The mores are the morality. — ChatteringMonkey

But you can't make any sense out of the mores without adding in meaning, value judgments, etc.

It's a bad idea, — ChatteringMonkey

"Bad"/"good" are ALWAYS subjective assessments, and there's never a guarantee that any two people will come to the same assessment about the same thing.

morality being about interpersonal behaviour doesn't make the disposition itself interpersonal. — ChatteringMonkey

I don't know if that's what you meant to type, but I couldn't agree more.

If it's only an individual disposition, then you are missing something. — ChatteringMonkey

What would you be missing?

she will still have to act according to the dominant mores... — ChatteringMonkey

If she wants particular consequences, etc., sure. But that in itself isn't actually morality. Morality is value assessments of interpersonal behavior.

then you merely have a view on morality, but that does not constitute an actual morality that is enforced socially. — ChatteringMonkey

Sure, there's no law or no mores etc. backing up your personal view. That's often the case, isn't it?

Nothing. It's fun. — khaled

Haha, okay.

I post here because I don't have much chance in real life any longer to talk about philosophy with anyone who has any knowledge of it from an academic perspective. I see it as "keeping those muscles exercised" a bit, so they don't just completely atrophy.

I think this place is really, really lame for it for a number of reasons, but unbelievably, it's the best place I've found for it, with a requirement of being relatively active, in recent years. If I could find any place better, with people who aren't nearly as unintelligent and ignorant and who don't have near as much of that typical arrogant Internet asshole attitude to boot, combined with whatever mental ailments, obsessions, neuroses, etc. most folks here seem to have, I'd bail in a New York minute, but I haven't found anything better yet.

And what was that going to do for you?

What did you ever think that talking with me was going to accomplish for you?

Answer the question. — tim wood

I did. You don't agree that I did. So I'm trying to explain that to you. Of course, either you're trolling or you're incredibly dense, so it might be difficult, but in either case, I'm willing to try to explain it to you.

Hence why I asked if you didn't agree that "Murder is wrong" is a moral stance.

I think everyone interpreted it that way. — khaled

I seriously doubt that anyone was reading most of it except for me and you. And maybe just me for most of it.

Most of the time you were, in fact, — khaled

Your interpretation is not a fact . . . at least not aside from the fact of it being your interpretation.

My stance is that mental states are identical to physical brain states.

This says nothing about explanations. Whether something can be explained significantly hinges on who we're explaining it to, what their criteria are for explanations (if they have any and they're judgment about whether it's a successful explanation isn't essentially arbitrary), their psychological biases, etc.

In other words, explanations and whether any set of words counts as an explanation is a completely different can of worms that what things are ontologically.

You're asked a fair - and basic - question. But you refuse to answer. — tim wood

Funny that you're trolling but characterizing it as me trolling.

Well, if "funny" means "typical."

Because you DO principle based ethics — khaled

I actually wasn't. I could see how maybe you'd interpret it that way. It's a bit ridiculous for you to tell me how I'm thinking of something though.

"Murder is wrong" is a moral stance.

You don't agree with that?

Either the insults prove unendurable, and the target attacks the speaker, or the words empower and provoke others to commit violence or worse. Gay-bashing, ni**er-bashing, woman-bashing (often called "rape"), and so on. Indirect, but not by much — Pattern-chaser

So again, you don't think that people have to decide whether to attack someone or not, or at least that they do or should have the power to stop themselves from becoming violent?

To elaborate a bit more, if you say morality is subjective because the valuing happens in the brain, you need some additional explanation to say that eventhough it is 'merely' subjective there are other mechanisms that make it a bad idea to act only one your individual subjective idea of what is moral. And unlike say preference in taste, there are definitely consequences to acting on you own subjective morals only... so it seems to me the distinction between things that are individual and collective is a usefull one here. — ChatteringMonkey

Subjective shouldn't have a "merely" first off, as if it's simpler or inferior or whatever.

Whether something is a bad idea is also subjective, of course.

Morality is dispositions about interpersonal behavior. So that means that by definition, it's not just about one's own behavior. And by definition, it's dispositions that people feel strong enough about that they'd take forcible action to prevent,and sometimes to obligate, some behavior (otherwise it would just be etiquette). So of course there's a social aspect to it, but moral stances, moral valuations themselves are individual and subjective.

You were not asked how you felt. — tim wood

Yes, I was. You asked my moral stance on it. Moral stances are dispositions--preferences or feelings, basically, that individuals have about interpersonal behavior that they consider to be more significant than etiquette.

You might think that moral stances are something other than that. You'd be factually incorrect about that.

No bro, khaled and I have explained this to you before, simple reasoning. If I don't have a child no one except the parent's own agenda is affected. — schopenhauer1

What does this have to do with what we're talking about. Again, I'm not talking about anything pro or con antinatalism in this tangent. I'm talking about something much broader than that.

When I wrote, "Basically, there's a lot of stuff that people consider suffering that I think is ridiculous/laughable to have a problem with," that wasn't at all focused on antinatalism. Can't you talk about anything else? What is wrong with you?

It's a type of convention, which originate in dialogue and agreement between people roughly speaking. You can find it in the brains of people, but not in one particular person individually, which is why the label 'subjective' doesn't really apply. — ChatteringMonkey

"Subjective" refers to something being located in brains, by the way. Re agreement, that's just sounds that people make. The meaning part occurs in brains. So value only occurs in brains. It's fine noting that we can agree on things, but that's not where the valuing part occurs.

For "intersubjective, not subjective or objective" to amount to anything substantial, you'd need to be locating the valuing part somewhere other than just persons' brains or in the world outside of their brains. (Whatever would be left.)

I want to bring out a simple point about responsibility that I think is often missed: that we are responsible ONLY for what is NOT in our control. This may seem counter-intuitive, but becomes clear, I think, with any cursory investigation into what responsibility entails. The first way to approach the point is contra-positively: were the results of our actions wholly under our control, if we were able to master every last consequence of what we said and did, we would not need to be response-able for them: there would be no response required, no ability to be exercised as a result of what we have done. Responsibility enters precisely at the point at which our actions exceed us. — StreetlightX

That paragraph made nothing clearer. Writing "response-able" as if it would refer to the same thing as "responsible" is comical, too.

Judith Butler, in her remarks on the concept of responsibility, puts it this way: “I cannot think the question of responsibility alone, in isolation from the other. If I do, I have taken myself out of the mode of address (being addressed as well as addressing the other) in which the problem of responsibility first emerges” (Butler, Giving An Account of Oneself). For as Butler notes, responsibility is ultimately relational: it is only in relation to another that one is responsible, accountable, for what one has said and done. There would be no ‘problem of responsibility’ without the relation to the other. But the other, as other, as an-other agency, is precisely what, or rather who, I am not in control of. It is in the face of the other that I am responsible, and the other is that who exceeds my mastery over things. — StreetlightX

So, I'd tell Ms. Butler that I can very well think about responsibility in isolation from others. It's weird that she can't. I could maybe help her be able to do this if she were here.

Re "the problem of responsibility" as she's using it, she's using a subjective interpretation as if there would be something universal to it.

You're not responsible for the reactions of other people unless we're talking about causality in the sense that I talk about it.

Another way to approach the point is less through the notion of responsibility than its subject: action. We say that we are ‘responsible for our actions’: but ‘our’ actions never belong wholly to us, at least, not insofar as they make a change in the world, insofar as they have consequences that exceed me. Hannah Arendt, in her beautiful passages on action, puts the point thus: — StreetlightX

This conflates actions and consequences of them.

“[The] consequences [of actions] are boundless, because action, though it may proceed from nowhere, so to speak, acts into a medium where every reaction becomes a chain reaction and where every process is the cause of new processes. — StreetlightX

Insofar as we're talking about other people, this would be denying that they have free will.

Don't quite understand what you mean, sorry. Care to elaborate? — ChatteringMonkey

In other words, how would it come to be as an existent? What's it supposed to be a property of? Where would we find it? How would it arise? etc.

Ethics or morality is neither subjective nor objective, but collective or intersubjective if you will — ChatteringMonkey

How would an intersubjective value obtain?

Seriously, though, for me, variety is important. The pleasure I take in various things won't lessen as long as I pursue variety. That way you don't get burned out on anything.

You can just order more from Amazon.

It does cause violence, albeit indirectly — Pattern-chaser

Indirect causes being further back in the causal chain?

For example, in a Rube Goldberg contraption, setting a billiard ball in a slot causes a level to lower, which causes a chain to move, which causes a lighter to light . . . etc. all the way until we get to a hammer cracking an egg? (So then the billiard ball is an "indirect cause" of the egg cracking?)

I'm being serious though. Why should something be prohibited if it's not the cause of what you have a problem with?

Message boards--how do they work?

I'm not going to explain my motivation for every post I've made in the thread. That would be way too long.

On that last post, my motivation was, for example, to tell you that you're wrong that by virtue of something, I need to defer to someone else's opinion on whether anything is a benefit or detriment. I don't need to do that.

And then another motivation was to explain that in my view, whether anyone considers anything a benefit or detriment is irrelevant to consent. So I'm giving you my opinion on something, because you're saying things that I think reflect conceptual problems on your part.

It would be too long to go into this sort of thing for every post.

By the way, I did write, in a post 20 pages ago, 22 days ago, in a response directed at you, "Personally, I'm not a fan of principle-based approaches."

Additionally, in the second post in the thread, from a month ago, I wrote: "The idea of any ethical stance hinging on 'suffering' isn't at all appealing to me, because I think that 'suffering' is both (a) way too vague, and (b) not something that's inherently proscribable ethically."

And then every post from me for a few pages was stressing how this stuff is all subjective, simply a matter of how an individual feels, etc.

Yet here you are still wanting to argue with me 3 weeks-a month later.

Actually you didn't even catch that I confused my conversation with you and my conversation with schopenhauer. With you, you were arguing that I need to defer to someone else's opinion re what's a benefit or detriment.

No I don't. I don't need to defer to someone else's opinion on that.

Whether someone else considers anything a benefit or detriment is irrelevant to consent on my view. Some I'm not sure why you've changed to talking about consent.

Because you are acting on said someone so not deferring to their opinion as to whether or not they consent to your action would be directly going against the consent of a consent capable being — khaled

First off, the topic here is whether, in my opinion, contra someone else's, it's ridiculous or laughable to consider some things suffering.

Let's make sure we have that straight. It's what I was talking about. (schopenhauer was having the same problem with not being able to stick with that idea.)

Violence, for one example. Maybe the most significant example. — Pattern-chaser

You're claiming that speech causes violence? You don't believe in free will then?

Not a result of reasoning? Let's start at square one. Terrapin: is murder wrong, yes or no? — tim wood

Sure, I feel that it is wrong. That's not a result of reasoning. It's an emotional disposition that I have.

That in no way addresses what I said. — DingoJones

He can't or won't interpret anything you said as anything other than an argument about antinatalism, because that would get him off his campaign/branding script.

So basically, it's just your opinion that it's not your job (you seem to be forgetting that I'm talking about opinions on whether some things are ridiculous to count as suffering, but at any rate . . .), and you're deciding for me that it should be my opinion that it's not your job to have opinions contrary to others about what's worth or not worth counting as suffering etc.

Because it's not my job — schopenhauer1

That's just saying the same thing in a wordier way. What makes it your job or not?

"No good" is not a fact. It's your opinion.

We went over this :roll: and I pretty much answered you here — schopenhauer1

So you can't decide whether something is ridiculous/laughable (as "suffering" for example) because of game theory? (seriously?)

People have been doing it from the start. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Can we talk about some of it? Maybe suggest a claim we could start with?

This is not a scientific discussion. — T Clark

So we're not talking about something that's really the case empirically? What the heck are we talking about then?

Let's be fair now that fairness helps the people in power. — T Clark

How this makes any sense to you in the context of what I said is a complete mystery.

It angers me how facilely white people can shrug off 400 years of brutality. — T Clark

People should probably deal with what's going on now. Folks from 100 years ago (and often much more recent) are not typically around any longer, regardless of what side anyone was on back then.

That doesn't mean that there's no connection to any current situation, but we need to deal with now.

You can decide whatever you want or compelled to do for yourself, not for or to others. — schopenhauer1

Because?

Again who are you or anyone to decide what that is for anyone else — schopenhauer1

Who is anyone to decide? The whole nut of this stuff being subjective is that there aren't right answers, and we all decide whatever we want to, or whatever we're compelled to (due to our dispositions--I wouldn't say that we just decide this sort of stuff on a whim).

Privilege is falsifiable by the social conditions. There is a existing/empirical reason some people are identified as having privilege or not, based on the observed social conditions. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Sure. So then we make falsifiable claims and see whether they hold water. How about we start doing that?

It doesn't equal that. What I said was that there's no way to say that it isn't that in that case. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. How would we know?

Strong emotions, so strong that you can't imagine thinking otherwise, are not the same thing is reason. "Murder is wrong" isn't a result of reasoning. It's just a strong emotion.