He may not be directly answering the question to the satisfaction of those of us who think the two domains are separate, but it's pretty clear that he thinks only in terms of the descriptive domain, and thinks that answering questions in there is sufficient to answer prescriptive questions too, which makes it clear enough to me that option #2 is the right categorization for his views.

That sounds like your view is either option one, or else if perhaps you take there to be nothing more to a prescription than a description of what someone wants, then option two.

It sound like the first option is the one for you.

Relativism is a kind of anti-realism. (Also, not all universalism is realism).

If you adhere to position number 4 - you have to presume some objective source of morality. So what is it? The Ethics tree? Lake Morals? The Shoulda River? Mount Ought? — counterpunch

It sounds to me like you’re still asking the descriptive question of what caused us to have the inclinations toward moral judgement that we do. I don’t disagree with you about that question.

On my view, there is just another additional question, which is not one of the cause of our capacity for moral judgement, but rather a “how to” question about the optimal conduct of that capacity. Just like philosophy also has a “how to” question about conducting our faculties for figuring out what is real (epistemology), which is different from a causal account of how we came to have such faculties.

Just wanted to note that I caught and fixed a brain fart in the OP: in the last sentence of the paragraph about option #4, it had said "just as well as science is applied to morality", when I meant it to say "just as well as science is applied to questions about reality".

Right. But I didn't ask that. This and the following long-winded explanation of it have nothing whatsoever to do with my question, so either your reading comprehension is terrible or you're avoiding it for some reason. I asked how 'trusting A' caused me to intend X when A says "Do X" without my simply drawing a conclusion from descriptive facts [A has said "Do X"] and [A is knowledgeable in this area]. — Isaac

The words that I emphasized in that response were supposed to draw attention to how I'm not disputing that those descriptive facts -- NB though that they are descriptive facts about prescriptive opinions -- can, as you're saying, be reason to adopt the same prescriptive opinion that A has. I'm not disputing that. I'm saying it's beside the point, which is about the meaning of that prescriptive opinion that A holds, which you also might choose to adopt because of your trust in A.

There's a descriptive fact that A holds an opinion (that you should do X), and a descriptive fact that A is a reliable source (on what you should do), and on those grounds you may conclude that A's opinion (that you should do X) is correct, and so you yourself adopt that opinion (that you should do X). That's all fine and dandy.

But what does it mean to think (or say) that you should do X? What is the content of A's opinion that you have now adopted? It can't just be that A thinks that you should do X, because then you never get to the "you should" part through the infinite regress of "A thinks that A thinks that A thinks..." that would erupt if that were really the content of A's opinion about what you should do.

You're claiming that the speech act "Do X" does something more than simply communicate the fact about the speaker's state of mind, that it somehow communicates something more. — Isaac

Not so. I think that all assertions only communicate the speaker's state of mind. "X is the case" only communicates the speaker's belief that X is the case. "Do X" or "you should do X" only communicates the speaker's intention for you to do X (and any other "X should be the case" only communicates the speaker's intention for X to be the case, which may not be directly translatable to an imperative command, but would still be translatable to an exhortation, like "O would that X were the case").

What I'm on about is that the content of that state of mind being communicated is not itself just a reference to a state of mind. The speaker's intention for you to do X is not just a belief that he believes that he believes [...ad infinitum...] that "you should do X", the meaning of which we'd never get to through that infinite regress. Nor is it a belief that someone else believes that a third person believes [...etc...] that "you should do X", because even if that's a finite chain of references you still end up never elaborating on what it means to think that "you should do X".

My position is that the content of the thought "you should do X", or more generally "X should be the case", "X is good", etc, just is the intention that you do X / that X be the case. No more special reference to the mental states of people need be made than with descriptive assertions, where that kind of reference only needs to be made at all in the context of understanding what it is to make an assertion of any kind. To assert that something is the case is to communicate a belief that X is the case, but the contents of that belief being communicated do not consist of references to someone's beliefs. Likewise to assert that something ought to be the case, or to command or exhort that it be so, is to communicate an intention for X to be the case, but the contents of that intention aren't references to anyone's states of mind.

But I can agree that this might sometimes be what it means to think that something 'ought' to be the case. — Isaac

That's enough for me.

a) it would not, by that method, be able to effect your desires beyond their physiological boundaries - the frontal cortices simply don't have that level of control over the endocrine system, it's not physiologically possible. It's like saying that if you thought it was a good idea for your heart to stop beating, or for serotonin to no longer act as neurotransmitter you could just think it and make it so. You can't. — Isaac

Good thing I'm not claiming that to be the case then. This is an important aspect of my differentiation between desire and intention. It's exactly like the analogous differentiation between perception and belief. You can perceive a pond of water in the desert, but because you know about mirages, disbelieve that there is actually a pond of water in the desert -- but that doesn't make you stop perceiving it. It still looks like there's a pond of water there, even though you have judged that perception to be incorrect.

Likewise, to have an intention, on my account, is to have a judgement about your desires, but that won't necessarily force them to change. If for some strange reason you thought your heart ought to stop beating, i.e. if you intended for your heart to stop beating, of course that wouldn't make that happen as though by magic. That intention would just consist of your judgement that it shouldn't be happening, even though you're powerless to do anything about that.

b) The fact that I could do this has absolutely no bearing on whether I should do this, nor on whether moral language actually is trying to make me do this in common use. — Isaac

I don't think that moral language is necessarily trying to make you evaluate your intentions like that. I think moral language is just trying to make you intend something, period. That's my answer to the question about the meaning of moral claims.

This bit you're responding to here is instead my answer to a different question: when to accept moral claims. I've already given many variations on my argument for why that's a good answer to that question before, but earlier today I was thinking about this and I thought of a way of phrasing it that seemed like it might appeal to you:

You can't help but feel like having your appetites fulfilled is good. That's pretty much the definition of an appetite: something the fulfillment of which feels good. You can try to fight against it, just like you can try to disbelieve your senses if you're a modern Plato who thinks that real reality is some transcendent realm only accessible through navel-gazing and that the world you observe is just shadow puppets trying to distract you from that. But you're just going to be fighting yourself and you won't get anywhere that way; at the end of the day you have to live in the world of your senses whether you think they're telling you the truth or not, and you're equally beholden to your appetites whether you think they're good or not. (This is like your thing about the physiological limits you were just saying above, which is why I thought you'd appreciate this approach).

And there can be literally no sound reason to think that either the truth or the good are somehow transcendent of experience like that: you couldn't learn that they were like that through experience, a posteriori, and a priori reasoning can't positively prove anything, only disprove things through contradiction. So you're stuck with no sound reason to ever think that anything is either true or good... other than that you can't help it that some things look true, and some things feel good, no matter how hard you try to tell yourself that those experiences are leading you astray.

That's why phenomenalism (empiricism plus hedonism).

And other people are all stuck in that same situation as you, except from their different perspectives, so things look and feel different to them. If you're trying to talk with other people to sort out which of all your differing thoughts and feelings about what's true/false or good/bad are the correct thoughts or feelings, you could just ignore everyone whose opinions disagree with yours, but that'll never get you anywhere toward agreement. Or you could instead look at each other's reasons for thinking and feeling the way you all do -- those experiences you're each stuck with as the only things you have to go on, as above -- and try to put together some picture that's consistent with all of those. That has a chance of reaching agreement, if you can figure out which picture fits that bill.

That's why universalism (realism, or anti-solipsism, plus altruism, or anti-egotism).

if I understand correctly — Tobias

Sounds like you do, thanks.

Well Pfhorrest, what do you think? You asked if I care to elaborate. Was it just to antagonise Wayfarer? — counterpunch

Sorry, hadn't had time to read fully and respond until now.

Overall it looks like a case of option #2 (description only). You give an accurate enough (as far as I can tell) factual account of reasons that caused humans and other organisms to be inclined to approve and disprove various behaviors, and apparently take that to be sufficient to answer all normative questions; no separate account of normativity looks to be required, on your view, besides that causal account of what made us be who we are such that we do what we do.

Suffice to say I don't agree with that, since I picked option #4.

what is considered true ultimately depends on our criteria for truth — Tobias

I'm asking what are your criteria for truth in these respective two domains (or one domain if your view falls into one of the second or third choices). It sounds like you use / advocate the use of science for descriptive questions. Do you approach prescriptive questions as a subset of that? Or in a similar but separate way? Or in a completely different way altogether?

Similar only in that they are both attitudes to states of affairs; the way we decide what is the case is not like the way we decide what ought be the case. — Banno

This is the kind of opinion that I meant to be covered by the first option, not the last.

OK, so what do you think trust is, psychologically? We have this input (the words "Do X") and an output (an intent to do X). How does trust get us from one to the other without importing any descriptive facts? As I see it we've still got [A says "Do X"] and [A is a trustworthy expert in X-types-of-thing]. Those still seem to be two descriptive facts about the world which I might use together with my desire (not to get these types of thing wrong), to arrive at the pragmatic conclusion to intend X. Which is exactly the description you rejected (supply of facts for me to do with what I will). — Isaac

That A intends for me to do X (i.e. "thinks that I should do X"), and that A is a person I expect to have the right idea of what I should do, constitute a reason why I could decide that I should do X / intend to do X, but it doesn't say what it means to think that I should do X.

Consider for comparison again the purely descriptive case. A tells me that X is the case, and A is a person I expect (for whatever reason) to be right about whether or not things are the case, so I decide to take his word on it that X is the case. But my thinking "X is the case" doesn't flesh out to my thinking "A thinks X is the case", which in turn would then have to flesh out to "A thinks that A thinks that A thinks that A thinks that [...ad infinitum...] X is the case". In telling me that X is the case, A both demonstrates his belief, and basically tells me to believe it as well, but the content of his belief, or mine if I accept what he says, isn't just that he believes it, nor is it any of the reasons there might be to believe it: the content of the belief is the state of affairs it's about, and the attitude to treat that state of affairs as a depiction of how the world is.

Back in the prescriptive case again, when A commands or exhorts me to make X the case, and A is a person I expect (for whatever reason) to be right about whether or not things should be the case, I might decide to take his word on it that X should be the case, i.e. to adopt the intention to make X the case. But my thinking "X should be the case" doesn't flesh out to my thinking "A thinks X should be the case", which in turn would then have to flesh out to "A thinks that A thinks that A thinks that A thinks that [...ad infinitum...] X should be the case". In telling me that X should be the case, A both demonstrates his intention, and basically tells me to intend it it as well, but the content of his intention, or mine if I accept what he says, isn't just that he intends it, nor is it any of the reasons there might be to intend it: the content of the intention is the state of affairs it's about, and the attitude to treat that state of affairs as a blueprint of how the world should be.

As a side issue, I'd also like to know how someone might squire the status of trust within the field of these ethical pronouncements. You've laid out quite clearly why we might trust someone in their descriptive statements, but you left out the equivalent in your paragraph on proscriptive statements. Everything else you mirrored sentence-for-sentence, but you left that out, why? — Isaac

Because that's the separate question of why or why not to accept that something ought or ought not be the case, i.e. when to do as commanded or exhorted, which is where we usually get hung up, so I didn't want to open up that rabbit hole for us to go down again yet, until we've settled this question of whether or not the contents of moral claims, commands, exhortations, intentions, "moral beliefs", etc, are just descriptions of other people's states of minds, or what.

Even if I got you to completely agree on this topic that saying that something is good, or that it ought to be the case, is basically the same thing as commanding or exhorting that it be the case, and that all of those speech-acts are not just describing to someone else what you (or someone else) think, but trying to make them think the same thing as you, where the thing that you think is not in turn just a description of what other people think, but a different kind of thought entirely from a description of a state of affairs, rather it's a prescription of a state of affairs... even if we were 100% in agreement on all that, there would still remain the question of when (and why) someone on the other end of such a speech-act should go along with it, should agree with what someone tells them ought to be.

There's the same distinction in purely descriptive speech-acts too. If, as I reckon it, telling someone that X is the case is basically trying to get them to believe that X is the case, and even if you agree with me that that's what descriptive speech-acts are doing, there still remains the question of when (and why) to believe what you're told.

It's basically the distinction between:

1) what it even is to think that something is the case, vs to think that something ought to be the case,

vs

2) what would be good reasons to think one of those things or the other.


My answer to the first type of question is basically that:

- to think something is the case is to have an "idea", a mental "picture", not just a simple 2D visual picture but a complex immersive multisensory "picture", that you are treating as a depiction of the world;

- while to think that something ought to be the case is to have a similar such "idea", or mental "picture", that you are treating as a blueprint for the world.


My answer to when and why to accept those kinds of attitudes toward various ideas is:

- in the first case, if you can "walk around" the idea in your mind and examine it from all different perspectives and from every perspective it consistently matches the sensations you've had of the world, as well as any that you personally haven't replicated but trust others' reports that they have had;

- and in the second case, if you can "walk around" that idea in your mind and examine it from all different perspectives and from every perspective it consistently matches your appetites, as well as any that you personally haven't replicated but trust others' reports that they have had.

Isn't the distinction obviously one of direction of fit? An "is" statement will be felicitous if what is said were modified to match what is the case. An "ought" statement will be felicitous if what is the case is modified to match what was said. — Banno

That's how I think of it, yeah, but it seems apparent that not everybody else does; and even those who do, who agree that they are fundamentally different kinds of statements, sometimes differ on what can or should be said or done regarding the two different kinds (e.g. Gould vs myself).

The answer to all those questions is, as I said in my last post, trust, which NB is a word closely related to “truth”.

If I ask you a technical question about psychology, that I genuinely have no idea of an answer to, I expect that you can give me a straightforward answer. E.g., if I didn’t already know this, I could ask “what does the parasympathetic nervous system do?”, and you could just say “it’s responsible for rest and digestion”, and since I trust that you know what you’re talking about on that topic, I would believe you. I’d only believe you because I imagine that you have seen, and been taught by many people who have seen, much empirical evidence of that, and if I didn’t trust your answer I could ask you to tell me how you know it (and then I’d have to trust that your supporting claims are true)... but the initial claim itself doesn’t mean the same thing as that argument you might be able to give to back it up. It just means what it says on the surface, it’s just an assertion of your belief at me, pushing me to believe the same.

Likewise if you tell me to do something, or that something should be, or that something is good. I read that as an assertion of your intentions at me, pushing me to intend the same. If I trust you I might just do what you say. Otherwise I might ask “why?” and you could try to give an argument to back that up. But the initial assertion doesn’t just mean the same thing as that argument you might give to support it.

Missed the option that the distinction isn't worth making? — fdrake

Where's the "other" option? I would say that they definitely have a different meaning, as "is" and "ought" have different meanings. But it's one philosophy, metaphysics, which deals with them both, so they are of the same domain. — Metaphysician Undercover

That would be one of the middle two options, each of which considers there to be only one domain. But in that case I’m curious how one would characterize that domain, in a way more fundamentally descriptive, or prescriptive, in the senses of those terms used by those who distinguish the two.

It’s like materialism and idealism as positions in philosophy of mind, both of which say that mind and body are not different kinds of things, but differ on what the one nature of both of them is like.

I think a philosophical method can be applied to both without compromising the is / ought distinction. Both normative considerations (why punish murderers for instance) and scientific considerations (The universe is 13.8 billion years old, (I googled it so it is true...) ) contain presuppositions. It is philosophy's job in my opinion to uncover these presuppositions — Tobias

My question here is basically about what you take those presuppositions to be. Are they radically different for the two sides, exactly the same for both (and if so what way are they like), or “separate but equal”.

To illustrate what I mean by that “separate but equal” thing: in my philosophy I apply the same exact principles to both reality and morality, but two of them manifest as different more familiar principles when applied to the different domains. The principle I call “universalism”, applied to descriptive questions, basically means anti-solipsism (or any other kind of metaphysical relativism), or in other words, realism; but applied to prescriptive questions, it means anti-egotism (or any other kind of ethical relativism), or in other words, altruism. Likewise, the principle I call “phenomenalism” breaks down into empiricism about descriptive matters, and hedonism about prescriptive matters.

None of the above. — counterpunch

Care to elaborate?

And btw, imo first-rate OP. — tim wood

Thanks!

I didn't claim there was no difference, only that the difference was not categorical, but one of degree, or of conveying additional information (such as urgency, or the authority of the speaker). — Isaac

That difference doesn't seem to me (in my experience speaking and listening to people in my native English for a handful of decades) to be made by the grammatical mood, but by other pragmatic aspects of the speech act. One could bark an indicative sentence like a drill sergeant would bark a command to convey urgency or authority on a matter of fact, and one could softly phrase an imperative sentence to give a gentle suggestion. Shouting "X is wrong!" at someone has the same pragmatic effect as shouting "Don't do X!" at someone, but gently saying "you shouldn't do X" has the same pragmatic effect as the softly-put imperative.

And all four of those, the two different tones of imperative and the two different tones of moral sentence, have something in common that differentiates them from descriptive sentences, whether those descriptive sentences are barked with authority or urgency, or spoken gently: the imperatives and moral sentences are all pushing or at least nudging the listener to do something, directly, while descriptions at most point out things that the listener might want to take into account when deciding what to do, and might even be spoken or received without any behavior-guiding implications at all.

Plain indicative statements, regardless of tone, do imply at least some level of authority assumed on the part of the speaker. If I tell you just "X is the case", I must expect that there's some chance you will believe me at my word. Likewise if you ask me "is X the case?", you're showing some willingness to take me at my word. If that trust isn't there, then maybe I'll tell you (or you'll ask me to tell you) other things to make an argument to back up that statement, like who else of what status believes it and what its implications are and what other things have implications about it, etc, but merely making the statement doesn't mean the exact same thing as all those things I might tell you to back up the statement.

Likewise with moral statements, and imperatives, exhortatives, etc, things in this intention-impressing category of speech acts, rather than the belief-impressing category in the paragraph above. If I tell you "you should do X", or "do X", or "O would that you did X", or anything like that, I must expect that there's some chance that you would do as I say just because I said it. Conversely, if you ask me "should I do X?", you're showing some willingness to do what I say to do. If that trust isn't there, I could give (or you could ask for) an argument why you should, but just saying "you should" or similar doesn't simply mean the exact thing as the other things I might tell you to argue why you should, like "most people will laud you for doing so", or anything like that.

So a command is no different in type to a statement of fact. — Isaac

If you're going so far as to claim this, that there's is no meaningful, pragmatic difference between indicative and imperative sentences, just some superficial grammatical difference, then I don't think there's any hope for progress in this discussion. You seem to live in a different world than I do.

Claiming that there is a certain speech act is the same thing as making a claim about the meaning of a word. Speech acts are what words mean, there's nothing more to meaning that the act associated with utterance. — Isaac

I was differentiating there between a priori and a posteriori questions about language. You're talking about what particular words that particular people actually say are meant by them to do or have the effect of doing. I'm talking about what general kinds of things we might want to do with our words. I said "there is a kind of speech act" as in there is a kind of thing that we could want to do with our words, not that any particular words are meant by any particular person to do that.

All these are ways in which moral language, exactly as I described it, can result in intentions in another. — Isaac

It can result in the other forming new instrumental intentions toward the fulfillment of intentions that they already have, sure. But it never even tries to simply tell someone to intend something.

It’s like if you never made any direct claims of facts, but instead only said what various sets of people believe, or what the implications of certain beliefs would be if one were to believe those things, but never actually said “x is the case”. You would still be saying things that would indirectly influence what your audience believes, but you would be conspicuously avoiding ever actually claiming yourself that something is true.

If you spoke that way, there would always be an open question of whether the belief you’re talking about is true or not: “Yes, I get that it’s widely believed, and its negation would imply things that I find counter-intuitive, etc, but is it actually true or not?”

I'm not seeing the distinction you're trying to make. It sounds like you're invoking some kind of mind-melding woo whereby intentions can get directly transferred without having to go through the beliefs and goals of the person listening. Elsewise any language is simply saying "I'm in this state of mind (fact about the world)", and the listener does with that what they will. — Isaac

It's not about any wooish direct transfer, but it is about directness in our speech-acts. As just described above, it would be weirdly evasive to never just straightforwardly say anything to the effect of "X is the case", but rather only talk peripherally about people's thoughts on or the implications of X.

It's similarly evasive of taking a prescriptive stance, of making a direct prescriptive statement, if all you ever mean by "ought" or "good", etc, is something about people's thoughts on or the implications of some X, and never anything straightforwardly to the effect of "make X the case".

You can't tell someone when to intend something. — Isaac

You can -- that's what commands do -- it just won't necessarily be effective. The person does always have a choice on whether or not to intend what you tell them to, but you can still directly tell them to make something so, rather than just talking around it.

Similarly, when you tell someone that something is the case, that doesn't force them to believe it. They still have a choice on whether or not to believe what you tell them. But making direct assertions of facts rather than talking around the issue is still a normal thing to do with language.

And so is making direct prescriptive / normative / moral / ethical assertions, to the effect of "make this so", rather than anything like "this is unpopular" or such.

It seems like we're talking about different things here. I'm not looking to assess what any particular words "really mean"; that's (if anything at all) an empirical matter, beyond the scope of philosophy, and if it weren't then it would only be relevant to philosophers speaking a particular language anyway. The contingent assignment of signs is arbitrary and of no philosophical importance.

The point I'm trying to make is that there is an important kind of speech-act, often even if not necessarily always associated with moral/normative/ethical/prescriptive language, that the kind of speech-act you're equating all moral speech to does not perform. The earlier thread about this where we got sidelined talking about moral universalism was not even specifically about moral language, but about language more generally.

The key point of that thread was that there are a lot of different things that we can do with words than the thing we usually do with indicative assertions:

- One the one hand, rather than making a statement, we can ask a question; which is to say, rather than pushing some ideas or attitudes toward such ("opinions" as I broadly term them) from ourselves onto others, we can solicit them from others to ourselves.

- Additionally, rather than pushing our opinions onto others, i.e. rather than effectively telling them to think something (what I call "impression"), as assertions usually do, we can also merely show that we ourselves think something (what I call "expression"). (Or parallel in the case of questions instead of statements, rather than soliciting an opinion directly from someone in particular as in a usual direct question, we can merely show our own lack of clear opinion and openness to input from anyone, wondering aloud).

- And lastly, rather than pushing (or soliciting) opinions with mind-to-world fit, i.e. descriptive opinions, beliefs, we can also push (or solicit) opinions with world-to-mind fit, i.e. prescriptive opinions, intentions.

It is that function of impressing an intention that moral language in the way you would account for it would utterly fail to do. Some other positions in moral semantics, like expressivism, also fail on that point in different ways: expressivism would have it that we're only ever expressing our prescriptive opinions, never impressing them. On the other hand you would have it that moral language merely impresses a belief, describes something to someone, and then they take that belief or description and combine it with whatever intentions they already had, whatever prescriptions they already endorsed, to guide their actions. Which is something people totally do when given descriptive information like that, yes. But if you would have it that that is all that moral language ever does, you miss out on the function that is truly unique to moral language, and not found elsewhere: impressing intentions onto people. Prescriptivity.

That's the main thrust of the Open Question Argument. If you tell someone that something or another fits into the purely descriptive category "good", you're telling them to believe that the thing is in a category of things called "good things", but you're not at all telling them whether or not to intend for those things to be the case. If all you're doing is describing, then that always remains an open question: "am I to intend that this be the case, or not?"

It's really hard to find a way to even phrase that question without using any kind of moral language, because only moral language serves that linguistic purpose. Even that phrasing I just used, "am I to...?", is just an obscured way of phrasing "ought I...?" or "should I...?" Consider, although we can in a way impress intentions via commands, how would you ask a question to which the answer is to be a command, other than moral language? Your superior could tell just you “do this” or “do that”, without any “ought” or “should”, but if he hasn’t yet and you need him to direct you, what can you ask him besides “should/ought I do this or that?”


Furthermore: When someone asserts a descriptive opinion to you, tells you something supposedly about reality, it's not given that you definitely will believe the belief that they're pushing at you. The question of what makes such an assertion true is the question of when it is warranted/justified/correct/right to believe the thing they're trying to make you believe by asserting that; what are the truth-makers of such claims? That is a different question than the question of what it even is to make a descriptive assertion in the first place.

Likewise: When someone asserts a prescriptive opinion to you, tells you something supposedly about morality, it's not given that you definitely will intend the intention that they're pushing at you. The question of what makes such an assertion true is the question of when it is warranted/justified/correct/right to intend the thing they're trying to make you intend by asserting that; what are the truth-makers of such claims? That is a different question than the question of what it even is to make a prescriptive assertion in the first place.

Empirical realism is an answer to that question of what the truth-makers of descriptive claims are, i.e. when to believe the beliefs that other people push at you: when those beliefs satisfy all empirical experiences (sensations, observations, etc).

Likewise, my hedonic altruism you're always criticising is put forth as answer to that question of what the truth-makers of prescriptive claims are, i.e. when to intend the intentions that other people push at you (via moral assertions): when those intentions satisfy all hedonic experiences (appetites, pains, hungers, etc).

Basically, if someone's acting in a way I don't like, and that behaviour happens to be behaviour which is publicly defined as 'morally bad' then one speech act I have at my disposal to get them to stop is to label their behaviour as such. — Isaac

That presumes that they care to avoid behavior that's labelled that way, which in turn is to assume that they are a relativist, who already thinks that whatever other people approve of is the thing they ought to do.

That's the general problem with all descriptivist accounts of moral semantics (NB that we're now off the topic of which states of affairs are good, and on to what it means to say that something is or isn't good). All you're ever stating is an "is", and letting your interlocutor supply their own "oughts" to combine with that. You never actually say anything about what you think actually ought to (or ought not) be, you only ever inform your interlocutor of what you think that thing is, and let them do with that information whatever they will.

The general rebuttal to all accounts of this type is G.E. Moore's Open Question Argument.

I'm going to start with this because I get the feeling it might be central to the disagreement — Isaac

I agree, now that I know you're an ethical naturalist, because I think the whole problem with ethical naturalism or any kind of ethical descriptivism is that it ends up not saying anything at all about what is or isn't moral in the sense I'm talking about, instead talking entirely about a specific subquestion of what is or isn't real, and merely labeling that fact about reality "morality", while entirely missing out on the function that distinguishes prescriptive, moral language from descriptive language.

My scenario was one where 'morally right' is a public definition which encompasses certain behaviours, such even if a person thought they ought to do X, if X is termed 'morally wrong' they'd be objectively mistaken to label such behaviour 'morally right'. You added that they would verbalise this state as "X is something I ought to do, but it's morally wrong", which would indeed be a contradiction. I, however, was referring to someone who intended to do X, and saw no morally relevant problem with that intent, in a society where the correct label for X is 'morally wrong'. — Isaac

That would be a society where the words "morally wrong" didn't function the way they do in our society, where they didn't have any imperative, normative, prescriptive force, where something being "morally wrong" was as dry a fact as something being red or triangular or, closer to the point, unpopular. That would be a society where the words "morally wrong" were purely descriptive, and one could coherently say that something was morally wrong without in the process condemning it or otherwise discouraging anyone from doing it. In that society, "X is something I ought to do, but it's morally wrong" would be a perfectly coherent thing to say, if "ought" meant what it does in our society -- i.e. if using it demonstrated a specific attitude of the speaker approving of the action, such that thinking something ought to happen entailed intending for it to happen -- but "morally wrong" only meant a description of common attitudes toward it without any implication about the attitudes of the speaker. In that society, saying that would be much like someone in our society saying "X is something I ought to do, but it's unpopular", which makes perfect sense in our language.

It can of course be an objective fact that something is unpopular, or red, or triangular, and in a society that used words like "morally wrong" in the way you describe, it could be an objective fact that something fit that description. But that would not constitute an objective morality, in the sense of that word used in our society, because it would not constitute any commentary on morality at all. People calling things "morally wrong" in that society would not be performing the prescriptive kinds of speech-acts typical of moral language in our society.

It's the fact that sentences like "I intend to do something I shouldn't do" seem somehow contradictory in our language that shows that a purely descriptive account of moral language is insufficient.

Good question, but since you've used 'we' not 'I', the answer would seem to be an empirical one, no? — Isaac

I agree, but again 'us' not 'me'. I'm not seeing how you answer these questions for 'us' only by introspection of 'you'. — Isaac

In those passages I'm using the first-person plural the way a mathematician would, or as philosophers sometimes do, the writer walking through a problem together with the reader in a shared first-person perspective.

Then when I switch to first-person singular, then I'm no longer talking about general how to do philosophy stuff, but identifying the particular philosophical question (singled out in the way advised in that general philosophy stuff) that I am addressing for the rest of it. I'm not saying that that's the only question -- other people might be asking other questions, and those could be worth answering too -- I'm just identifying which one I'm talking about here.

You've jumped here from the way we want the world to be (independent of any other people's wants) to the way we want the world to be (including other people). We're social beings, no? Why would you separate out our affects and those of others and then seek to reconcile them rationally. Would you not expect evolution to have had at least a significant impact on social cohesion by those very affects? Is not the seeking of a compromise solution (rather than bashing one's opponent's brains out) already the satisfaction of a affect valence embedded by evolution to help us co-operate. It seems somewhat superfluous to convince people of a met-ethical position by arguing that it provides us with a toll that only people of a certain ethical position would even want. It's a done deal by then. — Isaac

I do expect that we have evolved tendencies that already lean in the general direction that I'm advocating. We have empathy, we often care not to see other people suffer, we often enjoy making other people feel good.

But we've similarly got a pretty good-enough intuition about what is real, because of evolution, and that doesn't negate the usefulness of the scientific method as a way of improving on those intuitions. I'm likewise seeking to build a way of investigating more rigorously into the kind of topic that we already generally consider morality, to do better than those intuitions, just like the natural sciences do better than our intuitions about reality.

thought that's how it seemed. But affirming something is a propositional claim, not an exhortative one. — Isaac

You've apparently missed the part where exhortations are propositional (albeit with a different direction of fit to their propositions), they're just not indicative. But in any case, assuming you meant "indicative, not exhortative", that goes back to what I was saying about philosophical matters like this being logically prior to either of those kinds of things.

I'm saying that you've failed to cross the is-ought divide in your account. — Isaac

I'm not trying to cross the is-ought divide. I don't think that's possible. I'm trying to establish a means of figuring out "oughts" entirely on their own, just like we have a means of figuring out "ises" entirely on their own.

Why ought we seek that state of affairs? — Isaac

Assuming we each already feel like we ought to seek states of affairs where we ourselves each find our appetites satisfied, seeking a state of affairs that fits that criteria for ourselves as well as others eliminates conflict with others and gives us something to cooperate toward, which is more efficient than fighting over it.

Why ought we have trouble-free meanings? — Isaac

"Trouble" is itself a normative word, so it's basically tautological that we ought to avoid troublesome things, because "troublesome" things are things to be avoided, by the nature of the words. Calling the meanings "trouble-free" means that they avoid things we're aiming to avoid.

Why ought we even have only one meaning for morally right? — Isaac

I'm not saying that we ought to have any meaning or other, or how many of them we should have. I'm saying that here is one objective these kinds of words are often used to name, and here is an analysis of the a priori practicality of different ways of pursuing that objective.

To answer any of these questions you have to assume an audience who have a natural understanding of what 'ought' means. Thus rendering an account of it rather useless. — Isaac

A vast swath of majority is about giving a more rigorous account of things we already have an intuitive understanding of, usually to resolve some kind of problems that arise from the use of that intuitive understanding. We all have an intuitive notion of what "a set" of things are, yet naive set theory runs into problems so mathematicians more rigorously defined what exactly they mean by "set", in a way that still fits the use of the word we intuitively understand, without running into those problems that our naive understanding of it leads to.

That's what pretty much all of ethics is doing. Everyone has some notion of what good, bad, right, wrong, etc, mean, in a naive sort of way, but then all kinds of dilemmas and other problems crop up when applying those naive conceptions. The point of ethics is to sort out exactly which rigorously formulated concept both generally fits with our naive use of such words and also avoids the problems that that naive conception leads to.

I don't see such an argument. — Isaac

I just gave it two posts ago, so I'll just quote it here again:

What exactly about the fact that people do do or think that way implies anything at all about what anyone should do or think? You can't get an 'ought' from an 'is' like that.

If you're not trying to make such an inference, but just saying what is, then you're refraining from moral commentary entirely, and if that reflected a lack of moral judgement entirely, that would leave you a moral nihilist, which in practice can't help but be a moral egotist, which is the most extreme form of moral relativism, which is one of the two things you say this isn't.

And if you were trying to get an 'ought' from an 'is' in that way specifically, never mind for the moment that that's not a valid inference, you would end up either appealing to the authority of the largest group, where avoiding appeals to authority like is the very reason to reject transcendentalism; or else you might say that each different group that has agreement within itself on the question is right relative to itself, in which case you're back to relativism again.

One way or another I don't see a way of avoiding both transcendentalism (or the dogmatism that is the reason to avoid it) or else relativism with this approach. — Pfhorrest

Let's say actions which are virtuous cause neurological effects which attract us toward them and repel us from their antipode. Let's say that as our language developed we came to use 'morally right', in some contexts, to refer to such behaviours. In such a case, a person using the term 'morally right' to refer to some other behaviour would be objectively wrong. Even if they themselves (perhaps due to some genetic flaw) found themselves attracted to some unseemly activity, the term 'morally right' doesn't refer to their private feelings but the the general case.

How would you oppose such a position? — Isaac

That would be a merely quotational sense of "morally right", as in "the kinds of things that are called 'morallly right'", without that entailing any kind of endorsement of those things by applying that label to them. For illustration, consider terms like "bad boy" or "bad girl". Plenty of people think that a "bad" boy/girl is good in a way, they like "bad" boys/girls more than "good" boys/girl, and they don't actually think that the things the "bad" boys/girls do are actually wrong in their own honest evaluation, as in, they don't see any cause to condemn their "bad" behavior, if anything they might laud it.

It's a kind of performative contradiction to say something like "that behavior is morally wrong, but that's perfectly okay", or "that is good but I don't intend it", in exactly the same way that "that is true but I don't believe it" is a performative contradiction. It's certainly possible for people to believe things that are false, or disbelieve things that are true, or to intend things that are bad, or not to intend things that are good, but in saying that something is true/false or good/bad you're demonstrating something about your own attitude toward that state of affairs, so if you also say something contrary about your attitude toward that state of affairs, you're saying something about yourself contrary to what you're demonstrating about yourself.

An account of moral language that doesn't include that kind of demonstration of one's own attitudes toward the thing being called good/bad/etc, therefore is lacking something that moral language as we usually use it has.

The point of that quote was that the senators voting on it, if they themselves are traitors, require 2/3 vote to STAY in congress, so they should need all of the republicans plus 17 democrats to allow them to even keep their seats to have a vote on the impeachment.

I'm too tired in the middle of the night now to connect this properly to the Trump impeachment, but someone whose knowledge I trust said in a chat server earlier tonight:

the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution holds that people that commit sedition against the US require 2/3 approval from Congress to be allowed to sit in Congress, so if anything, allowing them to continue to hold their seats is unconstitutional

Discuss?

OK, so could you describe how those elements apply to you 'philosophical claim' that we ought to see morality as a sort of matching of affect to world (or vice versa). What part of that claim is analytic and what part pragmatic? — Isaac

It's not that one part of it is analytic and another is pragmatic, but that the whole thing lies at the interface between the two. Basically we're asking what exactly we are trying to do with an answer to the question "what is moral?" The importance of the question, its pragmatic import, what we need to know the answer for, narrows in on which of the possible meanings of the question matters to us in that context, and with that understanding comes the start of the means of answering it.

I'm taking the pragmatic import of the question to be one of selecting goals to direct our actions toward, basically building a blueprint for the world we want to make. The world we want to make is, tautologically, one where things are how we want them. The problem then is reconciling different ideas of what such a world would be like, because we're not just aiming for a world like I want or you want but a world like we want, so we have to reconcile those different wants somehow.

The "we" part basically gives you the universalist aspect: what we're aiming for is independent of any particular person, we're not just asking what you or I or a majority or a particular authority figure want, but what is "wantable" some a more impartial sense than any of those. And the "want" part basically gets you the hedonistic aspect, the satisfaction of... I don't know what best to call them, maybe "imperative" states of mind, the umbrella category including intentions, desires, and appetites.

The need to reconcile those two different things with each other then requires analyzing those "imperative" states of mind to a level that is potentially reconcilable, unlike intentions or desires, which brings us down to appetites.

But surely the key element is such a claim is it's correctness. — Isaac

Yes, and I'm affirming that such claims are capable of being correct and incorrect (rather than just expressions of emotions), and elaborating on what criteria by which to judge them thus.

Surely the implications of it are the only relevant factor? That it is at least plausible is a given from the start (intelligent people have thought it through enough to publish papers on it, we can assume it's at least plausible). — Isaac

When I brought it up I was hoping more for discussion on its merit as a theory of moral semantics, on whether it's a reasonable account of what moral language means that can accomplish the goals it tries to accomplish: an account of moral language that can support calling moral claims objectively or universally correct or incorrect, without either reducing them to claims of natural facts, or else introducing some kind of non-naturalist ontology. Objecting that it would imply that morality is objective then sort of misses the point...

One prominent criticism of the concept of objective morality is that it would require either collapsing the is-ought gap, or else violating naturalist ontology, since (it's thought by such critics that) only descriptive claims, which must then refer either to natural or non-natural things in reality, are capable of being objectively true or false. If one then holds that naturalism is true (so there aren't non-natural things to refer to) and that the is-ought gap cannot be crossed (so moral language can't be referring to natural facts), one would then be forced to conclude that moral language cannot be of the type that is capable of being true or false, but must be something like expressions of emotions, or else that it is all categorically false attempts at referring to non-existent non-natural things.

If, therefore, an account of moral language can be given according to which moral claims can be true or false in a way that doesn't violate either of those other principles, that particular argument against moral universalism bites the dust. So to say that such an account is then problematic because it would imply moral universalism... yeah, that's what it's for. It's a way of enabling a universalist account of morality without running into these particular semantic problems.

What I'm saying is that for an ethical naturalist, something like that certain characteristics are virtuous is a fact about the physical state of our brains and the consequences thereof on our beliefs. A sort of 'evolutionary encoding of morality' approach could quite easily make claims about what is and is not moral as cognitive claims without reference to affect valence. Equally, a purely linguistic approach can make objective, factual claims about what is 'virtuous' or 'morally right' based on how we use those terms and still not reference affect. The re are numerous versions of ethical realism which are neither subjective, nor related to affect. It is not a matter of having to choose the latter by eliminating the former, they're not exhaustive. — Isaac

That approach runs into the is-ought problem that I detailed in my previous post, along with how that then runs into either relativism or transcendentalism(/dogmatism). I'm aware that there are other ethical theories like that that claim to wiggle out of this trilemma (of universalist phenomenalism else relativism or transcendentalism), but I'm arguing that they actually cannot do so.

Anti-Democracy Party. — Wayfarer

They’d probably agree to the “Anti-Democrat Party” at least.

I've perhaps not made myself clear. You seem to be saying that we 'should' take 'morally right' to be that which maximises appetite satisfaction. It's like you're imploring us to accept that something ought to be the case on rational grounds, but then saying that something is that things ought to be the case on hedonic grounds. It's not the case that we we consider maximising hedonic values to be our utmost objective. Some people are more about maximising the virtues, others obedience to God etc. so you're not describing what is the case, you're describing what ought to be the case - which sounds like you've already got a system in place for deciding what ought to be the case. — Isaac

Philosophical claims like we're discussing here are properly speaking neither descriptive nor prescriptive in the sense that claims about reality and morality (respectively) are, but have some characteristics of each. In arguing for empiricism, against someone who rejects empiricism, would one be making an "ought" claim of the same sort as an "ought" claim that e.g. one ought not rape? No, but then again one would also not be making merely an "is" claim that we do use empiricism, either.

Philosophical claims are logically prior to either of those kinds of claims; they're a mix of analytic claims, which superficially seem descriptive but don't actually tell us anything about reality, and pragmatic claims, which superficially seem prescriptive but don't actually tell us anything about morality. They're about what we mean by our questions and proposed answers, and what we're aiming to do by asking them and what is effective toward that end.

How can moral language be exhortative if the meaning of moral terms is objective. Moral language must surely be propositional in that case? — Isaac

It is propositional, it's just not indicative: moral language proposes that something be, not that it is, and such propositions can still be the correct or incorrect ones to make, though they of course must be made correct or incorrect by a different kind of criteria than indicative ones are. It's a kind of non-descriptive cognitivism, which I've tried to go into much detail on before (and is not my original invention even), but you just got hung up on the universalist implications of it and derailed that whole thread.

These are not the only two options. For example following one's sense of virtue (for, say and ethical naturalist) would be an option which neither satisfied hedonic values nor differed between people. — Isaac

It's not at all clear to me what you mean by this, but the best sense I can make out of it is that "following one's sense of virtue" means doing what you think is the characteristic behavior of a good person, which then raises the immediate question of what to do when someone else thinks something different is the characteristic behavior of a good person.

It looks like you've then just got two irreconcilable bare opinions that can't be analyzed into some deeper components that could potentially be reconciled by building a new opinion that factors in all of those deeper components together. So either both of your irreconcilable opinions are correct to each of you respectively, just because they're your opinions, in which case you've got relativism, one of the two options you say this avoids; or else there is some correct opinion on that matter but there is no way of telling which if either of your different ones is that, in which case you've got transcendentalism, the other of the two options you say this avoids.

The "ethical naturalist" bit in there makes me suspect that you might say the way to reconcile differences of opinion about what is the characteristic behavior of a good person is to look at some empirical facts about what people do actually (tend to) do (on average), or perhaps what they (tend to) think is morally laudable (on average), but that's just falling into the naturalistic fallacy. What exactly about the fact that people do do or think that way implies anything at all about what anyone should do or think? You can't get an 'ought' from an 'is' like that.

If you're not trying to make such an inference, but just saying what is, then you're refraining from moral commentary entirely, and if that reflected a lack of moral judgement entirely, that would leave you a moral nihilist, which in practice can't help but be a moral egotist, which is the most extreme form of moral relativism, which is one of the two things you say this isn't.

And if you were trying to get an 'ought' from an 'is' in that way specifically, never mind for the moment that that's not a valid inference, you would end up either appealing to the authority of the largest group, where avoiding appeals to authority like is the very reason to reject transcendentalism; or else you might say that each different group that has agreement within itself on the question is right relative to itself, in which case you're back to relativism again.

One way or another I don't see a way of avoiding both transcendentalism (or the dogmatism that is the reason to avoid it) or else relativism with this approach.

It is possible to treat the consequences of obesity. — Isaac

Sweet, so there's some way I can eat all I want and not suffer any negative consequences from it? Do tell! Why doesn't my doctor seem to know about this?

This is what I'm telling you is not true. We do not gain maximum happiness by any measure from the obtaining of that for which we're longing. It's just not the case. — Isaac

I'm acknowledging what you said about the wanting being more pleasurable than the having. But when you want for something, you eventually end up either (A) not getting it, or (B) getting it. Are you saying that wanting for things and then having yours wants dissatisfied is observably more pleasurable than wanting for things and then having them satisfied? Granted that in either case the main pleasure comes from the wanting, from the pursuit of the thing. But that ends eventually. The question is which way of it ending is more enjoyable.

Then I'll take your word for that. — Isaac

Here's a very short (and so necessarily incomplete) overview of my answers to the whole stack of ethical questions:

Moral semantics (what does moral language even mean?):
Moral language is not indicative, but exhortative. Exhortations can still be correct or incorrect, just like indications can be, but they're made correct or incorrect by different criteria than indications are.

"Moral psychology", or philosophy of will (what is the nature of willing and moral judgement?):
To will or to intend something is the same thing as to judge it to be morally good: it is to reflexively evaluate your own desires and judge whether they are the desires you should have or not, by the same standards you would judge someone else's desires in your same circumstances. Your will is free when and to the extent that such self-judgement is effective upon your future behavior.

"Moral ontology", or "teleology" (what makes for a good state of affairs?):
States of affairs are good when they satisfy all appetites, and bad to the extent that they fall short of that; there is nothing more to a state of affairs being good besides everyone feeling good, and nothing short of everyone feeling good is a wholly good state of affairs. (This is where you and I always get stuck).

"Moral epistemology", or "deontology" (what is a just or right action or intention?):
Just actions are "good-preserving" in the way that valid inferences are "truth-preserving": a just action must not have any badness in its consequences that was not already there in the prior circumstances, and new goodness produced in its consequences does not excuse any new badness introduced, just like a true conclusion doesn't automatically make the inferences used to get there valid.

"Moral peer review", or political philosophy (who gets to judge what's good or just?):
This is really hard to write a short summary of, but I basically advocate for a kind of anarcho-socialism with people turning to independent defense and adjudication organizations to protect them from other people, where those organizations in turn use the product of a global collaborative process of moral investigation based on the earlier parts of the stack as their "law books" when adjudicating these conflicts, in the same way that schools use the product of a global collaborative scientific investigation as the basis of their textbooks that they teach from.

Moral praxis, or empowerment (how to get people to do things that way):
By showing people that supposed authorities can be not only insufficient but positively counterproductive, but that progress toward good things is nevertheless possible, by helping the people let down or violated by those supposed authorities, helping them to help themselves, helping them to help others, and to help others to help themselves, and others, in a positive feedback loop.

I agree with this, but it’s missing my point somewhat. I’m wanting to know how you justify that there is only one absolutely correct answer in any given circumstance. There always appears to be more than one acceptable answer, but you seem to try to claim that out of all the acceptable answers, there is one that is clearly better than all the others. I guess something like “limited relativity” is more in line with what I meant. — Pinprick

Such "limited relativity" is just universality plus uncertainty (which is what I'm advocating). It accepts that everything is either permissible or impermissible in an objective/universal sense, and among the permissible things, it's possible for one to be objectively/universally better than another even though both are permissible, and when that is the case it's still possible that we may have no idea (and practically speaking very little hope of determining) which is better than the other even though one is.

But what is the criteria you use to determine which answer out the the acceptable ones is best? Assuming listening to music and exercising both relieve my anger equally, what could there possibly be to make one of these options better than the other? — Pinprick

All of the innumerable consequences that come from doing one vs the other, that practically speaking you'll probably never know or care to know about.

The point of liber(al|tarian)ism, like falsificationism, is to stop from focusing on pinning down one exactly correct solution, since we'll never get to there, and instead just focus on staying within (and narrowing down) the range of permissible/possible (respectively) solutions.

I take a materialist view because that's all I can speak intelligibly about, and in those terms - existence is a pre-requisite to everything else. The continued survival of the human species is what makes anything else matter. — counterpunch

Sure, and I agree, but my point is that in defending that view you're already doing philosophy. Philosophical issues like what is a good end to strive for are logically prior to issues about practical means to particular ends.

I thought that's what you were doing; I don't remember why I thought that. My objection is that science is not phenomenalism - because phenomenalism is subjectivism, and science is objectivism. Science assumes that objects exist independently of our experience of them. Phenomenalism does not. — counterpunch

Distinguishing different kinds of "objectivism" and "subjectivism" is what I was doing, and that's what you seem to not be doing here. The point is that "objects exist independently of our experience of them" can mean (at least) two different things:

- There is something about those objects that transcends experience, such that nobody could ever tell from empirical observation whether those aspects or qualities or whatever of the object were there or not. This is "objectivism as in transcendentalism", which I'm against. (Phenomenalism is its negation, saying that there is nothing about the objects besides the observable properties of them, which is also the position that science takes.)

or

- The existence of those objects is not just relative to any particular person experiencing them at a particular time, but continues as the potential to be experienced even when not actively being experienced. This is "objectivism as in universalism", which I am for. (Relativism is its negation, saying that the objects are only real to those who are actively observing them, and science of course generally takes a position against that).

How so? I think you're conflating senses here. — counterpunch

I'm doing the opposite of that, I'm de-conflating senses that it seems you are conflating. See above for the two senses of "objective" I'm differentiating from each other. Their negations in turn are the two senses of "subjective" I'm differentiating from each other. You can have one without the other: universalism doesn't require transcendentalism, so phenomenalism in turn doesn't require relativism. You can have a universalist phenomenalism, which is what science generally assumes: an empirical realism, where there is a reality independent of it being actively observed, but in no part beyond the potential for observation.

No. Take light - and the famous experiment by Newton with a prism. I'm sure you've heard of it. If science were subjective, it would be satisfied that light is white - but instead, Newton uses a device to begin to break down the electromagnetic spectrum, much of which is not apparent to the senses at all. — counterpunch

And we learn about that by observing the output of the device with our senses. That's like "seeing the wind" (which is invisible) by its effects on the motion of leaves in the trees. That's indirect observation, which is still observation, and so still "subjective" in a sense that doesn't mean "relative" but just "phenomenal".

I've no qualm with this as an aim, but you used the word 'should'. What do you think 'should' means here? — Isaac

I take all moral language, including my use of it there, to be essentially exhortative in function, so in saying that that kind of state of affairs 'should' be, I'm saying something to the effect of "let it be the case that [that state of affairs]".

It can't mean 'it would be morally right too...' because what is morally right is what you're trying to establish, so an argument assuming it would be begging the question. — Isaac

In that case I was just clarifying what it is that I take a morally right state of affairs to be, which is to say, what state of affairs I would exhort to be. I was not just then arguing that it should be, just clarifying the conclusion of my argument.

What is the normative force of the above argument - we certainly could think of 'morally right' as being synonymous with matching the world to it's current and future population's appetites... but why should we? — Isaac

Because that view is essentially composed of the negation of two positions (as discussed further below), and assuming either of those two positions would leave us operating under assumptions that would render us unable to conduct a rational investigation of what ought to be.

On the one hand, the position that what is good or bad can be wholly unrelated to what what feels good or bad in our experiences would leave us stuck having to just take someone's word on it, leaving nothing to do but pick for no rational reason whose word to take without possibility of question.

On the other hand, the position that what actually is good or bad can differ between different parties just because those parties differ in their opinions obviously leaves no room for rational reconciliation because all you'd have to appeal to is your own opinion and the other guys already disagree with that so that gets you nowhere.

So if we hope to have any rational discourse about what ought to be, we have to assume the negations of those both (and at this point in our reasoning, assuming one way or the other is all we can do, because we haven't even established grounds for justification yet).

Reconciling the negations of those both, figuring out some way of having a universal morality nevertheless grounded in phenomenal (hedonic) experience, in turn requires differentiating appetites from desires, because of the obvious impossibility of reconciling conflicting desires without a deeper concept like appetites to turn to.

We could instead see that consequent suffering as the problem, that's the point I was making (as you later allude to). So normalcy does have something to do with it, it's partly how we choose which suffering to treat. — Isaac

I don't follow the connection between these two sentences. I agree completely with the first one: the reason why drug addiction, overeating disorders, etc, are problematic is because they cause later suffering, and we don't currently have the ability to prevent that consequent suffering, so we can only treat the behavior that causes it, even though that behavior is in the pursuit of enjoyment, as behavior should be.

If it were possible to avoid that consequent suffering, or if there just wasn't consequent suffering at all, then those behaviors being unusual (abnormal) wouldn't be any reason for concern.

It's like homosexuality no longer being classified as a mental disorder: it is unusual (statistically speaking), but harmless, so it's rightly no longer considered a problem. Or, I don't know if anything like "sexual promiscuity" was ever considered a mental health problem per se, but it's certainly been socially condemned, and for much of human history that may have been for good reason (there is plenty of suffering it could cause), but nowadays with birth control and disease prevention and treatment technologies, it's possible to be sexually promiscuous while avoiding the consequent suffering, which makes it no longer anything to condemn.

Not really. It depends how you define 'enjoyment'. Both neurologically and phenomenologically, maximum enjoyment is not obtained by getting things you want. Gamblers aren't addicted to the payoff, they're addicted to the chance of a payoff. Even in mice, maximum dopamine response is achieved at the anticipation of a reward (of which there's a just above 50% chance of achieving), not the reward, or even the certainty of it. The human brain is extremely complex and this disneyfied 'eliminate the bad things and make all the good things' version of the way the world should be may well not match the actual neurological mechanisms behind our subjective judgements of state.

To take the example above, the theory is that this particular dopamine system is evolved to sustain striving, to reward risk-taking (in a limited fashion). — Isaac

I was actually alluding to a phenomenological take on this very thing when I said that. Just not having any appetites for anything, not caring about anything, is not, phenomenologically, a very enjoyable state to be in. It's basically depression, speaking from experience as someone clinically diagnosed with that. It doesn't feel good to not want and not care about anything. In contrast it feels good to want things, to strive for them, to work up an appetite for a good meal, to look forward to an adventure, or a piece of entertainment, or to your favorite hobby, to get horny and want to fuck your significant other, etc.

But then if you are denied those things you were longing for, it feels bad. You could avoid that bad feeling by not wanting them... but while that's often better than the disappointment, it's still not great. What feels best is to want for things... and then to get them. And then to keep wanting for things, and keep getting them, and keep that feeling of striving and winning and moving forward and making progress going.

Then you keep coming back to "my ethics ... is more useful for resolving ethical dilemmas". It's not. We've just established that. It provides nothing whatsoever by way of guidance in the resolution of such ethical dilemmas. Don't be a psychopath, and don't be a religious fanatic are the only positions your ethical system advises. Everything in between is arguable on the basis of being some form of matching world to appetites. — Isaac

Not being a psychopath or religious fanatic is more useful for resolving ethical dilemmas than being either of those, I think you will agree.

But that aside, you're missing part of the very thing you quoted to respond to with this. The "don't be a relativist or transcendentalist" thing is just the first layer of my ethical system. That's my "moral ontology". There's another layer, my "moral epistemology". And then a political philosophy modeled after the usual (ideal) practices of modern academia, what you might call a "moral peer review". But all these things build on top of each other, and whenever I try to work toward laying them out I can't get past the first part with you, the part about agreeing on the investigation into a morality that is both universal and phenomenalist, an altruistic hedonism. None of the rest of it is applicable if we can't even agree on that. But there is a "rest of it", I just never get to move on to that because you get all hung up on disputing the basic groundwork.

I'm not sure what's given you that impression, but that's not my meta-ethical position. — Isaac

That's the negation of my principle of objectivism/universalism, and you keep objecting to that principle, which makes it sound like you favor its negation.

it's all pretty much permutations of mass, time and distance — Banno

Though mass is better defined in terms of energy than vice versa, and energy at a quantum level is about frequency and wavelength which in turn are all about time and distance again, so it really all boils down to time and distance.

How would you suggest one comes to be ontophilic? — Benj96

I find that, aside from simply allowing myself to ignore the meaningless craving for meaning that ontophobia brings on, the way to cultivate ontophilia is to practice the very same behaviors that it in turn inspires more of. Doing good things, either for others or just for oneself, and learning or teaching new truths, both seem to generate feelings of empowerment and enlightenment, respectively, and as those ramp up in a positive feedback loop, inspiring further such practices, an ontophilic state of mind can be cultivated.

I also find that it helps to remain at peace and alleviate feelings of anxiety and unworthiness by not only doing all the positive things that I reasonable can do, as above, but also excusing or forgiving myself from blame for not doing things that I reasonably can't do.

Meditative practices are essentially practice at allowing oneself to do nothing and simply be, to help cultivate this state of mind. A popular prayer also asks for precisely such serenity to accept things one cannot change and courage to change the things one can. And the modern cognitive-behavioral therapy technique called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is also entirely about committing to doing the things that one can do and accepting the things that one cannot do anything about.

It is of course very hard to do this sometimes, so it helps also to cultivate a social network of like-minded people who will gently encourage you to do the things you reasonably can, and remind you that it's okay to not do things that you reasonably can't, between the two of which you can hopefully find a restful peace of mind where you feel that you have done all that you can do and nothing more is required of you, allowing you to enjoy simply being.

Simply connecting with other people in itself helps to cultivate feelings of meaningfulness, as it is precisely that connectedness that constitutes meaning in any sense.

So, if I’m angry I should just use trial and error to see what relieves it? In this case, what would an incorrect (immoral) act be? One that doesn’t relieve anger? — Pinprick

It doesn’t have to be entirely trial and error, you can use prior knowledge and expectations based on that to guide you. But yeah a bad outcome would be one where either your anger is not relieved, or where you or someone else are made to suffer (now or later) in some other way.

How could I know what the right course of action is without first knowing what state of affairs is good? A good state of affairs is precisely what I’m trying to achieve by acting in the first place. — Pinprick

You do need to know what a good state of affairs is first, but that’s not all you need.

But, if you’re willing to accept that there are many “correct” answers, or at least not wrong answers, then why not just say moral truth is relative? — Pinprick

Because just having a range of acceptable possibilities doesn’t mean that that range is unlimited. We can be sure that some things are definitely wrong no matter who thinks they’re not, without having to know exactly what the optimal course of action is for everyone.

It’s the difference between multiple answers being acceptable because we’re not completely sure on the details of the correct answer, and ANY answers being acceptable because the only thing that makes it a right answer is someone believing it.

Those two seem contradictory. In one you’re saying that means matter. In the other you’re saying that as long as everyone’s need is met, that’s all that matters (which implies the means don’t matter) — khaled

In the latter, I'm saying that there is nothing wrong with the state of affairs. There can still be something wrong with how we got to that state of affairs.

For an example of the analogy with soundness of arguments (already explained before): I have on my desk here a yellow pencil. One could give the argument "All yellow things are asteroids. This pencil is an asteroid. Therefore this pencil is yellow." The conclusion is absolutely true, there is nothing the slightest bit false about the sentence "this pencil is yellow" (assuming "this" refers to my yellow pencil here). But the argument to that effect is horribly broken: both of its premises are false, and even if they were true, they wouldn't entail the conclusion. Nevertheless, the conclusion is still completely true.

Likewise, a state of affairs can be fine and optimal, such that nothing is morally wrong with it, and there is no room for improving it from there; but the way that we got to that state of affairs can still have been horribly wrong.

It wouldn't be a rational target to satisfy the hedonic levels of the drug addict of the the POMC deficient patient would it? — Isaac

It would be rational to aim for their appetites to be sated, whether that would be by changing the world to sate their appetites or by changing their appetites to be satiable by the world. I'm not saying that people should never change and the world must bend to them exactly as they are now, just that somehow or another (within deontological limits beyond the scope of this teleological part of the conversation) the two should be brought together into alignment.

But that part aside, the only reason why the drug addictions and overeating disorders are bad are because they lead to other suffering, i.e. the dissatisfaction of other appetites, like from health problems, withdrawals, etc. "Normalcy" should have nothing to do with it. Since we presently lack the power to sate those appetites and avoid the consequent dissatisfaction of other appetites, we're forced to compromise and target (within those deontological limits again) the maximal balance of satisfaction minus dissatisfaction. But a more optimal solution would be to eliminate those negative consequences: it would be great if e.g. we could all eat as much as we want and enjoy that, without our health suffering because of it (or running out of resources due to overconsumption, etc).

One other extreme conceivable solution to satisfying all appetites (besides the "everyone gets their own world" one previously mentioned) would be merely to extinguish all appetites, changing all the people such that they want for nothing, and so don't suffer from lack of anything. That is the solution aimed for by Buddhists, Stoics and the like, and it is a solution that's fine on my account, and some aspects of it can be very useful in pragmatic compromises we're forced to make. But it's not the optimal conceivable solution. Because while wanting nothing and getting nothing is better (less suffering) than wanting something and not getting it, wanting something and getting it is better (more enjoyment) still.

We end up with such enormously wide parameters as to be virtually useless as a moral aim. Basically we're limited to saying that we should not bring about a world which is so utterly unbearable that it is outside of the neurological limits of our brain to cope with it. I just don't think that helps at all with any actual real-world moral dilemmas. — Isaac

Even if that were an accurate gloss of my moral stance (and I'm not sure whether it is or isn't), I still think that that is a useful limit to the range of ethical considerations, compared to the kinds of things people actually try to bring into play in real-world ethical debates. This teleological aspect of my ethics we've been discussing, about what makes for a good state of affairs, is deliberately very broad, just like my ontology is, but there are still limits that rule out completely untenable extremes.

My ontology pretty much only rules out the utterly supernatural, and there being different actual realities for people who believe different things. Within that, anything goes, and it's beyond philosophy's scope to figure it out; that's for physics to do. Likewise, this teleological aspect of my ethics is only meant to be whatever is left after you rule out two things:

- that considerations besides what affects people's pain/pleasure/enjoyment/suffering/etc, like "ritual purity" or something, are morally relevant (i.e. that something can be wrong despite it hurting nobody)

- that who or how many people are of what ethical opinion or another has any bearing on what the correct ethical opinion is (e.g. that slavery was actually morally okay in societies where 'enough' of 'the right' people approved of it, and only became not-okay after they changed their minds).

The deontological aspect of my ethics (about the methods of applying those criteria to the justification of particular intentions) is more useful for resolving ethical dilemmas between people who're already on board with that kind of thing, like most modern philosophers have been (e.g. Kant vs Mill). And even that is still just a method for figuring out what intentions are justified; I think it's beyond the scope of philosophy to give actual prescriptions on particular choices, just like it's beyond the scope of philosophy to go into what kinds of physical particles exist.

But there's no point even getting into that methodological aspect with people who can't even agree on those two very broad limits on what makes for a good end, or state of affairs. And you've generally sounded like someone who's strongly attached to that second broad class of views that I would categorically exclude.

I’m talking pragmatically not analytically. — khaled

Then we're talking about different things. There's a whole stack of different questions in ethics, just like there are a stack of questions involved in the investigation of reality, including:

- What do our questions (and proposed answers mean), linguistically? What are we trying to do with our words here? (We've not really touched on this one and hopefully won't need to here).

- What are the criteria by which we assess those answers?
- - In investigations of reality this question is answered by the field of ontology: what is it that makes some possible state of affairs a real state of affairs?
- - In investigations of morality I call this question the "teleological" one, because it's about ends rather than means, what it is that makes some possible state of affairs a moral state of affairs?
(This is where questions of objectivity and subjectivity come in, and so what I've mostly been talking about.

- What is the nature of our faculties for assessing such things? I.e. what's the nature of the mind and the will? (We've not really touched on this one and probably don't need to here).

- What are the methods to use to find / get to such a state of affairs, given our limited knowledge / power means we can't just look it up / wish it into being?
- - In investigations of reality this is answered by the field of epistemology, about what is a justified belief.
- - In investigations of morality I call this the "deontological" question", because it's about means rather than ends, what is a justified intention (and consequently action, as justified actions require both a justified belief and a justified intention motivating them).

- Who gets to actually apply those methods or judge if they've been applied correctly?
- - In investigations of reality this is where scientific peer review and other facets of academics and education come into play.
- - In investigations of morality this is where politics and governance come into play.

- How do we get people, as a whole, society, to actually do things that way?

Those last three are the more pragmatic questions. But none of them can begin to be answered without first having a notion of what it even is that we're aiming for.

Not maximize? So there are times when you would purposely choose to stray away from the ideal of all appetites being satisfied? Based on what? — khaled

Sorry, I was unclear. "Maximize" to my ear sounds like "get as much as you can manage", but at this point in the analysis we're not talking about what is manageable or not, so maximization is irrelevant. A good state of affairs is one where all appetites are satisfied. A less bad state of affairs is one where fewer appetites are unsatisfied (or they're less unsatisfied), but that doesn't mean that the correct methodology is just "do whatever creates more satisfaction than dissatisfaction", and that all intentions to do so (and actions on such intentions) are justified. Just like in science we can't just throw out the inconvenient observations and go say that whatever satisfied more observations than it dissatisfies is the right theory; if there's unsatisfied observations there's still a problem with your theory.

I can get behind that. Isn’t it consequentialist though? Here you’re saying that the only arbiter of whether or not someone is wrong is whether or not people’s needs were met. If the act meets people’s needs, it cannot be wrong. How do you avoid consequentialism then? — khaled

It is necessary that the ends be one where everyone's appetites are satisfied, but that is not sufficient. The means used to get there must themselves also be justified. It's exactly like how an argument with a true conclusion is not therefore a sound conclusion; it needs to get there by valid inferences as well.

For example, if you could magically create a state where all appetites were satisfied, but at the cost of an agonizing death for half the people presently in the universe, then you would end up with a state of affairs where there is no room for improvement (everyone's appetites are satisfied, nothing can be made better there... somehow, we posit in this thought experiment), but you would have gotten there by horribly unjust means, and that end would not justify those means, so we in the universe prior to making the decision to that should decide not to do so.

For me, quantity implies the mathematical i.e. it involves, in a broad sense, geometry (shapes) and/or arithmetic (numbers) — TheMadFool

Numbers are quantities, but shapes are qualities. Two similar triangles have the same qualities, the same shapes, but they may be of different sizes, quantitatively different.

For a more general distinction, I think quality and quantity are different aspect of pattern-matching:

The first thing we need to do to structure our experiences is to identify patterns in them. To do that, we need a pair of concepts that I call "quality" and "quantity", which allow us to think of there being several things that are nevertheless the same, without them being just one thing: they can be qualitatively the same, while being quantitatively different.

Any two electrons, for instance, are identical inasmuch as they are indistinguishable from each other, because every electron is alike, but they are nevertheless two separate electrons, not one electron. In contrast, the fictional character Clark Kent is, in his fictional universe, identical to the character of Superman in a quantitative way, not just a qualitative way: though they seem vastly different to casual observers, they are in fact the same single person.

If two people are said to drive "the same car", there are two things that that might mean: it could mean that they drive qualitatively identical cars (or as close to it as realistically possible, e.g. the same year, make, and model), or it could mean that they drive the same, single, quantitatively identical car, one car shared between both of them.

With these concepts of quality and quantity, we can describe patterns in our experience as quantitatively different instances or tokens of qualitatively the same tropes or types. Out of this arise the notion of several different things being members of the same set of things ("qualities" as I mean them here mapping roughly to the mathematical concept of "classes", an abstraction away from sets, and "quantities" as I mean them here mapping roughly to the mathematical concept of "cardinality", an abstraction away from the measure of a set or class). And with that can be conducted all of the construction of increasingly complex abstract objects that can be built up from sets, encompassing basically everything.

How would one arrive at an unbiased position on a particular moral dilemma, when all the data points available are subjective? — Pinprick

You could ask the exact same question about how we arrive at an unbiased position about what is real, since all data points about reality (observations) are also subjective. In both cases, we approach objectivity by replicating each others' experiences, and if we can't, by seeing what is different about us that results in different experiences in the same circumstances.

Also, note that there is more than one option that refrains from causing harm, either to myself or others, so simply saying “whichever option causes less harm” doesn’t fully answer the question. If there is an objectively correct answer, then that answer, whatever it may be, can be the only correct answer. So, someway or another, I need to figure out if it is better to exercise to relieve my anger, or to listen to music, for example. What exactly is the criteria I should use to determine which answer is objectively correct? — Pinprick

There is likewise always another theory that explains a given set of observations (this is the underdetermination of theory by evidence). What to do about that is an epistemic, not ontological, question; and likewise the moral equivalent of that question is not one of what states of affairs are good, but about what the right course of action is.

Analogously to falsificationism in epistemology, which says that all different theories that have not yet been ruled out be the evidence are acceptable, liber(al|tarian)ism in deontology says that all actions that have not yet been ruled out (e.g. that don't harm anyone else) are acceptable. There is still one unique universal reality under falsificationism, we just never pin down exactly what it is, only narrow in on it. Likewise there is still one unique universal morality under my scheme -- one optimal solution -- but we can never pin down exactly what it is, only narrow down the possibilities.

Well you don't know that. What you said does not prove that there will never be a case where there is only one way. But regardless, it was a hypothetical "what if". — khaled

It's analytically always the case that there will never be only one way. Like I said above, this is basically underdetermination of theory by evidence, but about moral "theories" and moral "evidence".

For a simple illustration, the easy to come up with (but hard to implement) solution to all moral dilemmas is just to give everyone their own virtual world where everything goes however makes them the most satisfied. No matter what moral dilemma you come up with, that's an obvious solution to it.

That's a very very hard solution to implement though, so we have to make do with less than that, but for the purpose of theory it demonstrates that there's always a solution. There just might not be an easy solution.

What to do when we can't just effortlessly make everything perfect like that is the second question of ethics, what I call the deontological one, analogous to epistemology (which we need in turn because we don't just have a Big Book Of Reality that we can look up all the facts in; we have to make do with our imperfect knowledge, like in ethics we have to make do with our imperfect power).

What we've been discussing thus far, and what needs to be settled before you can apply any method like that, is what I call the teleological question, the question of what are good ends, what criteria define a wholly good state of affairs, which we are then going to try to approximate with such a method. That is analogous to how ontology is about the question of what criteria constitute some state of affairs being real, which we then try to approximate with epistemological methods.

We try to maximize appetite-satisfaction no? — khaled

Not maximize, and not try to. A wholly good state of affairs is one where all appetites are satisfied.

As above, we can't just make that happen with a snap of our fingers, so we've got to have a methodology of making do in lieu of that, but that has nothing to do with the definition of what a good state of affairs even is, which we need to have first before we can apply that methodology.

I don't understand what it means to "see objective morality" from within these subjective experiences in the first place. What does it smell like? What does it look like? Is it edible? Nonsense questions. — khaled

Yes, nonsense questions, because you're asking about senses, which define what is real, whereas it is appetites that defined what is moral. I'm not suggesting that there is a real object that exists that is the cause of things being moral or not. Think about what it means for something to be real. Unless you believe in supernatural things, or you're a solipsist, things being real are about them being a part of our empirical experience, everyone's empirical experience.

Likewise, on my account something being moral is about it being a part of our hedonic experience, everyone's hedonic experience. Morality doesn't look like anything per se, or smell like anything per se, but it feels good, it feels comfortable, it feels like a full belly, it feels like all of your appetites are sated, and it feels like that to everyone, not just you. And if there was some state of affairs where everyone felt good like that, and yet someone wanted it to be different in a way that made someone not feel good, or said that there was something still morally wrong even though everyone's every need was met like that, then that person would just be incorrect.

Yes. I like to call them "onotophobia" (existential dread, angst, depair, etc) and "ontophilia" (peak or religious experiences).

For many others though homeless would be an improvement. Either that or death. — Darkneos

And those people would quit their job and go homeless, or die.

Those who don't evidently find the alternative superior.

Ah, I see. For me, philosophy is a means to an end - and that end is the continued existence of the human species. — counterpunch

But "why is that the end?" is a philosophical question itself.

But phenomenalism? Phenomenalism is essentially subjectivism.

"Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli."

Do you run back into rooms to see if everything is still there?

Science is objectivism. Science assumes an objective reality exists independently of our experience of it. — counterpunch

Did you miss the part earlier in this thread about distinguishing different kinds of "objectivism" and "subjectivism"? Science is objectivist as in universalist, as in not relativist. But it's also subjectivist as in phenomenalist, not transcendent. Science deals entirely with the world as it appears in our observations (which is to say, our subjective experiences), without discussing anything that is wholly unobservable. But it also presupposes that there is a single unified (objective) explanation for all observations, that it's possible for everyone to be wrong about simultaneously.

But what if that is the only way? Here, compromise would involve harming others for this person. — khaled

There is never only one way. Appetites are data points: the states of affairs desired are curves fit to that data. And there are always infinitely many possibly curves that can fit any possible data.

Because after all, we’re looking for the best compromise and dubbing that “the objectively correct morality” — khaled

I already said earlier that my notion of "the objectively correct morality" does not involve any compromise. We may have to compromise in some ways in lieu of our ability to attain that objectively best state of affairs, but that kind of compromise doesn't have to be an "ends justify the means" kind of consequentialism that you seem to assume I support (which I definitely don't).

Just sounds bizarre to me. In this example the elephant is a physical existing thing. But I don’t see how this can be analogous to moral situations. There is no “moral elephant” as in “the objectivity correct morality”. — khaled

This is question-begging. We're all stuck inside of our own subjective experiences, both descriptively and prescriptively. We can never know for sure that there is or isn't a physically existing elephant apart from our experiences of it, or that there is or isn't anything morally analogous to that. All we can do is choose whether or not to act as though there is some objectivity attainable, in either case.

Some kind of hedonic consumer sovereignty cannot prioritise facts in a way that secures a sustainable future — counterpunch

Hedonism doesn't mean shortsightedness. We're going over this over in Darkneos' "Reason for Living" thread too. The reason why sustainability is good is because it prevents even greater future suffering. That's still a hedonistic consideration.

I do agree that sustainability is a very important thing to worry about, but we're talking here more about the criteria by which something could be judged as normatively important or not, rather than what specific things are most important.

Universal phenomenalism seems like a contradiction in terms, that refutes acceptance of a scientific epistemology — counterpunch

The scientific method hinges entirely on a kind of universal phenomenalism. Science rejects supernaturalism, and generally any transcendentalism, in favor of empiricism, a kind of phenomenalism. It also rejects the kind of truth-relativism that would say that different things can be true of the same thing at the same time to different people (see earlier example about the Flat Earth Society), in favor of a realism that says that anything that is true is true to everyone regardless of whether they believe it or not, a kind of universalism. That's not a contradiction, to say that nothing supernatural or non-empirical is real, and yet there is only one universal reality.

I advocate that same kind of approach to prescriptive as well as descriptive matters: to reject claims about morality that transcend hedonic experience (i.e. that have nothing to do with whether or not anyone suffers or flourishes), and to reject claims that the same thing at the same time can correctly be assessed as good by one person or group and correctly assessed as bad by another person or group (i.e. in such a disagreement at least one, possibly all, must be wrong).

that again, grinds gears with deontological ethics, that again disputes any kind of moral hedonism — counterpunch

Deontological ethics opposes consequentialism, as do I. But consequentialism is a position about the methods of morality, not about the objects of morality; it's about how to decide on what is a right or just action, not about how to decide on what is a good state of affairs. Consequentialism says that a right or just action is any one that promotes a good state of affairs, regardless of anything else: only the ends matter. Deontological ethics disagrees (as do I), and says that means matter as well; different kinds of it may or may not care about ends too, but I certainly do.

I think a full moral evaluation has to involve both means and ends: a fully moral action is one that achieves good ends by just means, and an action that only achieves good ends by unjust means, or that is just but fails to yield good ends, is as faulty as an argument that reaches a true conclusion by invalid inferences, or a valid argument that nevertheless fails to yield true conclusions. (In the last case, that can only be because false premises were accepted and remain uncorrected; in the analogous moral case, it would be because bad prior circumstances were accepted and remain uncorrected).

Neither of those has anything in it either for or against science. It's a separate matter entirely.

I'm going to forgo any critique for a minute because we keep losing what you're claiming in all your analogies (which I don't find helpful) and I want to see if I can clarify it. — Isaac

I appreciate that.

1. There may possibly exist some state of affairs, dynamic rather than static, which would most equitably promote every human's (and all future human's) appetites toward their current target valences, at any given time. — Isaac

Yes, although I don't think this bit (just that such a state of affairs is logically possible) is controversial? I think it's only saying that that is pretty much definitionally a good state of affairs that's at all controversial here -- that a wholly good state of affairs is necessarily and sufficiently one where everyone is pleased and not pained, enjoying rather than suffering, etc.

2. This state of affairs my well not be the desire or the intention of any individual (or even all individuals) and so it's possible for everyone to be wrong about what they desire or intend - hence the 'objective' bit. Relativism, when it comes to what we desire or intend, is thus dismissed. — Isaac

Yes.

3. An intention which is more 'good', morally, is an intention to make the world match more closely this state of affairs. — Isaac

Mostly yes, although see above in response to counterpunch about the importance of justification in there too. I know you said you don't find analogies helpful, but I can't think of a clearer way to explain:

Goodness is to intentions as truth is to beliefs, in that it's a necessary but not sufficient quality. We think it important for our beliefs to not be only true by chance, but to be justified as well, in a sense that means more than just the coincidence of the thing being believed and the thing being true. We aim to not only have beliefs, nor even true beliefs, but justified true beliefs.

Likewise, I think it's important for our intentions to be justified, in a sense that means more than just the coincidence of the thing being intended and the thing being good. We should aim to not only have intentions, not even good intentions, but justified good intentions.

Elaborating on the details of that is a long, separate topic, that hinges firstly on some common understanding of what a good state of affairs is, which is what we're working on here.

But yes, on my account, a state of affairs that more closely matches the kind of state of affairs described above is a "more good" (or "closer to good", or "less bad") state of affairs.

dying thirst for others’ suffering — khaled

...is not the kind of thing that fits the category of "appetite" as I mean it. Appetites in this sense cannot be for any particular state of affairs; that's not the kind of thing that is meant by the word. By the time you get to the "for", you've interpreted the appetite, and formed a desire.

What you're describing is a person who is suffering somehow (every unfulfilled appetite is a kind of suffering) and thinks that seeing other people suffer will alleviate his own suffering (satisfy his appetite): someone who has some appetite (his own suffering), and interprets that into a desire to see someone else suffer.

My moral system doesn't care at all that he thinks seeing others suffer will alleviate his own suffering, even if that's true. It does care to alleviate his suffering (satisfy his appetite), in some way. But it also cares to prevent the suffering of others (to satisfy their appetites), so the alleviation of his suffering can't be done in the way he wants to do it.

Think about the parable of the blind men and the elephant, which illustrates the distinction between sensation and perception/belief, which is analogous to the distinction between appetite and desire/intention. Each blind man touches a different part of the same thing, and on account of what he feels, thinks he knows what he has touched. One man thinks he has touched a tree. Another thinks he has touched a rope. The third things he has touched a snake.

All three of of them are wrong about what they think they have touched. But the truth -- that they have touched different parts of an elephant, its leg, its tail, and its trunk, respectively -- is consistent with the sensations that they all felt when they touched it. They were all wrong in their perceptions or beliefs, but the truth has to accord with all of their sensations. One of them being really really certain that the thing they all touched absolutely has to have been a snake and cannot possibly have been anything else doesn't change anything.

There may not have been any 'popular uprising' factor to these events at all.

Unless most of the Reddit bunch have assets in the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans, they were mere bystanders to last week's trading of 682 million shares at an average price of $218.20 — purchases totaling nearly $150 billion in a wildly volatile market. Only institutional investors have such resources to trade stocks, not self-styled populists with Robinhood on their iPhones. Since most big players are regulated public corporations with fiduciary responsibilities to avoid the enormous risks involved in this high-stakes game of chicken, the GameStop players almost certainly are all lightly regulated hedge funds.

I don't think you've worked a service job before. The kind of work wears you down to the point that most people dread waking up and going through it, never really being able to enjoy days off because they have to go back to the job. — Darkneos

At the job I lost a year ago (and still haven't replaced), which I had for 8 years prior, I would routinely beat the everliving shit out of myself, with my actual fists, because of the pressure to keep up with the insane workloads that got dumped on me all at once. And then be awake all night anxious about the next day. And just barely be able to unwind back to "normal" by the end of the weekend, only for Monday to fuck it up again.

But I put up with it because the alternative was ending up homeless, or at best living in the tool shed next to my dad's trailer again, which was even worse.