You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
-Romans 6:18

I'm not Christian anymore, but I think that Paul was on to something.

The desires are there. Each give some level of satisfaction when fulfilled. It's up to us which to fulfill because they often come in conflict.

Those living under such a law in some sort of separate community would not likely want to keep to themselves.

It's just a little bit deeper than your thinking I think. And I don't mean that arrogantly. I I just think if we are being honest we don't chose either our reflective desires or our compulsive desires. It's the chosing of which we indulge in that I think is free. It takes a lot more work to indulge the reflective desires.

We are sort of circling at this point, but I feel it would be disingenuous of someone with your view to use language like wrong, and evil.

I'm trying to imagine a rally from someone with your view to end slavery.
Guys I don't feel good about the slaves. Do you feel good about the slaves? I didn't think so. Well I don't like feeling bad so let's go to war and kill a bunch of hicks, and some being our brothers and fathers so that we can make an America that is more preferable to our feelings.

I realize this is not charitable and slightly comical and I'm sure it won't make a point to you but it does in my mind.

I noticed I wasn't as far from your thought process as I thought when putting that up. I I think there is one difference. I think they believe the ideas because they felt they were true. Now feeling they are true can be enough I'm sure. However positing that there is no moral truth is more dangerous to me than it is to you. I don't think the feelings of something being bad go away, but the feeling of the feeling being true might. The feeling of something being true is what leads to action and on your view I think this is in jeopardy.

Okay I follow that. I seem to remember him having someone on the podcast with him saying that we can agree on that, but once we move away from the worst possible misery for everyone it becomes very convoluted as to were to go next. And that perhaps if we go one direction up a peak it may be that we have got to go back down if we are ever going to get to a higher peak. I think Sam felt like at this point our answers would be found in further understanding of the brain to see what really makes people happy and perhaps even altering the brain if the wrong thing makes them happy.

Maybe it shouldn't but that last part terrifies me.

Well using feeling as justification seems shaky at best to me. I don't think America for instance used feeling to get where we are. I think Americans continually realized that they were not adhering to the ideas they believed in and so they continually evolved. The key being that they believed in the ideas. The group at one point felt slavery was okay. I think it took conviction from a belief to change it. At least in my opinion.

Am I right to think that Sam Harris is basically saying what is more moral is whatever leads to more happiness in a group sense and so we are left to argue what actually leads to more happiness? So in that way happiness may be subjective but morality objective.

I apologize but I prefer simple terms whenever possible.

I don't know I will have to contemplate more.
On the one hand it seems like you are saying throw out justification and on the other hand it seems you are saying proceed as if there was justification.

I would say for sure that denying moral progress hampers moral progress

So lets say you are a part of a culture that shares your preferred values. Are there any grounds for being critical of another culture that are stronger than saying that's not what I would prefer?

Your making me clarify what I think you already know I mean, but maybe not.
Equally valid is poor phrasing once again. The concept of validity make no sense at all when talking about our positions on morality if there is no moral truth. (i see this as a problem). So there is no way for me to say we should or ought to prefer one idea over the other. Equally valid in the sense that neither is valid at all is more what i meant, but its better to say validity doesn't apply.

So then what does apply to prefer imposing one set of values over another?

I think to say there is no moral truth is to say that all stances are equally valid which is why I oppose your view.

Perhaps you could explain why that implication is wrong.

Yes I do and the answer is valid to a moral truth. Just as scientific theories can be more or less valid to the truth. In both situations you assume there is truth and we have some sort of capability of moving towards it even if only for the reason of having practical benefits.

Validity needs to be based on an assumption. There is no way around that. Our observations about the physical world work on the assumption that our perceptions are not entirely deceiving us. That we can use our observations to move closer to truth. Take away that assumption and there is no where to proceed. It may be a wrong assumption, but not having the assumption has no practical benefit. I think we need to make a similar assumption about morality. A basis to move forward with. Or an attempt to move forward.

But if we assume that there is truth about morality as there is truth about our physical universe then we can use the same ideas we use to evaluate our physical universe. Mainly that we never say for sure that we have things right, but that we make progress towards the truth or towards aligning our ideas with truth, through our assumptions.

If we assume that all people are equal and we assume that we should proceed to allow everyone to act freely unless their actions harm others, we can move forward. And it some way we may be getting closer to the what the truth really is while never truly knowing what it is.

That may seem a little wishy washy, but it is what we do with the physical world. We assume there is truth and try to get closer to what that is.

This is to some degree my point. It seems we have to rely on our intuition to make value judgments yet we also assume that value judgments are purely feeling based and therefore inconsistent. So again there is no place to proceed.

Your right "I can't" wasn't the right way to say it. More that I wouldn't presume to.

Its devaluing to the point were my feeling about rape being wrong is no more valid than another's value that rape is good.
Or your value that we should do whatever we want as long as it doesn't harm others is no more valid than another's feeling that others well being doesn't matter. Or that a specific type of persons feelings don't matter.

All positions are equally valid in your view, or at least should be equally valid. There is no way to proceed in this case.

That's not the case any more than realizing that one's like of a particular flavor of ice cream is simply how one feels about it makes one stop liking that flavor of ice cream. — Terrapin Station

I suppose your right, however it seems like comparing our "taste" in morals to our taste in ice cream is still dangerous. I can't make laws about what ice cream should be made, but we do try to legislate against what is wrong. We have to be able to tell somebody that there taste for rape is wrong even though they might not think so.

Its not saying that your feelings go away, but it is devaluing them.

Well i guess there are two things going on. One do they exist, and two how would they be defined if they do exist.
I would say there are dangers that have been well written about in rejecting objective moral value.
I'm not however saying that the dangers prove moral value. The dangers are not about truth as much as they are about what is good for us to know.
I would imagine your not a fan of CS Lewis, but I feel like he explains the dangers much better than I ever could in "The Abolition of Man". He is only talking about the reaches of science and not arguing for religion. The warning at the end CS Lewis gives is that we have to be careful explaining these intuitions away like the intuition that some things (for instance rape) are just wrong no matter what,
He says that we don't want to go on explaining everything away and that eventually when we have explained humanity away we won't be human any longer. Hence the abolition of man.
The analogy which I love and I'm paraphrasing:
The point of looking through the window is to to see the garden on the other side. What good would it be if the garden were also transparent. And if we are able to see through all things, that would be the same as to not see at all..

This isn't going to be a very clear response, but I I'm just brainstorming here.
I think it's interesting that our American values today are actually more closely related to the ideas put forth by the founders than the values the founders had themselves.
We have gone much farther in treating everyone equally. We have gone much farther toward religious freedom.

So somehow they had the ideas right and the values wrong. And whatever culture that shows moral progress will either have to do something similar or have an outside influence. The cases that are most interesting is when change is affected from within the culture.

If our culture was to be objectively morally better it might be because of starting with the right idea. It maybe that we need is Leo to incept the right ideas into other cultures so they can fix themselves.

In some respects I think your articulating some thoughts about Sam Harris' work that I haven't been able to get out in words. Sam will talk about the importance of intentions, but he proposes a basis for morality that really doesn't consider them.
Your right it is this abstract information of emotion and intuition about the inherent wrongness of things that I don't think we should explain away or lose.

I'm going to have to give this response another read when I'm off work. I I just started my evening shift. It seems like we have some common ground though.

Saying that intentions are not a practical thing to try and judge someone by is correct.
However using that fact to prove that it is not the basis of morality is an incorrect leap in my opinion.
You may not be able to know my intentions and therefore not know how moral of a person I am.
Your judgement of me has to be based on my actions. Your judgement may or may not be correct.
Certainly actions are a good way to make an educated guess, but that is all it is.

More clearly intention is not a good basis for you to judge me because you can't possibly know my intentions. Intention, however can still be a basis for morality and self reflection.

In fact by my actions you are trying to guess my intent and my morality. But actions are not morality.

We seem to be agreeing somewhat, but having a problem with the words we are using. If you like lets say there is:

Bad - Immoral

And then there is unfortunate or undesirable or whatever else you would want to put here

Then bad , if it is defined to be immoral, would be a judgement of intention, and the other words a judgement of outcome.

Its bad in that it caused suffering. Suppose someone is stabbed with a knife still stuck in them and another person trying to save him removes the knife. The man dies. It is later determined that this man would have lived if the knife was left alone. This is a bad outcome. However, I find no grounds for saying that the man who removed the object was being immoral.

"Also, in my view, no intentions sans actions are morally problematic."

In my opinion ill will for someone, caused by jealousy lets say is morally bad on its own.

So intending to kill is morally bad. Intending to kill and also committing the act is morally bad.
Not intending to kill and killing is bad and subject to the law, but not morally bad.
Bad - Suffering
Morally Bad - Bad Intentions, apathy ..

I should probably clarify that I think the law should prevent bad in terms of outcomes. We don't want thought police, so we don't want someone to be punished for being bad if they haven't committed a crime.
I did say that compulsive desires couldn't be considered morally bad in themselves. But the moral person chooses to be in control of his compulsive desires.

This is a crucial point of disagreement.
I think its a language problem more than anything. Killing someone with out the intention is bad, no doubt. But morality in my own opinion is about the agent and not the action. One is bad, the other is morally bad.

I can't disagree with what you have written there. That is the purpose of law and order. To keep us free to act on desires, except when it violates another person's rights. However, I am discussing morality. I'm worried about the loss of personal responsibility as well as the loss of the ability to make value judgments. I want to say two things in the end.
1. We have free will so we are responsible.
2. Some practices can be held with contempt regardless of the culture they stem from.

That is definitely the logical next question and to be honest with you I will have to do some more thinking on this. I feel like it may have something to do with with being honest with yourself about your intuitions. I think a lot of the bad is done by people who use world views or religion or something of the sort to rationalize actions that go against their intuition. But again, I feel I need to spend more time contemplating this.