Might you not be better off establishing sustainability as a bridge between is and ought — counterpunch

I’m not sure what you mean by that.

trusting to the moral sense playing out in political and economic systems, to prioritise factual information to that end? — counterpunch

That is a part of the deontological side of my ethics.

If by this you mean "universal inter-subjective agreement is possible" sure, I don't think anyone is debating that. — khaled

That’s not what I mean, no.

Look to the descriptive side of things for clarity here, because it’s the prescriptive side where all the confusion lies.

Descriptive universalism is the opposite of descriptive relativism: it means that what is true is true for everyone everywhere always, whether or not they agree that it is; in contrast to, say, it being true inside the Flat Earth Society headquarters that the whole earth is flat, and true outside those headquarters that the whole earth (including under the FES-HQ) is round.

Prescriptive universalism is like that, but about what is good, rather than what is true.

Descriptive phenomenalism, or empiricism, is the opposite of descriptive transcendentalism, which is more or less supernaturalism: it means that nothing is true or false for any reason or to any extent other than its accord or discord with empirical experience.

Prescriptive phenomenalism, or hedonism, is like that, but about what is good or bad, rather than what is true or false, and about hedonic experience, rather than empirical.

Universal phenomenalism about reality means that truth is all about concordance with empirical experiences, not just any one person’s but everyone’s everywhere always. But it doesn’t at all demand that everyone agree, in their perceptions or beliefs, about what is true in order for it to be true. It’s possible that everyone could fail, in different ways, to come up with a model of what concords with all empirical experiences, and that wouldn’t change that such a model, whatever it is, is the universal truth, even though nobody believes it.

Likewise, universal phenomenalism about morality means that goodness is all about concordance with hedonic experiences, not just any one person’s but everyone’s everywhere always. But it doesn’t at all demand that everyone agree, in their desires or intentions, about what is good in order for it to be good. It’s possible that everyone could fail, in different ways, to come up with a model of what concords with all hedonic experiences, and that wouldn’t change that such a model, whatever it is, is the universal good, even though nobody intends it.

What is the system you advocate then? — khaled

That’s a longer topic and I can link you to something on it but I don’t want to derail this thread even further right now.

How do you deal with someone who has an extremely strong appetite for seeing people suffer? — khaled

This question misunderstands what “appetites” even are. They are not for specific states of affairs. They are physiology feelings like pain and hunger. Someone who wants to see other people suffer can get bent as far as what he wants, but whatever emotional pain is probably behind that desire is something that deserves alleviation somehow or another, just not necessarily in the way he wants.

I thought it would be clear that I use “objective” and “subjective” in the second, less useful sense. So to reject transcendentalism is to adopt relativism. — khaled

That doesn't follow. There's a less useful sense of "objective" (transcendent) and a less useful sense of "subjective" (relative), but those aren't each other's negations.

The negation of transcendent is phenomenal, which is the more useful sense of "subjective". And the negation of relative is universal, which is the more useful sense of "objective".

It's only by conflating the more and less useful senses of each together that you get relative as the apparent negation of transcendent, but you seem to recognize the distinction between the more useful sense and the less useful sense.

The thrust of all of this is that universalism doesn't have to be transcendent, and phenomenalism doesn't have to be relativist. A universalist phenomenalism is possible.

Not only do I disagree with the definition (when “inter-subjective” is available and gets rid of all confusion), I also disagree that the most inter-subjective morality is the correct one. You run into utility monster issues, where people with the strongest appetites get too much leeway. — khaled

"Most inter-subjective" doesn't mean "utilitarian". As I said early I'm opposed to utilitarianism on the whole, I just agree with its definition of what makes for a good end; I disagree entirely with consequentialism as a just means. So utility monsters don't blow up the system I advocate.

That would be entirely fine if all you were doing was categorising, but that's not all you're doing. You go on to treat appetites, desires and intentions as a components in a causal chain. — Isaac

I do not. As I said in my last post, we can (and possibly can't help but) start with desires, and then analyze them into appetites, just like we start with perceptions and then analyze them into sensations. I do struggle to imagine what other causal arrangement there could possibly be, just given what is even meant by the concepts, but no particulars of that causal chain matter at all to my philosophy.

I'm explicitly avoiding relying on any a posteriori knowledge about the substrate that human minds run on. I'm dealing entirely with phenomenological concepts here. What exactly gives rise to the instantiation of those concepts in our phenomenal experience is besides the point, philosophically.

When? Since it is absolutely demonstrably true that the target valences of our apettites change both with time and with cultures, exactly what point in time would your model address? Now?...or now?....or now? — Isaac

What about future generations? Do their appetites not get a look in? — Isaac

All appetites at all times matter, just like all observations at all times matter to science.

I think you're probably thinking that I'm looking to establish some kind of absolutist, always-do-this-in-all-circumstances-at-all-times kinds of rules, when I'm not. Universalism is not absolutism.

For an example, different people at different times and in different contexts feel too warm or too cold, sometimes, for reasons I'm sure you could elaborate in more detail than I could. That's a kind of displeasure, an unsatisfied appetite, so my system would say we ought to aim to eliminate or at least minimize that happening -- people's environments being too warm or too cold for them.

But doing so doesn't require that we identify the single best temperature that everywhere should always be at all times. The optimal solution would probably involve allowing each person to independently adjust the temperature of their personal environment as they like.

But it's still universally good that some particular person's environment be whatever particular temperature makes them most comfortable at that particular time. And that's the case for every particular person at every particular time, and the complete picture of what is good would involve each of those particular people having their environment be the particular temperature at which they're more comfortable at each particular time.

When we don't have the power to achieve that, we'll have to make compromises, yes, but at this point we're just talking about whether there is even a universally good end to aim for, not how to pursue it and how to deal with obstacles to attaining it.

discovering it would be a matter of biology and neuroscience — Isaac

Discovering how to attain it would be, yes. Discovering that it is good is something that can be found just from people living their lives and noting what circumstances feel good and bad to them.

The big picture of my overall philosophy involves using science to discover how the world is, and an analogue of it based on hedonic rather than empirical experiences to discover how it ought to be, and then combining those two sets of findings to figure out how to change the former to the latter.

In addition to just "use empiricism!" ("and of course realism, who would ever doubt realism"), a scientific method also needs a philosophical account of how exactly to apply empiricism to justify our beliefs. Just anything that empirically looks true (to whom?) isn't automatically real just because of that. That's what epistemology is for.

Likewise, in addition to just "use hedonism!" ("altruistic hedonism specifically, hedonism isn't egotism"), the analogue of it needs also a philosophical account of how exactly to apply hedonism to justify our intentions. Just anything that hedonically feels good (to whom?) isn't automatically moral just because of that. That's what the other half of ethics, the deontological half, is about.

But if you're talking to someone who doesn't even accept empirical realism as an ontology, talking about how to apply it epistemically is pointless. And likewise, if I can't even get you on board with altrustic-hedonic ends, there's no point in talking about the just means to pursue them yet.

Also the more common use. — khaled

I disagree, as I’ve seen the other used quite a lot too — but prevalence isn’t really important for our purposes here. It seems like with many terms the sense which makes most sense is used by proponents and a sense that makes less sense is used by opponents. Aside from “objectivism” and “subjectivism”, there are also different senses of “skepticism” and “fideism” commonly used by proponents and opponents of each. Likewise with “optimism” and “pessimism”, and probably lots of others too.

To me it always seemed like the task of finding the most "inter-subjectively" fitting morality was a task for the social sciences, politics, and some neurology, not really the task of philosophy. I don't see the point in musing about it without data and research. — khaled

I agree, which is why I think that ethics proper should not be a part of philosophy, only meta-ethics, like philosophy has meta-physics but not physics itself anymore.

The properly philosophical questions regarding morality are about how to go about the investigation of what is moral — what question are we even asking, why does it matter, what counts as evidence, etc — not about what specifically in particular is or isn’t a moral state of affairs, or a just action or intention, etc. Just like philosophy’s proper role with regard to investigating reality is answering those same kinds of questions about that investigation, and then letting physics (and the rest of the physical sciences) take over from there.

And I think the answers to both are the same: phenomenalism (meaning empiricism in one case and hedonism in the other), universalism (meaning realism in one case and altruism the other), and two other principles I call criticism and liberalism (that don’t have special names for each side of the is-ought divide).

On the one side that gets you broadly the scientific method; but actually using that method is not the place of philosophy, just defending its use over other alternatives. Likewise on the other side I think philosophy can give a method for doing an ethical analogue of the physical sciences; but actually using that method is beyond the domain of philosophy.

"Objective morality" is a term that has already been booked as the second use (I think thanks to the Abrahamic religions which make morality transcendental). — khaled

Utilitarians are usually considered moral objectivists, AFAIK, and they use basically the same criteria as I do for what is a good state of affairs, altruistic hedonism. (Though I disagree with them about the ends justifying the means; I only agree on what good ends are, and take just means to be a different subject — which is what I was just talking about, actually).

Sort of "dress up" subjectivity as objectivity — khaled

I’m wondering now if I was clear about the two different senses of “subjectivity” as well, and whether you’re distinguishing between them yourself. I find the two broad directions of philosophical error across the board to involve talking both senses of each term to be the same thing, and so thinking that in rejecting one sense of one term they have to reject the other too.

So you’ll get people who rightly reject relativism and “therefore” wrongly adopt transcendentalism (when all they needed was universalism, which you can have without transcendentalism); or people who, like I fear you might be doing, rightly reject transcendentalism and “therefore” wrongly adopt relativism (when all they needed was phenomenalism, which you can have without relativism).

That would just be an inter-subjective morality. — khaled

Objectivity as in universality is nothing more than the limit of increasing inter-subjectivity.

The way you use objective just seems really odd. — khaled

I like to distinguish between two senses of “objective”, one of which I support (and is what I usually mean when I talk about it) and the other of which I oppose because it’s a useless non-sense of the term that I would rather never be used. The former is the sense of “objective” as in universal, the opposite of relative. The latter is the sense of “objective” as in transcendent, the opposite of phenomenal. Both “relative” and “phenomenal” are senses of “subjective” in turn.

I am wholly on board with everything, reality and morality both, being “subjective” as in phenomenal, not transcendent: there is no sense to speak of about either of them that is not grounded entirely in our experience of the world, and if there somehow was more to either, whatever that would mean, we definitionally could not ever tell, because to tell we would have to have some experience of it.

But conversely I’m also adamant that we take both to be equally “objective” as in universal, not relative: never accepting that anything short of unlimited intersubjectivity be taken as sufficient in our answers, though because we are limited in our knowledge and power we will often be forced to make do for the time being with just the most intersubjectivity that we can manage.

That last part is where compromises come into play, but it is not the compromise that makes for the objectivity; we compromise only in lieu of being able to attain the fully objective good. If we had unlimited power, there would be no need for compromise: we could just create a scenario in which everyone’s appetites were satisfied, even if that meant giving everyone their own private world. We can’t do that yet, so we have do do the best we can instead, and how exactly to methodically approximate the objective good is a different subtopic within ethics. But there’s no sense getting on to that topic at all if we’re not even on the same page that there is some objective good that we’d be trying to approximate.

plenty of people do thinks they don’t like for years. Most jobs tend to be like that for the population as a whole. — Darkneos

Yes, but they put up with that suffering only to avoid even greater suffering, and in the hopes of some small pleasures along the way and even greater pleasures afterward.

That's what I thought, and what I was talking about. When you're not making a moral assessment, but just an assessment about something like ice cream flavors, you don't judge others as wrong just because they disagree with you. It is exactly when the assessment is of the moral variety that disagreement means someone is wrong.

Yes they are, each of those processes takes place in a brain. Sensation>perception>belief, and appetite> desire>intention are directional, staged processes — Isaac

I'm not making any claim about directionality or staging, or any particulars of any process, and anyone doing so would not be doing philosophy anymore. I'm talking only about a way of categorizing aspects of our introspective experience. If anything, "perception" and "desire" seem (in my own introspection) to be the aspects that I'm chronologically first aware of: some state of affairs initially just seems/looks/feels/etc true to me (a perception), and some state of affairs initially just seems/looks/feels/etc good to me (a desire).

It's only when I examine those kinds of mental states reflexively that I can tease them apart from the raw experiences that seem to have provoked them ("Why does this seem true to me? Because I see [some sensations]"; "Why does this seem good to me? Because I feel [some appetites]" ). And of course it's only when I do that reflexive self-examination that I form reflexive opinions about those opinions, affirming or denying that I'm perceiving correctly (forming beliefs) or that I'm desiring correctly (forming intentions).

Exactly what is or isn't going on in the underlying mechanisms that give rise to experience and thought doesn't change anything at all about the ability to categorize kinds of experiences and thoughts in this way. There don't have to be perfectly symmetrical neural processes going on in the brain to make this kind of symmetric conceptualization useful, and I'd be surprised if a product of evolution like the human brain was that tidy. The usefulness of such a conceptualization only requires that people somehow or another have the experiences of perceiving and desiring, and the ability to analyze those experiences, and reflexively judge them.

We can model descriptive data points because (and only because) we assume a cause. Our modelling process is exactly to speculate as the the cause of our sensations (and thereby predict the results of our response). Without cause the modelling makes no sense at all. — Isaac

What I am proposing to model is precisely what states of affairs cause all of our appetites to be satisfied, in the very straightforward sense that eating food normally satisfies hunger, but also other any other 'yearning' feelings like hunger, as well as things like what alleviates various pains. Those are all what we might call "imperative experiences": they're base, physiological feelings that call for something to be done, though no particular something is directly specified by them, we fill that in.

The question of what is moral is the question of what ought we do. We all have those feelings that call for something or another to be done (our appetites), and our immediate, unreflective opinions about what that something or other should be (our desires), on the basis of just our own such feelings. But an objective answer is an unbiased answer. So an objective morality is one that takes into account all such feelings (all appetites). But -- and this is the really important part that saves the whole thing from your usual criticism -- we don't have to take into account everyone's opinions about their feelings (all desires).

Are you familiar with Principled Negotiation? The distinction I'm on about here is basically synonymous with that method's principle to "focus on interests, not positions".

But nowhere in that model would there be anything that we 'ought' to do. — Isaac

Maybe this is where the real point of contention lies. This sounds to me like someone claiming that empirical observation only tells us about the world as it appears to us, but nothing at all about how the world really is. In that case I'm left wondering what the heck they mean by "really is" other than "consistently appears to everybody", as distinguished from "only appears to some people sometimes".

Likewise, I'm left here wondering what the heck you could mean by "we morally ought to do" if not "would consistently please everybody", as distinguished from "would only please some people sometimes".

As I'm saying to SophistiCat above, the very concept of morality inherently implies objectivity (as in universality, lack of bias). A non-objective morality is just a non-morality, in the same way that a non-objective reality is just a non-reality: something that only subjectively looks true to some people sometimes but false to others or at other times is unreal, and something that only subjectively feels good to some people sometimes but bad to others or at other times is immoral. ("Looks" and "feels" here referring to sensations and appetites, not perceptions and desires).

But we cannot check if the target valence is the 'right' valence — Isaac

I'm not proposing we should. I'm only proposing that we model what states of affairs simultaneously match all such valences. (Understood here to mean appetites rather than desires, as elaborated above). The subjective way that interactions with the world are experienced by people is just part of the raw data by which to judge the world, it's not itself the subject of judgement.

Our sensations are equally subjective: we don't directly experience a frequency of light, we see a color, and different people see different colors in response to the same light (e.g. various kinds of colorblindness, and tetrachromats). All that can be taken as objective about a visual observation is that a certain kind of person experiences (particular patterns of) certain kinds of colors.

Likewise, all that can be taken as objective data points in my model of morality is that certain kinds of people have positive or negative hedonic experiences (satisfaction or dissatisfaction of appetites) in certain kinds of contexts. We're not judging them for the having of those experiences; we're judging the world for its evocation of those experiences. (And then later judging people for their role in the world being that way, but that's more analogous to judging people for the quality of their assessment of what is real than it is to judging what is real).

The human body is an instrument used in the observation of the world: what we're checking, both in the case of sensations and in the case of appetites, is how our bodies react to the world, which in both cases tells us something both about the world and about ourselves.

You are confused. Of course I do - how could I not? Assuming, of course, that they are assessments of the same thing. — SophistiCat

So when you like one flavor of ice cream and someone else prefers a different flavor, you think that their opinion on ice cream is incorrect, rather than just not the same as yours?

I think that might be more true for an existential, therapeutic, Continental style of philosophy than it is the more aloof Analytic style. I was not going into philosophy in a state of destitution, but rather from the heights of my youthful naivete, seeking deep truths out of pure curiosity. Philosophy to me was a neat puzzle to be solved, indeed where all the neat-puzzles-to-be-solved converged, which is what lead me there.

Many years later when I did find myself in a state of destitution, that abstract philosophy helped me to find me way out of it; and also, it helped me to really ground all of that abstract philosophy better. But I never found just one master to guide me into the light. I had to make one from scratch for myself.

But that is not a reason to stop. You said if you like something then do it so therefor someone should take painkillers despite the "negatives" because they like it. — Darkneos

The negatives are things they don’t like. It’s the not liking that gives a reason not to do it. If you do it, you’ll like it a little, and then end up not liking it a lot. So on the whole there is reason to not do it: because on the whole, it’s an unlikeable experience, even though some small parts of it are likable.

Conversely if the positives outweigh the negatives for you then you have reason to do it despite those negatives.

This isn't merely about competing desires. It's about being sure that one is doing the right thing, the ethical, moral thing. It's about believing, for example, "Yes, it is morally right to eat ice cream". — baker

You assume that there is something more to morality than just ensuring that people feel good rather than bad.

It sounds like the part of my model that still hasn’t gotten through to you is my differentiation between appetites and desires or intentions, which is analogous to the difference between sensation and perception or belief. NB that these are not claims about any particulars of human psychology or neurology, these are just different concepts.

We don’t ask people what they believe or perceive to determine what is real. That would be just as problematic as you say my approach to morality is — because you take my approach to morality to be analogous to that. But it’s not.

The “external source” in our judgement of reality, if we’re not just going to beg the question here, is our senses, which are still subjective — we can’t ever discover whether or not there really is an objective reality on the other end of our senses, we can only assume it one way or the other. But unlike beliefs or perceptions, sensations per se cannot be completely irreconcilable with each other, because senses by themselves do not declare that a state of affairs is the case, they just give us some data points that the real state of affairs must conform to, and like it’s always possible to draw an arbitrarily complex curve through any set of data points, it’s always possible to come up with some state of affairs that matches (satisfies, accounts for, etc) all of those different sensations. It might be difficult, but it’s always possible.

Likewise, by “appetites” I mean the “sensations” of pain, hunger, etc. These do not directly tell us (or constitute us thinking) that particular states of affairs ought to be the case, so they cannot conflict with each other, just like sensations cannot conflict with each other, only perceptions or beliefs can. It’s only when we interpret those appetites into desires and intentions that we end up targeting different and possibly conflicting states of affairs. Asking people what they desired to figure out what’s moral would be like asking people what they perceive to figure out what’s real — it’s not guaranteed that you could put all the answers together in one coherent picture, so that’s not going to work, in either case. And that’s not what I’m advocating.

But you can put everyone’s different sensations together as the data points to fit a descriptive model to, and the limit of the series of such models that we progress through with adding further sensations to the data is what we take to be objective reality.

Objective reality isn’t something we just have on hand to compare our beliefs to. It’s merely the whatever-it-is that lies in the direction that our ever-growing accumulation of sensations is headed.

And you can likewise put everyone’s different appetites together as the data points to fit a prescriptive model to. The limit of the series of such models that we progress through with adding further appetites to the data is what we take to be objective morality.

On my account objective morality was never meant to be something we would just have on hand to compare our intentions to. It’s only ever been meant as the whatever-it-is that lies in the direction that our ever-growing accumulation of appetites is headed.

This is what I mean about you begging the question. We no more just have objective reality given to us than we do objectively morality, but you just assert that we have one but not the other, while we “have” neither. In both cases we are inescapably stuck in our subjective experiences. But it’s equally possible in either case to choose to eschew our conflicting intuitive interpretations of those experiences and try, however hard it might be, to piece together a unified model that fits all the raw experiential data itself. It’s that choice that makes for objectivism, not anything handed down to us from somehow outside of our subjective experiences.

The contrast here is between moral and amoral (morally neutral) actions, not between moral simpliciter and objectively/universally moral (whatever that might mean). — SophistiCat

Non-objective “morality” is simply not morality at all, so that’s the same distinction. Making “moral” judgement without acting like it applies to everyone is just expressing a preference with room for disagreement, not making moral judgement at all.

I would consider other people's assessments incorrect if and only if they are different from mine. This is a trivial tautology; you can't base any argument on it. — SophistiCat

The point is that you don’t do that for all assessments about all things, like on non-moral matters of mere taste. It’s precisely the taking of disagreement as not merely different but incorrect that makes it a moral assessment.

Simple. an objective fact is one about which it's possible for all parties to be wrong — Isaac

That's what I just said.

I see we've simply reached the point where you've previously abandoned the conversation — Isaac

Because we've gone over and over and over and over and over this a zillion times and I'm tired of struggling to figure out exactly how to communicate the apparent misunderstanding between us, because your objections sound to me like the kind of things that would apply (and be rebuttable) equally as much to descriptive matters, yet you don't deny objectivity there. It's just not worth the effort of trying to figure out how to convey to you the difference between the things you take me to be saying, whatever those are, and what I'm actually trying to say.

Different kinds of people in different contexts observe different things and interpret those observations differently in part through the influences of their different cultures -- a whole bunch of subjective disagreement there, and not to do with morality at all, but with reality -- yet we're nevertheless able to take all that subjectivity and distill an ever-better approximation of objectivity out of it with time and effort. All I advocate is to do exactly the same thing with the experiences, interpretations, cultural influences, etc, that are of a prescriptive rather than descriptive nature, as well.

And all I'm able to pull out of your responses to that is just "but you can't do that, it doesn't work, they're different", without any clear elucidation of why, what is fundamentally different about them. At least not one that isn't question-begging, e.g. that 'you can do that with descriptive matters because there is an objective reality that we can compare our descriptions to but there's not an objective morality to compare our prescriptions to' -- when the whole thrust here is that objectivity of either reality or morality is something we can only assume (or not), methodologically, and then try to work towards from the inescapably subjective perspectives that are our only connection to either. Objectivity is a choice that we make about our methods, not a condition that we find out there somewhere.

Yes, I get that the starting point for the moral decision-making process I advocate is a bunch of subjective stuff. So are all our starting points for the natural sciences. Yet we (seemingly) agree that the latter can get ever closer to objectivity, if we do it right. I just say to do that exact same kind of thing, but with an opposite direction of fit to all of the subjective pieces we start from. And of course people who don't agree to use that kind of process (like the strangers tied together in your example) aren't going to agree with its conclusions. People who don't agree to use scientific methods can end up thinking the Earth is flat, or any other kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense, too.

Sociological and psychological issues getting in the way of people making progress toward an unbiased, universal, objective account of things is not exclusive to prescriptive matters; it happens in descriptive matters too. But if people care to, they can work around it, and make progress toward objectivity... on either matter, descriptive or prescriptive, reality or morality. And if people don't care to, then yeah, of course, the endeavor toward objectivity is fucked... on either matter, prescriptive or descriptive, morality or reality.

It is handy if someone hangs around the marketplace to buy things from people looking to sell and sell things to people looking to buy, so that I don’t have to wait around there for you to need some pencils in order to sell them, or for you to show up with some paper to buy it. The guys hanging around the market do pay less for my pencils and charge more for the paper they got from you, true, but if it weren’t worth the convenience of just buying and selling from whoever’s available down there at the market, then I could always cut them out of the loop... if it’s worth that effort... which it’s usually not, which is how they make that living, providing convenience.

If I have a bunch of pencils but no paper, and you have a bunch of paper but no pencils, we can together create value for each other by trading some pencils for some paper.

Ok so you don't believe that people should be able to borrow funds or have lines of credit extended to them, ok. — BitconnectCarlos

That’s not selling something you don’t own.

More comparable would be renting a house and selling it to someone. How could you even do that? It’s not yours to sell.

What makes borrowing a stock and selling it any different? It’s not yours, how can you sell it?

ETA: On re-read I can see how one might construe spending borrowed money as "selling something you don't own" now. In any case I'm not specifically against that, but it is the case that in a properly functioning economy as I see it, nobody would have to borrow, except in the figurative sense of "borrowing from oneself", as capital ownership would be widely dispersed, so everyone would just have a pile of diverse invested capital that they could sell some of to get the money they need to spend on some newer more specific investment, like a new business. Large undertakings beyond the scale of one person's share of capital would require other people going in on it with you, and for their investment they would get equity in the venture; they wouldn't actually be lending money per se.

For my part I think it generally ought to be illegal to sell anything you don’t own.

This is the bit I don't get. Where's the connection between it mattering and me treating it as objective fact? — Isaac

I think this just shows how you’re importing something much more to the sense of “objective” than I am, because all I mean by “objective” is that it’s not a topic where disagreement doesn’t matter: it’s something where in any disagreement at least one party (and possibly all parties) is at least partly wrong.

I don’t know what more exactly you take it to mean by that.

If I was tied to five other people it would really matter that we agreed on which direction to walk (I might get injured if we don't all agree), but none of us would consider the chosen direction to be objectively 'right', we might as easily have tossed a coin for it. — Isaac

If you trying to walk to somewhere for some reason, then there is an objectively right way to do that, first of all in the sense of a way that will most effectively get you where you want to go for whatever reason you’re going there, but also in the sense that the choice of where to go and why accounts for all of your separate needs to go different places for different reasons.

Getting hurt because you’re trying to go different ways is a problem, sure, but also if one of you needs to get to their inhaler and another of you needs to get to their insulin, etc, there is some best route or another for you all to walk that will get the most urgent things done quickest etc. And it matters that you can all come to agreement not just on anything whatsoever to avoid hurting each other in the process of walking, but that you all agree to whatever that best walking route is to get all of your needs met.

No, but neither would I recommend what I did earlier to someone who specifically wants to be a Kant scholar.

If someone else wanted to figure out what is “the correct alcohol” (if there is such a thing), I would advise starting out with a survey of different kinds of alcohols and the differences between them, and what makes one better than another in a particular way or vice versa.

Of course there probably isn’t a universally correct alcohol, but philosophers do act in a way like they’re trying in different ways to come up with the correct solution to the same problem(s) and that others who do so differently are wrong for that. So if you’re not just trying to learn how to master the study of one philosopher specifically, but you’re trying to master philosophy generally...

Masculinity becomes toxic when men begin worrying about their masculinity. — Ciceronianus the White

:100: :up:

What about toxic femininity, toxic transsexuality, toxic oldness, toxic youngness, etc? It seems the bad word here is "toxic," so the moral is that you shouldn't do things that are poison or whatever toxic means. — Hanover

Sure thing. The phrase "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean "masculinity, which is toxic", but "a form of masculinity that is toxic". There can be a form of pretty much anything that is toxic. The "toxic" in "toxic masculinity" is specifically to differentiate it from other, perfectly okay kinds of masculinity.

That I love my wife is just a matter of my opinion, but it is far from trivial. — Isaac

Sure, but it's also not something you're going to try to convince other people to agree with you about, right? You love your wife, I don't, and that's fine isn't it? There's no feeling like you need to get me on the same page as you about your wife?

That's the binary difference I'm on about. Does it matter that we disagree, or not? If it matters, then you're treating it like it's an objective or universal matter, where we all need to come to the same conclusion lest at least one of us be wrong (and deserve blame if we act wrongly because of that). And if it doesn't matter, then there's no point blaming someone for acting on their different opinion, because their different opinion doesn't matter. I'm not swooning over your wife and buying her gifts or whatever, but that's not something you'd want to blame me for, right?

the only reason people avoid infinite regress is that they eventually stop at an arbitrary point — Darkneos

Do you apply this same standard to reasons to believe something? Do you fall down an infinite regress there too, or else stop at an arbitrary point? Or something else instead? In any case is that as much a problem as this?

I can say the same thing to them about painkillers when they aren't sick. — Darkneos

The reason not to just take pain killers all the time is the negative (unenjoyable) consequences of doing so. If those weren’t there then it would be a good thing to do.

People seem to have this myopic notion that enjoying something is a reason to do it when it's not. All enjoyment means is what it says, that you like the activity, not that you should do it. — Darkneos

What do you think would constitute a reason to do something? (Even if no such reason exists; what would you imagine if you imagined that such a thing did exist?) What does “should” even mean to you?

Why do you see these as the only two options - either 'like trivial preferences' or 'objectively and universally wrong'? — Isaac

Because the difference between those is binary: can multiple contrary opinions on the same thing be simultaneously warranted, or not?

If you think yes, then you’re treating it like it’s not objective — and also, since you think the different opinions are warranted, you have no motive to blame others for their disagreement, to treat them like their opinions are wrong and they are deficient somehow for holding them.

If you think no, then you’re treating it like it’s an objective matter. If you’re blaming someone for something, you’re treating them like their implicit opinion that their actions are okay is wrong, unwarranted, and they are deficient for thinking so — in other words, treating the matter as an objective one, where it’s possible to be wrong, not a mere difference of opinion.

That’s all independent of whether it really is an objective matter or not. This is just about whether you’re treating it like one, and what the act of blaming implies about that.

Whether the act was objectively, universally wrong is simply beside the point; all that matters, as far as me holding people morally responsible, is how I relate to the incident. — SophistiCat

But whether you think that its wrongness is objective/universal, rather than just a matter of opinion, is a part of how you relate to it.

I don't like strawberries. But I understand that liking strawberries or not is just a matter of opinion; I don't think anybody is incorrect in their assessment of strawberries just because they like them while I don't. But if someone asserts that your friend being beaten and robbed was perfectly fine and not wrong at all, you wouldn't just take that like you would take a disagreement in food tastes, right? You would think their assessment of the morality of that situation is incorrect, not just different from yours, no? You don't take each of your respective assessments of the morality of the situation to just be expressions of your respective tastes for battery and robbery -- where some people might like it, while you don't, and that's fine for them, it's just not your thing -- do you? If you did take it that way, then blaming someone for doing something you merely dislike but don't think is actually wrong in a universal, objective way, doesn't seem like it would make any sense. I don't blame people for eating strawberries, even though I dislike strawberries.

how do we figure out what is too much or too little masculinity — Edy

Toxic masculinity isn't about "too much" masculinity, but about a faulty construal of what constitutes masculinity. In other words, it's when men are socially pressured to do and think and feel things that are bad, both for others and for themselves, on pain of being considered "not a real man" and therefore deficient in some way.

Nobody's against men being as masculine as they want, so long as it's a healthy positive conception of "masculinity" that they're going after.

I'm reminded now of the four-part structure for absorption that my old intro to philosophy class outlined:

- lecture for breadth
- reading (original texts) for depth
- writing for clarity(?)
- discussion for... speed?

I'm a little fuzzy on the exact formulation of the last two, but the gist of it was that you write a lengthy piece on your own to clarify and organize your own thoughts on it, and then you discuss it with others to see how well you can recall and use the information on the fly. I remember thinking of it as analogous to the martial arts practice of slowly doing forms, and then sparring much more quickly with others.

Outside of an academic classroom setting, you could probably substitute some overview text like an online encyclopedia for lecture, and substitute a forum like this for discussion. So the modified version of this four-part structure could then be:

- Read an encyclopedic overview of the author/topic
- Read the original material
- Write your thoughts on the topic in an essay
- Post that here as an OP and engage in the subsequent discussion.

It would actually be really dumb to buy a house in cash — BitconnectCarlos

Oh yeah, avoiding paying all that mortgage interest is super dumb.

It's like saying I enjoy dancing. However I do not dance. — Darkneos

That's the kind of expression that elicits the question "why not?" in a normal person. It calls for an explanation of what un-enjoyable thing will happen to whom to warrant avoiding doing this thing you enjoy. Someone enjoying (or suffering from) something is the usual prima facie reason to do (or not do) anything; those kinds of experiences are the feeling that doing (or not doing) something is imperative, the thing you should do (or not do). All reasons to do (or not do) anything are grounded in such feelings.

I know you keep rejecting desires as reasons, but the only thing that pure logic all by itself can ever tell you is that something is or isn't a coherent possibility at all. It can't even tell you for certain whether anything in particular is the case, never mind whether it should be. Only whether it possibly could be.

Ends in and of themselves don't exist IMO. There is always some justification for doing something even as simple as eating a sweet. — Darkneos

How do you avoid the problem of infinite regress then? (Actually, I expect that the entire problem here is that with that attitude you can't avoid it). If you need a justification for everything, then you need a justification for each justification, and justifications for those justifications for your first justifications, and so on ad infinitum... you need an infinite chain of justifications and you end up forced to conclude that there is no justification for anything at all.

When we're talking about justifications as in purposes, reasons to do things, you end up with the conclusion that everything is pointless and there's never any reason for anyone to do anything. If you applied that same line of reasoning to beliefs, about what's real, you'd end up forced to reject all of those too. Pure logic can't tell you what's real either, only what's (im)possible.

To get an idea of what's real, you first have to understand what you're asking when you ask "what is real". Normally, we're asking for an account of what kind of empirical experiences to expect to be had in common by everyone in certain contexts: something real is the kind of thing that everyone appropriately situated can observe.

Similarly, to get any idea of what you should do, what the purpose of anything is, why to do anything, including to live at all, you first have to understand what you're asking by that question. And similarly, we're normally asking for an account of some kind of experiences that will be had in common, but not empirical experiences, but rather hedonic ones: what's enjoyable about this, or what suffering is avoided by this?

Something that is enjoyable is thus an end in itself: it's its own reason to do it. And if one finds life per se enjoyable, that makes life an end in itself.

better to dwell with one book/soul deeply...than to reside with many temporarily, like a man who moves from one place to another, never fully absorbing what he has found but only taking a bit from here and there... — Todd Martin

I actually disagree with this pretty strongly. The biggest thing I took away from my formal philosophical education was an impression of how almost every author had at least some things right, and so did their opponents, and the only way to find a really solid understanding of it all was to combine and cross-connect pieces from lots and lots of different views.

Just taking a deep dive on any one philosopher is a good way to end up an expert on someone who is probably very very wrong about at least something rather important.

Probably a lot like this.

Or this.

It was always kinda fucked up if you asked me, with “the fall of man” jazz. — praxis

Their original logo was a complex drawing of Isaac Newton under an apple tree:



So no, it’s not THAT apple (which if anything was more likely meant to be a pomegranate anyway).

Politics is the context this is all about. The kind of people that you could productively engage in philosophy with are all in groups 1-3, and only group 1 are really available for two-way philosophical discourse.

People who hold views based on things that both of you agree are good kinds of reasons are people you can philosophically reason with, and those are all group 1. As I said before, being in group 1 doesn’t mean they agree with you completely. Those differences grounded in what you nevertheless agree is solid reasoning are the places you have learning opportunities.

People who see you as “on their side” socially-speaking might at least be open to reasons to refine their beliefs, but if they aren’t “on your side” for reasons you see as rational then there’s not really opportunity for you to learn from them in turn. Those are group 2. They don’t necessarily agree with you completely either, but they at least trust that you’re an ally rather than an enemy, and may at least listen to you openly and honestly.

People who are undecided, group 3, similarly at least don’t see you as an enemy and so might be willing to listen honestly if you convey to them successfully that you are allied with their interests. Then you might have opportunity to explain why the reasons of your opposition are not good ones, and why they should not trust that kind of argument.

Group 4 sees you socially as an enemy and won’t be willing to engage with your arguments in an open and honest way. There’s no opportunity to learn anything from your uncle who fell for Qanon because of something he saw on Facebook, or to reason him out of beliefs he didn’t reason himself into in the first place. But you could at least maybe stand a chance of convincing him that you really do care for him and that those kinds of sources and arguments are unreliable.

And lastly, you just can’t do honest philosophy with a died-in-the-wool Nazi or such, in group 5. Their entire worldview is founded entirely in things you don’t see as rational at all, so there’s just not a common ground of reason from which to conduct a rational argument.

:grin:

Being alive doesn't exactly mean you have something good going for you. — Darkneos

If being alive is in and of itself something you want, something you value intrinsically rather than just instrumentally, then every moment you’re alive you have something you want, and so something good going for you.

Which isn’t to say that life is great for everyone, far from it, I know. Just that when you value life intrinsically, hardships are just obstacles to be overcome on the path back to feeling good intrinsically just to be alive. Whereas otherwise, you require some positive thing, and endless supply of positive things, to justify the work that it takes to live.

You’re asking for the latter, which makes it clear that you feel the latter way. But to someone who feels the other way, that question doesn’t make any sense. You may as well ask for a justification to eat ice cream, or any other pleasant thing. If you don’t like ice cream, then it makes sense to ask “Why should I eat this? What do I get out of it?” But if you do like ice cream, you just want to eat it, and you may be willing to go through some hardships to get it, but you don’t need any further justification for eating it: it’s an end in itself.

Sometimes to some people life feels like that: it’s just something they want for its own sake. Other times and to other people it doesn’t feel like that. I’ve felt both ways in my life, and feeling the way that makes sense of your question was the worst I’ve ever felt — not because anything in particular was bad in my life either, just because, for reasons I never figured out, I started feeling that way, and suddenly everything was pointlessness and despair unless I could find something to temporarily distract me.

Again, I’m not saying that either of those ways of feeing is or isn’t the factually correct way of looking at the world. They’re just different ways one might feel about the world. And one of them obviously feels better than the other. Realizing that is what saved me from feeling the other way, freed me to stop looking for a reason to justify living, and allowed me to instead focus on changing the way I felt to a state where life didn’t need any justification.

assuming that wanting to die is some sickness. — Darkneos

Isn’t that something that’s unpleasant to feel? Is not an unpleasant condition the very definition of a sickness?

Consider also: if you want to live, then whenever you’re alive, you’ve at least got something good going for you, and so something worth living for. So “wanting to live” is in itself something to live for.

philosophy of action is that acting because of luck prevents free action
— Don Wade

I have to recognize I don't catch this one. What do you understand with this sentence? — Raul

It’s called “the Mind argument” (after a philosophy journal called Mind where it frequently appeared). It’s the argument that actions caused by random chances are not freely willed actions, so it’s actually INdeterminism that’s incompatible with free will, rather than (or perhaps in addition to) determinism.

it's unproveable and unrefutable — Darkneos

Because it makes absolutely no experiential difference, and therefore it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or false — it’s completely meaningless. If solipsism is true then there’s still part of “you” that you don’t have conscious awareness and willful control of, and then the “part” of you (reckoned to be the whole of you by non-solipsists) that you do. That’s functionally the same thing as a difference between “the rest of the world” and “yourself”, so solipsism amounts to just renaming those categories in a needlessly confusing way.

I don’t even see HOW you could categorize people in advance of engaging with them, so I’m certainly not advocating that anyone somehow do that.

But after engaging with people, it will become clear whether their opinions are the ones you think are correct or not, and how strongly held those opinions are and for what reasons they’re held.

It’s then appropriate to engage with them differently based on those various factors. My proposal in the OP is to use more nuance in that differentiation than just “agree with me good, otherwise bad”, which is a sadly common method.

I’m first and foremost advocating the recognition of a difference between “doesn’t agree with me” and “disagrees with me”, as there are people who are undecided and might eventually end up agreeing or disagreeing, and treating them like they’ve already sided against you is counterproductive.

Then within the groups who do agree or disagree, I’m advocating a differentiation between those who just go with the social flow of agreement with their in-group, and those who hold their views for thoroughly introspective personal reasons. Because people who are “on your side” but not for good reasons might make problematic allies, and people who are “against you” but not really personally committed to the opposite of your principles might still be swayed away from being your enemies.

I don't see why a categorization like the one in the OP would be necessary or helpful. — baker

It might help you see better if you realize that it is proposed in juxtaposition to the common practice of treating people as only being in groups 1 or 5. I’m advocating more nuance than that.

I know all about index funds and active vs passive management thanks. I’ve got tens of thousands of dollars in a variety of different kinds. An index fund is still a particular kind of passively managed mutual fund. You were right about hedge funds being something narrower than I thought though.

“An index fund (also index tracker) is a mutual fund...”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_fund

However:

“Hedge funds are not mutual funds as hedge funds cannot be sold to the general public.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_fund

Looks like hedge funds and mutual funds are both types of open-ended pooled investments, though, the only difference being whether they are open to the public or not.