Is there a distinction between doubting the proposition that a sentence expresses, and doubting what proposition that sentence expresses? It seems to me that there is, but that is a distinction that threatens to be collapsing under your defence of KILPOD.

...There might be cases where it really is not clear even to experts whether the x should be classed as an ant or a termite, and there one might think that it is actually the meaning of the terms that is is being brought into question as well, but that is a very specific kind of case.

I think you are right that my defence of KILPOD does threaten to collapse that distinction, and that threat is present in Wittgenstein's own account in OC. It think there is a distinction to be made, but it is more a question of emphasis than anything clear cut. Donald Davidson's theory of meaning, for example, defines the meaning of a sentence in terms of its truth-conditions. To understand the meaning of "x is an ant" is to know when, and if, "x is an ant" is true. So, conversely, Davidson says: "to give truth conditions is a way of giving the meaning of a sentence" (Inquiries into Truth & Interpretation, pg. 24). Clearly, then (in so far as this is a plausible theory of meaning, which I think it is), the question of whether or not "x is an ant" is true, is not really separable from the question of what "ant" means - or, to be properly Davidsonian, what "x is an ant" means. One may look at x and say, "That is definitely a termite rather than an ant", but only because one already knows how to distinguish the meaning of "termite" from the meaning of "ant", in terms of the conditions which make "x is a termite" true. The only difference in the special case you mention is that the expert is dealing with a borderline case; the consequent difficulty in classification is both empirical and semantic, and might lead to a revision of the criteria for classifying ants and termites.

Borderline cases in the use of "I know that..." are of particular interest to W, with particular reference to what he dubs "Moorean propositions". Moorean propositions occupy an interestingly ambiguous area between the empirical and the non-empirical. An example would be "I have a head". Normally this would be treated as a non-empirical proposition, and would be senseless to doubt (in fact in normal conversation it would be a senseless thing to say). Normally, it would be senseless to say "I doubt I have a head", and consequently (according to W) it would be equally senseless to say "I know I have a head". But even here, one can imagine a special case in which "I have a head" is treated as an empirical proposition (i.e. by questioning it): a small child says "Do I have a head, daddy?", to which the reply is "Of course, everyone's got a head". As Andy Hamilton says: "A Wittgensteinian response to this...is that, here, the child is learning the meaning of "head", rather than enquiring whether she has one; indeed that there is no clear distinction here between learning facts and learning the meanings of words." (Hamilton 2014, pg. 203). So, strictly speaking, the logical possibility of doubt exists here, but that doesn't mean doubt is normal in this case. It only takes a special case for a logical possibility to exist. But Cartesian doubt goes much further than the Moorean propositions and arrives at a level of certainty that cannot logically be doubted. The Cogito takes us to the point where I cannot doubt my own existence (as a thinking thing) because the very act of doubting guarantees my existence (as a thinking thing). But W would say it is, for that very reason, nonsensical to say "I doubt I exist" and consequently equally nonsensical to say "I know I exist". The Cogito does not furnish us with knowledge or any foundation for knowledge. Cartesian "certainty" and its attendant scepticism about everything that doesn't have the same indubitable certainty, is the real target of KILPOD.

If I point to a thing and label it an elephant I do not need to know what an elephant is besides the one thing I pointed to.

In order to correctly label it an elephant, you need to know that the thing you point to is an elephant. So you at least need to know what an elephant looks like. Otherwise you're just talking about pointing to something, which could be anything, and labelling it an elephant. If you didn't know any facts about ants or elephants, you wouldn't know to label an elephant as an elephant rather than as an ant.

First of all, you have again shifted the subject of discussion from "an elephant" to elephants. This again is asking for essence. I do not need to /say/ what the difference between two objects is, it is enough for them to be distinguishable. To subsume particular objects under some concept of "type" is not necessarily a valid starting point. And yet this seems to be what you are always trying to do here.

First of all, the subject of discussion to which you refer was between myself and jkg20. Only you are insisting that I keep shifting the subject from "an elephant" to "elephants", even though jkg20 has also gone from "no ant is an elephant" to "ants are not elephants". That's because jkg20, unlike you, understands that the two propositions are logically equivalent. You can't say "no ant is an elephant" without subsuming particular objects under the type-concepts of "ant" and "elephant". "No ant is an elephant" means not a single object of the type "ant" is an object of the type "elephant". This of course is a true proposition. But we have to understand what ants in general are and what elephants in general are in order to know that it is true.

Secondly, to talk about "elephants" (as opposed to "an elephant") is not "asking for essence". To assume that concepts of type involve "essences" is a specifically Platonic assumption, against which Wittgenstein is well known for arguing in his later philosophy. You may have noticed my frequent references to Wittgenstein in my discussions with jkg20 (the purpose of which is to establish an anti-Cartesian position. Descartes was an essentialist.

But admitting that is not the same thing as admitting the possibility of doubt concerning the proposition that it actually does express. It is merely to allow the possibility that words used to express that proposition may have meant things other than they actually do. That is not doubt, that is just accepting alternative linguistic possibilities.

This simply begs the question of what proposition is actually being expressed. Knowing that x is an ant is not separable from knowing what "ant" means. The truth-conditions for the proposition "x is an ant" give the meaning of "ant", as Donald Davidson would say. To question whether or not x is an ant is to question what "ant" means. Suppose I say "The evening star is not the morning star." We know very well that this proposition is false, because as it happens "the evening star" refers to Venus, and so does "the morning star". But it might have been otherwise. The logical possibility of doubt exists there (i.e. of doubt that the proposition is false in this case). If I say "kestrels are not windhovers", how would you go about finding out if that is true or false? You may know already, or you may know what a kestrel is but not what a windhover is. If you didn't know what a windhover is, you'd need to look up the word "windhover", and then you'd find out that "windhover" is an alternative name for "kestrel". So then you'd know that "kestrels are not windhovers" is false. But it might have been true, just as "Ants are not elephants" might have been false.

In any case, if you are attempting to lay down a necessary or sufficient or necessary and sufficient condition for what counts as knowable, you are not being very Wittgensteinian...

Admittedly KILPOD does sound like a (proposed) necessary condition for knowledge. But then you'd have to accuse Wittgenstein of not being very Wittgensteinian. Here's a quote from Andy Hamilton's Wittgenstein and On Certainty (Routledge 2014): "KILPOD is stated at OC 58: " 'There is no such thing as a doubt in this case'...it follows from this that 'I know' makes no sense either" (also OC 41, 121-23). And OC 10 rejects the Cartesian view: "One thinks that the words 'I know that...' are always in place when there is no doubt, and hence where the expression of doubt would be unintelligible" - that is, where there is no logical possibility of doubt. His implication is that they are not in place in such a situation."

In other words, if "Ants are not elephants" were beyond the logical possibility of doubt, then "Ants are not elephants" would not count as knowledge. But because it's an empirical proposition, it is open to the logical possibility of doubt, so it does count as knowledge.

Any ideas how to go about denying 2?

Who's trying to deny it?

No. The ability to differentiate the two is an obvious indicator of their difference. If you have A=A say "but in this case A was a B" this leads to B=B. It is still the same. Even if I (obligingly) wrote A=B with "B not=A" this would only prove that such a thing cannot be, logically.

"A=B & B not = A" is a logical contradiction. It doesn't provide us with knowledge because it's nonsense. But if I say "Elephants are different from antelopes", that is either true or false as a matter of empirical enquiry, not of logical necessity. It provides us with knowledge because is true, but is not true of logical necessity (it is open to the logical possibility of doubt).

I'm only concerned about the cogito ergo sum argument. Is it a sound argument or not?

"I think, therefore I am", is not a logically valid argument. To be valid it would need to take the form "If I think, then I exist. I think, therefore I exist." (modus ponens). If the premises of this argument are true, then the conclusion must also be true, but that is a mere tautology. The conclusion doesn't tell us anything more than the premises already tell us, so it doesn't give us any knowledge. Since the purpose of the Cogito argument is to provide a sound foundation of knowledge, it fails in that purpose even when transposed into a valid argument.

And how do you justify the proposition that things are not simply what is meant? I can just say "that" is definitely not "this". Just look at the letters THAT THIS. You see the difference, right? What is different cannot be the same. It requires changing the subject from the concrete thing in question to it's essence to doubt this. But why would I want to change subjects?

The subject here is Cartesian doubt, which I am not trying to justify. Quite the reverse. According to Descartes the only certainty I have about THAT THIS is that I am aware of an image which appears to me as THAT THIS. It's open to doubt (according to Descartes), whether there is anything outside my own mind corresponding to the image (e.g. a computer screen with THAT and THIS written on it). It seems to me there's a difference between THAT and THIS, but my eyes could be deceiving me, or I could be imagining a difference that isn't really there, or I could be dreaming. These are all logical possibilities. But that doesn't mean they are real, sensible possibilities. I agree with Wittgenstein that entertaining such doubts is nonsensical; it undermines the very possibility of meaning, truth and knowledge. So I agree with you that the difference between THAT and THIS is as obvious as anything is. It makes no sense to doubt it. It is so manifestly obvious that it lies "outside the route of enquiry", as Wittgenstein would say. To say "I know that THAT is not the same as THIS" seems somehow ridiculous. It's the sort of knowledge that is so taken for granted that it wouldn't usually occur to us to claim it as knowledge. But it is still open to the logical possibility of doubt.

The case of "no ant is an elephant" is more complicated because reference is being made to things outside the words "ant" and "elephant" themselves. Just because there is a manifest difference between the words doesn't mean (necessarily) that there is a difference between the things that the two words refer to. It's a logical possibility that they could have referred to the same things, even though, in fact, they don't. This has nothing to do with essences. It has only to do with the distinction between what is in fact the case and what is logically possible.

The earth orbiting the sun is a fact, what we think is happening is a fiction.

Do you think the earth is orbiting the sun?

But how, knowing what "no ant is an elephant" means, is it possible to doubt it? Sure, I may not know the meaning of "ant" and/or I may not know the meaning of "elephant" but then I simply do not understand the proposition that no ant is an elephant...

But it is precisely the meaning of "no ant is an elephant" that is open to the logical possibility of doubt! Knowing what the terms "ant" and "elephant" mean is integral to knowing whether this or that is an ant or an elephant. The word "ant" happens to refer to a certain type of insect, and "elephant" to a certain type of large, ruminant mammal, but it might have been otherwise (that it might have been otherwise is a logical possibility). It is logically possible that there might have been a type of ant called an "elephant", where the "ant" element of the word refers to an ant and the "eleph" prefix is a technical description of the type of ant it is. You know very well (as do I) that this is not the case, but that does not alter the logical possibility it might have been. You and I know that snow is white, but the logical possibility remains that it might not have been. (KILPOD = knowledge implies the logical possibility of doubt).

For Descartes, this logical possibility of doubt means that we don't actually know that "no ant is an elephant". Hence, the Cogito takes us beyond empirical propositions like that to a level of "certainty" that is logically immune to the possibility of error. Even if all my thoughts are false, including the belief that no ant is an elephant, the very fact that I think at all proves that I do at least I think. And I cannot think without existing, so all the while I think I must exist. I cannot doubt that I think, since to doubt that I think is to think.

But for Wittgenstein, this solipsistic elimination of the logical possibility of doubt eliminates the possibility of knowledge itself, because it takes us beyond the bounds of sense. What cannot even in principle be wrong cannot be right either. Language itself would gain no traction because no rules for the determination of meaning could be generated. Hence, contrary to Descartes, we do know that "no ant is an elephant" as well as we know anything. Such a proposition is part of our "world picture"; part of "the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false". But that is only because what happens to be true might have been false, and vice versa.

What about a proposition such as "No ant is an elephant"? Is there a way of doubting this?

Well yes, the logical possibility of doubt exists here, because to know that no ant is an elephant it's necessary to know what an ant is and what an elephant is. These are cognitive achievements. If it's (logically) possible to doubt what an ant is or to doubt what an elephant is, then it's (logically) possible to doubt that no ant is an elephant. Descartes would certainly have said that this sort of proposition can be doubted, which is why the Cogito arrives at the proposition that it does. But for Wittgenstein, "No ant is an elephant" would count as knowledge, because the possibility of doubting it is logically possible. Ants and elephants are things to be discovered in the world.

Is Descartes position justified or not?

Absolutely not. His big mistake is to think that a foundation of indubitable certainty is required for knowledge. The kind of indubitable certainty he finds in the privacy of his own mind rules out the possibility of discovery, which is a necessary condition for knowledge. What Descartes takes to be knowledge is nothing of the sort, precisely because it rules out the logical possibility of doubt.

I think they're several clear examples where money does bring happiness and fulfilment. Like medicine.

Medical research can be funded by the state. Can wealthy-powerful pharmaceutical companies be trusted to serve the public interest when, for example, they deliberately try to get people addicted to opiate pain killers? Furthermore. medicine in and of itself is not happiness and fulfilment.

An idea is a fiction.

Not necessarily. The idea that the Earth orbits the Sun is true, so it's not a fiction. An idea, belief, proposition, is a product of the mind, but if such a product of the mind is true to the facts, then it isn't a fiction.

But the "certainty" Descartes arrives at isn't knowledge! KILPOD - knowledge implies the logical possibility of doubt.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born into one of the wealthiest families in Europe. He gave all his share of the wealth to his brother, because, being the very intelligent person he was, it didn't take him long to understand that wealth and power doesn't bring happiness or fulfilment.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Because if there were nothing at all you wouldn't be able to ask the question.

Sorry for the delayed reply, I was out all day yesterday.

What you've given is a hypothetical imperative, which proves all moral imperatives are not categorical,

I said it was a hypothetical imperative! According to Kant, hypothetical imperatives are not moral imperatives: all moral imperatives are distinguished as categorical. That is absolutely basic Kantianism. If you feel this is way off base, then I'm afraid we are going have to go our separate ways in our interpretations of Kant, and I likewise wish you luck. I respect your long-time dedication to the subject, so no hard feelings.

Which contains a maxim, which is itself a principle.

A maxim is I suppose a limited sort of principle, in that it is a determination to always do a particular thing under particular circumstances; but it applies only to oneself. It becomes a proper principle when it's universalized as applying to all rational beings. For Kant there is only one fundamental principle which defines the moral condition and determines the moral value of action, and that is the categorical imperative.

That's not what you said. If you had, I wouldn't have objected.

It's always possible that I didn't express what I meant clearly enough, but I think you objected to something I didn't actually say. Any chance you could remind me of exactly what it was I said, verbatim, that you objected to?

In addition, we don't think in terms of principles, that is pure a priori legislations, when we consider our actions, which indicates it is not necessarily principles that lead us to bad judgements. Rather, we look to the benefit we may or may not receive from the action, which leads back to the fallacious proposition that Kantian deontology respects right/wrong, when in truth it respects only good/moral, not good/immoral.

Sorry but this seems terribly confused.
Kant actually considered the right to be superior to the good. The good merely concerns the benefit we may or may not receive from an action, and is expressed by a hypothetical imperative, as in "If your aim is to get a good job, then you should study hard". This does not express a moral imperative. A moral imperative is necessarily categorical and concerns what it is right to do. To act rightly is to act in accordance with the categorical imperative, and in order to do that we need to think in terms of whether or not we can will the maxim of our action to become a universal principle (a principle binding all rational beings). So (in order to act morally) we must consider our actions in such a way as to put aside any thoughts of the goodness of their outcomes. Our motivation to act must come from the moral value of the act itself (as determined by the categorical imperative). So thinking in terms of the a priori legislation of the categorical imperative is exactly what we have to do, according to Kant, in order to act morally - to act rightly.

As for principles leading to bad judgements, I agree that it's not necessarily principles that lead to bad judgements. Bad judgements come about when we fail to take all the morally relevant features of the case into account, or when our motives are purely selfish. But being bound too rigidly to a principle can cause the agent to fail to take all the morally relevant features of the case into account. The principle being adhered to may not capture the most morally salient feature of the particular case.

A principle of necessity has already been posited as such..To then judge whether or not it is a ground, defeats the fact it is a principle.

I disagree. A principle can be posited as a necessary ground (for moral action), and it remains a principle even if that principle is judged not to be a necessary ground (for moral action). The judgement in this case concerns whether the posited principle is any good. It does not defeat the fact that it's a principle.

this is not a necessary principle for this condition, iff he can show the condition is impossible without it.

I take you to mean: "iff he can show the condition is possible without it".

Kantian deontology is predicated on fundamental principles

Actually it's predicated on one fundamental principle - the categorical imperative.

...as is any decent moral philosophy

That's just a dogmatic assertion. I take the view that moral principles often lead to bad judgements and at best should be treated as rules of thumb. A morally sensitive agent doesn't need them.

Yes, to judge the categorical imperative is to allow the possibility of refuting the ground of the theory it supports. But the irony in all this is that in my previous posts on this thread I've been talking about judging actions by means of Kantian principles - I haven't been talking about judging Kantian principles. You introduced that, thinking that was what I was saying. I am saying it now, since you've mentioned it. I'm a huge fan of Kant, and I'm a deontologist rather than a consequentialist, but I think Kant's insistence that morality consists in principles is a mistake. But that wasn't what I was saying in previous posts on this thread!

One cannot judge a principle of necessity.

There's a lot of misunderstanding going on here. To judge a principle of necessity would simply be to judge whether it is in fact a principle of necessity. I'm certainly not saying that a Kantian moral judgement judges the categorical imperative. Of course it doesn't. It judges an action according to its compatibility with the moral law (categorical imperative). Lying, for example, is (according to Kant) rationally incompatible with the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is the criterion for judging the moral value of actions; so judging what one's duty is, is just a question of that - judging what action it is my duty to perform or avoid, in the light of the categorical imperative.

Your quote from Kant concerns how an action that is done from duty derives its moral worth. It derives it from the maxim which motivates the action, not from "the realization of the object of the action" (the outcome of the action). This distinguishes Kant's deontology from consequentialism, in terms of its internalism. To say that moral judgement concerns what one's duty is, does not imply that the value of an action is derived from "the realization of the object of the action".

The judgement concerns what one's duty is. The idea of moral judgement is central to Kantian ethics, which is deontological.

You're welcome!

A sharp is/ought or fact/value divide is a specifically Humean feature designed to fit Hume's belief-desire theory of motivation. Moral realists undermine this sharp divide both by criticising Hume's own arguments in defence of it and with their observations of how moral reasons operate which entails an account of how moral properties and facts result from the morally relevant features of actions and the circumstances in which they are carried out. Because moral properties are regarded as resultant properties, "right" and "good" are not defined in terms of any natural properties, so the kind of realism being proposed is not vulnerable to the open question argument.

Deontology (internalist): If an action is right, then it is intrinsically right; if it is wrong, then it is intrinsically wrong.
Consequentialism (externalist): An action is right or wrong by virtue of its consequences.

Two points to make. Firstly, every action has an internal consequence (a consequence which makes the action the action that it is) by which it can be judged deontologically to be right or wrong. Consequentialism often overlooks this (it entails an inadequate conception of action). Secondly, any consequentialist theory is committed to specifying what consequences are intrinsically valuable. It displaces intrinsic value from action to outcomes (states of affairs).

How does philosophy today lead us to science?

By elucidating what science is, to what extent its procedures are rational and how it's methods achieve knowledge, in contrast to other "methods" of trying to acquire knowledge (e.g. divine inspiration or the "authority" of religious texts, or Trump style evidence-free subjective conviction).

Interesting OP. Dissatisfaction with R. M. Hare's prescriptivism was the starting point for some very interesting developments in moral cognitivism by people like John McDowell, David McNaughton and Jonathan Dancy. The main objection to Hare's prescriptivism is of course his conception of universalizability (which is not like Kant's). According to Hare, if certain features of an action are reasons for judging the action to be right in one case, then those features are reasons to prescribe any action which has them in all cases. It is the "should do x in all cases" in which Hare's universalizability consists. For example, if my reasons for agreeing to plant some shrubs in a neighbour's garden are that doing so would be helpful and would give pleasure to my neighbour and to myself, then I am committed to prescribing all actions which are helpful and give pleasure to both agent and recipient in all possible cases where such an action is available. This leads to some very obvious problems. Suppose, for example, a sadistic person has the opportunity to help another sadistic person to torture a litter of puppies. Given my judgement in the original case, I'm forced to prescribe the action in the second case because it has all the relevant properties; it is helpful and gives pleasure to both the agent and to the person helped. If I can't go along with that judgement in the second case, then I'm forced to rescind my judgement in the first case. But why should I need to do that, when the action in the original case seemed perfectly reasonable?

Particularists like Jonathan Dancy want to retain the idea that properties like helpfulness and pleasure are morally relevant and hence provide reasons for action, but to dispense with any notion of universalizability. So, properties which provide reasons for an action in one case may not do so in a different case, and might even count as reasons against an action in some cases, like the second one above. Crucial to this move is to give a plausible account of moral properties. Hence, the particularist regards morally relevant properties like pleasure and helpfulness as forming a base for resultant moral properties like "right" and "good". So moral properties as such are resultant properties, and the properties from which moral properties result are all reasons for or against action, depending on the precise circumstances that form the resultance base. In my view, the sophisticated development of an account along these lines gives the best prospect for moral cognitivism / realism.

Everyone seems to be going along with the Cartesian assumption that knowledge requires certainty; that the edifice of knowledge must be built on a foundation of absolute certainty. While this assumption is accepted, then we're forced to conclude that we can't really know anything beyond the tautologies of logic and mathematics and the solipsistic phenomena of one's own mental states. But tautologies are uninformative and we should ask ourselves whether it makes any sense at all to think of one's own mental states as objects of knowledge. If they were, then that "knowledge" would be incommunicable, since, in so far as they are logically private, any terms used to refer to them would be meaningless. (Wittgenstein's private language argument - a logically private language is not possible because its terms would be cut off from the possibility of any objective criteria for their warranted use). So the foundation of certainty that Descartes seeks in the privacy of his own mind is really just a meaningless chimera.

The upshot of this is that it's a mistake to think that knowledge consists in immunity to error. In fact immunity to error only guarantees the absence of knowledge. Hence, the nature of knowledge is such that it always contains the logical possibility of error. A proposition that happens to be true could, in principle, have been false. A major theme of Wittgenstein's On Certainty is the kind of global scepticism implied by Hume's empiricism (which takes Cartesian assumptions to their logical and absurd conclusion), and central to his critique of that scepticism is KILPOD - knowledge implies the logical possibility of doubt.

Interesting point. Gettier's claim is that the JTB definition can be satisfied (e.g. by the example you give), yet still not count as knowledge. But if Gettier knows exactly why the example doesn't count as knowledge, then he should be able to give an alternative definition, or provide an additional clause, which he doesn't. And if he doesn't know why the example doesn't count as knowledge, then what reason does he have for the claim that it doesn't?

My take on this is that Gettier is basing his claim on a presumption made by the JTB definition itself, which is that the truth of a belief is not sufficient for knowledge because a belief can be true purely by accident. So another clause is needed, and that, according to the JTB definition, is justification. Gettier's point is that justification doesn't do the job it's intended for, since, as the relevant examples show, a belief being justified doesn't necessarily prevent it from being true purely by accident.

One may question whether non-accidental truth is necessary for knowledge, but that is already presumed by the JTB definition, which is Gettier's target.

I do not exist for those who will never know of my existence. If nobody knows of my existence, do I exist?, or do I matter? … Do I exist if I'm the only one who knows of my existence?

This is a confusion of three separate questions concerning three different areas of philosophy: ontology, epistemology and ethics. The question of your existence is answered by you asking it. If you didn't exist you couldn't ask the question. But the brute fact of your existence is independent of the question of knowledge. When you're asleep you cannot be said to know that you exist; you're oblivious to the fact that you exist. Others may observe you while you sleep and thereby know of your existence. But even if no one knew of your existence, including yourself, that would not mean you didn't exist. No one knew that Pluto existed until it was discovered in 1930. Does that mean Pluto didn't exist until 1930? Of course not. The very concept of discovery presupposes the possible existence of things before they are known, and even of things that may never be known. So it is a mistake to think that you do not exist for those who will never know of your existence, since existence is independent of anyone's knowledge. Existence is not 'for' anyone or anything. As for whether or not you 'matter', that is an ethical question. Even if no one else knows of your existence, your existence would still presumably 'matter' to you? This is a question of value, not of epistemology or ontology.

To test my ideas? I don't mind who it's coming from. But it's not like an authority figure that tells you to do things and doesn't give an explanation why, or is open to debate. I make my own decisions.

So you join a philosophy forum to test your ideas. Great, that makes sense. That means listening to other people - it's other people's criticisms, valid or not, that are the test for your ideas. But you say the virtue of your idea is that you don't have to listen to other people. That makes your idea immune from criticism. So by what means are you going to test your idea?

Of course you make your own decisions. Moral philosophers want to enable you to make your own decisions, not to prevent you from doing so. Only a religious command ethic tells you what to do without giving reasons (other than "because God says so"). But to make your own decisions you need grounds for deciding one way or another. Different moral theories provide different grounds for decision making - but whatever the ground, the decision you make upon it will be your decision, no one else's. The problem with your idea is that the only ground you have for making a decision is how you feel about the decision you've made. This doesn't explain how you arrived at your decision in the first place or why you feel the way you do about it. If it's only the feelings that count in the decision, then the decision is beyond the possibility of criticism or revision in the light of evidence or reason. You are just stuck with your feelings about things, which means you are being told what to do by feelings you have no control over, rather than making your own decisions based on reason and evidence. In other words, your idea is self-defeating.

But the key here is you don't have to listen to other people either...I'm happiest this way, because I make my own decisions and if it doesn't work out, the only person to blame is me...

Then why join a philosophy forum?

I guess I think the most human thing you can do is to stick to what's true for you, what works for you.

Why would I be interested in what's "true for me"? How can I even make sense of that? The Donald Trump definition of truth: What is true is whatever works for me.