But I would point out that people call food good in part because it is necessary to survive — Leontiskos

Sure. Something I think is misguided. But I understand that this doesn't sit perfectly.

Both are true at the same time. — Leontiskos

You've done nothing to support this. It is necessary (as we both know, empirically). That htis is good is totally arbitrary. Unless you've made some claim before entering the discussion, which means "good" is to be interpreted as "that which is necessary for survival" or something similar. Have you?

You are avoiding answering the question. — Leontiskos

No. I'm telling you it was non sequitur. Feel how you want to about that. But it was loaded and I wanted clarification as to what you had loaded into it. If you don't want to give it, that's fine. I wont engage.

And I think we both know that the correct answer to (3) is, "No." — Leontiskos

I don't even know quite what you were getting at mate. Perhaps read my comments in better faith. I wanted clarification, and I do not take anything you've said here on board because its jumping hte gun something fierce.

Is there an arbiter of true and false? — Leontiskos

Not in the strict sense of those words. We have theories that apply to different facets of life, and in some of them we get T and F values. In some we don't. Logic (pure logic, so not applicable to most things in the world) has a convenient status here, but real life isn't that simple. Heck, language can't even account for Truth and Falsity correctly or consistently.

Do we need an arbiter before we can see that 2+2=4? — Leontiskos

I'm sorry, are you trying to suggest that Ethics is a mathematical function? If so we have no basis for discussion. Otherwise, I can't tell what you're getting at in this reply.

why would it be needed in ethics? — Leontiskos

It isn't. But if you want 'good' and 'bad' to mean much of anything, you need one. I don't claim they do, so I don't need one.

Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble," — Leontiskos

In the first section, he outlines almost exactly what I've suggested Ethics functions 'as'.

"The prudential ‘ought’ rests for its force on the facts about the contingent desires and interests people have, and just tells one what one ought to do if one is to satisfy them."

I find nothing further on which would counter this position. It's arbitrary. Obviously. If you'd like to point me somewhere in the article, more than happy to review and adjust.

Really cool thread.

I don't think there's a good answer other than "I have limited time" for non-theists. Most theists have a weak argument, anyway. I don't think there is anything but a rational justification for dismissing one on the basis of what they're saying. Is it a waste of your time? Fair enough. But you can't use morality to justify your own morality, which is what must be informing your actions. Its just instrumental rationality that would have you not 'waste time' or some such.

But unfortunately, that says absolutely nothing about the other person, and only about you and your views. I don't think many people front to that. Therefore, most people interpret their dismissiveness/discontinuance in such circumstances as morally justified. In some sense, it is. Their moral views justified the action. But it seems to me this is, prima facie, just toddler-like over-emotional behaviour. It isn't moral. It's "I'm right, you're wrong". So we're left with the practical consideration of whether or not its helpful/beneficial/worth it to continue the exchange/relationship.

For me, the only time I genuinely feel justified in dismissing someone is when they clearly are not listening. Their views never make me feel justified in shutting them down.
My views do, though, at times, because I think practical considerations are in play and not moral ones.

You did not respond to the claim that food is (deemed) good by all. — Leontiskos

It was an unreasonable claim in teh discussion. That is simply not how food is characterized. It is necessary to survive. Colloquially referring to this as 'good' is a psychological trick and not an ethical claim. Come on now.

I assume you agree — Leontiskos

Yessir - I wasn't purposefully dodging it. My response was tactical and addressing that wasn't needed.

3. If so, are those rhymes and reasons altogether different than those which guide other people's acts — Leontiskos

Bit of a non sequitur going on here. I would want to know your motivation from 2 to 3 there - or perhaps, what you would expect one to say and what you think that might mean.

The good is arbitrary. There is no arbiter. There are things people like, and things people don't like. The pervasiveness of any given view doesn't lend it any supremacy in a meta conversation about it's worth. It works. That doesn't say anything about its rightness. It should be clear from my babblings on any of these sorts of threads that I'm not entirely comfortable emotionally/intuitively with this. I'm much closer to wanting somethign in the realm of waht I feel you're failing to support. But, intellectually it's pretty simple to me - there is no arbiter of good and bad. For htis reason, either we need to change the conversation into something more subjective but still somehow measurable (i.e something like individual desire divided by the general harm/good it would do for the chosen cultural goals of that time and place in question) to talk ab out how best to act in given times and palces or to simply accept that ethics is properly a conversation about how conflicting views of good and bad must cooperate.

It's not even a pseudo science. It's not at all a science, of any kind. Its whirling and whistling.

Nothing in your second post does anything but elucidate, in apparently sober terms, the emotional valence of ethical considerations.

You've leapfrogged hte entire problem, and gone with accepting "good" and "bad" as they are, where they lie. Not doing ethics, anyway, as whether something is good or bad has nothing to do with whether that should arbitrate our actions.

It's hard to think that one is posing a serious question when they issue the challenge, "But how do you know that it is good to not be in pain?" — Leontiskos

It seems clear that the latter is more secure — Leontiskos

Err nope. There's no relationship between the two, but habit. If you want to invoke some kind of causation between an act and ipso facto good and bad (bare, not for some particular goal i.e not having your eyes burned out) then you've got your entire task still in front of you. I'm waiting.

They aren't strawmen, because they are actual behaviours of leftists. Again, that you are not aware isn't an excuse. I even gave you the benefit of the doubt on that.
If you're not aware, you're not aware. But you can still not be an absolute idiot and respond in such a childish, ignorant way.

Everything i said is outright, 100% true. BLM riots= justified. Luigi Mangione(murder) = justified. Defrauding hte IRS (Patrisse Cullors) = justified. Abusing, assaulting and literally 'hate speech'ing your political opponents = justified. Property damage (lets just use the moment, and think Tesla) = justified.
Censorship (COVID, Biden laptop etc..)=justified.

If you disagree with all the above, its rich calling yourself leftist. Not even aware of what the label captures.

And before you do something supremely ignorant, what the Right do is utterly irrelevant to this exchange. I even noted that at least when the right do similar things, its openly hypocritical. Leftists just move the goal post and then insult you when you point it out (as you do, constantly - so maybe I was wrong).

So, yeah. If you don't know what you're talking about it's best not to talk.

To begin with, can you provide references evidencing that modern hunter-gather societies - or at least some such - are of an authoritarian leadership which so 'oversees' all others in the tribe so as to preserve social cohesion? — javra

No, because I didn't claim this. I sense some bristling in this response, so forgive me for being pretty lack luster in mine. I don't care for bristles. I talked about hte subjection of women. So, yeah, i'll be answering to that. I've also noted how self-defeating many of your bristles are. Not looking good for future exchanges, I have to say.

ve previously given references to my affirmations — javra

You gave me a Wikipedia list? No facts involved, my man.

It was also one which you can just click on each of those pages, and check their social organisation: in almost all cases, men hunt and build and marriage/sex is patriarchal - even in the cases where this is, supposedly, not the case, the article contradicts itself, The very first one:

"In the Aka community, despite a sexual division of labor where women primarily serve as caregivers, male and female roles are highly flexible and interchangeable. Women hunt while men care for children, and vice versa, without stigma or loss of status. Women are not only as likely as men to hunt but can even be more proficient hunters."

If you're not seeing a problem, I can't say I care to explain it. Next, we get:

"leadership roles such as kombeti (leader), tuma (elephant hunter), and nganga (top healer) are consistently held by men in a community studied by anthropologist Barry Hewlett.[7]"

And, as I suspected in my earlier post/s, the article also very vaguely points out that colonialism changed their behaviours. No mention of the social changes, though you could simply go looking:

"Resulting changes in Aka social organization are difficult if not impossible to reconstruct for this early period. "
Given that other groups lost their strict women-subjecting culture upon colonisation (an example below) this isn't a stretch to say "I think someone's avoiding something"

Another random click:

the Moriori, in their attempts to get rid of gendered violence institutionalized it

"...because men get angry and during such anger feel the will to strike, that so they may, but only with a rod the thickness of a thumb, and one stretch of the arms length, and thrash away, but that on an abrasion of the hide, or first sign of blood, all should consider honour satisfied.

— Oral tradition[30]"

Another:

"The Ket was incorporated into the Russian state in the 17th century. Their efforts to resist were unsuccessful as the Russians deported them to different places in an attempt to break up their resistance. This broke up their strictly organized patriarchal social system and their way of life disintegrated."

And one more:

"The Bambuti tend to follow a patrilineal descent system, and their residences after marriage are patrilocal..... The only type of group seen amongst the Bambuti is the nuclear family."

"Sister exchange is the common form of marriage. Based on reciprocal exchange, men from other bands exchange sisters or other females to whom they have ties.[9]"

Clearly not egalitarian, despite the claim (not referenced) in the following paragraph, that they are.

I also spent about eight years looking in to and speaking with members of Amazonian tribes (for different reasons) and it was patently obvious all of those groups (Jivaro, Shipibo, Ashaninka etc..) are patriarchal through endless books, conversations and papers - I can't pull out some specific reference without carrying out some actual research, which this thread doesn't call for.

Further, this concept of hte 'noble savage" or some weird idea that indigenous societies were more just than ours needs to stop. They were mostly brutal and unforgiving.

You just named their cause.

I've never seen anything uncaused. I have no reason to think that would fail prior to the big bang. Maybe a better thing would be to say "I want to know why the singularity existed".

Is this to say that devoid of some authoritarian oversight humans - and, in particular, men - are naturally abusive? — javra

Hard to use the word abusive, but in modern parlance, yeah, sure, i'll take that. But I don't think calling a natural proclivity "abusive" helps the discussion, though. It's currently abusive behaviour because of hte fact that male power has been checked, and its an abuse of power.
Anyhow, I think without oversight, survival success is the overarching metric, and people will do all sorts of what we call abusive stuff when they can particularly when communication is less nuanced. Moreover, I think the impetus to fuck anything that moves is one that we never, and will never, shake and men have the entire advantage there. Degrees, obviously, but the Jason Momoa-looking among us would, I take it, always understand their power and the lack of oversight/retribution for same. I cannot see why they would refrain from raping ad infinitum in that world.

How then to account for the general egalitarianism of the hunter-gatherer tribes which are present in the current day? — javra

Easy: The rest of the world are no longer in those situations. My knowledge of several of those groups is that they are decidedly not egalitarian, even in principle. "traditional" gender roles are traditional because they are naturally enacted when required. We, in the modern world, don't require them. But that subjection of women to their men, rife in pretty much every group on that list. Is that not abusive? In many, the (implicit) rape and marrying off of children (girls) is rife.

Issues such as this then signifying that men will naturally rape as many women as they/we can — javra

Not quite, but most of the way down that line, yes, i think so. The fact that this has never actually stopped, seems an obvious clue. There are plenty of societies in which raping women is accepted, and sometimes protected by law. Do you think this might be a reflection of a type of nature?

How would you define the field of ethics? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fair enough, on your explication here, as to how we could be at an impasse. That said, I think I did point this out (perhaps implicitly) earlier in the exchange:
Ethics are to do with how we act, specifically, as regards other people (or organisms, I guess). Ethics aren't about human flourishing any more than the rules of football are about scoring touchdowns/goals (depending on your hemisphere). Even expanded concepts of ethics are about how to deal with A.I, aliens, non-existent people, people who can't feel etc.. etc. There are no ethical theories on how best to do any thing. The fact that the above gives us literally no basis to assert anything as 'true' is exactly why being an ethical objectivist is ridiculous, in my view. You have to do something else to get anything like objectivism.

Not a problem, I appreciate that.

That's fair, and yes, It's clearly an issue. Management in universities is increasingly (old news) of that kind. My current courses are... well, the courses are good.. but they're very hard to get through being brow-beaten constantly for existing. No wonder faith in Uni is falling fast.
I do think wokeness is an own-goal. So much so that the groups in question don't even notice it. Even when they lose as unlosable election.

The biggest problem I see is that people can make it all the way to PhD by doing what they're told, but believing something utterly preposterous and incoherent.
I have several (fellow) students in my current classes who say the most unreasonable, clearly incorrect stuff about factual matters - but they're passing. These types of people believe, truly, that there is no use for the concept of objectivity, and that there is no such thing as logical constraint on claims.
These people will become philosophers of nonsense. There are thousands. No wonder it doesn't pay.

No reason to label people who support the logical position to keep transgender males from being in women sports without that meaning they are bigoted. — philosch

Very good to keep in mind. Probably something for Wayfarer, but he's also explained himself in a way that makes me far, far less bristly at it (I have made clear elsewhere, but I am not a Trump supporter in any way other than it's entertaining, and I don't take life seriously enough to be like others hereabouts when it comes to 'existential crisis').

an echo chamber of hyperbolic nonsense. — philosch

Is what political discussions tend to be.

Do you/we though? This isn't meant to be inflammatory - sure you still don't care?

I want to know what caused the singularity. I don't much care about what caused it to collapse (explode).

They aren't strawmen. They are how leftists behave, en masse, where their behaviour can be reviewed (interviews, protests, news reports, instagram content etc...). If you're not aware of this, that's fine, but it is the case.

Aside from that, which I understand could just be that you've not seen the above in action, which is fine, to your initial response, I don't think you're really being genuine here. That's why I called is disingenuous. "favouring human rights" could be the label for any number of things. In practice, it tends to far overstep the concept of human rights. That's an entirely different discussion, but just something to understand why I think that description is disingenuous.

The human good is not reducible to health, but it involves health. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Certainly can, but there's no reason to suppose someone who doesn't think so is wrong. This is my entire point (and I think most of the discussion is happening, inadvertently, on a level above this). What objectivity is there to the claim that health is constitutive (even partly) of "the good for man"? It may well be that elimination is the best thing for man (at an extreme). There's no arguments which could counter this, to my knowledge, so I think there's a lot of presupposition going on. But in general, I would agree, that and did say as much. It will bear a lot of weigh in ethical reasoning, but not ethical concepts I don't think.

It is not good for some fish to be placed in saltwater — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is incorrect, as I see. It is bad for the body of a fish to be placed in saltwater (salmon notwithstanding). This is does not carry an ethical claim and so the bare assertion actually requires some prior justification (this, perhaps, being hte level issue noted above). It may be that fish don't experience in the sense required for ethical consideration. I'm not aware one way or the other, but certainly its a reasonable assumption (even on a 50/50 basis) of a lower fish like a guppy or plecostomus.

An appropriate amount of oxygen is said to be both "good" and "healthy," in virtue of how it promotes man's well-being and health respectively, for instance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That something is said, doesn't make it so. It is good for a man to continue breathing oxygen (and in turn, continue living). This still doesn't become an ethical claim. It is merely medical fact, aimed at a chosen goal. I can't see that this is an ethical claim. It's 'good' in terms of a specific goal. Maybe you're not stating that you see ethics as tied to specific goals. Though, if that's the case, everything is up for grabs.

What's the objection here? — Count Timothy von Icarus

If my response were agreed with (not that it should,just illustrating) then your claim is clearly not an ethical one. The objection is that you're calling a mere fact an ethical statement. Its an is, not an ought.

But that doesn't mean there are facts relevant to how to do these successfully. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There clearly are. Maybe you've misspoken here? But again, they aren't ethical facts. So, I'm unsure how your initial question (in this quote) could be answered. The objection hasn't even been addressed.

But neither is the relationship between alcohol and well-being amongst men random and unknowable. It is regular and knowable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And non-ethical (as yet, on your account).

That "alcoholism" is not good for well-being is something that can at least be established — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. Still failing to see how this is an ethical statement (i've cut the quote because I don't think your point requires that justification. The above stands to reason).

Yes, a fair point. Embarrassingly ignorant of me (genuinely).

All the women I know have horror stories about men. — RogueAI

Not at the women I know, so he is definitely wrong. That's not to bring down the importance of the issue, but it is actually pretty important to note, even if the 100% were even a reasonable take, that it is a small proportion of men. Not noting, and genuinely taking this into account, leads to endless cycles of gendered bias, in both directions, as reaction to prevailing wisdom. I suppose it could be said that at least women have a legitimate claim to care about this, but I think that misses the point. Not listening got us there. And it will again.

why do we think it matters if women fared better in prehistoric times than today? — Hanover

If there is a way to avoid teh above (whther you read my words as impugning conversations around harm to women, or conversations around men) we want it.
If there were societies in the past that were truly egalitarian (i content there are none), then surely we want, for policy reasons, to understand how and why (and, how and why it changed), no?

I think it would also be extremely interesting, if we had a way to know what went on back then, to add to our pool of data about human behaviour under different circumstances and more specifically, gender relations.

I think the idea that a pre-historic society was egalitarian is pretty much a DOA. Nothing to it. The less oversight society has, more abuse happens.

You said a lot more than that.

That's not correct, at all. Violation of human rights, when you're grop thinks it's ok, is the MO of 'leftist' thinking (i don't put you in this category, btw). Murder, when the group think it's ok, is leftist thinking. Crime, when you think it's Ok, is leftist thinking. Fraud, when the group thinks its OK is leftist thinking. Authoritarian behaviour "under the right circumstances" if leftist thinking. Censorship, when the group agrees, is leftist thinking.

These are anti-democracy. I make no further comment, other than to say your disingenuous description tells me you reject all of the above. And so, in turn, should probably be rejecting leftism.

At least on the right, these are still a violation, just a(n intensely) hypocritical one.

You said literally more than that, and it was what I pre-empted. That's ok, fella.

Please do. It's already bringing the level of discourse down. At least move it to the lounge.

The emotivist is normally doing something very similar. "Show me the empiricist explanation of beauty, ideally reducing it to mathematics or prediction, or it is illusory." Yet if beauty, truth, and goodness are "illusory" they certainly aren't illusory in the way a stick appears bent in water, and it seems fair turn around and demand an account of how such an "illusion" occurs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

False.

They don't care that this isn't how the Constitution says how these things should be done. — ssu

Yeah, which is a bit wild given their position on that document by lip service.

I've said that when these populists go on with things like talking of annexations of territory, it's like summoning up the devil. — ssu

Yes, that's been quite troubling for sure. That spells out something far beyond any domestic issues that are present, as far as i can see.

The former. But not particularly strongly. Anything could happen. I'm a pretty seriously doubter though.

So, what I pre-empted. Okay.

No, not at all as I see

IMHO, this is a grave mistake that leads to emotivism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is nice. Very clear key to your thinking.

But to return to medicine, are the value statements of medicine just statements of emotion? — Count Timothy von Icarus

. The statements of medicine are simply not ethical statements (unless you mean the specific domain of medical ethics, which is not facts about injury and damage, but guidelines informing action.. which is the proper domain of ethics, as I understand). They have truth aptness and they're interesting, and often dynamic, but they do not seem to be ethical unless you constrain 'ethical' to whatever specific superficial goal is in mind... "stem the loss of blood", "don't induce diabetes" etc. in which case, obviously you can derive an ought from an is, but that's cheating.

Medicine certainly seems to tell us something about the human good and human happiness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am unsure what, though, and it's certainly not a roadmap by any means. There always remains some X factor of 'wisdom' involved in delivering medicine, and more thoroughly in attempting to live a happy life (as you've used that concept, I'll address it) viz. most often people are happiest not doing what is medically optimal. Or even expressly doing what is not medically optimal.

My challenge would be: what makes medical facts about the human good "non-ethical?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Would it be non-ethical to serve alcohol? Some say so, but thats an extreme position that I think misunderstands ethics. I'm sure you'd agree, that such extreme principle is probably not teh best way to go - bu it would be a fairly logical resutl of understanding medical facts as ethical. They can be informative, and they can bear weight, I should think, on ethical reasoning but I can't see how they could arbitrate much of anything. If someone wants their leg broke, they want it broke.

Does an emotivist even recognize the question? — Ludwig V

Enjoying red wine isn't an ethical question. This truly strikes me a bizarre objection. The entire point of ethics is that it delineates actions which effect other people from actions which don't, either do much of anyhing, or have any tangible externalities.
I'd be happy to consider and see if I have an intuition about a like example that might seem like a bullet to bite, but here the domain of discussion answers the issue.

The exact level of discourse I'd like to avoid. This isn't Twitter.

My feedback is that this isn't a good move.

That isn't agreement. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is. I am really unsure hwo you're saying it's not, and I've full understood the rest of your comment. I agree, stomping babies is bad. Whether it's for them or not doesn't change the fact that my assent to that notion is actually what matters. "Stomping babies is medically bad for them" would be an empirical fact. And yep, that's also clearly true.

So, I take it you actually do disagree with: "stomping babies is bad for them is an obvious empirical fact of medical science." — Count Timothy von Icarus

You'll now be able to see that this isn't what was claimed previously. I agree with this (well, I notice this fact, rather).

Again, to deny this is to deny that medical science can tell us things like "injecting babies with pesticide is bad for them." — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, not at all. You are mixing up ethical claims with empirical claims. Ethics are, patently, not medical facts. Whether or not something being medically bad is actually bad for them is the question ethics needs to deal with. And i'm taking it you have no problem with saying ok fine, everyone agrees with that though, so what's the point? The point is that nothing supports that conclusion other than the universal agreement on it. Even that isn't 100% due to neuro-weirdnesses. Facts in the world are not ethical statements. I would not have thought we could still be mixing those up.

It's to deny that it is a scientific fact that injecting babies with pesticide is bad for them — Count Timothy von Icarus

But not an ethical one. Perhaps this is explains my incredulity in the above.

Now, I suppose an emotivist could grant that there are facts about values, but then deny that morality has anything to do with them. That seems like an odd position though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

They could, but you have not painted one into a corner that requires it. Your position mixes up facts and values. Being "bad for" someone, bare, is what you would need to show is self-evident. But it's not. It's bad medically/physically. I am taking a relatively linguistic position here, but allowing that a mere blank space to suffice for ab objective moral/ethic would be a much odder position that to accept, but be brutally uncomfortable with the fact (on my view) that there are no moral facts. My intuition tells me there must be. It is not an easy thing to have both of these things floating around.

Do you believe that the truth of "2+2=4" could change as time passes? — Metaphysician Undercover

No, but that's not something in the world. It's something about things in the world. All the things that could represent that equation wont stay the same.

you are someone who does not hold much truck — T Clark

More or less understand and agree with your comment, other than this. I do give intuition a lot of weight, but I don't think its much more than preconscious statistical analysis (or something similar.. that's probably not quite right).

Part of that is that folk do not generally try to force their preference for chocolate on to others. — Banno

I agree, but I think that's just a mistake of analysis ). One has consequences we want to avoid. The other, generally, is trivial. That doesn't really change their status as mere emotional positions, though. Not to put words in your mouth, but does this mean that the level of potential consequence is a yardstick for whether a statement is ethical or not (before sighing and ignoring, check the *)

I want to know what else is going on when someone says "It is wrong to kick pups" (we can ignore the 'command' version, because its exactly the same thing foisted on to another).

If everyone said kicking pups is fine, and we did not have a widespread negative emotional reaction, we wouldn't have the ethic "don't kick pups". It seems some never got the memo anyway... *sigh*.

*

Ethics inherently involves other folk. — Banno

It wants to, definitely, and is framed that way. But, this still doesn't move the needle. Emotional positions on how to treat others v emotional positions on what one wants to do for themselves. I do not understand a difference which would make one ethical and one not, in a sense that changes their truth-aptness or some such. The statement "One ought eat chocolate" reads the same as "One ought not kick pups". "I wouldn't, so you shouldn't" in the latter and "I do, so you should" in the former.

that which stays the same as time passes — Metaphysician Undercover

Can this even be, given time passes? What could stay the same?

For my part, I cannot think of 'masculine' and 'feminine' as actually telling us anything at all unless there is some tie to the sexes. Otherwise, we're just random calling two sides of a spectrum, which we can't even adequately describe the axis/axes of, 'masculine' and 'feminine'. This makes me think underlying assumptions about, perhaps, "good" and "bad" (or some similarly up-in-the-air notion) are informing much of people's discussion on them - but what are you actually talking about? I want to know what is a 'masculine' (or feminine) trait, and why. Don't think I've ever heard an answer that doesn't conform to the general idea below:
Personally, I see them as plainly tied to sex, and average capacity/behaviour. But I would probably be considered regressive for saying that our total history informs us that across time and place there are tendencies within the sexes - despite that being pretty obvious. No need to be restrictive. The bulk of people, in any ground, tend to fall in a range, and a few fall outside of it. Nothing weird going on.

If one wanted to bring up intersex/trans, I'd be happy to involve them but I doubt this is a reasonable thread to do so. For one, neither intersex or trans violates the sex binary and that's not a discussion for this thread.

Emotions are not the beginning and end of ethical deliberation. — Banno

I agree. But ethical statements do rely on emotional positions. I do not see anything else happening when one makes such statements. The deliberation may include some ratiocination - but this would just move the ticker on the emotional position (or, more likely for humans, the reverse: the emotional is driving the reason). No one is thinking "I feel strongly that X, but reason tells me Y and so my position is Y". That seems pretty much counter to the basic concept of morality at least and is not what people mean when they make ethical statements, I don't think.
Is there another description of the "statement" aspect here? I am ignoring your "truth" Aspect as we both know how we feel about that, I'd say. I'm interested in how you think it occurs rather than what it results in.

To close off personal reply to your comments, emotivism denies that there are ethical truths. The question it seems you're answering doesn't arise.

Or maybe people have emotions vis-á-vis questions of value because the events in question are good or bad? That is, "I feel repelled by x because x is evil," as opposed to "x is evil because I feel repelled by x." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I cannot understand how that could be hte case, without first telling me, objectively, why something is 'evil'. Given our only source of such claims is humans, .....where are we going?

However, the dedicated emotivist often ends up resorting to claims like: "being stomped isn't actually bad for babies," and defending this claim (which I think most would judge to be obviously false) by appealing to the notion that all value judgements are just statements of emotion. But that's obviously question begging — Count Timothy von Icarus

This doesn't seem like a very serious discussion, at this point. The dedicated emotivist is only committing to rejecting an objective claim to wrongness. I'm more than welcome to agree that stomping babies is bad. That's my position. It doesn't rely on anything but that. I am not committed to saying anything else. It just so happens our emotive positions are the same (I addressed this earlier:

There are fairly universal emotional reactions (such as the one Banno lays out here) that have infomed policy in almost every single instance there has been a policy across all of human history. — AmadeusD

This doesn't move hte needle, though. I pretty much accept both the above, and your take, but I can't see how that changes anything. The fact that lots of people have the same emotional reaction is no evidence for anything more than a collection of emotional reactions informing policy (and thereby, probably, further influencing emotional positions in future).

Basically, where's the a priori evil you need for that to not be reverse of your claim?

Huh. I see the train, I guess i just bare disagree. We'll see, I suppose :)

What, isolationism? Hehe.

There is something repugnant, — Banno

Further making clear your ethical system is emotivist at base. This isn't particualrly a dig at you -

I just cannot understand why people have such a hard time noticing that every moral claim they make is an emotional one (or maybe accepting?). There are fairly universal emotional reactions (such as the one Banno lays out here) that have infomed policy in almost every single instance there has been a policy across all of human history. Some instances notwithstanding due to overriding emotional positions, such as having a female baby being repugnant in many Asian cultures, this seems a truism and seems to make it perfectly clear that sans religion, this is how it works. Not theoretically, but literally how ethics is done. Call it a conversation? I could. But then Banno's further remarks make it clear he's not talking about ht same thing, I don't think.

I don't yet follow — javra

Your use of Truth precludes us from ever having it. Nothing to do with our influence on it.

We always (fallibly) know if such is the case. — javra

Contradiction, on your own terms. That's my entire point. We don't know anything if our knwoledge is, at base and always, fallible. That's why 'T-Truth' is nonsense as far as JTB can go (on my view!).

But this plays no part in fallible knowledge — javra

Knowledge requires infallibility, on your terms. I am struggling to understand how your responses to me (nad Clark, i guess) run in tandem with your explications of your own points. They seem contradictory to me, so maybe i'm not seeing something.

To respond to a point you made to another commenter: No, You cannot 'know' the Sun will rise tomorrow, because it hasn't happened you. You can expect it to, with certainty (which is about your belief, not about whether it refers correctly to anything). You cannot know if you're going to involve fallibility.

It was rhetorical. If that's all you need to make you 'sure' of a generational speculation, I'm unsure where to take this..

Don't you live in New Zealand? — Maw

Yep. What's the relevance? (fwiw, I hate it here LOL. Seems about as relevant).

In case you're going to make some argument about how my not living hte USA precludes me from commenting, or caring about hte US state of affairs (or having an accurate view of it) miss me. Cannot deal with such stupidity. If it's not, that's fine, and ignore this. It is a very common response I'd prefer to get ahead of is all.

but I don't think what he wrote was intended to address religious revelation. — T Clark

Neither was mine. I was excluding it, as religious revelation would surpass the level of certainty he indicates.

Gould was specifically writing about scientific knowledge — T Clark

Are you suggesting there is some other type of knowledge that approximates truth? Or is the breadth of 'scientific knowledge' peculiarly narrow here?

The push to have experienced people leave as soon as possible. — Paine

Are you sure this is what's happening? I don't really see it. I can see it as a (foreseeable, and dismal) side effect. That said, I'm unsure this would achieve the situation you're claiming either. Movement happens all the time, in and out of countries and classes etc... So, I'm just not quite seeing what's so special here i guess.

he reduction of "probationary" employees who are typically the ones who do the work after their teachers leave. — Paine

I might need a clarification of what you're pointing to. What's the 'reduction' in issue here?

Meaning that they were the people being trained to take the reins when older employees retired. — Wayfarer

Right. A huge amount of assumption goes into getting from this (which, arguably, isn't a massive problem - that's a far different conversation to this one though) to the conclusion that there's going to be some horrorful gap in knowledge upcoming. That said, I'm not coming down on any side. I'm asking for views and for people to defend theirs. If that's an issue, I don't take you seriously. I'm sure that's reasonable to you, also.

If you read the media coverage — Wayfarer

I'm not going to waste time trying to explain it. — Wayfarer

Oh, nevermind. Loud and clear.

Would it then be fair to suppose that you live in a world, an umwelt, devoid of truth? — javra

Well, that isn't really my position. My position is that the way you are using 'truth' results in this state of affairs. Nothing rises to the required level, so there is no Truth.

Taking part of your above response to Clark, I would say that you're on the right track there as far as my views go.

there does occur such a thing as ontic reality. To which all epistemic truths need to conform. — javra

I agree. But we can never know if such is the case. It is just hte strongest possibly supposition we must have to do or care about anything. If all was genuinely in flux, we wouldn't care a lick from moment to moment, i'd think.