This is a radical, and overarching openness that runs through all things, and is overwhelmingly alien to familiar thinking. — Astrophel
You said it yoursef: your taste will vary due to mood, etc. I am not a mood. When a mood comes to me, I can deal with it, true, but the mood and its alternatives are givens. You are thrown into a world of givens. Choice intervenes, but choices are only among what is given to choose; and so many are now beyond choice: I can't choose to hate chocolate or adore traffic noise. — Astrophel
Ethics is something to do with behavior, and in particular something to do with our behavior towards one another, but there are many ways to describe two (or more) persons in relation to each other without an ethical ‘dimension’, as we might say — biological, economic, and so on.
I’m tempted to say something like this: suppose we start not with persons only, but with another element, something like The Good. Seriously, full-on Plato. Suppose we think the minimum configuration we’re interested in is two people in relation to each other and also in relation to The Good. This, rather than just taking “good” as a way we might categorize the relations obtaining between people, because we want more than that: an ethical act, an ethical moment would be one that is not just a matter of what I do to you “being good” or not, but also of my “being good”, of my acting out of goodness, of my sharing in goodness with you, inviting you also to be good, of inviting you also to take up a relation to The Good as I have, recognizing your capacity to relate to The Good as I do, and so on. Not a matter only of categorizing an action, but of a multifaceted interaction with this third thing.
Reifying it like this can also serve to cut off the temptation to ‘finish’ good instrumentally — that is, as “good for” something or other. An ethical action is one that is good, full-stop, not good for you, or for your happiness, or your well-being, or for society, or for anything. Not in furtherance of some purpose, higher or lower, something we might eventually attribute simply to individual (or social, or biological) preference or habit or desire, but only in relation to The Good. If I act with one eye on you and the other on this third thing, The Good, with a commitment to you but also to this other thing, that is ethical. It’s not just you that has a claim on me, but this other thing as well.
I generally go in fear of Platonism, but off the top of my head I can’t really think of another way adequately to convey the absoluteness of the ethical, if you see what I mean. And I can’t imagine how we give substance to this third thing, The Good. I’ve no idea what to say about it. Maybe it’s just a way of throwing everything that touches our ways of behaving toward each other into one basket — all the biological, social, cultural factors, all those little hints and warnings and exhortations about what is good. All of that taken together seems to have a life, or at least an existence, of its own, that we find ourselves beholden to as much as we are beholden to ourselves and to each other. — Srap Tasmaner
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
Ethics doesn’t exist. The illusion is believing in a system of laws to the point that it overrules what you actually want/need/wish to do with your life.
The selfless man is spineless, selfish man is spineless. But the man who cares for being neither one nor the other … is the Self. — I like sushi
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? — Tom Storm
This answer seeks to smuggle a specific position on metaethics into the very definition of the subject matter — SophistiCat
And this specific position is? — hypericin
What it is is a codification, elaboration, ossification, (and in some cases, perversion),of innate concepts and feelings of fairness and justice that are inborn in most of us, and in most social species. — hypericin
Kant and Bentham-Mill would've never formulates their theories sans a definition i.e. answering the question "what's ethics?" is first and foremost.
For Kant, ethics is simply a universal law! Consequences, ergo what an act leads to, whether happiness/sorrow, are immaterial.
For Bentham-Mill ethics is grounded in the happiness-suffering duo! Consequence, happiness/suffering to be specific, matter.
Are these not the same thing?
My best guess: Bentham-Mill ethics is basically an interim solution to ethical problems/dilemmas until such a point when Kantian ethics becomes practicable/implementable. — Agent Smith
I've always thought Kant's imperative rested with utility, notwithstanding the "good will". How can I universalize my maxim in any meaningful way unless the principle details the specifics of the case? And what is a case if not for the real value that is in play? Act utilitarianism seems right. — Astrophel
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
Asking why will eventually lead to foundational justifications. — Astrophel
It doesn't matter why, or in what circumstance, or how evil one's intent is--- liking something, adoring it, despising it, and so forth, have in every case an existential counterpart: that which is in the world which is adored, despised and the rest. — Astrophel
Just to add, the argument for moral realism I defend is quite involved. This is but an iceberg's tip. — Astrophel
You mean like a boxing ring? A fighting arena? — god must be atheist
Seems my joke wasn't a KO... — john27
Oh no, actually it was the opposite haha. I meant that ethical behaviour has a tendency to not follow rationality. — john27
When I was fifteen, I worked out that ethics -- though a noble and grand feeling, and praised by society -- is an insidiously selfish act in each case of its manifestations. I figured some sort of a sacrifice is always part of an ethical behaviour. This, put together with the inherent aim of ethics to always benefit some other, it seems like the most unselfish, noble act.Ethics, on the other hand, seems to involve taking the concerns of others into account. — Banno
I think when one looks closely at an ethical matter, and puts aside all else that would otherwise intrude into an interpretation of what is there, one will "see" that matter for what it is, and it is not a discursive discovery, it is intuitive. — Astrophel
There is no ‘foundation’ for phenomenological investigations. That is basically one of the greatest benefits of phenomenology. It doesn’t adhere to any particular ‘foundation’ although it was created (by Husserl) to provide a better grounding for science (not ethics). It is a ‘science’ of consciousness.
If it was used for ethics it would have to take on other forms. Heidegger and others (the hermeneutical types) probably go there in part with their slither the greater phenomenological body (meaning based principally on interpretations of mere words tangential to experience). — I like sushi
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. — Tom Storm
An astronomer will deploy paradigms of normal science — Astrophel
Yes, I would agree with all that, considering your disposition towards consequentialism. On the other hand, from another disposition rather than yours, ethics in itself, as a doctrine, is neither discursive nor intuitive; it is aesthetic. This follows from the notion that ethics presupposes morality. Whether or not that presuppositions holds, is what the philosophy is all about.
The key, I think, is your “what is there” is in need of something that says how “what is there” got to be there, and perhaps more importantly, what the “what” actually is.
To put aside intrusions into matters by interpretations of them, is counter to basic human epistemological nature. We want to know stuff, always have, always will. Even granting that intrusions, re: analysis, of matters sometimes just makes the matter less explained, isn’t going to prevent us from doing it. — Mww
:up: An intelligible-pragmatic formulation of "the golden rule" (e.g. Confucius, Hillel the Elder, Buddha, Epicurus).Don't do things to others [which] you wouldn't want done to you.. This "don't want it done to us" can be generally deemed as "harm", or "suffering". Don't do it to others is a good place to start. — schopenhauer1
I think this is only a half right. We (can) know what is bad for our kind – h. sapiens as a species – that is, what harms us and makes us suffer. This makes disutilitarianism (especially as a normative modality of aretaic-eudaimonism) much more applicable to –reflectively practical for – flourishing than utilitarianism, deontologism, emotivism, etc.The counter to that is that people have different opinions on what is good or bad. — schopenhauer1
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. — Tom Storm
And so you reject a suffering-focused ethics as insufficient for judging 'what to do and what not to do to / with others'?I don't think not harming others is sufficient. — Banno
Is there anything that can survive, that is, be intuitively free of, the "play of difference and deference," free of "taking something AS"? The answer, it seems, is yes nd no. No, because, and I am still working on the way to caste this, no, because language is the "through which" the given is given. Yes, because language does not construct affectivity (to speak broadly of feelings, likes, dislikes, etc.).
I don't want to freeze history. I want to discover what is "presuppositionless" in historically structured occurrent affairs, and affectivity (broadly conceived) is this. — Astrophel
But it is not up to me, I mean, I don't decide what is delicious, disgusting, joyful, wretched and so on. I may choose among things, but choices all presuppose an established value, which is there, in the ethical matter, and ethics and all of its complications turns on this. — Astrophel
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