If someone wants to make up their own idea of enlightenment and the path toward it, that's their thing, and they have the freedom to do so. But it is misleading, to say the least, to then call this "Buddhism" or "what the Buddha really taught". — baker

What did Kant "really" teach? If he were here to tell you, would his thought be any less disputatious? The "real" Kant is, of course, a matter of scholarly work, but to the extent the object is to stay true to Kant exclusively, then the matter is not philosophical at all, for it is not interpretative, but historical. But then, Kant, in everything he said being philosophical, taken as it is, is inherently indeterminate, so the real Kant is really no more than a multitude of open questions.

This is what Buddhism is. Everything the Buddha said begs many questions, which is why it continues on as an open concept. Taken as a path of liberation, even, a practical method, it still is open. I would say as with Kant, even if the Buddha stood before us and told us exactly what he meant, it would still remain just as conceptually open as it is now.

The point is that the teachings in the Pali Canon are regarded as being taught by an enlightened being, and a unique one at that, someone who is categorically different than an ordinary person. As such, it is assumed that the teachings in those texts contain insights that an ordinary person simply cannot have. — baker

Insights! Of course, what else? Insights into what to do and how to regard the world. A foundation that provided, as I see it, the most important contribution to human thinking ever. But I would say in the event of meditation, all "schools" are in abeyance, especially when the significant changes occur in the way one's everydayness is apprehended. There comes a point, I do not argue but simply relate, at which attachments are genuinely loosened, and the world becomes, not to put too fine a point on it, a different place altogether. Schooled thinking has nothing to do with this, but it has been merely tool all along, a tool of second guessing interpretations and undoing familiarity held in place by pervasive conceptual strongholds acquired since childhood. It is at the conceptual level in the structures of the world itself that detachments have to be finally undone.

Later texts are taught by someone other than the Buddha, by people who may not even be enlightened. As such, they aren't assumed to have such insight and such value as those by the Rightfully Self-Enlightened One. — baker

Where is the proof? In the pudding. One has to read and confirm for oneself.

You're missing the point. The Buddhist teachings in the Pali Canon aren't just "some more philosophy; yet another philosophical text"; that is, the texts themselves claim to be more than that.

Whether you accept them to be such is up to you. But when a text itself makes such claims about itself, it's not clear how come people so often ignore that bit and just go on reading it as if it was yet another text. — baker

I agree, it is not just some more philosophy, rather, it is THE philosophy! But look at it like this: Buddhism's great contribution is that is provides a practical guide to liberation, but such a concept is absolutely open, it presents a landscape of fascinating theo-philosophical thought, and there is so much in this that takes the matter of liberation into extraordinary fields of inquiry.

What amazes me the most in relation to Buddhism is how ready people are to bastardize it. Orignally, in the Pali Canon, a path of practice toward enlightenment is layed out, in considerable detail. But despite that, so many people make up their own ideas of enlightenment, but nevertheless believe they are legitimized by the Buddha, and even call those ideas "Buddhist." — baker

I disagree. Buddhism laid out clearly as a method in achieve liberation is not the only way to achieve liberation. And you seem to think he was the only one ever to be "enlightened". I mean, what is enlightenment such that he was the only one and only his utterances make the right way? I've read the four noble truths and find them simply superfluous, not wrong, but certainly not exclusively right. They are extraneous to the essential idea: liberation.

If we're using terms in the same way, I don't think it's surprising that "presence qua presence cannot be spoken", words aren't identical to the things they stand in for after all. When we make an assertion, a whole process of interaction has lead to the uttered statement. "This rose is red", what are the boundaries of the rose? How many thorns does it have? How many petals? What is its hue? How reflective is it? How tall? A condensation of the rose's constitutive patterns occurs when using words to stand in for them; what counts as a rose, what counts as red, and what is irrelevant for both instances of counting as. — fdrake

I will do my best to use terms in a way that is familiar to your discussion.

The question I have for the above is, to say words aren't identical to the things they stand for, what "things" do you have in mind? Where are the boundaries of thing as a thing? What thingly qualities are implicitly brought to bear in the calling of X a thing? In short, nothing language can say can demonstrate a release from the richness of associated meaning so as to isolate any one thing such that the one thing is one. All terms are multiplicities, so when making assertions at all, any thing is absorbed into the congregation meanings. There are no things such that "words are not identical" to them. Presence qua presence cannot be made sense of UNLESS there is something in the actuality that "speaks" that is not explained in terms of other terms. This would be an absolute, not that such a term can be made sense of, it is the only wheel that rolls to express the peculiar nature of ethics: the injunction.

To say that "x" and x pick out the same thing is quite different than saying "x" is true iff x, the equivalence between the x on the left and the x on the right occurs only after the rose has been counted as red and counted as a rose; that is to say after it has been picked out. A whole regime of phenomena; of representation, of perceptual exploration of the environment, of how word is tailored to world; is hidden if the x on the right is treated as an uninterpreted event in the world. The perspective, norms, use of language, go into x, that is why it can be matched redundantly with "x" being true. In other words, that x on the right is theory ladened, and the theory it is ladened with is set up by how the statement counts as the state of affairs. — fdrake

Interesting. I tend to abide by what Heidegger says, and I find pragmatism coincides, though I think this needs work on my part to be clearer. I live an everyday life with already intact engagements, like walking down the street, waving at a friend, and so on. It is when something goes wrong that I take notice, and I think Dewey (Rorty following Dewey on this) makes a very good case from here: Meaning is the consummatory event whereby the problem that arises is solved, wherein lies the foundation for all understanding, language structured or otherwise. X, as I take your thinking, is prereflective, that is, the bare recognition that the snow is white, unreflected on, passed over propositionally, a ready-to-hand familiarity. Is this autonomic recognition inherently propositional? For one endowed with language, it is, for what gathers in the familiar event is the language learned. But it also is more, and that more is the rich meanings that are not pragmatic at all, but are simply the givens of the world, and these are value laden, and this brings the matter to the thesis at hand, metaethics. I don't agree with Dewey that such meanings are "wrought out" of pragmatic events, or, if this characterization works, it is not exhaustive of what occurs as one is still left with the presence as such that defies the pragmatics of speech altogether. We should, as Wittgenstein famously says, pass over such things in silence, but what of value? Value qualia, the appearing, not redly, tactilely, but in pain or joy: these cannot be spoken; one does not speak the world of ineffable actualities, these "qualia". But then, there is, I claim again (responding to the quote of mine you responded to), the injunction against causing pain that is "spoken". The proof lies in the pudding: put a flame to your finger and observe. A truly exhaustive analysis of the event cannot overlook its most salient feature, which is its noncontingent "badness".

Which provides a problem, if how "x" counts as x is internal to norms of discourse - it is indeed part of their execution -, those discursive norms must be taken as a given in order for disquotation to spell out the sense of a declarative sentences. ""x" and x pick out the same thing" works as an account of the sense of "x" only insofar as the means by which they do pick out the same thing is taken for granted. For declarative sentences, this is all buried in truth; truth as direct but interpreted contact between what the sentence is and what it picks out. That burial is also an inversion; what counts as an event becomes the substrate of the declarative sentence, rather than the speech act of its assertion containing within it a generation of what counts as what in interaction with an event. Displacing the generative component of the speech act's content with the norms by which the speech is judged by that generative content. This is an intellectual magic trick; a conjuring of the given by which the relationship between "x" and x is judged as a redundancy. In reality, that relationship is a generative process of interaction, and the conformability between "x" and x can be seen, retrospectively, as its output. — fdrake

If I understand you rightly, the magic trick has to do with attempting to "retrospectively" (after the case) take the question of whether "x" and x is a mere redundancy (tautology?) up IN a truth bearing proposition, which is circular, for such a proposition cannot penetrate into the nature is what is arguably non propositional, the full generative "sense". In other words, it is through the truth of the proposition that all things intelligible must pass. My thoughts go like this: in the execution of x, the passive observation, and "there is a rabbit" is uttered, truth only comes into play after the fact because it is in this afterward that truth, the functional concept's context comes into play. Until one utters the term explicitly, truth is merely a standby notion, along with a cluster of other rabbit and non rabbit notions that implicitly attend, ready to hand.

Yes, exactly. Much as belief differs from perception in the same way. You see something in the distance on a hot day that looks like a pool of water. But from other knowledge, such as of the local geography and climate and of the refraction of light in air of different temperatures, you do not believe there is a pool of water there, even though you perceive one. You believe there is a mirage, the false appearance of what looks like water, but isn't.

On my account, willing is thereby also equivalent to what might otherwise be called "moral belief". It's not just having a want, but judging a want as the correct thing to want, the thing you ought to want; just as belief is not just perception but the judgement of perception.

(Both perception and desire, on my account, factor into judgements of either kind: you must perceive your mental states and desire them either to remain as they are or to change. The difference between a willing, or an intention as I prefer to term it, and a belief, is which kinds of mental states you are judging: the first-order perceptions, or the first-order desires). — Pfhorrest

You know, there is a lot in this a take to instantly. First order beliefs and thoughts of any kind puts one in the mode of existing whereby past predispositions naturally and fluidly become present realities and the future openness is closed, predictable, fixed. If you read enough existential theory, you take this idea as central to grasping what a self is: it is a temporal "event" structured by historical familiarity determining one's reality. existentialists typically look upon the everyday living affairs of people as inauthentic, sleep walking through lives.

I think you're right calling it a moral belief, for when one realizes one's "freedom" one is placed in the midst of choices, and choices are value laden, not merely factual, and value is the very heart of ethics. What is right or wrong is always built into choice, even if one is not aware; indeed, it is awareness that makes freedom possible. A good Nazi perhaps never gave an order a second thought, for, if you will, he knew not what he was doing, and to use the concept of "will," this was simply not there, and technically, no "decision" was really made, for without the will, that is, without the second guessing, the standing apart from one's beliefs and autonomic behavior, one remains innocent!

Kierkegaard is an interesting read on this in his Concept of Anxiety, which is a study on the nature of sin, entirely removed, in most of the analysis, from Christian exegesis.

First order perceptions and first order desires? I think these talk about the same kind of thing, the stepping apart what would claim one otherwise immediately, in an unquestioned way, and this is the way we live our day to day lives.

Still not fond of the concept of will. It can be a useful term, but it is misleading for the will would be reducible to things that have a clearly meaning, like existential freedom.

This is Mahayana doctrine. Why choose Mahayana over the Pali Canon? Can you explain? — baker

As with any doctrine, one can either dogmatically receive it, then take this as an authoritative representation , disseminate what it says, learn by rote the utterances, divide into schools of thought, and call oneself a scholar. Or, one can talk the matter itself seriously, which means, while having respect for ancient ideas and those who founded them, realizing that these are interpretations of their own experiences and have no fixed, timeless say in the matters of determining what meditation is about, its nature and meaning, its revealed actualities.

What Buddhism is really about should never, ever be taken dogmatically, as a mere historical set of "facts". I don't choose Mahayana over Hinayana. These are mere classificatory distinctions that can be useful for referencing purposes, but to talk about what is essentially Buddhism, well, this takes one into the interesting interpretative inquiries: what is it that is disclosed in the interiority of the self when one meditates? How do we fit this into religious and philosophical paradigms? In the suspension of normal, spontaneous interpretative ideas, does Husserl's phenomenological reduction inform us in any interesting ways in understanding the meditative experience? And so on.

Case in point is your link to the right view. I do like this:

[The Buddha:] "By & large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by (takes as its object) a polarity, that of existence & non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'non-existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one.

There is a striking resemblance here to post modern thinking that denies a center to any proposition. Husserl's epoche, whereby all schools of thought are in abeyance, as is all naturalistic knowledge claims (so called). Many consider the religious dimension of this, reminiscent of Kierkegaard's "eternal present" which has a fundamental place in existential thinking across the board.

"Nonexistence" is simply an intruding conceptualization that has its meaning bound to a network of meanings, and to invoke such a term transforms a, call it "pure" perceptual event (very disputatious idea), into an apperceptive event, binding the understanding to logic and language, and here is where the most challenging part of meditation lies: in the undoing of the interpretative grip one's earliest training in the world has on one. Not to see a house AS a house, or to take up the world AS anything.

Why do you quote or cite anything, instead of just making stuff up and ascribe it to another person? — baker

Because I am not arguing about who said what, when or where. I care little for this. I only care about ideas and how they come into play in understanding the world and the rest is incidental. Now if I had the job of teaching this, it would be the same as it would be for Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Walt Whitman, Wordsworth, or anyone: incidental facts become part of the lecture.

Don't be silly. No one is making things up.

To will is not just to want, but to want to want. Weakness of will is when you want to want X (you will X), but nevertheless you do Y. Strength of will, also freedom of will, is when wanting to want something causes you to actually want (and so try to do) something. — Pfhorrest

So will is not in play until you want to want. Does it have to be explicit wanting to want, or if I want it and I pursue it I am implicitly willing it? I want a new computer and I go to the store, pick one out and purchase it. No will in this? Not until I put the wanting before me as a want, review its contents, and determine to satisfy it is it a will. this puts will as a reflective positioned perspective as the wanting is no longer simply the spontaneous drive to acquire, but it reviewed at a higher order: I reflect on the wanting. But how does this differ from regular wanting, for all it adds is a second guessing of the wanting, then a reaffirmation that the wanted thing is truly wanted. If I am choosing veggies in the produce department, turn to the broccoli, reach for it, then remember I want squash instead, is this a matter of simple want turning to willing? Or is it a matter of just wanting intelligently?

The illustration above aside, what you're saying here seems to be in line with Adler's will to power, related to Nietzsche's Wille zur Macht.

If we start from the premise that what drives a person is a will to power, then this also lends support to moral realism. — baker

I always take issue with "will". I simply have never detected such a thing. I will something. What does this come to outside wanting it, and doing what is required to get it, the driveness of the whole affair no more than this? Will seems superfluous, reified out of bad metaphysics: a will? Is this a noun? To will is just to want, desire.

But here, it is simply descriptive. I ask, what is pain? and you are invited to be the dutiful scientist and observe, then see how it conforms to "normal science" (Kuhn's term) paradigms. It simply does not. Pain, joy, and all that belongs to these are sui generis, all because of that non natural property, the ethical badness and goodness (as opposed to contingent badness and good ness; see above).

Nirvana is a related topic that deals with the extinguishment of the personality. Complete nirvana, more officially called "Fifth Nirvana," is the final extinguishment. — eduardo

You know, there may be truth in all of this, but I cannot affirm beyond what I have been able to understand myself. Eastern philosophy is revelatory and it is not about faith, but actual encounter. As for me, I am what you could call a threshold person, meaning when I meditate, the conceptual grip the world generally has on me slips readily away, and there is in the interiority of my self a kind of rising presence of something entirely other than normal reality. The world loses its definition, its familiarity, its knowledge assumptions, and the whole yields to something extraordinary, unnamable, but unmistakable.
You find this in the Western apophatic literature as well. See Meister Eckhart, who prays to God to be rid of God, or pseudo Dionysus the Areopagite's Cloud of Knowing. The final extinguishment? I imagine
the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức had achieved this when he set himself on fire. I do wonder what it must have been like to live inside that world where pain could be such a distant event.

So, if I'm understanding you correctly --

I'll illustrate on an example:
There are three major Viennese schools of psychology, classified by what a person's will is considered to be centered on:
the Freudian will to pleasure,
the Adlerian will to power,
the Franklean will to meaning.
The idea behind this classification is that a person is driven by will; there is difference as to what exactly that will is about, but the agreement is that the will is the essential driving force of a person and that this is the optimal way to approach psychological issues both theoretically and practically.

It seems to me that you are after a similar principle of classification as above (not specifically in terms of psychology, the example with the Viennese schools of psychology occured to me because it seems to be structually the same as what you're looking for). — baker

Not this. It is prior to this. If Freud thinks the pleasure principle rules egoic motivations, I ask, what is pleasure? A reasonable question for philosophy, not for psychology, though. I ask this as a phenomenologist who wants to take the honest confrontation with with the world at its foundation: the first encounter that is presupposed by empirical science. So, before psychology even makes an appearance, we can examine what things are at a more basic level, not unlike what Kant (the father of phenomenology, before Husserl) did with reason.

What is pleasure, joy, happiness, misery, and so on? This is a metaethical question, which is generally dismissible, for one cannot "speak the world' so to speak. But in the argument I laid out above, I claim pleasure, pain and the rest of our value words designate something metaphysical that has a presence which can be talked about, and this is the injunction, in the case of pain, misery, and all the other "bad" experiences possible, not to do X. Torture possesses absolutely the defeasible directive not to do X: sounds contradictory, but it's not. In and of itself the injunction against doing X stands absolutely, but entangled in accidental affairs. It stands as a prima facie obligation, only.

The idea that the self = nirvana, or that once the defilements are done away with, what is left is pure goodness and joy, is an idea that can be found in some Buddhist circles (esp. in Mahayana, and modern developments of Buddhism), but to the best of my knowledge, it has no support in the Pali Canon (ie. the text that is generally considered the authoritative text of what the Buddha taught). — baker

Right. But let's take the matter further, and in this, I am only interested in how we interpret something like this, and have limited regard for what the Buddha actually said. (BUt then, as I read through the Pali canon I find some very odd references that quite absurd. Why, I wonder, should this original doctrine hold sway?) Go ahead and empty the self of its contents I like this on "annihilation":

There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no priests or contemplatives who, faring rightly and practicing rightly, proclaim this world and the next after having directly known and realized it for themselves. A person is a composite of four primary elements. At death, the earth (in the body) returns to and merges with the (external) earth-substance. The fire returns to and merges with the external fire-substance. The liquid returns to and merges with the external liquid-substance. The wind returns to and merges with the external wind-substance. The sense-faculties scatter into space. Four men, with the bier as the fifth, carry the corpse. Its eulogies are sounded only as far as the charnel ground. The bones turn pigeon-colored. The offerings end in ashes. Generosity is taught by idiots. The words of those who speak of existence after death are false, empty chatter. With the break-up of the body, the wise and the foolish alike are annihilated, destroyed. They do not exist after death.'

It doesn't go far enough, does it? If you follow through on this annihilation, you must deny existence to anything language can make into an object, or reify by mental acts like gathering particulars under a heading, for a thoroughgoing annihilation denies all knowledge claims, for all such claims attempt to categorize the world. To think at all is to entertain a kind of illusion. Thus, all this talk about the four elements, wind, bones and ashes, these are not primordial things that stand above father and mother. There is no "person".

I prefer the prajnaparamita:

Therefore, in emptiness no form, no feelings,
perceptions, impulses, consciousness.
No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind;
no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch,
no object of mind;
no realm of eyes
and so forth until no realm of mind consciousness.

This is annihilation, and the method is one of apophatic philosophy. My thoughts are that once the constructed self is eliminated, what remains is not nothing, but a depth of existence and well being that goes entirely beyond the pragmatic existence of everyday living. Nirvana, throughout the literature, confirms this.

At first I was kind of surprised that you would come to conclude that moral realism follows from what I said about values, because I would conclude from values being socially constructing that something like a constructivist metaethics would follow. But yes, from the point of view of an individual in a certain society, morality would look largely the same no matter if constructivism or moral realism were true. Where I think those metaethical theories would make a difference in practice is that in a constructivist metaethics you can have different societies construct different values, whereas in moral realism values would be the same over different societ — ChatteringMonkey

I think it works like this: If you admit that there is within the analysis of the essence of ethics something that is NOT constructed, then one has crossed the boundaries of meaningful discussion and it must be "passed over in silence" just as one must pass any qualia over in silence. Ethics remains an entangled affair, in relations, politics, jurisprudence, and so on. E.g., it is rarely an issue that murder, rape, theft, torture are bad for obvious reasons. The issue rests with how be bad cashes out in complex, irreducible actual cases which deal with responsibility, accountability, constructed collective sentiment, legal precedents, and all of the things that make the world a morally messy place. Free will, for example, is always compromised in descriptions of accountability, yet it is has a essential place at the foundation of legal justification. This does not get resolved if there is something apriori right or wrong at the basic level of analysis.

R M Hare argued that if there were something in the fabric of things in ethics, it would make no difference. He writes;

‘Think of one world into whose fabric values are objectively built; and think of another in which those values have been annihilated. And remember that in both worlds the people in them go on being concerned about the same things – there is no difference in the “subjective” concern which people have for things, only in their “objective” value. Now I ask, “What is the difference between the states of affairs in these two worlds?” Can any answer be given except “None whatever”?’

I would argue against this: While affirming an absolulte foundation to ethics does not yield an inviolable body of practical rules, it does issue some that apply to all. Mill's harm principle comes to mind. But much more than this is, if ethics is, call it eternally grounded, then what does this say about US? For such a grounding transforms the conception of the self as a valuative creature. Saying value as such is eternal means that WE and our world are so grounded.

I am asking about the level on which art can play in addressing social and political issues. I am speaking about the role of expression of feelings in art, fiction, music and other art forms. How far should it be seen as an aesthetic quest or one which is part of a cultural statement? How influential can art be in raising consciousness?

Also, I am asking about the responsibilities of the artist. To what extent is the artist just expressing personal feelings? Is there any danger if art, music or fiction is too 'dark', such as metal music? Does it matter what art we create? — Jack Cummins

I used to live in South Korea and AFKN was the American military broadcasting station. It was not unusual to see men in arms doing exercises, running through courses, drilling. And then they began playing rock music to the mock combat activities, and the effect was appalling as it put the whole matter within a context of carefree play, a nd rock music has a certain violent nature of its own, with its hard driven beat, so there was a kind of natural fusion of primitive impulses. What was lost was the gravity of the deadly violence they were preparing for. It all became so light and free and exciting, and I felt as I watched them that the spectacle was a kind of Hollywood production.

So what is objectionable about this? It turned what should be the most dreaded thing imaginable into a juvenile fiction of sorts. Of course, we see this kind of thing in movies and television all the time, and while I do get a kick out of these things as much as anyone else.....I do not approve (one of the great benefits of reading philosophy is that it can give rise to second guessing one's own impulses and gratifications).

But then, art has no natural affiliations in ideologies, in purposes and intentions. It can be used for propaganda (See Stalin era posters; see WWI posters encouraging enlistment, glorifying the cause. Siegfried Sassoon and Wifred Owen wrote their poetry opposing the war, and art was put to service on both sides), advertising, movies scores (what would a movie without a soundtrack? Note how music transforms the mundane the dramatic, the romantic, the comical).

Art is only as dangerous as its context.

You mean my regard for others is ethically irrelevant? And which person I am is ethically irrelevant? If we divorce ethics from particular interests and a point of view, doesn't it just become irrelevant to that person? I mean I need a reason to do the right thing that is consistent with what I want. If x y and z are ethically correct, but I don't give a shit about them, I'm not sure where we go from there. Objective ethics are irrelevant ethics. They don't connect to anything.

EDIT: convergent intersubjective ethics are quite different from objective ethics. They are still wholly relativist. — bert1

No, I don't mean your regard for others is ethically irrelevant. I am saying that in the analysis of a given ethical issue, what drives the whole affair prior to any and all possible entanglements, what is essential for the matter to be at all ethical in the first place, is value, and value qua value is not "relative" or contingent or context dependent, but is a stand alone given in the world, in the, to quote Mackie, "fabric of things". This certainly and by no means, means that we can produce ethical principles in our lived affairs that apply absolutely, as Kant tried to do. It does mean that value as such where's its determinations pretty much on its sleeve. If I don't like something, if it causes pain, misery, I know it, and for simple physical matters, well, the judgment is generally very clear: it's hard to be mistaken about splinters and broken bones: they're bad, bad as hell, often. And of course the same goes for good experiences as well.

What makes ethics contingent is value's embeddedness in the muddy waters of things that are extraneous to value, as with beliefs, competitions for valued things, value hierarchies, ethical institutions, legal complications, political lying, and so on. The point is that beneath all this dynamic play of human affairs there is this stand alone foundation, and tis makes for moral realism.

Can we just assume there has to be an essence? A lot of philosophy historically has been about trying to extract essences out of things, to its detriment I would say.

I do agree that if there is something at the heart of ethics than it would be value. But I don't think value is something unmediated, directly given like you seem to be pointing to with value-qualia, but rather something constructed socially.

I'm not sure I have much to add here, it seems i'm going the opposite direction. I think more can be learned if you look at morality from a societal and historical perspective, rather than trying to look for essences or basic principles. — ChatteringMonkey

Then the consequence to this needs to be made clear: If value is both given in the world, not some theoretical construct or simply part of the ethical equation which subsumes valuing under a complex contingent consideration, but an actual given simplicter, that is, irreducibly "there"; as well as being the foudation of ethics (and aesthetics, says Wittgenstein) then we must conclude the unpopular view is true: moral realism.

I'm going to need a Buddhist canonical reference for this, please. — baker

Nirvana?

So, graphic details aside, what was there?

It hurt, but the hurt was overshadowed by the fear that the injury might be serious or that the wound will get infected.
There was also, "I need to take care of this wound."
And, "This shouldn't have happened."

What did you have in mind? — baker

Alas, the proof in IN the graphic details. You are looking at the post wound, the overshadowed hurt, the taking care of and the regret, and all of this is extraneous to the argument. The argument is far less complex. It has an implicit premise that what it is that grounds ethics is staring one right in the face, kind of the way Heidegger talks about being: the furthest from being understood, yet the closest, most prevalent in everyday affairs. But Heidegger didn't get it. Caring is an essential part of his phenomenological ontology, but caring is ABOUT something that is cared about, that is, the embedded yet most salient feature of caring: the concrete event of having your eyes gouged out by vultures!

I use extreme examples for they are the most poignant, and this is not unusual in philosophy to illustrate a point. Utilitarians have their utility gluttons as counterexamples, after all. I could talk about how yummy pizza is or how inconvenient having to do homework is, but nothing says a moral issue quite like the extremes.

Anyway. what I have in mind is an ontology of value, a metavalue. Not at all interested in how things are practically worked out, how they get entangled with the affairs of others, with value hierarchies, and the the rest. These are important, of course, but not the concern here, where all simply want all eyes on the experience give a proper, objective analysis. My claim is that once all "accidental" matters are put aside, the particulars of entangled cases, there is the, as I have said, residual metaethical: the "badness" the pain, or the "goodness" of the pleasure. If Hitler smoked a fine cigar and it just hit the spot right when he issued extermination orders, this latter would in no way whatever metaethically intrude upon the pleasure he experienced, for we are considering only the pleasure as a phenomenon, the pleasure itself as Husserl might have put it (maybe he did. Haven't read all of his works).

See I don't know if I agree with this. I spoke about meaning and identity, and added the examples of rape and racism to my previous post, probably after you read it. It seems to me that meaning and identity as part of a larger social context, play a large part in why we consider certain things immoral. And those are I think underdetermined if you would view them only from a present moment. Meaning and identity precisely play out in time, over extended periods. What is the most damaging thing about racism I'd say, is not any direct physical pain or direct material consequences it may have (those are bad too to be clear), but social exclusion and the fact that it prevents people from building up a meaningful life in society. — ChatteringMonkey

If it were a matter of what you call mundane qualia, being appeared to redly, and the like, then I would agree that what presents itself to inquiry is a blank when considered apart from (conceptual) meaning and identity, which is reducible to pragmatics, I would add. But qualia is infamously vacuous. A spear in your kidney is not. What makes a spear in your kidney "bad" at all, in any possible disputed judgment, is not mundane qualia, but value qualia.
I do share your thoughts about rape and racism. But this argument is really very different as it asks more fundamental questions. I say rape is morally bad, not to put too fine a point on it, but then, why? I say the same about many things, but the matter always turns to some pain or gratification, some discomfort or joy that is THE determining ground at the level of basic questions. No pain or pleasure, suffering or bliss in play: NO ETHICS.
I am dismissing the particulars of a given case, in the same way Kant dismissed such things, such accidents. Kant was looking into a specific dimension of experience, the rational structure of judgments. Here, I am abstracting from all the is an accident, a mere contingency, vis a vis ethics, like the conditions of a rape AS a rape: not all ethical affairs are rape affairs, nor are they stealing affairs, not this nor that, and on and on. No specific conditions are essential, and are therefore dismissible in determining what the nature of ethics is. it is the essence of ethics I am on about: what has to be the case in order for ethics to be possible. Value is this, or, metavalue. Yes, you can also look to conflicts of value acquisition: no conflict, no competing value-things, no ethics, but note: it is the value that is at the heart of what makes an entanglement what it is: all issues turn on what is at stake, and this is always value.

Morality is not only about screaming pain is my point. In some extreme case it might be the only thing that matters, but it usually is not.

And yes and no, I think suffering is an interpretative event, which I would argue we care more about than pain. — ChatteringMonkey

Suffering is an interpretative event after the fact, no doubt, when it is contextualized, weighed in theory and among competing justifications, and so on. But pain as such? How can this in any way be interpretative? Interpretation requires language, consideration, a taking something up AS something. How is this there, in scorching of the live finger? One receives this instantly, not deliberatively.

Morality is analyzable, and so I agree morality is NOT only about screaming pain (or intense gratification), and I would add, obviously. But the argument then asks about what this complex affair is and finds that the essential part of it is the element of the presence that carries its own measure of valuation. We cannot say what this is, and this is why Wittgenstein would never talk about it (save in the Tractatus and the Lecture on Ethics where he essentially says it should be passed over in silence), but its presence does, as with logic, "show" itself in the event.

A loose way to put this is to say that pain and pleasure speak for themselves, but looseness like this invites casual responses, and is not that kind of question. It is an analytic of ethics that tries to bring out this salient features at the level of basic questions.

I don't think "greater good" is entirely reducible to pain, value-qualia or something like a primordial actuality... it also has to do with the identity and meaning we give to our lives. This is I'd say what is missing in most of these account, we are also beings who live in societies, have certain roles to play, identities to assume, societal goals to reach etc... all of which give our lives meaning. And this is what determines morality for the most part. Ofcourse some of this bigger story will be determined by these value-qualia to some extend, but I don't think you can skip straight past this bigger picture from value-qualia to morality and still have something that would be remotely the same. — ChatteringMonkey

Frankly, I don't see your position on this. Do you think there is something of the "identity and meaning we give to our lives" that intervenes between you and the screaming pain? Do you think pain is an interpretative event?

How about injuries to one's body that are intended as part of the greater good? Think, for example, of that mountainhiker who fell into a crevice, got stuck, and cut off his arm in order to free himself and get out. — baker

Of course I know this case. And the greater good is certainly a moral priority. But the metaethical question is begged: What do you mean by "good"? For this, one has to go to the source, the primordial actuality, the "intuition" of pain or bliss and everything in between, the raw thereness, the value qualia--just take a hammer, bring it down hard on your kneecap and observe. You are not facing a fact, a caring, a negative judgment, an aversion, a denunciation, a condemnation, and so on. What is that there, in your midst, that screaming pain "itself"?

False. I think it's very clear that badness is contextual. Murder is bad, killing in self defense is not for example. Similarly, torturing a child is not bad, if they are a child of Satan. — khaled

Yes, I know. One does have to look more closely at the argument. I am not arguing that the judgment against the child isn't a contingent matter. I am arguing that such cases are not, qua ethical, analytically simpliciter. You may say that it is right to torture the child of Satan because s/he is a child of Satan, by definition evil, and therefore evil is what is deserved. But this has no place in these thoughts here.

Here, we are examining the anatomy of an ethical act, judgment. There are usual suspects, the contingencies that are complex and are responsible for much of the messiness of our world, and it is this that brings ethical ambiguity into our lives. But here, I am doing what Kant did with reason and judgment: Abstracting from the many convolutions of disagreements in our everyday lives and giving analysis to determine its basic structures and contents. So, put aside all that is there in the complexity of ethical problems, and ask, what makes this ethical at all? It is here that the metaethical makes an appearance. It is wrong to torture others for fun, say. But this "wrongness" looks to the nature of torture, the pain itself which is the basis of the ethical in actuality, apart from how it fits into the many complexities. THIS pain as such is an absolute in the what I will call "pure injunction" against inflicting it.

Is it more important to understand love or experience it? You will come to understand that love is quite understandable and acts in quite irrational ways. However, no matter how irrational it might seem, love will always confirm the perfection of life. — Thinking

But to understand is to deliver one from the nonsense that would otherwise define it. Look at the understanding as a kind of jnana yoga (as I do): is it first a pragmatic function that brings clarity, that prevents one from holding crazy beliefs and committing atrocities in the name of love. But there is also the Kantian insight: As integrated agencies, we are bound together by logic and language, keeping in mind that such things are in themselves transcendental: I use logic, a recall memories within the structures of logic and solve problems and even have a sense of self in logic, but the nature of logic is utterly alien to me. The nature of all things is transcendental.

Having said this, I agree with everything you said.

To the extent that I understand, I fully agree that the self is intimately tied to ethics as nowhere else is responsibility as central and as critical as in ethics and responsibility is all about the so-called self. — TheMadFool

I would add that ethics is a thing of parts. On the one hand, there are the entanglements of our affairs, which is all you might find in Wittgenstein's great book of facts (Lecture on Ethics); on the other, there are the concrete actualities that are in the middle to these entanglements, the pains and joys themselves, looked at phenomenologically, released from the many contingencies and contexts that might otherwise possess them.

The facts are not incidental to ethics, some are scientific, fixed and abstract, like the Earth being closer to the Sun than Mars, they also vary across the board between people, cultures, principles, and so on, as in the "fact" that marriage stabilizes relationships; however, they are incidental to metaethics: the reality, if you will, behind our ethical entanglements, our arguments about the shoulds and shouldn'ts in this or that situation, that which all the fuss is about, is value, and its "thing itself" dimension, metavalue: The badness of the "ouch!"

Of course, such bads and goods are an integral part of experience. Even as I type, I have interest, concern, there are worries in the background, and so on. This the reality of the self that "shows" itself through its "value qualia" and is the genuine object of inquiry into the nature of the self.

You can intellectualize all you want about love. But, you would still not understand it. To understand it you must experience it, hence it is termed "Mysticism" — Thinking

Experience it will not get you understanding. The understanding is not structured for this; it is rather a tool that has one function: to solve problems. Love is not the goal of the understanding, for the understanding cares about nothing. It is OUR goal, the extraordinary presence that beckons beyond the everydayness we are so invested in. Love is the desideratum that exceeds the desire. (You might want to check out Levinas's Totality and Infinity: an opaque, difficult thing to read, but once you are in it, it will destroy dogmas and orthodoxies.

Do either of you see a tension between "most of our engagements with the world are (prelinguistic)" and "I agree, and those engagements target statements"? — fdrake

One source of tension is rather obvious: Talk about what is prelinguistic is done IN language and logic, that is, is propositional, and what can logic and language "say" about things outside of logic and language? Didn't Wittgenstein warn us about this? But this tension has not at all gone unnoticed. Hermeneutics is the only recourse. It is the deferential nature of the meanings of terms, and this runs smack into Derrida, doesn't it?

It isn't spelled out in what makes an utterance true, it can only be spelled out in terms of its expected effects and motivations. — fdrake

Expected effects is what truth "really" is about? I think if you map out the lived landscape, insert that all that is there is a kind of, well, "thereING" rather than simply "there" then whatever you think about truth, knowledge, reality, ethics, aesthetics, mind is going to have to be reconstrued, for there is now a new foundational term in play: time. The pragmatists talked like this long ago (see Dewey, Peirce, James). Meaning is bound to doing, concepts are dynamic events, truth is, as you say, the expected effect.
So to say, "the contents of belief is propositional" puts the question to the basic assumptions about what a proposition is, and if a proposition is understood in terms of "consummatory events" (Dewey), i.e., the completion of a problem solving affair (See his Art As Experience: the organism approaches the obstacle, feels its way around, searching for a resolution, finds passage; then onward through, having the solution's details now incorporated into future possibilities) then herein lies the understanding! Of course, the content is full, rich, powerful: this goes to value, for value is the essence of caring about this. What is value? This is about metavalue, which I wont' go into unless you want to, but I say it moves the discussion to value because the content is, of course, not discussable. Presence qua presence cannot be spoken, and if the understanding is all about pragmatics, what we call reality, truth and the rest is really ready-to-hand instrumentality of Being in the world.
I read Rorty, Dewey and Heidegger as talking about essentially the same kind of analysis of knowledge, though Heidegger is much more interesting.

as with logic — Constance

Sorry, this should read: Just like it is with logic. the point being that Wittgenstein saw that certain themes in philosophy are simply pseudo themes, like metaethics or metalogic. The are off the grid.

Well, I'm not sure about that. From the perspective of someone who most of us would think is a selfish asshole, simply not being the kid in question renders their torture ethically neutral. But I'm a relativist, so I would say that. That's the contingent set of circumstances, the fact that I (i.e. selfish asshole bert1) could have been the kid, but phew!, I'm not. — bert1

But you are being called upon to remove your being the kid, not being the kid, being selfish, and so on. These are quite out of consideration, for the argument looks directly to, and only to, the pain simplciter. THAT pain is not diminished. If you don't care because you are, as you say, selfish, you are looking in the wrong place: Your regard for others doesn't matter. Consider this an argument about value qualia. Qualia is usually just easily dismissible (see Dennett, e.g.), note what qualia is supposed to be: the simpliciter "presence" of color or the sound, and nothing more. Here,. it is the same.

Of course there are. Especially if they’re religious. Those can mitigate the badness of anything. But thankfully I don’t agree with any of them and I hope no one here does either. — khaled

No, I say rather firmly on this. What is mitigated is not the inherent badness of the torture of the the one child: the thumbscrews still are equal in there pain production, and the pain production is not one whit diminished. It stands outside the ethical dilemma, as an independent, unalterable, for the badness in play is not contextual, does not depend on anything form its being bad. This is the point.

In a forum discussion long ago, someone proposed to have solved this problem by pointing out that ethics was originally a part of aesthetics, and that it was aesthetics that dictates what is ethical.
How do you feel about this? — baker

We know where this comes from, Wittgenstein in his Lecture on Ethics (Tractatus, too). Ethics and aesthetics are value themes, and at the center of value is what Witt thought has no place at all in discussion, which is Moore's non natural property. Mackie thinks like, is influenced by, Witt, and they are both wrong: In the proffered idea above, the one thing that stands out is this: take the extreme example of a finger put to flame and abstract from this the ethical, well, "badness", and I mean badness simpliciter. All that could be predicated of the event removed, the physical observables, the evolutionist's claim that pain is conducive to survival and reproduction, the possible ethical contexts, the regard one might have toward the event (all of which beg the question: Oh, you are averse to having your finger in the flame, you abhor it, denounce it, are disgusted by it, and so on...The question begged being about the unexamined value simpliciter: the literal horrible suffering event unnamed; or, the value qualia of pain, if you prefer). Remove all that falls safely within the boundaries of standard meaningful utterances, and there is the residual ethical; the metaethical, which isn't as "meta" as one thinks
Flaming fingers are not like the "facts of the world" as Witt noted regarding his great book of facts, facts like Mars being closer to the Sun than Jupiter or that my shoe is untied. All are equal, AS facts, according to Witt, and value never reveals itself sufficiently, as with logic, to discuss its nature, and thsi is true! BUT: It does reveal in its nature very explicitly, with the sharpest "presence" possible, the injunction not to do something (as well as to do something, on th e positive side of the metaethical).

And you arguing that belief content is a broader semantic category - I don't know what kind of things you throw in it, other than that it can be "pre-linguistic" - and so since not all of that content is even "linguistic" (presumably not all words or symbols, I don't know where you come from on this), not all of that content can be propositional; since propositions must be linguistic. — fdrake

I found this point about belief being a broader semantic category to be closer to the truth. Just make an observation of one's own, if you will, ready-to-hand "belief" that the cup is on the table. The semantics, that is, the meaning, of spontaneous, unreflected passive affirmation is not explicit at all. It is in the fluid affair of grabbing the cup while reading, adjusting the light, checking the time and so forth. One can hardly call this propositional, only dispositionally propositional; and even when attention turns towards the cup which, say, spills, the "the cup is on the table and it spilled" proposition is certainly not entertained at all. The entire event is a seamless, propositionless doing. I do think we are in a cat's world of prereflective engagement.

As to the content: mostly pragmatic, like walking down the street, each step assumes a secure landing, and the implicit "belief" that is dispositionally "behind" this, stands at the ready if one is called upon to speak, or if one commences to think things out. Language and its propositions stands apart from the execution.

Prelinguistic? Pragmatics is this, and most of our engagements in the world are like this.

Beliefs as mental states/dispositions with content vs beliefs as holding some statement to be true. Issues there might be: is a disposition towards a state of affairs the same as an attitude towards a statement? — fdrake

A disposition towards some state of affairs: this disposition presents itself as a conditional "if...then.." which is a pragmatic construction. Dispositions are anticipatory and language and logic merely formalizes this.

All such claims miss the point rather dramatically, which is to be expected from analytic philosophers. They hover over a problem on wings of categorial thinking (minimal moral realism??? you're kidding, right? I know you're not) having fun mingling logic and concepts, never touching the ground. Mackie and others needs to, perhaps, spend (well, he's no longer a living person) time in a Roman dungeon before he realizes that the world is, as Kierkegaard put it, qualitatively distinct from armchair theory.

Love is the primal essence of everythin — Thinking

Is this true? I wonder if you would put some meant on this. Not that I disagree, at all. But it is stated, not argued, that is, justified. I think for starters, one has to examine love. How is this an absolute?

I guess I don't understand this. The whole idea here rests with theism, but it is not open to a discussion to what this can meaningfully be about? Doesn't this trivialize the argument down to a simple logical play?

the world around us is physical, — Manuel

I have no idea what the term "physical" means. I take it to be a nonsense word, but a convenient place holder for as assumed stability.

But the easy problem has no merit in its explanatory explanatory basis. Such things do not touch ontology.

Metaethics? No more non existent than any given empirical concept. Indeed, more real than these.

Beliefs as mental states/dispositions with content vs beliefs as holding some statement to be true. Issues there might be: is a disposition towards a state of affairs the same as an attitude towards a statement? What role do t-sentences play in that account?

To me, the whole matter has to be reconstrued. Don't know if you will appreciate this. If not, then that's fine.

I abide by the pragmatist's hypothetical deductive account of belief: Prior to an affirmation, there is an predisposition to affirm. What is this if not a disposition towards a state of affairs, as you say? But does this stand clearer analysis? I affirm, after all, in time. Can the temporality of the affirmation's nature be analyzed? This goes not just to propositions, but to concepts, as all concepts are inherently propositional: so what is, say, nitroglycerin? We define this as a pragmatic, temporal structure of the conditional form: Nitro is, "If N is impacted with force F, then it will explode." Nitro is also, "If N is combined with chemical C, then result R will occur"; and so on, and so on.

All concepts have this form, and therefore all beliefs have this form. We live our everyday lives in the temporal dynamics of, to put it is Dewey's terms, the consummatory successes of problems solved. Language itself is constructed in a complex series of successful problem solving events whereby signifiers (sounds) and their signifieds (concepts) are matched with their objective counterparts which are achieved by hearing sounds, witnessing associations and assimilating models of language behavior in the environment.

But what does this do for belief being propositional? Well, it presents an understanding of beliefs and propositions that does not recognize the distinction. Propositional affirmations and beliefs are reduced consummations of problems solved. "My cat is on the rug" is true by virtue of a body of anticipations regarding rugs, cats, the copula 'is', the the ascription of properties, etc., which are themselves all confirmed in their repeatable behaviors. Knowledge that there is a sidewalk that will sustain my steps is a science experiment at every step, consummated, and this and a great number of other pragmatically based assumptions about sidewalks is what a sidewalk IS; this collective of pragmatic assumptions are the very definitions of Being.

Then why bother with a philosophy forum? There are plenty of science forums.

Because science isn't philosophy. Apples and oranges. The latter deals with an entirely distinct set of problems, those that are presupposed by the former. If you find yourself reading science to find your philosophical answers, then you are just asking science questions.

THE RADICAL EVIL OF DECONSTRUCTION: A REPLY TO JOHN CAPUTO

I will read this and get back to you.

Can an animal believe? Does my cat "believe" the open front door goes to the outside where the trees and squirrels are? Most definitely! Is it propositional belief? I think it is a proto-propositional belief. Consider the propositional structure of the conditional: If X opens the door, there will be Y that ensues. Note that my cats certainly gets this essential structure, but I while it is foolish to think her "getting it" is propositional, what is propositional cannot be wholly other than what actually goes through her mind (yes, mind). After all, our conditional logical form very likely is constructed on t he foundation that pragmatically "mirrors" the primitive, non symbolic cat knowing.