Thank you - that’s an insightful connection, and I’m glad you mentioned Buber. You’re right: the conception of compassion I’m working with probably leans closer to Buber’s I-Thou than to Levinas’s infinite Other. Levinas emphasizes transcendence and asymmetry - an ethical height that forever exceeds comprehension. Buber, by contrast, stresses reciprocity and presence: the moment when two beings meet in mutual openness, each confirming the other’s reality.

I see compassion as the living current that flows between these poles. It begins as Levinasian exposure - an encounter with the Other’s vulnerability that unsettles me - but it deepens, Buber-like, into a dialogical relation where both exist through the relation itself. Compassion is not self-sacrifice or self-assertion but the space between, the field of recognition that allows “I” and “Thou” to co-arise.

As for the naturalistic aspect, yes - I mean that quite literally. Compassion is not a supernatural virtue but a biological and phenomenological constant: an evolved mode of attunement that makes coexistence possible. Our neural and hormonal architectures, our mirror systems and attachment circuits, are the physiological correlates of what Buber calls the “dialogical principle.” The ethical, in this sense, is the felt continuity of life with life.

So perhaps my position could be described as dialogical naturalism: compassion as the empirical face of a metaphysical truth - the truth that relation precedes substance. Whether we speak the language of Levinas, Buber, or biology, the insight is the same: to exist is already to be with.

So perhaps my position could be described as dialogical naturalism: compassion as the empirical face of a metaphysical truth - the truth that relation precedes substance. — Truth Seeker

:fire: Again, well said, TS; our respective positions seem quite convergent. As an ecstatic naturalist (à la Spinoza's natura naturans sub specie durationis in metaphysic (e.g. Carlo Rovelli's RQM in physics)), for me ... 'relation is substance'.

Again, a well written thoughtful account.

When I harm another, I don’t merely break a social convention; I diminish the field of meaning that connects us. The “realness” of ethics lies in that experiential invariance: wherever sentient beings coexist, the possibilities of care and harm appear as objectively distinct modalities of relation. — Truth Seeker

I see the attraction of this, but aren't there some presuppositions at work?

Some hypotheticals.

If you harm someone, the field of meaning that connects us may also be affected and enlarged, though perhaps not in the way you are advocating. Why do you privilege one and not the other? What makes it less intrinsically useful or 'better' to be loved as opposed to feared?

Not to mention that giving people what they want or crave may be harmful, even if the granting of it is experienced as positive. In this relational approach, how do we determine when our behaviour towards others is good, since the reaction, even an enhanced relationship with the other, may not provide the correct answer?

It may also frequently be the case that doing good for others, caring for them (as in parenting and making choices for children or aging parents), is experienced as mistrust or as a violation of personal autonomy. So, caring does not necessarily lead to a harmonious connection or a positive interactions and may be viewed as 'evil' by the person being cared for.

We discover it the way we discover gravity - by noticing what happens when we ignore it. — Truth Seeker

So I remain skeptical that we discover it this way since gravity is predictable and behaviour is not.

As for your question - whether I’m a moral realist - the answer depends on what kind of realism we mean. — Truth Seeker

If I may, there's an ambiguity in "realism" that needs sorting. There are varieties of moral realism which suppose that moral facts are much the same as physical facts, found lying about the place. That's hard to support. Other varieties just point out that there are true moral sentences. The problem is with the notion of realism, not the ethics.

Good point and maybe my quesion was the problem. I guess I was asking it they believe that morality has a transcendent source.

There are varieties of moral realism which suppose that moral facts are much the same as physical facts, found lying about the place. — Banno

Like e.g. suffering / vulnerable beings ...

That’s beautifully put - I think our intuitions are indeed convergent. If relation is substance, then the universe is not a collection of things interacting but an interaction that gives rise to things. In that sense, Spinoza’s natura naturans and Rovelli’s relational ontology are saying the same thing: being is event, structure is process, substance is relation-in-motion.

Where I would add a small inflection is here: if relation is substance, then the quality of relation - its affective tone - matters metaphysically. The moment we feel compassion, we’re not adding sentiment to a neutral network; we’re glimpsing the network’s self-recognition. The ethical isn’t an overlay upon the physical - it’s the physical come to consciousness of its own interdependence.

So perhaps ecstatic naturalism describes the ontology, and compassion names its pathos: nature not only is relation but feels itself through sentient beings. When we care, the cosmos cares through us.

Excellent points, and I’m grateful for them - they go to the heart of what it means to speak of ethics as a real structure rather than a sentiment.

You’re right that harm, conflict, or even cruelty can enlarge the field of meaning in certain ways. Tragedy, trauma, and loss often deepen awareness and generate profound transformations of self and culture. But I would distinguish between enlarging meaning and affirming value. Violence may broaden the narrative field, but it does so through negation - by showing what breaks when relation collapses. Compassion, by contrast, reveals what holds the field together. Both are revelatory; one is diagnostic, the other sustaining.

To your question: “Why privilege one over the other?” - because only compassion can make coexistence coherent. Fear, domination, and cruelty can organize relations, yes, but only parasitically; they depend on the very trust and vulnerability they exploit. To be loved or feared are not symmetrical options, because fear corrodes the dialogical reciprocity on which understanding depends. In that sense, compassion isn’t just “nicer” - it’s structurally necessary for communication itself to remain possible.

You’re also right that care can wound - that good intentions may be felt as intrusion. For me this is not a counterexample but part of the texture of compassion. Genuine care includes respect for autonomy and an awareness of its own fallibility. It isn’t perpetual agreement but sustained responsiveness: the effort to repair when our help harms, to keep the conversation open. The ethical relation is asymptotic rather than static - it’s the ongoing calibration of good within complexity.

As for the gravity analogy, I take your point. Moral life is not predictable in the way physical law is; what I mean is that the consequences of ignoring compassion are as consistent as the consequences of ignoring gravity. We may not fall at a calculable rate, but civilizations and relationships collapse all the same. Over time, indifference erodes meaning as reliably as gravity pulls objects down.

So yes - behaviour is less predictable than matter, but the pattern of what sustains or destroys meaning is remarkably invariant. We might say compassion is to coexistence what gravity is to structure: the invisible coherence that keeps the whole from flying apart.

Yes - exactly. I agree that the problem lies less in ethics than in what we mean by realism. If we imagine moral facts as entities “lying about the place,” independent of all minds and cultures, then moral realism quickly collapses into absurdity. But if we reduce ethics to mere convention or preference, we lose the very distinction between right and wrong that moral language is meant to express. The challenge is to articulate a realism that isn’t naively objectivist yet isn’t dissolved into subjectivism.

My own position sits closer to what some call experiential realism or intersubjective realism. Moral truths aren’t things but relations that hold across conscious beings. When I say “it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering,” I’m not pointing to a property out in the world; I’m describing a stable pattern in the space of coexistence - a regularity in the way awareness relates to awareness. In that sense, moral statements can be true or false because they correspond to the real dynamics of sentient life, not to floating moral particles.

This is why I keep returning to compassion. It isn’t a “fact” waiting to be measured, nor a mere sentiment; it’s the experiential disclosure of what sustains the relational field in which meaning, language, and value are even possible. If that field weren’t real, nothing else we call real - not science, not logic, not dialogue - could function, because all depend on trust, recognition, and shared intelligibility.

So yes, I accept your distinction: realism about ethics needs rethinking. But rather than abandoning the word, I’d redefine it. Moral realism, for me, means this: that value is as intrinsic to the fabric of relation as curvature is to space-time. We don’t find moral “facts” lying about; we find ourselves already entangled in moral space.

The difference is in the direction of fit. In science we change what we say to match the way things are. In ethics we change how things are to match what we say. Science tells us how things are, ethics, what to do about it.

Beautifully put - that’s a wonderfully clear way to mark the difference.

Yes, in science, our language aims for mind-to-world fit: we adjust our beliefs to mirror what is. In ethics, the movement reverses - world-to-mind fit - we attempt to bring what is into alignment with what ought to be. But what’s fascinating is that this reversal isn’t arbitrary; it rests on a prior recognition that “what is” includes beings capable of suffering and flourishing. The “ought” is already latent in the “is,” waiting to be actualized through choice.

In my view, this makes ethics not the negation of science but its completion. Science describes relations of fact; ethics transforms those relations through care. When I say “it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering,” I’m not merely proposing a new state of affairs - I’m acknowledging a tension between the real and the realizable. Ethical language, in that sense, is a kind of creative realism: speech that doesn’t just reflect reality but helps it remember what it can become.

So perhaps the two directions of fit meet halfway: science refines our understanding of interdependence, and ethics tells us how to live that interdependence responsibly. Both, in their own registers, are ways of aligning ourselves with reality - one by describing its order, the other by deepening its compassion.

Cheers. Don't credit me; it's Wittgenstein, via Anscombe.

In my view, this makes ethics not the negation of science but its completion. — Truth Seeker

Compliment would be better.

Compliment works. Thank you.

So it seems that the line between legal and illegal is not discovered, it’s negotiated. What matters isn’t whether a law corresponds to some deep moral truth, but whether it works well enough for the purposes of reducing cruelty, minimising conflict, and keeping social life manageable. So the foundation of most moral systems seems to be preventing harm and promoting wellbeing. We can certainly decide not to do this and see what happens. — Tom Storm

I don't think you're giving your 100% correct ideas about this the credibility they deserve: legality absolutely is a negotiation at every level. When something is argued in court, it's always a process of mediation (because you can always just accept the demands to surrender if it's you vs. the state). Even when there's an attempt to make a set of laws seem more absolute, like what was perhaps going on in the Old Testament, the various groups and societies still had to adjust their administration and make changes to them later on. In modern life, seeing how a criminal charge quickly changes in nature during the legal process is a demonstration of this.