First, I maintain that was a misinterpretation of Kant's work that was referenced in it's refutation. — Cheshire
The fact people can rationalize an immoral act has zero bearing on whether it is an immoral act. — Cheshire
This is, I suppose, a symbolic culture-driven reference which I don't get. A white paper in a white room by a white philosopher who is a white folk? I don't know what you could possibly mean.makes me wonder if you are typing in a white room — Cheshire
Nothing has a bearing on an act whether it's moral or immoral, other than people's views. — god must be atheist
In some cultures cannibalism is opined to be acceptable and is encouraged, in most cultures it is rejected and deemed immoral. — god must be atheist
Big door, tiny window.This is, I suppose, a symbolic culture-driven reference which I don't get. A white paper in a white room by a white philosopher who is a white folk? I don't know what you could possibly mean. — god must be atheist
Big door, tiny window. — Cheshire
Or the literal description of institutionally themed interior space.That's another symbolic that is lost on me. — god must be atheist
I miss understood what you meant the first time. I agree that a lot of our conviction concerning moral judgement is based on the perception of them being a matter of reality. But, so does our value of fiat currency.I'm not sure whether you're actually asking this, or whether it is just part of your discussion. — baker
The idea was to establish objective morality. If the answers are different, then morality is not from the act but rather a subjective notion of the observer. The same willful act of destruction of the same object should in theory produce the same moral judgement. Or not. An attempt at an inquiry. — Cheshire
I agree. A failure to establish that all three acts are immoral doesn't negate the existence of objective morality. If it could be shown they were all indeed immoral it would make for a tidy compelling position. I tried to reduce bias by using three cases and a gradual increase of intuitive permissibility. It is also a case I personally witnessed years ago with a friend who failed to meet the art school entry requirements, but whose work was already on public display and then destroyed by the artist after it was returned.No, this "same moral judgment" is not requited at all, and indeed, such an agreement between is never a real agreement (this is a Quine/Derrida position). All that needs to be demonstrated is that there is a noncontingent part of the essential ethical affair. — Constance
I wasn't thinking like a philosopher. My purpose wasn't to produce a known result and pretend as if it was a discovery. It was scientific in the sense I hoped I would learn something.You're not going to get people to agree on the radically diverging and different entanglements ! These are impossible to pin down and are, in themselves, ethically arbitrary "facts" of a particular case. — Constance
It would have been bold to assume all three would be considered immoral by everyone; foolish to think they would be considered equally immoral.This lack of agreement is inevitable and it is foolish to think otherwise. — Constance
I think this was the most notable point set down by the responses. The observation that harm came to a store of value. It does seem to suggest that we can act on the world in a way that carries some objective element apart from the variance that arises. And that an act can be judged apart from the measure of suffering entailed. The paintings did not suffer. Which isolates a major common thread in known moral theories. The scientific approach asks if there is a better test or way to realize more informative results. You say it's "coercive", but I'm not sure in which direction you mean.However, what is agreed upon is the phenomenological analysis: put aside all factual entanglements and the residual value is not disputed, is cognitively coercive. — Constance
It also puts you at a personal liability of having possessed a murder weapon. Your fingerprints and DNA could be caught up in the handle. The matter is best resolved by covering the replacement cost of the axe and be done with it. When axe murder is in play the risk of withholding property wrongly is out weighed by a perceived non-trivial involvement in serious injury. How your complaints of entanglements exist above and are reconciled here is difficult to articulate. But, I understand the scenario introduces the seemingly conflicted nature of perception into a question of objectivity. But, having a known immoral act as the subject of perception in a way fabricates some of the matter or not. Criticism is difficult to establish; like so many things the differing suppositions of the context conflict with the desire for a clear analysis. Interesting points though; it does have informative value.I feel the obligation to return it and this conflicts with my suspicion that were I to do so it could lead to a terrible crime. — Constance
The observation that harm came to a store of value. It does seem to suggest that we can act on the world in a way that carries some objective element apart from the variance that arises. And that an act can be judged apart from the measure of suffering entailed. The paintings did not suffer. Which isolates a major common thread in known moral theories. The scientific approach asks if there is a better test or way to realize more informative results. You say it's "coercive", but I'm not sure in which direction you mean. — Cheshire
Well, in the case put forward by the OP there is no stated suffering to ignore.An act can be judged apart from the measure of suffering involved, but I certainly don't think this is an ethical judgment. A pragmatic judgment works like this, the kind that ignores suffering for some higher end, that is, utility. — Constance
The idea that value and that suffering is a type of assault on value is becoming significant to my current working model. If this isn't the case then I'll have to rethink quite a bit to account for the error.But even here in this contingent world of utility, attention must come to rest on actual value as the point of it all, whatever one has in mind. — Constance
Imprecise or subjectively driven perhaps, but there is no reduction to absurdity in the practice. We bury treasure, rent storage spaces, and purchase insurance with the understanding objects can be a store of value,I think it is absurd to think about things having value at all apart from what is attributed to them in a conscious act. — Constance
Witty got this bit wrong. Popper has excellent refutation of it in Chapter 1 Conjectures and Refutations. Available on audio for free on youtube.As to the scientist, well, all science begins with what is there, at hand. A geologist first has the object to be analyzed, then there is the classificatory work, techniques for measurement are called in, more classificatory work, etc., but it all begins with observation. — Constance
I'm going to have to reread this section several times to understand exactly what information you intend for me to possess. I haven't spent enough time reading Wittgenstein, so his communication style which is often adopted is very difficult for me. I do intend on rereading and editing this bit, but any clarifications or simplifications that could be made even tentatively would aid in my understanding of your position on the matter. I believe you are saying that ethical matters are often matters of reality even though they are subject to entanglement with less well grounded notions.the former rational end is itself ethically arbitrary. — Constance
The idea that value and that suffering is a type of assault on value is becoming significant to my current working model. If this isn't the case then I'll have to rethink quite a bit to account for the error. — Cheshire
I'm going to have to reread this section several times to understand exactly what information you intend for me to possess. I haven't spent enough time reading Wittgenstein, so his communication style which is often adopted is very difficult for me. I do intend on rereading and editing this bit, but any clarifications or simplifications that could be made even tentatively would aid in my understanding of your position on the matter. I believe you are saying that ethical matters are often matters of reality even though they are subject to entanglement with less well grounded notions. — Cheshire
How does he account for these statements if he can't say anything? I suppose that comes up at some point. Observing a deficit is something if I can speak about it. I used to have the same intuitive opinion concerning ethics, but I've been talking about it for a week, so something is clearly there; strange we would hold something in such high regard and not manage to attach words to it. I might wait and see if the world produces a genius that writes more readable books. Thank you for the recommendations.He typically would refuse to talk about ethical foundations because he was convinced it was nonsense to do so, and this was because language and logic are simply not able to speak about it, for value is there, like qualia, like a pure phenomenon, a presence, and there is nothing one can say, because, reading the Tractatus, there is nothing observable about the "Good". — Constance
How does he account for these statements if he can't say anything? I suppose that comes up at some point. Observing a deficit is something if I can speak about it. I used to have the same intuitive opinion concerning ethics, but I've been talking about it for a week, so something is clearly there; strange we would hold something in such high regard and not manage to attach words to it. I might wait and see if the world produces a genius that writes more readable books. Thank you for the recommendations. — Cheshire
Morality is a form of social survival, humans depend on people to survive. And morality is a set of rules you need to follow to benefit from the community protection and care. You don’t follow the social rules you get exiled and you will have to find another community that thinks like you. Hopefully, you can benefit from there protection and care.
These moral rules is to prevent chaos, distress or presenting a threat to a community. Both physically and emotionally.
People tend to forget that the origin of morality comes from evolution and it serves an almost technical purpose also. Is not just all religious or political and such.
Morality was meant to be a set of rules to help the group corporate together to fend off threats and predators. Maximizing the greatest chance for survival.
But as we evolved as a civilization it became more complex. That emotional transgression coming from our peers became the predator.
Morality became almost like a filter to weed the undesirables out.
Morality is not just about character. Is a biological evolutionary mechanism to help humanity survive challenges we may face. — SteveMinjares
My position on normative ethics is (aretaic) negative utilitarianism, wherein 'harm suffering misery' of members of any sentient species (at minimum) are considered 'the moral fact' (which solicits help to reduce harm or prevent increasing harm). Given that, I answer:
1. Only insofar as it increases harm to someone.
2. ditto
3. ditto
The answers here are the same in large part because the criterion proposed in objectively grounded. Harm is the objective moral fact at issue: objective because it is specie member-invariant; moral because it entails a meliorative (helping) response; fact because it indicates a natural species defect that when stressed risks dysfunction or worse.
... why would it matter if morality was objective or not? Objectively wrong, or subjectively wrong, they don't care either way. Neither force people to do what's right.
— Isaac
Same with laws: why bother with legistlating or deterrent punishments since "neither force people to do what's right?" — 180 Proof
Perhaps all this is true. But why should one do what is part of an evolutionary mechanism? Preservation of the species? Is this what you tell someone regarding the meaning of their suffering? As the plague blackens the finger tips and boils cover the body, we say, well, alas, this suffering is conducive to survival and reproduction! There, you have it?
You see the absurdity of explanations like this? The real questions in ethics go to more fundamental level, as with Why are we born to suffer and die at all? why does existence throw us into suffering at all as a condition for survival at all? — Constance
Suffering is the challenge we as a species need to go through to weed out the weak and make sure only the strongest survive. The purpose evolution. — SteveMinjares
So we don’t have to do the dirty task ourselves nature does it herself and goes through the process of elimination. This is not by societies choice but by design by evolution and nature to give the human race the greatest chance of survival. — SteveMinjares
Is the ego of humans to believe we don’t abide by the same rules that of the other creatures of this Earth.
Yes it hurts, and yes it sucks but it been working for millions of years so who are we to question it.
Yes people will suffer others will experience the heartache of witnessing such things but by each passing event that happen the next Generation becomes better, stronger and wiser.
Is the individual that disapproves this cause they desire a easier alternative. — SteveMinjares
I wonder if the level of group reliance and the strictness of moral enforcement are correlated. Like, the difference in enforcing a tribal law versus the permissibility of social deviance in modern societies. In a study of behavior there are surely elements of evolution. The anxiety of losing social connections or dysregulation of sleep cycles from isolation points to a biological need for us to attain social involvement.Morality is a form of social survival, humans depend on people to survive. And morality is a set of rules you need to follow to benefit from the community protection and care. You don’t follow the social rules you get exiled and you will have to find another community that thinks like you. Hopefully, you can benefit from there protection and care. — SteveMinjares
Thanks! It's always nice to find I'm at least wandering down a path others see as well. I do intend on at least reading over the lecture on the ethics. What little I've gleamed is he seems like a secular phenomenologist. I read a stack of paper produced by Hegel and could only tell you he wants to see what God sees in order to make sense of things to humans. I think Einstein's approach of accounting for what things look like from the subjective and then explaining it from the objective was the reconciliation phenomenology required. Thanks again for the references; I'll look forward to seeing what the developed form of my objection entails.Right at the outset, he makes that cryptic statement about passing over in silence that which cannot be spoken. There is a lot written about your objection, and I mean a lot! Recently, I have been reaading Michel Henry and Jean luc Marion, and Jean luc Nanci and the theological turn of phenomenology, putting a great deal of emphasis on Husserl. Husserl's phenomenological reduction suspends judgment to allow the world to become phenomenologically clear. Was Wittgenstein a phenomenologist? Maybe. — Constance
However, anytime we invoke evolution to explain everything there's the danger of reciting an anthropic principle. — Cheshire
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