As to the test for murder, there is such a test: would you consent to be murdered (not would you want to be murdered); do you imagine that everyone would or should consent to be murdered? And then why not?
— tim wood

But that is not a test for whether murder is wrong,its a test for whether I'd want it done to me....

And...back to the word salad again I'm afraid. — Isaac

Only word salad if you don't read.

Let's try flu shots instead. The question is not whether you desire one; no one desires to have a flu shot. The question is, would you consent to have one? And you might. It might be a good thing.

But likely you would not consent to murder because murder is not a good thing. And most people would reason it out that way. It 's really that simple.

And if you can't figure that, let's try this: Do you accept as meaningful the proposition that something - anything - is. X is. This table here is. Relative? Depends on how I feel about it? What do you say?

The question is not whether you desire one; no one desires to have a flu shot. The question is, would you consent to have one? — tim wood

Why on earth would I consent to have one if I didn't want one?

But likely you would not consent to murder because murder is not a good thing. — tim wood

Again, you've completely lost me here. I don't consent to be murdered because I don't want to be murdered. I like my life and I don't want it to end. I can't say the goodness or badness of the thing itself really enters into it.

Do you accept as meaningful the proposition that something - anything - is. X is. This table here is. Relative? Depends on how I feel about it? What do you say? — tim wood

Yes. As I've said before. As far as I'm concerned, there are two types of propositions that (or two ways of looking at the same proposition). In the first one might say "Dogs exist" and look at it linguistically. In this sense the statement is made true by agreement. If most people say dogs exist, then dogs exist. If they say it of unicorns and you can't find any, then you're just using "exist" wrongly.

But the other way of looking at a proposition such a "x is", is to see what verifying behaviour is associated with treating x as if it is.

But I can't make sense of a proposition such as "murder is wrong" in either of those senses. I've explained why to Rank above, so if you don't mind I'll refer you to that, it's only a couple of posts above.

It's here

But likely you would not consent to murder because murder is not a good thing. And most people would reason it out that way. — tim wood

It is first and foremost a matter of moral feelings. If most people felt differently about it, then they would reason differently about it. Perhaps now you can see why reason is the slave of the passions. But I doubt it. You seem to have made your mind up to argue against it no matter what. For you, reason simply must play a much more vital role, or else all is lost! Really, this has more to do with psychology than philosophy. You're actually not being reasonable at all, except perhaps in a more superficial sense. Underneath the visard, you're being emotional and alarmist. That has been quite clear from the start, actually. Clear to me at least. The first step for yourself and others who match your psychological profile is to come to the realisation that all will not be lost.

I more or less agree with every point you made there.

Why are human emotional responses so frequently characterised as mere preferences? Why can't they be, in the context of morality, profound and heartfelt passionate dispositions?
— ChrisH

Exactly. There's a weird bias against things that are mental phenomena, where the bias has it that something is far less valuable, worthwhile, worth talking about, etc. if that's the case.

Given how important love is to most of humanity, you'd expect this bias to lead to people claiming that love can't be just a mental phenomenon--and maybe some folks do claim that, I don't know. — Terrapin Station

Hear, hear. How many times have we seen this? In how many discussions? And over and over again. Forgive me for being pessimistic, but it is hard not to be when you witness stuff like this.

This loaded language was what my very first objection was about. And "mere" preference is but one example of it in this discussion.

Morality. All humans follow one after (mostly)adopting their first world-view via language acquisition.
— creativesoul

In my view it doesn't at all depend on language-acquisition. — Terrapin Station

Morality is codified rules of behaviour. Code is language.

Moral agency requires thinking about thought/belief.
— creativesoul

Because? — Terrapin Station

Moral agency is thinking about morality. Morality is thought/belief about the rules of bahaviour.

Reason can change one's passions. Therefore, it is not a slave to one's passions.
— creativesoul

Okay, go ahead and reason me out of my passionate belief that murder is wrong. — S

An exception negates the claim. If all reason were a slave to one's passions, then reason could not be used as a means to change one's passions, but it most certainly is. Therefore, reason is not always a slave to the passions...

Moreover...

The inherent issue with Hume(and he's not alone) is that his notion/conception of "passions" conflates all sorts of different things. Desires, wants, needs, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, etc. Reason is not distinct from any of these things. Reason is thinking about thought/belief. Thought/belief is chock full of emotional meaning, wants, needs, and desires...

I'm after what grounds all morality in order to compare it with conventional moral discourse.
— creativesoul

Unless you bring it with you, other than my brief and scattered remarks, and perhaps not even then, you won’t find what you’re after here. People are too bound up in projecting outward to demonstrate, rather than retreating inward to discover, those grounds. — Mww

We can try. We ought try.

Rhetoric is a sure sign that one's position/argument is sorely lacking. I'm no theist. That's a funny thing to say about someone like me... you clearly haven't read much of my writing.

I'm of the very strong belief that we can acquire knowledge of that which existed prior to our awareness and/or naming it.

Aren't you?

People are too bound up in projecting outward to demonstrate, rather than retreating inward to discover, those grounds. — Mww

You know, while I am sympathetic to the above, I would like to note that no one can do that alone. No one. No how. No way.

It always take an other. We are interdependent social creatures by our very nature. No one makes a mistake on purpose. Everyone's thought/belief system(worldview) is self-contained. We cannot see our own shortcomings. That takes an other... along with a certain humility... and a bit of shared meaning of course.

There's a weird bias against things that are mental... — Terrapin Station

What's weird about it? The bias is rightfully justified given the historical accounts ranging from Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Hume through modern day snake oil sales people, many of whom get paid quite handsomely for spouting rubbish...

Those accounts are bunk. The mental/physical distinction is bunk when it comes to taking adequate account of anything thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered. I'm biased against them as well, and yet on my view nothing is more important than having a good grasp upon what thought/belief is and how it works... If one gets that wrong, then they've gotten all sorts of other things wrong as a result.

Morality consists of and/or is codified thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour.

...commonality has no normative weight except for people who happen to be rah rah conformity. — Terrapin Station

This is interesting, to say the least. Did you come up with emotivism? Except for those who happen to be rah rah conformity, you say? Why should we equate what's right with what feels right, and vice versa?

:yum:

A little tongue-in-cheek...

:wink:

Haven't you ever taken an action that you thought/believed and/or strongly felt was good, right. and/or moral at the time only to later find out that you were sorely mistaken?

If so, I suggest you re-think the emotivism aspect of your position... clearly there's an issue.

An exception negates the claim. — creativesoul

And there is no exception to Hume's claim that reason is the slave of the passions, as opposed to your own claim, which only thinks it is attacking Hume's claim.

If the passion changes, then reason follows like a slave. If you could somehow succeed in changing my passionate belief that murder is wrong, even though that is practically impossible, reason would then do the bidding of my newfound passion like an obedient slave.

His point was not that passions can never change under any circumstances, including being reasoned with, although it is certainly true of innumerable cases that reason is weak or powerless. Reason is, and remains, a slave to the passions. It is our passions which are primary, as you tacitly acknowledge with your own failed attempt to attack Hume, since you tacitly acknowledge that it is the passions which we must get through to in order to have any hope of altering a moral judgement.

Desires, wants, needs, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, etc. Reason is not distinct from any of these things. Reason is thinking about thought/belief. Thought/belief is chock full of emotional meaning, wants, needs, and desires... — creativesoul

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason

I'm not quite sure what you're arguing here. My point was that merely "saving lives" cannot be presumed to be a goal above all others, such that any technology or lifestyle change which brings about this goal can be given objective superiority over one's that do less well in this regard. People have goals other than staying alive for as long as possible.

Im not, in any sense suggesting that society as a whole has a duty to make everyone happy, but I think we're really straying too far from our objective common ground when we start deciding that someone's happiness is not 'good enough' type of happiness. Yes, I personally think that getting your own way shouldn't be something that always makes you happy. I personally feel that some of the things people claim to want are 'ridiculous'. But I have absolutely no grounds whatsoever to tell them that they are objectively wrong to feel that way. — Isaac

My points was just to stress that even given a specific subjective feeling (pertaining to the inherent virtue of a given action, for instance) reason and evidence might still be of some persuasive and bias-escaping use (re: internal values consistency and consistency with foreseeable outcomes). All I'm really saying is that in some cases even when people make a direct appeal to feelings, we can still sometimes persuasively call a kind of bull-shit. I'm thinking of cases of naive risk-taking or naive risk avoidance. Some extreme sports give their practitioners an incredible rush (the kind of rush that makes life more worthwhile), but some of those sports are also extremely deadly. Wing-suit gliding is one such dangerous sport, so much so that there are no established long-time professionals (their death rate is too high). At some relative level of risk for each individual it becomes statistically likely that the utility loss of their shortened lifespan outweighs the extra hedons they gain from doing the sport (average hours before death is a good way to conceptualize the overall risk and reward ratio).

I'm definitely not saying we should forbid people from practicing this sport (although we should probably regulate it for safety reasons); to forbid it would be naive risk avoidance. But in reality, for many people, they're not getting the kind of long term hedonic quality and quantity that they would otherwise get (because of the high risk of death)./ It's not an example with a clear-ish answer either way, but it helps to expose the kinds of reasonable considerations we can make against our own feelings and the feelings of others. There are probably wing-suiters out there who aren't actually aware of the statistical likelihood of accidental death (maybe not many). All it might take to persuade them is a bit of data.

The "treating them like children" comes from the archetypal scenario that comes to mind when we resign that we cannot reasonably persuade our way through specific emotional whims, which is that of a parent trying to correct the behavior of an emotional and rationally naive child. Sometimes we must inevitably differ due to strong and immovable emotions, but sometimes our emotions are downright misinformed, and can be dislodged with the right leverage.

I don't think I can point-point any remaining significant disagreement between us, if any at all. The major sources of our earlier disagreement seems to have been the result of semantic interpretation (and maybe a bit of epistemic optimism vs epistemic pessimism)

The more important point, to me, though, is that following intuition simply feels better and so automatically has a higher weight in those situations where the right course of action is being weighed merely on a preponderance of evidence.

In other cases, where the evidence is overwhelming, them yes, intuition can be cast aside. — Isaac

I'm also interested in the value of intuition, and under my meta-ethical view its place is as a kind of intelligent decision maker (Ultimately a heuristic) that serves as a functional method-in-practice to help us make complicated decisions; emotion and feeling is its compass. Intuition can be entirely persuasive on the individual level, and in cases where intuitive knowledge is fundamentally malformed or mistaken, it can keep individuals in long-term patterns of behavior that are destructive toward their own moral goals and values.

The peculiar thing about intuition is that it is more directly the result of evolution and natural selection than are our conscious thoughts (intuition largely operates subconsciously (through evolution-endowed emotions), while the conscious mind is able to learn and react in real time to our immediate environments). Intuition is well equipped to keep us safe and help us reproduce across a range of typical environments that humans happened to find themselves in, in the distant past. Modernity being so very novel (a downright freak-show from an evolutionary stand-point), we're being faced with situations containing layers of complex relationships which human intuition has never before had to contend with. More than ever our actions can ripple across time and space in surprising ways which can affect other people, and the ramifications of the actions of others are harder than ever to escape by any means (pollution is a relevant example). No longer can we go our separate ways when we come to strong disagreement (which interestingly is the primary method of resolving severe conflicts among nomadic hunter-gatherers, obviously because the environment allowed for it). Our instinct for fight or flight actually poisons our conscious thought when it becomes a factor in situations for which both fight and flight are sub-optimal options. This view is why I approach the persuasive component of methods, frameworks, and arguments as so fundamentally important. The most universally persuasive argument becomes the most true in practice, and in terms of reaching our moral goals it becomes the most morally useful. The only caveat is that the persuasive vectors we choose must somehow we based in reason, observation, and evidence, else we're just a bunch of moral sophists who run the risk of succumbing to and promoting bad moral propositions.

Rhetoric is a sure sign that one's position/argument is sorely lacking. — creativesoul

No, rhetoric is a sure sign that one is a human being who's capable of expressing themselves in ways more diverse than making a series of barely connected assertions.

I'm no theist. That's a funny thing to say about someone like me... you clearly haven't read much of my writing. — creativesoul

No you're right, on reflection I'd go with messianic. Still, save that one for next time.

I'm of the very strong belief that we can acquire knowledge of that which existed prior to our awareness and/or naming it.

Aren't you? — creativesoul

I have no idea what this means. There seems to be a tendency on this site for people to just string words together without any thought given to what they effectively communicate. It's like reading the dictionary at random.

What on earth is "that which existed prior to our awareness and/or naming it."?

I think your point about optimism vs pessimism was very salient, perhaps explaining more about our disagreement than you even intended by it.

You talk about using reason to persuade people of both methods and perhaps moral values they might actually prefer if only they tried them (I hope I've paraphrased reasonably accurately). I agree with both objectives, but am more pessimistic than you about the likelihood that something as complex as reason will ever do such a job. Get a famous actor to say it, and you're on to a winner. Stand on your podium and make a reasoned argument and I'm afraid I rate your chances of success very low.

You talk about the good people of the scientific research establishments who work pretty hard to try and improve our lives. I just see the increasing "publish or perish" pressures, the financial influence of corporations increasing, the quality of teaching falling as workloads become increasingly untenable, a generation of students more interested in career climbing than curiosity...

We could go on... It doesn't seem to me that you've disagreed with the existence of any of the factors I've raised, and I certainly haven't disagreed with any you have. It just seems to be a matter of the weight we give them.

For me, your wing-suiters are a great example. Yes, maybe one or two might be unaware of the actual statistics and rational enough to change their minds if enlightened, but I'd stake my next paycheck on the fact that the motives of the vast majority can be explained (and indeed manipulated) better by basic psychology, than by reason.

Morality is codified rules of behaviour. Code is language. — creativesoul

(1) that would amount to ignoring a significant portion of the phenomena that people typically characterize as morality, moral stances, etc.,

(2) it either ignores or gets wrong what meaning is/how meaning works,

and

(3) it ignores that someone feeling one way or the other about interpersonal behavior--assessments of permissibility, etc. is a unique phenomenon, contra for example behaving in a way that doesn't upset the apple cart in relation to other persons' behavior precipitated by their feelings about interpersonal behavior. In other words, there's an important difference between Joe feeling that it's wrong for him as a 40 year-old to have sex with eager 13 year-olds and Joe behaving in accordance with the prohibition of such sex because of the social repercussions of it should he engage in that activity and be found out.

We can try. We ought try. — creativesoul

Sure, but only to the extent of patience, re: when barking at the moon and Wiki have equal dialectical authority, I find myself with nothing to say.
————————-

If one gets that wrong, then they've gotten all sorts of other things wrong as a result. — creativesoul

Quite so. As we can see here........

“Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and affections, it follows, that they cannot be deriv’d from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have already prov’d, can never have any such influence. Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.”

......passions presuppose morals, by Dave’s own words (THN, 3.1.1., 1739), and furthermore serve as causality for actions, so it is reasonable to suppose an underlying stratum with respect to the myriad styles of passion themselves. By relegating reason to an inactive participant in mental operations outside logic and scientific truths, and pissin’ all over the very idea of a priori knowledge, all he had left to work with was the various and sundry sentiments as an inherent objective reality in humans. Which is really a shame, because he did acknowledge that on which Kant built his entire tripartite critique, the distinction between speculative and practical metaphysics.

So close he was.....
“Tis impossible to tell what changes and improvements we might make in these sciences were we thoroughly acquainted with the extent and force of human understanding, and cou’d explain the nature of the ideas we employ, and of the operations we perform in our reasonings.” (THN, intro)
.......but missed by a Scottish country mile he did.

But we can’t blame anybody for operating under the cultural influences of his day, just as we all do, and his day was governed almost entirely by the amazing advances in science and technology, seen in the birth pangs of the British Industrial Revolution. On the other hand, all he had to work against was the foolishness of pure subjective idealism of the clergy. So...empiricism ruled the philosophical roost because everything having to do with anything had an empirical foundation.

Hume is credited in some pertinent literature for initiating a formal moral relativism. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those who followed would seize on the following, yet drop out completely the very notion of the sentiment in general and particular forms of passion specifically, as the ground of morals. Becoming colloquially seen as a version of “Hume’s Guillotine” (not the is-ought kind) because it in effect chopped off his own philosophy: if a passion is accompanied by a false judgement, and if it isn’t passion that causes a false judgement, then that which does, absolutely must be the only thing left in what Hume calls “the disquisitions of all philosophy”........reason.

“....Where a passion is neither founded on false suppositions, nor chuses means insufficient for the end, the understanding can neither justify nor condemn it. ’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. ’Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. ’Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. A trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment. (...) In short, a passion must be accompany’d with some false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable; and even then ’tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment....” (THN 2.2.3.3 . 1740)

I understand modern moral philosophy frowns on that which came to be when there wasn’t such a thing even as a telephone, and barely an indoor toilet, where now some wannabe with letters after his name manufactures a solution for which he then needs to create a problem. (Sigh)

This is interesting, to say the least. Did you come up with emotivism? Except for those who happen to be rah rah conformity, you say? Why should we equate what's right with what feels right, and vice versa? — creativesoul

Have I ever suggested that any view should be adopted because it's popular?

You should adopt a view akin to emotivism because it's factually correct, it's what the world is like.

Moral agency is thinking about morality. — creativesoul

Aren't you using the "capacity to act" definition of "agency"?

What's weird about it? — creativesoul

What's weird about it is that it's difficult to understand where anyone got the idea that there's something inherently inferior about mental phenomena. Especially since mental phenomena are so central to us as sentient beings. The need to place (almost) all phenomena outside of us, so that mentality is, at best, always just perception, is ridiculous. (And in fact, some people want to even do away with perception being mental, or want to do away with minds altogether.)

Haven't you ever taken an action that you thought/believed and/or strongly felt was good, right. and/or moral at the time only to later find out that you were sorely mistaken? — creativesoul

I've had different views at different times, sure. That's one thing that moral stances are relative to--time.

You talk about using reason to persuade people of both methods and perhaps moral values they might actually prefer if only they tried them — Isaac

Reason is important in figuring out how to appeal to someone, but re the present topic, you have to know the moral stances that person already holds, especially their core/foundational stances. Particularly if you can find some apparent conflict with other stances they hold, you can try to persuade them to another stance via an appeal to consistency. That might not work, but it can, and does often enough, that it can be worth trying.

It would appear, then, that if the persons of the relativists on this thread were gathered away somewhere and informed that the lord of the castle intended to murder them, the best they could do is say, "Are you sure that he wants to?" And on being answered in the affirmative, would have to reply, "Ok, then, we just needed to know that he wants to. As long as he wants to, then, we have no complaint."

Is that about right?

And there is no exception to Hume's claim that reason is the slave of the passions, — S

I challenge you to provide here a paragraph or two on Hume's "passion...". I have reviewed it here:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/.
This may not be the last word, but it's certainly a start. And on your dogmatic bare assertion and and reassertion of it, I'm persuaded you really do not understand it. In short, I'm calling you as bluffing.

It is completely clear that Hume's is a theory built on certain presuppositions and a model. That is, given the model, then if this, then that. Grant me what I want, and I can prove you're a rhinoceros, no exceptions.

It may seem that the first questions would be, is it right? Is it correct? Is it the way the world really works? Oddly enough, it is a mistake to make these the first questions. The primordial question must be, if the thing is to be understood as an expression of the author's intention, what purpose does it serve? What is its function in the "machinery" of the thinking in which it is placed.

If it is intended as an account for how the world really works, then it's fair to ask if's right and correct with respect to that criterium. If not, then not. But it then leaves open the question of what it's for.

Here is one quote that I think throws any understanding of Hume's idea here as an account of how the world works into question, if not straightaway under the bus:
"He claims to prove that “reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will,” and that reason alone “can never oppose passion in the direction of the will” (T 413)." (From the above referenced site.)

Chew on this for a while, oh gentle reader. Do you find yourself with a case of indigestion? If reason - especially reason! - is not in itself an action of the will, and an intended action, then what is it? And whatever it is, how does it become reason? I do not have an answer. I suspect there is none.

To understand Hume requires an investigation into what he was responding to. That is, I suspect he was not giving an account of how the world works, but rather offering a counter theory to perhaps Hobbes and others (so listed in the article).

This is not a simple topic. I do not pretend to have got through it. It's structure warns me to take it with a grain - or a tablespoon - of salt. But S understands it and can at least partially help us to understand it. Right, S?

Reason is important in figuring out how to appeal to someone, but re the present topic, you have to know the moral stances that person already holds, especially their core/foundational stances. Particularly if you can find some apparent conflict with other stances they hold, you can try to persuade them to another stance via an appeal to consistency. That might not work, but it can, and does often enough, that it can be worth trying. — Terrapin Station

Maybe. I'm not too beholden to my negativity about the effectiveness of reason to want to dismiss the idea entirely, though I might have sounded that way.

My experience with trying to communicate conflict and inconsistencies within positions (moral or otherwise) has been none too dissimilar to that of this thread. What seems to me to be a clear and reasonable explanation of such is treated as if I were speaking Greek, and what I get in return, by way of rebuttal might as well be randomly selected words from a dictionary for all the sense they make. I'm afraid it's all made me perhaps a little too cynical about the whole process. It is, however, quite useful for honing one's own position, so I can't dismiss the whole thing.

As long as he wants to, then, we have no complaint."

Is that about right? — tim wood

Why on earth would we have no complaint? I think I speak for all the relativists who've posted here in saying that we do not want to be murdered. The Lord wants to murder us, we do not want to be murdered. What is there not to get about that?

We can try. We ought try.
— creativesoul

Sure, but only to the extent of patience, re: when barking at the moon and Wiki have equal dialectical authority, I find myself with nothing to say. — Mww

:smile:

It would appear, then, that if the persons of the relativists on this thread were gathered away somewhere and informed that the lord of the castle intended to murder them, the best they could do is say, "Are you sure that he wants to?" And on being answered in the affirmative, would have to reply, "Ok, then, we just needed to know that he wants to. As long as he wants to, then, we have no complaint."

Is that about right? — tim wood

Are you voluntarily trying to come across as stupid?

It would be possible to have a good discussion about this sort of stuff where the discussion isn't solely fueled by straw men and playing stupid.

Is that about right? — tim wood

You really should read the responses from the relativists on this thread. If you did, you wouldn't ask such absurd questions.

What's weird about it is that it's difficult to understand where anyone got the idea that there's something inherently inferior about mental phenomena. — Terrapin Station

I think the idea is that mental phenomena are subject to bias and subjective limitations which weaken conclusions while if something can be confirmed seperate from those bias’s and subjective limitations then its a stronger conclusion.
Even if you disagree with that, is it really that strange?

I think the idea is that mental phenomena are subject to bias and subjective limitations which weaken conclusions while if something can be confirmed seperate from those bias’s and subjective limitations then its a stronger conclusion. — DingoJones

The whole notion that we'd be confirming everything independently of mentality is already the bias though.

In other words, if something exists only as mental phenomena, then all we need to confirm is that someone has whatever mental phenomenon. The notion that it should be (or needs to be or whatever) something additional is already the bias against mental phenomena.

You'd think that we'd simply want to peg what things really are, and not be biased against simple facts.