Are there different kinds of problems?
— Mww
Sure. — Kenosha Kid
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
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 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
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
If I understand you correctly information about how our brains work is not appreciated here. Is that correct? — Athena
You all are going to discuss Natural and Existential Morality without an understanding of nature? — Athena
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
And that's the point. Objective nature is inferred from generalisation, not a single data point. — Kenosha Kid
That is, you can present empirical evidence to someone with a belief and show them that that belief is credible or not. — Kenosha Kid
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
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
But we did. cultural practices varied enormously according the what little evidence we have from archaeology. — Isaac
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
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
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
But every single datapoint matters, and all we have access to are a bunch if single datapoints. — Pfhorrest
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
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
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
It is that we can do so predictively. The assumption of objective moral truths has no equivalent reassurance. — Kenosha Kid
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
Information on how the brain works includes (...) the part our bodies play in our judgment. — Athena
A failure of the Enlightenment was a lack of information about our animal nature. — Athena
our growing information has improved our ability to understand nature. And this information is very important to good moral judgment. — Athena
Neither (...) is going to make us different from how nature has made us. — Athena
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
Scientifically minded people, religious fundamentalists, and postmodernist social constructivists all disagree on how to judge truths about what is real. — Pfhorrest
It is not that I want them to be predictive. — Kenosha Kid
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
...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
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
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
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
The idea that our word 'good' picks out exactly one unified and inviolable concept identical in every mind which conceives it seems ludicrous. — Isaac
Any possibility implies either an object that accords with it, or not. — Mww
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
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
but the outputs are still proposals of imposition, not description.
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
What about several different objects? Like several quite different things are 'games' but my teacup here definitely isn't one of them. — Isaac
There is not some reified concept 'the good' which we then go about finding out which thing belong in — Isaac
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
We all adopt, almost entirely, our first worldview. — creativesoul
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
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
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
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
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.