My core principles are...
That such a contest of opinion is settled by comparing and measuring the candidates against a common scale, namely that of the experiential phenomena accessible in common by everyone, and opinions that cannot be thus tested are thereby disqualified. (A position I call "phenomenalism", and its negation "transcendentalism"). — Pfhorrest
I'm not saying that philosophical questions should be settled by appeal to people's intuition from their life experiences, I'm saying that a core philosophical answer (that I'm not presenting an argument for here, just stating that it's the answer I settled on), an answer to a question about how to answer questions, is "answer them by appealing to phenomenal experiences". — Pfhorrest
Well then you're describing science, not philosophy — Isaac
So you're saying that the answer to the question "how should we settle questions" is "by reference to common phenomenal experience", which is science. Isn't that just positivism? Not that that's a problem, just that it seems a rather long way round of revisiting a prior philosophical tradition. — Isaac
analogous methods for answering normative or prescriptive questions. — Pfhorrest
In defending why you should do science instead of something else, you're doing philosophy. — Pfhorrest
So by what should the correctness of answers to these questions be judged, if not common phenomenal experience (which we've just established is science)? — Isaac
...and in that establish the groundwork for ethical sciences: not physical (empirical) sciences applied to ethical questions, but an analogous kind of investigation, appealing to experiences of things seeming good or bad instead of experiences of things seeming true or false, to put it roughly.on normative questions I also advocate appeal to hedonic experiences in a way analogous to the appeal to empirical experiences on factual questions. — Pfhorrest
an analogous kind of investigation, appealing to experiences of things seeming good or bad — Pfhorrest
There are plenty of cases of shared agreement about things "seeming good or bad" as in sharing the same hedonic experience of the same phenomenon. Many of the same kinds of thing cause pain, hunger, etc, all kinds of hedonic experiences, in most people. — Pfhorrest
Yes, but there's is not a shared phenomenal experience that pain is 'bad'. — Isaac
Many people seems to expect the use of the term 'bad' to do something other than refer to pain. — Isaac
If something doesn’t feel bad, how can it be called pain? Pain, or suffering more generally, is a bad-feeling experience. — Pfhorrest
people who think that things can be bad even though they hurt nobody reject hedonism, and I think they’re wrong. — Pfhorrest
I think it can be shown that they are wrong. That’s how disagreement works. — Pfhorrest
They feel (or see) pain and do not feel that it is 'bad', in a moral sense. — Isaac
You get that when I say "seeming good or bad", I don't mean you look at some situation not involving you and "sense" its morality, right? We don't confirm empirical observations by looking at the people making the observation and intuiting whether they seem to have it right or not. We confirm them by standing in the same place as them and seeing if we see the same things. Likewise, you confirm a hedonic experience by standing in the same circumstance as someone who reported having it and seeing if you feel the same way in that circumstance. If so, then that's "ethical data" that needs to be accounted for. — Pfhorrest
you confirm a hedonic experience by standing in the same circumstance as someone who reported having it and seeing if you feel the same way in that circumstance. If so, then that's "ethical data" that needs to be accounted for. — Pfhorrest
Whether hedonic experience equates to moral 'goid' and 'bad' is the matter in dispute. You cannot resolve that issue using the method you outlined because there is no shared phenomenal experience of hedonic experience equating to moral 'good' and 'bad'. The feeling that it does/doesn't varies widely. — Isaac
That there is such a thing as a correct opinion, in a sense beyond mere subjective agreement. (A position I call "objectivism", and its negation "nihilism".) — Pfhorrest
the initial state of inquiry is one of several opinions competing as equal candidates, none either winning or losing out by default, but each remaining a live possibility until it is shown to be worse than the others — Pfhorrest
The first head-scratcher for me is the compatibility of objectivism with phenomonalism. Isn't the acceptance of the phenomological limit rather at odds with the idea that I have direct sensation of reality? And why do I need to even appeal to shared phenomena if my knowledge is objective? — Kenosha Kid
And is a philosophy of what's-right-for-me truly compatible with liberalism? For instance, can:
the initial state of inquiry is one of several opinions competing as equal candidates, none either winning or losing out by default, but each remaining a live possibility until it is shown to be worse than the others
— Pfhorrest
be said to be compatible with objectivism? — Kenosha Kid
Tell me how you justify empiricism without appeal to empiricism. — Pfhorrest
I think empiricism about the external world is something which cannot really be doubted, so I don't think it requires a justification. — Isaac
you're presenting something as the case (and claiming to be able to argue for it) that is absolutely not judicable by reference to common phenomenal experience. — Isaac
It would seem odd to me for some alien anthropologists to take a view that, whatever it is, there was a right answer to a human question that did not exist at any time during the lifetime of humanity. — Kenosha Kid
It is not that I disbelieve that some phenomonological thing has an underlying objective reality necessarily, more that it's easier to dismiss false beliefs about that reality than it is to justify good ones. — Kenosha Kid
am absolutely not saying that hedonism can be empirically proven. Hedonic experiences are a KIND of phenomenal experience, the prescriptive analogue to the descriptive kind of experience we call empirical. I am saying that appeal to common (shared) experiences of that kind is how to settle normative questions — Pfhorrest
Most people agree on some level that pain is bad, just like most people generally believe their eyes. — Pfhorrest
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