You can refrain from killing, raping, and pillaging, but none of this guarantees that others will not kill, not rape, or not pillage from you.
So now what? — baker

True. There are no guarantees in life, period. I think the GR mainly applies to the self as a guiding principle - I don't think anyone sees it as a magic charm that ushers in ethical behaviour all around. I've always understood it to be like a teaching tool setting forth a simple approach. People seem to love it or hate it.

:up:

Explain

1. The Golden rule (concrete).

2. The Golden rule (abstract). — Agent Smith

Agent, Thought I explained this in my post. If it is unclear, forget it. :razz: I'm just suggesting that there is a spirit of interpretation - an intent - not a narrow, literalist interpretation.

The Golden Rule: Treat others like you would like to be treated. Others, yes, but only in terms of you. — Agent Smith

My understanding of the golden rule is not to read it in concrete terms. It is not saying that you need to assume people share your preferences exactly. It is saying treat others with the consideration you would appreciate - honour their preferences as you would want them to honour yours. That and in general terms almost all people do not want to be stolen from, lied to, framed or murdered - so there is that.

I guess we'll have to keep bringing it up then since the problem is not addressed sufficiently and continues to worsen. — D2OTSSUMMERBUG

It's never gone away. One of the biggest debates in the Western world is the marketisation of everything from art to education, health services to prisons. This is one of the reasons Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel (whose project is all about this) has been in recent years one of the world's most popular thinkers. People have been concerned about this for a long time.

What I am arguing is that when money or market gradually makes up a greater role in considering the worth of art, we seem to accept that how much art is worth lies completely in how much revenue an artist makes, or how willing the public is to consume for the art. — D2OTSSUMMERBUG

Not really a new idea, from his New York base, the Australian art critic, essayist and writer Robert Hughes wrote and made documentaries about this very problem about 35 years ago. The commodification of art in its current expression started in the 1970's.

Despite this there is always the difference between something being intrinsically good and something being valued by a market. I suspect they will remain different things since the market is not an arbiter of virtue but of value.

Do you think time and space exist outside of our use of these terms - they are ideas which help us makes sense of the world according to our lived experience, but I am unsure that they can transcend us?

And yet the world is full of wonderful, beautiful music, visual art, poetry, literature, architecture.... — T Clark

What world do you live in? :razz:

But yes, I never argued that across time people have not also done (and still do) good things.

He follows approaches that hold onto a religious metaphysics, albeit of a progressive and heretical kind. — Joshs

Hi Joshs - I appreciate your replies. Yes, I already suggested this to A as a point of difference.

Now we know that they have all sorts of perceptual and recognition skills, including being able to empathize with others. Again, without such an appreciation of the infant’s perspective, ethical treatment of them is limited. I would argue the entire history of culture involves the growth of insights into how others unlike ourselves think and feel. — Joshs

I think this provides a bit more substance to the matter. I particularly like your last sentence.

I guess I am in the 'pragmatic interaction' camp and anything outside of that is for specialists and likely to be as speculative as some of the ideas generated by quantum physics.

Why? Isn't that what they want? — Raymond

What people want is rarely what they want. :scream:

It's not hard to understand - many artists do mainstream, compromised work for the money and exposure. This often annoys and frustrates because anything they might want to do with a richer imaginative vision is simply a risk and unlikely to sell. Audiences are frustrating and this often breeds contempt for the stuff which sells.

But I should add that some artists are exactly as they appear - superficial, predictable and gravid with kitsch and cliché. They are all tip and no iceberg.

I've found 'freethinking that's invisble in plain sight' preferable to conspicuous philosophizing (or worse – sophistry) in almost all situations (i.e. more often than not, being a smart ass makes one less of a bore than being a smarty-pants). YMMV :mask: — 180 Proof

I very much like your response to this OP. Can you please say just a little more about the attributes of 'freethinking that's invisible'?

So your objection strikes me as rather shallow. — baker

It's not an objection, it's just a statement trying to provide a more realistic account of how mainstream pop music and art works. It seems shallow to you probably because you don't understand the world of mainstream cultural product. As someone who has worked in media as a second career and met quite a few successful artists (including pop stars, actors and artists ) the market is one of the only topics of conversation. How to get a hit. Oh, and artists are often appalled by what sells - even if it is theirs.

How can we say what ethics is and what the basis of obligation is if we don't understand what it is about a person that makes ethics even possible?
A fair question, and then some. — Astrophel

As I have said, for me ethics is what happens when we try to cope with living with others. Ethics is only possible with others. We can't go any deeper without making stuff up or drawing from presuppositional theology or some other suspect meta-narrative. Because we have different wold-views you don't accept my answer. That's fine. Ditto. I simply don't see that there is any merit trying to 'understand' ethics from the perspective of the pre-conceptual and pre-linguistic - which is where you seem to be heading. By definition there is nothing to say.

So perhaps you can use your preferred method of enquiry and suggest an answer?

I wasted YOUR time? — Astrophel

You conflate disagreement with personal attack.

The time wasting comment was my response to the specific approach described below which seemed to me to lack focus and promise. Your ice scream paragraph:

What is deliciousness? Such an odd question, no? But all such affections go like this. And note that inquiry ends here, for there is no need to justify wanting something delicious, for to be delicious is inherently good, unassailably good. Of course, you can assail many things: can I afford it? Should I steal it? Is it healthy? This kind of thing can be as complicated as human affairs themselves. But: it is these affairs that make for complications, not the Haagen dazs's deliciousness.
Herein lies the essence of ethical agency. — Astrophel

Ethical agency seen through the 'continental' lens here seems diffuse and likely fruitless. But it is up to you to demonstrate what it accomplishes. However, I am happy to move on.

So, what's a handy crux of outrageous otherness? God. God puts a face on our unimaginably strange universe, which is to say, our God consciousness boils down the unmanageable universe to something digestible. — ucarr

There's not much to say about gods since they are entirely silent and absent themselves. Gods are holding statements for the unknown. We've always understood this.

In self-help groups I've frequented, there's common talk about learning to love oneself as a remedy to paralyzing insecurities, debilitating anxiety and self-destructive behavior. — ucarr

Sounds like Californian New Age pop psychology. And yes there are people who find this 'love' frame helpful. I think a better way of putting this is 'do not hate yourself'. It seems pretty clear to me that many people marinate in their own self-loathing. For me the solution is not to see the problem as a simple bifurcation that can be switched upwards to 'love' (which is unhelpful dualistic thinking) but to simply give yourself a break, as a fallible, fucked up person - like most of us. Try to do better. Almost everyone already knows what they need to do to improve their life. The hard part is taking the steps.

And now something for the pessimists and antinatalists:


This Be The Verse
BY PHILIP LARKIN

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

You had to mention Ayn Rand. When she's mentioned, I'm obliged to repeat that Ayn Rand is to philosophy what L. Ron Hubbard is to religion. — Ciceronianus

:clap:

Are most people not very philosophical in their thinking and talking? I find it difficult to engage people in large topics that may not yield rewarding conclusions. Do philosophy people have a reputation? — TiredThinker

People are not interested in philosophy for many reasons - time, opportunity, relevance, difficulty, temperament. Generally people follow their upbringing and emotions into a particular worldview, be it theism or scientism, and this worldview generally comes with family and friends and does the job of providing a framework and a community.

Most people are irritated by, or at least uninterested in defining terms, identifying categories and providing sound arguments. People into philosophy are sometimes seen as irritating, obtuse and somewhat self-regrading. You certainly don't need philosophy to get through life and do well (however you understand 'well'), so for many people it has no value.

I blame myself, Tom Storm. I assumed you at least had a curiosity and a capacity to inquire. The trouble here is that you really don't know anything at all about continental philosophy, which is the implicit background to all this. — Astrophel

Blame - how old fashioned. :wink: But I note that in remainder of your response you put the blame somewhat harshly on me. Nice work. I don't really know anything about any philosophy, I just have an interest.

But I have read smatterings of Husserl and listened to Dreyfus' fascinating lectures on Heidegger and started reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, so I am not unsympathetic to continental philosophy or phenomenology.

You need to do better than attempt an elitist put down of a poor pleb who is so beneath you. It makes you sound like you're out of your depth. I suspect now that an inherent belief in the superiority of your own thought might explain why your capacity to communicate on this is so muddled. Possibly you are not really trying. Now it might also be that English is not your first language, so that could be a factor too.

Nevertheless, if you were any good at this you would be able to explain your idea clearly and not blame others for the deficits in your own capacity to communicate. And you might not stoop to playing 'in group/out group' games in an awkward attempt to marginalise those who have different views. :razz:

Ethics is about acting in a public social world, like it or not, and that's where ethical thinking must take place. — Banno

That's it in a nutshell - you're much better at this than I am.

care that I can get enough money to buy Haagen Dazs. Why? Because it is so delicious. What is deliciousness? Such an odd question, no? — Astrophel

No, I'm totally familiar with these sorts of games. I just don't think they bear fruit. An endless recursion of conceptual snipe hunting

Herein lies the essence of ethical agency. — Astrophel

Herein lies the essence of time wasting.

in no major monotheistic religion is killing, raping, and pillaging an automatic disqualifier from getting into heaven eternal (!!!). It just isn't.
You can kill, rape, and pillage and still get to heaven just fine. — baker

That's an accurate assessment and probably well covered by the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins.

The should' and shouldn'ts are on hold until we can find out what it is that sits there in our perceptual midst that makes it ethical at all. — Astrophel

I know that, but I'm saying that it doesn't become ethical until should and shouldn't or ought and ought not enter the frame. Ethics is about behaviour and how to be in the world with others.

If you want to go deeper than that, I am not sure there is a pool bottomless enough for that journey.

Take a simple case: a person bludgeons another for her money. Why is this prima facie wrong? What is the most salient feature of this case? — Astrophel

I don't understand why we are talking about examples of a violent crime like we're a couple of high school students. :razz:

Are you able to tell me what point it is you are trying to examine?

It seems like you are struggling to understand what makes an action right or wrong.

I've already answered this question several times (albeit indirectly). My general position would be we should privilege the flourishing of conscious creatures. A violent action like this would go against that.

Now you have asked already - why privilege flourishing? If you are genuinely asking this then you are likely to be anti-social (sociopath). If you are asking for rhetorical purposes, there is, as I said earlier, no clear answer to this unless you are a believer in a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception of ethics as per Plato, where goodness, truth and beauty sit inside the logos waiting for us to enact them. Or you could come at it via a divine command theory of morality as per Islam and some forms of Christianity. These are the 'magical' answers I was referring to.

Other than that, we simply have to make personal choices regarding our behavior - we can be guided by virtue or malice. It's up to us.

Then hurry up, because I have less and less time for this forum. — baker

I'm running to my timetable, not yours.

Nothing mystical about a knife in your kidney. That matter is much more basic than you would have it. — Astrophel

Over 30 years I have often worked with violent criminals, I know knives and I know basic. Doesn't change my view on the issue of human flourishing.

But there is something in the occurrent event of misery, I mean while one is actually miserable, that needs attention. the habit we have, and this I take to be seriously understood, the habit that language imposes of the world both lifts it into understanding as well as silences and occludes. What I am saying is that the "magic" is magical to you because is unfamliar. Face it, Heidegger was right: the more science and technology dominates thinking regarding the place and status of what it is to be human, the more the powerful and profound are pushed out of existence, and by existence, read the manner of our thoughts and feelings. Cell phones are more real to modern sensibilities than existential matters. The fact that almost no one at all takes up such matters is exactly what makes them strange and magical.
That knife in the kidney. Answer me this: what would be a complete analysis of teh bare features of the one sitting there in misery? Spare me the medical contingencies, as well as what a biologist might say, or an evolutionist. Just observe what is there sitting before you.
Clue: there is in the event, at its final determination, something that defies explanation, but is the most salient feature. — Astrophel

Not sure what you are trying to address with this lengthy response. Seems like you are using phenomenology to distract from the original point, namely that we can build a robust ethical system on some basic ideas. If you think there is some transcendent aspect to this enterprise I have neglected, maybe it would help for you to describe it directly.

How is it that, for example, Lady Gaga, who, given her education and musical experience, should know better, nevertheless makes such mediocre music? — baker

Goodness - I think the answer to this is obvious. Kinkade, Eco and Gaga made the artistic choices they did not to subvert anything but to make money. In case you haven't noticed, the biggest market on earth is for the mediocre and the kitsch.

. How it would have looked if you were part of it. — Raymond

Go for it Ray... I don't even know how things look now and I am here (I think), so I'm certainly not going attempt anything like that.

I mean they are likely to be constructs we have developed that seem to reflect human experience and we use them conceptually in daily life to help us manage our environment. Can we say that they transcend human reality? I don't know. How would we show this? When we get to a question like was there ever 'nothing' we are kind of stumped because the idea of nothing is elusive and possibly incoherent. But I'm not a physicist... just my best shot at it.

They seem pretty non-conceptual to me. — Raymond

Of course - they map to human experience.

Isn't there something a little mysterious about moral courage? — Srap Tasmaner

I have no idea - you seem to be the one advocating mysteries. :smile:

But does all this track back to the initial question about the origins of ethical behaviour? It's not hard to see how heroism might belong just to a few outliers in a society where dark forces heavily punish dissent. It's also not hard to see why there may be no ready made answers for heroism - people often behave for reasons unknown even to themselves. And the ostensible reasons people give for why they do certain things are often post hoc rationalisations.

Why shouldn't they? It's about space matter and time. — Raymond

Because space and time are conceptual notions humans have developed to understand the world. I am not sure they map to anything beyond us.

I am unable to vote on such a question - I doubt we have access to the relevant information. Personally, the idea of 'nothing' versus 'something' are human constructs to help us understand lived experience - useful on the plains of the savanna no doubt - not sure they fit when applied to cosmology.

Human flourishing simply begs the question: why should humans flourish? Something more basic is required. Something that cannot be analyzed because it issues from t he world itself. — Astrophel

I consider this to be wishful thinking and mysticism. You said earlier that I was making it more complicated than it need be and now here you are saying something serpentine like this. :razz:

Sounds like you want a transcendent or magical foundation point to this question and this may well be an emotional reaction. You won't be the first to reach this position.

Human flourishing does raise the question what does human flourishing look like when done well? We know that pretty much all people are attempting to achieve this. Even the Taliban - they, like all fundamentalists, think a particular interpretation of God's will leads to human flourishing - generally flourishing in the afterlife.

We can debate how best to accomplish human flourishing but there seems little doubt to me that pretty much all people have agreed in their own way that this is a starting point. I don't think we need any more than this.

There is the old lady, and there is Raskolnikov, there is the bludgeoning. What about this is there of Plato or the logos?If not here, in this typical case, then nowhere. — Astrophel

This one seems uncomplicated (however I confess to finding Dostoevsky dull). Are you a Jordan Peterson neophyte?

If you believe in moral realism (derived via God or some kind of idealism) then you are likely to think killing is wrong.

If you believe there is no foundation, then you need to approach such questions existentially - what do you consider right and why. Maybe virtue can guide you, or principles like human flourishing - it's an open question.

When we think of the Platonic Good, we think of the Republic, right? And the cave, the shadows, the sun and so on. Now, Plato was, I guess, the father of rational realism, and we think of the Good, it is some IDEA that all instantiations of good are of. — Astrophel

Well yes - we kind of have two loose options - taking the Platonic ideal that all balance, goodness, order is located in the Logos and knowledge of this is available to all of us if we have the right teaching. Or we can take a more Nietzschian view, that all human truth is perspectival. Nietzsche has that great line - if you believe in grammar, you're a theist.

The counter to that is that people have different opinions on what is good or bad. Your assumption of good onto someone else could be drastically wrong. — schopenhauer1

I don't think the point is to take the Golden Rule in such a concrete manner. 'Do unto others' can mean we respect the other's preferences even if we don't share them, just as we how they well respect ours. Live and let live. No one has ever started a bar fight or war over being shown excessive courtesy... or not being stolen from or assaulted or murdered.

ask then, what is in an attraction or repulsion? — Astrophel

I suspect many are built into our lizards brains and may not be related to rational thought. Some are about survival and procreation. I hate it when people rest all things on evolution but I suspect that we are repulsed and attracted by biological imperatives which then work their way up over history into predilections and imperatives.

Curious point - many animals have strong codes of behaviour. Where does that come from? Same as above I'd say. They keep it simple, they clearly don't go on the lecture circuit advocating mindfulness or contemplative prayer.

I am asking that this be put off until we actually know what it is that sits before you that you are theorizing about. Is there an objection to this? — Astrophel

Good. What does phenomenology make of ethics - isn't this the approach you are suggesting? For my money what sits before ethics is behaviour that either repels or attracts us. Then comes the postulation.

Socrates is the most misguiding and most over-rated philosopher of all times. — god must be atheist

That's a ballsy statement. Nietzsche would have agreed but he was... Nietzsche. What's your excuse? :razz:

I ask, in order tp have a moral theory at all, you have to have something before you to theorize about. What is it there, in the reduced analysis of actual moral affair, that can make moral theorizing possible? — Astrophel

Human beings are meaning making creatures. We can't help but contrive and codify, systems, rules, positions, behaviours. Why is ethics different to any other human behaviour? Or are you coming at this from a foundational position?