There are many here, including myself, who consider history to be an immensely important factor in the source of morals. But the discussion has not yet arrived at the point where we can get deep into it. But, barring any extreme interloping, we will get there sooner or later.

Right now, we are milling around the notion of ethical authority. I have posited history and consensus as the primary source of ethical authority. Not much else has been said about ethical authority.

I second the need for a certain degree of robustness... explanatory power(of the particulars).

robustness — creativesoul

I like that term.

That was a poor rendition of the scarecrow's song on the original Wizard of Oz. A lame attempt at dismissing certain recent meanderings.

I must say, I enjoyed your theatricality. :cheer:

Ethical authority is the power to write and/or enforce the rules regarding what counts as acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. That is to have power over people. All power over people is obtained in one of two ways. It is either granted by consent or it is usurped.

What is the most dependable method of approach to this topic? I mean, ought we not put good reason to good use here - sound - if at all possible. There's no disagreement concerning whether or not we have morals. There's no disagreement concerning how we come to adopt our first morals(original language acquisition). I assume that we all agree that morals must begin simply and grow in complexity along with our understandings/worldviews. I assume that none of us are going to argue that a zygote has morals. In general, human thought/belief about morals has grown in complexity along with our knowledge regarding the history of morals/morality throughout the world. A robust account/theory of the origen of morals ought be able to take proper sensible account of all of these considerations and more.

Methodology seems to be the contentious issue.

Like some of you, I also agree that the approach needs to be multi-faceted. Empiricism looks towards physical observation. Morals aren't just physical. Thoughts aren't just physical. Beliefs aren't just physical. Rationalism looks towards pure(a priori) reason alone. There is no such thing. Methodological naturalism requires quantification. Does existential quantification count? There's some sense of verifiability/falsifiability possible if we're careful how we frame our line of thinking/vein of thought. Conceptual scheme(linguistic framework) is paramount here.

I disagree with Witt on this matter. The ladder cannot be kicked out from beneath us - unless it is utterly inadequate for justificatory support to begin with. Not all metaphysics shares the inadequacies of metaphysics based upon historical dichotomies unless it is also based upon them.

Even then, we're not kicking it out by virtue of taking it into logical notation - contrary to Quine. Taking inadequate common language use into proper logical account transmits the inadequate explanatory power of the common language use.

Subject/object. Internal/External. Mental/physical. Material/immaterial.

None of the above dichotomies are capable of taking proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither.

All thought/belief is one example of a plurality of different things that consist of both, and are thus neither. The presupposition of truth(as correspondence) inherent to all thought/belief somewhere along the line is another. All attribution of meaning is yet one more.

Connections. Associations. Correlations.

Thought/belief is formed when a creature draws a mental correlation between different things. All thought/belief consists of mental correlations drawn between different things. All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content regardless of subsequent further qualification.

All meaning consists entirely of drawing mental correlations, associations, and/or connections between that which becomes sign/symbol and that which becomes significant/symbolized. All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content, regardless of further subsequent qualification as 'real', 'imagined', and/or otherwise.

Rather, we're systematically replacing the faulty rungs, until - in the end - they're all based upon, agree with, and/or effectively supplant parts of the current knowledge base.

Paradigm shift. — creativesoul

This was the post that ushered the discussion into a period of enlightenment. I felt it necessary to repost it in its entirety.

Enlightenment? You're too kind. That has yet to have been determined.

:wink:

Ethical authority is the power to write and/or enforce the rules regarding what counts as acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. That is to have power over people. All power over people is obtained in one of two ways. It is either granted or usurped. — creativesoul

The first relation between follower and usurper is found between the child and parental figure. I would surmise that in all ordinary cases, the parental figure factors as the first ethical authority for everyone.

It is either granted or usurped. — creativesoul

The result of this struggle to the death is "consensus".

is it possible to view the morals of a community as a sort of 'strongly recommended advice' to people who might wish to join that community without causing significant internal agitation or potentially upsetting another community? — Couchyam

This has some relevance in respect to ethical authority. As an example, it could be further simplified to have a wider scope of application and "explanatory power".

Ethical authority is found in many relations, between: individual and individual, individual and collective, collective and collective, and individual/collective and principle.

before moving to the more advanced considerations, we still need to examine the ethical authority of the individual/collective in relation to the individual.

I would believe whomever is your first teacher, potentially in daycare, to be the first figure of authority. I mean parents, yes—- if they were authoritative over you when you were 3-4 years old, not if they let you run a muck. I feel Kant really propounded many ethics of morals, and even Spinoza on the basis of ecclesiastical thinking, but I wouldn’t give them power, because any of a philosophers arguments are based on a multitude of pent up feelings of their past. I know Jordan Peterson has a Darwinian theory on truth and it is grounded in “good,” and “useful” moral values, but even this seems like trickery or a sense of something to be imperative, yet how can you trust a philosopher with an agenda? Lifting others up, can only be reached by oiling the broken cogs of imoral ethics? Why can’t a child argue with an adult? Because the adult would act as a superior judge based off divine wisdom and experience. So I don’t know if parents and teachers are the right way to find the right and wrong ethics.
Just my two sense.

So I don’t know if parents and teachers are the right way to find the right and wrong ethics. — BrandonMcDade

I appreciate your input. But to clarify, we are not attempting to discover right and wrong ethics. We are investigating the source of morals. Other than the definition of morals: "that which concerns right and wrong human behavior", the question of "right and wrong" is not our interest here. What we are doing here is meta-ethical.

parents and teachers — BrandonMcDade

I would say they impart a feeble and primitive morality to the child, but sometimes it can really stick.

I was stating origins of authoritative ethics, should I have mentioned Plato’s view of spirit? I apologize for my Tyron understanding of meta-ethics

How could anything originate out of the opposite of truth? Truth out of error?
Or the will to truth out of the will to deception?
Or the generous deed out of selfishness?
Or the pure sun bright vision of the
wiseman out of covetousness?- Fredrick neitzche

What you said had relevance, it was how you said it that was troublesome. I think looking to the history of ethical philosophy would tell us much, not to mention save us from retreading old ground.

You seem to have a decent grasp of history. Do you know anything about Hegel's dialectic of the lord-bondsman?

It’s basically codependency, yet unequally shackled.

Would you like to touch upon dialect or mien? Or would you rather talk of codependency? Most ethics comes from the fact we will soon reach an inexorable demise. “The anxiety of death.”

Would you like to touch upon dialect or mien? Or would you rather talk of codependency? — BrandonMcDade

I'm not familiar with mein, but as a dialectician myself, how can I resist the former, so both I suppose. Codependency too. :grin:

Most ethics comes from the fact we will soon reach an inexorable demise. “The anxiety of death.” — BrandonMcDade

I'm willing to stretch our thought experiment to the point of considering this. But first things first...

Personally, I dub a philosopher to have an indifferent approach to opposition or values, given they’re from a different order of supposed knowledge. Why is it there valuations and dialect change once they’re isolated or come across opposing knowledge or opinions? Where does this defense mechanism come from, and why is the conscious not allowing the host to understand of its own arrogance or ignorance?—- I feel this relates to the origin of ethics in some way unclear to me. Though I do wish to point out the source of dialect- may come from one being attacked or something that pushed them into becoming cold, and seeking of truth to become a defender. A defender to what? Their ego? Species? Life? It seems when ones learns more, and they have a rendezvous with the tormentors of the past—- their dialect becomes even more protective of themselves( so, in better words cold, and indifferent) to the point it can be self evident of their (unknown to them) arrogance.

Apologies, of it seeming rushed, but codependency belongs to the same defense mechanism, it’s nothing more than a fantasy, fantasy’s start very young through the ego to stop the torment given to them by parents or neighbors.

Why is it there valuations and dialect change once they’re isolated or come across opposing knowledge or opinions? Where does this defense mechanism come from, and why is the conscious not allowing the host to understand of its own arrogance or ignorance? — BrandonMcDade

That is the question. Why is it so hard to share our pressuppositions and build hypothetical constructs that may improve understanding by highlighting basic error? Arrogance and ignorance.

Apologies, of it seeming rushed, — BrandonMcDade

No problem. You shouldn't rush though. In philosophy, clarity is always better than speed.

Well both are fueled by the ego, and so the ego encompasses codependency, and dialect. Life isn’t what it seemed to be, when you’re 2-3, usually, when you start to come to terms with life, and death.
The ego doesn’t just show up after you got to see the world for a bit. It is forming and active even during infancy. Ego must be the origin of any valuations.

fantasy’s start very young through the ego to stop the torment given to them by parents or neighbors. — BrandonMcDade

This might be true, but we need to take a step back and as creativesoul says, do the groundwork, to establish that all conditioning, moral included, is some kind of trauma. I think that is a worthy thing to explore. Let's set it on the margin for now. (Could make a good thread, or not.)

The ego doesn’t just show up after you got to see the world for a bit. It is forming and active even during infancy. Ego must be the origin of any valuations. — BrandonMcDade

You already agree with the basic premise that we've built the entire experiment upon. What you call the "ego", we have termed: thought/belief. We have taken notice of everything you have said here, for example, the infant represents the age of prelinguistic thought/belief.

@Janus

The tide is coming in, and with it the interlopers. :grin:

What would you claim are the bases of inferences that others have moral feelings, thoughts and dispositions, and that their behavior is morally motivated? — Janus

It would be a huge discussion to get into because there isn't just one way that we do this, and it's not something simple in any case. We probably don't need to get into any discussion about it, because the point was simply that I'm not saying anything at all like "We can't know that others make moral judgments." If someone else believes that just in case we can't directly access something, then we can't have knowledge of it or can't say it exists, that's their problem. I'd not at all agree with them. Maybe it would be worth starting a different thread about how indirect knowledge works, but there's not really any need to get into that in this thread, because I'm not saying anything like "We can have no knowledge of others making moral judgments." I only wanted to correct that misconception. I'd rather we try to stay somewhat focused.

And by the way, the whole "internalize" thing wasn't my doing. Someone else brought the idea up. I only had issues with it because of what it implies, per the normal connotations of "internalize," especially keeping in mind various other statements made in this thread, with respect to the ontology or morals/morality. It turned out that "habitualize" was closer to what was being said.