Similar objects of the same kind are just examples of the thing in question. — Mww

What I'm asking is what your justification is for saying this. Taking Wittgenstein's 'game' example, there is no 'thing in question' with regards to the word 'game' we apply it according to some rules, but the rules do not together represent 'game' because they do not all need to be applied at any one time.

What I'm saying is that words do jobs, they don't always refer to some 'thing' even if they appear to. It may be that appearing to refer to some thing is the job they're doing. The same word might do a different job in different contexts. So with a word which appears to refer to some thing, we might be looking for one thing, several things or no things at all.

What is a moral realist? Or, what would you say a moral realist is? How would I know one as such? — Mww

I think a moral realist would have to be someone who thinks that moral 'goodness' and 'badness' are universals. But they would also need to have some sort of correspondence theory of truth. Anything less and they can't really apply 'true' to moral statements. Unfortunately both are nonsense!

Back to our bodies and thinking- how do you feel about what I said? — Athena

I don’t have any feelings about it; my feelings weren’t affected. My thinking was affected, and from that, I can say I agree with a lot of what you say, disagree with some.

Agree:
.....Enlightenment is no longer predominant; our education is bad; stress how to think not what to think; sense of right or wrong is visceral...

Disagree:
Sense of true or false is visceral; (formal) education develops us as capable moral creatures; we normally vote from feelings.
————-

Does your gut tell you this is ridiculous or maybe something that should concern us? — Athena

Only this.....

While the brain plays a part in our thinking, it does not play the most important part. Our bodies play the most important part. — Athena

....which I fail to understand at all. I suppose you mean our gut is part of our body, which I reject as it relates to thinking. From here, if it were true, it would follow that feeling controls thinking, which in turn permits thinking to be rash, irresponsible and dangerous, exactly as much as it permits thinking to be beneficial. But the former is the exception to the rule, the latter being the rule.

Anyway, I have the utmost respect for educators, especially these days, when kids are generally just punk-ass renditions of their parents. And THAT....is what my emotional intelligence looks like.

Would you agree that when you're saying "genetic is statements", you have in mind a broader category concerning body and mind functions? Or do you actually want to do the reduction of non-cultural is-statements - which I take are is statements that do not concern cultural stuff but do still concern humans - to statements about genetics? — fdrake

I had in mind our genetic bias toward certain social behaviours and capacities, but I don't see these as qualitatively different from any other part of our evolutionary history. What did you have in mind?

(If human is in configuration X) then (human should do Y)

IE, despite the losses of information there are still true imperatives of that form.

EG: "If a human wants to avoid losing the functioning of their hands then said human should not hold their hands in a fire for 15 minutes" — fdrake

Yes, as I said to Pfhorrest, I don't mean this to extend to all normatives. In fact, I argue that normative rationalism is, in the case of morality in our current environment, inevitable and necessary. However, sticking with animal facts :) this is a perfectly true but redundant use of language. In practise, I do not wonder whether to keep my hand in the fire for 15 minutes. If I am, say, drunk enough to think that I have become superhuman, my body, with no rational input from me, will disillusion me of this matter within a second or two, and the resultant behaviour -- to remove my hand from the fire -- will likewise require no input from the drunkard in charge.

This is equivalent to the redundancy I spoke of earlier. Yes, one might wish to, as Pfhorrest invited me to, derive a moral philosophy from our instincts that holds social behaviour amenable to reciprocal altruism as objectively 'good' as well as good-for-the-group, good-for-us (indirectly) or good-for-survival-of-our-ancestors, but that would be as redundant as deriving that it is bad to put your hand in a fire for 15 minutes if you wish to avoid losing it. Nature got you covered there.

"do humans want to avoid losing the functioning of their hands"? is a question you could answer with a survey. It might also turn out that there are contextual defeaters, like a would you rather game: "would you rather lose functioning of your hands or kill everybody else on the planet?" - that still facilitates the imperative being true so long as the context isn't a defeating context. So it's not necessarily true, it's contingently true for all plausible scenarios, and if you're gonna base moral principles on human behaviour and wants, it's going to output contingently true statements at best anyway. — fdrake

This is fine, and, while the example is not something I would consider a moral question, there are, in my view, moral claims that are contingently true in all moral frames of reference (just as, say, rest mass is the same in all inertial frames of reference) . Behaviours and beliefs justifying them can be antisocial or social, and, in the schema of the OP, only the social ones underpin our ideas of morality (though the antisocial ones are certainly relevant). Moral frames of reference are based on our social apparatus of empathy and reciprocal altruism and must be self-consistent to be social. A frame in which it is okay for me to kill you for fun but not okay for you to kill me for fun is by definition not a moral frame of reference (and any frame of reference in which the rest mass is different cannot be an inertial frame). In short, we can place limits on what kind of frames of reference can be considered moral at all.

It is to this extent that I believe we can a) understand our conceptions of morality and tendency to generalisation them and b) since we must face moral problems rationally most of the time, derive, if not a complete set of moral truths, boundaries on what is considered universally immoral. [EDIT: and the value of liberalism within those bounds]

In my experience, deliberation and planning often plays a pretty big role in evaluating how best to treat people. You've already got reason in analysed territory, and it already links to emotions and sensations. Seems strange to me to make such a reduction away from reasoning when you've thrown reasoning in there - presumably justified by it being "subjective" when it concerns human norms (more later). — fdrake

I think this is one of those cases (and I see it in my discussions with Pfhorrest here as well) where we probably assume very different kinds of thinking of each other based on our respective histories, me coming from a non-philosophical formal education (albeit one I approached out of philosophical interest). You seem to be characterising my position as somehow wanting to limit the role of reason and looking for evidence to support it. As a person with a background where reason was pretty crucial, that really isn't the case.

I prefer to start from the evidence and see what makes sense. Where the evidence suggests that, in encountering another individual, we have unconscious neurological and physiological reactions to that encounter which bias us toward or away from certain behaviours on the whole, clearly that is not describing a rational process. Further, it is clear that such a process has no non-contingent need of rational outsourcing, hence my supposition that 'good' did not need to be rationalised in small social groups. We still have use of reason even within this limit upon ambiguity since we must sometimes reason a) what the desired outcome is, and b) how to realise that outcome. (Not always the case: I do not believe, as Mww does, that my ancestors had to bother reasoning whether escaping a sabre-tooth tiger was efficacious or how to do so: biology got us covered there too).

Clearly we do exist now with a need to rationalise those drives and biases: people we meet are largely strangers and have important cultural differences about social behaviour, and we exist within power relations (neglecting neither the chicken nor the egg). So I do believe that discerning what is 'good' in a given situation demands reason: I just don't believe that rational concepts about said drives and biases are fundamental, accurate, or have primacy. That we know what we know about those biological drives comes from reason, so this is an assault purely on rationalism, not reason itself, which is pretty great actually, if over-credited.

Despite that any representation knowledge varies in a trivial way with human belief (it's knowledge! It's normative!), and even the content depends upon language for its articulation even if it's true - or a great approximation to the truth. But subjective stuff has that property too, it depends upon articulation and human behaviour for its production... Any facts about human behaviour have to vary with human behaviour, so that would make them subjective - whereas more precisely they're contingent and about humans. — fdrake

Well, we actually hit upon the ultimate contingency (was that you or Pfhorrest? I forget): "X is objectively true... if you agree." That's as good a definition of relativism as any.

I come to this from quite a different angle (again!). We are substantially limited in how we can know the world, trapped by our own subjectivities if you will, and it is therefore important for claims to objectivity to be well justified. Subjective-by-default is my position. I am sufficiently impressed by the regularity, predictability and generality of material phenomena that I am quite convinced of an objective existence for what is around me (including my body, the world, you at the other end of this internet connection), even if I cannot know how well my subjective conceptions of them represent their true nature, and I see nothing like this in morality.

I think this is perhaps unusual: we are naturally inclined to look for the generally true in subjectively received evidences, and so the default seems to be an assumption of objective reality until proven wrong. Naturally I'm no better, but I do think we can learn not to trust claims of objectivity, and that this would save a lot of bother defending daft positions against evidence. (That's not a dig about this thread: I was thinking of the persistence of e.g. beliefs in objective space and time). As I said to Pfhorrest, if anyone can justify the objective existence of moral truths in the same way that nature has justified belief in an objective existence, the OP is wrong, and I am stumped as to what the evidence in hand can possibly mean.

I prefer to start from the evidence and see what makes sense. Where the evidence suggests that, in encountering another individual, we have unconscious neurological and physiological reactions to that encounter which bias us toward or away from certain behaviours on the whole, clearly that is not describing a rational process — Kenosha Kid

My perspective on that is: we do react in some way, and reason is involved somehow. Well, more accurately cognition. The qualitative distinction between the functioning styles of system 1 and system 2 in that approach doesn't preclude both functioning at the same time - it's more a question of weighting, no?

And since it's a question of weighting, reason's involved to a greater or lesser extent depending on the act. This is why I find it strange that you're focussing on moral behaviour being non-cognitive when both systems are involved. Instances of action based on moral principles or conceptually relating to norms of conduct are in part deliberative.

You seem to be characterising my position as somehow wanting to limit the role of reason and looking for evidence to support it. As a person with a background where reason was pretty crucial, that really isn't the case. — Kenosha Kid

I think I can see why you'd attribute that to me based on my response. My perspective on what you've said is you're throwing the baby (reason-cognition-deliberation-planning) out with the bathwater (reducing following moral principles to a certain homeostasis of non-cognitive sentiment). I just don't see good reasons to split cognition away from sentiment when we're talking about morality, that usually comes up in contexts when we're already trying to find out what best to do. Cognition's involved in that.

I do agree with you that if you transformed the terms of the argument to "emotion is an interaction between cognitive processes and sensorial processes", there would still be the weighting question, and I'd side with you that for the most part moral decisions are made transparently (absorbed coping-system 1 functioning-prethetically), that is they are already made by what we're already doing - but in cases where we're trying to find out what's right, cognition is way more involved and I don't think it's appropriate to call these moral problem solving behaviours non-cognitive. Always a question of weighting deliberation and reflex when exploring what to do.

So in essence, I don't think you're minimising the role of reasoning, I think you're collapsing a lot of distinctions into being much the same distinction. subjective/objective = system 1/system 2 = normative/descriptive = territory/map (in this context) = value/fact - when how we make maps from territories, investigate, deliberate, is already part of the territory of moral conduct since it is in part cognitive. It's like moral conduct is deficient since it's not objective (merely subjective), but it's actually both if you propagate all those distinctions through each other using an assumed structural symmetry.

We are substantially limited in how we can know the world, trapped by our own subjectivities if you will, and it is therefore important for claims to objectivity to be well justified.

The subject/object distinction is doing most of the work, rather than the scientific stuff you've carefully interpreted. How would you draw the conclusions you have without your framing of the subject/object distinction? You've given a bird's eye view from the perch of the objective, I'm not sure you can perch there when talking about human conduct - it always varies with human conduct, since it is human conduct. It's always subjective in that framing. It's like rigging the discussion.

I don't think it's really relevant. The point is one can't simply compare similar methodologies and expect one to be justified because the other is. — Kenosha Kid

It’s relevant because it’s the difference between them that you cited. If you can’t describe what that difference is, then it seems like a non-difference. Imagine a world where there was an objective morality as you mean it and moral claims were predictive as you mean it. What would be different about that world compared to the way you hold this one to be? If there is no difference you can articulate, then there’s no reason to think this isn’t just such a world.

Science is justified by its predictiveness. Metaphysics are not justified by anything beyond the subjective attractiveness to the believer. — Kenosha Kid

I’m not talking about metaphysics at all, and if you think I am you’re severely misunderstanding me (as I already suspect).

All of which is subjective, not objective. — Kenosha Kid

All evidence is “subjective” in that sense. It is being shared in common between everyone that makes it converge toward the objective. Again, exact same scenario with empiricism and reality as with hedonism and morality.

I was perhaps unclear. Moral relativism is what's left when you dismiss moral objectivity as being inconsistent with or otherwise not held up by evidence. It's not a position that I feel directly needs defending; it simply emerges from what I consider a more realistic description of what morality is at root. I'm not a relativist because I find it attractive or persuasive on its own merits. — Kenosha Kid

This isn’t any different than what I was saying, it’s just put the other way around. You’ve rightly ruled out the fundamentalist-like approach to ethics, but then gone straight to relativism as the only alternative, missing the possibility of a science-like approaching to it which is neither fundamentalist nor relativist. The fundamentalist would call it relativist, just like religious fundamentalists call physical sciences relativist too. But then the postmodern social constructivist, a kind of truth relativist, claims that the physical sciences are just another totalizing dogma just like the fundamentalist’s religion is.

Both the fundamentalist and the social constructivist fail to see how the physical sciences are not just the opposite between those two, but a completely different third option. You seem to me to be in the analogous place of the social constructivist, with regards to morality: you’re rightly against the fundamentalist, but missing that my kind of position is not over there with him, but also is not over with your relativism (as the fundamentalist would claim I am), but is rather a completely different third option.

The first order is the fundamental drives and capacities that make us ultra-social animals. The conceptions we form around those -- the second-order -- are rationalisations of the first, lacking insight as to the nature of the first or the origins of the second. — Kenosha Kid

That’s not the first and second order I’m talking about. The first order I’m talking about is “what should we do?” Answers to that are certainly often informed by the drives you mention. But the second order is “how do we figure out what we should do?”

the relationship between morality and social biology would be extremely mysterious, since it would appear that humans have two very different sets of imperatives for doing the same thing: one they are born with, another they must discover for themselves. — Kenosha Kid

That’s not at all like anything I’m proposing.

Humans are also born with an innate sense of reality, grounded in empirical experience, but historically have wandered far beyond that in the search for a greater understanding of reality. The scientific method, such as it is, is an admonition not to do that, but to instead pay closer attention to and expand the range of that empirical experience we innately turn to, to find that greater understanding of reality. It’s not a choice between either just believing whatever you happen to believe or else getting lost in some dual epistemology and ontology. You can pursue a deeper understanding of reality without abandoning the innate sense of it you have, just by refining it instead.

Likewise, as you say, humans are born with an innate sense of morality. It’s grounded in a different kind of experience than our sense of reality. And we historically have wandered far beyond that in the search for a greater understanding of morality. My moral methodology is an admonition not to do that, but to instead pay closer attention to and expand the range of that experience we innately turn to, to find that greater understanding of morality. It’s not a choice between either just doing whatever you happen to feel you should or else getting lost in some dual morality. You can pursue a deeper understanding of morality without abandoning the innate sense of it you have, just by refining it instead.

Similar objects of the same kind are just examples of the thing in question.
— Mww

What I'm asking is what your justification is for saying this. Taking Wittgenstein's 'game' example, there is no 'thing in question' with regards to the word 'game' we apply it according to some rules, but the rules do not together represent 'game' because they do not all need to be applied at any one time. — Isaac

Thing in question is just the subject of discourse. There is a subject of discourse referred to by the word “game”, something like.....that formal activity in which a relative competition arbitrates a standing goal, and consequently having for its objects the conditions consistent with the particular rendition of the concept the word represents, and all according to rules. The objects of baseball are different than the objects of pinochle, even if they are both subsumed under the subject represented....referred to.....by the word “game”, and the rules administering the objects of each are correspondingly different.

When the subject of discourse is something like “good”, none of that can apply, because all those are contingent on the peculiarity of the subject, whereas the subject “good”, being merely a possible human condition, or a possible integral part of human nature, can have no contingency whatsoever because it has no peculiarity. It either is the ground of that which would logically follow from it, or it isn’t, in which case, it is irrelevant.
——————-

What I'm saying is that words do jobs, they don't always refer to some 'thing' even if they appear to. — Isaac

I would agree with the first, with the amendment that words always refer to some thing because that is the only job they have. There is no reason to even invent words, without presupposing that to which they refer. Hence.... words being nothing more than the schema of conceptions. Don’t forget....we think up words; they are not given to us in the same manner as are phenomena.

The same word might do a different job in different contexts. — Isaac

Of course: a foot is at the bottom end of your leg, or it is an assemblage of quantitative units. The word is still only doing one job in each case, that being relating a conception to its representation, context just informing what the conception is.

So with a word which appears to refer to some thing, we might be looking for one thing, several things or no things at all. — Isaac

Appears to refer to some thing still presupposes the possibility of the thing. With the parameters already set for the thing, we require it to be one thing. Anything more than that defeats its necessity.
————-

I think a moral realist would have to be someone who thinks that moral 'goodness' and 'badness' are universals. — Isaac

Ok, thanks. I don’t have an opinion, myself. So.....just wondering.

Is there a meaningful distinction that we can draw and maintain between something or other being believed to be, hence sincerely called "good" and being good? I think there is. — creativesoul


I think so as well. It is the distinction between what it means for something to be good, and what it means for good to be something. Have to admit, though, drawing and maintaining the meaningfulness of it, is a lot harder than merely granting its possibility.
— Mww

I think this would be highly unlikely. We can't even agree on what constitutes a 'game', or where exactly the boundaries of 'here' are. The idea that our word 'good' picks out exactly one unified and inviolable concept identical in every mind which conceives it seems ludicrous. — Isaac

The contentious pivotal matter, historically anyway, involves whether or not the 'quality' of goodness is somehow a property of all good things regardless of whether or not we believe it to be. Charitable donations are often discussed here. Giving to charity is good.

I do not see how talking about what it means for good to be something is helpful here. It reduces to naming and descriptive practices employing the term "good'.

I agree that the word "good" means different things to different people. Furthermore, it's meaning changes within an individual user's lifetime as their moral belief system grows in complexity. That speaks to the 'subjective/relative' aspect of the evolution of morality. However, that is irrelevant to the point being raised.

The point involves whether or not there is a difference between changing one's belief about what's good and being mistaken about what's good. I say there is. If it is possible to change one's mind about whether or not something counts as "good", and that newly formed belief is mistaken - still yet - then it is clear that our belief about what counts as good is not equal to what counts as good.

My perspective on that is: we do react in some way, and reason is involved somehow. Well, more accurately cognition. The qualitative distinction between the functioning styles of system 1 and system 2 in that approach doesn't preclude both functioning at the same time - it's more a question of weighting, no? — fdrake

It's an interesting question, touching on something @Mww asked earlier. If I were to stab at an answer (and you should definitely attack this with big sticks as there's a strong potential for argument ab rectum here), it would be this: reason is invoked to solve particular problems, and provided with evidence that may or may not be relevant to those problems. This seems counterintuitive because we think we're always thinking, but I suspect that's a symptom of the fact that we lack immediate problems to solve that are not reliant on cognition. Survival is not usually an issue for us, so we are left with the general problem of how to occupy our minds.

Take that with a pinch of salt or, better yet, as an example of how one could answer the question. In terms of parallel processing and interaction, the brain is a parallel processor and one of the things among others it can manage simultaneously is algorithmic problem-solving and quality control: system 1 appears to send some of its conclusions to system 2, which then must take credit for the solution since it is unaware of system 1, and it also seems to send problems to system 2 to which system 1 cannot offer trial solutions, and it seems to send a great deal of evidence, more than will be useful.

And since it's a question of weighting, reason's involved to a greater or lesser extent depending on the act. This is why I find it strange that you're focussing on moral behaviour being non-cognitive when both systems are involved. Instances of action based on moral principles or conceptually relating to norms of conduct are in part deliberative. — fdrake

I think it's a coup getting someone to agree that some of it is non-cognitive. But to answer your question, I think the rational mind is a practical tool for decision-making. I am not absenting it from making decisions about moral behaviour: I am simply saying it is not the origin of its own conceptions of good and evil. That origin seems to me to fall into two camps: intrinsic, selected-for biological drives and reactions, and our socialisation from childhood.

My perspective on what you've said is you're throwing the baby (reason-cognition-deliberation-planning) out with the bathwater (reducing following moral principles to a certain homeostasis of non-cognitive sentiment). I just don't see good reasons to split cognition away from sentiment when we're talking about morality, that usually comes up in contexts when we're already trying to find out what best to do. Cognition's involved in that. — fdrake

I'm really not sure whether you're talking about in small social groups or since. If the former, at the end of the day nature cannot select for behaviours that are derived rationally. A given characteristic must actually help the genome survive if it is to be part of that genome; it can't rely on us thinking it through. Fortunately, as we've established, the rational mind is a lazy quality-checker. If you're talking about since, no, I do think reason is probably always necessary for moral decision-making, for the reason that that self-same biology that gives us our sense of good is unfit for our current environment, and reason must pick up the tab.

I don't see not crediting reason for every human decision as throwing the baby out with the bathwater; it's simply giving credit where credit is due, rather than giving credit to reason by default. There is plenty of evidence that much more is going on in our brains than our conscious minds are aware of. If you're comfortable with that, I don't see anything controversial in the idea of social responses having a non-rational basis.

I'd side with you that for the most part moral decisions are made transparently (absorbed coping-system 1 functioning-prethetically), that is they are already made by what we're already doing - but in cases where we're trying to find out what's right, cognition is way more involved and I don't think it's appropriate to call these moral problem solving behaviours non-cognitive. — fdrake

Now, yes, because "what's right" is ambiguous. In small social groups with homogenous socialisations, "what's right" was likely not ambiguous at all, again on the basis that, if it were, reason would have been essential to making social decisions and, if reason were essential to making decisions, nature could not select for social characteristics. Whatever our nature is doing before we consider the question, that is, to my eyes, the basis for our conceptions of good and evil. Nowadays we must rely on reason even for determining "what's right", because generally we're dealing with people that cannot be relied on to respond to social stimuli in the same way we do.

It's like moral conduct is deficient since it's not objective (merely subjective), but it's actually both if you propagate all those distinctions through each other using an assumed structural symmetry. — fdrake

No, I don't think moral conduct is deficient because of the lack of moral objectivity. I think moral objectivity is a deficient description of moral conduct. Moral conduct seems to be taking care of itself.

How would you draw the conclusions you have without your framing of the subject/object distinction? You've given a bird's eye view from the perch of the objective, I'm not sure you can perch there when talking about human conduct - it always varies with human conduct, since it is human conduct. — fdrake

It is precarious, and worthy of a hammering. I proceeded on the basis that, at root, our moral conceptions derive from our social instincts (implemented as described in the OP). Morality is an abstraction, generalisation and approximation to what we do naturally, which is social altruism, empathy, and intolerance of non-reciprocal behaviour, presented to our rational minds as feelings mistaken for a priori knowledge.

Any one who behaves antisocially -- i.e. without empathy or with hypocrisy -- cannot therefore be behaving morally. This does not define a set of objective moral values, but does place limits on what sort of behaviour can and cannot be considered moral, i.e. considered consistent with human sociality. Within those bounds lies any empathetic, self-consistent set of values, which will be myriad, with no basis for saying that any are incorrect within or without that set of values (moral frame of reference).

The test case I suggested in another thread was of indoctrination of children into religions. To me, this is unambiguously immoral: the child is harmed by the process, with a reduced ability to discern (what we are justified in assuming is) reality from fantasy. I would not raise my child in a faith, I am grateful that I was not raised in a faith, and I can't but judge someone who raises their child in a faith. However I am also aware that, from a religious person's point of view, raising a child in a faith is a good thing to do, e.g. for the sake of their soul. A typical religious person would raise their child in their faith, is grateful they were raised in that faith, and deems it good that others raise their children in that faith, and perhaps bad when others don't.

Both frames of reference are self-consistent, that is: neither are hypocritical, and both consider the fates of others with care. From a strictly moral perspective, there is no reason to hold one as more moral than the other: that would be arrogance, or moral totalitarianism. The conflict might in principle be resolvable, but not on moral grounds. Any shift in the rightness of the action in question would require one person to be convinced of or against theological beliefs instead. But within our respective, broader, non-moral contexts, our moral frames of reference are each robust, and each person should feel justified in pursuing aims consistent with those frames of references. In other words, within the bounds of social behaviour, moral truths are relative, not objective.

That we know what we know about those biological drives comes from reason, so this is an assault purely on rationalism, not reason itself, which is pretty great actually, if over-credited. — Kenosha Kid

As I said to Pfhorrest, if anyone can justify the objective existence of moral truths in the same way that nature has justified belief in an objective existence, the OP is wrong, and I am stumped as to what the evidence in hand can possibly mean. — Kenosha Kid

How has nature justified belief in an objective existence? Was it via rationalism or reason itself?

There is a subject of discourse referred to by the word “game”, something like.....that formal activity in which a relative competition arbitrates a standing goal, and consequently having for its objects the conditions consistent with the particular rendition of the concept the word represents, and all according to rules. — Mww

So when a child goes outside alone to have a 'game' of playing soldiers 'relative competition arbitrates a standing goal'?, When my nephew and his friends are playing 'silly games' it's according to rules? When I wind you up about something and then admit "I'm only playing games with you", that's a 'formal activity'? No, we derive what the speaker intends the expression to do by it's context.

the subject “good”, being merely a possible human condition, or a possible integral part of human nature — Mww

Is it? People use the word 'good' to mean all sorts of things, I don't see any compelling reason to believe it always and in all places refers to a possible human condition or a possible part of human nature.

words always refer to some thing because that is the only job they have — Mww

What does 'hello' refer to?

The word is still only doing one job in each case, that being relating a conception to its representation — Mww

"Don’t ask a podiatrist to convert numbers to metric, they only are used to working with feet." Hilarious I know (I'm here all week). So which 'one job' is the word 'feet' doing in that particular use?

Appears to refer to some thing still presupposes the possibility of the thing. — Mww

So "I took my married bachelor friend out for a drink last night", because it appears to refer to a married bachelor must therefore presuppose that such a thing is possible? Is it not just nonsense?

Have it your way. I’m not interested in tangential nit-picking.

It's an interesting question, touching on something Mww asked earlier. If I were to stab at an answer (and you should definitely attack this with big sticks as there's a strong potential for argument ab rectum here), it would be this: reason is invoked to solve particular problems, and provided with evidence that may or may not be relevant to those problems. This seems counterintuitive because we think we're always thinking, but I suspect that's a symptom of the fact that we lack immediate problems to solve that are not reliant on cognition. — Kenosha Kid

I've reconciled that most of my mind is already sacrificed unto the Machine God on the altar of my body. I think of cognition similarly. It can dominate the generating processes of mind-body outcomes only when it's fueled with problems. Which, I'd agree with you, are of circumscribed character.

No, I don't think moral conduct is deficient because of the lack of moral objectivity. I think moral objectivity is a deficient description of moral conduct. Moral conduct seems to be taking care of itself. — Kenosha Kid

There being a black and white of right and wrong actions is a poor description of moral conduct; tagging moral actions as purely right or purely wrong is part of the game of moral conduct. I don't think trying to come up with meta principles that filter actions into WRONG and RIGHT bags is a particularly justified endeavor, given that the pretense to universality is already part of the clusterfuck of moral conduct; it stays in the territory of moral conduct.

But, I still think it is possible to cultivate moral wisdom in that territory - that we can learn to be more right or at least less wrong in how we treat others. I'd guess you'd agree? In your conceptual landscape, you've got evolutionary machinery selecting over prosocial traits. Evolution's a much cleverer engineer than any group of humans, but its search space (pro-social behaviours, long term survivability tactics, highly replicable behaviours) is also something that can be explored in thinking and living. I'm not saying we're particularly good at exploring the search space, I'm saying that we've got access and do indeed explore it, although through a glass darkly.

. If you're comfortable with that, I don't see anything controversial in the idea of social responses having a non-rational basis. — Kenosha Kid

Maybe if I put it like this: the situation is worse than it having a non-rational basis, rationality only comes online when called by non-rationality, non-rationality is partially constituted by cognitive interventions on sensorial flows of information around the body. So I'm not trying to make the claim that "morality is rational" in the manner that I could sit here in an armchair and come up with a correct Stone Tablet by the virtue of my "sovereign faculties", I'm coming at it from the perspective of imploding the distinction between rational and non-rational conduct - to replace it with a weighted mixture of the two whose relative weights depend on context.

"Is the moral value/conduct based on a good model?" is always a good question. An example - relationship advice from the social shut in fdrake. Base how you treat your partner on the information you have about their needs and constrain your proposed actions by your capabilities and needs. It doesn't really say very much, other than emphasise that moral values have a modelling component to them. As far as agency goes; reciprocity without modelling is blind, modelling without reciprocity is empty.

After that implosion, abstract principles of morality and a capacity to model "objective truths" are already in the territory of moral conduct; their grasping demarcates the contours of specific moral problems. Which, I think, goes some way towards what @Pfhorrest is positing; synthesize heuristics based on regularities, it's all theory ladened anyway (cognitive interventions on sensorial flows contextualise/regularise based on priors, theories all the way down man), and our bodies change slowly enough to be a fecund subject of moral inquiry. The mind can't even go fuck itself like the body can.

Have it your way. I’m not interested in tangential nit-picking. — Mww

It's not tangential, it's fundamental to the arguments about moral realism. Holding to the idea that we use terms in a consistent and coherent way, when we in fact don't, is what leads to errors in thinking such as that there can be some universal mechanism for determining moral 'right'. If we acknowledge that the term 'morally right' is applied to different behaviours/characteristics for different reasons in different contexts, we can see that no such mechanism can possibly exist.

Morality, as a single measurable property of behaviours/characteristics is a fabrication of philosophy, it just doesn't exist among real human groups.

If we acknowledge that the term 'morally right' is applied to different behaviours/characteristics for different reasons in different contexts, we can see that no such mechanism can possibly exist. — Isaac

The fact that different people use the same word in different ways does not necessitate the conclusion that there is not a correct way to use it. It could be that they have just not learned the correct way. So your cited evidence supports a probabilistic conclusion, but it does not have the strength for your claimed conclusion "that no such mechanism can possibly exist".

Morality, as a single measurable property of behaviours/characteristics is a fabrication of philosophy, it just doesn't exist among real human groups. — Isaac

The issue here is one of judging the particular instance as suitable to be classed as a member of a specified general category. If a "real human group" (whatever "real" means in this context) has agreement amongst themselves, that a designated particular is a member of a specified category, how is this a fabrication of philosophy rather than a real attribute of that real group? I would think that if there was disagreement between two "real human groups", and a compromise was arbitrated by a philosopher, this would be a fabrication of philosophy. But what makes you think that it is philosophy rather than "real human nature", or something completely arbitrary, rather than philosophically directed arbitration, which produces such conventions?

In other words, why do you believe that a particular being a member of a general category (x is of the type A, for example), is something created rather than a natural fact? You seem to give no credence to the reality of types. But is it not true that there is a real difference in type between a human being and a chimpanzee, for example?

It's not tangential, it's fundamental to the arguments about moral realism. — Isaac

The tangential is the foolish devolution into silly language games. I mean......any fool can intentionally put words together in a proposition that reduces it to sheer absurdity. All that’s accomplished is showing how ridiculous it is possible to be.

“.....I can think what I please, provided only I do not contradict myself.....”

I don’t care about real human groups. No matter the group, is fundamentally nothing more than the composite of its individuals. It only stands to reason, that to understand the group, something about the individual must first be given. And even if the group admits to different characteristics than its individuals, they are nevertheless the causality for that difference.

Wanna know about a molecule? Figure out its elements.
——————

Morality, as a single measurable property of behaviours/characteristics is a fabrication of philosophy — Isaac

Morality the concept, is a fabrication of philosophy, yes. And.......what about it?

Hmmmm.....come to think of it, what would be a reasonable, logical single unit of measurement for behavior, anyway? Surely not a mere fabrication of philosophy.

That’s not the first and second order I’m talking about. The first order I’m talking about is “what should we do?” Answers to that are certainly often informed by the drives you mention. But the second order is “how do we figure out what we should do?” — Pfhorrest

Ah, mea culpa. In that case, it occurs to me that I perhaps misunderstood your original "where are the oughts" as meaning "where are the moral imperatives" where you possibly meant "how do we get from drives to deciding on what to do?" If this is the case, then I think the majority of cases come down to reason, even in small social groups. However, this is not reasoning what 'good' is, but how we make the good thing happen. No argument from me that reason is chiefly involved in the latter, or that, these days, it is chiefly involved in the former.

Imagine a world where there was an objective morality as you mean it and moral claims were predictive as you mean it.
...
All evidence is “subjective” in that sense. It is being shared in common between everyone that makes it converge toward the objective. Again, exact same scenario with empiricism and reality as with hedonism and morality. — Pfhorrest

My old responses to why both of these points are invalid still stand.

The fundamentalist would call it relativist, just like religious fundamentalists call physical sciences relativist too. But then the postmodern social constructivist, a kind of truth relativist, claims that the physical sciences are just another totalizing dogma just like the fundamentalist’s religion is.

Both the fundamentalist and the social constructivist fail to see how the physical sciences are not just the opposite between those two, but a completely different third option. You seem to me to be in the analogous place of the social constructivist, with regards to morality: you’re rightly against the fundamentalist, but missing that my kind of position is not over there with him, but also is not over with your relativism (as the fundamentalist would claim I am), but is rather a completely different third option. — Pfhorrest

Fundamentalism is not necessarily antisocial. In fact, homogeneous socialisation is kind of fundamentalist in a way, although not necessarily deliberately so (which would involve a power relation, which in turn would undermine reciprocity and require larger group sizes). So, no, my argument is very much against objectivism, not fundamentalism. I do not labour under the impression that you know what the moral objects you believe in are.

it would appear that humans have two very different sets of imperatives for doing the same thing: one they are born with, another they must discover for themselves.
— Kenosha Kid

That’s not at all like anything I’m proposing.

My moral methodology is an admonition ... to instead pay closer attention to and expand the range of that experience we innately turn to, to find that greater understanding of morality. — Pfhorrest

Seems remarkably similar. I guess it is the word 'imperative" that makes the difference. I'm happy to reduce the strength of this to "truths". Either way, I don't object to the description of learning from experience, deliberately or otherwise. Encountering different people with different cultures, histories, local laws, etc. requires us to rationalise, as per the OP.

However, three things:

A) I do not think this changes our concept of 'good', based on our underlying social drives. We can learn of new ways to harm, of new cultures that require different consideration, of new scenarios where the desired outcomes and practical realisations of them have not previously been met, but this is applying the same moral principle to new situations, not uncovering some refined idea of 'good' or 'goods'. The thing it will uncover is that my moral sense is sometimes incompatible with that of others, from which alone we see no justification for an objective answer to a moral question.

B) Who judges whether a refinement to your moral readiness is good or bad? You do. How? Within your moral frame of reference. There is no guarantee even in a steady state moral universe that you are making progress on all issues. You might be getting worse!

C) There is no obvious termination point for new cultures, new harms, new frames of reference, bar the extinction of our species or a return to our natural environments.That is the way of genes and memes. The biosphere did not start diverse and naturally get thinner, although mankind is doing its best to make sure that happens. The potential for refinement would be effectively infinite and arbitrary, with, rather than a progression from ignorance to enlightenment, a moving staircase from almost-current to outdatedness. That certainly fits with typical testimony of people who started young and wanting to make the world a better place, became the people who benefited from whatever world they both inherited and helped forge, to eventually bemoaning a world gone to the feral dogs they once in fact were. Beyond the overall trends that I do think are manifestations of our extending empathy and altruism to those who are not like us, I would put money on the fact that we're mostly just trying and failing to keep up with a moving and arbitrary goalpost, because, within that ambiguity, there are lots of ways of being wrong, and no one way to be right: a moral problem of expansive multiculturalism (speaking as a multiculturalist).

How has nature justified belief in an objective existence? Was it via rationalism or reason itself? — Luke

By demonstrating herself to be accurately described, in part, by scientific models. If there was nothing "out there" underlying the phenomena we observe, we are left with needing a much more complex explanation for why those phenomena behave like there is.

I don’t have any feelings about it; my feelings weren’t affected. My thinking was affected, and from that, I can say I agree with a lot of what you say, disagree with some.

Agree:
.....Enlightenment is no longer predominant; our education is bad; stress how to think not what to think; sense of right or wrong is visceral...

Disagree:
Sense of true or false is visceral; (formal) education develops us as capable moral creatures; we normally vote from feelings.
————-

Does your gut tell you this is ridiculous or maybe something that should concern us? — Athena


Only this.....

While the brain plays a part in our thinking, it does not play the most important part. Our bodies play the most important part. — Athena


....which I fail to understand at all. I suppose you mean our gut is part of our body, which I reject as it relates to thinking. From here, if it were true, it would follow that feeling controls thinking, which in turn permits thinking to be rash, irresponsible and dangerous, exactly as much as it permits thinking to be beneficial. But the former is the exception to the rule, the latter being the rule.

Anyway, I have the utmost respect for educators, especially these days, when kids are generally just punk-ass renditions of their parents. And THAT....is what my emotional intelligence looks like. — Mww

Yes, we can rash, irresponsible, and dangerous. I think that someone most of us know, who is sitting a high place, is a perfect example of that. Men of action. Don't think about it too much. It is also fast thinking, which means not contemplating what we think but reacting to say, campaign ads like one of Pavlov's dogs. I think this is important to understand for a couple of reasons.

I want to begin by establishing "gut thinking" is not my idea.

Noun. gut feeling (plural gut feelings) (idiomatic) An instinct or intuition; an immediate or basic feeling or reaction without a logical rationale. Don't think too hard about the answers to a personality test; just go with your gut feeling.

gut feeling - Wiktionary — wikipedia

Also, I want to establish awareness of thinking with our gut is a cultural matter. In the West we are under the influence of Stoicism but in Japan going on one's gut feeling is encouraged.

How Different Cultures See Intuition and Innovation - Business ...
www.business2community.com › strategy › how-differ...
Jul 30, 2019 - ... be acquired without reason or observation: a gut feeling or a sixth sense. ... This is different from Japan, where they cultivate their inner intuitive ... I think we in the West look down on intuition because it is difficult to quantify. — business2commnunity

One reason this matters, is self-awareness. Being unaware of our feelings plays into ideas of subconsciousness. One day I was hungry and didn't notice that was why I absolutely had to have a cooking magazine that was in front of my face in the store. When we are hungry it can be hard to think of anything else. On the other hand, when we are in creative mode, we don't notice hunger or the passing of time. I think our culture pushes all of us to be in our heads instead of in our bodies.

All of this goes with other cultural choices and notions of good and evil. It also goes with our judgment of philosophy, human behavior, education. One of our earliest education experts, James Williams, stressed the importance of teaching children to control their attention and bodies. The more we can habituate certain behaviors, the more free space there is in our minds for important thinking. Today it is obvious people think self-discipline is a violation of their liberty and being forced to sit still in a classroom was about industry controlling education and preparing future employees.

I say too much- I am trying to get to this point... When we realized most of us are not good at being stoic and pondering the good life, but we are impulsive and emotional, we turned away from Enlightenment goals and using education for well-rounded lives and independent thinking. We are now specializing, more reliant on memorization than logic, and lack self-control, moving us in the direction of a police state because humans are emotional and must have authority over them. Candidates and the media and producers of products put a lot of money into researching how to control our decisions and they are appealing to our lower selves and we are defenseless because we are unaware and poorly informed.

On second thought, my question is not a good match for this thread so I deleted it and will put it another thread.

I do not believe, as Mww does, that my ancestors had to bother reasoning whether escaping a sabre-tooth tiger was efficacious or how to do so — Kenosha Kid

I don’t want to be on record as claiming that. Biology may take care of escaping, you know, ....run like hell....but that’s not the same as understanding how not be in a position to have to escape.

Ten days ago, so...bygones.

I want to begin by establishing "gut thinking" is not my idea.

Noun. gut feeling (plural gut feelings) idiomatic wiktionary — Athena

Notice the difference?

I don’t reject gut feelings in their relation to thinking. I reject gut thinking in its relation to anything.

As for the rest...informative and interesting opinions, so thanks for that.

There being a black and white of white and wrong actions is a poor description of moral conduct; tagging moral actions as purely right or purely wrong is part of the game of moral conduct. I don't think trying to come up with meta principles that filter actions into WRONG and RIGHT bags is a particularly justified endeavor, given that the pretense to universality is already part of the clusterfuck of moral conduct; it stays in the territory of moral conduct. — fdrake

*black and right :rofl:

I am not pointing fingers at absolutism in particular though. One can add a finite number of contingencies to a moral rule and still find disagreements that, were they between real people, could be put down to cultural differences. At the absurd limit, one could add further contingencies to uphold both. At the other limit, an objective moral rule could uphold one or none. At either end, moral objectivity fails to makes itself known.

But, I still think it is possible to cultivate moral wisdom in that territory - that we can learn to be more right or at least less wrong in how we treat others. I'd guess you'd agree? — fdrake

Yes, I think the schema I proposed in the OP could be better worded along these lines. It is much easier to state that something is objectively (contingently) immoral than it is to state that something is objectively morally. Killing gingers for fun is immoral: it is antisocial, hypocritical behaviour that causes harm for personal gratification and fails to demonstrate human social capabilities for empathy and altruism.

Perhaps a simple test case is the straightforward act of helping someone. At first approximation, one might say: while it is not immoral to keep one's head down and expect nothing of anyone, it is more moral to go out of one's way to help someone. Again, we can consider two cultures, A and B, each perfectly socially self-consistent individually, but utterly opposed to one another in every respect. Is it moral for an outsider to help A and not B? Depends on your point of view. If you were socialised by culture A, yes. If by B, no. If by another, it depends but mostly yes. One could apply this to the question of, for instance, whether to help an abortionist or a disruptive pro-life protest. (Just to clarify: I have my own moral frame of reference and it's a pro-choice frame. But I do not think pro-lifers are immoral.)

I'm coming at it from the perspective of imploding the distinction between rational and non-rational conduct - to replace it with a weighting. — fdrake

Sure. The functionalist in me is saying that these distinguished operators are doing different things with different information though, and one of them is dealing with more raw data than the other, although I agree to the same end. If it helps to reclarify, I take no issue with the role of rationality after it has received the data: I do think rationality is vital. I just don't think it's the reliable source of our knowledge of what morality is that older-school rationalists like Mww claim it to be. It seems overwhelmingly likely to me that the non-rational remainder of us plays the actual role of what a priori knowledge was supposed by rationalists to be. Beyond that, I grant reason most of the credit any rationalist would, not just in determining what the moral outcome and means to realise that outcome are in any human situation, but in determining how an outcome can be considered moral or not in our current environment. It is necessarily rational, because stimuli-response behaviours cannot deal with this sort of ambiguity, that is: it is insufficient to feel what is right.

That aspect of the OP was aimed squarely at the notion of reason having a priori moral knowledge. However it is precisely the necessity of reason -- that ambiguity that our non-rational selves cannot deal with -- that advises my relativistic argument. I have a ways to go on this, but I think that our instinctive interpretations of what we are doing when scrambling around this moral space are inaccurate, commensurately so with the inaccuracy of our rational conceptions of moral knowledge. Beyond the limits that we all probably agree on (for me, the social/antisocial boundary), I think there's a sort of politician's fallacy about moral judgement. It is not the case that we have an incomplete view of the moral universe and must refine our views as our experience dictates. Rather, we have inconsistent views and must relax some, tighten others, move others, in order to figure out a way to fit in a new environment that contains those sorts of experiences lest our consciences cause us pain or our peers reject us. It is a practical issue using a practical tool, not something that needs to be subscribed to or that one can fall short of in any objective way. When we take on new experiences, it is part of reason's job to determine whether we can be flexible, or whether this would make us hypocrites too. Obviously this does not always work, or else antisocial ideologies would not exist in the first place, e.g. radicalisation could not occur.

I don’t want to be on record as claiming that. Biology may take care of escaping, you know, ....run like hell....but that’s not the same as understanding how not be in a position to have to escape. — Mww

For sure. :up:

Notice the difference?

I don’t reject gut feelings in their relation to thinking. I reject gut thinking in its relation to anything.

As for the rest...informative and interesting opinions, so thanks for that. — Mww

I googled to see if anyone made a connection between our subconscious and our gut feeling and I found the following link. It is in agreement with "Emotional Intelligence" and also Daniel Kahneman's explanation of Fast and Slow thinking. Our gut feeling can save our lives and if we had to think through everything, slow thinking mode, we would not survive because we could not respond fast enough.

Tragically a father a shot and killed his daughter who returned from college a day early and was hiding in her closet when he came home, thinking it would be funny to jump out and scare him. She did not anticipate he would get his gun before investigating the unexpected presence of another person. Our defense system that saves our lives can lead to terrible mistakes too. I think understanding this is important to our moral judgment. Especially if we are a juror during a trial.

Intuition happens as a result of fast processing in the brain. Valerie van Mulukom, Author provided

Imagine the director of a big company announcing an important decision and justifying it with it being based on a gut feeling. This would be met with disbelief – surely important decisions have to be thought over carefully, deliberately and rationally?

Indeed, relying on your intuition generally has a bad reputation, especially in the Western part of the world where analytic thinking has been steadily promoted over the past decades. Gradually, many have come to think that humans have progressed from relying on primitive, magical and religious thinking to analytic and scientific thinking. As a result, they view emotions and intuition as fallible, even whimsical, tools.

However, this attitude is based on a myth of cognitive progress. Emotions are actually not dumb responses that always need to be ignored or even corrected by rational faculties. They are appraisals of what you have just experienced or thought of – in this sense, they are also a form of information processing.
https://theconversation.com/is-it-rational-to-trust-your-gut-feelings-a-neuroscientist-explains-95086

PS if you feel a strong attraction to someone of the opposite sex, it could be because of how that person smells. Considering this can lead to marriage and/or children, this subconscious response to an odor can have serious consequences. You feel you are in love but you are not aware of why and act on your feelings.

Is there a meaningful distinction that we can draw and maintain between something or other being believed to be, hence sincerely called "good" and being good? I think there is. The historical facts and current facts support that answer quite well. Our moral belief, as humans, has evolved. Morality has evolved. There's no good reason to claim otherwise, and/or deny that that evolution continues. So, sometimes we're wrong, and what we once thought to be good is no longer believed to be.
...
I'm not claiming that believing and/or saying that something is good, makes it so. I'm not saying that what's good is relative to the believer in any way that makes moral claims true by virtue of being believed to be. Rather, I'm saying that we come to acquire knowledge of what's good over time with trial and error, and I am only pointing out that we've made and will continue to make our fair share of mistakes along the way.
— creativesoul

I actually agree with your interpretation of the trend; it is a point I have made myself. However... you must be aware that local, temporary moral trends can occur in different directions. We have a growing trend currently toward nationalism, for instance. By your reckoning, then, nationalism must be more morally good, since you assume that, whatever morality is, we tend toward it with time. — Kenosha Kid

I was simply laying a bit of groundwork. Stating the obvious, as it were, that morality evolves over time, and that we've made mistakes along the way. I do not assume that "we tend toward" morality with time(whatever that's supposed to mean here). That actually doesn't make sense at all according to the framework I'm employing. I also do not equate morality with good, and that is crucial to keep in mind, lest there will be more misunderstanding than understanding. In fact, an astute reader can see for themselves that I'm not even using the term "moral" as a synonym for "good" or "acceptable". That said...

By my reckoning, the growing trend towards nationalism is prima facie evidence that morality evolves. Nothing more... yet. I personally find that talking of "nationalism" is misleading, at best. It's a term used to place some candidate or another in negative light, by virtue comparison to some historical 'bad guy'. All too often, the comparison is found sorely lacking. That's another subject though. The point about the quote above is that you've misunderstood my reckoning...

There are no thoughts about "goodness" or "the good" unless they are formed within a language user skilled enough to either learn how to use the name to refer to other things, or within a language user skilled enough to begin questioning/doubting such adopted use.
— creativesoul

Agreed. And in terms of origins, I don't see any area for contradiction here, since language preceded the advent of large social groups. — Kenosha Kid

I've raised the point above in order to begin establishing the groundwork for an evolutionary timeline of morality. Pointing out that talking of "the good" is existentially dependent upon language use, whereas some other moral thinking is not shows us that talk of "the good" comes later. Thus, whenever someone wants to delimit the conversation about morality to such terms, they've already began using a linguistic framework that is incapable of taking proper account of morality, particularly how it emerges and evolves over time.

We all adopt, almost entirely, our first worldview.
— creativesoul

I'm wondering if you mean completely. In my experience, moral consideration is incremental. We are limited to the experiences we have had to date. I'd personally not call such a thing a worldview, since there will be many elements of the world about which, as a four-year old, I had no view at all. — Kenosha Kid

I meant what I wrote. During language acquisition itself, we adopt our first worldview.

Your apprehension here is based upon a self-defeating, untenable notion of what counts as a worldview. One need not have a view about all elements of the world in order to have a worldview. They are all limited... incomplete.

* — Kenosha Kid

Welp. There go my aspirations of being the Stalin of Political Correctness.

Yes, I think the schema I proposed in the OP could be better worded along these lines. It is much easier to state that something is objectively (contingently) immoral than it is to state that something is objectively morally. Killing gingers for fun is immoral: it is antisocial, hypocritical behaviour that causes harm for personal gratification and fails to demonstrate human social capabilities for empathy and altruism. — Kenosha Kid

I guess that's another case of the asymmetry of justification; it's much easier to falsify than verify. In another vocabulary; it's much easier to find necessary conditions for good conduct than sufficient ones (pace @180 Proof). I think there are good epistemic reasons to render an ""X is good" is true" claim necessarily suspect when X ranges over everything people do in every context, but as we seem to agree comparisons ""X is preferable to Y" is true" have better evidentiary status. I guess that this arises from contextual invariants regarding preference forming mechanisms behaving differently for each type of claim.

I think it's a bit sketchy, but it seems to me that ""X is good" is true" is more readily produced by codified systems of moral norms; they engender evaluating actions of specified types as wrong, in that context if you vary the system of moral norms you can create a defeater. A code of conduct with the pretense of covering all human conduct has no conduct left to fuel resolution/innovation of moral problems that arise within it - and if evaluation is predetermined, they can be predetermined some other way. On the other hand, comparative evaluations tend not to have that universality to them; they contrast within the context of evaluation rather than evaluate over all such contexts. This leverages the specificity of the here and now in the proposed solution ("I should do this rather than that", "I will change thusly") rather than futilely attempting to annihilate it. Contexts of evaluation can enact their revenge by showing that how we have changed our conduct in any given instance was flawed, but that flaw can be treated as another imperative to do better - another "I will change thusly".

I guess the idea that preference forming mechanisms that work on improvements are more context invariant than binning claims into right and wrong is what generates that distinction. It's harder to make a context sensitive system of knowledge arbitrary by acknowledging context sensitivity - it's a premise instead of a defeater.

My intuitions regarding moral claims is realist for the same reasons as I think knowledge is contextual; we can say something is right or wrong and be right in doing so so long as the context is appropriate.

Abstracting one level as you do, I think, with the subjective/objective distinction is what allows the anti-realism ("no moral claims are true") into your perspective, the contextual nature of (moral) knowledge becomes a mechanism for creating "moral frames of reference" that are external to the terrain we're in - like a meta ethics without an ethics. I think we agree on object level stuff (context sensitivity of moral judgement, differing codified systems of moral judgement are incompossible when universal and distinct), but I think that all this reasoning is part of the object level stuff too. Even the subjective/objective thing - emptying the context sensitivity out of moral judgement is going to make all the claims have defeaters or incompossible frames of reference and thus be false or indeterminate rather than the "true in practice, for now" we live in.

Fundamentalism is not necessarily antisocial. — Kenosha Kid

Social-vs-antisocial is a first-order difference (“what should we do?”). Fundamentalism-vs-science-vs-relativism is a second-order difference (“how do we figure it out?”). Any of the second-order methodologies could in principle reach any of the first-order conclusions.

I do not labour under the impression that you know what the moral objects you believe in are. — Kenosha Kid

I don’t “believe in moral objects” at all, which again makes me think you’re not understanding what my position even if. I don’t believe that there exist somewhere in reality some kind of things that make moral statements true. I just think it’s possible for one moral claim to be more or less correct than another, in a way that doesn’t depend on who or how many people make that claim.

I wonder how familiar you are with the different possibilities in moral semantics, and I invite you to check out my ongoing thread on Meta-ethics and Philosophy of Language where we’re discussing it. It sounds like you think I’m asserting some kind of non-naturalist moral realism in contrast to your moral subjectivism, but both of those are kinds of descriptivism, and I actually advocate a non-descriptivist form of cognitivism.

Seems remarkably similar. — Kenosha Kid

I don’t see it, and if you do I miscommunicated. What you said sounds analogous to two kinds of knowledge, the empirical kind that everyone has and the mystical kind that only initiates to secret orders get. What I meant was supposed to be analogously to a spectrum of different degrees of empiricism, from the ordinary kind everyone uses in their day to day lives to the honed and refined kind that professional scientists use. Scientists aren’t using a different kind of knowing, they’re just better at using the ordinary kind. And my moral methodology isn’t supported to be a different kind of morality, just a better use of the ordinary kind.