Why wouldn't the murder of 80 billion sentient land organisms and 1 to 3 trillion sentient aquatic organisms per year by non-vegans and for non-vegans be morally wrong when it is possible to make vegan choices which prevent so much pain and death?
— Truth Seeker

Some plant and fruit lovers might say to you that how could you kill the plants pulling them out from the field, cut and boil or fry them, and eat them? You are killing the innocent living plants. Same with the corns and fruits. They were alive and had souls. But you took them from the fields, cut them and boiled them, and ate them killing them in most cruel manner. The panpsychic folks believe the whole universe itself has consciousness and souls. Even rocks and trees have mind. What would you say to them? — Corvus

That’s a fair question, and it touches on deep debates about consciousness and moral status. If plants or even rocks had experiences - if they could feel pleasure, pain, or suffering - then harming them would indeed raise moral concerns. But that’s precisely the point: sentience, not mere aliveness, is what makes the moral difference.

Plants grow, respond to stimuli, and even have complex signaling systems, but there is no credible evidence that they have subjective experiences. There is no “what it’s like” to be a carrot or a corn stalk. By contrast, cows, pigs, chickens, lambs, octopuses, and lobsters clearly display behaviors indicating pain, fear, and pleasure. That’s why I draw the moral line at sentience: it’s the capacity for suffering and well-being that generates ethical duties.

If panpsychism is true and everything has some primitive form of consciousness, then we’re faced with a spectrum: perhaps electrons or rocks “experience” in some attenuated sense. But even then, there is a morally relevant distinction between a rock that (hypothetically) has a flicker of proto-consciousness and a pig screaming in agony while being slaughtered. Degrees of sentience would matter.

So my view would be: we should avoid unnecessary harm wherever it occurs, but we must prioritize preventing the most intense and obvious suffering. And right now, that means reducing and eliminating the killing of sentient organisms when we can live well on plant-based foods.

Thank you for taking the time to unpack all of that - it’s a lot to absorb, but I think I follow the thread. If I understand you, you’re saying that Kant’s noumena don’t need to be treated as some unreachable “beyond,” but rather are already immanent within phenomenality itself - the givenness of the world. The cup, the keys, the pain in my ankle: these are not mere appearances pointing to something hidden, but the very ground of what Kant misplaced on the noumenal side.

That makes sense of why you think phenomenology “drops representation” and allows the world simply to be what it is. But then I wonder: doesn’t this risk dissolving the distinction between appearance and reality entirely? If noumenality is internal to phenomena, then haven’t we just collapsed reality-in-itself into the structures of givenness, making it conceptually impossible to say what, if anything, could be “other” than appearance?

I also found your point about language important - that ontology requires articulation, and that language both makes the world manifest and at the same time gestures apophatically beyond itself. Still, I’m left with a tension: if language constitutes beings, do we have any grounds left for scientific realism? In other words, can we still say physics describes how the world is, or is it only another language-game, a historically contingent way of structuring manifestness?

And finally, on the ethical dimension: I appreciate your insistence that value is not vacuous, that pain and joy are not abstractions but intrinsic to the manifestness of being. But if value is as foundational as you suggest, does that mean ethics is not derivative of ontology, but co-constitutive with it? That strikes me as both powerful and problematic - powerful because it restores seriousness to ethics, problematic because it blurs the line between descriptive ontology and normative claims.

Would you say phenomenology ultimately abolishes the metaphysical question, or only reframes it as a question of how manifestness discloses itself in experience, language, and value?

Just read what I wrote. Should read "thereof" not "thereby".

That makes sense of why you think phenomenology “drops representation” and allows the world simply to be what it is. But then I wonder: doesn’t this risk dissolving the distinction between appearance and reality entirely? If noumenality is internal to phenomena, then haven’t we just collapsed reality-in-itself into the structures of givenness, making it conceptually impossible to say what, if anything, could be “other” than appearance? — Truth Seeker

Is there a collapse in the openness of being? If God were to appear before me in all her splendor, and then to you in the same way, we could then talk about it, but to do so would take the current vocabulary as a basis for novel descriptions. The "otherness" of God would require articulation, and, unless God said otherwise, this articulation would be finite, historical, which is just fine, because this language never was a dogma of possibilities. Possibilities are wide open. This pen is what it is until recontextualized in a non pen environment, then the pen's essence becomes other than the pen and its familiarity. This other in this current analysis is "wholly other" and this is possible because the language of beingS is itself entirely open. This emerges as the foundation of indeterminacy that is our existence.

If I were to try an say what the is IS for everything, and this were some closed concept, utterly noncontingent, then THAT would collapse upon itself. But here, the definition defers to this Other, and the only closededness found is in the good and bad, which is terms are of course contingent. These are not God's commandments. But as wholly other, they are closed only in their manifestness.

I think I see what you’re saying, that what looks like a “collapse” isn’t a collapse at all, but an opening. If noumenality is internal to phenomena, then the “other” is always already available through the recontextualizing power of language. A pen is what it is until language situates it otherwise, and in that sense the “wholly other” is not shut out but emerges as a possibility.

That helps me understand why you resist the charge of collapsing appearance and reality. You’re not erasing the difference but relocating it: the difference shows up within manifestness itself, in the shifting horizons of description and re-description. The danger, you’re suggesting, only comes if we try to freeze being into a final, closed definition.

Still, I wonder whether this move really preserves the “otherness” that Kant had in mind. If all otherness is mediated by our historically contingent vocabularies, does the idea of the wholly other end up being just another name for the openness of language? In that case, are we still talking about reality-in-itself, or have we turned it into a way of describing indeterminacy within phenomenality?

And on your last point about good and bad: I find it intriguing that you see them as “closed only in their manifestness.” Do you mean that values, unlike objects, resist infinite re-contextualization, that they present themselves with an authority that can’t be deferred in the same way? If so, is that where phenomenology keeps the ethical from collapsing into pure relativism?

I also found your point about language important - that ontology requires articulation, and that language both makes the world manifest and at the same time gestures apophatically beyond itself. Still, I’m left with a tension: if language constitutes beings, do we have any grounds left for scientific realism? In other words, can we still say physics describes how the world is, or is it only another language-game, a historically contingent way of structuring manifestness? — Truth Seeker

I think talk about language games is deflationary. Hermeneutics is better.

I would no more go to an empirical scientist for insights into the nature of our being in the world than I would go to a geologist for violin lessons. Science is an abstraction from the original unity of phenomenality, a unity discovered only when subjectivity is allowed into ontology; and physics, the final word on empirical sciences, has nothing to do with this. All knowledge is hermeneutical, even the concept of phenomenology, but here, there is the jumping off place as language makes that extraordinary move to question itself! And in doing this, discovers its own agency, not in Descartes' cogito (our own personal Yahweh) but in the value dimension of our existence.

Consider: it was long held, and still is by some, that our essence lies with reason, you know, man is a rational animal, but reason is not at all indicative of agency. One can imagine thought without agency, hovering about, disembodied. It needs no egoic center, an AI that talks with perfect logicality, but really no one is at home, so to speak. No "soul" perhaps, if you can stand the way this term is burdened with religious connotation. I prefer Heidegger's dasein, but Heidegger doesn't understand metaethics; at any rate, his dasein is the closest thing to philosophical exposition of the human soul one will find anywhere. But value: try to conceive of value without agency. Impossible. Impossible to imagine suffering disembodied, out there being what it is but belonging to no one. Suffering insists on agency. If there is suffering, there must be someone suffering, and this includes animals. What kind of agency is this? Not Kantian Transcendental Unity of Apperception, which is an impossiblity grounded in an abstraction. Rather, it takes an agency that is commensurate with the givenness of the value dimension, which is in the manifestness of the suffering; that is, and this is where we encounter transcendence.

And finally, on the ethical dimension: I appreciate your insistence that value is not vacuous, that pain and joy are not abstractions but intrinsic to the manifestness of being. But if value is as foundational as you suggest, does that mean ethics is not derivative of ontology, but co-constitutive with it? That strikes me as both powerful and problematic - powerful because it restores seriousness to ethics, problematic because it blurs the line between descriptive ontology and normative claims.

Would you say phenomenology ultimately abolishes the metaphysical question, or only reframes it as a question of how manifestness discloses itself in experience, language, and value? — Truth Seeker

Framing and reframing: This is the historical evolvement, but in philosophy, there is the attempt to determine truth, and truth will have to be framed within a framework of existing possiblities. Ontology's biq question is: is there a framework of thought which gives light to a ground outside of framework as such? Here, such disclosure is built into phenomenality here and now.

Coconstitutve? Sticky. Phenomenology is essentially descriptive. I bring up agency to discuss the evidential basis for affirming our dasein IS a, if you will, soul, that we actually exist (as Kierkegaard put it) and by soul I refer to transcendence in immanence. Think of the way Kant's deduction gives us agency, but this transcendental agency is pure structure, pure form, and as a ground of agency just fails altogether because, well, this is just not what we ARE for it is dismissive of our actuality. Our essence lies with caring, with things mattering, being important, and momentous question of who and what we are is, What does it mean for something to be important, momentous? And of course, it is the radical end of this that leaps into the thought: What that terrible violence the world does to us all about? Why is that lighted match on your living flesh so seriously important? What is importance about, not contingently important, as with one thing being important for another, as in, This document is important for national security, and the like; but "importance as such", an analytic term, let's not forget, not to invoke some platonic form of importance, a mere reification of an analytic term. the phenomenological method brings this question to light with striking clarity: a firm dismissal of all that is not right there, in your midst as a "pure phenomenon": pain is its OWN importance,

But I wandered a bit. Coconstitution is one of the most elusive ideas. Plainly put, my cat IS a moral agency because he participates in the value dimension of existence, not because he belongs to the kingdom of ends as Kant thought, and certainly not because he can think about ontology. The essence of ethics is caring and its objective counterpart, the actual joys cared in and about, and caring has a veritable infinite range from mild amusement, dull interest, boredom to the heights of horror and bliss. Because my cat can't think ontolologically, it can't rise to a greater understanding of its existence into profound discovery. That word 'profound' needs further attention.

But the point would be that in the phenomenological disclosure, affectivity and the language that conceives it are one. This takes disclosure to be very important, bringing ethics to its teleology, which is tied to agency.

So my view would be: we should avoid unnecessary harm wherever it occurs, but we must prioritize preventing the most intense and obvious suffering. And right now, that means reducing and eliminating the killing of sentient organisms when we can live well on plant-based foods. — Truth Seeker

It sounds like you are projecting your own personal value or psychological state onto the nature and the eco system unduly and with some emotional twist. The nature works as it has done for billions of years. It operates under the system called "survival for fittest". Lions always used to go and hunt for deers, striped horses and wild boars. If you say, hey Lion why are you eating the innocent animals killing them causing them pain? And if you say to them, hey you are cruel, bad and morally evil to do that. Why not go and eat some vegetables? Then it would be your emotional twist and personal moral value projected to the nature for your own personal feel good points.

Lions must eat what they are designed to eat by nature. No one can dictate what they should eat.
Same goes for human. Human race is not designed to eat rocks and soils, just because someone tells them it is morally wrong to eat meat, fruits or vegetables because they may suffer pain, and they might have minds and consciousness.

The bottom line is that it is not matter of morality - right and wrong. It is more matter of the system works, and what is best and ideal for the nature. If it is healthy - keep them fit and keep them survive for best longevity, and tasty for the folks, then that is what they will eat.

So my view would be: we should avoid unnecessary harm wherever it occurs, but we must prioritize preventing the most intense and obvious suffering. And right now, that means reducing and eliminating the killing of sentient organisms when we can live well on plant-based foods.
— Truth Seeker

It sounds like you are projecting your own personal value or psychological state onto the nature and the eco system unduly and with some emotional twist. The nature works as it has done for billions of years. It operates under the system called "survival for fittest". Lions always used to go and hunt for deers, striped horses and wild boars. If you say, hey Lion why are you eating the innocent animals killing them causing them pain? And if you say to them, hey you are cruel, bad and morally evil to do that. Why not go and eat some vegetables? Then it would be your emotional twist and personal moral value projected to the nature for your own personal feel good points.

Lions must eat what they are designed to eat by nature. No one can dictate what they should eat.
Same goes for human. Human race is not designed to eat rocks and soils, just because someone tells them it is morally wrong to eat meat, fruits or vegetables because they may suffer pain, and they might have minds and consciousness.

The bottom line is that it is not matter of morality - right and wrong. It is more matter of the system works, and what is best and ideal for the nature. If it is healthy - keep them fit and keep them survive for best longevity, and tasty for the folks, then that is what they will eat. — Corvus

I think it’s important to distinguish between what happens in nature and what humans choose to do. Lions must eat other animals because they have no alternative. Humans, by contrast, have alternatives. We can thrive on plant-based diets, which are now supported by mainstream nutrition science, and in doing so, we can drastically reduce the suffering and death we cause.

Appealing to “nature” as a moral guide is tricky. Nature also contains parasites that eat their hosts alive, viruses that wipe out populations, and countless brutal struggles. If “survival of the fittest” were our moral compass, then any act of domination or exploitation (e.g. murder, torture, rape, robbery, slavery, colonization, child abuse, assault, theft, etc.) could be excused as “just natural.” But human ethics has always involved questioning our impulses and asking whether we can do better than nature’s cruelties. You used the word 'designed' for humans and lions. Humans and lions are not designed. They evolved. Evolution is a blind process, it has no foresight, plan or conscience.

So I’d say the real issue isn’t whether killing happens in the wild - it obviously does - but whether we, with our capacity for reflection and choice, should perpetuate unnecessary killing when alternatives exist. Lions can’t choose beans over gazelles. We can. That’s where morality comes in. Lions murder other lions, and they have no police or legal system to punish the murderers, but we do. Humans are not lions, and lions are not humans. We have the capacity for moral reasoning - lions don't.

Veganism is far more than a diet. It's an ethical stance that avoids preventable harm to sentient organisms. Fruits and vegetables don't suffer pain because they are not sentient. Humans, lions, zebras, deer, chickens, cows, lambs, goats, pigs, octopuses, squids, dogs, cats, rabbits, ducks, lobsters, crabs, fish, etc., suffer because they are sentient. Please see:
https://www.carnismdebunked.com
https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan
https://veganuary.com

I like how you put it that phenomenology resists deflationary “language game” talk and instead sees all knowledge as hermeneutical, including science itself. That helps explain why you stress that suffering and value aren’t abstractions but intrinsic to the manifestness of being.

But I’m still wrestling with the issue of co-constitution. If, as you say, “pain is its OWN importance,” then ethics is not something layered on top of ontology but already woven into it. Yet doesn’t that blur the line between description and normativity? Saying “pain is its own importance” feels stronger than “pain shows up as something important to us.” Do you mean to suggest that importance is ontologically basic, that value is part of the very fabric of reality?

And on your point about agency: I find it intriguing that you see even your cat as a moral agent because it participates in the value-dimension of existence, even without conceptual reflection. That seems to broaden “agency” far beyond the Kantian framework. But does that mean every sentient creature participates in ethics simply by virtue of suffering and caring? If so, wouldn’t ethics then lose its distinctively human dimension of reflection and responsibility?

Finally, on scientific realism: if physics is just another hermeneutical abstraction from phenomenality, does it still tell us something true about the world, or is it simply a historically contingent interpretation that works until paradigms shift? I’m wondering whether, in your view, science still “latches onto” structures of reality or whether its authority is entirely instrumental.

I think I see what you’re saying, that what looks like a “collapse” isn’t a collapse at all, but an opening. If noumenality is internal to phenomena, then the “other” is always already available through the recontextualizing power of language. A pen is what it is until language situates it otherwise, and in that sense the “wholly other” is not shut out but emerges as a possibility.

That helps me understand why you resist the charge of collapsing appearance and reality. You’re not erasing the difference but relocating it: the difference shows up within manifestness itself, in the shifting horizons of description and re-description. The danger, you’re suggesting, only comes if we try to freeze being into a final, closed definition.

Still, I wonder whether this move really preserves the “otherness” that Kant had in mind. If all otherness is mediated by our historically contingent vocabularies, does the idea of the wholly other end up being just another name for the openness of language? In that case, are we still talking about reality-in-itself, or have we turned it into a way of describing indeterminacy within phenomenality?

And on your last point about good and bad: I find it intriguing that you see them as “closed only in their manifestness.” Do you mean that values, unlike objects, resist infinite re-contextualization, that they present themselves with an authority that can’t be deferred in the same way? If so, is that where phenomenology keeps the ethical from collapsing into pure relativism? — Truth Seeker

I am impressed that you press on with understanding and abiding interest.

This notion of the wholly other is an enigma that is hard for me to bring to clarity mostly because I haven't read enough Derrida, and to talk meaningfully about what this philosopher said presupposes a lot. In order to grasp this idea, one hs to see clerly that something very unusual happens when language questions its own nature, asks, What am I? (interesting note: without what I would call substantive agency, the subject so systematically marginalized by philosophy, then the "Who am I?" question reduces to language inquiring about language. This actually works, I would say, ONLY if the substantive life of value engagement is absent from the equation. This, of course, is like talking about something entirely other than a human being. An abstraction). When this question is asked, it is seen how impossible the question really is because the question applies to the asking itself and is not going to be addressed with more language; or rather it IS and it IS NOT. This is the wonderland of deconstruction. It is language under erasure. Wittgenstein put the Tractatus "under erasure" in the book's closing thought.

But I’m still wrestling with the issue of co-constitution. If, as you say, “pain is its OWN importance,” then ethics is not something layered on top of ontology but already woven into it. Yet doesn’t that blur the line between description and normativity? Saying “pain is its own importance” feels stronger than “pain shows up as something important to us.” Do you mean to suggest that importance is ontologically basic, that value is part of the very fabric of reality? — Truth Seeker

Yes. There is nothing that is not in the fabric of reality; even error is an actuality, but not AS error, but simply as an existent. On blurring the line: The "taking AS" is basic to hermeneutics. Heidegger talk about this as a feature of the temporal structure of dasein (which I think of as the soul, without any primordial agency. I argue Heidegger didn't understand ethics, hence his notorious refusal to properly condemn the Nazis after the war), but simply put, when I take this cup and talk about it in some way, I am taking that-there AS a cup. It is in the "taking as" where errors can occur, taking the cup AS the wrong thing, a bowl, perhaps. Language IS a taking up the world AS something, and the issue of coconstitution centers on a couple of hard topics. One is, taking up the world AS trees, pianos, cups and saucers, etc., one is taking up itself as it is embedded IN this original object. The analytic of the object cannot be absent of this feature, and so the "blur" arises when normativity is given to us in complex entanglements out of which principles are made, and the descriptive analytic of the essence of normativity, which brings one to the same discussion of metaethics. I say, one shouldn't assault one's neighbor, but why not? Because it hurts, brings pain into the world. Again, absent this pain, ethical normativity simply vanishes, but the normativity is not reducible to this foundation; it is conceived always in prima facie entanglements, otherwise, the obligation issues exclusively from the primoridality of pain qua pain, and the "principle" that issues forth from this lies with a pure manifestness which is a-propositional. Pain is NOT an idea, a principle, but lies absolutely outside of the contingencies that such things are subject to. I always want to emphasize: good and bad are analytic terms. They are a "taking as" of the value-residuum discovered in the analysis in which ethicality itself is examined. Talk of the "absolute" of manifestation is also a taking as. There is nothing in these ideas that is not this, and to go beyond this is just bad metaphysics, metaphysics without a ground, the kind of thing found in a Kantian paralogism. BUT, and this is the "but" that is the issue at hand: the delimitations of the finitude of language come to a fateful threshold where thought encounters existence and realizes that there is radical and impossible difference that is not accountable in the play of words and meanings. Impossible because possibility is defined in terms of intelligibility (this is where Derrida takes metaphysics. See, e.g., The Metaphysics of Violence, which is about Levinas).

So whenever this impossible division is made a theme of discussion, everything is under erasure because it doesn't "make sense". Co constitution doesn't make sense as one side of the "co" construction lies outside intelligibility.

And on your point about agency: I find it intriguing that you see even your cat as a moral agent because it participates in the value-dimension of existence, even without conceptual reflection. That seems to broaden “agency” far beyond the Kantian framework. But does that mean every sentient creature participates in ethics simply by virtue of suffering and caring? If so, wouldn’t ethics then lose its distinctively human dimension of reflection and responsibility? — Truth Seeker

Agency is only as it is evidenced to be. Kant handily dismisses the subject, the "I am" based on the failure of hteir being an object. If there were an object, a self, there to be observed, like a toaster, then the self would be an empirical concept, and a representation only; but this "I am" is simply not there. But ethics is a very different ground from logic. Kant can imagine thought without substantive agency (agency reduced to the formal structure of judgment easily) easily.

more on this....

Thank you again, Constance - I can see how much thought you’ve put into this, and it helps me clarify where my own sticking points are.

On the “wholly other”: I appreciate how you bring Derrida into the discussion, especially the way language can turn back on itself and fall “under erasure.” I think I see what you mean: that when language asks “what am I?” it exposes both its indispensability and its limits, and that this tension is where the notion of the wholly other arises. Still, I find myself asking: does this really preserve alterity, or does it risk reducing “otherness” to the play of language itself? If all otherness is mediated through our historical vocabularies, can the “wholly other” ever really exceed them?

On co-constitution: your insistence that “pain is not an idea” struck me. I take you to mean that normativity doesn’t float free as some principle, but that it arises directly out of the manifestness of suffering itself. That’s a powerful point, but it does blur the line between ontology and normativity. If pain is already “its own importance,” then ethical obligation seems built into the structure of being. Do you think that means ethics is not derivative at all, but intrinsic - part of the very fabric of reality?

And regarding agency: I see now that you’re trying to resist both Kant’s formal reduction and a purely human-centered notion of agency. If even my cat evidences agency in its participation in the value-dimension, then ethics extends beyond reflection into affectivity itself. That’s an intriguing move, but I wonder: if all sentient creatures are agents in this sense, does “ethics” lose its distinctively human task of reflection and responsibility, or does reflection simply become one way of deepening what is already basic to existence?

First though, what kind of emotivism is it you have in mind? Talking in terms of "beliefs" and "moral propositions" suggests you take moral language to be truth-apt. Emotivists typically deny that. Are you some other sort of non-cognitivist? — GazingGecko

When asked their opinion on an ethical question, non-cognitivists do not literally say "boo!" or "hurray!" do they? In any event, whatever language they choose to express their attitudes, they do have such attitudes - pro or con or noncommittal, same as the rest of us. And when they are called to act, their actions are motivated by their moral attitudes, same as the rest of us. To be sure, non-cognitivists maintain that moral utterances are not, technically, propositions, but so what? If all you are saying is that theirs is a tortured semantics, I would tend to agree with you, but at the same time, I don't find this issue to be interesting or important enough to argue.

Also, I think your response comes at the open-question-challenge from a direction that, while more sophisticated, misses my main concerns. Sure, one can have different degrees of attitudes towards moral propositions. The point I'm pressing with the question, "I believe the death penalty is wrong, but is it wrong?" is that crude subjectivism struggles with the semantic data. I don't think your re-interpretation of the question in theory-laden terms really fixes that problem.

A further problem is that it undermines deliberation. It seems like I'm asking myself a substantial question when I question my belief in such a manner. With the crude subjectivist reading, it would trivialize that deliberation. — GazingGecko

You keep referring to "crude subjectivism" - what is that, and who propounds it? And why do you think that it does not adequately address the open question challenge?

Any moral question worth asking is, by that very framing, not a trivial question to answer, even for a subjectivist (perhaps especially for a subjectivist). Introspection in such matters is not as easy as reading a number off a gauge. Nor does one need to be satisfied by the first subjective impression.

I doubt that your current appeal to psychological prediction of possible change in attitude helps. Suppose I know a dystopian state will brainwash me into having a positive attitude towards the death penalty tomorrow. Your re-interpretation makes "I think the death penalty is wrong, but is it wrong?" map neatly onto that prediction, yielding an obvious "no" because I know my attitude will change tomorrow. But even in that scenario, the question appears more substantive than a trivial "no." So it seems like your re-interpretation struggles to capture what that original sentence means. — GazingGecko

Brainwashing is not a good counterexample. A brainwashed subject is a morally impaired subject.

Sure, you can give an account for how emotivists could want to press the convergence of attitudes, saying something like: "Everyone, disfavor the death penalty!" That helps explain morally inspired conflict.

My problem with your response to disagreement is that it does not appear to solve the issue I have in mind. In genuine disagreements we aim at contradiction. Crude subjectivism predicts we shouldn't experience the exchange as a contradiction given what it says that "right" and "wrong" means, yet linguistically we do.

Compare with a truth-apt domain:

A: "The Earth is flat!"
B: "No, the Earth is not flat!"

B is negating A's declarative statement. Both can't be true.

Moral claims appear to frequently function the same way:

C: "Abortion is wrong!"
D: "No, abortion is not wrong!"

D seems to be negating C's apparent declarative statement. Once again, both can't be true.

Here are my attempted translations inspired by your comment:

E: "Boo to abortion! Everyone, disfavor abortion!"
F: "Yay for abortion! Everyone, favor abortion!"

or (another attempt):

G: "I have a positive attitude towards abortion. Everyone should have a positive attitude towards abortion."
H: "I have a negative attitude towards abortion. Everyone should have a negative attitude towards abortion."

There is no literal contradiction between E & F or between G & H, where as there seems to be between C & D. That gap is semantic evidence against crude subjectivism (and some non-cognitivist flavors). So I believe my original objections stand (for now). — GazingGecko

I am not sure what point you are making here, if it is not just the truth-aptness point - is it? Yes, if moral utterances are not propositions, then, trivially, they cannot be contradictory in the logical sense. But is this really important? They are opposite, contrasting, or what have you - for all intents and purposes, other than logical formalism, it comes to the same thing, doesn't it?

You’re trying to run all these concepts through a propositional logic wringer, which, as I said before, presupposes that the terms we are comparing do not alter their sense in the very act of comparison. Without its dependence on the fixity of its terms, logic can’t produce its laws, and you’re clinging to these laws as the ground for your attempt to refute certain philosophical approaches as self-contradictory. If you start from a ground of identiy and then explain difference as emerging from or dependent on identity, then you will always be able to use propositional logic to ‘refute’ philosophies which claim to ground identity in difference.

If I have this right, it's: "I am not contradicting myself because I am equiovcating." I am not sure if that's much better though. If someone wants to advance a theory that radically changes notions of truth, then it seems like a commitment to basic logical consistency would be valuable for convincing the skeptic. No doubt, if one is allowed to contradict oneself and equivocate, one can justify anything at all.

But doesn't this assume a metaphysical standard of usefulness that a pragmatist wouldn't recognise? In reality, actions always produce consequences, and “success” is judged relative to the goals and expectations of the community. There's no call for a separate idea of what is “truly useful”. What current practice affirms as useful is what matters, because usefulness is determined by how practices function and coordinate behaviour. The claim that “what is truly useful cannot be whatever current practice affirms” is imposing an external measure that pragmatism wouldn't recognize. — Tom Storm

Sure, so how can your community ever be wrong about what is useful? It seems to me it can only be wrong just in case it happens to decide it has been wrong later. You're collapsing any distinction between appearances and reality here. That's the very thing I've been trying to point out.

"Not anything goes because only the useful goes," but also "what is useful is what the community judges to be useful." It would follow that "putting lead in drinking water is useful just so long as the community thinks it is useful." When it decides this wasn't useful, it ceases to be. We can hardly appeal to any other standard or facts about human biology and lead that hold outside of what is currently deemed "useful." But this seems absurd. More to the point, "pragmatism" that isn't ordered to an end isn't even "pragmatism." It's an abuse of the term. "Sheer voluntarism" would be the appropriate label when what is sought is wholly indeterminate outside the act of seeking (willing) itself.

I would note that other historicist, constructivist theories, such as those inspired by Hegel, do not face this difficulty because they leave themselves grounds for the assertion that practice will be attracted to certain affirmations in the long run (whether or not this is overly "providential" is another question). However, I can see no grounds for such a position if truth (and so presumably reality) is itself just a dependent function of community affirmation, except by preformative contradiction or equivocation.

And this is besides the problem of self-refutation. It's still unclear to me how what Rorty says about truth can be true when the community rejects it.

Still, I find myself asking: does this really preserve alterity, or does it risk reducing “otherness” to the play of language itself? If all otherness is mediated through our historical vocabularies, can the “wholly other” ever really exceed them? — Truth Seeker

Well, you're talking like Heidegger. And he struggles with finitude, even referring to Meister Eckhart )once only?), and Buddhism, in the Spiegel interview. Near death he asked for Carl Rahner, a Heideggerian Jesuit priest (true. moving away from Aquinas seems to be an accepted move in Catholic theology), and insisted he had never left the church. Rahner was, well, if you say so...

But, exceed? There are no divisions, so there is no exceeding, not in this "ontological monism" I've been talking about (which I think is right). Consider what we are dealing with that begins this strange and radical inquiry: the phenomenological reduction, or, epoche, of Husserl. You can read this and it's pretty accessible, in his Ideas I, where he attempts to clear the phenomenon of the bulk of thought that would otherwise claim a thing for itself.

Anyway, take a look at how Derrida talks about Levinas' "other" which is intimated in the actual face of suffering, what he calls a trial of theology and mysticism,

neither as a dogma, nor as a religion, nor as a morality. In the last analysis it never bases its authority on Hebraic theses or texts. It seeks to be understood from within a recourse to experience itself...the other itself as what is most irreducibly other within it: Others. ...a recourse the reaches the point at which an exceeded philosophy cannot be brought into question. Truthfully, messianic eschatology is never mentioned literally: it is a question ofdesignating a space or a hollow within naked experience...not an opening among others.It is opening itself, the opening of opening, that which can be enclosed witin no category or totality.

Messianic eschatology is going to be a serious analytic step beyond mere theology, just as is found inKierkegaard who does have Christianity solidly behind his thinking, yet brings this into an analytical domain of what Derrida refers to as naked experience above. Why does Levinas use these burdened religious terms that come straight from traditional metaphysics to talk about a phenomenological analysis of experience? It is because these terms preserve the religious meaning of the analysis, much like Kierkegaard did with original sin in his Concept of Anxiety, centering on dogmatic assumptions of Luther and others so as to make sense of "hereditary sin" in the, to borrow a Heideggerian term, "thrownness" of our existence. To me, this thrownness has a singular reductive telos, which is to the metavalue discovered in ethics and aesthetics.

So in answer to your question regarding this "wholly other," the objective ground for this is the radical indeterminacy of language, and hence, of our existence, and for this you have to, well, read yourself INTO it, as all things are always already "read into" in the meaningful encounter, and by this I refer to the totality of taking the world AS what language CAN SAY (can=possiblities) things are. In hermeneutical thinking, analysis always begins with assumptions, which have their meanings in their own analysis, and I think it safe to say that this is something like the heart of deconstruction. I have read deconstructionist thinking chasing meanings around like a child asking annoying questions about everything you say. This objective ground has an existential counterpart and if you ask someone like Levinas what this is, he might refer your to Meister Eckhart or pseudo Dionysius the Areopogite. But Levinasian hermeneutics would have you, not chasing your own tail or biting it like an ouroboros, but constructing language that brings the world into existence. When we spek here of existence, we are talking about the world that appears before us; there is nothing else to talk about. You are Truth Seeker, but what is truth? Certainly, we yield to Leibniz' principle of sufficient reason that talks about grounding a proposition in well delineated reasoning, but, and this comes straight from Heidegger, this is not where philosophy seeks to go, not the true ground. He writes,

The understanding [29] of being ('AOyoc; in a quite broad sense)b that guides and illuminates in advance all comportment toward beings is neither a grasping of
bein as such, nor is it a conceptual comprehending of what is thus grasped
(/..6yoc; in its narrowest sense = "ontological" concept). We therefore call
this understanding of being that has not yet been brought to a concept
a pre-ontological understanding, or ontological in the broader sense.

Preontological refers to what is there, right when philosophy opens its eyes upon the world to ask What IS it? and what we get is an already made world, a language, a culture, and these are constructed historically, and so before a philosopher even opens her mouth, there is this vast endowment in place that, if you will, opens it for her (going, fascinatingly, to agency again. Really, this is where Heidegger, Rorty and others do not see in the "essence of agency", that is, the "what it is" of agency as such. What is missed is the value dimension of existence and its insistence on an agent of experience that is commensurate with the pure manifestness of value, which is illustrated by putting your hand in boiling water. IT really does come down this "ground")

Essential for understanding is hermeneutics, the idea that we construct meanings, and these meanings are OPEN. See how this so conctrasts with something like positivism that is so committed to clarity (Rorty's problem is this absurd commitment to rigidity while he at the same time insist a radical openness of truth, inspired by Heidegger), language is open. See how Heidegger begins his Origin of the Work of Art:

What art is can be gathered from a comparative examination of actual art works.
But how are we to be certain that we are indeed basing such an examination on art
works if we do not know beforehand what art is? And the nature of art can no more be
arrived at by a derivation from higher concepts than by a collection of characteristics
of actual art works. For such a derivation, too, already has in view the characteristics
that must suffice to establish that what we take in advance to be an art work is one in
fact. But selecting works from among given objects, and deriving concepts from principles, are equally impossible here, and where these procedures are practiced they are a
self-deception. Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought, assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.

This little passage should make clear the way he thinks in philosophy. One does not go into an analysis knowing the answer. The answer emerges in the play of thought. Heidegger here sounds like a child in a candy shop, as if he cannot wait to see where language will lead in this process of "disclosure" of what lies "hidden" in the potentiality of possibilities of the totality of meanings, ALL of which are open: open to each other (think metaphor, irony, literary devices and where these have their most potent application, poetry! The crucible where novel meanings come into existence) and open to Being.

Herein lies the ground for meaningful metaphysics, I would argue. There is no empirical object in ontology, but the openness of its being an object IS the object. This is hard to accept, of course, in standard and familiar ways of relating to the world. The object is an event! And an event is not a dogmatic closure, but "free", if you will, and everything is like this. This freedom of the object (and the subject that conceives it) is metaphysics. So when you read someone like Levinas or Jean Luc Marion and you find yourself in a jungle of the strangest concatenations thought one can imagine, it is due to the foundational indeterminacy of our existence taken up AS these dissertations, and here language can gather in a convergence of thought's possibilities to make/discover what it is,

To get a very good look at this, see his Being and Time section 64 and onward in Division 2. Time is the phenomenologist's bottom line.

And regarding agency: I see now that you’re trying to resist both Kant’s formal reduction and a purely human-centered notion of agency. If even my cat evidences agency in its participation in the value-dimension, then ethics extends beyond reflection into affectivity itself. That’s an intriguing move, but I wonder: if all sentient creatures are agents in this sense, does “ethics” lose its distinctively human task of reflection and responsibility, or does reflection simply become one way of deepening what is already basic to existence? — Truth Seeker

We are committed to one thing, which is a descriptive phenomenology, and this does not solve all problems. It opens problems and shows problems in an entirely different way. Deepens what is already basic to existence, yes, I would agree with this; as well as imposes upon our ordinary ethical thinking regarding animal rights, after all, if the measure of moral agency is this non-formal value-as-such, then cats and canaries are moral agents, meaning we cannot treat them as objects, we have to yield to them as we yield to other people, but not in all the subtle ways. We are a culture that is just coming to realize this, and it is caught up in an unwieldly equation of hamburgers and slaughter houses.

Thank you, Constance, that was a fascinating tour through Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and beyond. I think I see more clearly now what you mean when you describe the “wholly other” not as something that exceeds language but as something disclosed within the indeterminacy of language and the openness of being. That does help explain why you resist the charge of collapse: otherness isn’t abolished, but appears in the play of disclosure and re-description.

Still, I’m struck by the cost of this move. If alterity is always mediated by hermeneutical openness, then the “wholly other” seems inseparable from the historical contingency of our vocabularies. Is that really sufficient to preserve what Levinas meant by alterity in the ethical sense - the face of the other as a demand that resists assimilation? Or is phenomenology reinterpreting that demand as simply another manifestation of openness?

On agency, I appreciate your willingness to extend moral significance beyond the human - that if cats and canaries participate in value-as-such, then they are owed moral regard as agents of a kind. That resonates with contemporary debates about animal ethics, though your grounding in phenomenality is very different from utilitarian or rights-based accounts. I suppose my question here is: if all sentient beings are moral agents in this descriptive sense, what still distinguishes human responsibility? Is reflection just a matter of deepening what is already basic, or does it introduce something normatively unique that goes beyond affectivity?

Finally, I notice you say phenomenology doesn’t “solve” problems but reframes them. Do you see that as a strength - a way of keeping thought open to the world as event - or as a limitation compared to traditions that do aim for closure in metaphysical answers?

Sure, so how can your community ever be wrong about what is useful? It seems to me it can only be wrong just in case it happens to decide it has been wrong later. You're collapsing any distinction between appearances and reality here. That's the very thing I've been trying to point out. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well I’d assume this is mostly about the framing. Wouldn’t we say instead that, rather than being about right or wrong, communities develop methods, approaches, and beliefs that work for a time and then no longer work, or no longer meet needs? And society is never in complete agreement, just as many Americans who embrace Trumpism are off set by others who see a fascist dictatorship emerging. The developing conversation and the consequences will settle on a position.

"Not anything goes because only the useful goes," but also "what is useful is what the community judges to be useful." It would follow that "putting lead in drinking water is useful just so long as the community thinks it is useful." When it decides this wasn't useful, it ceases to be. We can hardly appeal to any other standard or facts about human biology and lead that hold outside of what is currently deemed "useful." But this seems absurd. More to the point, "pragmatism" that isn't ordered to an end isn't even "pragmatism." It's an abuse of the term. "Sheer voluntarism" would be the appropriate label when what is sought is wholly indeterminate outside the act of seeking (willing) itself. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. Pragmatism doesn’t say that usefulness is whatever people happen to believe at a given moment. Usefulness is tested by consequences, by how well beliefs help us manage experience, predict outcomes, and solve problems over time. A belief that lead in drinking water is “useful” will eventually clash with the consequences of lead poisoning. It will fail to guide successful action, and that failure is precisely what drives the community to revise its judgment. Wouldn't you say that the collapse of superstitions, smoking, and other harmful practices has followed such a process?

Wouldn't you say that the collapse of superstitions, smoking, and other harmful practices has followed just such a process? — Tom Storm

This is leaving out the metaphysical part of the thesis, the idea that there is no such thing as truth outside of practice. I don't agree that "it was not true that smoking causes lung diseases back when no one agreed that it did" and that it then became true once current practice began to affirm that it is so. Rather, I'd maintain that it was true from the very beginning that smoking causes lung disease, and that current practice came to affirm this truth because it was already true.

Now, if it was true that smoking still caused lung disease back when no one thought it did (back when no human practice affirmed this truth) it can hardly be the case that things are true only in virtue of what human practice affirms.

Wouldn’t we say instead that, rather than being about right or wrong, communities develop methods, approaches, and beliefs that work for a time and then no longer work, or no longer meet needs? — Tom Storm

How are "success" and "works" defined here? Isn't it just what current practice and sentiment affirms? Or is there a fact about what actually promotes human flourishing outside of current practice and sentiment?

Now, if it was true that smoking still caused lung disease back when no one thought it did (back when no human practice affirmed this truth) it can hardly be the case that things are true only in virtue of what human practice affirms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I said -

Pragmatism doesn’t say that usefulness is whatever people happen to believe at a given moment. Usefulness is tested by consequences, by how well beliefs help us manage experience, predict outcomes, and solve problems over time. A belief that lead in drinking water is “useful” will eventually clash with the consequences of lead poisoning. It will fail to guide successful action, and that failure is precisely what drives the community to revise its judgment. — Tom Storm

This is leaving out the metaphysical part of the thesis, the idea that there is no such thing as truth outside of practice. I don't agree that "it was not true that smoking causes lung diseases back when no one agreed that it did" and that it then became true once current practice began to affirm that it is so — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, this will depend on the pragmatist, I would imagine. But the idea that we don't have access to a truth outside ourselves is certainly something Rorty would say; at least if you include his particular brand of neo-pragmatism.

But what are we talking about here? We seem to be going around in circles, which may well be my fault, since I don’t recall exactly what we were discussing. I’m not a pragmatist; I just see the merit in some of their arguments.

Now, if it was true that smoking still caused lung disease back when no one thought it did (back when no human practice affirmed this truth) it can hardly be the case that things are true only in virtue of what human practice affirms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Drilling down into this: Yes, smoking caused lung disease even before we knew it did. But as far as I know, from a pragmatist point of view, it wasn’t true for us in any practical sense until people investigated it and evidence demonstrated it. Pragmatism sees “truth” as something that helps us act successfully in the world, not as a fixed fact that exists completely independently of human understanding.

Right, some versions of pragmatism are merely pragmatic. I was speaking only to the metaphysical thesis.

So Peirce, a realist (metaphysically and morally), has no such issue because truth as: "the opinion fated to be agreed upon [eventually] by all who investigate [faithfully]," doesn't run into the same sorts of problems.

On the “wholly other”: I appreciate how you bring Derrida into the discussion, especially the way language can turn back on itself and fall “under erasure.” I think I see what you mean: that when language asks “what am I?” it exposes both its indispensability and its limits, and that this tension is where the notion of the wholly other arises. Still, I find myself asking: does this really preserve alterity, or does it risk reducing “otherness” to the play of language itself? If all otherness is mediated through our historical vocabularies, can the “wholly other” ever really exceed them? — Truth Seeker

Hold on a bit. I am reading Derrida's On the Name to give a better response to your question. Not helping, frankly. This particular series of odd writings is meant to demonstrate the bloated nature of language that is used so casually, telling us that our meanings are actually opaquely diffuse. At any rate, I try to follow Heidegger in the quote above where he calls the riddle of the art object a "feast for thought." Ontology requires one to stand in the openness of thought-in-the-world (by all means, put the book down and observe the world without the intrusion of knowledge assumptions) reach into meanings and try to deal with this threshold experience of meeting the world on the world's terms, that is, givenness, and this takes a constructive effort to play through down to the impossible simplicity of Being (following Henry, Marion, et al). Being is not an augmentative concept, like science is: science grows, weeding out failed paradigms, adding new ones. Phenomenlogical monism does not seek growth, but simplicity (and if one argues that science seeks the same, then I would say this is ONLY because science and phenomenology are part of a singular endeavor in the first place. Science just hasn't come to realize that any responsible conception of "the world" at the most basic level of inquiry is absurd without the contribution of the perception that "makes" the object what it is. When it does, it will look to phenomenology. There is no choice in this, really). Derrida "discovers" this impossible simplicity in the "trace".

On preserving alterity, it takes something of a revelation to understand this. The object palpably in front of you has to be reduced to its essence, not as the color yellow or a paper clip, where you pick it out of other things, discover differences and the name has its essence in this; but Being as such, which, like the way I have been treating good and bad, very difficult to discern. Take that burning flesh: yes, clearly it hurts, but what is BAD about this? See, this turns is out terribly indeterminate, and it is a struggle to talk about it, because there is no object, no "thereness"; the pain is clear as a bell, but the bad of the pain is...utterly elusive . One literally has to go after it to discover it, for it is cloaked in religion and science, and these do not take up the good and the bad thematically, ignore it completely. Religion takes on the gravitas, but is analytically irresponsible; science loses the whole matte to physicalism which is devoid of phenomologial actuality. Good and bad are lost in a sea of these region's "taking as" hegemonies that altogether exclude the question for a proper ground of what it means for something to hurt so bad, or delight so good. It takes the reduction to "see" it, the impossible "alterity" of it. The question of the wholly other is essentially a question of non formalist value, the living actuality of the pain of the burn. You question as to preserving the radical alterity of the wholly other is not going to find satisfaction until eyes are turned to this, and this pain, or this joy of requited love has to be delivered from the play of thought that would keep it hidden, as with talk about evolution and the way pain and pleasure are conducive to reproduction and survival, which is, of course, true, as I read about it. But begging the question about the nature of what is there.

We live in two worlds, within one. Making the move from the familiar to the phenomenological world brings all things into a new interpretative light, so novel in its nature, you probably have to be a little crazy to see it, crazy enough, at least, that you can experience the world fairly free of preconceptions, which means seeing a tree and also acknowledging that the Being of the tree remains a mystery IN the mundane acknowledging it to be a tree. This mystery is, I suspect, what you are looking for. I would like to paste here the entire section called Care as the Being of Dasein from Being and Time where Heidegger e3ssentially says when one becomes self conscious (essentially IN the reductive move to clear experience from knowledge assumptions, habit), in the act of reviewing what one IS, and exercising one's freedom to choose and create one's self (dasein), one stands apart from the historical totality, and enters into a structural unease, an anxiety, as to what one IS, for the tranquilizing effects of going along with everything with everyone else is suspended and one is left hanging, facing an unmade future, and here we find responsibility, alienation, a "calling" for a resoluteness in deciding to become something/someone. This is about as mystical as Heidegger gets. For Henry et al, this uncanniness becomes a very different matter. Henry is a Husserlian, and takes the idea of pure consciousness very seriously.

On agency, I appreciate your willingness to extend moral significance beyond the human - that if cats and canaries participate in value-as-such, then they are owed moral regard as agents of a kind. That resonates with contemporary debates about animal ethics, though your grounding in phenomenality is very different from utilitarian or rights-based accounts. I suppose my question here is: if all sentient beings are moral agents in this descriptive sense, what still distinguishes human responsibility? Is reflection just a matter of deepening what is already basic, or does it introduce something normatively unique that goes beyond affectivity? — Truth Seeker

What distinguishes human responsibility. But all responsibility belongs to us, not animals. Responsibility is a concept, and cats don't think. So this limits agency for cats, young children and madmen, whose capacity for thought is nonexistent, undeveloped, or compromised, respectively. Phenomenology, I argue, informs us that there is an absolute ground for responsibility, and it is argued that this makes our ethics important in the way old testament commandments did, but, of course, without any specific commandments. Again, how does one "see" this? Derrida's is a dissection of language showing how what is said is no one thing, but reverberates throughout all of language, but this keeps within a deconstructive analytic . The REAL move is existential. Phenomenology is a method, not simply a thesis.: you take what is before you and strip it of obvious meanings that otherwise would possess it in the spontaneous everydayness. What remains is the phenomenon, but what is stripped away remains implicilty IN the constitution of what is before you. It "always already" is IN it, and your job now is to exorcise this pervasive implicit world of habituated reality (which, I thknk I mentioned once, Kierkegaard calls inherited sin. Heidegger thougth Kierkegaard was just a "religious writer" but when you read Being and Time the themes laid out by K are clearly there).

Finally, I notice you say phenomenology doesn’t “solve” problems but reframes them. Do you see that as a strength - a way of keeping thought open to the world as event - or as a limitation compared to traditions that do aim for closure in metaphysical answers? — Truth Seeker

A strength! Why, it provides a feast for thought! There is a kind of closure, but it takes the discussion into the matter of religion. What is the essence of religion? I argue it is two fold, the meta-consummatory and the meta-redemptive. Talk about metaethics as I have been and a ground is laid, but from here on, we are in metaphysics, and the ground is a metaground. This is a challenging affair to go into. Only if you are interested. It rests with the insight that metaphysics is now released from "groundlessness" that is the default assumption of ontology, and we can now speak with measured confidence about this ground, this metaground. Religion is to be regarded as a "science" of phenomenological inquiry.

Thank you, Constance. I can see how much care you’re taking to work these ideas through, and I appreciate the way you keep tying them back to phenomenological method rather than treating them as free-floating theses.

I think I understand your point that the “wholly other” is not something that stands beyond phenomenality, but is disclosed in the radical indeterminacy of language and in the givenness of value itself. Your example of pain was helpful: the badness of the burn isn’t an “idea” but an elusive alterity that resists reduction, and only shows itself when we perform the reduction. That gives me a sense of how phenomenology preserves otherness without positing a Kantian noumenon.

At the same time, I’m still left wondering: if all alterity is revealed within phenomenality, isn’t there a risk that “the wholly other” becomes just another way of talking about indeterminacy and openness, rather than something irreducibly beyond? Levinas wanted the face of the other to resist assimilation; does phenomenology, as you frame it, secure that resistance, or does it reinterpret it as another disclosure of givenness?

On responsibility, your clarification helps. Animals and children participate in the value-dimension, but responsibility as such belongs to us, since it requires reflection and concepts. That makes sense, but I’m curious whether this creates a two-tier picture: all sentient beings are moral participants, but only humans are moral agents in the full sense. Is that the distinction you’d want to defend?

And lastly, I can see why you describe phenomenology’s refusal of closure as a strength rather than a weakness - it keeps philosophy alive, a “feast for thought.” But when you gesture toward meta-consummatory and meta-redemptive grounds, you seem to be moving back toward something like metaphysics or even theology. How do you see phenomenology avoiding the pitfalls of “bad metaphysics” at that point? Does this “metaground” remain descriptive, or does it inevitably take us into prescriptive, religious territory?

To be sure, non-cognitivists maintain that moral utterances are not, technically, propositions, but so what? If all you are saying is that theirs is a tortured semantics, I would tend to agree with you, but at the same time, I don't find this issue to be interesting or important enough to argue. — SophistiCat

It is fine to not find it interesting. One can be more interested in revisionism than what the actual concepts are. Such projects can be both useful and interesting.

Still, I was responding to @Truth Seeker's first question:

Is right and wrong just a matter of thinking something is right [...] and something is wrong[...]? — Truth Seeker

That question is about what "right" and "wrong" are and to answer that it is important to understand what they mean. Semantics is important in that regard. If one uses a different meaning, one is answering a different question. Dismissing semantics abandons that project.

You keep referring to "crude subjectivism" - what is that, and who propounds it? — SophistiCat

Roughly: x is right = I have a positive attitude towards x. And similar translations for other evaluative terms.

I use the term crude subjectivism to separate my critiques from more complicated variants of relativism and subjectivism. I think that is useful for the sake of revealing issues with certain anti-realist positions that share the same relevant features as crude subjectivism without distractions. It is "crude" in that it is the rudimentary form of a family of views.

It is frequently advanced in ethics classes, on forums, and informal metaethical discussions. It becomes even more frequent if one include its sibling, crude cultural relativism, which suffers from the same kind of issues. I take it as quite obvious that many hold these kinds of views in our times. It is quite a natural reading to take as the implied view in @Truth Seeker's first question. So I think it is worth critiquing.

Historical examples are always more sophisticated. Philosophers tend to go beyond the rudimentary. In either case, I think Edvard Westermarck gives an account for moral concepts that is close to crude subjectivism. There is a similar strand in a part of Thomas Hobbes. Some passages of David Hume also invite this reading, but I think he avoids fitting that mold on the whole. I'm not really sure where to put Hume metaethically, to be honest.

And why do you think that it does not adequately address the open question challenge? — SophistiCat

Because if the crude subjectivist theory is correct about our moral concepts, the meaning of the sentence (O) "I think abortion is wrong, but is it wrong?" would translate to (T) "I think I have a negative attitude towards abortion, but do I have a negative attitude towards abortion?" which makes that kind of reflection seem trivial, like "I think I'm hungry, but am I hungry?" Checking one's attitudes seems to be quite straight forward most of the time. But reading (O), it does not sound like such trivial reflection. So as a metaethical theory, we have evidence against crude subjectivism.

Any moral question worth asking is, by that very framing, not a trivial question to answer, even for a subjectivist (perhaps especially for a subjectivist). Introspection in such matters is not as easy as reading a number off a gauge. Nor does one need to be satisfied by the first subjective impression. — SophistiCat

That is a fine point well put. I think the plausibility depends on how one cashes out "attitude" but you are right that introspection is not always clear on most such views. After watching a challenging film, I might genuinely question what attitude I have towards the film while I'm driving home from the cinema.

I still think it is difficult to capture the meaning of these questions for subjectivists. Even an incredibly self-aware person that attends to their attitudes could ask those kinds of questions in a way that sounds coherent and substantial.

Brainwashing is not a good counterexample. A brainwashed subject is a morally impaired subject. — SophistiCat

I don't really see why it is not a good counter-example. What do you mean by a "morally impaired" subject? That is not clear to me. Otherwise, it risks seeming like an ad hoc fix.

In either case, here is a new version that illustrates where I think both crude subjectivism, even with your suggested fixes, don't seem to capture the meaning.

The Dying Omnivore. Adam is sitting on his porch, reflecting. Adam is a deeply self-aware person that is well-attuned to his attitudes. Tomorrow, Adam has chosen to die due to inoperable cancer. Still, he is clear-headed. In that moment on the porch, Adam asks himself, "I believe and will always believe that buying animal products is right, but is it right?" and then continues, "I'm certain I have a positive attitude towards buying animal products and that I will always have that positive attitude towards it, but is it right?"

If crude subjectivism, even with the added dimension of degrees of belief, is correct about the meaning of "right" and "wrong," it appears like the two questions by Adam should sound like trivial, settled re-asks akin to "It is snowing today, but is it snowing today?" One would probably suspect that the person was confused if they asked such a question. But Adam's questions sound coherent and substantive rather than obviously confused and trivial. So crude subjectivism probably gives the wrong account for the meaning of "right" and "wrong."

I am not sure what point you are making here, if it is not just the truth-aptness point - is it? Yes, if moral utterances are not propositions, then, trivially, they cannot be contradictory in the logical sense. But is this really important? They are opposite, contrasting, or what have you - for all intents and purposes, other than logical formalism, it comes to the same thing, doesn't it? — SophistiCat

I agree that it would be a trivial point if emotivism is assumed as the correct account of morality. Of course there would be no contradiction. However, I have not assumed emotivism, because the correctness of emotivism is part of what is in dispute when we are figuring out what "right" and "wrong" is.

My point here was that moral discourse behaves like propositions, while emotivism predicts they would not. Since emotivism goes against the linguistic data, it does probably not capture what "right" and "wrong" means.

Tell you what. I have some reading to do. I'll get back to you soon when I am free of this.

You are right in that ethical systems are selective. That's why non-vegans murder sentient organisms and think they are doing the right thing, even though there are vegan options that avoid the deliberate exploitation and murder of sentient organisms — Truth Seeker

My apology for butting in from the side and diverging from the thread, but reading your comments on vegans and non-vegans, I am curious as to your views on abortion?

Ok, thank you. There is no rush.

It is fine to not find it interesting. One can be more interested in revisionism than what the actual concepts are. Such projects can be both useful and interesting.

Still, I was responding to Truth Seeker's first question:

Is right and wrong just a matter of thinking something is right [...] and something is wrong[...]? — Truth Seeker


That question is about what "right" and "wrong" are and to answer that it is important to understand what they mean. Semantics is important in that regard. If one uses a different meaning, one is answering a different question. Dismissing semantics abandons that project. — GazingGecko

Of course, but the point I was trying to make was that the question of cognitivism vs non-cognitivism is an analytical question that does not really get at the substance of the OP's query. It hinges on philosophical positions on truth, properties, beliefs vs attitudes, etc. With the right combination of such positions, one can be a cognitivist subjectivist (or perhaps even a non-cognitivist objectivist).

I take a relaxed, commonsensical attitude towards truth, which inclines me towards ethical cognitivism, but not in any robust sense that an objectivist might wish for.

You keep referring to "crude subjectivism" - what is that, and who propounds it? — SophistiCat


Roughly: x is right = I have a positive attitude towards x. And similar translations for other evaluative terms. — GazingGecko

It is worth putting "x is right" in some context, because this is a common source of misunderstanding. The subjectivist position is that when someone says "x is right," what they mean is "I have a positive attitude towards x." The statement is indexed to the speaker and reports on their mental state, in contrast to syntactically similar sentences, which report on something in the common domain ("the cat is on the mat") or expresses common knowledge. Understood in this way, even this "crude" position puts to rest easy charges of logical inconsistency. If A says "x is right" and B says "x is wrong," there is a controversy, but not a (logical) contradiction.

Still, this statement of crude subjectivism leaves something out. Emotivists or expressivists accept other, uncontroversially non-propositional functions of moral statements, such as exhortation or signalling. (As an aside, such uses of moral statements might be counted in favor of moral non-cognitivism. However, moral statements are far from unique in this regard. Natural language is rich and quirky, and there are plenty of instances of seemingly assertive expressions that can function as something other than assertions.)

And why do you think that it does not adequately address the open question challenge? — SophistiCat


Because if the crude subjectivist theory is correct about our moral concepts, the meaning of the sentence (O) "I think abortion is wrong, but is it wrong?" would translate to (T) "I think I have a negative attitude towards abortion, but do I have a negative attitude towards abortion?" which makes that kind of reflection seem trivial, like "I think I'm hungry, but am I hungry?" — GazingGecko

The only reason I can see for why this might seem like a serious challenge for subjectivism is if one has an objectivist presupposition at the back of their mind. Absent such presupposition, what could a question such as "I think abortion is wrong, but is it wrong?" mean? I believe it would be reasonable for anyone, subjectivist or not, to interpret it in ways that I have suggested: reflection, self-doubt, open-mindedness. The subjectivist goes further in stating that that is all there is to it. There is no objective truthmaker against which to evaluate the answer.

"I think I'm hungry, but am I hungry?" would be more like "I think it would be wrong to push that little girl into traffic, but is it wrong?" No one in their right mind would ask such a question. The questions that are actually being asked are not so easy to answer.

Brainwashing is not a good counterexample. A brainwashed subject is a morally impaired subject. — SophistiCat


I don't really see why it is not a good counter-example. What do you mean by a "morally impaired" subject? That is not clear to me. Otherwise, it risks seeming like an ad hoc fix. — GazingGecko

In your thought experiment, a person is brainwashed to have certain moral attitudes (and they know about that in advance, but this is not important to my point). This is not a fair counterexample, because a person's moral agency is suppressed or compromised, so that they can no longer be considered to be the same moral agent at a different time. If that is not clear, I am not sure what else I can say.

As an aside, edge cases and pathologies are not very illuminating in philosophy, and I wish analytical philosophers would abuse them less. If they are good for anything, it is to counter simple and rigid frameworks, which are brittle by their own nature. But subjectivist metaethics is not like that, I would think. Nothing is simple or rigid where human psychology is involved.

The Dying Omnivore. Adam is sitting on his porch, reflecting. Adam is a deeply self-aware person that is well-attuned to his attitudes. Tomorrow, Adam has chosen to die due to inoperable cancer. Still, he is clear-headed. In that moment on the porch, Adam asks himself, "I believe and will always believe that buying animal products is right, but is it right?" and then continues, "I'm certain I have a positive attitude towards buying animal products and that I will always have that positive attitude towards it, but is it right?"

If crude subjectivism, even with the added dimension of degrees of belief, is correct about the meaning of "right" and "wrong," it appears like the two questions by Adam should sound like trivial, settled re-asks akin to "It is snowing today, but is it snowing today?" One would probably suspect that the person was confused if they asked such a question. But Adam's questions sound coherent and substantive rather than obviously confused and trivial. So crude subjectivism probably gives the wrong account for the meaning of "right" and "wrong." — GazingGecko

Well, simultaneous assumptions of certitude and doubt would not sit well in any context, so perhaps your framing here is flawed. But I guess that is not what you wanted to highlight with this example, but rather the practical near-impossibility of changing one's mind. In that respect, this is a better thought experiment than the brainwashing one, since (morbid setting aside) it does not push into the pathology territory. Still, I don't think that this is much of an argument against subjectivism. We are asking a hypothetical question, and hypothetical questions invite counterfactuals, where some things are held fixed and others are left open. So, the question is not "will Adam ever change his mind?" but "would Adam change his mind?" Here we would want to hold fixed Adam's moral character, but the particular circumstance of his fatal illness seems to be irrelevant.

if moral utterances are not propositions, then, trivially, they cannot be contradictory in the logical sense. — SophistiCat


I agree that it would be a trivial point if emotivism is assumed as the correct account of morality. — GazingGecko

No, that is not what I am saying. What is trivial is that according to non-cognitivism, moral statements do not have truth values, so, of course, sentences expressing moral sentiments cannot be logically contradictory, since they cannot be formalized into logical propositions. But that doesn't mean that they cannot be understood as contradictory (conflicting, antithetical, etc.) in an informal sense.

My point here was that moral discourse behaves like propositions, while emotivism predicts they would not. Since emotivism goes against the linguistic data, it does probably not capture what "right" and "wrong" means. — GazingGecko

I think you are making too much of this. First of all, if moral statements did not behave like truth-apt statements, the question of cognitivism vs non-cognitivism would not arise in the first place. The non-cognitivists' position is to bite that bullet. You are not telling them anything they don't already know.

Second, morally flavored statements are commonplace. Who is to say that they must fit into the same linguistic mold as non-moral statements, rather than form a distinct class?