Although there is no such thing as a perfect system of government, I would quite like to know what form of government is the closest to being perfect? — Sigmund Freud

Government without a state. A decentralized network of independent, collaborative and consensual collections of democratically-elected individuals with term limits and limited powers.

Yeah, I was also surprised at how many virtue ethicists there are on here. Also nominalists.

I actually tried reading Being and Time many years ago and found it utterly impenetrable. My thought recently has been that some of his shorter essays might be more approachable. I have a Basic Works of Heidegger on my list as well as the Safranski biography, so I do hope to have at least a baseline knowledge of him. I know nothing about Levinas, but he's another continental figure, so I'm a little wary of him, too. If I get into a PhD program, I'll be focusing on Schopenhauer, so my planned reading list won't be tackled for some time. — Thorongil

If you thought Being and Time was impenetrable then I don't know what you'll think of Levinas, haha. Well, that's not entirely true, some of Levinas' texts are easier and digestible. Time and the Other as well as Otherwise Than Being are tough, but some of his shorter works are easier.

Two of my favorite texts by Heidegger are, The Question Concerning Technology and The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, the latter being where he mentions Scholasticism as the decline of philosophizing proper.

Then for Levinas, shorter texts are Useless Suffering, and On Escape. A longer text, but one of my favorites, is Time and the Other.

It seems to be how physicists currently treat dark matter, for example. And it seems to me that I can know that I exist without knowing what I am. With God, I think the Scholastics would say that we can make true statements about what God is (e.g. God is being-itself) without fully understanding what they mean. — Thorongil

It is interesting you bring up the point about knowing that I am without knowing who or what I am. But I have to wonder, how is it that I know that I am without knowing any essence of myself? What is knowledge without essence?

Just based on my own thinking on things, I have to agree with something along the lines of the Schopenhauerian Will. I know I exist, because I am striving. I suffer. This is the primal apodicticity - I suffer, therefore I am.

Another angle to approach this by would be to go a Thomistic / Wittgensteinian route and argue that not everything can be articulated with words. That we may understand without being able to communicate means that at least some knowledge is esoteric and cannot be communicated to a population with an increasingly narrow attention span.

Well, they are presented as deductive, not inductive, arguments, so if the conclusion follows from the premises and the premises are true, then they would be indubitable in the way, 1) all men are mortal, 2) Socrates is a man, 3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal is indubitable. — Thorongil

Sure, but I would say that the premises of these arguments are inductive. That change happens is an empirical observation, for instance. That things depend on each other for their mode of existence is not an a priori deduction. That there may seem to be some kind of design to the world is certainly an empirical observation. Theological arguments like this start from everyday, common experiences and abstract from there.

The point I suppose I was trying to make was that it is not only implausible (in my opinion), but also not preferable, to hold the existence of God as "just another fact", alongside the truth of evolutionary theory, or the orbital trajectory of Saturn. God should not be an entity to be "studied". If we were to "prove" that God exists beyond any reason of doubt, would we need any faith? Would there be any difference between science and religion?

In my mind, the fact is that theological arguments will never reach the level of sophistication and universal acceptance as the more ordinary scientific theories. And that may just be well. Part of the seduction of religious belief is the mystery behind it, and the breathtaking risk associated with believing in something that is not the product of reason (but is not contradictory to reason, of course). As soon as we think these arguments are perfect, I think that might be the end of religion. God would become ordinary. I don't think I want to actively pursue God like this.

Thank you, Erik.

Thank you, Wayfarer.

I'm not too familiar with Heidegger, but what you attribute to him here accords well with my position. Leibniz lurks in the background of my thoughts on the question you're responding to, as I've come to sense that his version of the principle of sufficient reason might be superior to Schopenhauer's, and Leibniz's version, of course, leads pretty straight forwardly to theism. — Thorongil

Definitely read Heidegger, but I also recommend Levinas. Both are critical of historical philosophy. Heidegger critiques what he sees to be a diminution of Being to beings, especially in light of the modern technological-industrial revolution. I think he even identifies Scholastic "metaphysics" christened as a science in itself as the beginning of the decline of philosophy proper. Levinas critiques what he sees to be an "egology" behind most metaphysical systems, where everything Other is attempted to be assimilated into one grand totality that the mind can understand. There are things we encounter without understanding, and the dominant tradition has been to either ignore or reduce away these things. Though he points out certain times in which philosophers have recognized the Other, such as Descartes' attempt to use our knowledge of infinity as an argument for God. Anyway.

I concur. But recall that the pre-modern philosophers you speak of made a distinction between knowing what and knowing that something is. We cannot know God's essence but we can know that he exists, they would say. — Thorongil

Yeah, I agree. Though it's sort of difficult for me to wrap my head around the notion that we can know that something exists without knowing hardly anything (if anything) about that which is said to exist. Seems to me that we need at least some basic understanding of what it is we are talking about if we are to say that something "exists".

But this could also be a modern influence to equivocate God's existence with the existence of ordinary objects. I'm not sure what exactly it means when we say God exists if we are not talking about something in space-time with definite qualities, but this is just what Heidegger means when he says the question of Being is not a question of beings, and seems to also be what Levinas tries to get at when he says the Other is beyond the totality. The encounter before understanding. The mind cannot grasp God, because God is beyond the totality.

I'm not sure I agree here. Another Scholastic distinction is between the preambles of the faith and the articles of the faith. The existence of God was thought to be a preamble of the faith, and so capable of rational demonstration. The articles of faith, however, do require faith, for they are revealed truths, that is, truths that do not contradict reason but cannot be arrived at by reason, such as the Trinity. — Thorongil

I was not aware of this distinction, thanks. I thought it was that demonstrations only led the path to God for non-believers and did not establish his existence as some kind of indubitable fact, only as possible and perhaps even likely. I thought Aquinas did not think reason alone could establish that the universe did not extend temporally ad infinitum, for example, and that it's creation by a necessary being was a metaphysically coherent notion that was nevertheless taken on by faith.

The more interesting and pressing question is whether the phantasmagoria of experience exhausts the category of the real. In other words, the more important question is not what objects are, but why they are. If this question has no answer, nihilism results. If this question has an answer, but we can't know it, skepticism results. If this question has an answer, and we can know it, then something like theism results. — Thorongil

Eloquently stated, although perhaps too poetic for my tastes. I believe this to be a prevalent theme in Heidegger's obsession with Being, one of the drama kings of 20th century philosophy. Heidegger thought metaphysics begins with the question of why anything exists at all - or the question of Being. That there is a distinction between that which is, and Being as such, is what I feel is what makes it so powerful to me when Leibniz wrote:

"...[concerning knowledge] of the necessary and eternal truths, above all those which are the most comprehensive and which have the most relation to the sovereign being ... this knowledge alone is good in itself ... all the rest is mercenary."

This comprehensive understanding of everything is the aim of metaphysics. And I think it to be true that Heidegger and many of his contemporaries represented a movement in philosophy that attempted to deflate the importance of metaphysics - at least a certain kind of metaphysics. No more should we approach metaphysics with the confidence that we know what Being is. No more should we consider existence as a substance.

"Metaphysics is a dualism," Heidegger once wrote, and his and others' work reflect a desire to mitigate this reoccurring split. The mind is not separate from the world, it is in the world. Theoretical knowledge is not the primary form of understanding. That something like eliminative materialism is seen as even remotely plausible speaks volumes about what I see to be a deficiency and prejudice in the epistemology and metaphysics of many today.

When you say:

If this question has an answer, and we can know it, then something like theism results. — Thorongil

I agree in some sense but not entirely. I reject the notion that the divine, if it exists, would be something that we can come to "know" in such a way that we can express it using the vocabulary of the everyday. Aquinas' insistence on the analogical nature of theological language is important here. And Levinas takes this to a whole new level. We encounter without understanding the Other, grasping its trace (its existence confirmed by its non-existence) without its essence. The modern notion of theism (and one in which atheism is almost overwhelmingly dependent on) that God is a being-amongst-beings, differing only by quantitative magnitudes and suspiciously anthropomorphic characteristics, stands opposite to both Scholastic and post-modern conceptions of God which explicitly resist describing God as if describing an ordinary object.

And this is what I see to be the seductive aspect of metaphysics: the drive for the extraordinary. All around us are the mundane, the repetitive, the ordinary. If only there could be some better dimension, perfect, stable and transcendent to this boring and violent place! Obviously this is a Nietzschean view of things.

In my opinion, I think metaphysical theorizing is primarily motivated by a strong desire to find reasons to believe in what is not experienced. Yet a religious belief based on rationalist proofs is hardly religious at all, because it lacks the risk of faith. Before the modern era, demonstrations of God's existence were meant to get people on the path of faith, not establish without a doubt that God exists, because that would jeopardize faith and ran contrary to the epistemology of the time which held that only God, and not reason, could establish a connection between the object (man) and the subject (God), which was later reversed in the modern Enlightenment as man became the subject and God became the object which was to be known.

But even Aquinas' analogical language and his insistence on the limitations of human reason make me queesy. I prefer the idea that we must lose God in order to come closer to him. I have lost God, I cannot find him but have not stopped trying to listen. These attempted proofs strike me as ways humans try to accelerate their relationship with God, and put God under the totality.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Point being, I agree that if there is a reason for the world being, then this engenders some form of theism, but I think if this is indeed the case then we can never know much more than pale imitations and metaphors. We may know but only so much, to perhaps such a minimal degree that we might even wonder if it is even knowledge and not simply an encounter with something which exceeds ourselves.

A Short History of Atheism by Gavin Hyman. Fascinating read.

Rationality is light, supposedly. It is associated with enlightement, wisdom, philosophy, science, blah blah blah. To find fault in rationality is simply impossible. You would have to be either mad or a fool or both to even think of painting rationality in a negative light.

However, there's this small thing that's been nagging me for some time. Every evil deed that has ever been committed has been done under the aegis of rationality. There's always a perfectly good ''reason'' to insult someone or hit someone ir even to kill him/her. — TheMadFool

It's interesting you say this, because this is something Levinas spends a lot of time discussing. Levinas interprets the history of western philosophy as being "egology", where the desire is to know things, for things to reveal themselves (similarly to what you said: knowledge is light). Ultimately everything is put under the totality of Same-ness, me-ness, for-me, etc. It is directed outwards, but comes from inside. This totality is hostile to anything not of itself. Violence, murder, genocide, all of these are enabled by a lack of recognition of the Other, or the decision to destroy it.

But there's trickles of alterity in the history as well. Descartes' argument for the existence of God by appealing to the concept of the infinite, philosophical discussions of death (the impossibility of possibility) and the erotic are not of the Same. More chiefly is the Other, and its trace, in which we encounter without understanding and which forms the primordial basis for ethics.

When it comes to ethics, then, I think something could be said about how we approach other people and the world at large plays a large part in how we fare as human beings in general. Do we see people as instruments to be used, abused and discarded after their utility is exhausted, or do we respect them, give them distance, yet be prepared to help them when necessary? Do we take more than we give? Do we spit words at people, or do we let our language be one of many ways of gift-giving?

What do you think? Is this the only flaw in rationality? Does rationality have other shortcomings? — TheMadFool

I don't know if rationality itself is responsible for moral corruption. Surely Kant thought morality was grounded in rationality, and that someone not acting morally was not acting fully rationally, even if they are capable of rational thought. In other words, the means may be rational but the ends are not. It is not until an action is done from a sense of duty out of a rational understanding of human dignity that it becomes truly a morally praiseworthy action. At least, so Kant thought.

If there is a flaw to rationality I would have to say that it has destroyed illusions and has retroactively attempted and systematically failed to construct suitable replacements.

Hilarious video XD

This seems like a loaded question. What movement are you referring to that is seeking to establish such a "right"?

Minor to moderate anxiety seems to be the natural state. If you're completely relaxed, there's probably something wrong that you're not aware of, and being aware of this possibility will end your state of relaxation.

Quite literally we have to "take our minds off things" to relax. Our awareness has to be limited. We "shut down" a bit.

No, but I'm trying my best.

...just kidding, I could do a lot better.

Determinism cannot be proven synthetically, as we could never hope to perceive and understand every happening. It also cannot be proven analytically, because it's not obvious a priori that an event always has to have a cause. For instance,
when you said:

At the most basic level, things happen because they are caused by other things.

If you roll a pair of dice, the result is not random, but determined by the laws of physics. If you knew all relevant information (e.g. force of throw, distance of throw, angle of throw, nature of surface, etc.), you could figure out what the result would be.

Take that simple example and apply it to everything. The fact is that you couldn't have all the information to determine what could happen, for example, with human behaviour. But hypothetically if you did, then you would be able to predict it with ease. — RepThatMerch22

You have not really argued for this, but merely asserted that determinism must be true, with its associated consequences.

The question of determinism, as you seem to understand, is whether we would be able to accurately predict what would happen in the future given we know everything that is currently present.

All of this being said, however, I do agree with you that determinism, or something very close to it, is likely true. Most of our scientific advances are that of universal law-like tendencies. Science itself has been successful in part because it assumes things do have causes, or explanations, for why they are the way they are. So although empirical evidence can never fully prove that determinism is true, neither can it fully prove that indeterminism is true (as it is with most metaphysical debates). Given the success science has had operating under a deterministic perspective, it seems reasonable to assume that the world operates deterministically, or at the very least under tendencies that do not radically differ whenever.

The problem with your OP is that you assert that determinism must be true. How are you getting necessity out of empirical observation?

I think regardless of the truth of his statement, Trump calling countries "shitholes" is going to make it difficult to have amiable foreign relations with these countries. Nobody likes their country being called a shithole, especially if it's not primarily your fault that it's a shithole and even moreso if you are trying very hard to make things less of a shithole.

Why do we call these countries "third-world" or "developing" countries instead of "shithole" countries? Because it's disrespectful, ahistorical and imperialistic to call them shitholes when the white man was instrumental in making many of these places the shitholes they are.

I think it's true that there are biases in philosophical debates, and also that this has always been the case and will likely always continue to be the case. A lot of our beliefs depend on how we interpret the perceptual data given to us. It is not the case that we can just open our eyes more and the world will give each and every one of us the exact same thing. So when people disagree about things in philosophy, a lot of the time it has to do with simply a difference in assumed principles and axioms. If you don't agree with my position, you can always just assume different principles and therefore hold a different position, and there's nothing I can really do about that unless your principles are logically incoherent.

Take the skepticism debate. Most people seem to want to preserve or validate scientific knowledge of the world. Why? It's not a rational reason but a desire to see scientific knowledge vindicated. And while later on we might come to a pragmatic conclusion that seems to validate this knowledge, it's fundamentally the values and desires we have that seem to constitute our orientation to philosophical positions. Someone who doesn't care about science as much, or likes to go against the status quo, or whatever, is more likely to adopt a skeptical position about science or epistemology in general.

Someone may object that this may be the case for some people, but others (coincidentally themselves) have the psychological type or drive to pursue truth without any desire for what the truth ends up being. How convenient and question-begging. The idea that philosophers and scientists are somehow pursuing pure and untainted knowledge is a form of magical thinking. Objective knowledge isn't derived from the pure pursuit of it. It comes as a side-effect of a battlegrounds of competing wills-to-power. Positions are held because people like them, and they only let go (if ever!) when there is an overwhelming amount of evidence and reasons against it. Hence why people we disagree with seem to not let go of positions even when we think we have conclusively shown it to be false (and they think the same of ours'). A good example of this, I think, is the continual interest in the ontological argument for God. It's been disproven so many times in the past and it still keep cropping up. Some people just don't want to let go of it. They hope one day there will be a form of the ontological argument that actually does work. And maybe they're right, who knows.

This is the question of altruism. I think it's probably the case that most or no actions are entirely either selfish or altruistic. But I think it's wrong to call selfish what we otherwise normally would call altruistic just because you derive pleasure from it. If the ancient Greeks are to be believed, then a good person does the right thing, or lives virtuously, because they want to do the right thing.

This is, of course, relevant to Kantian ethics as well. A common misconception is that Kant thought only actions motivated by the purely rational Categorical Imperative were morally praiseworthy. As is commonly thought, Kant held that most actions are motivated by desires and that these desires corrupt the moral "perfection" of a good will. Hence the picture a lot of people have of Kant's ethics as involving a person who genuinely hates doing the right thing as the most morally pure person. This is a misconstrual of Kant's moral philosophy, but whatever.

Anyway, ethical intuitionism seems pretty bust on most accounts. — apokrisis

This is a huge misunderstanding these days, unfortunately. Intuitionism fell out of favor because the major defenders died, and the idea was subsequently misinterpreted horribly later on. It's getting a good revival nowadays though. Michael Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism was one of the books that helped launch it back to the forefront of moral realism. But this is a detour from the OP, I'll make a different post later when I have more time.

Intuitionism....

In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism (opposed to preintuitionism), is an approach where mathematics is considered to be purely the result of the constructive mental activity of humans rather than the discovery of fundamental principles claimed to exist in an objective reality. — apokrisis

"Intuition", as I'm sure you are aware, is a term used in philosophy that has lots of different meanings depending on the context. I most definitely am not using intuition in the sense of some magical "sixth sense", nor am I affirming what is quoted here. I am coming from the perspective of philosophers like Moore, Ross, Prichard and Sidgwick, i.e. the British Intuitionists, as well as contemporary moral intuitionists like Audi and Huemer. Ethics is a separate branch of inquiry, and cannot be reduced to a descriptive science. We come to know moral truths in a very similar way to how we come to know mathematical or logical truths - we "see" something as good or evil, right or wrong, just as we come to "see" the validity of a logical proof, or "see" how a mathematical theorem makes sense.

But the Good is of course then a warm, fuzzy, human concept of essential cosmic value. So what we now look for in nature is just a straightforward optimisation principle - like least action. A structure is good (it can endure and thus exist) as it expresses an equilibrium balance. — apokrisis

See this is where I find an issue with naturalistic ethics, including natural law theory. The "goodness" of a working piece of equipment, the "perfection" of a functional object or system, is NOT equivalent to "goodness" in the moral sense. I think, as Moore does, that moral goodness is undefinable analytically. And so while we may come to see what grounds moral goodness, say pleasure or virtue, the analytic definition of goodness will always be transcendent upon this ground.

The Good is not a warm, fuzzy feeling in the non-cognitive sense. Perhaps we respond to the Good by feeling warm and fuzzy but it certainly is not the case that this feeling itself is what is the Good.

Can you elaborate?

So you have no interest in replying to what I said. Okay. — Thorongil

Maybe I'd be more inclined to talk about this if you brought this up elsewhere. I don't know why you continue to insist on discussing a private gripe with me in a public discussion.

You sound like you're from a top 10 worst anime villains of all time.

Forget the theism/atheism debate here. I ask everyone, theists and atheists: does the concept of a being from before time creating everything make sense? If so, why? If not, why? — Starthrower

Does the concept of an uncaused world that nevertheless seems contingent make sense?

The only perspective I have is my perspective. Don't you think you should only apologize if you recognize that what you did was wrong/inappropriate? Just because someone claims you did something wrong, doesn't mean you actually did do something wrong and thus must apologize to them.

But to talk of morality transcending that socially-constructed framework is to talk about it having some human-independent, and nature or evolution independent, basis.

I'm not sure from your words whether you have clearly disentangled the two incompatible positions and chosen a side to stand on. Either our morality is the normative product of natural circumstances or it has some super-natural basis. — apokrisis

No, this is a false dichotomy. For instance I think mathematics is transcendent to socially-accepted norms. Logic transcends society. Yet our capacity to ascertain logic and mathematics presumably comes from evolution. I think the same thing applies to morality.

There's nothing "spooky" or "queer" about objective morality under an intuitionist view. I think we come to know moral truths in a similar way we come to know mathematical truths, or understand logical reasoning. I think you're begging the question here by assuming that an evolutionary explanation of morality necessarily precludes the possibility of objective morality. Hence why you automatically assume any objective morality must be "super-natural".

Of course, since I deny values can be reduced to natural properties in the same way water can be reduced to H2O, I'm committed to there being a separate realm of things other than descriptive facts. Stabilizing society =/= good, because it's an open ended question as to what goodness is, in both the analytic and synthetic sense.

Doesn't matter, for you said that "a person should still apologize for what they have done even if they did it accidentally or did not mean to do the wrong thing." So if you refuse to apologize, then you don't actually agree with this statement and are in fact a liar and a hypocrite. — Thorongil

No, I'm not going to apologize because I don't recognize what I did to have been inappropriate. You may think it was inappropriate, but I don't agree with you on this. How is this difficult to understand?

I think people over-estimate how much they actually need.

If you don't feel guilty about being a rich white male, or his fortunate wife, how did you manage to solve your guilt problem? — Bitter Crank

By trying to help those who are less fortunate. Feeling guilty doesn't help anyone.

You forgot to add on what I said afterwards:

My view is that, no, a person should still apologize for what they have done even if they did it accidentally or did not mean to do the wrong thing, because apologizing is a way of communicating your recognition that what you did was, in fact, wrong to do. Not apologizing for doing the wrong thing in general means you either don't think it actually was the wrong thing to do, or you have a character flaw that precludes you from admitting failure and assuming responsibility. — darthbarracuda

I've already told you that I don't recognize what I did to have been inappropriate. Thus I do not feel compelled to apologize.

Yes, in the off chance that you are actually bothered by your own hypocrisy and interested in reconciling, I felt I had to respond. — Thorongil

Yet you picked a terrible place to bring this up.

I stand by my post, as it directly bore on the topic of this thread. It wasn't an attempt to derail it or troll. — Thorongil

Then what exactly was it supposed to do, then? I have no idea why you thought to bring a private conversation up in a public discussion, and re-route the philosophical discussion to your personal gripe with how I treated you however long ago that was.

Of course it is incoherent. Either the basis of morality is transcendent of society or it is simply whatever society does in terms of what works for it.

If there is some moral absolute, then there is no excuse for a moral agent to ignore that. Moral relativism becomes simply indefensible. One's duty is not to the whims of society but the absolutes we claim to have transcendent status.

And then vice versa. If morality is relative to the social good - what works for it - then that is the standard to which a moral agent ought to direct their strategic reasoning.

Things are then only gray or muddled to the degree that moral agents can't make up their minds which is the case.

But yes. Many really are muddled in just this fashion. — apokrisis

It's not incoherent. There's absolutely nothing incoherent with the notion that there is a fact of the matter as to what we ought to do that transcends society, but that our epistemic access to this is muddled, confused, or otherwise limited in some way. There's a lot of truth to the saying that doing the right thing is by accident. Or - to put an Aristotelian twist on it - doing the right thing is oftentimes (but not always) due to a prior development of habit, in which action virtuously or morally comes naturally, and the moral agent is capable of deftly maneuvering given the circumstances ... but that this does not constitute perfect moral knowledge. (I've been toying with the idea that given our nature and circumstances there cannot ever be a "right" action, but that's a different topic).

Ultimately we may divide meta-ethical theories between dualistic theories and monistic theories. In fact there is only one dualistic theory (intuitionism), and four monistic theories (naturalism, subjectivism, non-cognitivism, nihilism). I'm of course championing intuitionism - I think there is a clear difference in kind between facts and values, and that any sort of morality that can be recognized as morality must employ some form of rational intuition.

"What works for society" is ambiguous, because it hides the fact that society only works if people do actually believe in some form of transcendent value - even the social contract theory implicitly holds that life, or something similar, is good. There is a system of justice because people believe justice to be morally important. Laws are made (sometimes) with morality in mind. etc. To the degree that someone believes what is good (transcendent) = what maintains social stability, then doing what will keep society stable will be one and the same with doing the good.

It seems you have no interest in reconciling. So be it. I'm happy to ignore you once more. — Thorongil

I never said that. I said I have no interest in reconciling in this discussion, which you have masterfully managed to de-rail.

Now you're trolling...

Right, that's why it was relevant. — Thorongil

No, that's not relevant. This is a philosophical discussion, not a place for you to mention private interactions and relish in the apparent irony.

But if morality is about collective social goals, then we instead hope that mature individuals are rational game players. They don't merely just follow norms blindly, nor ignore them selfishly, but play the social games creatively and strategically. — apokrisis

I don't see how we can't have both. Morality as socially-transcendent yet moral agents maneuvering in creative and strategic ways. There's nothing incoherent from what I can tell with the notion that there is an actual transcendent morality but it's muddled and "gray" in the colloquial way of looking at it.

I'm doing so now because it seems especially relevant. — Thorongil

How is it relevant, though? You actually said you brought it up because you thought it was ironic.

I don't care if it is or isn't, I'm just pointing this out to you. — Thorongil

Either you're lying about not caring, or your intent is to create drama. Why, though?

I'm feeling for myself, after some deliberation, that apology is part of a ritual or symbolic exchange. You make an apology when you believe that by such a speech act you will place yourself, and the person you're apologising to, in a better relation than your present mutual standing. That's it! — mcdoodle

I agree that apologizing can put two people on higher mutual standing with each other. But I will say that apologizing only to get to a better standing with another person is insincere, even manipulative. You should apologize first and foremost when you have done something wrong and the other person deserves to be supplicated to. Sincere apologizing is an act of humble submission - you put yourself at the mercy of the other person, and they can either reject or accept your apology.

Shiiiit, you're still hung up on that? If I remember correctly I said I was going to be honest with you anyway. Do I need to apologize for being honest?

I'm not going to apologize for something I don't see as wrong. That would just be insincere of me, a sniffling apology to get back on someone's "good" side. I'll apologize when I think I actually did screw up and feel the other person deserves an apology.

I apologize if that was rude... /s

Edit: to an extent I come from a Levinasian stance, in which I experience a primordial demand to apologize to anyone and everyone simply for my very existence. I get in other people's way, interrupt their projects, irritate them, etc. Any sort of self-righteous indignation is a violence against the other person. So, I do feel a need to apologize to you, just as I feel the need to apologize to everyone. But from a broader, third-person perspective, as an impartial observer, I don't think someone else would agree that I should apologize for each and every thing I do.

That's what I wonder. Can people actually choose to do wrong? If they are making real world choices, they must weight the decision with many factors. And of course it is easy to rationalise and tip the balance the way that favours yourself and your interests. But that just says people construct some belief about whether they are overall in the right or in the wrong. And having done that, by definition really, they pick what is for them the "right".

Talk of intentionally picking the course you know to be wrong doesn't sound coherent. You are really talking about people picking the course they know you would likely judge wrong - but they would rather see what they want to do as right. — apokrisis

I don't agree with what I see to be your reduction of moral rightness/wrongness to subjective or inter-subjective opinions, or calling it "right" instead of right. You and I seem to be using different concepts here, as it is plain to me that choosing the course that is morally wrong is very much so possible and coherent and happens all the time, whereas you seem to be using it in the sense of prudential rationality, or weakness of will.

I'd be more interested in something like the ancient Greek notion that evil is born from ignorance. But that would lead us to the question of moral responsibility in general, and not just apologizing (but also punishment, justice, redemption, etc).

So your OP seemed to want a black and white absolute moral principle. But morality is normally pragmatic. — apokrisis

No, not at all, I explicitly reject any sort of black-and-white moral absolutism. At least, any sort of morality that can be cashed out in real life. But rejecting absolutism doesn't necessarily imply relativism or extreme particularism. We can certainly have prima facie principles and duties, which I think ultimately is what is the case. So the OP, far from asking for absolutes, is asking for general, "at first glance" moral principles. At first glance, when someone does something wrong, they ought to apologize regardless of their intentions. But this of course isn't an absolute. It's only a guideline for what tends to be the most appropriate thing to do.

Really, I'm less interested in the meta-ethics this time and more interested in actual normative ethics.

But if you intentionally do the wrong thing, surely you must believe that in some larger way it is the right thing? So it would then be unreasonable to apologise - unless you have also come to believe you were in fact wrong and so changed your mind about what is right.

Whereas if you do something wrong by accident, then apologising is no big deal. You are not to blame. An accident is. You are apologising for an accident for which you are not responsible in any intentional sense. — apokrisis

People can do the wrong thing knowing it is the wrong thing because they do not care about morality, and care more about themselves or whatever. Promising a friend to do something for them but deciding to not fulfill this promise and go have fun partying or whatever instead is an example.

If I were to crash my car into someone else's on accident, I would feel compelled to apologize even though I didn't do it on purpose.