How are you using “concepts” here? Can you not be introduced to concepts with a society as the vector?

I think that I know what you’re suggesting. Regarding emotions, if the actual feelings we have are some combination of pleasure/displeasure and high or low arousal associated with particular circumstances, how can we have emotion concepts like anger, jealousy, etc. if they are not social constructs?

I think biology should replace religious morality. Understanding ourselves, and sensing wrong and right, should be an extrapolation of biological realities. Where there isn't a place yet met, go with practical wisdom, religious or not.

I think biology should replace religious morality. Understanding ourselves, and sensing wrong and right, should be an extrapolation of biological realities. Where there isn't a place yet met, go with practical wisdom, religious or not. — Josh Alfred

A very utilitarian approach.

"Goes some way" is a rather euphemistic way of saying what? Inadequate. — praxis

No, because it isn't inadequate in the context of what it can explain. It's only inadequate if you take it out of the appropriate context I had in mind, which is uncharitable at best, and strawmanning at worst. That's not doing good philosophy.

Inadequacy or 'going some way' is problematic in its deficiency. Clearly that's not a problem for you, and yes, it's a problem for me, and anyone else who is interested in an explanation that goes further than "some way." — praxis

Same problem as above. It's your problem, and anyone else's, if you have unreasonable expectations about what it should explain, and your objections thus far have either been denial of what it does actually explain, or an unreasonable expectation of what it can't currently explain because we haven't advanced that far yet.

That we don't have flying cars is not a reasonable basis for not buying a car. That's the kind of fallacy in your reasoning: cars are rubbish because they can't fly.

I'm not sure why you believe that emotions are any less dependent on culture than morals... — praxis

I'm not sure why you're making shit up and trying to pass it off as something I've said or implied. I said the converse, and my wording was different. I said that moral judgement is founded in emotion. Why can't you just pay attention?

We're done here, I think. I'm cutting it off short instead of continuing with the remainder of your reply.

That's the kind of fallacy in your reasoning: cars are rubbish because they can't fly. — S

If ‘cars’ are nature and ‘flying’ is nurture, I’ve been saying repeatedly from the beginning that both are necessary for a flying car.

Car + flying = flying car

Car ≠ flying car

Would it help if I drew pictures?

I said that moral judgement is founded in emotion. — S

It would better be said that emotion, as distinct from the most basic affect, is founded in moral and aesthetic judgement. Moral and aesthetic judgements are the foundation of our communal, that is to say emotional, lives, and it is within that context that more complex emotions are possible.

...

It would better be said that emotion is founded in moral and aesthetic judgement. Moral and aesthetic judgements are the foundation of our communal, that is to say emotional, lives, and it is within that context that emotions are possible. — Janus

I would argue emotion is more closely related to aesthetic judgement, whereas reason corresponds closer to ethical judgement.

Aesthetic preference is developed through the immediate experience of the pleasurable, and emotive valance comes to be attached to those preferences. It is important to understand that aesthetic judgement is ethically indifferent. It is not concerned with good and evil, but rather with the interesting and the irrelevent (qua. the emotionally stimulating versus the emotionally extraneous). Aesthetically, reason only factors insofar as it relates to emotional impulses. But, sensu stricto, reason cannot be said to factor into the aesthetic because in aesthetic judgement, the emotional impulses are simply swept along without any rational intention.

Ethical judgement is predominantly determined by reason, and although incidental emotional effects might coincide, they remain insignificant. Whereas the aesthetic excludes the sovereign individual, the ethical reinstates him as the deciding agent.

Before the movement into the ethical sphere, the individual is necessarily oriented within the aesthetic. The movement represents a negation of the aesthetic and all that it entails. It is a qualitative reversal, in which the individual turns from an outward focus on interest, to an inward focus on his personal responsibility. In other words, the focus of his judgment no longer pertains to his relation to the world (where his interest lies), but to the world's relation to him (where his responsibility lies). The judgement accounts for the aesthetic existence (how the world seems to be), and makes an ethical determination: how the world ought to be. The individual is subsequently beset with the task of conforming himself to the world as it should be, which generally requires him to subdue his emotional impulses through the power of reason.

But what is the teacher going to present --a set of words a la a set of sounds or text marks? Is that what concepts are?

There’s also (in addition to my previous comments about it) the relative value and narrative that order concept, such as liberty (high value for you) and sanctity, which is something that is undeniably learned though culture.

the relative value and narrative that order concept, — praxis

That phrase I can't figure out unfortunately.

Again, culture can influence values, but you can't actually be given values from something outside of yourself. Values/valuing anything is a mental phenomenon.

If ‘cars’ are nature and ‘flying’ is nurture — praxis

Then you would have completely misunderstood me once again.

Would it help if I drew pictures? — praxis

No, it would help if you paid closer attention.

It would better be said that emotion, as distinct from the most basic affect, is founded in moral and aesthetic judgement. Moral and aesthetic judgements are the foundation of our communal, that is to say emotional, lives, and it is within that context that more complex emotions are possible. — Janus

No, it's better how I said it. (And sometimes less is more).

be given values from something outside of yourself. Values/valuing anything is a mental phenomenon. — Terrapin Station

Still unclear how you mean this. A non-mental phenomenon can directly cause mental phenomenon, creating sensory data for example. In the same way an outside source, ie words from a book, can in-still values into our minds. That doesnt have to mean the value exists outside or minds, just that the source does.

I cut the quote short somehow, but should still be clear.

the relative value and narrative that order concept,
— praxis

That phrase I can't figure out unfortunately.

Again, culture can influence values, but you can't actually be given values from something outside of yourself. Values/valuing anything is a mental phenomenon. — Terrapin Station

I meant to write *concepts, btw.

What I mean is that what you’re suggesting about learning concepts may not apply to how we order concepts. The order or framework, such as a moral framework, is cultural, and is established and maintained with a narrative, various practices and beliefs, etc.

you can't actually be given values from something outside of yourself. Values/valuing anything is a mental phenomenon.

This kind of dualistic view is difficult for me to appreciate. It feels artificial and not particularly useful.

If someone intentionally made you value (or devalue) something, in what sense have they not given or shared that value?

If ‘cars’ are nature and ‘flying’ is nurture
— praxis

Then you would have completely misunderstood me once again. — S

And we know you don’t clarify because it would reveal the meagerness of your point.

And we know you don’t clarify because it would reveal the meagerness of your point. — praxis

I frequently clarify upon request, but, funnily enough, when someone persistently misinterprets me, or fails to get the point, I tend to become less inclined towards doing so. I am only human, and my patience isn't infinite.

I thought that the point of my analogy was clear enough. And I want to put this to the test by asking someone who I judge to be more capable than you in this regard to tell us what he thinks I was getting at with that analogy.

So, @Terrapin Station, what do you think my point was with the analogy that his criticism of my explanation is like saying that cars are rubbish because they can't fly?

But what is the teacher going to present --a set of words a la a set of sounds or text marks? I — Terrapin Station

From a certain perspective yes.

Is that what concepts are? — Terrapin Station

Concepts are abstractions from what I've appropriated in my immediate existence, which are communicated via referential signifiers, not necessarily words.

So, Terrapin Station, what do you think my point was with the analogy that his criticism of my explanation is like saying that cars are rubbish because they can't fly? — S

I'll try to save Terrapin the bother.

The source of morals cannot be found in human biology, therefore the belief that it can is rubbish.

As I said, meager.

Morals require biology and culture.

Well, at least you tried.

There are two possibilities:

1) You don't understand what you're trying to convey well enough to communicate it succinctly.
2) You're unwilling to communicate your point for some reason, perhaps out of mischievousness or embarrassment of its inadequacy.
3) I'm too dumb to comprehend your magnificent thoughts.

I would argue emotion is more closely related to aesthetic judgement, whereas reason corresponds closer to ethical judgement. — Merkwurdichliebe

I am not too sure about associating aesthetic judgements with emotion in the basic sense of pleasure, or at least not of sensual pleasure in any case. In my experience the arts at their best afford a kind of intuitive insight into what cannot be discursively explicated. a sense of a profound, seemingly magical, meaning in the greatest works that merely sensual pleasures, like eating do not evoke.

I think this is because art works invoke the presence of the other. There may have been a time when our food was directly connected for us to the beings it came from that this was also the case with eating, but food for us has mostly become commoditized, or so it seems to me. I think the same may be said for impersonal sex.

As Schopenhauer tells us, the aesthetic response is to that which is of no practical significance to us. It is what transports and transforms our consciousness. Of course great art can be, and has become, commoditized too, so for many collectors it is all about possessing precious objects, but I think this is already out of the domain of aesthetics, and is moving into the domain of self-interest and consumption.

In contrast I think ethics is all about self-interest, about what matters most to us, because at its extremes it involves matters of life and death, both for the individual and the community. The almost universal (universal excluding sociopaths) agreement regarding the wrongness of acts such as murder, rape, theft, torture, enslavement and so on, at least when it comes to those whom we think of as our own, is on account of a profound concern, a deep emotional investment, in the overarching importance of communal life. The myth of the separate individual with his private mind is very much a myth of modernity. It is, ironically, most compatible with the mechanistic, inevitably dualistic, model of the cosmos.

I agree with much of what you said there, though, and often apparently contradictory ideas just reflect the existence of different possible ways of interpreting concepts such as <reason>, <emotion>, <interest>, <responsibility> and so on, and the different ways in which they can be related together to produce diverse and perhaps apparently incompatible perspectives on our common human experience.

I vote for a combination of 1 and 2. I think 3 can safely be ruled out. It's quite remarkable how much @S says, without really saying anything at all. It's a severe case of Chronic Fatego. :wink:

Am I the only one who noticed his list of two things had 3 things on it? I think 3 was a good addition though. Perhaps a necessary one lol

Yeah, someone who steals infants would say that. :joke:

I meant to say that one and two are possibilities. Not to say that S’s thoughts are not magnificent.

There are two possibilities:

1) You don't understand what you're trying to convey well enough to communicate it succinctly.
2) You're unwilling to communicate your point for some reason, perhaps out of mischievousness or embarrassment of its inadequacy.
3) I'm too dumb to comprehend your magnificent thoughts. — praxis

Two possibilities and an actuality.

Would you like to take a stab at the point I was making with my analogy? Something tells me that you'll fare better than certain others.

Your analogy says that you will settle for a car because a plane is our of your reach. But it's not a good analogy anyway because at least a car is useful, whereas your "theory" is not merely inadequate, but totally useless.