I don't think we disagree on the fundamentals here:

"an Is that entails what one Ought Not to do." is what you noted, which of course logically leaves us with 'what should be' vs 'what should not be'.

I agree that unnecessary suffering 'should not be', my point is that this can only be objectively true if good is objectively what 'should be'. The moral fundamental that 'existence is better than non-existence' is required for us to at any point claim 'X should exist". Because all questions of morality chain down to this fundamental question.

Why should suffering not exist? Because it overall lowers the quality of a living being's life. But why should there be a living being at all? Because its an increased concentration and complexity of existence that produces far outcomes than the material alone. Why should there exist anything at all? Because existence is better than non-existence.

The point of a fundamental is you can get to a point upon which you can build from. It also acts as a floor when working backwards. There comes a point where we have an answer, and there are no more questions. The answer is the reason, the fundamental that logically must be.

It sounds like you're asking what normativity most fundamentally is? And you sound like a structuralist. You're looking for a answer that explains all the disparate pieces, like the two-dimensional people building a theory from watching a spoon pass through their plane. All they see is a dot that turns into a line, and back to a dot. What is it?

I read a book by a structuralist who focused on gnostic myths. The typical myth goes like this:

In heaven, all was silent because nothing is undone in heaven. Then, out of the silence came the first question: what is this?. God turned to the questioner and said: "Silence yourself. There are no unanswered questions in heaven." The questioner understood and complied, but something about this event caused a part of the questioner to fall out of heaven, and this part is known as Sophia. In time, Sophia gave birth to a blind god named Samael. Samael's body is our universe, but everything that happened in Samael took place in blindness. There was murder and violence, but it didn't mean anything. It was like a play with no audience.

Sophia felt sad when she looked at her son, who couldn't see her. So she whispered into his ear and what she said pervaded his body and coalesced in humans. Humans awoke and began to see their world for the first time. They felt guilt and shame. They had become their own audience. And they turned to see beyond their world, to heaven, where all questions are answered.

For a structuralist, a story like this could be about something that is always happening in the present, maybe below the surface. — frank

Not structuralism. Post structuralism, the denial that language really has any rigorous commonality among those in a language group. No, the idea here goes beyond this discussion. The issue is about the essence of ethics, what is ethics such that were there an absence of this, ethics would cease to exist, like logic vanishing without tautology and contradiction. I am saying that the dominant position that is the denial of objectivity in ethical matters is wrong, and the evidence for this in, if you will, in the fabric of existence: suffering and delight. What ARE these? No less than the explicit manifestation of, say, having your teeth pulled without anesthetic, or being in love. Max Scheler refers to this as non formal value and ethics (arguing against Kant's ethical formalism). But no more than this? This is a hard question. To say what happiness is IN a context of relations, uses and purposes is one things, but then, what about "out" of these contextual indices? This outside is a matter of being outside of language. Suffering lies outside of language, as does the beauty of Ravel's Mother Goose Suite. We do face interpretative contexts everywhere in our entanglements with the world, but these interpretations are what suffering IS.Suffering IS what it is in al its manifestness, and this is acontextual.

Well, objection works with the early analytic notion of the "absolute ' which was bound up with their conception of "abstract objects " and the notion that "objectivity approaches truth at the limit." It comes out of a certain view of naturalism where the perspective of consciousness is a sort of barrier to be overcome, the much maligned but often reproduced "view from nowhere." However, such a consideration of the "absolute" has probably had a longer life as a punching bag for continentals than it did as a position that was actually embraced by large numbers of philosophers. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"View from Nowhere" is an attempt to slip past the glaringly obvious world of actualities we live in. But nowhere means nowhere IN the potentiality of possiblities that arise with a particular ontotheology, where this term is bound to finitude, like talking about Christian metaphysics and a list of superlatives that belong to God, the whole affair extracted from the familiar and its habits of thought of a particular time and place. "Nowhere" is being itself. "Absolute" is a categorical attempt to speak this, which fails, to put it in Kant's terms, because it is a concept without intuitions, empty. The real question that haunts this inquiry inspired by Hamlet's claim in the OP is, is there really no intuition beyond the (merely) empirical? If you break a leg, does the excruciating pain not deliver an "intuition" that stands up to the vacuity of the locution "view from nowhere"? This question issues from outside the historical matrix that informs language's "games".

I would think though that to be properly absolute, in the sense the term is normally used outside that context, is not to be "a reality as set over and against (and outside) all appearances," but rather to include all of reality and appearance. Appearances are really appearances, and so they cannot fall outside the absolute. Hegel's Absolute does not exclude any of its "moments" for instance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps you intend it this way: like Kant's noumena, what is it that is NOT noumenal? To say the phenomenon is not noumenal means to draw a line between the two, but how is a line to be drawn if the noumenal is impossible to conceive? It is not that the noumenal is some impossibly distant ground for all things; rather, all things are the ground and metaphysics is discovered IN phenomenality: in the foundational indeterminacy of categorical thinking and the presence of empirical objects. It is all a unity, yet beyond unity.

This is relevant as far as grounding the human good in human nature goes. Sometimes, one sees the claim that: “there is no such thing as human nature.” Prima facie, such a claim cannot be anything but farcical if it is not walked back with so many caveats so as to simply reintroduce the idea of a nature in some modified form. It is clear that man is a certain sort of thing. We do not expect that our children might some day soon spin themselves into cocoons and emerge weeks later with wings, because this is not the sort of thing man does. We know that we will fall if we leap off a precipice, and we understand that we are at no risk of floating away into the sky when we step outdoors. Things possess stable natures; what they are determines how they interact with everything else. Beans do not sprout by being watered in kerosene and being set ablaze, nor can cats live on a diet of rocks. Attempts to wholly remove any notion of “human nature” invariably get walked back with notions like "facticity," “modes of being,” etc. (Generally, the original idea of a "nature" is presented as a sort of straw man in these cases). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Unless the question as to human nature goes to language itself. Then all things lose their nature, their essence. Sure, we know that beans do not sprout watered with kerosene, but kerosene: what is this apart from the repeated results of a scientific determination, where repeatable results define what kerosene IS. Light a match to kerosene and it burns, without fail under "normal conditions". But IS kerosene reducible to this IS and others like it that congeal into habits of perceptual anticipation? But then, who cares? The factual dimensions of kerosene are absent of meaning apart from the basic features of language, the logic, irony, metaphor, imagery, pragmatics (especially), and so on, and kerosene can be contextualized and recontextualized into eternity, and when these are put to rest, the residuum is nothing, mere being as such...that is until the value dimension is recognized. Now being as such is "life" as Michel Henry talks about it. Meaning outside conceptual open endedness.

The original idea of a nature as a strawman, referring to something as absurd as a real subject, like a soul, absurd because unobservable.

Not structuralism. — Constance

Why not structuralism? It's a candidate for answering what ethics is.

his is a hard question. To say what happiness is IN a context of relations, uses and purposes is one things, but then, what about "out" of these contextual indices? — Constance

The ancient Persian answer is that goodness is the direction we're reaching out toward. Evil is what we're pushing away from, so a good person is in motion, or progressing. In this view, it doesn't matter what your present condition is, if you're progressing, you're good. If you're stationary, you're evil.

The ancient Jewish answer is that goodness is clear for all to see in your health and well-being because obviously God is blessing you. A similar outlook is Roman stoicism, which aligns goodness with Nature. It's in a tree's nature to grow toward the light, if it fails to do this, it becomes sick. Sickness and evil are basically the same thing: a failure to abide by your nature. I like the the Roman view because it's efficient.

If you notice, both these views allow flexibility in what actually counts as good. We may discover through experience what really constitutes progress or health. On the other hand, they conflict in whether goodness shows up on the surface, or if it can be hidden. Our present worldview is a fusion of ancient views.

Good = actions that prevent or reduce suffering and promote well-being for sentient beings.
Evil = deliberate actions that cause unnecessary suffering or destroy the capacity for well-being in sentient beings. — Truth Seeker

Yes, I think you are closing in. But there does remain the final question: what is there that is bad about suffering? You may, as I do, hold that this is self evident, though this gets lost in our entangled affairs, where competing goods and bads struggle. But the question is now momentous, not mundane: Suffering is now not a convention of the language and culture that talks about it, talk that leads to variability because suffering is inevitably caught up in uses and purposes. Suffering is the bare manifestation of that terrible pain in your ankle, and this, if you can stand it, transcends the finitude that language that would hold it down, keep it familiar, contained in reduction to the ordinary. But suffering is not ordinary, not an institution. It is that original that institutions of ethics have their foundation in.

The above is the full argument so you can understand where I'm coming from. — Philosophim

Her is where the argument has trouble:

Definitions:
Good - what should be
Existence - what is
Morality - a method of evaluating what is good

This puts existence under the critical determinations of ethics, a call for an "ethical ontology" under which all things abide. Now, someone like Mackie (see his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong) will call this "queer"--for what kind of ontology IS this to rule over all existence? Only God has had this impossible place in the world, and God is conceived in ancient terrified mentalities. What is the basis for this assumption of a "God" (notwithstanding the absence of the term in your argument. The Godlike "queerness" holds.

Not that I think Mackie is right. But this above needs to addressed.

Why not structuralism? It's a candidate for answering what ethics is. — frank

I don't see it. Put plainly, when you have an ethical issue, the ground for this takes one away from structure and into the value dimension of the world. The prima facie prohibition against stealing something dear to you is the fact that it is dear, and this dearness is not a structure of anything, Saying what it IS has a structure, but the bare phenomenality has none of this; and yet, if this phenomenality were to be absent, the ethicality would be absent as well. Thus, what it means for something to be ethical defers to the manifestation of what is important, and importance here is a nonformal (non structural) actuality. Ethics has its determinative ground here.

See the issue: ask me what a dog or a cat or an interstellar mass IS, and language is forthcoming; and ask what this explanatory language IS, and more language is forthcoming; and this circularity has no end. But what of the "presence" of what is there? This is "apprehended" IN language, yet stands entirely apart from it. If this were, say, the color yellow, then the paradigmatic status of this as a color may indeed evlove with scientific insight (in its "revolutions"), but whatever newly arises, is going to be within the "structure" of existing existing paradigms. Ethics will work like this as well, evolve in time, BUT: the ground of ethics is not like the color yellow, or any other empirical concept. It is value-being, meaning, simply put, the difference between moonlight being a reflection fo sunlight, and a punch to the kidney. Both facts, but the latter radically different. It is this difference that makes ethical phenomenality what ethics is really all about.

The ancient Persian answer is that goodness is the direction we're reaching out toward. Evil is what we're pushing away from, so a good person is in motion, or progressing. In this view, it doesn't matter what your present condition is, if you're progressing, you're good. If you're stationary, you're evil.

The ancient Jewish answer is that goodness is clear for all to see in your health and well-being because obviously God is blessing you. A similar outlook is Roman stoicism, which aligns goodness with Nature. It's in a tree's nature to grow toward the light, if it fails to do this, it becomes sick. Sickness and evil are basically the same thing: a failure to abide by your nature. I like the the Roman view because it's efficient.

If you notice, both these views allow flexibility in what actually counts as good. We may discover through experience what really constitutes progress or health. On the other hand, they conflict in whether goodness shows up on the surface, or if it can be hidden. Our present worldview is a fusion of ancient views. — frank

Yes, I have read. But this puts the uses and purposes that are freighted into ethical issues INTO the essence of ethics. To establish what ethics IS, we do not look to good this and that, for this begs the foundational question: what is the nature of something being good...at all? This is the determinate question amid the prevailing indeterminacy of purposes and uses in which the good is embedded.

I don't see it. Put plainly, when you have an ethical issue, the ground for this takes one away from structure and into the value dimension of the world. The prima facie prohibition against stealing something dear to you is the fact that it is dear, and this dearness is not a structure of anything, Saying what it IS has a structure, but the bare phenomenality has none of this; and yet, if this phenomenality were to be absent, the ethicality would be absent as well. Thus, what it means for something to be ethical defers to the manifestation of what is important, and importance here is a nonformal (non structural) actuality. Ethics has its determinative ground here. — Constance

I think dearness as a concept only exists relative to its opposite: worthlessness. I've already talked about some of the ethical structures we've inherited: progress, health, and covenant-based. It's clear to me that structure is primary, so I guess we'll agree to disagree here.

See the issue: ask me what a dog or a cat or an interstellar mass IS, and language is forthcoming; and ask what this explanatory language IS, and more language is forthcoming; and this circularity has no end. But what of the "presence" of what is there? This is "apprehended" IN language, yet stands entirely apart from it. — Constance

And yet what you've said here is a manifestation of the structure of human thought: that a signifier implies something signified. You're giving voice to structure. Is it the structure of the mind? Is it the structure of the world? Is it both? You don't have any vantage point from which to answer that. Whereof one cannot speak..

To establish what ethics IS, we do not look to good this and that, for this begs the foundational question: what is the nature of something being good...at all? This is the determinate question amid the prevailing indeterminacy of purposes and uses in which the good is embedded. — Constance

You want an answer as to what goodness is beyond the uses the word is put to. That's why you're ending up needing a transcendental basis. I think you're begging the question.

Sure every society debates good vs evil, it's popular. However, what qualifies as "good" in Kabul and Amsterdam can be quite different (since good is subjective individually and inter subjective collectively). — LuckyR

Well, why is it popular? Is everyone just confused and wrong? While possible, I'd wager there's a reason out of the thousands of societies across thousands of years across multiple continents, some never interacting with one another (or even never coming into contact with any other but their own) all managed to organically and independently reach the same conclusion. Something about it is intrinsic that is definable, whether we have succeeded in understanding it or simply fallen short of such a task.

If the ultimate highest Good man can ever understand is subjective, it might as well be used interchangeably with a word like "pleasing" or "enjoyable" or perhaps "socially and biologically advantageous". This way we can accurately say: "without 'good' (meaning any or all of those terms) society would collapse into anarchy and suffering (evil?) would abound, therefore being good is the right thing to do and what is good vs. what is not becomes self-evident."

I reckon it would be short of impossible to pin down an absolute Good outside of theist-oriented beliefs. That much I grant you.

We also associate qualities that society "likes" or yes perhaps even needs and would perish without as "good", of course. Wearing a fur coat outside in Kabul would be "foolish" and perhaps "wrong" in a shallow sense of the word, but it wouldn't be Wrong as in Evil. Just a bit silly. Whereas wearing the same in Amsterdam, depending on the season, would be "smart" and also "good", again in the shallow sense of the word. Of course, in both places, wearing the skin of a priest or holy man as a coat would likely be considered wrong, irrespective of any differences between the two places and peoples.

Point being, if "Good" really is "unknowable" other than by one's personal or social opinion, why do we even use it? Why not again words that most people don't realize they're using "Good" as a proxy for (I.E. "pleasing", "smart", "socially advantageous", etc.)?

It's common for moral objectivists to trot out low hanging fruit such as murdering babies when attempting to demonstrate their worldview, since it has a >99% agreement rate among "normal" folk. But ignore topics like welfare assistance which has a 40/60 split. — LuckyR

Well, is that any less valid of a place to start? Did you start learning math with advanced calculus or did you start learning what numbers are and that 2 + 2 = 4? The journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step. We can't just reduce what we feel to be less than relevant as "low hanging fruit" without any real reason or rationale. Again, outside of theism, the only likely place one can find Morality outside of what one pleases would naturally have to be tied to biology and sociology: what proliferates healthy societies vs. what doesn't.

As an aside, the two topics are fairly distinct. In the latter, welfare assistance, there are clear and logically proven drawbacks such as dependence, laziness, no incentive to contribute to one's society, possible lack of purpose, possible risk of societal financial collapse or insolvency, etc. There are plenty of valid, rational, and above-all, logical (able to be proven on paper) concerns for both proponents and critics alike. Not so much for the first scenario. Few that come to mind, at least.

I take it you'd agree with this sentence: "There is no Good or Evil, just as there is no Right or Wrong; These are empty words that merely refer to mutually agreed upon social constructs rooted in biological and emotional realities and little else."

Good = actions that prevent or reduce suffering and promote well-being for sentient beings.
Evil = deliberate actions that cause unnecessary suffering or destroy the capacity for well-being in sentient beings.
— Truth Seeker

Yes, I think you are closing in. But there does remain the final question: what is there that is bad about suffering? You may, as I do, hold that this is self evident, though this gets lost in our entangled affairs, where competing goods and bads struggle. But the question is now momentous, not mundane: Suffering is now not a convention of the language and culture that talks about it, talk that leads to variability because suffering is inevitably caught up in uses and purposes. Suffering is the bare manifestation of that terrible pain in your ankle, and this, if you can stand it, transcends the finitude that language that would hold it down, keep it familiar, contained in reduction to the ordinary. But suffering is not ordinary, not an institution. It is that original that institutions of ethics have their foundation in. — Constance

That’s a beautifully put reflection. I think you’ve touched the heart of the matter: suffering is not merely a social construct or a linguistic convention, but a fundamental experience that resists reduction. When we ask, “What is bad about suffering?” the most honest answer might be that it needs no further justification - it reveals its badness in the very act of being endured.

Language and culture may frame or contextualize suffering, but the raw experience of agony, despair, or anguish is prior to those frames. That’s why so many ethical systems, despite their diversity, converge on minimizing suffering and promoting well-being. They are built on the foundation that suffering is not an arbitrary preference but an undeniable reality, and well-being is its natural counterweight.

In that sense, good and evil are not metaphysical mysteries but responses to the lived fact of suffering and flourishing.

Now, someone like Mackie (see his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong) will call this "queer"--for what kind of ontology IS this to rule over all existence? — Constance

It is the ontology of consequence. Essentially I'm noting that an essential property of existence is that it 'should be'. This is a fundamental. Fundamentals should be proven as necessary, for what exists to be, but themselves need no prior proof or explanation for their being. It is not, "This is what I propose, just trust me," but "The only logical conclusion that can be reached with what we know of existence."

If you're truly interested in the discussion, please check out the argument in addition to the definitions to see why this ends up being a fundamental. As well, it would probably be better if you post there to not distract from this person's post, as well as have easy quoting access to the argument and responses.

I think dearness as a concept only exists relative to its opposite: worthlessness. I've already talked about some of the ethical structures we've inherited: progress, health, and covenant-based. It's clear to me that structure is primary, so I guess we'll agree to disagree here. — frank

Okay, but language stands in binary structures, not aches and pains and pleasures and delights. These latter are not language at all, notwithstanding that they are "said"; it is thus "under erasure, as Derrida put it. Their being said demonstrates their being logically bound to the essence of ethics, that is, it is only in language that recognition of something outside of language is possible. And as much as philosophy can tear such a thing to shreds (philosophy is hell bent on nihilism---and for a very good reason, don't get me wrong. It keeps the road narrow, just as the rigors of science does) it is not nonsense (as Wittgenstein called it early on when he said ethics and aesthetics were transcendental), I claim. It rather issues from the starting point of any inquiry, which is observation: the non linguistic nature of non formalism in value and ethics (Scheler calls it that) is simply "there" .

And yet what you've said here is a manifestation of the structure of human thought: that a signifier implies something signified. You're giving voice to structure. Is it the structure of the mind? Is it the structure of the world? Is it both? You don't have any vantage point from which to answer that. Whereof one cannot speak. — frank

Th vantage point lies in the concept of pure phenomenality, which is, in its essence, only "partly" a concept (language loses it grip in discussions like this). There are two camps on Derrida. One is that of John Caputo in his Radical Hermeneutics, The Prayers and Tears of Jacque Derrida, and elsewhere. Caputo tries to shwo that in Derrida there is the crux of religious affirmation. Hard to talk about briefly, or at all really. I find phenomenology opens conversation to the metaphysical openness of our existence, and in this openness is the presence of the world, standing monolithically before our eyes. Heidegger was right, what is there is "of a piece" with the language that speaks what it is; but he was wrong to ignore the...this is where it gets a little weird: ignore the primordiality of the ontology of value-in-being.

I won't go into this here unless you want to. Jean luc Marion lays this issue out in his Givenness and Reduction. Impossible to read unless one follows Husserl and Heidegger closely. I don't follow closely enough, really. Postmodern thinking, or post-postmodern thinking, teeters on the brink. BUT: in its defense, this brink is discovered, not altogether "made" (as Rorty puts it). The world IS the brink.

You want an answer as to what goodness is beyond the uses the word is put to. That's why you're ending up needing a transcendental basis. I think you're begging the question. — frank

I certainly can see why you say this. But consider: kick me hard in the kidney. The question is begged, and is ALWAYS begged in anything language can say about this, for all that can be said lies in the contingency of language. There is nothing sacrosanct in language, for anything can be gainsaid, and so just in the saying there is the refutation. This is why philosophy remains unsettled after millennia--it is an apriori inquiry, meaning its questions rely on what is IN language's meanings, and this is why Heidegger insists on a finitude of dasein's being. But that pain in my kidney cannot be second guessed. Like logic's modus ponens? Stronger. Logic is given to us in language. The pain AS SUCH is not.

I reckon it would be short of impossible to pin down an absolute Good outside of theist-oriented beliefs

If using just "short of impossible" means: functionally impossible, then we're in agreement. As to theisticly originated beliefs, they seem at first glance to be (internally) objective, after all they're written down right there in this physical Book. However, ultimately some human at some point originated the contents of the Book (leaving aside what or who inspired that human). Thus to a third person observer, which is everyone in the current era, the Book's contents are at least partially subjective.

As to your sentence, no I don't agree with it (as written), I'd put it thusly: Good/Evil and Right/Wrong definitely exist, not unlike the existence of money, Germany and Apple Corporation. Similarly, they are, like money very important both theoretically and practically. However, all of the above do not exist objectively, rather inter subjectively.

Good brings about fortune. If you were never good, and were always bad, you wouldn't make any money. Evil is purposely doing bad, and again, requires at least some good strategically to earn money.

Good also brings about profit other than money. If you always perform bad in front of others, you likely won't make other friends.

Avoiding pain is a good in itself.

Our gut instincts know what good is because we know what pain is like and unless there's a good reason as to why not, all others will avoid pain.

Our gut instincts know that wasting resources leads to waste pile up and reduction of availability.

Theft is bad unless the person deserves theft. Which is dependant on how they're using their stuff/money. If a country is making false war with other countries, it may be a good thing if that country receives a financial attack. There's some strategy involved with morality.

Most of morality can be deciphered by gut instincts from wise minds. Pain is a no unless deserved. Theft is a no unless deserved. Finding out whether or not someone deserves a bad thing happen to them is dependant on a wise judge who can tell if a person is ultimately bad or ultimately good. If a person is ultimately good, there is no reason something bad should happen to them. Someone is ultimately good when their performance is more good than bad.

Some ultimately bad people are so petty, a perfect judgement would tell that they are forgiven for their bad. The judge also has within it the capacity to forgive if that poor morality is not evil - at least it's not evil - and the person may have an excuse as to why it's morality is poor.

What's right is what's profitable in every sense of the word(money, health, friendship, paradise, etc). What's bad is what's not profitable. What's evil is what's a complete abstraction of what's profitable.

Performing good brings about good in return. Performing bad brings about bad in return. Evil brings about more bad. What's good is up to wise minds to judge using their gut instincts, it can't always be what's not bad to a person--- there is strategy involving a moral power play. At the end of the day, there would be no profit if there wasn't some semblance of good.

But that pain in my kidney cannot be second guessed — Constance

Sure, but is it good or evil? Or neither? It's the intellect's job to answer that. You can't go wrong spending a little time with analytic philosophy, especially if your mind has a tendency to take flight like a bird. AP is slow and humble.

It's common for moral objectivists to trot out low hanging fruit such as murdering babies when attempting to demonstrate their worldview, since it has a >99% agreement rate among "normal" folk. But ignore topics like welfare assistance which has a 40/60 split. — LuckyR

Well, it's also common for anti-realists, even professional analytic philosophers, to assume that the realist must be committed to the idea that "most people's judgements re value must be mostly true, most of the time." But such a view is in fact a development of the "sentimental" anti-realist theories of the Enlightenment that want to ground value in some sort of "common denominator" in sentiment.

Obviously, the vast majority of earlier Western and Eastern thought radically disagrees. They generally argue that man is fundamentally deluded about value. Epicetus claims that most masters are slaves (whereas a slave might be truly free) because the majority suffers from vice and is deluded about value and freedom. The difference between apparent and real goods is so extreme that many who have tried to point this out to people have died grizzly deaths. Socrates was executed. As Plato puts it in the Allegory of the Cave, when the philosopher descends back into the cave to try to guide others out he will likely be beaten. So too, Christ (God himself!) was crucified for his moral and spiritual teachings, and Saint James, Saint Peter, and Saint Paul followed him in execution. Boethius lost everything and died for doing the right thing. Dante ended up writing the Commedia under a sentence of being burnt to death. Nor is the East particularly different in the fundamental theme here, man's inability to determine what is truly desirable.

This also highlights a pretty key difference, which is that the norm in pre-modern philosophy is that the saint or sage is the measure of value, as opposed to the "common sentiment." Buddha, not the masses, knows the truth about suffering, etc.

I'm a little unclear what it would mean for something like Germany to not be objective. Does this mean it is not an objective fact that German surrendered in WWII? Is it not an objective fact that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July, 4th, 1776? Are there objective rules to chess? What about objective truths of arithmetic (which is often considered a "game" like chess)?

If they are "intersubjective" does this mean that if all relevant subjectivity changes, the truth changes too? So if in the far future man's understanding of history becomes radically confused and people come to think that: "Adolf Hitler was the first president of the United States," and all surviving evidence somehow points in this direction, does it become true? I would assert that this is ridiculous. Adolf Hitler cannot "become" the first president of the USA anymore than George Washington can cease to have been its first president, regardless of what man currently thinks. Hence, I'd consider that fact to be "objective" in the sense that it is not dependent on current belief and opinion.

Now, sometimes "objective" gets used more as a synonym for "noumenal," or as "holding in a view from nowhere," but I find this unhelpful. Arguably, on this definition, no potential knowledge is objective, and so it fails to be a useful category (or fails to make a useful distinction). If knowledge is "the intellect's grasp of being," and truth "being qua knowable," then the idea of "mind-independent" truths is a contradiction in terms. Yet it would also seem to be nonsense to say that something "is the case" but that it also is "not true that it is the case."

It does not seem there can be "being qua knowable" with nothing to know anymore then there can be good—"being qua desirable"—with nothing to desire. However, it seems that there can certainly be mistaken beliefs and opinions about what is true and desirable.

I'm a little unclear what it would mean for something like Germany to not be objective. Does this mean it is not an objective fact that German surrendered in WWII? Is it not an objective fact that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July, 4th, 1776? Are there objective rules to chess? What about objective truths of arithmetic (which is often considered a "game" like chess)?

If they are "intersubjective" does this mean that if all relevant subjectivity changes, the truth changes too? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wonder if this kind of objection is mixing up intersubjectivity with instability. To say truth is intersubjective is not to say that it shifts with our whims, but that it depends on the shared practices that make claims intelligible. Facts about Germany’s surrender or the date of a declaration remain fixed because our institutions and habits of checking evidence are stable. If those forms of life were gone, the way we talk about truth would likely be gone too, but that does not make present truths vulnerable. It only means there is no view from nowhere that holds them beyond these kinds of practices.

With histroical facts, intersubjectivity is essentially grounded in agreed methods for checking evidence. With morality, by contrast, the agreement doesn't involve measurement, it seems to be about what we care about and the kind of lives we prefer. And yes, all this may well vary over time and across cultures, but essentially not stealing, lying, or killing is good for the survival of a tribe, so it’s pretty easy to see the attractions of a code of conduct/morality, at least at a functional level.

I won't deny that some people use "inter-subjective" to mean essentially the same thing as "objective" once meant. This seems to me to be an unwillingness to argue the conflation of "objectivity" with some sort of Kantian "noumenal."

Facts about Germany’s surrender or the date of a declaration remain fixed because our institutions and habits of checking evidence are stable. If those forms of life were gone, the way we talk about truth would likely be gone too, but that does not make present truths vulnerable. It only means there is no view from nowhere that holds them beyond these kinds of practices. — Tom Storm

How so? Given your description, if our institutions, habits of checking evidence, and systems intelligibility change—which they do—it seems like the facts change, and so it absolutely could cease to be true that Germany surrendered during WWII, no? You say I am confusing inter-subjectivity with instability, but then seem to present an understanding about the truth of past events that makes such truths unstable. That is, current systems and practices become prior to past history.

With histroical facts, intersubjectivity is essentially grounded in agreed methods for checking evidence.

So if man goes extinct, are there no facts about human history?

This goes back to something I mentioned earlier about a particular metaphysics of language and appearances where "Socrates must 'step outside his humanity' to make the universal pronouncement that 'all men are mortal,'" or where one must "'step outside history, culture, and language, to say anything about what is other or prior to these." This is the most common metaphysical underpinning for historical anti-realism I am aware of. I also think it's somewhat self-refuting since it tends to rely on a metaphysical presumption that truths are bounded by "language games," but then (often dogmatically) absolutizes this particular metaphysics of language and appearances to make this apparently universal claim.

I guess I would just repeat what I've already said about the difficulty of containing reason within "norms and practices" or "paradigms" and their difficulties:

To address your earlier question about the limits of reason, I would point out that the claim that reason cannot adjudicate between paradigms or world-views is, of course, a gnostic claim. One presumably knows this if one claims it to be so. Yet to have recognized a boundary is to already have stepped over it.

Now, if we claim that reason is in a sense isolated within "world-views and paradigms," we face the odd situation where some world-views and paradigms resolutely deny our claim. They instead claim that knowing involves ecstasis, it is transcendent, and always related to the whole, and so without limit—already with the whole and beyond any limit. And such views have quite a long history.

Our difficulty is that, if reason just is "reason within a paradigm," then it seems that this view of reason cannot be so limited, for it denies this limit and it is an authority on itself. Our criticism that this other paradigm errs would seem to be limited to our own paradigm.

The positive gnostic claim, to have groked past the limits of intelligibility and seen the end of reason from the other side faces an additional challenge here if we hold to the assumption that any such universal claim must be "from nowhere," and itself issued from "outside any paradigm, " since it is also generally being claimed that precisely this sort of "stepping outside" is impossible. But perhaps this is simply a misguided assumption. Afterall, one need not "step out of one's humanity" to know that "all men are mortal." One can know this about all men while still always being a particular man.

So, that's my initial thoughts on the idea that reason cannot adjudicate between paradigms. It seems this must remain true only for some paradigms, and one might suppose that being limited in this way is itself a deficiency. After all, what is left once one gives up totally on reason as an adjudicator? It would seem to me that all that remains is power struggles (and indeed , some thinkers go explicitly in this direction). Further, the ability to selectively decide that reason ceases to apply in some cases seems obviously prone to abuse (real world examples abound)—in a word, it's misology.

But none of this requires stepping outside paradigms, except in the sense that reason may draw us outside our paradigms (and indeed this happens, MacIntyre—RIP—was drawn from Marxism to Thomism). To know something new is to change, to have gone beyond what one already was. That's Plato's whole point about the authority of the rational part of the soul. The desire for truth and goodness leads beyond the given of current belief and desire, and hence beyond our finitude.

I'll just add that the absolute, to be truly absolute, cannot be "objective" reality as set over and against appearances, but must encompass the whole of reality and all appearances. Appearances are moments in the whole, and are revelatory of the whole. Appearances are then not a sort of barrier between the knower and known, but the going out of the known to the knower—and because all knowing is also in some sense becoming—the ecstasis of the knower, their going out beyond what they already are in union with the known. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Now of course, we might allow that all human knowledge is always filtered through culture, language, history, etc. (as well as human nature) but this does not requires that there are the ground of—a prior to—truth itself. For if there was no truth (no potential for knowledge, no intelligibility) the former couldn't exist in the first place.

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)? — Truth Seeker

This claim can be cashed out in many ways. I will focus on one common way. I will take the claim to be:

X is right = I have a positive attitude towards X.

I think this view of 'right' is incorrect (and the same for 'wrong'). When discussing ethics, that simply does not seem to be what is meant by the terms.

For instance, it makes sense to hold the thought "I think death penalty is right, but is it right?" Under the view above, this would translate to: "I think I have a positive attitude towards the death penalty, but do I have a positive attitude towards it?" This makes ethical reflection seem trivial, when it does not seem to be trivial. So that is a problem for the theory.

It also fails to handle disagreement. If I disagreed with the previous speaker, and said: "No, the death penalty is definitely wrong", it seems like I tried to contradict them. However, this would not be the case if I'm just reporting my own attitude. To illustrate:

A:"I have a positive attitude towards the death penalty!"

B:"No, I have a negative attitude towards the death penalty!"

A and B are not making contradictory propositions. Both can be true simultaneously. But in these exchanges, we are often trying to contradict the other person. So there is something problematic with the subjectivist theory.

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

Knowing for sure might be difficult for any form of potential knowledge. Can one know for sure that one is not currently living in a simulation? Probably not. Can we still be justified in our beliefs about the external world? I think so.

One should be humble about many ethical beliefs, given that there are often clear uncertainties. Still, one must also take it seriously. Even if it is unfeasible to be absolutely sure, that does not mean we should compromise ethical beliefs, at least not fully.

If someone kicks a dog, even if I cannot be 100% sure that it is wrong, I think I'm justified to take it as such, and prohibit people from abusing their pets. One can be uncertain and serious at the same time.

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)?
— Truth Seeker

This claim can be cashed out in many ways. I will focus on one common way. I will take the claim to be:

X is right = I have a positive attitude towards X.

I think this view of 'right' is incorrect (and the same for 'wrong'). When discussing ethics, that simply does not seem to be what is meant by the terms.

For instance, it makes sense to hold the thought "I think death penalty is right, but is it right?" Under the view above, this would translate to: "I think I have a positive attitude towards the death penalty, but do I have a positive attitude towards it?" This makes ethical reflection seem trivial, when it does not seem to be trivial. So that is a problem for the theory.

It also fails to handle disagreement. If I disagreed with the previous speaker, and said: "No, the death penalty is definitely wrong", it seems like I tried to contradict them. However, this would not be the case if I'm just reporting my own attitude. To illustrate:

A:"I have a positive attitude towards the death penalty!"

B:"No, I have a negative attitude towards the death penalty!"

A and B are not making contradictory propositions. Both can be true simultaneously. But in these exchanges, we are often trying to contradict the other person. So there is something problematic with the subjectivist theory.

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

Knowing for sure might be difficult for any form of potential knowledge. Can one know for sure that one is not currently living in a simulation? Probably not. Can we still be justified in our beliefs about the external world? I think so.

One should be humble about many ethical beliefs, given that there are often clear uncertainties. Still, one must also take it seriously. Even if it is unfeasible to be absolutely sure, that does not mean we should compromise ethical beliefs, at least not fully.

If someone kicks a dog, even if I cannot be 100% sure that it is wrong, I think I'm justified to take it as such, and prohibit people from abusing their pets. One can be uncertain and serious at the same time. — GazingGecko

I agree with you that reducing right and wrong to “just my attitude” makes ethical reflection seem trivial and misses how we usually use those words. Ethics isn’t just about reporting preferences, it’s about evaluating them and testing them against reasons, evidence, and the lived reality of sentient beings.

I also think you’re right that we can’t get 100% certainty about morality (any more than we can get certainty about whether we’re in a simulation). But just like in science, we don’t need absolute certainty to act - we need justified beliefs based on the best available evidence.

For me, the clearest anchor is suffering and well-being. If someone kicks a dog, the dog suffers. That suffering isn’t a matter of attitude - it’s a real experience in the world. And since suffering is universally aversive, preventing it gives us a solid grounding for calling something “wrong.”

So maybe we don’t get certainty, but we do get enough clarity to live by: wrong = actions that inflict unnecessary suffering, and right = actions that prevent or reduce suffering and promote well-being. That keeps ethics from collapsing into “just my feelings,” while still leaving space for humility and reflection.

So maybe we don’t get certainty, but we do get enough clarity to live by: wrong = actions that inflict unnecessary suffering, and right = actions that prevent or reduce suffering and promote well-being. That keeps ethics from collapsing into “just my feelings,” while still leaving space for humility and reflection. — Truth Seeker

:up: :up:

That’s a beautifully put reflection. I think you’ve touched the heart of the matter: suffering is not merely a social construct or a linguistic convention, but a fundamental experience that resists reduction. When we ask, “What is bad about suffering?” the most honest answer might be that it needs no further justification - it reveals its badness in the very act of being endured.

Language and culture may frame or contextualize suffering, but the raw experience of agony, despair, or anguish is prior to those frames. That’s why so many ethical systems, despite their diversity, converge on minimizing suffering and promoting well-being. They are built on the foundation that suffering is not an arbitrary preference but an undeniable reality, and well-being is its natural counterweight.

In that sense, good and evil are not metaphysical mysteries but responses to the lived fact of suffering and flourishing. — Truth Seeker

Yes, prior, logically prior, meaning if this dimension of our existence were to be removed, then the very concept of ethics becomes meaningless. So here, one has to step out of language andlogic entirely for the logical ground to be what it is. Now, the same canbe said for science, I mean, remove, well, the world, and science vanishes, but science only cares about quantifications and causal connections and works entirely within the structure of thought of its paradigms. It doesn't ask about the nature of scientific observation, say, because it doesn't care since this kindopf thing; it doesn't have to. After all, the color red, say, just sits there. It is nothing without the language that discusses it analytically. The phenomenon itself has no qualities that are not reducible to the categories of language contexts.
But that sprained ankle, not like a color (as such) at all. The very salient feature of its pain is the very essence of the category! This empirical science cannot deal with this, and analytic philosophy simply runs away, because to admit this is ,like admitting an actual absolute. Like admitting divine existence in their eyes.
But are they wrong? After all, this IS the essence of religion: an absolute in the metaethical analysis.

Sure, but is it good or evil? Or neither? It's the intellect's job to answer that. You can't go wrong spending a little time with analytic philosophy, especially if your mind has a tendency to take flight like a bird. AP is slow and humble. — frank

Surely you are right. Have you read Mackie's Inventing Right and Wrong? One of my favorites, because it is SO well wrtten and is meant to be a text book for an analytic class in advanced ethics, which I took years ago (not with Mackie himself, of course). The argument is altogether against an objectivist ethics, calling moral realism too "queer" (the argument form queerness"). It is an intensive analysis of anglo american moral thinking, but his is mostly straw man thinking. Call moral realism a platonic form of the good (FOG as my prof put it) and now you have an absurd ontology, a "substantival" good, as if ethics were "something".
But that is not the claim here. Good and evil, these are just analytic terms that emerge out of what is there in the giveness of the world. Put plainly, ouches and yums actually exist, but they're not things "at hand". They show this "queerness" as Mackie put it, which is no more or less than what it is to experience it. Phenomenology looks directly at this and asks, what IS this? All schools of science and common sense in abeyance. And Mackie is right, there is something IN "ouch!" that is not empirical but "existentially apriori"---Kant's pure reason was on the same track, after all, causality tells one that this cup cannot throw itself off the table, and this cup does exist. Very queer, I would say, this causality. But ethics: this is not the vacuous Kantian form of judgment and thought. Here there is depth of meaning.

If you're truly interested in the discussion, please check out the argument in addition to the definitions to see why this ends up being a fundamental. As well, it would probably be better if you post there to not distract from this person's post, as well as have easy quoting access to the argument and responses. — Philosophim

Sorry, I'm not going to read all of that. I read through some, and it occurred to me that it was excessive. Existence must possess the ground for good and evil. And it does. But existence qua existence syas nothing about this. OTOH, there IS no existence qua existence; this is just an abstraction from what there, in the givenness of the world. to see this, one has to move toward inclusiveness, that is, including everything that IS, and this means all of what is usually excluded, human subjectivity. This move is difficult for most because it requires a rejection of a naturalistic pov, for naturalism (materialism, physicalism) is reductive of ethics down to a value-free ground of "scientific metaphysics"; that is subjectivity is reduced to a thing, and value, judgment, thought, antidipation, sentiment, choice, reflection, and on and on, these, the very ground of ethics, are altogether lost. This deflationary account of ethics is what survives in analytic thinking. And again, this constitutes a view of existence which has no place for your thesis.

So all said, talk about existence simply needs clarification. Obviously, existence is should be ONLY if existence is inherently ethical, that is, metaethical, which means existence must resolve itself into an ethical conclusion of redemption for "the bad" and consummation for "the Good". Religion, mostly, is exactly what does this. But religion is cranky and silly, even. Ah, it is this, but not in "essence".

You thesis amounts to a world where divinity subsumes existence. Of course, divinity needs unpacking.

But that is not the claim here. Good and evil, these are just analytic terms that emerge out of what is there in the giveness of the world. Put plainly, ouches and yums actually exist, but they're not things "at hand". — Constance

It sounds like you're coming close to saying good is pleasure and evil is pain. You could build a moral system from that. The quest to discover what ethics really is would be completed?

I think there are advantages to occasionally looking at the world through an amoral lens. Judgment and understanding stand in opposition. The more you judge something or someone, the less you understand, because once the judgement is made (that was evil!), there's no reason to look further. Understanding requires putting judgment on the shelf. For instance, if you think about the most aggressive, toxic person in your life, consider that angry, aggressive people usually feel weak and afraid. People who try to manipulate others feel like they have no control. People are contradictory. People who are in pain sometimes lash out to cause others pain. Plus causing pain can be a form of self medication because it feels good to stomp downward. It makes you feel powerful, and a dopamine burst is apt to accompany it, producing a feeling of accomplishment. In other words, the question ethics doesn't spend much time on is: why does the abuse exist? Step away from ethics into nihilism, and you can see how so many people are trapped in a web of grief and rage, most born into that web. Instead of lamenting it, see the way this web shapes identities and grand dramas that play out over generations.

Remember the Shakespeare play where everything started off great, everything went well, and then there was a happy ending? There was no such play because it would have put the audience to sleep. The mind seeks out the painful because it's dramatic. The story arc requires pain in order to have something to overcome. Consciousness itself is a story arc. This is Schopenhauer's pessimism.

How so? Given your description, if our institutions, habits of checking evidence, and systems intelligibility change—which they do—it seems like the facts change, and so it absolutely could cease to be true that Germany surrendered during WWII, no? You say I am confusing inter-subjectivity with instability, but then seem to present an understanding about the truth of past events that makes such truths unstable. That is, current systems and practices become prior to past history. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, as I said -

If those forms of life were gone, the way we talk about truth would likely be gone too, but that does not make present truths vulnerable. — Tom Storm

I should have said fragile rather than vulnerable, perhaps. Pragmatically truth serves a purpose which remains stable while a given truth is of use to us. And you’re right in 1000 years much of present science may well be understood as factually wrong. But this doesn’t mean current scientific understanding isn’t useful now.

Now of course, we might allow that all human knowledge is always filtered through culture, language, history, etc. (as well as human nature) but this does not requires that there are the ground of—a prior to—truth itself. For if there was no truth (no potential for knowledge, no intelligibility) the former couldn't exist in the first place. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not convinced. Do we need an extra “truth” hovering behind that to explain why knowledge and intelligibility are possible? The fact that human practices generate and sustain standards of intelligibility is all the explanation we really need.

So if man goes extinct, are there no facts about human history? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Facts only have meaning in the context of a set of practices, without us around to give them context, they’re basically meaningless.

Good is stand alone. Morality is about balance with good performing. You make a product look good to sell it. You keep in good health to survive. You do good by nature to build a paradise that lasts. Evil is a choice you can make but isn't really part of morality, it's anti-morality. It's not just failing. It's deliberately failing to do good(which doesn't bring about anything bar maybe personal joy). You won't sell a product if it's created bad. You won't survive if you do bad to your health. You won't create paradise that lasts if you're not good by nature.

You won't sell a product if it's created bad. You won't survive if you do bad to your health. You won't create paradise that lasts if you're not good by nature. — Barkon

I don’t think this is accurate. People can sell harmful products that cause cancer, become rich, build a personal paradise, mistreat those around them, abuse drugs and still die at a vast age, content and satisfied. Isn't this a fundamental irony of life: moral failings and worldly cruelty don’t impact upon happiness? Now some people enjoy myths like gods to provide judgment on such folk in order to restore the balance they believe is missing from the real world.

but any joy they got during that vast age was a part of something good they did. If the people can be conned, perhaps there's good in that.

, but science only cares about quantifications and causal connections and works entirely within the structure of thought of its paradigms. — Constance

Only on a particularly deflationary view of "science." At any rate, those who embrace such a view, and who stick to a "hard" empiricism and naturalism also often tend towards denying causality. But in such contexts, consciousness itself, reference, intentionality, etc. are every bit as "queer" as "evaluative judgement."

Might I suggest though that this is an unhelpful starting point for framing a metaphysics of goodness, given that camp largely tends to deny goodness, or else to put forth some sort of reductive, mechanistic view of it as reducible to "brain states?" I mean, your earlier point about kerosene (or presumably also one's own beloved, or anything else) being reducible to empirical data seems to already have assumed an answer about ethics. Yet it can hardly be one that it is "good" to affirm.

I should have said fragile rather than vulnerable, perhaps. Pragmatically truth serves a purpose which remains stable while a given truth is of use to us. And you’re right in 1000 years much of present sciencemay well be understood as factually wrong. But this doesn’t mean current scientific understanding isn’t useful now. — Tom Storm

Well, are our current theories wrong now, and just not understood as such? Or are they "true" now and will become false at some point in the future? I assume you have "scientific progress" in mind, but supposing some sort of apocalypse where science reverts towards pre-modern beliefs (i.e., animist spirits as primary causal agents, geocentrism, etc.) would these beliefs "become true again?" Likewise, were geocentrism and the "flatness of Earth" facts when dominant practice, discourse, and belief still led to their affirmation? (And wouldn't "scientific progress" be arbitrary if "truth" did change like this?)

If the answer to these questions is negative, then I would contend that this shows that truth is not posterior to (i.e., dependent upon) practice, language, culture, etc. (although it may be filtered through them).

I'm not convinced. Do we need an extra “truth” hovering behind that to explain why knowledge and intelligibility are possible? — Tom Storm

Well, I am not sure about truth "hovering behind" anything, but the notion that truth isn't posterior to practices and beliefs resolves the problems highlighted by the questions above. Was the Earth truly flat when dominant practices and beliefs affirmed it as such? If not, the truth of the Earth's roundness cannot have been dependent upon those practices. Indeed, if the reality (truth) of things just is whatever the dominant practice/culture says they are, how could beliefs ever fail to be "pragmatic" and why would they ever change? We are always omniscient in that case, just so long as we don't disagree.

The fact that human practices generate and sustain standards of intelligibility is all the explanation we really need. — Tom Storm

From whence this intelligibility? Does man or his practices generate it ex nihilo?

Facts only have meaning in the context of a set of practices. Without us facts effectively vanish. — Tom Storm

Well, here's your answer for why you need a truth that isn't dependent on man, otherwise you have to affirm this sort of thing. So, did the Earth lack a shape before man and then man brought determinant the shape of the Earth into being by "practicing?" Or did it have a shape when the dinosaurs walked the Earth, but it wasn't true that it had a shape, and it wasn't a fact that it had any particular shape?

Even accepting your claim (which seems extreme), we face the problem of why practices and beliefs should be one way and not any other. Since there are no facts outside of practice and language, it follows that there can be no prior facts that determine practice and language themselves. And, since there are no facts outside of current belief and practice, no facts can explain how or why beliefs and practices change and evolve.

All that aside, it seems a little grandiose to me, the idea that man makes everything what it is through his speech, judgements, etc. That sort of expansive constructivism or linguistic idealism (different varieties of the same thesis I suppose) seem to me to just repeat Genesis 1, only with God cut out and man pasted in God's place. You know: "In the beginning the language community hovered over the formless deep and called forth trees and stars..." And to the extent that there is no true actuality prior to man's practices, he seems to be very much the volanturist God of the Reformers, with wholly inscrutable origins and reason for "creating."

I am quite sympathetic to the problem that, if truth is the intellect's grasp of being, there can hardly be "mind-independent truths," but the solution of making truth dependent on man leads to some bizarre conclusions, especially if man is considered to be contingent.