But Banno, if what is right is found by intuition, then there's no way for a person to distinguish between something actually being right and it merely seeming right to that person.

Too obscure, or a lack of @Sam26. Moved and edited.

But Banno, if what is right is found by intuition, then there's no way for a person to distinguish between something actually being right and it merely seeming right to that person. — Banno

I think a moral fideism is reasonable. Have moral convictions, be resolute. Persuade others of these convictions when necessary.

The will to power.

Isn't that covered by the fideism part? Maybe the belief in God is simply a manifestation of the will to power, but the believer has faith it isn't.

OK, a Knight of Faith?

Closer to that. But without the high heroic trappings. It's too high a standard to hold any actual person to. The totalitarian true believer is the knight of faith in a dark mirror. I'm thinking of something a little more modest, and human. Like : you know what's right, and you do your reasonable best to act accordingly, without worrying about whether these convictions are metaphysically justified.

Ok. I’ve just thrown an argument at myself that should have been hurled by others in another thread.

The knights will not suffice. There should be more to a hinge proposition.

The knights will not suffice. — Banno

Why not?

Isn't intuition subconscious logic? What we call intuition is reflexive rationality taking place at a spinal level metaphorically speaking? Since intuition isn't and can't be rigorous it's prone to error. The error margin is the only difference between intuition and formal reasoning. That's to say where's the relevant distinction betweem intuitionistic morality and whatever is the other option?

Because I am not as easily pleased as you?

Isn't intuition subconscious logic? — TheMadFool

That is oxymoronic. Logic is grammar. Grammar is not subconscious.

Aren't Wittgenstein's therapeutics or 'bedrock' the paradigmatic targets of 'too easily satisfied' responses?

But I'm serious. What more can be added? What would it even look like? Any why does anything even need to be added? What kind of satisfaction is being pursued?

In the interest of furthering conversation, a question:

But Banno, if what is right is found by intuition, then there's no way for a person to distinguish between something actually being right and it merely seeming right to that person?

A couple of threads ago I was going in the other direction... :grin:

Where are you going in this thread tho?

Same place, from the other side:

Then you seem to be in the rather odd position of claiming, say, that it is wrong to kick a puppy, but that it is not true that it is wrong to kick a puppy. — Banno

To play devil's advocate (and part of this devil's in me) : Sure but what about SLAVERY? Lot of firm intutions there as well, self-evident to some as the hand in front of them.

Or, more to the point : what if the puppys kicked as part of a ritual?

Yep; all that. So now what? How we gonna tell them what to do?

Well we don't need to tell others what to do, mostly. But if we find our lives intertwined with theirs, sharing some moral situation - I think we'd appeal to their better angels through historical or fictional examples or discussing what's at stake --- in general, directing them, in whatever way, toward the values that they do, in fact, hold - when they aren't lost in abstraction.

That said, there is a danger here. Shame and the need for self-respect can be weaponized by skilled manipulators, who use people's moral sense against them, in service of their own ends. People can even be taught to do this to themselves, and experience this as their own intuition. So people are on guard against this kind of thing. That makes things trickier.

That is oxymoronic. Logic is grammar. Grammar is not subconscious. — Banno

Is logic as arbitrary as grammar? Can we make our own rules?

Yep.

Intuition is how you figure out what your preferences are.

But Banno, if what is right is found by intuition, then there's no way for a person to distinguish between something actually being right and it merely seeming right to that person. — Banno

I'm not sure that that follows. I'm also not sure that the alternative explanation would satisfy you. It can 1)be the case that what is right/good is found by intuition, and 2)intuition can be mistaken.

Intuition is thought/belief based. Those can be wrong. We can think/believe(intuit) that something or other is good, only to find out later that it was not. This happens all the time. People's thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour(about what's good/right) changes throughout their life(most people's anyway).

Human history shows this change as well.

If you means there’s no way to rationalize it, isn’t this evidence for intuitionism?

In studies of "moral dumbfounding" people have strong moral reactions but fail to establish any kind of rational principle to explain their reaction.

Intuition is how you figure out what your preferences are. — Terrapin Station

Seems quite plausible to me, at least or especially in a context of aesthetics or ethics.

I would normally say ethics shouldn’t be based on intuition but rather on concrete principles, but as I get older I realize how human intuition is often very useful and the world couldn’t run without it as it does.
More and more I’m beginning to doubt that ‘man is basically good’. Man is more self-centered, confused, vain, and a slave of emotions. His intuitions, although serving its purpose for survival and multiplication, cannot be trusted upon, judging by it’s tumultuous past and chaotic material-centered present. Religion should’ve been helpful in this regard, but it rarely ever was. And neither is abundance.
Ethics cannot be relied on if it is bent for an agenda. It must be objective and clean, in most situations anyway.

But Banno, if what is right is found by intuition, then there's no way for a person to distinguish between something actually being right and it merely seeming right to that person. — Banno

There are a variety of things that can render people blind to ethical truths. There must be something fundamental about ethics else how does anyone ever learn what good is? Something like Meno's paradox looms, right?

An alternative is to say that ethics is a matter of language use only. IOW moral nihilism.

There must be something fundamental about ethics else how does anyone ever learn what good is? — frank

One thing that happens for people to arrive at ethical stances is that most people have empathy. They observe Joey hitting Eddie, and they have a gut-level reaction against this--"Hey! Don't hit Eddie! That's not cool!"

Another thing that happens is that people observe or imagine behavior and then they intuit not only whether they're okay with letting Joey and Eddie act that way towards each other in itself, but they also can think about things like, "Okay, if we let Joey and Eddie behave that way towards each other, it's likely to lead to x (which is likely to lead to y (which is likely to lead to z etc.)), and then they intuit whether they're okay with x (and/or y (and/or z etc.)).

Usually people don't just think these sorts of things about Joey and Eddie. They apply them to a much broader population. They generalize how they feel.

And of course, society has a lot of influence on these things, as other people express the results of their own intuitions, whether individually or per the statistical norm in some culture, and as people react to behavior, including your own . . . but moral stances, to be moral stances someone actually holds, are still going to be the result of intuitions about behavior and its upshots.

Yep. Feeling for others, feeling remorse, I think those would be examples of direct intuition of ethics.