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
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
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
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
Not structuralism. — Constance
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
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
The above is the full argument so you can understand where I'm coming from. — Philosophim
Why not structuralism? It's a candidate for answering what ethics is. — frank
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.I reckon it would be short of impossible to pin down an absolute Good outside of theist-oriented beliefs
But that pain in my kidney cannot be second guessed — Constance
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
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
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
With histroical facts, intersubjectivity is essentially grounded in agreed methods for checking evidence.
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
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
Is there any way to know for sure what is right and what is wrong? — Truth Seeker
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
:up: :up: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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
So if man goes extinct, are there no facts about human history? — Count Timothy von Icarus
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
, but science only cares about quantifications and causal connections and works entirely within the structure of thought of its paradigms. — Constance
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
I'm not convinced. Do we need an extra “truth” hovering behind that to explain why knowledge and intelligibility are possible? — Tom Storm
The fact that human practices generate and sustain standards of intelligibility is all the explanation we really need. — Tom Storm
Facts only have meaning in the context of a set of practices. Without us facts effectively vanish. — Tom Storm
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