If I understand you correctly information about how our brains work is not appreciated here. Is that correct?

You all are going to discuss Natural and Existential Morality without an understanding of nature? Perhaps I am in the wrong room?

Are there different kinds of problems?
— Mww

Sure. — Kenosha Kid

What it is that makes problems of different kinds?
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are not detected by the senses (...) indicates some other mode of presence....
— Mww

But my point was that something is present to my consciousness, just not anything like a priori knowledge. It is not a rational thing present. It is emotions and attention biases (...) senses of panic, distress, focus, and urgency.....

And there it is. A different mode of presence, neither empirical nor rational. Let’s call such emotions and attention biases present as innate conditional qualities, in as much as humans come equipped with them, even if not immediately available for use, and the objects of them being, as you say, senses of panic, distress, focus, etc.

.....I am not presented with some voice or inter-title: "One ought to help the child." — Kenosha Kid

Agreed. I am not presented with....yet.

Emotions, the general term for a compendium of related objects, are all present in consciousness, are part of the contents of it. That shouldn’t be contentious. My thought is that morality is an even stronger innate condition than emotion and attention biases, or, which is the same thing, have a greater presence, but regardless, will still have its objects in similar fashion. If such is the case, then one of the objects of morality may be some arbitrary ought, which reflects upon and sufficiently characterizes an empirical circumstance, should one be present, or merely a possible circumstance not yet presented. In effect, the presentation of some arbitrary ought is an effect of innate qualities in general and morality in particular, as connected causality. And while common rationalization is yet not present, the idea of its possibility, is, and is represented by some contingent moral activity related to the ought. In this case, “help”. That I ought to help is naturally qua morally given, but what that help entails, what form I think that help should take, is not.

Agreed, as yet, a priori knowledge has made no appearance onstage, because rationality has not either. Natural predisposition is more like it, I would say.
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the person also presents to your rational mode some activity of his that elicits a feeling in you not given by the person as an object, but by what the person is doing.
— Mww

Of course! (...) we are in an environment in which moral actions must be rationalised.....

Thus is established that there is a rational mode, and that there are empirical affects on it.

......But my consciousness being presented with moral drives is not the same thing as my reason having their essence. — Kenosha Kid

This is confusing. I suppose you to mean moral drives being present in consciousness, or, consciousness being present with its moral drives included. Ehhhh.....I wouldn’t affirm either of those, for me consciousness has content in the form of intuitions or conceptions, everything we think, feel or experience, but moral drives are not those, but rather, depend on them. Nevertheless, I agree reason doesn’t have the essence of moral drives, reason is solely and necessarily the means to do something with them.

This is the old-fashioned rationalism I reject. There is a very real analogue to this in our physiological responses that can bias us in a given direction, and the empirically-verified existence of these negates the need for other sources of moral knowledge. — Kenosha Kid

You reject it, but do you testify that you never use it? I admit to being influenced by authors informing me about possible methodologies for my thinking, but do you honestly reference analogues given from test subjects specifically designed to show error, to inform you of your thinking? As far as I’ve been able to discern, knowing the mistakes we make in thinking hasn’t been countermanded by demonstrations regarding the strictness of methods for correct thinking. Being shown the errors in perceiving shades of gray doesn’t tell me what happens when I perceive a mountain, and knowing cognitive errors are natural doesn’t alter what beautiful means to me.

Yes, I believe the God of Abraham religions are the chief cause of some of our most serious problems because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam mean living with false beliefs and not science. — Athena

Yes, religion in itself has terrible effects. I do think it is immoral to produce people who cannot discern between fantasy and reality. I consider that "harm". I merely meant that some of those things you see as effects of religion are more like effects with religion having common causes. There is an impressive correlation between religion, conservativism, prejudice, nationalism, anti-intellectualism and capitalism, but that doesn't necessarily mean one in particular causes the other. Historically, nationalism seems to stand out as the unifying force, although each will influence one another. But yes for an even more stark lesson in how religion can destroy societies, look east.

If I understand you correctly information about how our brains work is not appreciated here. Is that correct? — Athena

Correct, but only by me. Well......sorta correct. I appreciate the brain for its fascinating complexity, and I only care about information on how it works as it characterizes the importance other people give it.

You all are going to discuss Natural and Existential Morality without an understanding of nature? — Athena

Don’t need to understand Nature in general to discuss natural morality as a very small part of it. How does one understand Nature, anyway?

Thread in a nutshell

Is the fact/value distinction isomorphic to the map/territory distinction when considering descriptions of evaluations of valenced (pleasant/unpleasant) events?

@Pfhorrest says no, because there are oughts in the territory; our bodies' sensations and their congruent expectations to be satisfied, These are based on descriptive content, and can thus be synthesized into heuristics that accurately describe the oughts in the territory.

@Kenosha Kid says yes, because oughts in the territory can only ever be mapped, so the fact/value distinction says they are devoid of the theoretically synthesised imperatives the investigation seeks to produce. Even if they concern morals.

Do facts about values say those values are right? No.
Do facts about values say those values are ours in a qualified way? Yes.

If there's a universal core of oughts that applies to everyone - a privileged flavour derived from necessities of human functioning by an intellectual synthesis, it seems @Pfhorrest wants to say these are true since they describe the deep structure of our oughts, and they are binding because they are actually occurrent. @Kenosha Kid comes in at this point and says because they are descriptions, you can't get behind the map of our oughts to get at the territory of any universal principles of morality without it ceasing to be a map.

Two different flavours of immanence accusing each other of different sorts of transcendence ("You can't get behind the map!" says K to Pf, "You can't get outside the theory ladened!" says Pf to K), each relying on precisely what is accused.

If I believe it is better to give to charities in Africa than in Britain, and my friend believes that it is wrong to ignore misery on one's own doorstep in favour of classier 'TV' charities abroad, I might refer to facts of efficacy (my charity has achieved more change than his) or statistics, but I have no recourse to a piece of evidence that says one of us has a more compelling case. Assuming the existence of such inaccessible source of truth cannot be justified. Assuming the existence of, say, gravity can be, even if the objective truth about gravity is very different from our theories. — Kenosha Kid

But you can collaborate such that progress is achieved mutually, improving both your perspectives on charity and as a consequence the practical approaches that arise from them. That's all fact-based objectivity is in any sphere, inanimate, behavioral or whatever, the constructive convergence and equilibrating of theoretical viewpoints attained by a united front of revisionary, synthesizing experimental processes. Objectivity isn't "out there" to be irresolvably disputed depending on your point of view, it is a kind of cultural paradigm that creates joint truth by human sharing. That collectivizing outlook is the essence of rationality, why reasoning rendered into this value system we call "rationality" is the core of ethics, and why our ethical ideal is subordinance of the unconscious to reasoning in many contexts. Rationality is the engine that drives objective knowledge long-term, no matter how fallible or inapplicable reasoning proves to be at any particular moment.

And that's the point. Objective nature is inferred from generalisation, not a single data point. — Kenosha Kid

But every single datapoint matters, and all we have access to are a bunch if single datapoints.

That is, you can present empirical evidence to someone with a belief and show them that that belief is credible or not. — Kenosha Kid

If they agree to consider empirical experiences as evidence. If they don’t agree on the methodology then you can’t convince them. Arguing why they should agree with that methodology is a philosophical, not empirical issue.

You cannot do this with morality. If someone disagrees with me, there's no means by which I can refer to a fact that makes one of our beliefs incredible. — Kenosha Kid

There is if they agree on a methodology by which to judge what is or isn’t moral. Arguing why they should agree with a particular methodology is s more general philosophical issue, not a moral issue.

If I believe it is better to give to charities in Africa than in Britain, and my friend believes that it is wrong to ignore misery on one's own doorstep in favour of classier 'TV' charities abroad, I might refer to facts of efficacy (my charity has achieved more change than his) or statistics, but I have no recourse to a piece of evidence that says one of us has a more compelling case. — Kenosha Kid

You do if you both agree on what counts as evidence, which is not a moral question but a more general philosophical one.

Interesting take on it, and it may help clear things up if I say I take a completely accurate map to become a copy of its territory. (In general, not just with this moral stuff: a 1:1 scale flawless 3D map of an actual landscape just is a perfect copy of that landscape).

But we did. cultural practices varied enormously according the what little evidence we have from archaeology. — Isaac

Sure, but the timescales of that cultural variation are typically generational, maybe millennial. But 100,000 years of staying in group sizes of 20-50... that's a tall order for culture alone.

We don't have historical data to confirm or deny this, but the thought experiment that keeps running through my head is this: A tribe of 20 or 30 people operates ultra-cooperatively, with fairly homogenous socialisation across two, three generations that reinforce the social biases we have. The group grows to the point where a) individuals cannot mentally manage networks that large and b) some non-negligible variation of culture can be sustained. This threatens the very basis of their social instincts, since no one can be sure that the person their dealing with is sufficiently like them to have the same values and react the same way. Disputes arise, confusion, aggression, stress, distrust, perhaps a polarisation of the group.

Baboons handle this by the strong imposing hierarchical structures which keep the weak stressed and subordinate. Naturally, it seems, we don't. Our cooperativeness appears to be effectively an intolerance to diversity that separates social cultures as they occur, like a schism in a religion. Whether that schism is violent or peaceful, who knows? We seem to have filled up the globe, so I'm guessing we generally divided peacefully.

The nature and consistency of this divisiveness seem very in line with those same inherent traits I discussed in the OP, which, to be selected for, required the likelihood of trust, accurate-enough empathy, and reciprocity. It is these things that would break down if social mores (from biases and mimesis) became plural and group sizes became cumbersome. It seems more reasonable to me that culture, if it gave rise to different socialisations, would have been divisive rather than unifying.

I think instead that cultures that eventually did unify larger groups, such as specialisation, law and hierarchy, did so because individuals had or thought they had something to lose by striking out alone. Agriculture meant that particular individuals within a social group were food-providers. Individual skill, more than teamwork and accurate mimesis, suddenly mattered and, if you wanted to eat, you had to be a farmer or be in his favour. The law does this too: it gives you much to lose by disagreeing. The church does this best: earthly punishment plus promise of eternal punishment afterward. And hierarchical groups do this by having the strongest fighters enforce social roles with violence.

In each case, the culture that unifies does so by having and asserting power. That sort of culture I can buy keeping us together for thousands of years, but these are largely variants of baboon culture. Deep down, we're small-town egalitarians. And I say this as a fervent multiculturalist myself.

If there's a universal core of oughts that applies to everyone - a privileged flavour derived from necessities of human functioning by an intellectual synthesis, it seems Pfhorrest wants to say these are true since they describe the deep structure of our oughts, and they are binding because they are actually occurrent. @Kenosha Kid comes in at this point and says because they are descriptions, you can't get behind the map of our oughts to get at the territory of any universal principles of morality without it ceasing to be a map. — fdrake

They're not even descriptions, but illogical abstractions. A description ought to be of something, but the only moral subjects are minds and, says the moral objectivist, these are unimportant. Minds are reduced to entities that can make true or false claims, or have true or false claims made about them.

There are two maps in my view: a map between potentially unknowable genetic and cultural is-statements and subjective ought-statements, and a map between subjective ought-statements and objective ought-statements. The first is characterised by a severe loss of information, as the rational mind builds conceptions about itself as a moral agent in the world to answer non-moral ought-statements and, latterly, moral ones. This is a loss because necessarily the agent has no information about why they are compelled to answer such questions. We rationally answer them, but we do not rationally decide that such questions are asked, rather we are compelled physiologically and neurologically on the basis of natures and nurtures that we are not typically knowledgeable about. The OP largely concerns this, and descriptions here are relevant at both ends.

The second map is where description gives way to imposition. It is pragmatic to agree a set of objective laws to limit edge case behaviour within a group, but these laws impose, rather than describe, moral truth values. Moral objectivity goes a step further and generalises individual or popular subjective conceptions to everyone ever according to some mysterious out-there law. There is no descriptive aspect to this. It might be advised by some descriptions about the person arguing for the rightness or wrongness of an act; it might be advised by some descriptions of consensus witnessed by that person, but the outputs are still proposals of imposition, not description. There are occasions when they might seem descriptive. I would predict that, while historically people have argued that the proposition 'slavery is good' is true, one could expect that almost no one would argue that 'it is good to be a slave' is true (hypocrisy) from which one might make Pfhorrest's case that the proposition is false with those attesting it to be true being either deceitful or in error. However, there are other reasons why the second statement is universally false. It is illogical to generalise from such consensus that a) the proposition is false uncontingently and b) all such values are similarly predictive, predictiveness being the reason for accepting other kinds of claims of objectivity (viz. science).

The lack of justification in this generalisation from subjective to objective values is proportional to the lack of clarity in the metaphysical thesis itself which, unlike other claims to objectivity, has no interest in how such propositions can be objectively true, why they have the values they have, how they relate to -- let's remind ourselves -- the only moral subjects in existence, or how we can ask questions to infer what their properties are, which is precisely why comparison to objectivity in the hard sciences is bogus in my opinion.

But you can collaborate such that progress is achieved mutually, improving both your perspectives on charity and as a consequence the practical approaches that arise from them. — Enrique

Certainly. Via discussion, two people can synthesise their independent conceptions to progress the beliefs of both. But that progress is still per person, and is manifest in them each.

That's all fact-based objectivity is in any sphere, inanimate, behavioral or whatever, the constructive convergence and equilibrating of theoretical viewpoints attained by a united front of revisionary, synthesizing experimental processes. Objectivity isn't "out there" to be irresolvably disputed depending on your point of view, it is a kind of cultural paradigm that creates joint truth by human sharing. — Enrique

I don't think this is a meaningful definition of objectivity then. If all of it is contained within the subjectivities of each mind, that is still plural subjectivities, not one objectivity. If you're considering some net measure of plural subjective knowledge, history and belief to be objectivity, e.g. statistics, then that is not mind-independent and we have no disagreement except on terminology. I think I've been clear that my objection is to the belief in mind-independent moral objectivity by which a proposition can be deemed objectively true or false. Your definition of objectivity does not have this character.

But every single datapoint matters, and all we have access to are a bunch if single datapoints. — Pfhorrest

But it would not be reasonable to deduce from this that a) we can therefore generalise from a single data point (or biased subset of data points) or b) that the veracity of that generalisation is data-independent. Again, the compelling argument for assuming an objective existence to gravity is not that we can make observations and gather testimony from others and generalise to other phenomena. It is that we can do so predictively. The assumption of objective moral truths has no equivalent reassurance.

There is if they agree on a methodology by which to judge what is or isn’t moral.
...
You do if you both agree on what counts as evidence, which is not a moral question but a more general philosophical one. — Pfhorrest

But you recognise that this isn't in any way objective? As in, this would not be something presumed to hold irrespective of the thoughts of those exact people agreeing. This would be two people defining and occupying a common frame of reference, if indeed they do reach agreement. Nothing has changed but their particular beliefs.

Yes, religion in itself has terrible effects. I do think it is immoral to produce people who cannot discern between fantasy and reality. I consider that "harm". I merely meant that some of those things you see as effects of religion are more like effects with religion having common causes. There is an impressive correlation between religion, conservativism, prejudice, nationalism, anti-intellectualism and capitalism, but that doesn't necessarily mean one in particular causes the other. Historically, nationalism seems to stand out as the unifying force, although each will influence one another. But yes for an even more stark lesson in how religion can destroy societies, look east. — Kenosha Kid

Very nicely said. The OP classifies us as animals and goes on to explain oxytocin. At the moment I don't think a lot of oxytocin is being produced. I think Scandanavia may be experiencing more of it than the US? I don't think Trump is an oxytocin guy but more of a testosterone guy. When men watch football their testosterone level increases and our colleges spend more on football than public speaking skills and democracy depends more on public speaking skills so if we were promoting democracy we might want to spend more on public speaking? Perhaps culture has a role to play in the flavor of nationalism? AND we might want to pay a lot more attention to what stress is doing to the world? I am afraid some nations are like bombs about to go off because of the pandemic and follow economic problems.

Religion can play a huge in this depending on the flavor of religion. Oh my, you say religions can destroy societies. They are also strongly associated with war. People can turn to religion for comforting and increase the hormonal impulse to care for each other, or religion can flip people into an intense state of war. Our willingness to kill the other person is highest when we believe God favors us and will assist us in war, and even wants us to fight the war.

And Kenosha Kid, never before did I think of the relationship of our hormones, and things that cause economic collapse, and war, but now I do! This is where the OP and your post has lead my mind. And back to the notion that religion is only part of the mix. If it prevents us from understanding ourselves as animals and prevents us from working with our hormonal reality, the explosion of protest and tearing down of statues and burning buildings may continue to spin out of control. A president who is divisive and yells those in power must dominate might succeed as well as Hitler did because the state of the nation is tense, fearful, and angry- bad hormones! And this is a really good thread!

But this might be our path into the New Age, like giving birth to a child involves the pain of giving birth? I am not overly sure of anything, but think the thinking in this threat is progress.

Correct, but only by me. Well......sorta correct. I appreciate the brain for its fascinating complexity, and I only care about information on how it works as it characterizes the importance other people give it.

Don’t need to understand Nature in general to discuss natural morality as a very small part of it. How does one understand Nature, anyway? — Mww

Information on how the brain works includes knowledge of our bodies and hormones and the part our bodies play in our judgment. A failure of the Enlightenment was a lack of information about our animal nature. Neither, classical information, as civilizing as it is, nor being saved by Jesus, is going to make us different from how nature has made us.

How do we understand nature? At the start of the Enlightenment, people relied either on the Bible or on the Greek and Roman classics to understand nature. Aristotle was the authority on most things and he was not always right. After many years of Scholasticism based on the teaching of Aristotle, there was a huge backlash and there was a growing argument that truth means studying nature itself, not what an authority says about it.

The Protestant Reformation was a rebellion against all authority and we were liberated to determine truth for ourselves. That kind of got messed up with education for technology and specialization. Education for technology is not exactly education for science and liberal education included education for science. I think specialization was necessary to get to where we are today, but specialization is also very limiting so now we have to pull all the different studies together. All the different ways to study nature are exhausting! We can study animals in nature and compare them to humans and we can dissect them and learn about brain structure and hormones. At the time of the Enlightenment, we did have enough information for a good understanding of nature, but our growing information has improved our ability to understand nature. And this information is very important to good moral judgment.

We desperately need to evolve into a New Age, because up until now we have functioned on very poor information. A moral is a matter of cause and effect, and that makes knowing the truth essential to good moral judgment. We are in a revolution of consciousness that will separate the New Age from the past.

It is that we can do so predictively. The assumption of objective moral truths has no equivalent reassurance. — Kenosha Kid

Moral claims aren’t in the business of trying to predict anything, so it’s not clear what you would even want from them to be the equivalent of “able to do so predictively”. It would have to be some kind of projection of past oughts to future ones. “X oughtn’t have happened, Y oughtn’t be happening, so Z oughtn’t happen in the future.” But to tell whether or not that “moral prediction” is true, you need a way to judge each “ought” in it, which is exactly what’s at question.

But you recognise that this isn't in any way objective? As in, this would not be something presumed to hold irrespective of the thoughts of those exact people agreeing. This would be two people defining and occupying a common frame of reference, if indeed they do reach agreement. Nothing has changed but their particular beliefs. — Kenosha Kid

There is nothing different in this scenario than the parallel scenario with regard to judgements about reality. Scientifically minded people, religious fundamentalists, and postmodernist social constructivists all disagree on how to judge truths about what is real. Only the postmodernists say that that means reality is relative. (You don’t want to be like them do you?) The fundamentalists still disagree with the scientists on how to judge truths about reality, even though both agree that something is objectively real. The scientist can never convince the fundamentalist of particular claims about reality until he can convince the fundamentalist to follow a more scientific epistemology. But that doesn’t make all the claims of science relative, does it?

Information on how the brain works includes (...) the part our bodies play in our judgment. — Athena

What part did your body play, with respect to the judgements regarding what to cognize before exemplifying it in the writing of your comment? Your brain played the greatest part, no doubt, but I’m gonna go ahead and bet $100 you had no clue what your brain was actually doing.
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A failure of the Enlightenment was a lack of information about our animal nature. — Athena

This presupposes the Enlightenment failed. Your intimation appears to be, that if the Enlightenment had more information about our animal nature, the tenet sapere aude which grounds at least Enlightenment philosophy, would be powerless. Hence, the Enlightenment would have been powerless. But it wasn’t.
—————-

our growing information has improved our ability to understand nature. And this information is very important to good moral judgment. — Athena

Perhaps, but only if one thinks an understanding of nature is a.) possible, and b.) relevant. I am of the mind that the only part of nature we’re entitled to understand, is the incredibly minor part our species-specific cognitive system permits, and, moral judgements are directly related to exactly that.

Neither (...) is going to make us different from how nature has made us. — Athena

...from which it follows that the cognitive system we have, is exactly how nature made us. Better, methinks, to figure out some understanding of that, and what to do with it, then further muck things up by abandoning it.

Moral claims aren’t in the business of trying to predict anything, so it’s not clear what you would even want from them to be the equivalent of “able to do so predictively”. — Pfhorrest

It is not that I want them to be predictive. It's that this quality is what makes theoretical models compelling contenders for (partial, with limited accuracy) approximations of an objective reality, which necessitates the existence of objective reality. You compare the methodology of science and moral philosophy as if the methodology was the crucial thing. It isn't: it's the predictive power of an assumed objective reality.

Scientifically minded people, religious fundamentalists, and postmodernist social constructivists all disagree on how to judge truths about what is real. — Pfhorrest

Precisely. And the difference between the first and the second is that the understanding of the first is evidence-dependent, whereas the beliefs of the second are evidence-independent. If one's moral beliefs aren't affected by further evidence about morality, they are analogues of the second. The metaphysical thesis does not care about mechanisms, therefore is stoic in the face of evidence. A naturalist formulation of moral theory, on the other hand, ought to be evidence-driven.

It is not that I want them to be predictive. — Kenosha Kid

It’s not about you “wanting“ them to be so, in that sense. I’m asking what would a “moral prediction” even look like? What is the thing you are looking for as potential evidence for an objective morality, but not finding?

the difference between the first and the second is that the understanding of the first is evidence-dependent, whereas the beliefs of the second are evidence-independent. If one's moral beliefs aren't affected by further evidence about morality, they are analogues of the second. — Kenosha Kid

Moral relativism is neither of those though; it’s the third. You seem stuck thinking that the only options are that or the second: if you’re not a moral relativist then you’re some kind of moral fundamentalist. My position is the moral analogue of the first, the scientist: neither relativist nor fundamentalist. And I absolutely do say to take into account evidence for one’s opinions about morality: things feeling bad is evidence of them being bad, just like things looking true is evidence of them being true.

Of course you immediately come back and ask “where is the scientific evidence that things feeling bad actually is bad?”, but that’s confusing meta-ethical conclusions with first-order ethical conclusions. That’s like asking for the empirical evidence that science is better than religious fundamentalism or postmodern social constructivism, when the very acceptance of empiricism is a defining difference between those things. When you push the question back to the second order and ask how you answer first-order questions, you can’t demand or accept first-order evidence for second-order answers. That is exactly where philosophy begins.

Interesting thread. So many things have been said by so many different people. Although I've carefully read much of this thread, I'm working from memory here. I'll mention and/or further discuss different points and/or aspects of consideration that have been previously mentioned, but need a bit more fleshing out... to my mind. Please pardon me if I've missed some things. There's no way to cover it all and keep this post to an acceptable length.

...we have left the reasoning for what-is-to-be-done behind. And that will always be moral reasoning, when the thing to be done is primarily qualified by the goodness of it.
— Mww

Yes, I feel the crux upon us. So this is the rationalist view of morality: I am presented with a situation, I rationally deduce what the good outcome will be, and I rationally deduce how to realise that outcome. But where did the quality of goodness come from? What makes that outcome "good"? — Kenosha Kid

Is there a meaningful distinction that we can draw and maintain between something or other being believed to be, hence sincerely called "good" and being good? I think there is. The historical facts and current facts support that answer quite well. Our moral belief, as humans, has evolved. Morality has evolved. There's no good reason to claim otherwise, and/or deny that that evolution continues. So, sometimes we're wrong, and what we once thought to be good is no longer believed to be.

Morality, if that term refers to codes of acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour, is relative, but it is so in broad-based universal fashion. All morality is subject to influence by individual social, cultural, and/or familial particulars. Again, history supports this quite nicely.

I'm not claiming that believing and/or saying that something is good, makes it so. I'm not saying that what's good is relative to the believer in any way that makes moral claims true by virtue of being believed to be. Rather, I'm saying that we come to acquire knowledge of what's good over time with trial and error, and I am only pointing out that we've made and will continue to make our fair share of mistakes along the way.


Touching upon the origen, and/or how morality emerged onto the world stage...(nice OP, by the way)


All thought about what counts as "the good" is borne of language use. It consists completely of correlations drawn between that particular language use and other things by the user themselves. Hence, the relative('subjective') nature mentioned earlier. Again, I'm not advocating moral relativism or moral subjectivism. Rather, I'm merely granting what ought be obvious. There are no thoughts about "goodness" or "the good" unless they are formed within a language user skilled enough to either learn how to use the name to refer to other things, or within a language user skilled enough to begin questioning/doubting such adopted use.

We all adopt, almost entirely, our first worldview. That is replete with moral belief and talk of "good". The problem is that we've already begun forming belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour long before.

So... talk of "good" comes later. Here, I am touching upon the timeline skirted around earlier regarding morality and how it relates to that particular language use.


On rational thought, mimicry, and morality...

Some rational thought - and all discussions of morality - consist(s) entirely of language use. Some rational thought does not. Some rudimentary thought about acceptable/unacceptable does not as well. Rational thought happens long before spoken and/or otherwise uttered language use; long before one adopts the moral aspect of their worldview.

Either that or mimicry as a means to get attention or as a means to seek affirmation during language acquisition does not count as rational thought, because we most certainly mimic prior to properly speaking. We mimic as a means of language acquisition.

That's rational thought being employed in language acquisition. So, not all rational thought requires and/or consists entirely of language use, particularly talking in terms of "goodness" or "the good", or any other commonly used terminological framework/dialiect/jargon commonly called "moral discourse".

Individuals mimick an other for a wide range of different reasons. Sometimes, this mimicry happens long before the actor(they) is(are) capable of talking about what they're doing in terms of it's moral import. They can describe everything it is that they are doing, but struggle to talk about where they picked up the idea that the behaviour being put on display is acceptable. This is the sort of mimicry that happens after language acquisition but before metacognitive endeavors meant to isolate and discuss pre-existing moral thought and belief.

We first learn to call things "good" by learning what is already called such by the community we're borne into. This is considerably different than deliberately delving into moral philosophy. I'm of the well considered opinion that that distinction has not been kept in mind near enough throughout the last several centuries.

Prelinguistic thought about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. Linguistic thought and belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. Thinking about pre-existing thought and belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour.

Three distinct manifestations. All qualify as moral thought and/or belief. That needs parsed out, for it is very nuanced. For now, I leave it until someone shows an interest in doing so. It is quite germane given the topic and OP.

It seems to me that social groups have two systems for creation and maintenance of behavioural norms. One is active, the other passive. The active one is about influencial members trying to stand out, the passive one is like a game of Chinese whispers, each member simply trying to copy the other... — Isaac

While I readily agree with the relevancy of those two 'systems', I find that that suggested dichotomy is far from adequate. As it stands, it seems like an overgeneralization. I mean, it seems incapable of taking proper account of all the different ways we create social norms that do not rightfully qualify as either of those two suggested(exhaustive?) systems. I've said some things that speak to that tangentially. More directly...

Maintaining a social norm(rule of behaviour) is acting to do so, which is endeavoring in a goal oriented task of maintaining some norm for the sake of it. The problem, it seems to me, is that many social norms emerge and remain to be continued in practice without any deliberate intent to keep them in place for the sake of keeping them in place. Particularly regarding creatures without complex langage capable of talking about the behaviour.

So, the framework above cannot properly account for some of what happens that gives rise to morality.

There are also issues with drawing broad-based conclusions about all situations where we copy/mimic others based upon one particular situation thereof... the game of Chinese whispers.

Some copying is not like the game of whispers. If some copying is not like the game of whispers, but all copying passively creates and/or maintains social norms, then there can be no copying as a means to stand out... but there is. It is a common occurrence amongst young language learners. If copying another's behaviour is passive, and nothing passive is active, then no copying could be for the reason of making oneself stand out. If what is being proposed here were true, then it would be impossible for one to copy another's behaviour in order to stand out.

The problem, of course, is that that happens all the time. I would guess that it happens each and every day, without fail. Since we sometimes copy an other as a means to get attention and/or stand out, it is clear that the suggested dichotomous framework is found lacking.

This is not meant to completely discredit the proposed account, only to limit it's use to only certain conclusions. Keeping this in mind will help us to account for a wider range of everyday behaviours, and thus improve our account b beng able to do so. The suggestions do most certainly put a finger on a few important situations where social norms are being cultivated, created, and/or maintained. Just not all.

Is there a meaningful distinction that we can draw and maintain between something or other being believed to be, hence sincerely called "good" and being good? I think there is. — creativesoul

I think so as well. It is the distinction between what it means for something to be good, and what it means for good to be something. Have to admit, though, drawing and maintaining the meaningfulness of it, is a lot harder than merely granting its possibility.

Is there a meaningful distinction that we can draw and maintain between something or other being believed to be, hence sincerely called "good" and being good? I think there is. — creativesoul


I think so as well. It is the distinction between what it means for something to be good, and what it means for good to be something. Have to admit, though, drawing and maintaining the meaningfulness of it, is a lot harder than merely granting its possibility. — Mww

I think this would be highly unlikely. We can't even agree on what constitutes a 'game', or where exactly the boundaries of 'here' are. The idea that our word 'good' picks out exactly one unified and inviolable concept identical in every mind which conceives it seems ludicrous.

The idea that our word 'good' picks out exactly one unified and inviolable concept identical in every mind which conceives it seems ludicrous. — Isaac

Then perhaps it isn’t a word or a concept with which we should be concerned. Any possibility implies either an object that accords with it, or not. If an object, then what the possibility entails because of it, and if not, the possibility is abandoned as unintelligible.

The question reduces to whether or not the human animal is imbued with something common to all its members. Only if there is such a thing, is it then reasonable to suppose there are differences in its manifestation.

The usual understanding, the historical precedent, begins with the objects, which are always seemingly different, and that difference prevents the investigation into the source of those objects, insofar as a great enough plurality seems sufficient to negate a non-empirical connecting commonality, re: Hume, Bradley, Hobbes. If one begins from the notion of a common source as given, however, in the form of a natural human-specific fundamental condition, the difference in objects follows naturally from it, even if by different means, re: Kant, Leibniz, Schopenhauer.

Still, rejecting the possibility of a fundamental human condition is very far from proving there isn’t one. It then becomes nothing but a matter of the stronger propositional argument.

Any possibility implies either an object that accords with it, or not. — Mww

What about several different objects? Like several quite different things are 'games' but my teacup here definitely isn't one of them. Could it not be that we refer to one of several things when we speak of the moral 'good', and yet it still be true that if we refer to my teacup we've made a mistake (that's definitely not one of the things)?

The question reduces to whether or not the human animal is imbued with something common to all its members. Only if there is such a thing, is it then reasonable to suppose there are differences in its manifestation. — Mww

Absolutely. I think most moral realists are misunderstanding how language works. There is not some reified concept 'the good' which we then go about finding out which thing belong in, we use the term 'good' to perform some language tasks. It's only requirement for being allowed to remain part of our language is that it continues to perform those tasks.

The human animal is imbued with several things common to all its members, several things common to large groups, and a few quite unique to the individual. Some varying collection of these things are referred to by the term 'moral good' at different times, in different conversations, to different effects.

but the only moral subjects are minds — Kenosha Kid

There are two maps in my view: a map between potentially unknowable genetic and cultural is-statements and subjective ought-statements, and a map between subjective ought-statements and objective ought-statements. The first is characterised by a severe loss of information, as the rational mind builds conceptions about itself as a moral agent in the world to answer non-moral ought-statements and, latterly, moral ones — Kenosha Kid

The second map is where description gives way to imposition. It is pragmatic to agree a set of objective laws to limit edge case behaviour within a group, but these laws impose, rather than describe, moral truth values. Moral objectivity goes a step further and generalises individual or popular subjective conceptions to everyone ever according to some mysterious out-there law. There is no descriptive aspect to this. It might be advised by some descriptions about the person arguing for the rightness or wrongness of an act; it might be advised by some descriptions of consensus witnessed by that person, but the outputs are still proposals of imposition, not description. — Kenosha Kid

Three questions:

Would you agree that when you're saying "genetic is statements", you have in mind a broader category concerning body and mind functions? Or do you actually want to do the reduction of non-cultural is-statements - which I take are is statements that do not concern cultural stuff but do still concern humans - to statements about genetics?

but the outputs are still proposals of imposition, not description.

I don't think you've constrained the ultimate output space enough to ensure that all true hypotheticals of this form are lost:

(If human is in configuration X) then (human should do Y)

IE, despite the losses of information there are still true imperatives of that form.

EG: "If a human wants to avoid losing the functioning of their hands then said human should not hold their hands in a fire for 15 minutes"

And humans want to avoid losing the functioning of their hands. So humans should not hold their hands in a fire for 15 minutes.

And if in principle there are very generic configurations of human bodies and minds that are also X, then (human should do Y).

"do humans want to avoid losing the functioning of their hands"? is a question you could answer with a survey. It might also turn out that there are contextual defeaters, like a would you rather game: "would you rather lose functioning of your hands or kill everybody else on the planet?" - that still facilitates the imperative being true so long as the context isn't a defeating context. So it's not necessarily true, it's contingently true for all plausible scenarios, and if you're gonna base moral principles on human behaviour and wants, it's going to output contingently true statements at best anyway.

We rationally answer them, but we do not rationally decide that such questions are asked, rather we are compelled physiologically and neurologically on the basis of natures and nurtures that we are not typically knowledgeable about. The OP largely concerns this, and descriptions here are relevant at both ends. — Kenosha Kid

The last question is about where rationality - deliberative thinking here I guess - fits in. You've made a reduction of the territory of human values to psychological drives and cultural norms, but in that reduction you've also got our capacity to plan and deliberate. In my experience, deliberation and planning often plays a pretty big role in evaluating how best to treat people. You've already got reason in analysed territory, and it already links to emotions and sensations. Seems strange to me to make such a reduction away from reasoning when you've thrown reasoning in there - presumably justified by it being "subjective" when it concerns human norms (more later).

Well, I guess I have another question; you're using the words "subjective" and "objective" a lot when talking about this, how do you understand them in this context? I ask because so many arguments on the forum that lead to a qualified sense of moral nihilism ultimately turn on their interlocutor having this distinction in the background:

What's objective is invariant of human belief.
What's subjective varies with human belief.

And with that framing in mind, it becomes impossible for anything normative to be objective, because it depends on human action to sustain it. If humans believed brutal violence was a great conflict resolution strategy, then it would be a great conflict resolution mechanism. Just as justified as do no unnecessary harm, because both lack the pre-requisite objectivity to be admitted into the big boy's club of representational knowledge.

Despite that any representation knowledge varies in a trivial way with human belief (it's knowledge! It's normative!), and even the content depends upon language for its articulation even if it's true - or a great approximation to the truth. But subjective stuff has that property too, it depends upon articulation and human behaviour for its production... Any facts about human behaviour have to vary with human behaviour, so that would make them subjective - whereas more precisely they're contingent and about humans.

Something can be contingent and still universally applicable to its domain; like it just so happens that everyone who lives in Scotland lives in the UK. It seems to me you don't think moral principles can be like that because they're not objective; I'd suggest that Pforrest's approach seeks to generate something much more similar to that kind of statement than anything carved in stone tablets. And I think you're expecting any moral realist to bottom out in stone tablets, when moral realism is generally more focussed on the enmeshment of bodies, practicalities, norms, cognition and wants.

What about several different objects? Like several quite different things are 'games' but my teacup here definitely isn't one of them. — Isaac

Similar objects of the same kind are just examples of the thing in question. And several dissimilar objects are examples of different questions. What we’re looking for, is that which is that thing because it couldn’t be anything else. As such, it is necessarily irreducible.

So several examples may tend to justify the validity of the thing, but don’t say what the thing itself represents. A fundamental human-specific condition, in order to be sufficient to ground that which follows from it, cannot be reducible to the very examples for which it is meant to be the ground. This is why we may be looking for something not a conception at all, because we can only understand conceptions by means of their examples, their instantiation by means of things that represent them. Or, to be exact, their schema. “It is good to do this”, “this” being a yet-unspecified schema of that which is to be done.
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There is not some reified concept 'the good' which we then go about finding out which thing belong in — Isaac

Agreed. What we’re looking for cannot be a reification of anything. All we’re attempting, is to justify its possibility, and if that is accomplished, determining what may or may not logically follow from it.

The human animal is imbued with several things common to all its members (....) Some varying collection of these things are referred to by the term 'moral good' at different times, in different conversations, to different effects. — Isaac

Agreed, but here, all that’s been done is posit examples of good. Moral good is just another representation, as is skill or wisdom. Why one is skilled or how he became wise is a hellava lot easier to characterize, then why is he moral. Perhaps the reason for that relative ease, is the former is grounded in experience, the latter in intelligence, both of which are contingently sufficient to represent his moral inclination, but lack the necessity to represent his moral constitution.
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What is a moral realist? Or, what would you say a moral realist is? How would I know one as such?

It’s not about you “wanting“ them to be so, in that sense. I’m asking what would a “moral prediction” even look like? What is the thing you are looking for as potential evidence for an objective morality, but not finding? — Pfhorrest

I don't think it's really relevant. The point is one can't simply compare similar methodologies and expect one to be justified because the other is. Science is justified by its predictiveness. Metaphysics are not justified by anything beyond the subjective attractiveness to the believer.

And I absolutely do say to take into account evidence for one’s opinions about morality: things feeling bad is evidence of them being bad, just like things looking true is evidence of them being true. — Pfhorrest

All of which is subjective, not objective. I take no issue with this aspect of your moral testimony: it is the same as mine. The above demands neither objectivity nor purely rational development of personal morality, in fact suggests quite the opposite of both.

Moral relativism is neither of those though; it’s the third. You seem stuck thinking that the only options are that or the second: if you’re not a moral relativist then you’re some kind of moral fundamentalist. — Pfhorrest

I was perhaps unclear. Moral relativism is what's left when you dismiss moral objectivity as being inconsistent with or otherwise not held up by evidence. It's not a position that I feel directly needs defending; it simply emerges from what I consider a more realistic description of what morality is at root. I'm not a relativist because I find it attractive or persuasive on its own merits. It is simply a recognition that each of us are individually, from the bottom up, given moral capacity and biases, and each of us is socialised individually, with more localised and temporary biases. There are severe limits to what a personal 'readiness' (as 180 Proof put it) can be and still be considered social, but within that no one person has demonstrably more 'correct' moral beliefs than others and no one person is less justified in defending their beliefs than others, which is exactly the same as saying there are no objective moral truths outside of the social-antisocial divide. If there is any means of showing that this is untrue, I may yet convert to moral objectivism, but I imagine I would have heard it by now in this thread if not elsewhere.

Of course you immediately come back and ask “where is the scientific evidence that things feeling bad actually is bad?”, but that’s confusing meta-ethical conclusions with first-order ethical conclusions. — Pfhorrest

No, I ask for some equivalent for morality to the compelling reason to believe in the objective reality behind scientific law. It needn't be scientific, though if it is inconsistent with evidence, I will disregard it as such.

When you push the question back to the second order and ask how you answer first-order questions, you can’t demand or accept first-order evidence for second-order answers. That is exactly where philosophy begins. — Pfhorrest

So far as I can tell, that's your question, not mine:

In doing so, you are only describing why we are inclined to do certain things, and calling those things good. You haven’t given any argument for why those things we are inclined to do are the good things. — Pfhorrest

The first order is the fundamental drives and capacities that make us ultra-social animals. The conceptions we form around those -- the second-order -- are rationalisations of the first, lacking insight as to the nature of the first or the origins of the second. I am perfectly happy with this: I do not feel the need to justify the latter at all, any more than I need to justify Newtonian mechanics in the face of Einsteinian mechanics, i.e. on purely pragmatic grounds. I do observe that we are in a situation where those second-order questions inevitably must be asked, and look to empirical evidence in trying to establish a minimal boundary line between social and antisocial behaviour, the area that I believe has primacy in moral consideration. I'm not particularly wedded to my tentative attempt, but I am not inclined or obliged to take a two-tone approach and pretend that the second order is somehow more real, is accurate, or otherwise has primacy. The second-order questions, like the above, that you've thought I must answer from a first-order theory (from page 1) have struck me as questions based on false assumptions about what the second order really is.

As I said, if there's a single argument justifying why moral claims generally have objectively true or false values, the OP is wrong, and the relationship between morality and social biology would be extremely mysterious, since it would appear that humans have two very different sets of imperatives for doing the same thing: one they are born with, another they must discover for themselves. What purpose would either have, the other being assumed real?

What part did your body play, with respect to the judgements regarding what to cognize before exemplifying it in the writing of your comment? Your brain played the greatest part, no doubt, but I’m gonna go ahead and bet $100 you had no clue what your brain was actually doing.
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This presupposes the Enlightenment failed. Your intimation appears to be, that if the Enlightenment had more information about our animal nature, the tenet sapere aude which grounds at least Enlightenment philosophy, would be powerless. Hence, the Enlightenment would have been powerless. But it wasn’t.
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Perhaps, but only if one thinks an understanding of nature is a.) possible, and b.) relevant. I am of the mind that the only part of nature we’re entitled to understand, is the incredibly minor part our species-specific cognitive system permits, and, moral judgements are directly related to exactly that.

Neither (...) is going to make us different from how nature has made us. — Athena


...from which it follows that the cognitive system we have, is exactly how nature made us. Better, methinks, to figure out some understanding of that, and what to do with it, then further muck things up by abandoning it.[/quote]

If you want to know more about how much our bodies influence our thinking, you might read "Emotional Intelligence". Or just ask your gut if there might be some truth in what I am saying.

When doing research on middle-age women I came across a paper that explained our visceral reaction to going against what we believe is right, such as a mother leaving her child so she can take a job outside of the home. Today mothers don't seem to have as much trouble doing this as in the past when we were conditions to stay at home and put the family first. I have a granddaughter who has very weak mother instincts, so I am not saying nature made us mothers, because a large part of that is our conditioning. The point is, our sense of true or false, and right of wrong is visceral.

Who we vote for is more apt to be based on our feelings than our reason. Campaign ads and media in general appeals to us on an emotional leave. The more something causes fear or anger the more apt we are to remember it. Trump is very manipulative in this way and I would be surprised if a Trump supporter were in this forum because his supporters tend to do very little slow thinking. Trump himself sure is not a slow thinker and that means being impulsive not thinking things threw. While the brain plays a part in our thinking, it does not play the most important part. Our bodies play the most important part.

While the Enlightenment is still with us, it is not dominating us today. Utilitarianism is dominating us, and that isn't so bad, but our education is so bad! When we used the Conceptual Method, children learned to think. Math is about learning how to use our brains, but that is not new math. It is word problems dealing with everyday math needs. It has practical use and is not as abstract as new math. I have a problem with new math for young children before they have learned how to think. I want to stress "how" to think, not "what" to think.

Now the Behaviorist Method of education is about what to think. It relies on memorization and does not involve deep thinking. It is also used for training dogs. Education for technology relies on the Behaviorist method. Now we have people barking like dogs at anything that moves, and ready to tear someone's leg off because there is little tolerance for deviation from what is right, and no doubt that right is right. This is not the Enlightenment. Back to our bodies and thinking- how do you feel about what I said? Does your gut tell you this is ridiculous or maybe something that should concern us?

Would this be natural of existential morality?

I hate to make this post any longer, but if we knew what we know today, the ongoing battle between education to make us better, thinking human beings, or education focused on practical vocational training, might have maintained the lean favoring our human developed as creatures capable of good moral judgment and human excellence. Grade school being for our souls and specialization waiting until college.

Is there a meaningful distinction that we can draw and maintain between something or other being believed to be, hence sincerely called "good" and being good? I think there is. The historical facts and current facts support that answer quite well. Our moral belief, as humans, has evolved. Morality has evolved. There's no good reason to claim otherwise, and/or deny that that evolution continues. So, sometimes we're wrong, and what we once thought to be good is no longer believed to be.
...
I'm not claiming that believing and/or saying that something is good, makes it so. I'm not saying that what's good is relative to the believer in any way that makes moral claims true by virtue of being believed to be. Rather, I'm saying that we come to acquire knowledge of what's good over time with trial and error, and I am only pointing out that we've made and will continue to make our fair share of mistakes along the way. — creativesoul

I actually agree with your interpretation of the trend; it is a point I have made myself. However... you must be aware that local, temporary moral trends can occur in different directions. We have a growing trend currently toward nationalism, for instance. By your reckoning, then, nationalism must be more morally good, since you assume that, whatever morality is, we tend toward it with time.

I think there are actually strong reasons for holding that, in many ways, we are more moral than before; essentially it reduces to the hypocrisy argument of the OP. I also think there are strong reasons for believing that this trend should occur: we are physically biased toward social behaviour, and intolerant of hypocritical behaviour (viz. slave-trading or -ownership, wars for resources, etc.). I find reassurance in that.

However it is only by local, temporary standards that we judge earlier local, temporary standards to be less moral. We might yet find a very different optimum in which good-for-me outweighs good-for-the-world in all respects, and things like environmental action might be considered immoral for causing harm and barring help in the good-for-me moral paradigm. As a child of such a paradigm, you would, applying the same logic, hold that we are more moral in our individualism and competitiveness than we were back in those immoral self-limiting days of the late 20th, early 21st century. And if you want evidence that you could have such a mentality, chat with a Republican or a Tory.

It is from your frame of reference (one I share) that we have, on the whole, gotten better. There are plenty of people (mostly religious people afaik) who completely disagree with you. Some of those, especially in the Middle East, have indeed seen a trend toward what they see as a more moral paradigm of religious unity, gender division of legal rights, violent suppression of diversity, and violent ideological expansionism, while our co-ed schools are viewed as positively Satanic. Like you, they no doubt see history as being on their side.

There are no thoughts about "goodness" or "the good" unless they are formed within a language user skilled enough to either learn how to use the name to refer to other things, or within a language user skilled enough to begin questioning/doubting such adopted use. — creativesoul

Agreed. And in terms of origins, I don't see any area for contradiction here, since language preceded the advent of large social groups.

We all adopt, almost entirely, our first worldview. — creativesoul

I'm wondering if you mean completely. In my experience, moral consideration is incremental. We are limited to the experiences we have had to date. I'd personally not call such a thing a worldview, since there will be many elements of the world about which, as a four-year old, I had no view at all.

Either that or mimicry as a means to get attention or as a means to seek affirmation during language acquisition does not count as rational thought — creativesoul

It can and cannot. Mimicry does not need to be rational. 'Mirroring' for instance is an unconscious mimicry. But rationality is perfectly capability of deriving mimicry as an apt behaviour for certain situations too (one can consciously, deliberately mirror, for instance, knowing that it's more likely to make a date go well).

Same goes for language. Our early years language acquisition is based on mimicry and trial and error, but that doesn't negate the fact that I can look a new word up in the dictionary and understand its usage rationally.

Maintaining a social norm(rule of behaviour) is acting to do so, which is endeavoring in a goal oriented task of maintaining some norm for the sake of it. — creativesoul

Or in fear of the consequences of not doing so, which is a massive slice of the wedge if not the thick end.

I think this would be highly unlikely. We can't even agree on what constitutes a 'game', or where exactly the boundaries of 'here' are. The idea that our word 'good' picks out exactly one unified and inviolable concept identical in every mind which conceives it seems ludicrous. — Isaac

Really, it is a ludicrous idea? I think we have a few agreements about what is good. Most of humanity until recently agreed family order and responsibility were good. There is in general an agreement in a civilized society that we don't kill our neighbors and eat them. Do unto others as you would have them do to you, is an agreed good in all religions that I can think of. It took the US awhile but we finally agreed our food supply should be safe and making it safe and saving lives was thought to be a good thing by most people. However, right now we are having a moral crisis in the food industry and hopefully, this will change with growing awareness. So what I am missing that would make the notion that it is a ludicrous idea that we can agree about good and bad? I think not to have some of these agreements is deviant and not the norm.

I think there are actually strong reasons for holding that, in many ways, we are more moral than before; essentially it reduces to the hypocrisy argument of the OP. I also think there are strong reasons for believing that this trend should occur: we are physically biased toward social behaviour, and intolerant of hypocritical behaviour (viz. slave-trading or -ownership, wars for resources, etc.). I find reassurance in that. — Kenosha Kid

Given our greater knowledge of cause and effect, I am confident our moral judgment has improved and will continue to improve. I think Cicero was correct about our failure to do the right thing is because of ignorance and once we know the right thing we are compelled to do the right thing.