Which might sound good, but probably doesn't accurately reflect the actual business of doing ethics or being in an ethical conundrum. Instead of 'feeling' ethics we just problematize it, and instead of practicing or considering the practice of more real world situations which demand ethical attention we shift our efforts toward a puzzle-solving motif where the focus becomes theory construction and the categorization of ethical attitudes based upon a seemingly unrealistic hypothetical. — Larynx

Excellent point. I usually enjoy these problems as parodies of philosophy at its most tone-deaf. It's like the tragicomedy of a Vulcan working out an algorithm to maximize virtue. Everything profound and high is reduced to a maximization or minimization problem.

Hi. I must confess that I can find only another example of vague abstract evangelism in the opening post. Would you mind boiling this down in practical terms? Isn't this just the idea that everyone should be super-ultra-scientific? Doubt everything, except that what constitutes evidence is ambiguous and that doubt is somehow automatically virtuous?

Sometimes the word 'scientism' is thrown around a little recklessly, but I think it fits here. As I've followed the thread, I see you enact what I'd call a kind of fanaticism that won't budge an inch. I'm new here too, and I'm not trying to make an enemy. My thinking is that being on a forum is pointless if one isn't exposed to criticism, so I'm offering you some criticism. Maybe it'll speed the rule of artificial intelligence somehow.

In short, I think the positive/negative distinction in morality is true and useful. — TheMadFool

I hear you. It has its uses. I even suspect that most ways of talking that have caught on have their uses. That's why they caught on. We philosophers tend to make things absolute in a way they weren't intended to be, though. For instance, ordinary talk uses 'certain' comfortably and vaguely and usefully, while philosophical talk dreams up some ideal and elusive certainty that has nothing to do with life.

As I said above a moral truth leads to positive (obligatory) deeds and negative (forbidden) actions. — TheMadFool

I suppose. But I often think of moral truths as somewhat vague ideal ways of being. I have a vague blurry image of a noble or wise or good person. Depending on my recent behavior I can take pleasure in identifying with or approximating this image or suffer pain in the perception of myself as having been petty or cruel. I can't always specify the good or the bad. I remember a complex situation and feel bad or good about myself. I can then search for the words. I can clarify a gut-level reaction. I can add a conceptual system to something that is more visceral in its functioning.

What comes to my mind is that all metaphysics is reductionism. We reduce the complexity of experience to useful generalities.

One piece of the puzzle is the doctrine of inter-dependence. As an example it claims that when wood, metal and artisan come together we get a chair. The chair is just a convergence of other more ''primary'' stuff and so can't have an independent existence. — TheMadFool

I've heard/read a similar idea. What a chair is involves all of human history and the universe ultimately. I can't exhaustively describe a chair (if even then) without describing/explaining everything. How have chairs evolved? What are the words for chair and how are the connected to chairs? What are chair made of and why do these materials work? And so on.

Similarly, the self/I also arises from inter-dependence - flesh, bones, blood, for instance, give rise to consciousness and the self/I. Therefore, there is no real I. Not-self is what I hear people saying. — TheMadFool

I see that we can break people down as a system of sub-things. There is also the social existence of individuals and the way we are differentiated from one another and understand ourselves and others in terms of these differences. I am male because there are females. I have personality trait X only because such a trait is conspicuous against the possibility of its absence. We might say that an individual self is a kind of foreground which is dependent on its background. The background is lots of other selves.

There are plenty of other labels that I find to be problematic. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I agree with the sentiment. For me this is largely an issue of personal style. I don't like taking labels too seriously. But I swim in the language with others. So it's good if I know how to play the game. And sometimes labels (delivered in the right tone) are good style. Even cliches are useful. Ulysses is full of cliches, intentionally. Hackneyed language is a big part of human reality. Bad poetry is the rule. It is the background against which good poetry exists.

Or would eliminating labels like "believer" and "non-believer" cause a public mental health epidemic, a poorly functioning society, and an individual and group-level existential crisis? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I think we'll always have (if nothing else) euphemisms in the mouths of politicians. Differences will persist, and we are motivated to discuss these differences. For instance, labelers and non-labelers. If you started a movement to eradicate labels, you'd probably want a term for those who opposed you. If you somehow avoided this on principle, the news anchors would still need some shorthand. Categories are just too useful. I think the best we can do is be aware of the way they can limit us.

When we use words, we tend to assume that others are using them in the same way as we are. If they do not, that will cause a problem for understanding and evaluating each other's reasons, or for any sort of communication. But there is plenty of evidence that we usually don't know exactly what words mean. — Jokerlol

I agree. I don't think we can get behind our own language.

When I first read philosophy, I learned somewhere the motto 'define your terms.' While this is not a bad idea, I think it can only be taken so far. As I analyze the meaning of a word, I have to use lots of other words that I am taking for granted as I analyze the word in the foreground. So I am using un-analyzed words to do philosophy, which was supposed to be less than ideal.

Knowing how to 'do' language seems like a condition for the possibility of thinking that thinking cannot 'get behind' or make fully explicit. I think one version of the philosophical quest would like to make everything explicit and justified. No more unlit dependencies. No dark mother on which we depend. But I think the best we can do is light up this or that a little better and maybe improve our lives by improving our thinking.

How would any of us live if we believed that the past doesn't predict the future? — Shane

As I see it, Hume himself continued to believe. He knew that we all must do so. What he noticed was our inability to justify this trust deductively or in terms of pure reason. It is almost sanity itself to predict the future in terms of the past, so what Hume arguably revealed was that sanity wasn't logical in some pure non-empircal sense. The 'uniformity of nature' is apparently a sort of hard-wired implicit assumption.

It's impressive that Hume could become conscious of this. It's not easy to understand Hume's point. I've tried to explain it to friends and they couldn't grasp it. I think it's like trying to point out water to fish. As profound as the thought is in one sense, it's trivial in another. It's like the denial of the possibility of presuppositionless thought. Only philosophers have dreamed of such a thing in the first place. Being perfectly rational is some fully explicit way is, in my view, a quasi-religious goal. I suspect that it is somewhat inspired by monotheism.

I will continue to use the Oxford Comma. (this, this, and this. NOT this, this and this.) — Bitter Crank

I salute you. Oxford Comma all the way.

I like to either go fast, or go slow. But, it ultimately doesn't matter. — Noble Dust

I object to the commas in both sentences above. But I like this attention to prose style.

Should I have combined my two sentences into one? Maybe. But I like the extra pause that comes with a period before a 'but.'

The law, if I'm correct, is mostly about type 2 rules (negative rules). Judicial systems don't impose positive rules of society like they do negative rules. — TheMadFool

Hi. We could look at this another way. 'Don't murder' could be phrased as 'respect the lives of others.' Also 'give to the poor' could be phrased as 'don't cling to the wealth you control to the point of endangering the community's poor.' In short, I don't think the positive/negative categorization is essential. It's mostly skin-deep.

In terms of enforcement, prohibition may be a more convenient form. Respecting the life of a stranger often means leaving them alone, not running them over, not interfering with their different but other-respecting lifestyle, etc. Since most of us do this most of the time, it's the violating actions that stand out (which argues we are mostly good or social).

What do you think of the following claim?

“Metaphysical disquiet.—It seems to me that a metaphysical system is nothing if not the act by which a disquiet is defined and succeeds partially—as well as mysteriously—if not abolishing, at least in transposing or transmitting, itself into an expression of self that, so far from paralyzing the superior life of the spirit, on the contrary, strengthens and maintains.”
Gabriel Marcel, Metaphysical Journal — Mitchell

I generally agree with that claim. Of course (?) the disquiet can return and the system is then discarded or adjusted. It also seems possible that a strengthening at one time point can be related to a weakening at another time point. The idea that was meat can become poison (and the reverse).

Compare the quoted passage with Dewey:

"We only think when we are confronted with a problem" — sime

Great quote, even if it is an exaggeration. Sometimes (in my experience) there is a relaxed state of mind (emotionally neutral or vaguely positive) in which thoughts and imaginings pass in a quiet stream. Perhaps problems force a direction on this stream. The threat or promise holds thinking to the calculation of interactive possibilities in a particular context.

Marcel probably needs bouts of metaphysical disquiet to de-paralyze his superior spirit. — Bitter Crank

Well said. There are things one writes when one is in a certain mode/mood. Who hasn't looked back on recent optimism or pessimism (or complacency or angst) and been embarrassed or disgusted? Writing and other recordings are good for this kind of self-knowledge. Who was I when I said that? Who did I think I was? Was he right or am I? Or neither of us?

Everything that I have just described is perfectly just and fair, I have been told. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Hi. Do people really tell you this? For me it's usually people talking about how screwed up the world is.
And I also thought 'life isn't fair' was a platitude.

Here is where the philosophy comes in: I am supposed to believe that it is all just, fair, part of "progress", etc. Prove that it is! — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Dr. Pangloss comes to mind. The person who says it's all good and right and as it should be strikes me as a fascinating exception. Didn't some stoic once say that the world is perfect? I don't believe that, but it's a fascinating strategy. Perhaps the usual mode is finding reasons to live and therefore to say that life is good (and roundaboutly fair). Then the less usual but common enough mode is finding reasons to die. 'Life isn't fair' seems like a tweener, both an attempt to adapt (adjust expectations) and a damning compromise perhaps. Fairness seems like an intra-human concept. The freezing cold outside doesn't seem to care much what we've been through and would still like to accomplish.

I'm sure you do have it made relative to some people's current and fragile desires and expectations. And others would consider your life a piece of hell. A lot of old men would pay you for your youth, I'd bet. Is any resource more taken for granted? Maybe health. Anyway, I relate to your disgust with the game. So much that is public is false. And yet we need what the system offers. If we die in our righteousness, then verily we have our reward. (?)