And if they are not truth apt they cannot participate in rationalising our actions. — Banno

They can be reasoned with if you take a conventional view of morality, i.e. it is true that we agreed (as a society) that stealing is wrong... you don't need the moral statements themselves to be truth apt.

The foundation of these norms is the metapysical question. Do we have them just to facilitate survival and therefore ingrained in our DNA? Or do they come from a higher source of wisdom directing us toward higher purpose? If you choose the latter, you have no way of asserting that than faith. The consequence of denying the higher power is to be a complex wolf or chicken though. That worldview is lesser i'd submit. — Hanover

Maybe it's just a convention, wouldn't that be the most obvious answer?

The statement "stealing is illegal" is true, verifiable by looking the law up to see see what it says. — Hanover

Yep. "stealing is immoral" is a much harder problem.

Do we have them just to facilitate survival and therefore ingrained in our DNA? Or do they come from a higher source of wisdom directing us toward higher purpose? — Hanover

Why are they the only options? What are the other options? And these two do not appear to be mutually exclusive.

Yes, but my point, perhaps badly worded, is that if the statement 'stealing is wrong' amounts to no more than the emotivist's "boo stealing!" This can't be truth-apt. I'm not convinced yet that the emotivist is wrong about this. — Tom Storm

Ok, but then my point still stands. One can't derive any consequent from "boo stealing!". At the very least a moral statement worthy of the name needs to apply to more than just oneself. That you don't like chocolate ice cream is not a reason for you to stop others eating chocolate ice cream. That one ought not kick puppies is a reason for you to stop others kicking puppies. "One ought not kick puppies" is different to "Boo puppy kicking".

Back to the Binding of Isaac. The replies assumed that I was holding god culpable for the torture of a child. But god, being god, does what it is necessary to do; so if god demands a sacrifice, he could not have done otherwise.

But Abraham, on the other hand, might have not collected the wood, might not have trussed his son or held the knife. He may have done otherwise. On this account it is Abraham, not god, who is to blame.

Ok, but then my point still stands. One can't derive any consequent from "boo stealing!". At the very least a moral statement worthy of the name needs to apply to more than just oneself. — Banno

I agree with this.

A pathway to developing moral systems via emotivism would probably involve arguments about cooperation: a code of conduct that provides safety and predictability, because most humans feel more comfortable that way. Or something like this.

Yes. It's about how we want things to be. It's not that emotivism is wrong so much as that it doesn't properly recognise the difference between what I want and what we want.

That one ought not kick puppies is a reason for you to stop others kicking puppies. "One ought not kick puppies" is different to "Boo puppy kicking". — Banno

No, it really is not. "one ought not kick puppies" means "I think one ought not kick puppies". Nothing more. It means the speaker believes it to be true, referring to nothing further.

But god, being god, does what it is necessary to do; so if god demands a sacrifice, he could not have done otherwise. — Banno

But see, for example, Exodus 32:7-14.

God says he will destroy those who built the golden calf. Moses tells God that will make him look bad to the Egyptians if he does that and it will contradict God's covenant to provide the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the promised land.

"Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened."

Moses changed God's mind. Quite the lawyer. This seems to indicate God is a tempermental sort, fortunately willing to be talked down. As in, don't forget your promises and don't go looking like a crazy man. Such reasoning prevailed upon God.

Your reference to God lacking free will is based upon a logical analysis of what omnibenevolence requires, and inserts more modern concerns about perfection and freedom. it's not based upon a reading of the text about this particular God (Yahweh).

While I do know the Jewish view is that angels lack free will, my understanding is that human free will comes from the fact that humans were created in God's image (part of the Creation story). That is, freedom is part of a divine nature.

I don't know your analysis of God having free will holds, but it's certainly not an issue directly addressed in the text.

What I'm pointing out here also harkens back to what I said earlier. This is a text about the ancient Hebrews and their covenant with God and their eventual receiving of the promised land. Any event that interferes with that ends the book or at least greatly changes it's theme.

If Abraham kills Isaac, there will be no Jacob (aka "Israel"). The next passage would then be: " And so now God fucked up, having talked Abraham into killing what was supposed to be the forefather of the Jewish people. Ho hum, let's now talk about Ishmael, Abraham’s other bastard child Sarah cast off into the wilderness."

Since it's just a book of fiction, it's perfectly fine to conclude some parts are inconsistent, undeveloped, confusing, non-sense, or whatever. It's not like the world's most well written story.

For example, know why Moses never entered the promised land? The Jews questioned whether it was safe because their scouts saw Nephilim there and it pissed God off that they would question the soundness of his directive to enter.

The Nephilim are giants, half angel, half mortal. They were the reason for Noah's flood (the unholy offspring of gods fucking women) to kill them all off. As in wtf?

No specific "atheistic ideology" was mentioned in your initial claim that atheistic ideologies are equally as dangerous as religious ideologies so I mentioned a few. — praxis

I did say this

Those who feel certain there is no God and those who feel certain there is a God and that they know the will of that God and who believe they are justified in force-feeding their beliefs to others are equally ideologues, and thus equally dangerous. — Janus

which I think clearly shows that what I had in mind were dogmatic ideologies, whether atheistic or theistic. It is the belief in absolute authority whether human or divine and the imposition of dogma on others which is the problem.

When you say "morality is about harm done," it seems to me thsi is expressing an emotional reaction to harm. How does harm become objective? — Tom Storm

Emotional reactions will always be a part of moral and immoral actions, but it's not the guiding principle behind moral action. One could imagine a person not responding emotionally and yet able to recognize that a particular action is immoral. Why? Because most people recognize that certain actions are objectively immoral. The example that illustrates this point is the following: Imagine a person cutting off the arm of another without good reason. The harm done to the person is objective, viz., the blood loss, the arm on the ground, the screams, and the reactions of family and friends. All of these components are objective and clearly objective. This is true whether you respond emotionally or not. And where there is a question as to the harm done, which clearly happens, then we can debate whether or not there is harm. One can see the objective harm in stealing, lying, betrayal, etc. By the way each of these (stealing, lying, and betrayal) have nuances that people debate about, but that's just the nature of the subject. It's not always clear that harm has been done, so we shouldn't always be absolutist about these things. But generally speaking, we can say these actions are immoral.

We might also add that when confronted with two evils, choose to do the least amount of harm (the principle of harm) based on the facts available to you.

It is the belief in absolute authority whether human or divine and the imposition of dogma on others which is the problem. — Janus

There's a significant difference between faith in authority and forced obedience (imposition).

I tend to think that enlightenment values would more or less immunize someone from blind faith in authority because at the heart of it is the imperative to think for yourself. So how could Stalin effectively use enlightenment rhetoric to support totalitarian control?

Maybe, but I’m not sure. For me, emotional reactions are likely to be preconcpetual, prelinguistic experiences to which we apply post-hoc rationalizations. "I am angry because..." what follows is the post-hoc part. I've often held that human preferences are primarily directed by affective states, with rational deliberation serving as a post-hoc justification rather than the initial determinant of choice. — Tom Storm

I have a somewhat different idea of emotions. Emotional reactions are reactions to something, some state of affairs, fact, whatever. That's what I call the object of the emotion - what it is about. So, for me, emotional reactions are the emotions. (You seem to be positing that the emotion is something orther than the reactions). If I react to the scoring of a goal with joy or disappointment, the goal is neither post-hoc nor a rationalization.
I disintinguish betweem emotions and moods. Anxiety and depression sometimes have emotions - some specific thing that I am anxious or depressed about. But sometimes they do not, and then they influence how I respond to specific objects or events. They affect how we interpret everything. As Wittgenstine said "The world of the happy man is quite different from the world of a sad man".

I'm not sure what your points mean in relation to emotivism. Can you clarify this? — Tom Storm

Looking at it again, I'm not sure that it really makes sense. It was just an off-the-cuff thing.

Ok, but then my point still stands. One can't derive any consequent from "boo stealing!". At the very least a moral statement worthy of the name needs to apply to more than just oneself. — Banno

Isn't there a complication about this, that the emotions have two functions, one is to express how we feel
(*Boo!", "Hurrah!") and the other to describe what it provoking the feeling - the object of the emotion. One could compare the concept of stealing which describes an action, but also expresses an evaluation of it.

Yes. It's about how we want things to be. It's not that emotivism is wrong so much as that it doesn't properly recognise the difference between what I want and what we want. — Banno

Yes. And if it is about how we want things to be, then it is about our values.

No, it really is not. "one ought not kick puppies" means "I think one ought not kick puppies". Nothing more. It means the speaker believes it to be true, referring to nothing further. — AmadeusD

For example, know why Moses never entered the promised land? The Jews questioned whether it was safe because their scouts saw Nephilim there and it pissed God off that they would question the soundness of his directive to enter. — Hanover

I didn't know that. I shall add it to my list of justifications of God's action in the OT, together with his reason for forbidding Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge, for the Flood, for punishing Job. No doubt there are others. The God of the OT is a rather different creature from the God of the NT.

which I think clearly shows that what I had in mind were dogmatic ideologies, whether atheistic or theistic. It is the belief in absolute authority whether human or divine and the imposition of dogma on others which is the problem. — Janus

Yes. Perhaps more cautiously, it is the confidence that one knows what the absolute authority is telling us that is the danger.

Yes. Perhaps more cautiously, it is the confidence that one knows what the absolute authority is telling us that is the danger. — Ludwig V

Without in any way denying this, in parallel, what I’ve previously termed “the dark side of faith” can also manifest thusly:

The conviction that the stance which one holds and proclaims is superlative to - and thereby unaffected by - any rational or empirical evidence to the contrary. This in itself could be contextualized via the notion of “hinges” - in the sense that one’s stability, or else integrity, of being will here hinge on one’s never being wrong in what one upholds, irrespective of the evidence.

And I'll contest that the ability to so maintain in turn establishes what is loosely termed “strong men”, who then can become a cult-of-personality to all those they impose their authoritarian authority upon. (So stated because not all sources of authority will be authoritarian - be it an encyclopedia or some specialist in some scientific field, etc.)

One could imagine a person not responding emotionally and yet able to recognize that a particular action is immoral. Why? Because most people recognize that certain actions are objectively immoral. The example that illustrates this point is the following: Imagine a person — Sam26

I guess that’s where we differ. I don’t believe any preference we have or decision we make is independent of our affective state. Reasoning is post hoc and the reasoning we find compelling or "satisfying" is shaped by how we feel about it. Emotion doesn’t always manifest as tears or laughter; rather, it forms the underlying foundation of our identity and preferences.

Note, I am not an emotivist, I might become one on further investigation but for now I think it is an interesting way of looking at morality. I do think emotion is critical to who we are.

Because most people recognize that certain actions are objectively immoral. The example that illustrates this point is the following: Imagine a person cutting off the arm of another without good reason. The harm done to the person is objective, viz., the blood loss, the arm on the ground, the screams, and the reactions of family and friends. — Sam26

An emotivist would likely respond that even though the physical harm of cutting off the arm is indisputable, the leap to labeling the act as "objectively immoral" still rests on subjective emotional responses rather than inherent moral facts. Your description of screams and reactions illustrates the observable consequences of the act, but it is our emotional reaction to these consequences—our feelings of horror and disapproval—that ultimately drives our moral judgment. In other words, while the physical harm is objective, the construction of this act as immoral is not derived from the harm itself but from the shared emotional attitudes that society cultivates in response to such violence. And humans (within time and place), seem to share fears, horrors, anxieties.

I disintinguish betweem emotions and moods. Anxiety and depression sometimes have emotions - some specific thing that I am anxious or depressed about. — Ludwig V

I don't currently make those sorts of distinctions. Mood is affect. Anxiety is affect. Enjoying music is affect.

As Wittgenstine said "The world of the happy man is quite different from the world of a sad man". — Ludwig V

Sure. But we can also say that the world of the happy man A is quite different from the happy man B.

So, for me, emotional reactions are the emotions. (You seem to be positing that the emotion is something orther than the reactions). — Ludwig V

Yes, I am suggesting that emotion shapes our identify and may be the foundational platform over which our identity (choices, decisions, preferences) is constructed.

That seems about right.

Your description of screams and reactions illustrates the observable consequences of the act, but it is our emotional reaction to these consequences—our feelings of horror and disapproval—that ultimately drives our moral judgment. In other words, while the physical harm is objective, the construction of this act as immoral is not derived from the harm itself but from the shared emotional attitudes that society cultivates in response to such violence. And humans (within time and place), seem to share fears, horrors, anxieties. — Tom Storm

I would argue that as soon as you describe the physical consequences of the act as harmful, you have made a moral judgement - or at least a value judgment. Harm is deleterious, by definition.
I suppose you would say that fears, horrors etc. are shared, you would say that they are not objective, but inter-subjective. But that sharing is one of the features of objectivity, so that seems like a cop-out,

But we can also say that the world of the happy man A is quite different from the happy man B. — Tom Storm

I suppose we can. But the point that happiness and sadness are attitudes that shape our judgements stands.

I am suggesting that emotion shapes our identify and may be the foundational platform over which our identity (choices, decisions, preferences) is constructed. — Tom Storm

I don't think that emotion is one thing. It is a collection of different reactions to the world we live in. It seems very odd to deny that the world we live is not the foundation of your choices, etc.

, The ambiguities around "emotion" are perhaps the reason that the view Tom is espousing is no more often called non-cognitivism, placing the emphasis on the supposed inapplicability of reason to moral sentiments. Much of the literature around Wittgenstein assumes either the interpretation that he took ethics to be outside of language and so not a part of rational discourse, or alternatively that ethics (and aesthetics, even more so) pervades our whole world, showing itself in every aspect of our social lives. The tricky bit might be seeing these as not mutually contradictory.

There's also a reason that what was once called subjectivism, then emotivism, is now commonly called by philosophers non-cognitivism - names that grew as folk expounding on the topic found it necessary to take more and more into account to defend the basic sentiment that ethics is about how we feel about things, and not so much about what we think about things.

One major problem here is the separation of what we feel and what we think is no where near as clear and clean a cut as this approach supposes. Another is that what we think and feel tend to the private or subjective, with all the accompanying difficulties.

We have been encouraged to look to use - not to think, but to look. There is a difference between looking around and seeing how things are, a comparatively passive activity, and looking around to see how things might be changed, both aesthetically and ethically - a far more active process. The activities being undertaken in these two contrasting cases are quite distinct.

By looking to what we might do, we bypass the opacity of thinking and feeling, refocusing instead on our acts of volition, and how we might change things. Fundamentally, ethics and aesthetics are about what we might do.

The difference is neatly summed up in Anscombe's list of things from the shop. While the words may be the same, there are two very different uses for the list. We might take the list to the shop and purchase the things on it; in which case we change the world to fit the list; or we might write the things we purchased out in a list, perhaps as a receipt, and so change the list to match the world. The difference here is not in the list but in our intent.

All this by way of suggesting that it might be our intent that is important in ethical situations rather than our emotional response.

There's a significant difference between faith in authority and forced obedience (imposition). — praxis

Apart from forced obedience imposition may also include brainwashing, resulting in faith in authority.

So how could Stalin effectively use enlightenment rhetoric to support totalitarian control? — praxis

It is well known that Stalin's most effective strategy was the cultivation of fear in the populace, and the imposition of punishment on transgressors.

Yes. Perhaps more cautiously, it is the confidence that one knows what the absolute authority is telling us that is the danger. — Ludwig V

Would you not say that one must first have faith that the authority is absolute before one could presume to serve it?

By looking to what we might do, we bypass the opacity of thinking and feeling, refocusing instead on our acts of volition, and how we might change things — Banno

So dismiss thinking and feeling and focus on what we do. This is a recipe for understanding morality?

It's what you do, not what you feel or think, that counts, isn't it?

It's what you do, not what you feel or think, that counts, isn't it? — Banno

Morality is about what we think and feel about what we do.

Morality is about what we think and feel about what we do. — frank

Intention? Sometimes we might seek to do good and unwittingly cause bad outcomes, is that what you have in mind?

It's what you do, not what you feel or think, that counts, isn't it? — Banno

Very Jewish sentiment. Catholics require faith and works. Protestants receive salvation from faith alone.

Ok. If that works for you.

I really don't care. Seems parochial.

All this by way of suggesting that it might be our intent that is important in ethical situations rather than our emotional response. — Banno

To this effect:

If one intends to save a life (and has good enough reason to believe oneself capable of so doing) but accidentally kills it (say in the process of giving CPR or first aid), ought the person be deemed good or bad? Most of us would say "good", and the law generally agrees. (e.g., in California there's the so-called "Good Samaritan law" which applies to just this kind of thing. It's in large part based on intent.)

Conversely:

If one intends to murder another but accidentally benefits the other in the process of so trying to murder but failing (say by alleviating them of a malignant tumor, for example), ought the person who intended to murder be deemed good or bad? Most would say "bad".

This offered in the context of intents vs. doings.

And, of course, one can always actively intention X while emotively disliking so doing. Here I figure things could get relatively complex. But we still judge ethical standing on the intentioning and not on the emotive state of being. If one intentions the saving of a life by giving mouth to mouth resuscitation while being disgusted by the vomit, for example, the actively engaged in intentioning is nevertheless what counts.

By looking to what we might do, we bypass the opacity of thinking and feeling, refocusing instead on our acts of volition, and how we might change things. Fundamentally, ethics and aesthetics are about what we might do. — Banno

It's what you do, not what you feel or think, that counts, isn't it? — Banno

I'm not a philosopher, so here is my obtuse response:

Can't it be said that it is emotions and attitudes that ultimately drive our doing? What we do is a reflection of what we feel and value, and moral language itself is an expression of approval or disapproval rather than a statement of fact.

Would you not say that one must first have faith that the authority is absolute before one could presume to serve it? — Janus

Yes. I had in mind the possibility, for example, of someone believing that God is the final authority, but suitably cautious about thinking that they know the mind of God when it comes to what to do.

The idea that emotion plays a primary role in determining which actions are immoral and which are not is a non-starter for me. I don't see this as a worthy moral theory. I think you agree. I agree with you that our actions are primary. I try to make such theories as simple as possible for people. I see right and wrong in terms of the harm done and mitigating the harm. Other issues play into morality like intentions, values, virtues, and mitigating circumstances.

Give us an argument for why morality isn't emotion first and foremost. So far you've just offered hand waving.

It's better than no waving at all. :grin: