Okay, so what is evidence of any implicit values of life and well-being, or where does that obtain/what is it a property of, etc.? — Terrapin Station
“....Empirical principles are wholly incapable of serving as a foundation for moral laws. ..." — Mww
Here are some things which it makes sense to call natural: trees, grass, oxygen, mountains, rocks, rivers. Morality is like this?? — S
Eudaimonia is popular again. And that's fine - it's a worthy goal. But I would maintain that it's not what might be called a principle good. And I'd argue for that using the open question argument. — Banno
In other words we expect them to feel that value, and we expect their thoughts and actions to reflect that feeling. — Janus
Exactly. Yet ethical subjectivism erases just that distinction by treating morality and the Will to Power as categorically equivalent.
— Andrew M
I think you are distorting the meaning of the Will to Power here. The thing is that though there are common moral codes that most of us accept as necessary for harmonious social life, each of us (those who think for themselves at least) has our own variant that diverges more or less from those common moral codes to enact our own conception of our individual flourishing. — Janus
The evidence of those implicit values is that a model assuming them makes successful predictions (and, in addition, is explanatory). Suppose that Bob has a bottle of water and a bottle of poison on the bench and that he is thirsty. The bottles are clearly identified. I predict that Bob will drink from the bottle of water, not the bottle of poison. I would predict this, even without knowing Bob or asking him what his preferences are. — Andrew M
Morality is an abstraction (or pattern or form), not a concrete particular like the above things. However it is an abstraction over particulars and natural processes and so is similarly natural. As a familiar example of a natural abstraction, consider the center of mass in physics.
The particulars in the case of morality are actions like murdering people and kicking puppies. These actions occur in the natural world.
So the issue, I think, is not one of natural versus artificial, but of whether there is a natural moral standard that is well-motivated (and useful) versus standards that are artificial (or subjective).
Which is where Schelling points come in. But I'll leave it there for now in case you disagree with any of the above. — Andrew M
The full argument may not be there yet. But I think we should be able to say that the good has something to do with (sentient) life and well-being. A kicked puppy is not a happy puppy.
— Andrew M
An approach that might work is looking at capabilities. Martha Nausbaum. Usable stuff. — Banno
You are hopelessly befuddled*. Morality is not reducible to biology any more than concepts like 'marriage', 'money' etc, or more to the point, "beauty", "virtue", "the good" and so on. (Speaking of the trivially obvious... ) — Baden
The complement nonmental phenomena to subjective experiences are brain states, which are physical configurations of a biological brain. i.e. We can observe/measure brain states with instruments. They are in that sense part of the 'objective' realm. — Baden
The evidence of those implicit values is that a model assuming them makes successful predictions (and, in addition, is explanatory). Suppose that Bob has a bottle of water and a bottle of poison on the bench and that he is thirsty. The bottles are clearly identified. I predict that Bob will drink from the bottle of water, not the bottle of poison. I would predict this, even without knowing Bob or asking him what his preferences are. — Andrew M
I don't find your claim that goodness is a thing that's conceived of that's not linguistic disagreeable enough to pursue an argument against it. — S
I asked you to give me an example of what you meant when you said that "not all conceptions of goodness can account for that which exists prior to our conceptions" to help me understand what you're getting at. I brought up a rock, but that didn't seem relevant. You still don't seem to have provided an example. You instead seem to want to skip ahead and pursue your own agenda, turning this back around on me, responding to a question with another question which redirects, which I find quite annoying. — S
That's fine. But I understand the Will to Power as a wholesale rejection of morality, not a tinkering at the edges. Do I have that wrong? — Andrew M
Some conceptions are of that which exist in their entirety prior to being conceived. — creativesoul
If goodness were nothing more than our own personal like/dislikes or something similar that arises from metacognitive endeavors, — creativesoul
then it would be existentially dependent upon language, as would our knowledge of it. — creativesoul
Some conceptions are of that which exist in their entirety prior to being conceived.
— creativesoul
It's a mystery to me what that might be saying/what it might amount to. — Terrapin Station
I also think there's a significant difference between saying that morality consists in rules and saying that it consists in judgements. — Janus
Ethics is a synonym for morality. — Terrapin Station
I think it boils down more to finding a better way to talk about morality than fundamental disagreements about what it is. — Baden
Morality, at the very least, definitely has an artificial aspect. We came up with "good" and "bad", moral language, moral rules, moral principles, etc. We came up with moral concepts. — S
I don't think Nietzsche accepted the validity of systems; where systems are understood to be universal, overarching. It doesn't follow from that that his thinking was not systematic. — Janus
I acknowledge the objectivity there, but I don't think that it's necessarily right to call that "immoral". If I am one of those people, and I inadvertently act contrary to my aim of kicking the puppy, then I'm just being unreasonable. But if I have a principle which says that that behaviour is immoral, then sure, it would be immoral accordingly, but only relative to my principle, and only relative to my thoughts and feelings about its application. — S
It wouldn't apply universally, even if I thought and felt that it should. If other people reject that principle, because they think and feel differently, then I can't demonstrate that they're objectively wrong, since our thoughts and feelings are inherently subjective, and there's no warrant for a transcendent standard to override one of us.
You can get some objective truth in moral subjectivism. That I have never denied. It is objectively true that I feel that kicking puppies is wrong, for example. But the moral subjectivist would be like, so what? — S
Are you basically just saying what @Banno said, namely that despite differences in meta-ethics, normative ethics matters? — S
And then you go on to make some normative points, like that the way that you judge it, we shouldn't be greedy, and we should be considerate of others — S
Maybe, like Banno, you judge that morality should be about everyone, about how "one" or "we all" should behave, and not particular, like how I should behave. Why should I care in this context, whether I agree or disagree? That does not seem to have any relevance, meta-ethically. It seems beside the point. — S
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