I think I already clarified this earlier, but establishing a scale against which to compare the morality of situations where one end of that scale is nobody suffering and the other end is abject misery for everyone doesn't mean that I expect (who?) to make that good end the case or else (who?) is a criminal or something. It's a scale. It's just how we compare things. Suffering bad. More suffering worse. Less suffering better. No suffering best. It's not a complicated thing. — Pfhorrest

Define "suffering".

One can examine their life without being pensive over its necessity, but refraining from any contemplation in that regard is antithetical to all philosophy - isn't it? Why assess the structural or metaphysical underpinnings of your life, if you aren't trying to decipher or extract a meaning from it? One can synthesize an epistemic conclusion from the former, but hardly apprehend a motive without the latter. — Aryamoy Mitra

Philosophy is supposed to be love of wisdom.
Wisdom should have something vitally to do with how one goes about one's daily life, 24/7.

Faith is belief despite the lack of justification. — Banno

But there is a justification, namely, one to the effect of, "It is worth it to commit to an ideology that promises salvation, even when the situation seems hopeless, and especially then." It's human nature to want out of trouble. (And it tends to happen that when one is in trouble, not that many options for a way out of it are available. They usually don't put Heidegger's books on the bedside in cheap motels.)

I doubt there are many theists who started out by believing that God exists, and then took the whole project of religiosity from there.
Rather (esp. as far as adult converts go), they started off with an existential despair that they resolved with an ideology of hope. The actual issue of the existence of God is secondary or tertiary to all this.

What drives their faith is that initial existential despair. This also explains why adult converts often lose their faith over time or "mellow out": the religiosity they took up in their state of existential despair helped them overcome said despair, and now with the despair gone, so is their faith.

Atheist:
Most epistemologies agree, broadly, that beliefs can only be considered reliable when they are backed, (somehow), by observation.

Faith would be belief in that for which there isn't observation, and thus, beliefs so backed are not reliable. — John Chlebek

Indeed, but they can still be relevant, because often in life, it's about what is at stake, not what the stakes are.

For example, believing it's worth to apply for a job even though there are a thousand other applicants. Or believing that it's worth to take a course of medical treatment even if the chances are slim.

Me:
"beliefs can only be considered reliable when they are backed, (somehow), by observation."

You can observe that it makes a difference in a person's life whether they are committed to some particular standard or idea, as opposed to whether they are not.
It's justified, reliable to believe that commitment makes a difference.

I'm not sure how to reply to this. But I believe on some level he is begging the question. He said that he has observed that non-observable statements are unreliable. I think his reply would work if he said "I have observed that observable statements are reliable." But the other is just an assumption and is not observable, at least not in the scientific sense he is saying.

More context is needed here, the specific theistic statements he commented on.

Natural selection shows us that morality is a social construction. — Harry Hindu

Could you sketch out how it does that?
I can't think of an unequivocal way to interpret "morality is a social construction".

No, stay and fight!

If the good is, as you said earlier, neither definable nor analyzable, then a great many moral philosophers have been merely spinning their wheels. How can they be so wrong?


I'd like some clarification as well, because people have tried to define "good" and "happiness". Some even come up with supposedly objective, universal standards of those. Clearly, those people don't think that the good is undefinable and unanalyzable as Banno does.
Both camps can't be right.

It's the philosophical position of pessmism that makes one hate life and wishing one would never have been.

The vampire novels of Anne Rice explore the implications and downsides of eternal youth. In the beginning, the novels portray the condition as romantic and erotic. By the end, the novels feature an unending procession of mindless savagery and nihilism. — fishfry

Tolkien's elves are an alternative idea to this.

the error of the primacy of the individual. — Banno

At the end of the day, one lives alone and dies alone. A theory of morality has to account for this somehow. Even more so when we're living in a society where those in positions of power seek to renounce all responsibility, seek to have power and take it away from the individual, and place all the blame and all the responsibility on the individual.

I am first to point out the social embeddedness in and social epistemic dependence of the individual on society. But I'm also pointing out that the society here treats individuals in a hostile, or at best, indifferent manner, as expendable. We're not dealing with a traditional tribal social situation in which individuals are by default seen as assets. A theory of morality needs to account for this.

Don't care. — Maw

A useful theory of morality would offer principles for dealing with precisely such individual, personal situations.

You said earlier:

Insofar as human nature is real, insofar as human well-being is real, and insofar as human suffering is real (often in gratuitous forms), then it seems inescapable that moral realism is justified.
— Maw — baker

and I requested a clarification:

This can go at least two ways: It can be an utopian, idealistic concern for everyone, or it can be a form of narcissism. Hence a request for clarification.

because your formulation doesn't exclude a position like "Whatever enhances my wellbeing and diminishes my suffering is moral (morally good, morally right, just, righteous), even if in the process of this, other people or their property get hurt or damaged".

A justification of moral realism ends up in precisely the type of scenario you're so critical about:

I don't see the point in individualizing ethical questions when wealth inequality soared during a global pandemic which disproportionately affected minority ethnic groups while working classes suffer for the benefit of Capitalists. — Maw

Moral problems are experienced at the level of the individual. I'm not interested in hypothetical scenarios with individuals, but in the point that moral problems are experienced at the level of the individual, and not on some abstract level of "group" or "society".

Yeah, no wonder one hates life and wishes to never have been ...

That's going gently into that bad night.

In light of these three propositions (if you accept them), is it at all worth rationalizing one's being? If not, you're no longer examining your life. If you do, you're likely embarking on an inexhaustible venture. — Aryamoy Mitra

It seems that one cannot not attempt to rationalize one's existence, so it's moot as to whether it's worth to rationalize one's existence or not.

Who decides whether x amount of self-examination is not enough and so still falls under "the unexamined life" which is, purportedly, not worth living?

At what point did that which I call “me” appear? — Present awareness

When someone else considered you such.

Natural selection? — Harry Hindu

In that case, the prospects for a theory of morality are rather hopeless, if we have to wait for "nature" to deliver the verdict. (We'll possibly be dead by then.)

99% of all species that have existed are now extinct. We could say the same for every individual that has existed.. Who's to say that all species are destined to become extinct like individuals are destined to die?

Unless one takes solace and salvation in being a member of a particular species, the above is irrelevant.

Ask a Chan/Zen practitioner. As the Buddha purportedly had taught his disciples — 180 Proof

As far as the Pali suttas go, the Buddha taught nibbana, kamma, and rebirth.

Whether the world is finite or infinite, limited or unlimited, the problem of your liberation remains the same.

Suppose a man is struck by a poisoned arrow and the doctor wishes to take out the arrow immediately. Suppose the man does not want the arrow removed until he knows who shot it, his age, his parents, and why he shot it. What would happen? If he were to wait until all these questions have been answered, the man might die first.

Yes, the standard passage when one is looking for a thought-terminating cliche.

Trying to turn the Buddha's teachings against themselves, by using one teaching to undermine another is inconsistent, to say the least.

It's like a car without an engine
On the contrary, it's more like a Pegasus without wings.

A secularized version of Buddhism (ie. a Buddhism without nibbana, kamma, and rebirth) is a system of beliefs and practices that infantilizes the person who abides by them and keeps them on the level of good boy/good girl morality.

So... for you philosophy is only about setting out definitions? — Banno

If the solution to the problems of good and bad is as simple as you outlined earlier:

The upshot is that the good is not definable, and hence that your enterprise is bound to fail. — Banno

then one has to wonder what all those moral philosophers have been doing for millennia.

Edit: If all (perception and understanding of) reality is subjective then the burden of proof is not on the claimant but on the disagreer. — New2K2

Sounds like the standard approach in religious apologetics.

The burden of proof lies with the less reality orientated disputant - the less authoritative party. — J O Lambert

Agreed. For only such a person would take up that burden.

They each have non-religious sects or schools; — 180 Proof

What use is, for example, Buddhism without nirvana, karma, and rebirth (as the non-religious secular Buddhists would have it)? It's like a car without an engine.

as far as "metaphysical hinge commitments", those are matters of aesthetic taste (i.e. "the absolute" is in the third-eye of the beholder).

Oh. That's bold.

Maybe there is something that survivor's can't even find words for, perhaps because it's not conceptual. It's amazing and even disturbing what people can get used to (being 600 lbs, being paraplegic, cockroach-infested homes, working on the cutting line in a chicken processing plant, etc.) But all of these forms of inconvenience and discomfort aren't necessarily as bad as festering resentment. — T H E

Yes, the resentment festers.

Yet there's something obscene about noble platitudes in the face of others' suffering, and that's why I suggest a more 'materialistic' approach. If things aren't quite bad enough so that you have to move, a gradual resignation to the shittiness of the situation seems like the only option.

There is a point of no return. When one ventures on the path of resignating oneself to a shitty situation, there comes a point from whence on one cannot return to the human race anymore. A point from whence on one will never be accepted as an at least potentially worthy human being anymore. A point from whence on one cannot even conceive of oneself as an at least potentially worthy human being.
Resentment, bad as it is, at least keeps one away from that path, or at least keeps one away from reaching that point of no return. That resentment is the last thing that binds one such person to humanity.

I guess that's moral realism for the underdog.

I guess I know that you already know this, and I wish had something better for you now and for me when things get bad in my life at some point, as they surely will, us being so damned fragile and stuck together down here. Hopefully it's a little comforting to have your suffering recognized. I guess that's a strategy I use, universalizing my trauma, squeezing what juice I can from it.

Thanks.

What could be more important than winning??
— baker
Being right. — Harry Hindu

But who decides what being right is?

Just look at humans vs neanderthals. Who is now extinct?
Everyone has to die at some point. This is not a consolation.
— baker
Then your point is that no one ever actually wins?

No, just that since everyone is subject to death anyway, death is nothing special, not a sign of failure.

Becoming extinct is a failure in terms of a species. But dying, as an individual, is not failure, because everyone dies anyway.

Looking at the topic matter from the perspective of the species is too general, given that we're talking about intraspecies competition, ie. person vs. person.

I would suggest we don't look at ethical theories based on human collectivity and immediately seek to atomize it, asking how this can benefit me, irrespective of how it impacts others. — Maw

Human wellbeing and human suffering necessarily take place at the level of the individual, for the individual.

It is self-evident that one person's happiness can result in another person's misery. Any theory of morality needs to account for this.

The upshot is that the good is not definable, and hence that your enterprise is bound to fail. — Banno

Then why the tomes of theories and discussions about the good and the bad?
For millennia, have all those moral philosophers been laboring with an erroneous understanding of good and bad?
And if yes, whence that error?

A few things you might want to read around: "ressentiment" in Nietzsche from the blowhards can use this to punch down angle. "bourgeoise morality" is a Marxoid concept for the blowhards to punch up with. The idea of a "justification narrative" is useful in that regard too. — fdrake

Okay, thanks, I looked up those. Not yet sure how they compute in all this.

Also, a word of unsolicited advice, don't think you're above and untouched by these things just because you can recognise them for what they are. You're implicated, like I am. No values escape rhetorical context.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Obviously, life lives off of life, life consumes life. Big fish eat the little fish. There isn't necessarily an evil motive in all this consumption, it's just beings trying to survive. And, of course, when a bigger being with bigger and more complex appetites tries to survive, the damage they do to others is much more than when smaller beings are just trying to survive. Such is the nature of life, such is the nature of consumption.

This is what I sometimes think when I look out the window, and it gives me a small measure of peace.

Thanks. Yes, thought about that. Unfortunately, the situation is such that the unmanaged storm water would cause damage to our house as well by risking a landslide. I'm actually in the process of reworking the whole drainage issue primarily to protect our house.

Could be. So circumstance dictates your reality. And if something were to work in your favor or ever begin to support the premise, you'd jump ideological ships yet again. Yeah.. that's typically how it goes here. Perhaps, as the song goes, we're all just dust in the wind. A man should be firmly grounded in something, even as the tides rise and fall. But to each their own. — Outlander

I haven't jumped ideological ships quite yet, but I do radically question what I have believed so far.
It's that firm grounding that I'm looking for, something that will hold come rain or high water. I haven't found that yet.

- - -

I think might just makes 'I can get away with this for now.' After all, if you really thought might = right, you'd have to acknowledge the virtue of your neighbor --whereas I think you'd like to beat his virtue out of him (I would in your shoes, and that's what would scare me, the fear that I'd snap and end up in prison.) — T H E

I don't actually believe that might makes right -- but I fear it does. Because if you look at how the world usually works: the powerful do get to call the shots.

I make a point of reading stories about survivors, to see if some useful insights can be gained on how to cope with adversity.
In most stories I've seen so far, the person depended on religion. Religion isn't an option for me.
Most others are really just about doing practical things, almost as if the hardship one is experiencing has nothing to do with the metaphysics of the workings of the universe. I find this peculiar and I suspect those personal accounts are holding back vital information, things that the survivor realized when coping with the hardship, but which they conspicuously refuse to share with others.

We have several cats who are used to the luxuries of having a considerable garden. Moving/renting would mean that we'd have to move to a much smaller place, having to find new homes for the cats, or killing them. And all this for the sake of pleasing the Christian capitalist. He is free to live as he pleases, while others are not.

Here's the thing: What do situations like this tell us about the workings of the universe? My only conclusion so far is that might makes right.

Yes. Non-religious "theories" that come to mind: Hellenic Cynicism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Pyrrhonism ... Chinese Dàojiā ... Indian (non-Vedic) Śramaṇa tradition of e.g. Jainism, Buddhism, Charvaka ... — 180 Proof

The latter are religions, and the former still require metaphysical hinge commitments that one cannot take up at will.

(Or is philosophy, like history, written by victors?)
The mainstream tradition of Western Philosophy (Plato-Aristotle-Aquinas + Descartes-Kant-Hegel) is "written by the victors" but there's always been counter-traditional writings by e.g. Hellenes, Nominalists, Immanentists (i.e. radical secularists), Freethinkers, Libertarians, Pragmat(ic)ists, Absurdists, etc ...

Thanks, I'll have to look into those (I'm not yet familiar with all of them).

- - -

It makes right if it benefits you. Conquest, besting or outwitting another, or otherwise doing something you would not wish to be done to yourself, etc. If not, it's wrong. Criminal activity, terrorism, cheating, etc. Hypocrisy is a pledge one takes and a lifestyle one embraces, one that can be sustained with adequate numbers and resources, but if ever placed under impartial and non-biased scrutiny won't stand for much. — Outlander

There is no world court, no impartial and non-biased scrutiny.

A man without a conscious is no man at all, just another beast of the Earth. They will busy themselves with worldly pleasures, material pursuits, and other vain pastimes until they expire, at which point another will surely take their place. Going through the motions of life absent of a conscious or empathy for one's fellow man, what do you have? A purposeless, transient being who knows only to steal, kill, and destroy. One who will never truly know the finer things in life that do not come with a price tag or physical value, for he will be too busy defending that which does, with mind, body, and soul. A life with little more compassion outside of that which serves the self.

Or maybe that's an idle fantasy the losers tell themselves. Perhaps homo homini lupus is simply as good as it gets, and that's it.
Sorry, I'd like to believe you; I used to think that way as well, until recent events made me radically reconsider my stance.

Your neighbors sound like assholes. If it is at all possible, even if it's a pain in the ass, you might want to move. — T H E

We can't insure or sell the house, it's been rendered worthless.
Us moving would be just the final jewel in the crown of his victory.

See, this is power: to be able to fuck someone up like that, legally. And still be a good Christian, a good person. Morally superior.

Since everybody is bringing Christianity into this discussion as the salvation for the powerless, — Joshs

Yes, Christianity tends to be portrayed that way, although I don't see why. Christians have pretty much always been in the position of power anyway.

Christian piety arose as will to power becoming sickly and turning against itself, as a strategy of those who were oppressed to gain revenge against those who dominated them by elevating self-denial ( the ascetic ideal) to a primary principle.

But how are Christians "denying themselves"? By not killing everyone they feel like killing?

I suggest the terms of the OP’s query, in construing power as an opposition between those who are powerful and those who are powerless, already pre-suppose the ascetic ideal.

I don't understand what you mean.

How does, for example, pointing out that your boss has more power over you than you do over your boss, pre-suppose the ascetic ideal?

- - -

What do you mean by "right"? Winning something does not make one right. It simply makes one a winner. — Harry Hindu

What could be more important than winning??

Just look at humans vs neanderthals. Who is now extinct?

Everyone has to die at some point. This is not a consolation.

I need to learn to respond to people like him in the succinct way you do, instead of wasting my time on long-winded clarifications that fall on willfully deaf ears. — Pfhorrest

Wonderful example of bad faith.

Oh, the irony: You're the one preaching concern for everyone, but you yourself don't live up to your own ideal, but instead eagerly jump to the conclusion that someone is acting in bad faith.

Then what does it mean?

No point wasting time on someone responding in bad faith to a post made 3 years ago — Maw

*sigh*

In order to avoid starting new threads on an already existing topic, I looked up existing ones.

You said:

Insofar as human nature is real, insofar as human well-being is real, and insofar as human suffering is real (often in gratuitous forms), then it seems inescapable that moral realism is justified. — Maw

This can go at least two ways: It can be an utopian, idealistic concern for everyone, or it can be a form of narcissism. Hence a request for clarification.

I'm pointing out that your views on morality are completely unrealistic. You seem to think that a theory of morality is an anything goes kind of project where one can give free reigns to one's imagination; an indulging in a pipe dream.

You're developing a theory of morality for which there can be no hope of it ever being implemented by humans.

I've found that the Bungled and the Botched are also happy and live worthwhile, meaningful lives. — Banno

The question is, how do they do it?

I mean, without resorting to religion, because a religion is not something that one could take up at will.

SO I take it that the premise of this thread is fucked.

How?

Can you provide an example of the kind of winner and situation you mean? — Tom Storm

For example, my neighbor, who cut into the slope our house is on, destabilized the terrain, so that our house is in danger of collapsing. As if that wasn't enough, he built the chimney and the AC exhaust right under our living room and bedroom windows. And he laughs!
Lawsuits are so expensive that it's not worth taking him to court.
He's the winner in this.

- - -

This doesn't follow at all. People routinely do things they think will make them happy and end up doing themselves more harm than good. — Pantagruel

Some do that, sure.

I doubt very much that the majority people who live by the might makes right credo qualify as happy. Are bullies usually happy people?

Of course. Look at their self-confidence, their smugness!

/.../ Systematising ethics (right/wrong) like that can have a very "this drunk came up to me on the street and told me the way to find God" feel to it! That seems quite vindicated to me, as any such system is an attempt to reconfigure how values are seen and norms are related to, a lot like our drunken messiah's aspirations. — fdrake

Which is what he's doing: Just yet another authoritarian know-it-all with an utopian bent ...

Baker's question seemed to be "why do you care not to give false answers to things?", not "why are you talking about that topic?" There are lots of good practical reasons not to care to pay attention to particular things, but given that you're paying attention to something already, it's kind of shocking

to see someone so explicitly act like it doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong about it. — Pfhorrest

This is what you get from my words???!

I was asking you about your motivations for wanting to know the truth about some particular matters, in this case, "God". That was the cue for you to look within and be clear about your motivations. Perhaps also share them with others. Unless you're into rehashing the same old theism-atheism arguments that have been around for millennia, without ever getting resolved. I figured that if you have a formal education in philosophy and aren't a teenager, it would be safe to assume you know better than to go down that road.

Cool, so if a majority of people like baseball should people be force recruited to play the game? — schopenhauer1

Like it or not, this is exactly what is happening.

I'm in a philosophy forum, where people make arguments about things like morality.

Yes, and all too often, they wander off into lalaland.

Actually, all of life is a big argument and whether you know it or not, people's arguments are affecting/effecting your life.

And I've got my neighbor's chimney and AC exhaust into my living room and bedroom windows to prove it.

Okay.. slavery not just being the natural course of things also seemed alien for many generations, mainly before the Enlightenment and even then it took until the mid-1800s for it to really start being considered legitimate moral sentiments.

It's not comparable. People arguing against slavery were arguing against just one aspect of the until then unquestioned socio-economic project called "life as it is usually lived". You're questioning the whole project.

Some say it's naive, childish to wonder about whether something is just or moral.
— baker
Really? Why?

Who has the problem here: you, or the pronatalists?

It doesn't compute in _your_ mind. It computes in so many other people's minds.
— baker
Well, let's take two outcomes from the different computations.

1.) If MY computation is right, no ONE suffers (cause no one is born, of course).
2.) If the procreator-sympathizers are right, SOMEONE suffers.

So? It's still your problem.


Face it: You're miserable. That's all there is to this.