Morality does NOT come from the individual. — Noah Te Stroete

Would you say that morality is something other than judgments/assessments of behavior? Or is it that you think that judgments or assessments can occur outside of minds somehow?

all due respect, and I mean that. None of that self description is close to an argument against the point I was making.

I'm not "choosing" to place myself somewhere on the scale, I'm making an honest assessment and reporting that assessment. — S

The difference is?

Morality does NOT come from the individual. — Noah Te Stroete

It comes from a variety of sources. One is religious belief ('the gods have told us what to do, so we ought to do it'), another is social programming ('our leaders have told us what we should do, so we ought to do it'), and a third is the one I mentioned earlier, the recognition that pleasure is good and pain bad, and the entirely reasonable inference from this that we ought to promote pleasure and reduce pain. It's in this third area that the basis for a degree of objectivity in moral truths is to be found. For example:

Proof that intentionally boiling babies is morally wrong

1. Boiling babies causes them pain.
2. Pain is bad.
3. Therefore the effect of boiling babies is bad.
4. Intentionally performing an action whose effect is bad is morally wrong.
5. Therefore boiling babies is morally wrong.

If anyone wants to disagree with 1, 2 or 4, I'd be interested to know their reasons. I'd also be interested to know from moral relativists here how they would go about persuading someone else not to boil a baby.

Of course none of the above shows that every deontological principle is based on an objective truth, and I wouldn't want to claim that it was; my view of morality is that some of it is based on objective truth, and some of it is relative.

BTW, I'm quite a bit older than fourteen and three quarters, but it's nice to have it noted that I have a fresh and youthful approach.

Would you say that morality is something other than judgments/assessments of behavior? Or is it that you think that judgments or assessments can occur outside of minds somehow? — Terrapin Station

I already gave my views of the extra-mental in I believe it was the “Horses are Cats” thread. Nothing we can speak about is truly extra-mental. Are you asking me if judgments or assessments can occur in the material realm? That seems silly.

I already gave my views of the extra-mental in I believe it was the “Horses are Cats” thread. Nothing we can speak about is truly extra-mental. Are you asking me if judgments or assessments can occur in the material realm? That seems silly. — Noah Te Stroete

So then how is morality not of individuals? Are you positing some sort of communal mind?

all due respect, and I mean that. None of that self description is close to an argument against the point I was making. — Rank Amateur

Ah, someone else who is giving off the impression that they've never heard of Hitchen's razor. Like for like is perfectly permissible. As for arguments, you go first, and then maybe I'll respond. But understand that your assertions can simply be dismissed or met with counter-assertions.

The difference is? — Rank Amateur

The difference is that of doxastic voluntarism and doxastic involuntarism. It is about your controversial use of the word "choice" in this context.

It comes from a variety of sources. One is religious belief ('the gods have told us what to do, so we ought to do it'), another is social programming ('our leaders have told us what we should do, so we ought to do it'), and a third is the one I mentioned earlier, the recognition that pleasure is good and pain bad, and the entirely reasonable inference from this that we ought to promote pleasure and reduce pain. — Herg

I would argue that all of these except for pleasure and pain come from society. Pleasure and pain are the foundation of moral feeling I think. I said to S that both together are sufficient for the moral truths. As a descriptive moral relativist, I know that minds can differ on morality, but I am not a meta-ethical moral relativist. There are “objective” moral truths. Whatever “objective” means to people. Cold-blooded murder, rape, child molestation are all examples of morally wrong moral truths.

It comes from a variety of sources. One is religious belief ('the gods have told us what to do, so we ought to do it'), another is social programming ('our leaders have told us what we should do, so we ought to do it'), and a third is the one I mentioned earlier, the recognition that pleasure is good and pain bad, and the entirely reasonable inference from this that we ought to promote pleasure and reduce pain. [\quote] — Herg

Again, if morality is a judgment or assessment of behavior, how can someone else make a judgment for us? If you're saying that we literally receive a judgment from someone else, how does that work?

Nothing to do with any teleological goals of society, unless you mean the survival of the community. Morality comes from society/socialization as we are inherently social creatures. Morality does NOT come from the individual. If it did, the world would look very much different. We probably wouldn’t even be having this discussion in such a world as the one you are claiming exists. — Noah Te Stroete

Sorry, but I'm not interested in a bunch of bare assertions strung together like that, as though they're a real argument. I already addressed some of this earlier, so you should start from what I said before, not from scratch.

It comes from a variety of sources. One is religious belief ('the gods have told us what to do, so we ought to do it'), another is social programming ('our leaders have told us what we should do, so we ought to do it'), and a third is the one I mentioned earlier, the recognition that pleasure is good and pain bad, and the entirely reasonable inference from this that we ought to promote pleasure and reduce pain. [\quote]
— Herg

Again, if morality is a judgment or assessment of behavior, how can someone else make a judgment for us? If you're saying that we literally receive a judgment from someone else, how does that work? — Terrapin Station

It was only for my third category that I was claiming objectivity, not the first two. They were just anthropological notes, and I don't wish to defend them at all.

To refer to commonalities in morality as 'popular' rather than 'prevalent' suggests a relatively irrelevant meta-level of judgement of judgements. Morality consists primarily in how people's judgements are borne out in action not how much people like or admire those judgements. Ergo, referring to moralities as 'popular' rather than 'prevalent' is imprecise and inapt as Janus pointed out.

E.g. we don't say that in modern society the prohibition of rape is 'popular', we say that the prohibition of rape is 'prevalent'.

So then how is morality not of individuals? Are you positing some sort of communal mind? — Terrapin Station

Through shared meaning, communication, socialization.

It comes from a variety of sources. One is religious belief ('the gods have told us what to do, so we ought to do it'), another is social programming ('our leaders have told us what we should do, so we ought to do it'), and a third is the one I mentioned earlier, the recognition that pleasure is good and pain bad, and the entirely reasonable inference from this that we ought to promote pleasure and reduce pain. It's in this third area that the basis for a degree of objectivity in moral truths is to be found. For example:

Proof that intentionally boiling babies is morally wrong

1. Boiling babies causes them pain.
2. Pain is bad.
3. Therefore the effect of boiling babies is bad.
4. Intentionally performing an action whose effect is bad is morally wrong.
5. Therefore boiling babies is morally wrong.

If anyone wants to disagree with 1, 2 or 4, I'd be interested to know their reasons. I'd also be interested to know from moral relativists here how they would go about persuading someone else not to boil a baby.

Of course none of the above shows that every deontological principle is based on an objective truth, and I wouldn't want to claim that it was; my view of morality is that some of it is based on objective truth, and some of it is relative.

BTW, I'm quite a bit old than fourteen and three quarters, but it's nice to have it noted that I have a fresh and youthful approach. — Herg

I don't see anything worth taking seriously in that. It is just dogmatism. You need to actually explain, as though speaking to a sceptic, why your reader should accept that it is as you say. Why not, alternatively: in accordance with my moral judgement pain is bad as far as I'm concerned? You don't seem to have put any real effort into defending your stance against obvious objections.

You don't seem to have put any real effort into defending your stance against obvious objections. — S

And you have put no effort at all into making any.

And you have put no effort at all into making any. — Herg

That's not how the burden of proof works, and I asked you why not, alternatively: in accordance with my moral judgement, pain is bad as far as I'm concerned? You merely assume or assert controversial premises and reason from that point onwards, which is the fallacy of begging the question.

It is not valid to suggest that it is the case that they're true unless proven false. And you can't shift the burden. That would be an argument from ignorance.

So how about you take this criticism seriously and try again?

"My issue is if you chose as best you can to place yourself close to subjective end, you are forgoing the right to evaluate the moral judgment of others. It can't just be subjective for you. Nietzsche has to assume the guy stabbing him in the back with a knife is just listening to his particular truth, and his personal morality based on that truth."

Nietzsche could conclude, for instance, that the man stabbing him in the back was operating on the basis of an assessment that not only the man, but Nietzsche himself, could accept as justified given the man's understanding. The act, then could be thought of as akin to a shark attacking me. I don't blame the shark ,any more than I would blame wind for knocking a tree onto me.
So here we have the assessment of unpleasantness without the attribution of blame or guilt or evil to the perpetrator of that unpleasantness. IS this still a moral issue or a pragmatic issue of figuring out how to defend myself against back-stabbers, shark attacks and falling trees?

You merely assume or assert controversial premises and reason from that point onwards, which is the fallacy of begging the question. — S

Very well, since you evidently lack the energy to discuss whether my premises are true or false, I will present my reasons for believing them to be true. You will find that I am not, in fact, begging the question.

1. Boiling babies causes them pain.
Babies have a similar enough physiology and behaviour to mine and yours for it to be reasonable for us to infer, from the fact that you and I experience pain when boiled, that babies do too.

2. Pain is bad.
If you went to a doctor and said, 'doctor, this pain is bad', you would have good reason to be annoyed if his reply was, 'ah, so you have a personal dislike of pain, do you?' Everyone whose views have not been tainted by bad philosophy knows that pain is bad - this is a truth we learn by experiencing pain. If you wish to pretend that you aren't aware of this truth, then of course that is up to you.

3. Therefore the effect of boiling babies is bad.
Entailed by 1 and 2.

4. Intentionally performing an action whose effect is bad is morally wrong.
'Wrong' here is simply the equivalent of 'bad' when applied to actions: that we happen to say 'wrong' rather than 'bad' is an accident of linguistic history. The material point is that the badness of the intended result of an action necessarily infects the intention with which the action is performed. The two cannot be reasonably separated, and therefore if an action is intended to have bad consequences, the action itself must be a bad action.

5. Therefore boiling babies is morally wrong.
Entailed by 4 and 5.

think we both just basically said the same thing re Nietzsche

Proof that intentionally boiling babies is morally wrong:

1. Boiling babies causes them pain.
2. Pain is bad.
3. Therefore the effect of boiling babies is bad.
4. Intentionally performing an action whose effect is bad is morally wrong.
5. Therefore boiling babies is morally wrong.

Justifying moral truths on the basis of syllogisms runs into the same difficulty as grounding truth in general in syllogisms. Formal logic is only as 'true' as the underlying presuppositions grounding the thinking of objective causality. There's a history to this thinking, which gets itself into trouble after Godel, Putnam and Quine. There was the discovery that language gets in the way of grounding logical assertions. An assertion has to be communicated, and there is no interpretation -free communication of an assertion about the world.

If morality came from the individual, there would be no need for socialization.
There is a need for socialization.
Thus, morality doesn’t come from the individual.

Maybe you could spell it out. What if we take a time machine to a hypthesized time when everyone thinks like Nietzsche. Then no one would make use of morality or justification or law or standard or ethics. They would talk instead of contingent perspectives that organize the world for each of us. They would recognize communities of loosely overlapping interests but without claims being made for rightness or wrongness. Instead, there would be relatively adaptive(for ourselves) adjustments each of us can make within the context of particular engagements within a community. If we would still want to call this an ethics it would change the meaning of ethics to the variabillty of effectiveness personal coping within situations. A more ethical comportment would be one where one's understanding more effectively allowed one to make one's way.

or kill each other like sharks

2. Pain is bad.
If you went to a doctor and said, 'doctor, this pain is bad', you would have good reason to be annoyed if his reply was, 'ah, so you have a personal dislike of pain, do you?' Everyone whose views have not been tainted by bad philosophy knows that pain is bad - this is a truth we learn by experiencing pain. If you wish to pretend that you aren't aware of this truth, then of course that is up to you. — Herg

Okay, so you're just talking about pain being bad in a sense that is not in itself morally relevant, in spite of the superficial appearance given the shared terminology of "bad". In that context, "bad" means something like severe or painful. The lack of relevance is obvious if you swap "bad" for "immoral". How do you think the doctor would react if I said that the pain is immoral? It's easy to make an obvious point, but you also need to make it relevant to the topic.

3. Therefore the effect of boiling babies is bad.
Entailed by 1 and 2. — Herg

All that that is really saying, given your explanation of the meaning of "bad", is a misleading repetition of your first premise: that boiling babies causes them pain, or severe pain. So it is just a truism. No logical relevance yet.

4. Intentionally performing an action whose effect is bad is morally wrong.
'Wrong' here is simply the equivalent of 'bad' when applied to actions: that we happen to say 'wrong' rather than 'bad' is an accident of linguistic history. The material point is that the badness of the intended result of an action necessarily infects the intention with which the action is performed. The two cannot be reasonably separated, and therefore if an action is intended to have bad consequences, the action itself must be a bad action. — Herg

If "wrong" is simply an equivalent of "bad" in accordance with your previous usage, then you're just making an irrelevant tautology: intentionally performing an action whose effect is severe pain is causative of severe pain.

That says nothing of morality. You are equivocating your terms, hoping that nobody will really notice.

5. Therefore boiling babies is morally wrong.
Entailed by 4 and 5. — Herg

You haven't reached that conclusion without committing a number of key errors, so it doesn't really count.

The lack of relevance is obvious if you swap "bad" for "immoral". — S

This has to be a category error or something fallacious. He isn’t saying that “pain is immoral”. He is saying that by our very nature, pain is something we instinctively avoid.

We would kill each other like sharks if thats the best we could do in terms of our coping in our world. If the idea of killing each other like sharks bothered us ,as is the intent of your bringing up that example here, the question becomes, what is the relation between this being bothered by a community of cannibals and morality?

Or , more specifically, since we already know how we have traditionally thought about our attempts to deal with our being bothered by interhuman violence, how could one understand a community that successfully minimizes interhuman violence without a traditional moral system?
The way that post modern, poststructuralist radical relativist discourses answer this is that interhuman violence is connected with the inability to relate to an other who appears alien to us. We dont do violence to ourselves generally, and those who we identify with as like ourselves(generally family and friends). Good and Evil have been replaced for poststructuralists by the opportunity recognized within any era of culture to encourage the ability to see the other as not alien. Their morality is not about enforcing a belief system , it is about encouraging the multiplying of belief systems. It is an ethic of diversification, which is what deconstruction is about. Radical relativism sees the protection from hating each other to death as freeing individuals and communities from being stuck in any given system of truth. If there is an evil for them it is the interruption of movement and transformation in thinking in general. 'Evil' for them is no longer something bound up with the content of particular beliefs, laws, actions but the very settling for any specific content as THE TRUTH.

intentionally performing an action whose effect is severe pain is causative of severe pain. — S

He didn’t say that. He is saying that the action is MORALLY wrong.

This has to be a category error or something fallacious. He isn’t saying that “pain is immoral”. — Noah Te Stroete

That was my point, which you seem to have paradoxically both missed, and yet stolen. Of course it doesn't make sense and is a category error. He is saying something else that is not morally relevant. It's not morally relevant to say that cheese puffs taste bad or that my toothache hurts real bad. It is morally relevant to say that murder is immoral. The fallacies are his, not mine. And the relevant fallacy is equivocation, as I pointed out.

He is saying that by our very nature, pain is something we instinctively avoid. — Noah Te Stroete

Which again, lacks moral relevance in itself. You'd have to make it relevant with one or more additional premises.

This misses the point in a similar way to the earlier point about brushing your teeth.

Pain is bad. (a given)
Pain is instinctively avoided. (another given)
Causing pain in other people is bad. (from the first given, and the fact that we live in a society as social creatures)
Causing pain in other people should be avoided. (From the second given and the third premise)
Things that should be avoided are wrong.
Causing pain in other people is wrong.

He didn’t say that. He is saying that the action is MORALLY wrong. — Noah Te Stroete

You are being careless and jumping to conclusions. I know exactly what he said. And I know exactly what I'm doing. My point was that he is switching from one meaning to the other without proper justification. And I was demonstrating that by consistently applying his meaning instead of covering it up with the terminology which he is exploiting. He himself said that "wrong" is just "bad" applied to actions, and his explanation of "bad" was not morally relevant, it just meant something like severe or painful. Simply adding the word "moral" in front of that doesn't magically make his argument work.

Think before you react.

Pain is bad. (a given) — Noah Te Stroete

Yes, pain hurts and is undesirable. That's what you're saying there, I take it? That's trivial. Or are you going to do what a sophist would do, and exploit the ambiguity of terminology?

Pain is instinctively avoided. (another given)
Causing pain in other people is bad. (from the first given, and the fact that we live in a society as social creatures)
Causing pain in other people should be avoided. (From the second given and the third premise) — Noah Te Stroete

Nothing morally relevant. Just sophism.

Brushing your teeth is good for your health. Cheese puffs taste bad. Pain hurts.

We act relative to goals and values and desires.

Who gives a fuck? The topic is morality. Say something relevant to the topic.