Hey guys, I have a few criticisms of moral relativism that I don't think have been covered yet.

Are you ready for this? Drumroll please.

Moral relativism treats every moral judgement as equal. If you're a moral relativist, and someone attempts to murder you, you just have to say, "Okie dokie! Go ahead and murder me!".

Also, you're basically condoning the holocaust. Why would you do that? You vile bastard.

:rofl:

lol

Oh yeah, also, passionately expressing a strong objection to murder is like casually saying, "I like cheese puffs".

Moral relativism treats every moral judgement as equal. If you're a moral relativist, and someone attempts to murder you, you just have to say, "Okie dokie! Go ahead and murder me!".

Also, you're basically condoning the holocaust. Why would you do that? You vile bastard. — S

Oh yeah, also, passionately expressing a strong objection to murder is like casually saying, "I like cheese puffs". — S

What original philosophical insights, wherever did you find them! Best not let the opposition get a hold of such damning arguments as those, they'd have us beat in no time!

I am using the term "morality" as a rigid designator....

What counts as "moral" behaviour follows from one's notion of morality.....

It always refers to codes of acceptable/unacceptable behavior....

Is morality the sort of thing that can exist in it's entirety prior to language acquisition? If we follow current convention, it cannot, unless the written rules for acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour are not existentially dependent upon common language. They are by definition existentially dependent upon common language use. So, according to current convention. No. Morality cannot exist in it's entirety prior to common language. That would fail to draw the distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. It would relegate all moral thought/belief as metacognitive in it's nature. But it's not. All deliberate oppositional change in one's original adopted morality is......

language is not required for thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. It is required for thought/belief about unacceptable thought, and/or belief.....

So here we must make some sort of decisions. Some may include.....
1. Deny....; 2. Deny...; 3. Admit.....; 4. Reject....
5. Come to the realization that the written rules of conduct consist entirely of and/or are otherwise underwritten by thought/belief statements.....

If all thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour counts as morality, then morality - in rudimentary form - is not existentially dependent upon common language.....

What is it (Kant’s a priori practical reason) doing here? — creativesoul

.......

Last things first. Kant is how all the above even happened. You couldn’t have thought any of that without the machinations in your head. The ideas are yours, the words are yours, the very thesis is yours, and very well may have nothing whatsoever to do with Kantian philosophy. The formulation from one to the other to the other are......ooooo yeah........necessarily a product of Kantian a priori practical reason. Can I get an a-MEN, BROTHER!!!!!

Sorry for butchering your well-written thesis, and hopefully I pulled the pertinent bullet points. I understand the keywords as morality as a rigid designator, morality in its ENTIRETY, and the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable. Morality isn’t about our agreements; it’s always about our disagreements.

This gives me the most trouble: Language is not required for thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behavior because behavior follows from one’s notion of morality, granted. However, to say language is required for thought/belief about unacceptable thought, and/or belief (without recourse to behavior), still leaves unexplained what that language would be. Could it be because one can witness behavior in another so needs no language to judge it, but if all there is, is thought/belief there is no behavior to witness, hence nothing to judge. If there’s nothing to judge, what use would language have? I’d have to talk to somebody about what he’s thinking, but without any reason to talk to him in the first place? The only conditions under which this would work is in a dialogue about possible behavior, about possible relative notions of a set of rules, about morality itself.

Anyway.....well done; it was fun. Hope I did you justice.

well-written.

:rofl:

If the candidate had but one teacher or set of teachers all of whom held the same sort of unshakable certainty, and whose belief system actually glorified and looked fondly upon continuing to hold that belief even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary...
In these cases it ain't so easy to change one's mind. — creativesoul

If that is true, then it follows necessarily that lacking any evidence whatsoever, what was not so easy becomes impossible.

Is this what you were referring me to?

Let's say hypothetically that the whole world is sat round a table deciding what 'The Law' should be........
(Herein is the groundwork for universality, re: the whole world, implying each and every moral agent)
.......and I propose "No one can murder me, but I can murder whomever I choose". You might say then that is not a very rational suggestion because if everyone adopted it my first desire.....
(It is not a desire, it is to be a law. If adopted, there is no possible desire to do anything but what the law demands)
..... (to not be murdered) would be logically frustrated by my second (that I may murder whomever I choose).

OK. The irrationality lies in the inherent contradiction. If the law became universal, was adopted as spoken by the whole world, the second part of the law is moot, because every single member adopts that no one can murder me. Therefore, you could never murder anybody.

I suppose the notion of universality incorporated in the maxim is in itself not irrational, but it is so improbable in its adoption that rather than irrational, it is the more rationally negligible.

Yes? No? — Isaac

Basic functional society is enough and that requires that we get the social environment right, not moralise. It's like trying to talk a cog into playing the right role in a machine rather than just putting it in the right place for it to do so. — Isaac

True enough. Rather Utopian, though, isn’t it? Idealistic? You’re asking for something history has never given, except in small pockets the rest of humanity failed to value properly. If all we have is social environment and moralizing about social environment, and social environment hasn’t sufficed to render moralizing of no import........why not moralize? Even if dialectic on how to improve social environment so it becomes right, what is that besides moralizing? If it isn’t moralizing, then we’re open to arguing such things as economy, boundaries, relative judicial systems, etc., in order to arrive at social environment right-ness. And all those have at their base, morality.

If we follow current convention, it cannot, unless the written rules for acceptable/unacceptable thought, — creativesoul

Since you keep mentioning rules/codes, and especially since you're mentioning written rules here, can I ask just where these rules/codes are recorded?

let's say that Joe has a love of a particular part of the Amazon — Terrapin Station

I see what you mean, wherein the realms of anthropology and morality tend to overlap, something like Janus’ civil intentionality. Virtue ethics. That’s ok, it’s a viable consideration. My objection stems explicitly from the distinction I hold between morality the “rigid designator” and anthropology the subjective interaction.

To make it more generalized, the idea is just that someone has a preference of x that's not based on something else, but to make x obtain, some (other) moral stance is required, otherwise x won't come to be.

Re "rigid designation," the whole idea of that isn't really worth bothering with in my opinion.

That which is moral is always a rational determination, so “one should not kill” is just one more in an constant barrage of them.
— Mww

Fine, but not only a rational determination, the subjective feeling that some law exists (I wouldn't put it that way myself, but I'm trying to use your terminology), must come first, and it is this which makes morality relative. — Isaac

Interesting. How would you put it, and how does it make morality relative?

Re "rigid designation," the whole idea of that isn't really worth bothering with in my opinion. — Terrapin Station

That’s fine. I think it worth bearing in mind, nevertheless, that any discipline predicated on non-contradiction demands something like it.

That’s fine. I think it worth bearing in mind, nevertheless, that any discipline predicated on non-contradiction demands something like it. — Mww

You're not going to have contradictions across possible worlds, because then we're not saying the same thing, in the same respect, etc.

So for me the separation of thought from feeling and the privileging of one over the other, as expressed in formulas like "Reason is, and ought to be, slave to the passions" betrays somewhat simpleminded thinking. — Janus

Agreed. Good thing about Hume...he wrote in good ol’ English, no translational ambiguities. What he wrote is what you get, and of no great difficulty to understand. We know what he meant by reason, we know what he thought its limitations were which regulates its employment. Add in the conditions of the day, his empiricist bent, gives us what we see as simple-minded thinking. Still, it only took 50 years for his moral theory to be shown incomplete and thus sufficiently refuted.

I think his biggest detriment to moral philosophy was....plain and simple....he worked backwards, insofar as he tried to synthesize modern empirical thought to ancient virtue ethics. Which just doesn’t work. You can’t get Greek virtue utilitarianism to inform British Enlightenment sentimentalist plurality.

Kinda funny, if you ask me. People are so much more apt to think themselves as sentimental entities, than to think themselves rational entities.

OK, so I should have said any discipline having to do with humans in this world demands something like it.

It's funny when people think that Hume has been refuted when the evidence suggests otherwise. I doubt that many people who aren't Kant fanboys would agree that Kant refuted Hume on ethics. He developed Hume's metaphysics, but ethics? Nope.

My understanding is that Kant grounds the practical belief in human freedom on the universal fact of moral responsibility. — Janus

Another good point, and relates to what you said about Hume’s simplistic thinking. Hume was an empiricist, which makes explicit the principle of cause and effect be paramount in his thinking. From that, comes this:

“....It appears that, in single instances of the operation of bodies, we never can, by our utmost scrutiny, discover any thing but one event following another, without being able to comprehend any force or power by which the cause operates, or any connexion between it and its supposed effect. The same difficulty occurs in contemplating the operations of mind on body- where we observe the motion of the latter to follow upon the volition of the former, but are not able to observe or conceive the tie which binds together the motion and volition, or the energy by which the mind produces this effect. The authority of the will over its own faculties and ideas is not a whit more comprehensible: So that, upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of connexion which is conceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between them. They seemed conjoined, but never connected. And as we can have no idea of any thing which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connexion or force at all, and that these words are absolutely without meaning, when employed either in philosophical reasonings or common life....”
(WSM, 1737)

“.....It is God himself, who is pleased to second our will, in itself impotent, and to command that motion which we erroneously attribute to our own power and efficacy....”
(EHU, VIII, 1748)

Hume couldn’t conceive a natural connection between the “authority of the will over its own faculties”, therefore he was left without a cause for a given effect, anathema to an empiricist but sufficient for a sentimentalist. We don’t know whether he threw out the concept of freedom, or never even thought of it to begin with, but the point is, he stopped short, philosophically. Perhaps the shadowy ghost of infinite regress curtailed his intelligence....dunno. Left it to the heavens, he did.

Kant, an the other hand, granting Humian cause and effect in the physical world as given, thus recognizing the need for consistency of the principle with respect to the authority of the will in a possible metaphysical context wherein your “universal fact of human responsibility” is an effect and presupposes a necessary cause. But he was still at the mercy of infinite regress, for to suppose freedom as a cause necessitates it be at the same time an effect. What Hume didn’t consider is this:

“....I adopt this method of assuming freedom merely as an idea which rational beings suppose in their actions, in order to avoid the necessity of proving it in its theoretical aspect also. The former is sufficient for my purpose; for even though the speculative proof should not be made out, yet a being that cannot act except with the idea of freedom is bound by the same laws that would oblige a being who was actually free. Thus we can escape here from the onus which presses on the theory. We have finally reduced the definite conception of morality to the idea of freedom. This latter, however, we could not prove to be actually a property of ourselves or of human nature; only we saw that it must be presupposed if we would conceive a being as rational and conscious of its causality in respect of its actions, i.e., as endowed with a will; and so we find that on just the same grounds we must ascribe to every being endowed with reason and will this attribute of determining itself to action under the idea of its freedom...”

In short, Hume couldn’t prove a cause, Kant showed no proof was necessary. We couldn’t tell the difference between a rational being with freedom theoretically proven as cause for the authority of the will, from a rational being with merely the presupposed idea of freedom as the means for the authority of the will.

TA-DAAAAAA!!!!

Is this what you were referring me to? — Mww

Yes, but now I've got your quote inside my quote... Too meta! Anyway

(It is not a desire, it is to be a law. If adopted, there is no possible desire to do anything but what the law demands) — Mww

It's hard to fit my world view into the language of your deontology. I talk about numerous desires, within a particular social dynamic leading to rules, but rules no more strict than the rules of grammar. I'm trying to translate that into your language so we can see if there's any common ground, but you might have to meet me in the middle, it's not going to work if you want every proposition translated into Kantese, some just don't translate, there are presumption contained within the language that I just don't hold to.

The irrationality lies in the inherent contradiction. If the law became universal, was adopted as spoken by the whole world, the second part of the law is moot, because every single member adopts that no one can murder me. Therefore, you could never murder anybody. — Mww

Well, this bit is what the rest of my paragraph was supposed to address. It is only irrational if you take laws as absolute, rather than as signposts, and that is a premise I don't accept. Even laws in the strictly legal sense sometimes contradict one another and it is necessary to find a route through. So "no one may murder me" is one law, but "I may murder whomever I choose" is a law, the following of which would constitute a breach of the first law but, crucially, not for me. It would be my victim who would claim the breach. "someone has murdered me! And this is against the rule we all agreed to" (their ghost might exclaim). But I would respond "no, the law we all agreed to was that no one can murder me, and as no one has, all is well".

Rather Utopian, though, isn’t it? Idealistic? You’re asking for something history has never given — Mww

I don't agree with that premise, but I think, again, we do not want to get too sidetracked. Suffice to say I'm something of a Rousseauean when it comes to paleoanthropology.

Even if dialectic on how to improve social environment so it becomes right, what is that besides moralizing? If it isn’t moralizing, then we’re open to arguing such things as economy, boundaries, relative judicial systems, etc., in order to arrive at social environment right-ness. And all those have at their base, morality. — Mww

You could call it moralising, I suppose, but that seems rather a broad definition. Is surgery really moralising because at it's base is the desire to protect human life? Humans seem to function in a way they themselves report as 'well' in particular social and physical environments, and significantly less well outside of them. Maintaining these environments is often a dynamic feedback from the very social interactions they maintain, much like a thermostat responds to the heat it itself was responsible for generating. Morals, set out as a single, universal set of rules which every person is somehow compelled to follow does not fit this dynamic model.

Interesting. How would you put it, and how does it make morality relative? — Mww

As above. I see moral rules as emerging dynamically from hundreds of independent social interactions between individuals, many of whom want different things. The rules change, adapting to different environments and different groups of people. It's hard to parse all that in terms of universal 'laws'.

I appreciate the reply. But your argument is so tortuous and wrong-headed I cannot being myself to deal with it; it's just cleaning up a mess, and the mess is to big - maybe some of it.

I'm physically capable of murder? - Well, that definitely could be the case for some and not others. — Isaac

This is what you wrote:

But there's nothing irrational about saying I don't want anyone to murder me, but I shall murder whomever I please. — Isaac

I did not misquote you, because I was not quoting you at all. Here is what I wrote:

if it is reasonable that a) you don't want to be murdered, but b) you can yourself murder as you desire, then.... — tim wood

Yes, that just means ability. Had it been in my mind to reference a permission, I'd have written "may." But you're off on a riff that is not even tangentially related to what I asked.

And you apparently didn't see the "If." Ifs make a difference. Nor the "reasonable."
l

Secondly, even if one were to get around the 'can' issue. Let's say hypothetically that the whole world is sat round a table deciding what 'The Law' should be, — Isaac

But that's not what anyone is doing. Oh, wait! You're doing it, but it stands as a non sequitor to the argument, or any understanding of the argument. The whole question goes to reason, not to law or anything else.

Thirdly, the desire to avoid being murdered, and the desire to murder are not necessarily equal, — Isaac

Desire? Are you incapable of reason and stuck in desire? Here is how my post reads:

Not if you restrict yourself to expressing desires. How about as a matter of reason? Seem reasonable to you? Not, what do I want, but rather what is, at the least, non-contradictory? — tim wood

I am sure you understand this. Why do you write as if you do not? I do not question what you can desire. I question whether you can reason.

Fourthly, there is the issue of granularity. Even if, despite all that, we remain committed deontologists, but nonetheless psychopaths. We can simply re-write our law. I {people called Jim born on 15th July 1965, with brown hair, blue eyes and an evil mustache} may murder whomever I please, but no one without those credentials may murder me. Now, if I presume that is rational, then I may presume everyone else would reach the same conclusion, which is fine by me. — Isaac

As a psychopath, or even as Issac, you can write any anything you want. You can even presume what you want about its rationality. I can presume 2+2=72. But none of this is what my post was about. You're a smart guy, how did you miss that? Or did you miss it?

I suggest you go back and read my post. I invited you to counter it. All you've done so far is take care to evade, avoid, and steer clear of it. On the assumption you know what you're doing, why would you do that?

It's hard to fit my world view into the language of your deontology. I talk about numerous desires, within a particular social dynamic leading to rules, but rules no more strict than the rules of grammar. I'm trying to translate that into your language so we can see if there's any common ground, but you might have to meet me in the middle, it's not going to work if you want every proposition translated into Kantese, some just don't translate, there are presumption contained within the language that I just don't hold to. — Isaac

Now that I understand your world-view having a Rouseauan flavor, I can see why not. Wouldn’t work at all, would it? I’m willing to meet in the middle, so use your own language, but first let it be known what we are meeting in the middle of. Me as a transcendental Kantian on the one hand and you as a...what, virtue ethicist?....on the other. You tell me, keeping in mind this is a thread on morality.

You know, Kant acknowledged Rouseau’s major influence on his political and civil philosophy. In “Observations on the Beautiful and the Sublime”, 1764, Kant says “...I am by natural inclination a researcher ... and I thought that this alone could constitute the honor of man. (...) Rousseau set me upright. And I would consider myself more useless than the ordinary worker if everything I did did not contribute to securing the rights of man....”. There are also references to Rousseau in “Anthropology From A Practical Point of View”.

Re rigid designators, by the way, this is a good thread to introduce some of the problems I have with the idea:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/814/a-challenge-and-query-re-rigid-designators/p1

"Herd mentality" and "herd morality". Are these real things? Sure. How? They have an effect/affect.

They are ideas. Nothing more. Their effect/affect is confusion.

I've not proscribed any behaviour...

Yet.

Broken things don't work right.

Last things first. Kant is how all the above even happened. You couldn’t have thought any of that without the machinations in your head. The ideas are yours, the words are yours, the very thesis is yours, and very well may have nothing whatsoever to do with Kantian philosophy. The formulation from one to the other to the other are......ooooo yeah........necessarily a product of Kantian a priori practical reason. Can I get an a-MEN, BROTHER!!!!! — Mww

My report of Kant's shortcomings are existentially dependent upon Kant's words.

Kant's linguistic framework is utterly incapable of taking proper account of the distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief.

He and Hume are equivalent in that regard, as is all of Western philosophy that I'm aware of.

Funny thing is, that that difference is undeniable.

If one gets thought/belief wrong, then one gets something or other wrong in their report/account of anything and everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.

Kant's CI...

Now that remains more than admirable. His staunch rigidness against not being honest in one's testimony. His demand of always testifying honestly and sincerely. That remains admirable.

If the candidate had but one teacher or set of teachers all of whom held the same sort of unshakable certainty, and whose belief system actually glorified and looked fondly upon continuing to hold that belief even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary...
In these cases it ain't so easy to change one's mind.
— creativesoul

If that is true, then it follows necessarily that lacking any evidence whatsoever, what was not so easy becomes impossible. — Mww

Any and all evidence to the contrary of one's belief system becomes such as a result of it's being used as such. Prior to the use, what becomes evidence is not yet... evidence.

In light of that, your response doesn't make much sense to me.

Deliberately changing one's belief system in such a way as to later become standing in opposition, requires first becoming aware of it.