I'm still not sure why you'd think I allow a private meaning for the term "morally good". — Dawnstorm

Because you said

If you see a foreign language student hitting an old lady, intervene, and he says "I understand that you think it's morally wrong to hit an old lady, but I disagree," we likely do not have language problem. - A moral disagreement — Dawnstorm

In order for the student to merely 'disagree' here, rather than be wrong about the meaning of the term 'morally bad' he must have his own private meaning of the term 'morally bad', one which is in disagreement with the one the rest of the language community uses. If, on the contrary, he does not have a private meaning of the term 'morally bad', then he must acquiesce to the meaning determined by the language community, and that does not include hitting old ladies.

When the grocer delivers potatoes, you 'ought' to pay him because that's the meaning of the work 'ought'. — Isaac


This seems needlessly hard to parse or outright wrong. I don't know which. — Dawnstorm

Hopefully the former, especially as I wrote 'work' where I meant to write 'word' (new phone, different keyboard).

Hopefully the former, especially as I wrote 'work' where I meant to write 'word' (new phone, different keyboard). — Isaac

I didn't even notice the typo (so much for careful reading...). And I'm still not sure what you're saying here.

In order for the student to merely 'disagree' here, rather than be wrong about the meaning of the term 'morally bad' he must have his own private meaning of the term 'morally bad', one which is in disagreement with the one the rest of the language community uses. If, on the contrary, he does not have a private meaning of the term 'morally bad', then he must acquiesce to the meaning determined by the language community, and that does not include hitting old ladies. — Isaac

"Morally bad" represents a "negative moral evaluation". "Hitting old ladies" is a state of affair prone to moral evaluation. A person who doesn't evaluate hitting old ladies negatively would be using the term "morally bad" incorrectly if he said from his perspective that hitting old ladies is morally bad, but he would be using "morally bad" correctly if he said from his society's perspective that "hitting old ladies is bad". Moral evaluations are always tied to a perspective. The meaning of "morally bad" isn't private; the personal evaluation tied to the word is, independently of whether there's agreement or disagreement (or indecision, or indifference).

You're seem to be getting rid of a useful distinction, and I can't figure out why? What do we get in return?

I think we agree 'bad' doesn't mean anything on its own beyond a vague indication toward a negative. One can be a bad actor, but a good person. One can be a bad person but a good actor. So bad and good only mean anything relative to some objective or ideal. Something which is morally bad is bad relative to ideals of morality (behaviour, character...). If I've understood you correctly, we're on the same page here.

The word 'moral' has to have some public meaning for it to be useful. It has to identify some publicly available set of behaviours or ideals IR characteristics, otherwise it would serve no purpose and be impossible to learn how to use. So I don't see how it can mean 'whatever behaviours you think fit'. That would be a private meaning.

You might want the public meaning to be something more than just an arbitrary set of behaviours, maybe publicly available membership criteria such that our violent student could make an argument that his behaviour fits the definition. But, as I said to @SophistiCat, it seems highly unlikely to me that the meaning would be so pure, given the language's history, but even it was, it would still have to have boundaries in order to be a useful word at all.

So we're left with the public meaning of 'moral' being a messy cocktail of ideals, religion, culture, psychology etc, but overall being exclusive in some way that is publicly agreed on, otherwise it's useless. We each might want it to mean something else, something more easy to police, but it doesn't and we, as individuals, don't get to just declare what words mean.

Hitting old ladies is far from any of the ideals or standards within the general public definition of moral, so doing so is morally bad.

You're seem to be getting rid of a useful distinction, and I can't figure out why? What do we get in return? — Dawnstorm

Not entirely sure what distinction you mean here.

Some time ago, someone argued that, since we share many or most moral sentiments, those morals are independent of us.
I'm not convinced that holds up.

In analogy, many or most of us have two arms with five fingers each.
However, that does not mean that such "arm+finger'ness" somehow exists independently of the lot with such limbs.
Should an extinction occur, such "limb'ness" may no longer exist (per se), but could re-emerge again.
In such an event, the likes of love and hate may equally have vanished, but could be rediscovered again.

Why would our moral sentiments be exempt?
It seems that morals are by and for and applicable to experiencing minds (at large).
Surely we don't speak of rights (and justice and virtues) for rocks? :)

Much like the other examples, morals can exist independently of any individual, but seemingly not independently of the lot of moral agents.
This does not itself entail that morals are ad hoc, random, arbitrary, discretionary, mere matter of opinion.

The statement can perfectly well refer to something empirical, such as observed behavior or verbal report — SophistiCat

I imagine that two people being in love is a rather vague thing involving the dispositions, acts, social context... It'd be hard to draw a line around a bunch of phenomena and go "Yep, that is the truth condition for X and Y are in love". Are you suggesting that dispositions aren't included in that blurry-at-the-edges web? I imagine that "X and Y are in love but X does not have any dispositions regarding Y." would be another of those Moorean puzzles of assertion; a violence against the phenomenon by failing to reflect a vital aspect of it.

Whether or not one's conduct is adequate to one's beliefs and attitudes (when there even is a conduct to speak of) is a separate question from whether beliefs and attitudes are right or wrong. — SophistiCat

I don't think it's separate; if we separate an action's pragmatic consequences on stakeholders its agent's disposition from evaluations of rights and wrongs, it isn't clear that we're still talking about the same thing. All I'm trying to say are that statements like "You're right, I shouldn't've treated you like that" can be true! And they don't need to refer to some purely extra-human thing to be so - their truth value turns on whether the action concerned was or was not adequate in context. Rather than an extra-human goodness or rightness.

How can we expect any statement about humans to be true if it has to correspond to event type which does not vary with the actions and perspectives of humans?

Not entirely sure what distinction you mean here. — Isaac

Easy things first. I'm talking about the distinction between being wrong about language, and being wrong about morals. I can't figure out how to read you and still be able to tell the difference.

I think we agree 'bad' doesn't mean anything on its own beyond a vague indication toward a negative. One can be a bad actor, but a good person. One can be a bad person but a good actor. So bad and good only mean anything relative to some objective or ideal. Something which is morally bad is bad relative to ideals of morality (behaviour, character...). If I've understood you correctly, we're on the same page here. — Isaac

Yes, as far as I can tell, we're on the same page here.

The word 'moral' has to have some public meaning for it to be useful. It has to identify some publicly available set of behaviours or ideals IR characteristics, otherwise it would serve no purpose and be impossible to learn how to use. So I don't see how it can mean 'whatever behaviours you think fit'. That would be a private meaning. — Isaac

That one, I think, needs some unpacking. First, I think this is the place where I should lay open my bias. I've studied sociology on university, but the discipline I fell in love with was linguistics. So while I'd roughly agree that the word "moral" has to be useful when referring to the public, I also think it has to be applicable on all social levels from the individual, upwards, since a person has morals, and any grouping has morals, and there's no guarantee that they're the same, since not every behaviour that differs from public morals is immoral or amoral.

A person's bahaviour that doesn't conform to the public set of rules, for example, can be classified in three distinct ways:

a) moral (person acts according to private moral compass)
b) immoral (attempts to act according to a moral compass, but fails, maybe due to a lack of will power)
c) amoral (psychopaths see morals as an external imposition)

Now those are psychological terms, as they pertain to the way individuals make choices. There's a social level, too:

a) moral (in accordance with some superindividual set of rules - a culture or subculture)
b) immoral (deviant)
c) amoral (actions that have no moral import; chosing to eat a hotdog over a burger)

The easiest way to resolve this via separate lexical entries. (During analysis we'd be calling only one of those sets "moral", but we'd have to decide beforehand which one, to avoid confusion.)

I've noticed about myself that I when I say someone acts morally, I mean that the person acts according to an inner moral compass, regardless of whether that compass is aligned with the morals of a greater group. When I mean to say that someone acts in accordance with a group's morals, then I say it like that. So a psychopath may act in accordance with his cultures morals, but he doesn't act in accordance with any inner moral compass. My speech habit is to say a psychopath doesn't act morally, even he chooses to stick to his culture's rules.

If possible, I'd like to find a way to use the word moral on both the personal and social level, via some coherent theory, but... it's hard. I believe that people recreate social structures in their daily conduct, and by that I mean that a culture usually incorporates not only typical moral rules, but also typical moral conflict (e.g. pro-choice vs. pro-life). As such parameters shift, but some rules are more stable than others. Lines like "abortion is murder" or "(online-)piracy is theft" are emotional appeals to less controversial rules, but you can craft rational arguments about why this should be the case. And these discussions are part of the environment in which we develop our personal morals, the younger the more potent, I think.

I lean towards a dynamic meaning of moral that has something to say about all the levels. Individuals who move through space-time as social vortices who accumulate and disseminate morals through their behaviour. And any analysis should account for all levels, if possible.

So a person who personally thinks he should follow all of society's rules, and has not particular confidence in his own judgement, would act in accordance with society's morals, but he's also likely to encounter plenty of criticism as a "stickler for rules", and will be asked to lighten up. You cannot analyse this under the aegis of morality, if moral only has the public meaning.

I feel like I've been rambling, but I'll leave this as is, or I'll never finish this post. To summarise, I definitely think that the term "moral" needs to deal with the public sphere, but I think that ideally it should deal with the entire social spectrum.

You might want the public meaning to be something more than just an arbitrary set of behaviours, maybe publicly available membership criteria such that our violent student could make an argument that his behaviour fits the definition. But, as I said to SophistiCat, it seems highly unlikely to me that the meaning would be so pure, given the language's history, but even it was, it would still have to have boundaries in order to be a useful word at all. — Isaac

Nah, I'm perfectly fine with it all being messy. As I said above, though, I think we need to be careful about the word's scope. I consider morality to be some sort of never ending process where specific rules are both input and output of thinking-feeling agents' actions. It's going to be messy (not sure about the extent to which it is arbitrary).

Hitting old ladies is far from any of the ideals or standards within the general public definition of moral, so doing so is morally bad. — Isaac

In moral discussions, people tend to chose non-controversial rules, so controversies are going to feel implausible. You need to suspend disbelief, though, if you're going to use such examples for thorough study of what the concept could mean. If my personal morals demand to hit one old lady per week, and I do that, I'm not acting amorally. I'm not acting immoraly with respect to my own moral compass, but I am acting immoraly with respect to society's standards, and I'm going to have a hard time hitting old ladies in prison. (Maybe I'm secretly relieved, because I don't like hitting old ladies?)

There's really nothing you can say beyond that, if you're not aiming for universalism.

Easy things first. I'm talking about the distinction between being wrong about language, and being wrong about morals. I can't figure out how to read you and still be able to tell the difference. — Dawnstorm

Ah, OK. Then yes, I'm saying there isn't a difference. In short, morality is a social concept, the language used to describe it is social too and so private meanings make no sense. One can only speak about one's morality using the public definition of what morality is and that definition cannot refer to a private feature otherwise it's not a useful word. Wittgenstein's beetle and all.

a) moral (person acts according to private moral compass) — Dawnstorm

How would they know? As per the private language argument, unless their behaviour is publicly acknowledged to be labelled 'moral' how would they privately maintain a criteria for their behaviour to class as moral and still expect the word to play a meaningful role in communication? How would they distinguish a 'moral' compass, for example, from any other compass, without a public definition of 'moral'?

Say I declare that hitting old ladies is moral. I follow my own moral compass which is to do whatever makes me feel good. How can I now use 'moral' in a conversation? It's taken on an entirely private meaning which might not even be the same meaning I had for it yesterday (I wouldn't know). No one would know what I meant, I would not know what they meant and I couldn't even be sure what my own diary entry meant from yesterday.

I've noticed about myself that I when I say someone acts morally, I mean that the person acts according to an inner moral compass — Dawnstorm

How do you know? I mean how do you know it's a 'moral' compass, and not just any old compass?

I think this is the place where I should lay open my bias. I've studied sociology on university, but the discipline I fell in love with was linguistics. — Dawnstorm

Fair enough. I studied psychology with a research interest in group belief adoption, so that's our biases laid out.

In moral discussions, people tend to chose non-controversial rules, so controversies are going to feel implausible. — Dawnstorm

Yeah, that's actually where I'm going with this. Once we accept that 'moral' is a publicly defined term, we simultaneously accepted the mess and the dynamism (like your definition here, by the way), we have to accepted that one a thing is 'moral', that's alk there is to it. There's 'moral', not 'moral', and 'sort of moral, fuzzy at the edges'. But there's no way if working out that fuzziness, there's nothing most moral, it just us what it us, a messy, community defined group.

Moral objectivism has a few qualities I struggle to reconcile (maybe someone can help me here):

- If a moral evaluation of some event is to be made by an individual, it is by definition subjective. A group of individuals will tend to disagree (partially / fully) on what the correct moral evaluation of an event is.

- If a moral evaluation of an event were to draw upon some objective "truth" (a correct moral evaluation that is not contingent on the individual and exists objectively), I struggle to see how one would know or come to understand of this truth.

Welp, I voted No instead of Yes because I just skimmed through what your definition of objectivism was.

Ah, OK. Then yes, I'm saying there isn't a difference. In short, morality is a social concept, the language used to describe it is social too and so private meanings make no sense. One can only speak about one's morality using the public definition of what morality is and that definition cannot refer to a private feature otherwise it's not a useful word. Wittgenstein's beetle and all. — Isaac

This isn't a beetle-in-the-box situation. We do different things with morals than with language. which was my first post in this thread was meant to demonstrate. "Using a wrong word" is not a moral failure.

How would they know? As per the private language argument, unless their behaviour is publicly acknowledged to be labelled 'moral' how would they privately maintain a criteria for their behaviour to class as moral and still expect the word to play a meaningful role in communication? — Isaac

I do think you have a point there somewhere, but I also think my focus is somewhat different and we're not entirely talking abou the same thing.

Any real-life decision is utlimately private, and only through lots of private decisions is there something like a public sphere. I don't think action points only upwards, so to speak. It's no more warranted to impute a public sphere than it is to impute private experience.

And even private experience is partly socially formed. My conscience is a home-grown trace of my social history, for example, but it's also partly informed by my personality (I don't like conflict, for example, and that would certainly have an influence on what I'd feel bad about; "I should confront this person, but I don't have the energy."). Some basic urges are socially formed. Toilet training comes to mind. Walking on the sidewalk, too.

Few actions are purely moral. Most have an instrumental aspect, too. Whatever we theorise about the socially accepted moral goods is abstract, anyway, and needs to filter through your private decision making process to become an action (or a tragically long hesiation).

On the other hand, when it comes to meaning I'm not looking for similarity between people so much as compatibility: as long as our actions proceed without a hich it doesn't matter what the beetle-in-a-box is like (if it's even there). But, well, incompatibilites do occur, and at least for me it's not always easy to spot whether there's a misunderstanding or a disagreement. See this discussion for plenty of examples.

How do you know? I mean how do you know it's a 'moral' compass, and not just any old compass? — Isaac

Okay. I'm hungry. There's a banana on the table. I don't like the banana and decide to hold off on eating it. There isn't a moral component in the decision I can find.

I know my little sister is looking forward to eating the banana. Now a moral component enters my decision. I have one more "excuse" not to eat the banana. I like to think well of myself, so I'd like to frame it as a moral decision. But this also makes me de-emphasise that I dislike bananas. Then I can ask why I'd think better of myself if my motives aren't "being picky" (oh hey, there has been a potentially moral angle on it all along, and I didn't notice) but being "considerate". My motivation is a sort of compound, though, so whatever I wish to think about myself isn't all that important. A panel of disinterested observers could tell me how I consistently act, though...

Yeah, how do I know? Maybe I'm just not hungry enough to eat a banana. But there is a constellation, and the ways to arrange the pieses are, to an extent similar, and extended observation can get you a clearer picture. I don't think purely moral actions exist, and I also think completely amoral actions are rare. So the question is most likely "how do I know the ratio?"

I probably don't, but I can guess and feel hurt when other people laugh at my guess and guess again.

Yeah, that's actually where I'm going with this. Once we accept that 'moral' is a publicly defined term, we simultaneously accepted the mess and the dynamism (like your definition here, by the way), we have to accepted that one a thing is 'moral', that's alk there is to it. There's 'moral', not 'moral', and 'sort of moral, fuzzy at the edges'. But there's no way if working out that fuzziness, there's nothing most moral, it just us what it us, a messy, community defined group. — Isaac

So where do you place protests, criticism, and conflict, if the moral realm is all public sanction? Don't forget that every single one of us is part of each other's context, even if only in some very minuscle way. How do topics (like, say, trans rights) enter the public discourse? I can't imagine explaining any of that without morally interested agents. (Meme theory maybe?)

Moral objectivism has a few qualities I struggle to reconcile (maybe someone can help me here):

- If a moral evaluation of some event is to be made by an individual, it is by definition subjective. A group of individuals will tend to disagree (partially / fully) on what the correct moral evaluation of an event is.

- If a moral evaluation of an event were to draw upon some objective "truth" (a correct moral evaluation that is not contingent on the individual and exists objectively), I struggle to see how one would know or come to understand of this truth. — avalon

The problem is that it is both subjective and objective, or maybe better even that this whole objective/subjective divide is not helpful in understanding morality.

We create morals, as a group or collective. Since we create them, and this creation happens based among other things on peoples opinions on morals, you can't really say it's not subjective. But then there are also a whole bunch of objective background constraints that make it so that it generally goes in certain directions... so there are 'objective' aspects to it too.

And then once morals have been created, which is a matter of agreement/convention, it is not a matter of subjective opinion anymore whether a person breaks a moral convention or not. It's objectively true that people agreed upon a certain moral convention, and objectively true or not whether that convention is broken.

We create morals, as a group or collective. Since we create them, and this creation happens based among other things on peoples opinions on morals, you can't really say it's not subjective. But then there are also a whole bunch of objective background constraints that make it so that it generally goes in certain directions... so there are 'objective' aspects to it too. — ChatteringMonkey

What you describe as objective background constraints I would rather call the "environment" to avoid the term objective. I otherwise agree.

And then once morals have been created, which is a matter of agreement/convention, it is not a matter of subjective opinion anymore whether a person breaks a moral convention or not. It's objectively true that people agreed upon a certain moral convention, and objectively true or not whether that convention is broken. — ChatteringMonkey

I agree that you can say that an agreed upon convention can be objectively said to be broken or not. In my eyes however, and more importantly, the convention itself is not reaching at some objective moral truth. You're back to a kind of subjective consensus about what is right or wrong.

I agree that you can say that an agreed upon convention can be objectively said to be broken or not. In my eyes however, and more importantly, the convention itself is not reaching at some objective moral truth. You're back to a kind of subjective consensus about what is right or wrong. — avalon

Yes, I'm not a moral objectivist.

Welp, I voted No instead of Yes because I just skimmed through what your definition of objectivism was. — ep3265

Were you going to vote "yes" before that, because you are an "objectivist" in some other sense ruled out by that definition? If so, what sense of "objectivist" do you mean?

My apologies. No I'm a relativist, but then read what your definition of moral objectivism was. I totally am fine with coming up with a complete moral system, if it's, as Nietzsche describes, a "strong" moral system instead of a "weak" one.

A strong one is one which we recognize it comes from the self and a weak one is one which we project where the moral system comes from.

Unfortunately, I don't believe in a fully natural objective morality.

We do different things with morals than with language — Dawnstorm

No, we do different things with some of our desires than we do with language. Calling those desires 'moral's is a linguistic event. It's you talking to me at the moment, It's a social interaction and so it has to involve only social meanings for us to be able to communicate.

Yeah, how do I know? Maybe I'm just not hungry enough to eat a banana. But there is a constellation, and the ways to arrange the pieses are, to an extent similar, and extended observation can get you a clearer picture. I don't think purely moral actions exist, and I also think completely amoral actions are rare. So the question is most likely "how do I know the ratio?" — Dawnstorm

I agree with you here once the definitions are sorted out, but I was actually asking about the definition in the first place. You gave the example of someone who's actions do not chime with modern society's moral, but whom you accept is "following their own moral compass". what I was asking was how you knew then that it was a 'moral' compass he was following. He's clearly following some objectives, why have you attached the term 'moral' to them? IF you're not going to use the public definition of what sort of objectives are 'moral' ones, then why use the word at all? What differentiates 'moral' objectives from just any old objective?

The answer for me is that society has labelled certain types of objective 'moral' ones, just like it's labelled certain wavelengths of light 'blue'. We don't get to just choose our own wavelengths to call 'blue', We don't get to just choose our own objectives to call 'moral'.

So where do you place protests, criticism, and conflict, if the moral realm is all public sanction? Don't forget that every single one of us is part of each other's context, even if only in some very minuscle way. How do topics (like, say, trans rights) enter the public discourse? I can't imagine explaining any of that without morally interested agents. (Meme theory maybe?) — Dawnstorm

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here, but I'll have a go at answering it.

The term 'blue' is a publicly defined term, we learn what things are 'blue' as we grow up by using the word more or less successfully. No amount of learning can tell us where 'purple' becomes 'blue' or where 'blue' becomes 'turquoise'. This is because those parameters were never set. There's no right answer. Society's fluid use of the term is what determines it's meaning (that it the truth-maker, or arbiter of it), and society's fluid use of the term hasn't given a judgement on the matter, so there is no right answer.

Which types of objective (or characteristic, or behaviour) are 'moral' ones is determined by society's fluid use of the term in communication. No amount of learning can tell us where ambiguous or disputed objectives become 'moral'. This is because the parameters were never set in that much detail. Some people call abortion 'moral', some call it 'immoral'. They all understand one another within their language communities, so both are right. No one calls hitting old ladies 'moral' (at least no fluidly communicating language community does), so hitting old ladies is not 'moral'.

None of this has any bearing whatsoever on what I want to get other people to do or allow me to to do. I am not dictated to by the meaning of the word (nor is anyone else). I might use it's rhetorical power to add persuasiveness to my argument, but that would be nothing but rhetoric. If the entire world got together and told me that what I wanted was called 'flurb', it wouldn't make any difference at all to whether I wanted it.

No, we do different things with some of our desires than we do with language. Calling those desires 'moral's is a linguistic event. It's you talking to me at the moment, It's a social interaction and so it has to involve only social meanings for us to be able to communicate. — Isaac

Okay, after around 1 1/2 hours of trying to puzzle out this paragraph, I think I might actually start to understand where you come from. Is you take on this issue derived from or at least compatible with Skinner's Behaviourism? How public events teach us to tease apart a holistic private experience into lingistic concepts.

When I hear "linguistic" my linguistics side takes over, so I was constantly looking in the wrong direction (if I'm right here).

The answer for me is that society has labelled certain types of objective 'moral' ones, just like it's labelled certain wavelengths of light 'blue'. — Isaac

The way I use "moral" it's more akin to "colour" than to "blue". "moral" =/= "morally good".

I know you'd like a definition from me, but there a lot of things I haven't figured out yet, and I have no "research goal" to guide a provisional one. For example, I've hinted in this thread that I think psychopaths can't act morally, but I'm not actually sure I really think that (for example: does morality necessitate perspective taking, or is a consequentialist approach sufficient?). As a result, I may be inconsistent across posts. Were I to attempt a definition at this point, the problem would get worse.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here, but I'll have a go at answering it. — Isaac

I disagree with nothing you said in the following paragraphs. I had the impression that you're taking the public sphere for granted, as if it weren't made up of lots of private experiences we face in behavioural aggregate. But if my Skinner epiphany is in any way getting me closer to your perspective, I have a direction to think in now. I'll need to let this settle for a while.

Okay, after around 1 1/2 hours of trying to puzzle out this paragraph — Dawnstorm

Well. Most people have given up on my paragraphs in the time it takes them to read the words (if not before), so I'm charmed by your persistence...

Is you take on this issue derived from or at least compatible with Skinner's Behaviourism? How public events teach us to tease apart a holistic private experience into lingistic concepts. — Dawnstorm

In the sense of your last sentence, yes. I don't agree with Skinner's behaviourism in general, but the idea here is that all rationalisation of our mental states and activities is mediated through socially defined parameters. There was an excellent thread a while back on Lisa Feldman Barrett's way of looking at emotions as socially mediated categories for raw affects. My view is more closely aligned with hers.

I just don't think it's possible to privately interpret one's mental states to an extent where one can form propositions about them without recourse to social modes of interpretation. So for me to say that my hitting old ladies is moral would require that I am first fluent in the social activity of interpreting some behaviours as 'moral' ones. This is an activity like any other, they do not arrive pre-labelled. The act of labelling (and this goes for any of our thoughts) is a piece of socially learnt behaviour. If I know how to ride a bike, I cannot claim falling off is doing so, even if it's what I intended to do. Labelling the sort of desire which motivates people to hit old ladies a 'moral' one is just doing the labelling wrong. No different to moving the bishop perpendicularly. Nothing stopping you, but it's just not chess anymore if you do.

The way I use "moral" it's more akin to "colour" than to "blue". "moral" =/= "morally good". — Dawnstorm

I've sometimes used 'moral' as shorthand for 'morally good' so hopefully this shouldn't get in the way too much.

There was an excellent thread a while back on Lisa Feldman Barrett's way of looking at emotions as socially mediated categories for raw affects. — Isaac

Thanks for the pointer. I'll check it out when I have the time and inclination.

I just don't think it's possible to privately interpret one's mental states to an extent where one can form propositions about them without recourse to social modes of interpretation. So for me to say that my hitting old ladies is moral would require that I am first fluent in the social activity of interpreting some behaviours as 'moral' ones. This is an activity like any other, they do not arrive pre-labelled. The act of labelling (and this goes for any of our thoughts) is a piece of socially learnt behaviour. — Isaac

I'd agree to this. Just to be sure: I don't think of "society vs. person" as a dualism. Society is the result of lots of people interacting (when looked at from below), and "identity" (In a more basic sense than current identity politcs would have it) is a process of positioning yourself (when looked at from above). Because of this, I'd have to add that it's <i>also</i> impossible that social structures and artefacts exist if they're not being enacted/interpreted by knowledgable agents. There's something reflexive going on here.

When I convince you that the earth is flat, this is just as wrong as it was before. When I convince you that hitting old ladies is morally good, that's still wrong, but not in the same way. The entire system has just shifted a little to it being right. (Of course, it's very, very hard to convince people to begin with, and because of that it's unlikely to ever gain "critical mass", even in a subculure.) It's very likely always going to be wrong. But the dynamics involved make change possible in principle.

I've sometimes used 'moral' as shorthand for 'morally good' so hopefully this shouldn't get in the way too much. — Isaac

So have I. It's hard to shed everyday usage.

When I convince you that hitting old ladies is morally good, that's still wrong, but not in the same way. The entire system has just shifted a little to it being right. (Of course, it's very, very hard to convince people to begin with, and because of that it's unlikely to ever gain "critical mass", even in a subculure.) It's very likely always going to be wrong. But the dynamics involved make change possible in principle. — Dawnstorm

Yes. That's it. Just like the word 'bully' (which used to mean something more like 'lover'). It would have been wrong to use it to mean 'someone who beats up weaker people' back then, but it's right to now. Things have to reach, as you say, a critical mass. That's where I think basic biological functions come in. There's certain positions which are unlikely to reach the required critical mass. At least not for any length of time. Although, looking at the world today l'm becoming more doubtful.

The key thing is we're talking about convincing people to do X, and to call it 'moral' despite that being wrong. Just like the first person to sincerely use 'bully' to mean more like our current negative connotation was actually using the word wrongly. They didn't just have a difference of opinion about what it meant, they knew exactly what it meant and were deliberately using it wrongly for some effect. Over time they'd have a small language group in which their idiosyncratic meaning would be 'right', though still 'wrong' elsewhere. Eventually the whole community of language users adopts the new meaning.

This may happen with hitting old ladies, but it hasn't yet, and so our violent geriophobe is 'wrong' to interpret his urges as 'moral'.

Morality is a concept, a convenient concept, but only a concept. Causation has the same worth as morality when it is related to creating a comfortable social environment. Also causation as a concept does not come with the cultural weight of unnecessary altruism. Morality is also permeated with cultural ideas that may not reflect the needs of the individual.

Your discussion with @Dawnstorm is along the same lines as the one we've been having (my position being largely in line with Dawnstorm's), but I am not sure how much you have managed to converge. I'll give it a try - hopefully I won't confuse matters more.

As Dawnstorm has pointed out, there are two aspects to moral valuation. There is the moral activity: judging the rightness and wrongness of actions and situations, actual and hypothetical. And then there are moral valuations that come as a result, which we often think of as properties of the things that we evaluate: whether they are good, bad or neutral (roughly speaking). I get the impression that you are mixing up these two aspects, perhaps deliberately, because you think of them in the same key.

When I was saying that morality is a "natural kind," I was talking about the activity of moral valuation: the having of pro and con attitudes, the influence that these attitudes exert on emotions, decisions, and social dynamics. This activity is fairly recognizable and relatable, so I don't think that it is subject to Wittgenstein's private language argument. I admit that, as you say, "all rationalisation of our mental states and activities is mediated through socially defined parameters." But although the boundaries are somewhat vague and mutable and culturally specific, and much can be made of uncertain relationships between morality and related categories like duty, social shame, etc., it is not completely arbitrary what gets grouped in the category of moral valuation. Nor is this category as mutable and capricious as moral vocabulary can be. Nor is it shaped by the same processes that shape the language (although there can be mutual influence between the two).

None of this has any bearing whatsoever on what I want to get other people to do or allow me to to do. I am not dictated to by the meaning of the word (nor is anyone else). I might use it's rhetorical power to add persuasiveness to my argument, but that would be nothing but rhetoric. If the entire world got together and told me that what I wanted was called 'flurb', it wouldn't make any difference at all to whether I wanted it. — Isaac

I agree with this.

And I would say the same about so-called "objective morality." The language of "objective morality" is usually deployed as a kind of rhetorical cudgel, in lieu of banging the table. But thinking of this dispassionately, if I approve of something as morally right, and then someone assures me that it is not just my opinion, but the thing is objectively right, that wouldn't make it any more right in my eyes than it already is. And if someone tells me instead that it is objectively wrong - well, I would just disagree with whoever holds that opinion.

I imagine that two people being in love is a rather vague thing involving the dispositions, acts, social context... It'd be hard to draw a line around a bunch of phenomena and go "Yep, that is the truth condition for X and Y are in love". Are you suggesting that dispositions aren't included in that blurry-at-the-edges web? — fdrake

Sure, both the disposition of being in love and the associated behaviors and social context are blurry. But so are all things psychological and social.

Whether or not one's conduct is adequate to one's beliefs and attitudes (when there even is a conduct to speak of) is a separate question from whether beliefs and attitudes are right or wrong. — SophistiCat

I don't think it's separate; if we separate an action's pragmatic consequences on stakeholders its agent's disposition from evaluations of rights and wrongs, it isn't clear that we're still talking about the same thing. All I'm trying to say are that statements like "You're right, I shouldn't've treated you like that" can be true! — fdrake

I agree that acting or failing to act in accordance with one's moral dispositions is itself subject to moral valuation. ("I did as I thought should have done - Hooray!" "That which I should have done I did not do") But that comes in addition to the original disposition.

So, to clarify you seem to be saying that there's a mental activity of evaluating behaviours, and that the group we call 'moral behaviours' is a natural grouping within this, and that the values we give ('good', 'bad') are feelings toward these behaviours, themselves naturally grouped? We then put labels on these natural groups to talk about them and in doing so we may expose a little fuzziness around the edges, but there's still a core where the world dictates to us what the groupings are, not the other way around.

Is that roughly right? If so, I think I'd probably agree, but with a couple of very large caveats.

The first you've already said - "The boundaries are somewhat vague and mutable and culturally specific, and much can be made of uncertain relationships between morality and related categories like duty, social shame, etc.,". I think this is important because it's generally the boundaries where moral disputes are.

The second would be that there would have to be groups of evaluating behaviours, not one. I referred to it as such above, but I don't think you did, so I'm not sure what your thinking is here. Neurologically, it's getting increasingly difficult to make the argument that moral evaluation is a single process, it's almost certainly composed of several processes involving different parts of the brain in different contexts. This matters because if you want to argue that the groups we evaluate these behaviours into are themselves natural kinds, you have to have a different pair of natural kinds corresponding to 'good' and 'bad' for each process because the results are different in each case.

Say for example processing in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex will be the emotional response to options (patients with severe damage to this region consistently give purely utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas, no emotional content even though they might be emotional in other ways). The result, therefore will be some emotional content which we will have to sort (say feel warm and cosy about it='good', feel sickened by it='bad'). But then another dilemma might involve more some area like the superior temporal sulcus which is involved in processing social perception. That might output - will be perceived negatively by my social group='bad', will be perceived positively by my social group='good'. I won't go on, but other areas might produce paired results like disgusting/attractive, salient to me/not salient to me, affects a valued member of my group/affects an outsider, conflicts with a learnt rule/complies with a learnt rule...

I don't think there's necessarily a problem with saying there are natural kinds for each of these groupings, just that it would be some job of work demonstrating the case.

I think we're closer here than it might seem. I said at the outset that I think there are two issues 1) what we call 'moral behaviour' - an language issue, and 2) what the reason might be for any similarity/difference we see in that language. You seem to be talking here about (2) - saying that the reason for the consistency in applying the term 'morally right' to certain behaviours, is partly that the biological function underpinning the speech act is tapping into some 'natural kinds'. ( the other part being the influence of culture, upbringing etc.). As I said, I'm inclined to agree with you here. We may differ over the relative extents of these influences, but we seem to agree on the fact they, together, explain the language terms dividing up the way they do.

The conclusion I draw, might be different though. My feeling is that as soon as we introduce a large quantity of biological function into the picture, then it becomes more proper to say of the extremes (say someone thinking hitting old ladies is morally 'right') that they are either damaged, or mistaken about the language. There's either something wrong with their brain - it's not assigning behaviours to the usual 'natural kind' (ie not working properly), or there's something wrong with their understanding of the language - they're describing what they get a kick out of doing and that's not the group of things we call 'moral', we call that group something else).

All of which is an interesting aside... The most important thing here, I think, is

The language of "objective morality" is usually deployed as a kind of rhetorical cudgel, in lieu of banging the table. But thinking of this dispassionately, if I approve of something as morally right, and then someone assures me that it is not just my opinion, but the thing is objectively right, that wouldn't make it any more right in my eyes than it already is. And if someone tells me instead that it is objectively wrong - well, I would just disagree with whoever holds that opinion. — SophistiCat

This is what riles me about moral objectivism too. It takes an incredibly complex process involving an almost impossible to disentangle web of emotion, socialisation, indoctrination, theory of mind, tribalism and self-identity and claims that some simple process can deliver the 'correct' answer better than the ones we already use. It's like throwing away most of the world fastest and most complex supercomputer (the human brain) and saying "we don't need all that, we can do this just with one small section at the front that deals with predicate logic". Why would anyone want to do that?... Rhetorical gain to help push an agenda.

It's like throwing away most of the world fastest and most complex supercomputer (the human brain) — Isaac

I must say, you have really good arguments.....but a bigger really....is the fact that the vast majority of humanity to whom abstract concepts apply, very seldom, if ever, think of themselves as possessing supercomputers between their ears. That doesn’t mean they don’t have one, but if they don’t think of it that way, it is irrelevant to them what exactly that 7lbs of wetware actually does for them. Even if that glutinous mass is technically responsible for everything a human does, if it isn’t readily apparent as such, he should be forgiven for “listening” to that which is first, foremost and always, apparent to him.

Besides, given that cognitive neuroscience in general has limited access to fundamental brain mechanics, otherwise that which seems to the average smuck to stand as his personal identity, or “subjectivity”, is perfectly explainable from the predicates of natural law, and given that, by whichever name one wishes to bestow upon it, the otherwise competent human thinks for himself by means of some logically describable methodology of his own invention that has nothing whatsoever to do with brain mechanics at all, I think it more apropos that humans in general don’t throw away their supercomputers as much as that supercomputer is, for all intents and purposes, hidden from them.

Rhetorical gain to help push an agenda. — Isaac

Been that way for all recorded human history, right? If there’s something inherently wrong with that kind of procedure, why haven’t we evolved out of it naturally, or, found a way to harness the supercomputer such that rhetoric and logical syllogisms and whatnot, loose their respective powers? In effect, why do we still think the same way we always have, insofar as our own brains don’t have any affect on us, by means of which we know it as such?

Even if that glutinous mass is technically responsible for everything a human does, if it isn’t readily apparent as such, he should be forgiven for “listening” to that which is first, foremost and always, apparent to him. — Mww

When you go to catch a ball do you 'do the maths' or do you just put your hand where you 'feel' the ball is going to end up? I'd say people listen to what their sub-conscious is telling them all the time. The artifice, in my opinion, is pretending otherwise.

If there’s something inherently wrong with that kind of procedure, why haven’t we evolved out of it naturally, or, found a way to harness the supercomputer such that rhetoric and logical syllogisms and whatnot, loose their respective powers? — Mww

I'm not quite sure what power you think logical syllogisms have here. I can't think of a single syllogism that describes any real life moral dilemma accurately. If you're asking why rhetoric works, that's much more simple to offer an answer for. The brain is the most calorie rich organ, doesn't matter much now, but it did in our past. It's simply more efficient to trust someone else to have worked a thing out than it is to work it out yourself, the majority are unlikely to be wrong. so long as one or two people in a tribe don't act this way, the tribe prospers as most of them have not had to commit to the calorie intensive work of calculating everything from scratch. Skip forward a few thousand years, we no longer have any means of knowing who to trust, we scramble about for clues as to who's in 'our gang' and rhetorical expressions often provide these clues.

I'd say people listen to what their sub-conscious is telling them all the time. — Isaac

If by “listen” it is meant to exhibit conscious attention, then by definition it is impossible to pay attention to that which is sub-conscious.
—————

When you go to catch a ball do you 'do the maths' or do you just put your hand where you 'feel' the ball is going to end up? — Isaac

If I go by “feel”, why would I ever need to look? While the coordination part, synonymous with the brain “doing the math”, of the hand-eye coordination system may be autonomic, the eye part is certainly a conscious activity, which implies I put my hand where my brain informs me of my best chance of catch success. Something needs to tell the brain what “math” to do.

I never trust my feel for the ball; I use my eye and trust my brain.
———-

I can't think of a single syllogism that describes any real life moral dilemma accurately. — Isaac

we no longer have any means of knowing who to trust, we scramble about for clues as to who's in 'our gang' and rhetorical expressions often provide these clues. — Isaac

Isn’t that a syllogism? Got your major, got your minor, got your conclusion. And by so doing, didn’t you at the same time, think to describe all moral dilemmas in general, even if not so much “any real-life moral dilemma” in particular?
———-

It's simply more efficient to trust someone else to have worked a thing out than it is to work it out yourself, — Isaac

True enough, yet we chastise others for argumentum ab auctoritate in dialectics, and argumentum ad verecundiam in the case of actions.

Anyway....thanks.

The second would be that there would have to be groups of evaluating behaviours, not one. I referred to it as such above, but I don't think you did, so I'm not sure what your thinking is here. Neurologically, it's getting increasingly difficult to make the argument that moral evaluation is a single process, it's almost certainly composed of several processes involving different parts of the brain in different contexts. This matters because if you want to argue that the groups we evaluate these behaviours into are themselves natural kinds, you have to have a different pair of natural kinds corresponding to 'good' and 'bad' for each process because the results are different in each case.

Say for example processing in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex will be the emotional response to options (patients with severe damage to this region consistently give purely utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas, no emotional content even though they might be emotional in other ways). The result, therefore will be some emotional content which we will have to sort (say feel warm and cosy about it='good', feel sickened by it='bad'). But then another dilemma might involve more some area like the superior temporal sulcus which is involved in processing social perception. That might output - will be perceived negatively by my social group='bad', will be perceived positively by my social group='good'. I won't go on, but other areas might produce paired results like disgusting/attractive, salient to me/not salient to me, affects a valued member of my group/affects an outsider, conflicts with a learnt rule/complies with a learnt rule...

I don't think there's necessarily a problem with saying there are natural kinds for each of these groupings, just that it would be some job of work demonstrating the case. — Isaac

Well, this assumes that the determination of a "natural kind" is to be made by means of a reduction to the neurological framework and then checking whether the phenomenology can be accounted for by a single process or by a number of heterogeneous processes. There is some attraction in this approach, but it is debatable. I was actually thinking more in terms of phenomenology and its "folk" classification, which is more vague and squishy. But that's OK, I am not making an argument for some sharp Platonic ontology of moral phenomena.

Interesting research though.

The conclusion I draw, might be different though. My feeling is that as soon as we introduce a large quantity of biological function into the picture, then it becomes more proper to say of the extremes (say someone thinking hitting old ladies is morally 'right') that they are either damaged, or mistaken about the language. There's either something wrong with their brain - it's not assigning behaviours to the usual 'natural kind' (ie not working properly), or there's something wrong with their understanding of the language - they're describing what they get a kick out of doing and that's not the group of things we call 'moral', we call that group something else). — Isaac

If someone says that he gets a kick out of hitting old ladies, but by "getting a kick out of smth" he actually means moral aversion (in the usual sense), then that is a language issue. If he is actually getting a kick out of it (in the usual sense), and no moral aversion, then I am still not sure what language has got to do with it.

This is what riles me about moral objectivism too. It takes an incredibly complex process involving an almost impossible to disentangle web of emotion, socialisation, indoctrination, theory of mind, tribalism and self-identity and claims that some simple process can deliver the 'correct' answer better than the ones we already use. It's like throwing away most of the world fastest and most complex supercomputer (the human brain) and saying "we don't need all that, we can do this just with one small section at the front that deals with predicate logic". Why would anyone want to do that?... Rhetorical gain to help push an agenda. — Isaac

You make it sound like there is a 'correct' answer to be found, and our natural moral sense is just better at figuring it out than a rationally constructed ethical system. For that to be the case, there has to be an independently defined problem and an independent means of evaluating the fitness of the solution to the problem. But here is the thing: if you reject moral objectivism, then it follows that moral problems are framed by the very moral agent that has to solve them, and the same agent then has to evaluate the fitness of the solution. Is the answer actually 'correct'? Such question doesn't even make sense in the absence of an objective standard. Whatever answer you converge upon has to be the right answer (as far as you know), because rightness and wrongness are normative metrics, and a normative evaluation is exactly what you do when you answer moral questions.

I look at it from a somewhat different angle. If you are a naturalist about morality: no God's laws or other supernatural impositions - and many proponents of objective morality are naturalists - then why would you even suppose that for something as complex and messy as natural moral landscape appears to be, the Enlightenment-age paradigm of a simple, rational, law-driven system would be a good fit? A much better paradigm would be something equally complex and messy and organic - biology, neurology, psychology, sociology.

The brain is the most calorie rich organ, doesn't matter much now, but it did in our past. It's simply more efficient to trust someone else to have worked a thing out than it is to work it out yourself, the majority are unlikely to be wrong. so long as one or two people in a tribe don't act this way, the tribe prospers as most of them have not had to commit to the calorie intensive work of calculating everything from scratch. — Isaac

Correct me if I am wrong, but my impression was that much of our brain's processing power is dedicated to mundane subconscious tasks like visual processing and motion control. Even when it comes to more conscious activity, much of it would be common to all people: language, social interactions. The more intellectually rarefied activities that we value so much don't occupy a proportionate place in the brain's architecture and power budget.

If by “listen” it is meant to exhibit conscious attention, then by definition it is impossible to pay attention to that which is sub-conscious. — Mww

One can pay attention to the result (which are made available to the conscious), without paying attention to the process by which they're derived.

Something needs to tell the brain what “math” to do. — Mww

Not at all. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000284/

by so doing, didn’t you at the same time, think to describe all moral dilemmas in general, even if not so much “any real-life moral dilemma” in particular? — Mww

The intention was to provide a list, hence no "single" syllogism.

True enough, yet we chastise others for argumentum ab auctoritate in dialectics, and argumentum ad verecundiam in the case of actions. — Mww

We do, but note these are not necessarily fallacies, they're contextual.