Deer overpopulation in Scotland isn’t a natural problem — it’s a human-made one. Humans killed their natural predators (wolves, lynxes and bears), cleared forests, and now even manage land to keep deer numbers high for hunting. Shooting them isn’t “kindness,” it’s perpetuating the harm. Real solutions are restoring ecosystems, rewilding predators, or using non-lethal population control like fertility management. — Truth Seeker

Indeed, but does it reduce suffering? My local population of wild goats is controlled by fertility management. But all the goats still die eventually of old age. Is it preferable to be killed by a bear or a human? But what I want you to see is how we agree about the moral foundations while we dispute the practicalities. Nobody thinks that falsehood is preferable to truth in principle; nobody thinks that suffering ought to be inflicted for its own sake; there are some who think that life itself is not good because it always involves suffering - they would say that we ought not to reproduce at all. But again the argument proceeds from the same roots - that suffering is bad.

Deer overpopulation in Scotland isn’t a natural problem — it’s a human-made one. — Truth Seeker

Of course it is human made, humans are an invasive species and there are no natural controls on the population. That is why we need the 'unnatural' control of morality; one might call it 'self restraint'.

And this is as old as the bible. Humanity has eaten of the tree of knowledge, and fallen out of the Natural world into a world of right and wrong. The natural world does whatever comes naturally, but humans make moral choices. Rewilding is a moral choice to withdraw somewhat. One I agree we should do more of. But that is something we would have to convince our fellow men of on the basis that morality is real, and the world as a whole would really be better. One cannot do it on the basis that it is all just opinion or invention, and anyone can have any opinion and none can be right or wrong.

You can observe brain activities corresponding to pleasure, pain and even consciousness on functional MRI scans.

We know these states "correspond" to pleasure or pain because people tell us they do. A huge amount of neuroscience in this general area presupposes that people are accurate reporters of real, private, mental states. If we didn't assume that, did not presuppose it as fact, then all of our "measurable, third person data" would only tell us about how different stimuli cause different responses in different parts of the body, e.g., "do this and people emit this sort of sound wave." This is why some philosophers and neuroscience argue that we should declare consciousness a sort of unscientific illusion.

Anyhow, if this counts as "observing" inner life, how is goodness not observed? Isn't medical and vetinary science incoherent without the good of the body, health? Isn't most of the field of psychology incoherent with the assumption of a mind and what is good for it? "Psychology" is itself the "discourse of the soul." So too, engineering as a science, architecture, etc., all sorts of arts and sciences, are quite incoherent without a notion of goodness. How can one decide between a good bridge and a bad one, or a good water treatment plant and a bad one, without ends you want to achieve? If a building that falls down is just as good as one that stands, or a treatment that kills patients just as good as one that heals them, these disciplines disappear.

Hence, the good (ends, desirability, choice-worthyness) seems to be everywhere. Further, if it is in the mind, and the mind comes from the physical, then ends, desirability, etc. come from the physical.

I guess that's my point. Your division here seems to beg the question, and I don't think it's actually a wise thing to just assume. IMHO, it's unclear exactly why pleasure should be so different from goodness, one "real" the other illusory for instance.

Indeed, but does it reduce suffering? My local population of wild goats is controlled by fertility management. But all the goats still die eventually of old age. Is it preferable to be killed by a bear or a human? But what I want you to see is how we agree about the moral foundations while we dispute the practicalities. Nobody thinks that falsehood is preferable to truth in principle; nobody thinks that suffering ought to be inflicted for its own sake; there are some who think that life itself is not good because it always involves suffering - they would say that we ought not to reproduce at all. But again the argument proceeds from the same roots - that suffering is bad. — unenlightened

I think being killed by a bear is worse than being killed by a human because humans can shoot a deer in the brain and kill it with minimal pain, but a bear can't do that. A bear has to claw and bite the deer while the deer is still alive and conscious, which causes more pain to the deer compared to a bullet to the brain. Nonexistence is the only way to prevent all suffering. When we use contraceptives to prevent the existence of a sentient organism, we prevent all suffering, all enjoyment and the eventual death of the sentient organism. Antinatalists argue that humans should stop having babies because that is the only way to prevent more suffering and death.

I think morals and laws matter because they have real consequences for real sentient organisms.

↪Truth Seeker

You can observe brain activities corresponding to pleasure, pain and even consciousness on functional MRI scans.

We know these states "correspond" to pleasure or pain because people tell us they do. A huge amount of neuroscience in this general area presupposes that people are accurate reporters of real, private, mental states. If we didn't assume that, did not presuppose it as fact, then all of our "measurable, third person data" would only tell us about how different stimuli cause different responses in different parts of the body, e.g., "do this and people emit this sort of sound wave." This is why some philosophers and neuroscience argue that we should declare consciousness a sort of unscientific illusion.

Anyhow, if this counts as "observing" inner life, how is goodness not observed? Isn't medical and vetinary science incoherent without the good of the body, health? Isn't most of the field of psychology incoherent with the assumption of a mind and what is good for it? "Psychology" is itself the "discourse of the soul." So too, engineering as a science, architecture, etc., all sorts of arts and sciences, are quite incoherent without a notion of goodness. How can one decide between a good bridge and a bad one, or a good water treatment plant and a bad one, without ends you want to achieve? If a building that falls down is just as good as one that stands, or a treatment that kills patients just as good as one that heals them, these disciplines disappear.

Hence, the good (ends, desirability, choice-worthyness) seems to be everywhere. Further, if it is in the mind, and the mind comes from the physical, then ends, desirability, etc. come from the physical.

I guess that's my point. Your division here seems to beg the question, and I don't think it's actually a wise thing to just assume. IMHO, it's unclear exactly why pleasure should be so different from goodness, one "real" the other illusory for instance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You have raised valid issues. Just because morals and laws are mental constructs, it does not mean that they are not real. I think morals and laws matter because they have real consequences for real sentient organisms. We have no way to directly access the sentience of another organism. You can't know what it is like for me to be me, and I can't know what it is like for you to be you. As we are both humans, I imagine that we have similar pleasures and pains. How can consciousness be an illusion when I am experiencing it right now and you are experiencing it right now?

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare, Act 2, Scene 2, "Hamlet".

Is right and wrong just a matter of thinking something is right (e.g. it is right to save and improve lives) and something is wrong (e.g. theft, fraud, rape, robbery, enslaving, torture and murder are wrong)? Is there any way to know for sure what is right and what is wrong? Different countries have different laws. Even the same country has different laws at different times. How do we decide what should be legal and what should be illegal? — Truth Seeker

Right and wrong just a matter of thinking something to be so? Sounds absurd. The prima facie obligation not to bludgeon my neighbor certainly has to be thought out, given the circumstances, but the conditions that make right and wrong ethical in the first place are PRIOR to this thinking out, viz., suffering being bludgeoned causes. Suffering is not thinking. This pretty much covers the true ground of ethics. It is the non ethical entanglements that give rise to indeterminacy in ethics, not the nature of ethics itself. Hamlet was famously caught in such indeterminacy.

So the foundation of most moral systems seems to be preventing harm and promoting wellbeing. — Tom Storm

Which begs the question: is this foundation discovered in the mere thinking, or is there something timeless and absolute in the presuppositions of an ethical problem? The problem itself is, of course, messy, as the OP notes, but does this make ethics itself reducible to the thinking only, that is, ethics being the kind of thing that is made and conventional only, and not discovered. If ethics is essentially discoverable, then this implies something outside of thought , addressed by thought to determine how to understand it. But if ethics is entirely made in the matrix of language dealing with the world, "made up" if you will, then this is end of there being a true independent ground for ethics, and a radical relativism is all that is left.

If anybody has any ethical questions, they can just ask me. — frank

The ethical question I have is THE ethical question: What is the ground of ethics? This is the be taken as Kant took up reason (though, not to even come near endorsing his absurd rationalism on this issue). Kant's method of reduction is what I have in mind: First isolate the desideratum from incidentals. Do you think ethics has a reductive residuum that survives the suspension of incidentals (or accidentals, if you prefer)?

Although I can't prove anything beyond that, and the discussion is purely philosophical beyond that point, I think that any assertion of morality should not violate this core tenant. — Philosophim

I wonder if you could say what this core idea is.

So the foundation of most moral systems seems to be preventing harm and promoting wellbeing.
— Tom Storm

Which begs the question: is this foundation discovered in the mere thinking, or is there something timeless and absolute in the presuppositions of an ethical problem? — Constance

Do good and avoid evil. Wellbeing and harm are, I think, the same thing in other words. I suggest that humans are those that can question their inclinations, motives and actions in this way and it is the ability to ask and consider if something is right action or wrong action is that foundation. This very discussion is the foundation, and the discussion develops with our abilities to act, and knowledge of consequences. If we don't know that burning fossil fuels destabilises the climate, then we think it a great good to warm and power the human world that way. But as we learn about the long term consequences, we come to know better.

The other question that impacts this is "whose harm, and whose wellbeing?" Me, my family, my tribe, my nation, my ethnicity, my species, my planet? The flourishing of the whole of life is a comparatively recent consideration in these debates, and even consideration of the whole of humanity on an equal level is rather recent, to the extent that our traditions and institutions have not fully made the adjustment. And of course the local harm and wellbeing is more apparent, and tends to seem more vital than distant ones in time or space. I cannot see the starving in Africa, or my unborn great great grandchildren so any harm I might be doing them seems less important, and somewhat hypothetical.

The problem itself is, of course, messy, as the OP notes, but does this make ethics itself reducible to the thinking only, that is, ethics being the kind of thing that is made and conventional only, and not discovered. If ethics is essentially discoverable, then this implies something outside of thought , addressed by thought to determine how to understand it.

I don't see how it could be. If ethics is the study of ends, of what is sought, then it seems clear that some ends are not sought merely as a matter of convention. People do not seek happiness and avoid suffering as a sort of convention. We do not desire food, oxygen, warmth, etc. by convention; and yet these do seem to be chief "goods." That it is, at least ceteris paribus, bad to be blinded, to have one's hand cut off, to suffer brain injury, etc. does not seem to be a matter of convention. Convention itself is only coherent if it springs from a sort of goal-directedness that already presupposes value, else there would be no reason to follow conventions.

As to discoveries, surely some moral insights are discovered. Newton famously drank mercury because he thought it was good for him. Yet today, knowing what we know about the effects of mercury ingestion on the body, we can say that, all else equal, it is bad for people to have mercury slipped into their food and drink. This is knowledge of value that must be discovered though.

This very discussion is the foundation, and the discussion develops with our abilities to act, and knowledge of consequences. — unenlightened

But prior to this, there is the discussion of what ethics IS. Actions, granted, do not have to proceed with with perfect clarity on about the ontology of ethical standards since actions are embedded in a culture and its ways thinking and valuing. But philosophically, metaethics is basic: the OP asks about whether ethics is all just in the thinking, and beyond this it is all open, with no intruding standard from outside of the norms of one's society. If the answer to this is in the affirmative, then ethics is lost to nihilism.

I don't see how it could be. If ethics is the study of ends, of what is sought, then it seems clear that some ends are not sought merely as a matter of convention. People do not seek happiness and avoid suffering as a sort of convention. That it is, at least ceteris paribus, bad to be blinded, to have one's hand cut off, to suffer brain injury, etc. does not seem to be a matter of convention. Convention itself is only coherent if it springs from a sort of goal-directedness that already presupposes value, else there would be no reason to follow conventions.

As to discoveries, surely some moral insights are discovered. Newton famously drank mercury because he thought it was good for him. Yet today, knowing what we know about the effects of mercury ingestion on the body, we can say that, all else equal, it is bad for people to have mercury slipped into their food and drink. This is knowledge of value that must be discovered though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To say ethics is the study of ends presupposes the value of an end. This is where the basic philosophical question leads one. One states an end, a purpose to one's actions, and no matter what this is, there is another question latent and ignored: What good is this? But now the issues hangs on this idea of the good, which resists inquiry. Or does it?

What is the ground of ethics? — Constance

"Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.” – Albert Schweitzer, “Civilization and Ethics”, 1949.

"Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.” – Albert Schweitzer, “Civilization and Ethics”, 1949. — Truth Seeker

Okay, and it is not that I disagree with Schweitzer, but there is philosophy unsaid in these words, and this is where thought has to go. Reverence for life. but reverence is a way one comports oneself toward a thing, and reverence toward life is too vague to serve as way to say what this is. Of course, I know what he means: human life but what is it about human life that makes it something to be revered? A principle? But philosophy has lots of principles laid out through the centuries, notably, principles of utility and deontological principles like Kant's notion of duty. But they are all question begging as to what it is that makes ethics what it IS. A principle as such has nothing ethical about it, and calling it an ethical principle presupposes and understanding of what ethicality IS. Life cannot be foundational here, because there is nothing in the idea of living, living as such, that makes ethics what it is. How does one define living in thsi context? Breathing, heart beating, liver cleansing blood, and the rest? How does this generate ethical obligation? Or is it the sensate dimension of experience? I mean, what in life makes a person an ethical agency at all?

But prior to this, there is the discussion of what ethics IS. — Constance

How can there be? How can ethics be discussed before there are ethics? First the fall into knowledge, and the birth of shame, then the questioning and discussion. It's always the same with philosophy, it wants to start at the beginning but cannot, it always starts in the middle and in a muddle.

Ethics are grounded in the questioning of life, in the second guessing of behaviour, in the thought that things might have been different, and might have been better.

A path is made by walking on it; ethics are made by questioning our actions.

good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil. — Truth Seeker

Albert defined good and evil. Veganism is good because it saves and improves lives. Vegans value all sentient lives - not just human lives.

. If ethics is essentially discoverable, then this implies something outside of thought , addressed by thought to determine how to understand it. — Constance

I’ve heard no good reason to accept this idea but if you want to provide some evidence please do.

is there something timeless and absolute in the presuppositions of an ethical problem? — Constance

I don't know of anything timeless and absolute, do you? Are you thinking morality is like maths or the logical absolutes? I'm not certain they are timeless or absolute and there are philosophers who argue this.

But if ethics is entirely made in the matrix of language dealing with the world, "made up" if you will, then this is end of there being a true independent ground for ethics, and a radical relativism is all that is left. — Constance

I would imagine that suffering and happiness were experienced before language, so there’s that.

I would think also that morality comes from our interactions with the world and other creatures, not just language. But given you wrote of relativism “is all that is left” it sounds like you’re not comfortable with it. I think we’ve had this conversation before.

I think we all know what is 'wrong' and 'right' but our intuitions and some deliberation. Whether that applies to another is a matter of chance (sort of).
We can't "know x is right" without recourse to something. We don't have a universal something. *shrug*.

Questions about abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, or welfare aren't merely about administrative effectiveness; they rest on moral judgments about the value of life, autonomy, and justice. Even framing them as ‘policy’ decisions already reflects a moral stance. — Tom Storm

Let’s say I think abortion is a bad thing and I would like to promote policy solutions to address that. Here are some suggestions - effective sex education, easily accessible birth control, medical and social support for pregnant women, support for adoption, affordable childcare…

Veganism is more ethical than non-veganism because it reduces suffering and death by a massive amount. [ ... ] Now that I have provided argument and evidence, is it now the truth? — Truth Seeker

Yes, but that "truth" does not entail that "non-veganism" is immoral or necessarily so. Imo, eating either non-industrial or vat-grown/3-d printed meats is no less ethical than a strictly plant-based diet.

How can consciousness be an illusion when I am experiencing it right now and you are experiencing it right now? — Truth Seeker

Given that the human brain is transparent to itself (i.e. brain-blind (R.S. Bakker)), it cannot perceive how the trick is done and therefore that consciousness is an illusion (i.e. not the entity it seems to be or that one thinks it is).

Also, as Libet's experiments have shown, one is not "experiencing right now" but rather conscious perception occurs up to 550 milliseconds after a stimulus. And what one is conscious of is a simplified representation of the salient features of the perceived object; thus, "consciousness" is only a simplification of a much more complex process that one cannot be conscious of (like e.g. a blindspot that enables sight).

Consider Buddhist no-self, Democitean swirling atoms, Humean bundle theory, Churchlands' eliminativism ... Nørretranders' user-illusion, Hofstadter's strange looping, Metzinger's phenomenal self model, etc: some philosophical cum scientific 'models' of the entity-illusion of consciousness.

To say ethics is the study of ends presupposes the value of an end.

I'm not sure if it does. That there are ends that people act for seems obvious. If we were wrong about this, it seems we should be wrong about just about anything and everything. Moreover, there are obviously better or worse means towards different ends. If I want to sail off my island and have at my disposal logs to make a raft or stones, the logs shall work far better for achieving my end.

One states an end, a purpose to one's actions, and no matter what this is, there is another question latent and ignored: What good is this?

Right, this is how I would put it: Aside from the question about what is good vis-á-vis any particular end (e.g., winning a race) we can also ask about the choiceworthyness of that end itself. Ends can be ordered to other ends. For instance, we might want to win a race against fleet footed Achilles because if we do then he will agree to release our captured friend. Ends can be ordered to other ends. So, we face the problem of grounding proximate ends and means in some sort of end that is choice-worthy for its own sake, i.e., "an end that is sought for its own sake."

Are there any such ends? Are there many?

A common answer here has been pleasure. Yet it is generally been agreed that simple pleasures—from food, sex, drugs, etc.—are inferior to the "pleasure" derived from participation in common goods (i.e., the good of being a good husband, a good parent, a good citizen, a good soldier, a good priest, a good artist, etc.) or a sort of intellectual pleasure associated with wisdom, contemplative understanding of the world and one's role in it, or as Hegel says: "being at home in the world." Some people use "pleasure" only for "bodily pleasures," but I think we can speak about different sorts analogously. Sometimes, we seek bodily pleasures so as to accomplish one of the "higher" sorts of pleasures, as when we want to be in a good mood so as to help someone else better. Yet happiness as a sort of overall flourishing, "living a good life" and "being a good person," seems to be sought for its own sake.

Anyhow, that's just a candidate for what is good in itself, and sought for its own sake.

Others deny that there can be anything worth seeking for its own sake. So all judgement about ends relies on an infinite regression of finite ends ordered to other finite ends, which must, in virtue of our being finite creatures, bottom out somewhere, seemingly in irrational impulse. However, these folks still think we can live "better or worse lives," and "learn to deal with this ungroundness." So, even for them, there can still be an ethics and a politics (politics as an art for producing good/virtuous societies)—a study of living a better or worse life.

However, I want to suggest that one can have "the best," or an "infinite good" in mind as a goal without knowing such a good. Indeed, if the human mind has an infinite appetite for goodness, as philosophers of all stripes from Platonists to athiests have claimed, then it seems that, on account of our finitude, we can never fully know or be "mentally conformed" to such a good, since it surpasses us. Yet we can be "always ever more open to it." That's sort of the root of Plato's notion. It is the desire for what is "truly good" not merely what "appears good" or "is said to be good by others" that allows us to transcend current beliefs and opinions, to move beyond our own finitude in a self-determining pursuit of the Good. The object is not known at the outset, it is merely desired (that's the whole idea of the "erotic ascent").

Normally, traditions that build on Plato—Boethius, the Golden Age Islamic thinkers, many of the Patristics, the Scholastics, etc.—also posit a sort of "knowing by becoming" here. Praxis is essential (e.g., contemplation, ascetic labors, etc.). But within these schools it isn't "knowing the good" that comes first, but knowing what essentially precludes knowing and consistently willing the good, which is being divided against oneself and controlled by one's passions and lower appetites, rather than the rational appetite for goodness or truth as such. Hence, ethics here beings from a sort of "meta" position, from looking at what must be the case for any ethical life regardless of what goodness and justice turn out to be. Indeed, much of what Plato puts out there would seem to hold even if "good" just means "what I myself will prefer." It applies to anyone not embracing full nihilism, in that being ruled over by one's appetites and passions will only lead to good outcomes by accident (and we know from experience that it will often result in disaster).

Which is all to say that ends can be quite unknown and we can still have an ethics.

A path is made by walking on it; ethics are made by questioning our actions. — unenlightened

:fire:

How can there be? How can ethics be discussed before there are ethics? First the fall into knowledge, and the birth of shame, then the questioning and discussion. It's always the same with philosophy, it wants to start at the beginning but cannot, it always starts in the middle and in a muddle.

Ethics are grounded in the questioning of life, in the second guessing of behaviour, in the thought that things might have been different, and might have been better.

A path is made by walking on it; ethics are made by questioning our actions. — unenlightened

Before, not in the temporal sense, but in the logical presuppositional sense: Ask the question, What is ethics? and you uncover the analytic of ethics, like a geologist opens a rock or a mineral looking for its contents. What is sought is an analytic of ethics, a determination as to what makes an ethical case ethical at all. Prior to the "case" is the condition laid out in the world to which ethic reasoning is a response, something IN the world that ethical issues are "about". This goes to the essence of ethics: value. What is value?

Albert defined good and evil. Veganism is good because it saves and improves lives. Vegans value all sentient lives - not just human lives. — Truth Seeker

But sentience as such possesses nothing of ethical possibility. And something being alive is equally without an ethical dimension. How do you define good and evil? What does it mean to say something is evil? It can't be because it gives rise to something else, some purpose or use value, because these beg the question about the nature of evil itself. This, I argue, is where the question leads thought. Not to what is called evil, but what evil is itself, its nature, its essential meaning. If one wants to understand ethics, one has to understand what ethics IS.

Is there any way to know for sure what is right and what is wrong? — Truth Seeker

First, people are born into societies with a standing system of values (reflected in law, religion, manners, and so forth). So from the start, that is one source of certainty.

Once one is old enough to think for one's self, one can revise and edit the received rules. There are limits on how far one can go: Even if you have decided it is OK to steal, most of society thinks it is wrong and if you steal, you may be caught and punished. There are usually core values and rules which you had best abide by, like it or not. There are often quite peripheral rules which can safely be ignored. But sometimes peripheral rules, like fashion, are almost as critical as core rules.



So, if your Home Owners Assn. says that your lawn must be weed free and no longer than 3 inches, then you had better hop to it. Or else!

I don't think WS was arguing for completely subjective morality. I take what he said to mean that we can 'think' our way from one position to another, from an act being bad to that act being good. There are plenty of historical examples of thinking our way from bad to good, good to bad.

Most people make up their minds about what is good and bad based on their society, on very strong influences, and on one's own thinking. There is usually some wiggle room in the morals of the 8 billion + people on earth, but not too much. That's one reason why most of us get along with each other reasonably well most of the time.

What brings major trouble is when a political leader (Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Trump, Ayatollah Khomeini. the Taliban lunatics, the Sudan warlords, etc.) decide to impose a moral scheme at considerable variance from the people's generally practiced moral system. Trump isn't in the same league as Hitler (yet, anyway) but his shredding of USAID, Voice Of America, the Department of Education, the CDC. his nonsensical policy on science and vaccination, and other actions undermines what people thought good, true, and right about government. The consequences will be less health around the world, less health at home, less reliable information around the world, less education, and so on. Not good!

Veganism? A fine topic, I suppose, but hardly the yardstick by which morality is measured.