fine. Nothing abhorrent about this, but... This is a waste of my time, and I don't have the time to wade through misapprehensions, when you could (if capable) just answer directly what you mean, to avoid putting the other person through a slog that you could have avoided with a modicum of good faith.

Again, if this is your vibe, go for it. It isn't mine and my issue is that you seem to have a pretty deep and untouchable superiority complex, in which i have no interest. But thank you for elaborating, nevertheless.

He's saying someone like me can swear that perceptions can bar perceptions. People can even be saying the same thing from two different perspectives and fight about it until they realize they mean the same damn thing. — Vaskane

Unless you';re claiming to have overcome sense perception, this is built-in to every conversation ever had. Doesn't have a reason to be said here.

Yeah, when you’re strange, in a strange land, that died in mcarthur park in the rain, like the Chevy in the levy, in Paris. — Bella fekete

A wonderful set of references.

"Cause I'm much more fluid than most people here are and am capable of going with the flow quite well. Look how many BSoDs that one simple question caused. "Could not compute must give error report on question asked."

It is more likely you're not groking responses to your ideas adequately, and responding as such.

seein is not necessarily perceiving, sometimes perceptions bar a message, and here is a continuum an autist can swear by. — Bella fekete

Whether it's me or you, I have no idea what you're getting at.

You think imposing tastes is justifiable (when "[You] care about it enough to impose it on other people"). Hence, the conversation is at an end. — Leontiskos

The philosophical one is. Having not resolved anything hehe.

But there's much to be said about that assertion.

I am not looking to stay ten toes down for the sake of dignity or pride: I seek the truth. — Bob Ross

I got the feeling this wasn't on the menu, for this interlocutor. I have a feeling moral realists are necessarily unable to bridge the gap we're genuinely looking to traverse.

LOL.

You're a lawyer, right? What one can readily see in practice is a gross inequality before the law, depending on one's socio-economic status. If one has money for a good lawyer, one can get out of pretty much anything. If one doesn't have such money, even an administrative mistake by a government official can mean the end of one's existence. We're not living under the rule of law; we're living under the rule of money. Money, with which law can be bought. And so for someone who doesn't have much money, dealing with the state really comes down to might makes right. — baker

(I use this list format for clarity only; not at all a function of exasperation or anything like can sometimes be inferred)
1. No. Legal professional - still working my way toward lawyer unfortunately lol but I do work along side lawyers daily and essentially perform their functions without my signature.
2. That's true to a certain extent, and in certain ways. Nominally, the law should not function beyond quality in terms of those disparities. If you have a shitty lawyer, not a lot can be done. But you're right to point out the aggregate reality of that problem.
3. For uneducated people**
4. Yes, but that is misguided and unhelpful to both their case/s and the overarching claim being made.

So what are you really saying? Might makes right? — baker

Given that, even within the quoted passage, i note that these are 'misguided' emotions, I would say it's fairly clear this is not my position personally. It also wasn't actually what i was talking about.

I believe those individuals think they are fighting people who do believe 'might is right'. I make no comment on whether that's the case, other than to say i've seen it manifest by way of a either misinformation or misguidance time and time again. That was all i was commenting on :)

If that’s your vibe /.../
— AmadeusD
I'm high functioning on the spectrum.
— Vaskane — baker

Not quite sure why you've noted these together, but the latter was applied to me for a period of close to eight years.

Vaskane's reply following the above comment makes me less inclined to interact with him. Whether that's his fault or not isn't concerning me.

While a deconstructionist may have 'the group' in mind, it is still an individualized group that follows 'what they think is right,' as you put it. — dani

By 'individualized' are you just speaking to a 'group' adequately delineating itself? I ask, as i don't recognize what you're describing in these movements at all really. The whole 'eating it's tail' trope around identitarian groups having very much gate-keeping qualities about them comes to mind.

I might be over-blowing that particular aspect - but it does seem to me that the Frankfurt/Horkheimer origins speak to a very distinct flavour of anti-individualism, essentially replacing individual conceptions with group-accepted ones, in turn attempting to pit these against the conceptions and gate-keeping of other groups in a 'power struggle'. This is never done on the individual level, so i guess I'm wanting a bit more to understand the position that deconstructionist thought has any focus on individuation beyond lip-service?

Well, you did use Nagel line. In fact, your whole message was based on it. Not only that, you referred me to RogueAI 's question "Do you think there is something it's like to be a Venus Fly Trap?" on the same subject — Alkis Piskas

Not quite. I delineated sentience from consciousness (or that was my intention). Because your definition to my mind (and maybe RogueAIs) doesn’t rise to sentience and therefore there would be nothing it’s like to be a vft on that account. I can’t see the problem. The Nagel line was a useful way of outlining why I see a disconnect between conscious experience viz. sentience and consciousness per se. It was about what you’d said.