The moral relativist cannot commit to principle, he has to view all principles as simultaneously right and wrong. The moment he commits to a principle, he becomes absolutist. The morality of the relativist is a phantasm. — Merkwurdichliebe

I agree, to the degree that I understand this yanked out of context. There's a popular game where a thinker pretends to have no perspectives or all perspectives at the same time. In my view, that's finally a bogus position. And if we drop out of the fantasy land of intellectual talk, this becomes extremely obvious. We don't thrive in this society long enough to learn fancy words unless we've been deeply trained on some fundamental things that we have never even bothered to question. I don't have to remind myself not to play with my poop. And that's a second point I should sneak in. Lots of morality is automatic, and it's arguably this automatic stuff that's decisive.

Yup. The task here is taking proper account of all that.

We all adopt(almost entirely) our initial original worldview, replete with morality intact. That's true for everyone, regardless of that which is subject to the individual particular situations(family, culture, history, society, etc.)

The morality one first adopts, and later comes to question, is (largely)relative to the situations they are born into and live through(take part in).

if we drop out of the fantasy land of intellectual talk, this becomes extremely obvious. — ghost

Be careful here. Not all intellectual talk is to be shunned simply because it is intellectual talk. Your post, for instance... plenty intellectual without fancy words. I like it.

The morality one first adopts, and later comes to question, is (largely)relative to the situations they are born into and live through(take part in). — creativesoul

I agree. I don't remember being potty trained, and I don't need a theoretical justification for the wrongness of hurting cats when I walk at night. Or of covering my mouth when I cough. So I'd say that within a culture the conscious moral discussion is focused on difficult cases where the gut-level principles of a culture clash.

Be careful here. Not all intellectual talk is to be shunned simply because it is intellectual talk. Your post, for instance... plenty intellectual without fancy words. I like it. — creativesoul

I agree that intellectual talk shouldn't be shunned just 'cuz. It's a fairly innocent pleasure even when nothing is at stake. And actually I have dabbled in trying to frame a relativism that didn't eat itself. It's like a chess problem.

As a matter or morality or taste, though, I like being able to downshift into real talk. We've probably all met a few people who can't switch off the video game and speak usefully about the real world that sooner or later we end up having to deal with.

I don't need a theoretical justification for the wrongness of hurting cats when I walk at night. Or of covering my mouth when I cough. So I'd say that within a culture the conscious moral discussion is focused on difficult cases where the gut-level principles of a culture clash. — ghost

Indeed. Our awareness of differences is heightened during conflict between opposing moral thought/belief. That is particularly the case when they've been held for a long time period. In these situations it is also often the case that there are innumerable other beliefs connected to them in some important way. Conviction of the moral variety can take hold. Righteous indignation can result, on both sides...

Indeed. Our awareness of differences is heightened during conflict between opposing moral thought/belief. That is particularly the case when they've been held for a long time period. In these situations it is also often the case that there are innumerable other beliefs connected to them in some important way. Conviction of the moral variety can take hold. Righteous indignation can result, on both sides... — creativesoul

I agree. I suggest that consciousness is 'summoned' to interruptions of otherwise smooth, automatic, habitual know-how. This is an old idea, but I think it's solid.

If our breathing comes to our attention, we can control it. But we breath also when we don't think about our breathing.

When something exists prior to something else, it cannot be existentially dependent upon that something else. When something is existentially dependent upon something else it cannot exist prior to that something else. When something consists of other things, it is existentially dependent upon those other things. Those things can be called "elemental constituents". When something consists of elemental constituents, the constituents either exist in their entirety prior to being a part of the combination, or they emerge as a result of the combination.

Those considerations are needed for establishing a timeline of/for the evolution of thought/belief. It's one part of a more complex process. It is not required for one to adopt and/or have and express morals. Rather, it is required for one to have knowledge of how we've come to have them(the origen of morals). It can also help parse out the different things that we attach "moral" to such as principles.

One thing that we need to address is prelinguistic thought/belief that is moral in kind...in other words, prelinguistic thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. My question is how can we account for the notion of "acceptable/unacceptable" in the absence of language?

Imo, prelinguistic thought/belief is limited to nonrational and immediate corellations/associations/connections - primitive assessments. From the perspective of linguistic thought/belief, it is easy to impose the terms of acceptable/unacceptable upon the prelinguistic form, but from the perspective of prelinguistic thought/belief, the faculty of conceptualization has not yet been developed. As such, there can be no concept of acceptable/unacceptable. Prelinguistic thought/belief is incapable of the mode of thought/belief necessary to create/discover a rational worldview, and it certainly is incapable of abstraction, which is a necessary faculty for applying more complex concepts (like moral principles) onto particulars. — Merkwurdichliebe

This needs addressed more to both of our satisfaction. Next time. Until then, just wanted to let you know that I'm working on this aspect.

Janus What is the ultimate source of morals...Strangelove! :razz: — Merkwurdichliebe

Very early in the thread I said this:

When it comes to social animals I think it has to do, not with the survival of lone individuals, where competition would be paramount, but with the survival of packs, herds, flocks or communities, where cooperation is foremost in, ultimately, making it more likely that the individuals who belong to those social collectives will survive.

I think it is emotion in the form of "fellow feeling": affection, empathy or love, as well as self-interest in the form of fear of ostracization, that ensures cooperation within animal and human collectives. It is for this reason that I say that valuing or caring about what binds the collective, and behaving, and for self-reflective beings such as ourselves, even thinking, in terms of that, is what is right and good for social animals; it is simply the best strategy. — Janus

And you responded with this:

To be clear, I was asking this in the context of: what is the source of morals? — Merkwurdichliebe

I haven't changed my opinion at all form the above insofar as I would say that it lays out the evolutionary and biological conditions for the advent of proto-morality, "proto-morality" being the kind of bonding social behavior that is accepted within groups of social animals. It's opposite proto-amorality would be deviant behavior which disrupts the order of the group.

Humans, by virtue of language, have transcended the merely instinctual imperative to adhere to proto-moral behavior, but they are nonetheless socially conditioned and inculcated into pre-reflective moral (and obviously other) worldviews, that form cultural and conceptual contexts, contexts only within which questioning of those paradigms may later become possible. And as I have repeatedly said, in this thread, the questioning is only relevant if it has inter-subjective significance, and could come to be inter-subjectively agreed upon. So, as a counterexample that proves the rule, if someone were to question and reject the idea that murder is wrong, that would put the person immediately outside the moral context of the community, and hence render the person irrelevant, since the community could never come to assent to such a moral revision.

And the flipside of all this is the other engine which drives and determines the communally shared and/ or enforced mores under which we all live; namely power relations. But again, I don't believe power relations determine the most important and fundamental mores; those that are concerned with "life and death". Those are universally cross-cultural.

Well said. Nice general outline. Also completely commensurate with what I'm attempting to establish with some common sense logical groundwork.

:smile: Yes, I am mindful that we don't seem to be in disagreement.

As we've discussed in past, and as I've repeated here in this thread... I'm not yet entirely sold that I have stumbled upon a basic framework that can exhaust all the important aspects of morality. However, if morality is the result of evolution, if it consists entirely of thought/belief, and if I have thought/belief right(from prelinguistic onwards), then the framework ought show some potential/promise(pun intended). Sorting through it all is quite the task. Impossible without others.

:wink:

I appreciate your participation.

...My question is how can we account for the notion of "acceptable/unacceptable" in the absence of language? — Merkwurdichliebe

The notion of "acceptable/unacceptable" consists of language use(thought/belief statements). As is the case with all thought/belief, thought/belief about those two terms consists entirely of mental correlations drawn between different things. In this case one of those things is the language use itself.

That's the wrong question to ask.

We cannot account for anything if we do not have language. It does not follow that what we're taking account of is existentially dependent upon being taken account of. Some things exist in their entirety prior to our account of them. Prelinguistic thought/belief is one such thing. Some of it is about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour.

How can it be the case that prelinguistic thought/belief can be about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour?

That's a much better question by my lights.

In short, pre-linguistic thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour can be formed and/or held(re-formed) when a pre-linguistic creature replete with the ability to draw a correlation, association, and/or connection between different things makes that connection between another's harmful behaviour and the resulting onset of discontent.

These things happen on a daily basis. They will continue to do so. What possible ground could serve to deny this?

Would anyone here be willing to say that we cannot form, have, and/or hold thought/belief about behaviour that we do not accept, behaviour that we outright reject - at that moment - simply because we have not yet acquired the common language used to talk about it?

All things moral...

I've been off the grid all day. I like the direction this discussion has taken. :up: There are some nice posts I want to address...

:cool:

What we need to do is discuss how morals arrive in prelinguistic thought/belief, both individually and culturally.

How do we define the rule maker, and the rule taker, and what are the details of their relation?

I like the use of the term proto-morality.

However, if morality is the result of evolution — creativesoul

Under our criterion, it would be thought/belief about evolution, by which we could talk about evolution of thought/belief. It is very paradoxical.

@Janus

I might call this primitive ethics. I have trouble understanding ape morality. :grin: Nevertheless, it does count as "moral-in-kind"

I have previously agreed with myself that morality pertains to thought/belief about right/wrong in respect to human thought/belief/intent/behavior. By that, I meant to rule out proto-morality as a domain of morals, not to say is isn't a necessary source of morals.

What we need to do is discuss how morals arrive in prelinguistic thought/belief, both individually and culturally. — Merkwurdichliebe

They don't. Only rudimentary moral belief are possible(similar to Janus' "proto-morality" and some notions of "moral intuition"). Morality and morals both require language. There are no prelinguistic morals or morality.

Not all moral thought/belief is morality. All morality is moral thought/belief. Not all moral thought/belief are moral principles. All moral principles are moral thought/belief. Not all moral thought/belief are social mores. All social mores are moral thought/belief. Etc.

Under our criterion, it would be thought/belief about evolution, by which we could talk about evolution of thought/belief. It is very paradoxical. — Merkwurdichliebe

Not all thought/belief about evolution is moral in kind. Paradox is a result of inadequate framework. No need for paradox here.

What we need to do is discuss how morals arrive in prelinguistic thought/belief, both individually and culturally.
— Merkwurdichliebe

They don't. Only rudimentary moral belief are possible(similar to Janus' "proto-morality" and some notions of "moral intuition"). Morality and morals both require language. There are no prelinguistic morals or morality. — creativesoul

Ok, good. I'm glad we don't have to go over that again. :smile:

Not all moral thought/belief is morality. All morality is moral thought/belief. Not all moral thought/belief are moral principles. All moral principles are moral thought/belief. Not all moral thought/belief are social mores. All social mores are moral thought/belief. Etc. — creativesoul

Not all thought/belief about evolution is moral in kind. Paradox is a result of inadequate framework. No need for paradox here. — creativesoul

Precisely!

I'm glad you made these points explicit. :up:

I don't have to remind myself not to play with my poop. And that's a second point I should sneak in. Lots of morality is automatic, and it's arguably this automatic stuff that's decisive. — ghost

So I'd say that within a culture the conscious moral discussion is focused on difficult cases where the gut-level principles of a culture clash. — ghost

All conscious moral thought/belief are founded on myriad, subconscious, nonmoral and moral assessments that are acquired through prior experience.

The automatic stuff lies in subconscious thought/belief as embedded valuations. Yet, not all prexisting valuations that factor into moral thought/belief are moral in kind.

Yet, not all prexisting valuations that factor into moral thought/belief are moral in kind. — Merkwurdichliebe

I agree. I guess I was generally trying to point how much of our morality is 'beneath' the artificial theories we construct on top of that darkness. I'd say that the ultimate source of morals is as obscure as why there is something rather than nothing. But we can naturally think in terms of our genetic and historical evolution. This connects to the complexities of what we mean by 'source' and 'explanation.' Roughly I'd say that the human intellect looks for the knobs and handles by which it can control its environment, including its social environment. Even if we sometimes don't have the power to turn those knobs (by going back and time and changing history or the human genome), we look for them and contemplate alternate realities resulting from alternate settings, etc.

As a matter or morality or taste, though, I like being able to downshift into real talk. We've probably all met a few people who can't switch off the video game and speak usefully about the real world that sooner or later we end up having to deal with. — ghost

I second that. There is always a greater need for more reference to real world examples, nothing gives greater sense to video-game speech (just as video-game speech gives relevance to the real world). A balance must be strived for.

A balance must be strived for. — Merkwurdichliebe

I agree. We don't want to be lost in unnecessary complexity, and we also don't want to be so anti-intellectual that we can't manage a good model. Theory-heads tend to underestimate the understanding of those more careful about their style, I think. And anti-intellectualism can sometimes just be stupid and see nonsense in that which it hasn't had patience or ability for. To me this is like an existential issue. One can never be sure. The theory-head (or mystic) could be lying to himself. The anti-intellectual might just be lazy are not quite sharp enough to get it. And then we have vanity to contend with. How much failure to get it is just vanity?

I agree. I guess I was generally trying to point how much of our morality is 'beneath' the artificial theories we construct on top of that darkness. I'd say that the ultimate source of morals is as obscure as why there is something rather than nothing. But we can naturally think in terms of our genetic and historical evolution. — ghost

Consciousness is a ship at sea. It cannot ever hope to fathom the depths of its necessity. But we might be able to go fishing, and catch some reasonable genetic or historic explanations. I like fishing.

Consciousness is a ship at sea. It cannot ever hope to fathom the depths of its necessity. But we might be able to go fishing, and catch some reasonable genetic or historic explanations. I like fishing. — Merkwurdichliebe

I agree. I like noticing the darkness that surrounds us...but then getting out my fishing pole. I'm at peace with our ultimate ignorance. There is even something beautiful about an existence that is too large for our finite, problem-oriented minds. What's the alternative, after all? An endless game of Donkey Kong?

I like noticing the darkness that surrounds us...but then getting out my fishing pole. I'm at peace with our ultimate ignorance. There is even something beautiful about an existence that is too large for our finite problem-oriented minds. — ghost

Well put, the more we know, the less we know. This is why I embrace 'Socratic ignorance '.