I suspect that de Klerk et al are basically Kantian in their moral stance.
— Joshs

Which is to say very little; perhaps that they were consistent. — Banno

It says that without Kant and his armchair these wonderful ethical actors would have defaulted to ethical positions more authoritarian in nature, which is what typified pre-Kantian moral thought.

And again, the point is to act. — Banno

Plenty of people acting, but not enough people really thinking.

I blame myself, Tom Storm. I assumed you at least had a curiosity and a capacity to inquire. The trouble here is that you really don't know anything at all about continental philosophy, which is the implicit background to all this. — Astrophel

Blame - how old fashioned. :wink: But I note that in remainder of your response you put the blame somewhat harshly on me. Nice work. I don't really know anything about any philosophy, I just have an interest.

But I have read smatterings of Husserl and listened to Dreyfus' fascinating lectures on Heidegger and started reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, so I am not unsympathetic to continental philosophy or phenomenology.

You need to do better than attempt an elitist put down of a poor pleb who is so beneath you. It makes you sound like you're out of your depth. I suspect now that an inherent belief in the superiority of your own thought might explain why your capacity to communicate on this is so muddled. Possibly you are not really trying. Now it might also be that English is not your first language, so that could be a factor too.

Nevertheless, if you were any good at this you would be able to explain your idea clearly and not blame others for the deficits in your own capacity to communicate. And you might not stoop to playing 'in group/out group' games in an awkward attempt to marginalise those who have different views. :razz:

And again, the point is to act. — Banno

This reminds of a somewhat tasteless analogy: that of a headless chicken (which is set on the ground rather than held upside-down by the legs to hurry up the rush of blood - yes, as the high school joke goes, I sometimes eat dead animals too … and they have to be killed in order for this to be … this great news flash aside). A headless chicken will act in all sorts of ways - can even be said to interact with others when other chickens are around - but this without a coherent goal. Ethics on the other hand, in order to so be, requires action governed by a coherent goal.

Deontology: that good is best approached when all one does can become a universal law were all others to find themselves in an identical situation. Utilitarianism: that good is best approached when dolor is optimally minimized among one and all within the cohort(s) considered. Virtue ethics: that good is best approached when virtue is optimally enacted in oneself and in the populace. At the very least when so expressed, all systems of ethics are founded upon an optimal approach toward a good - a good that is never fully, perfectly obtained and maintained in its pure form within practice; an ideal good, in other words. Action not governed by this ideal good is thereby not ethical regardless of the ethical system implemented - so too does this ideal good define the unethical as action that stands in opposition to the very same ideal good addressed. The headless chickens’ actions, however, stand outside both the ethical and unethical, this as best as we can tell.

What, then, is this ideal good that all ethical systems address implicitly, if not explicitly?

As previously mentioned, and in accord with @Joshs, I strongly sympathize with the notion that its discovery resides in reflection upon the nature of the self, which naturally incorporates not only oneself but what all other selves desire by shear fact of being (when philosophically addressed, even when they are deemed mortal enemies). And, in accord with @Astrophel, I can’t see how it can be discovered without discovering truths in respect to the affective beings we are - some universally applicable affective truth(s) which reason serves to guide and benefit but which is not reasoning in and of itself.

[My own answer, BTW, will be quickly disregarded as mysticism, pomo, or some such, for it in part pivots around an ultimate state of nondual awareness wherein all dolors can only be rationally inferred to vanish while awareness remains - a state of awareness that awaits to be obtained for as long as it might existentially take - in this sense akin to cosmological notions of Nirvana, Brahman, the One, etc. So, because of this derision from others, I’m not going to be offering my own answer as a contender for argument. But the philosophical question regarding ethics remains even when such “mystical” answer is at best shunned:]

What is the ideal good aspired toward that all ethical systems address - this implicitly, if not explicitly - without whose governance actions become at best amoral (i.e., neither moral nor immoral), this as per the actions of a headless chicken?

Else, how can ethics obtain in the absence of any ideal good?

Plenty of people acting, but not enough people really thinking. — Joshs

Sure. It remains that the point of ethics is to act.

Ethics on the other hand, in order to so be, requires action governed by a coherent goal. — javra

Hmm. I suppose the problem I see here is the singular: Goal, not goals.

Both deontology and utilitarianism seek what we might too tightly call an algorithm for deciding moral issues. A rule such that any case has a ready-made solution, a black box into which one feeds the data and derives a solution.

Virtue ethics need not seek that. It need not expect there to be any such rules. Instead it focuses on making oneself as capable as possible of acting well in whatever unpredictable situations one might find oneself in. And it leaves acting well open to discussion and transformation; not undefined, but open.

Virtue ethics lacks the hubris of deontology and utilitarianism.

Sure, being fair, being consistent, and being happy are worthy; but there's more to it.

Hence, goals.

Virtue ethics lacks the hubris of deontology and utilitarianism.

Sure, being fair, being consistent, and being happy are worthy; but there's more to it.

Hence, goals — Banno

Other than what I previously mentioned here, I don't have anything against virtue ethics.

The plurality of goals you mention to me misses the point. Of course there are a plurality of goals in practice within an individual, to not address a culture. As to their ethical standing, what is it that makes all these deemed to be good goals commonly defined - or better yet understood - as good? Herein lies the meta-ethics of good, or goodness. All concrete instantiations of good - regardless of perspective from culture or person - share in common the property of being good. And this property that defines all concrete instantiations is singular. Liken it to a universal and its instantiations: the universal is singular, the instantiations of it are plural.

While I can understand that it's a non-concern for some, it is yet a valid, if not very important, philosophical question: What is this ideal good that defines the innumerable, often enough times conflicting, instantiations of good relative to different cultures and to the different individuals within?

As to their ethical standing, what is it that makes all these deemed to be good goals commonly defined - or better yet understood - as good? — javra

You'll perhaps be aware that I've a generally anti-philosophical approach. So I think that there's a fundamental methodological error in starting by deciding what is good. Good isn't found, least of all by philosophical discourse. That's part and parcel of rejecting the philosophical method of seeking essences, or setting out definitions, or fathoming the a priori...

There is no feature common to what is good, as Moore showed - apart from being good. Like all definitions, those for "good" are post-hoc rationalisations. But that does not prevent our using the term well and effectively.

So the plurality of goals, so far as it goes, does not miss the point, so much as dismiss it and yet remain on task. It bypasses the navel-gazing, admitting that we needs must act; and do so regardless of whether we know what we ought to do.

Alan Watts, D T Suzuki, Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharishi and Theodore Roszak — Wayfarer

Not to forget Ram Das, Timothy Leary, Carlos Castaneda, Aldous Huxley.

So - I very much see the course of modern intellectual history as the almost complete loss of the meaning of soul, which has been replaced with various forms of neo-darwinian materialism. It treats mankind as an objective phenomenon, something to study, alongside ants and whales, and has no greater conception of what matters that what works in an instrumental sense.

"Chemical scum", as Stephen Hawkings once put it eloquently. (Oddly, this kind of attitude is sometimes dignified with the term 'humanism'.) — Wayfarer

Interesting the way the scientific community so casually releases this kind of talk to culture. It is not that it is wrong, but that it is true only in the context of discussions that are thematically restricted to their own field. This IS what a person is through the eyes of a physicist, and there is no intent to denigrate humanity; they don't see it that way because they are fascinated by what they do. Just listen to Neil de Grasse Talk about the Truth of scientific discovery. He thinks it's the Hoy Grail. Utterly clueless. Hawkings' sense of humor is an in-house commonality among those so embedded in a mentality that the cannot understand anything else.

So - I very much see the course of modern intellectual history as the almost complete loss of the meaning of soul, which has been replaced with various forms of neo-darwinian materialism. — Wayfarer

Of course, Darwinism is right. So is astronomy and biochemistry. They are right, and I don't question these. But they simply are not philosophical. See Husserl's Ideas I or his Cartesian Meditations for for a really explicit statement about this: sciences and the "naturalistic attitude" on the one hand, and phenomenology on the other. The latter is an exposition of "things themselves" that are there, intuitively (he claims) prior to what a scientist does. It is "originary". This is a whole new world.

Whereas I see the great traditions of philosophy (and in my world, those are Christian Platonism, Indian Advaita, and Mahāyāna Buddhism) as representative of the philosophia perennis, and charting the course towards self-realisation. You do find inklings of that in Kierkegaard, and Heidegger wrestles with it in his own secularist kind of way, although I could never see it in Nietszche (flak jacket on.) — Wayfarer

It is said that the Buddha was the ultimate phenomenologist. I think Husserl's epoche, if taken to its logical end, is an act of meditation. The phenomenological reduction is a "method" not just a theory. It requires one to suspend most of what comes to mind to the understanding. Meditation is just this suspension, but rigorous. Is it possible to "see' the world as it "is" without recollection rushing to claim the moment? Is it possible to even conceive such a thing, for to think of it is to recall. See, if you like, Kierkegaard's Repetition: there is a difference between recollection and repetition. The former is a Platonic affirmation of knowledge; the latter is a renewal of presence IN time. You find this in Heidegger and Sartre(?). There is long history of this, starting with Plato: the present is a moving image of eternity; the Augustine, Kant, and so on. I am Trying to read Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative. I find it difficult, but there is this very old notion of nunc stans I am trying to think through. Kierkegaard is famous for his "eternal present" and Wittgenstein followed suit, I think. He was a fan of Kierkegaard.

So after that long preamble, what of the summum bonum? I see the grand religious narratives as symbolic an allegorical presentations of the journey of self-realisation, variously conceived and envisaged in different cultural milieu. But that self-realisation, in my lexicon, is possible due to the sense in which h. sapiens is the Universe become aware of itself. We're not simply the epiphenomenal byproducts of dumb material stuff, as the secular academy must assume, absent any meta-narrative of their own. As stated splendidly in one of Albert Einstein's late-in-life musings, by way of a letter of condolence:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. — Wayfarer

Reading phenomenology completely changes the vocabulary of ideas like this. It takes that shift from daily engagement in the world to a broader perspective and gives it a whole new meaning.

Blame - how old fashioned. :wink: But I note that in remainder of your response you put the blame somewhat harshly on me. Nice work. I don't really know anything about any philosophy, I just have an interest.

But I have read smatterings of Husserl and listened to Dreyfus' fascinating lectures on Heidegger and started reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, so I am not unsympathetic to continental philosophy or phenomenology.

You need to do better than attempt an elitist put down of a poor pleb who is so beneath you. It makes you sound like you're out of your depth. I suspect now that an inherent belief in the superiority of your own thought might explain why your capacity to communicate on this is so muddled. Possibly you are not really trying. Now it might also be that English is not your first language, so that could be a factor too.

Nevertheless, if you were any good at this you would be able to explain your idea clearly and not blame others for the deficits in your own capacity to communicate. And you might not stoop to playing 'in group out/group' games in an awkward attempt to marginalise those who have different views. :razz: — Tom Storm

I don't know where this comes from, but it was you that said your time was wasted after all that I put out there. I mean, what time did YOU waste? And you read nothing, or you said nothing at all about the argument placed before you. You didn't bring up this point, call me on that, express disbelief about the other. You made no effort at all. Snipe hunting?? That is insulting. And now you are the injured party?

I wasted YOUR time?

You'll perhaps be aware that I've a generally anti-philosophical approach. — Banno

Very candidly stated. I can find admiration for that. Maybe akin to the moto of not fixing what isn’t broken? Just as candidly, I remain curious … and dissatisfied with not knowing what is right and what is wrong in that oh so philosophical sense. So, from where I stand, we’re at a friendly enough impasse.

But to be clear on my part:

So I think that there's a fundamental methodological error in starting by deciding what is good. — Banno

Not deciding, but discovering.

:clap: :ok:

Not to forget Ram Das, Timothy Leary, Carlos Castaneda, Aldous Huxley. — Astrophel

Ah yes, thanks for the reminder.

It is said that the Buddha was the ultimate phenomenologist. I think Husserl's epoche, if taken to its logical end, is an act of meditation. — Astrophel

See Epoché and Śūnyatā , Jay Garfield. Right on that wavelength.

The phenomenological reduction is a "method" not just a theory. It requires one to suspend most of what comes to mind to the understanding. Meditation is just this suspension, but rigorous. Is it possible to "see' the world as it "is" without recollection rushing to claim the moment? — Astrophel

And also The Embodied Mind, the Varela/Thomson/Rosch book that initiated the enactivism school. That is basically a combination of phenomenology and abhidharma. (Thomson has recently published a book Why I am not a Buddhist, but I don't think that detracts from the Buddhist philosophical elements of the original work. ) I think this kind of approach manages to step out of the whole 'reason v faith' dichotomy that bedevils so much mainstream thinking.

Is it possible to "see' the world as it "is" without recollection rushing to claim the moment? Is it possible to even conceive such a thing, for to think of it is to recall. — Astrophel

I think the origin of metaphysics, specifically with Parmenides, was grounded in such a vision. There's a (somewhat maverick) classics scholar by the name of Peter Kingsley who explores those themes. (Fascinating recent review on that.)

But subsequently to my exploration of those ideas through the Eastern sources I mentioned, I came to realise that many of these themes are also to be found in the Western tradition. There is that thread in Western philosophy but it's basically been rejected by most analytical philosophy as such, although it lives on in European philosophy. I'm trying to join those dots now but it takes a lot of reading.

I wasted YOUR time? — Astrophel

You conflate disagreement with personal attack.

The time wasting comment was my response to the specific approach described below which seemed to me to lack focus and promise. Your ice scream paragraph:

What is deliciousness? Such an odd question, no? But all such affections go like this. And note that inquiry ends here, for there is no need to justify wanting something delicious, for to be delicious is inherently good, unassailably good. Of course, you can assail many things: can I afford it? Should I steal it? Is it healthy? This kind of thing can be as complicated as human affairs themselves. But: it is these affairs that make for complications, not the Haagen dazs's deliciousness.
Herein lies the essence of ethical agency. — Astrophel

Ethical agency seen through the 'continental' lens here seems diffuse and likely fruitless. But it is up to you to demonstrate what it accomplishes. However, I am happy to move on.

What moves the act beyond the merely irritating into the immoral? — Banno

A difference subtle. Not my cup of tea I'm afraid but I'll give it my best shot: How about if I say it's a matter of degrees and not type and so destroying the cave is immoral, but not as immoral as killing a person.

:up: Don't get carried away though!

It remains that the point of ethics is to act. — Banno

More than "to act", to reflectively act.

But do you have any original ideas to share, as well? — god must be atheist

From p.1 of this thread .

it's a good definition of self-sacrificial ethics — god must be atheist

Why definitely "self-sacrificial"? Although sometimes you may sacrifice things you would like to do or have for yourself for the sake of others, e.g. your family, your company, etc., this is not always the case. But even in these cases, if, for example, you sacrifice your desire to buy a nice car and instead use that money to send your son or daughter to the a College or University, this will increase their survival because they would have a better salary in the near future than if they were just school graduates. And this will also benefit the whole family, wouldn't it? There are a lot of examples of such cases.
On the other hand, you are not supposed to sacrifice everything for the sake of others. In that case you threaten your own survival and well-being, and you can even die. And that would be not good for anyone. That's why suicide is generally considered an unethical action. It's against survival. That is, against life.

the ultimate spring and origin of ethics is the survival of the individual and/or the survival of his DNA derivatives. — god must be atheist

OK, but this is totally physical. Well-being refers to both physical and mental aspects. Happiness, joy, intelligence, feeling free, and so on are all non-physical and attributes of well-being, and thus ethics.

The circles you mention .. — god must be atheist

"Spheres!" We live in a 3D world! :smile:

actual efforts to make survive — god must be atheist

Please don't stick to the word "survival". A lot of people do. However, I add the word "well-being". But also a lot of people ignore it! I am not sure exactly why. (Although I have some idea why :smile:)
You may substitute the word "survival" with "life" if you like. In fact, I think I will start using that word instead myself! :smile:

his personal ethics may be skewed in the sense of what expectations society places on him, because of the discrepancy between his agenda and society's agenda. — god must be atheist

If there is such a discrepancy, and it is difficult for you to bear that, you might want better go and live in another society. But as long as you stay in it you must respect its rules and expectations. If your company has a certain code of ethics or rules or policies with which you disagree, you have to either live with them (because your salary is more important) or join another company. Isn't that right?

But then, well-being is no more explanatory than good — Astrophel

Well, they are different things, aren't they? The first one means a state of being comfortable, healthy or happy. The second one is much more general and it can mean that which is right (in general), a benefit or advantage to someone or something, etc. I have clarified the word since a lot of people start asking questions like, "OK, but what is (considered) good?" etc.

Anyway, there is a book you might find interesting by Oldenquist, called "Non suicidal Society". — Astrophel

Please, give me something easier to do! :grin: For instance, answer to your own viewpoint(s).
In in fact, I am more interested in first-hand --people's own-- than second-hand opinions.

family comes before country, country before world; that kind of thing. — Astrophel

It would be good to have some examples, because I can't see how such a thing can work ...

In the first place, according to this scheme, "you" are more important than your "family", since you are the smaller than it, right? Well, this is one of the reasons why marriages fail. And if your marriage fails and you break up, then you get "smaller": you are retreating into your shell.

Then, how can your family be more important than your country if you need a country to live and work in, in order to sustain it?

Then, if your country is more important than the world, could you go against the whole word to defend it? If another country attacks yours, who would be there to support your country since it behaves as being more important than every else? Why do you think coalitions are created in wars?
Your country cannot live isolated except in a jungle!

No, sorry, this scheme does not make any sense.

Beware of what authorities (experts), known personalities --philosophers or other-- say. Don't adopt their opinions except if they really make sense to you, "work" for you and apply to your life.

The problem with utility is that people are not quantifiable entities. — Astrophel

Certainly not.

There is a sovereign "right" one has over the public good. — Astrophel

I'm not sure, but maybe "There is a no sovereign 'right'" ?
If you meant that, there is such a right. This is where customs, traditions, laws, etc., come in.
But above these, "public good" is what benefits society. And I think everyone knows what. It's another thing if people chose to ignore it or do the opposite. This has to do with personal ethics. Only insane people usually cannot distinguish right from wrong.

Ethical agency seen through the 'continental' lens here seems diffuse and likely fruitless. But it is up to you to demonstrate what it accomplishes. However, I am happy to move on. — Tom Storm

The continental lens is not the issue. If you make it in issue, then you can tell me what it is. You think it is unimportant that to philosophically understand ethics, one does not have to understand ethical agency? That is analytically impossible, because ethics is an inter-agency affair. How can we say what ethics is and what the basis of obligation is if we don't understand what it is about a person that makes ethics even possible?
A fair question, and then some.

More than "to act", to reflectively act. — 180 Proof

Absolutely! But what is it one has to think about? This is critical, I mean, philosophy asks, what is this all about, this struggle (this "war" says Levinas)? To address this, then certain questions come before us. Struggles are over something, power, wealth, advantages, indulgences, glorious things, trivial things, and since this is a philosophical question, then all attention is on the essence of these. I call it affectivity or value. This is the basic concept for the engine that drives ethics: the simple fact that we are in a world in which we care, and caring is the subjective side of the objective desideratum: the existent yums and ouches IN the world.
Reflection has to go here eventually, if the matter is philosophically taken on. In my thought, all roads to validating anything philosophically lead to the material basis out of which it arose.

Same-page construct (?):
Affectivity...that from which a change in a given system is possible.
Structure of affectivity, then, is that by which the change occurs.
The first is an element in a system, the second is a method of that element in that system.

The structure of affectivity is twofold — Astrophel

Agreed, as stated in a plethora of texts. So saying, from the continental tradition, as you admit this current subject matter takes its ground, the duality of affectivity, in its Enlightenment continental form, is given from the distinction in judgements, re: aesthetic, which regards what the subject feels about a thing, and, discursive, which regards what a subject thinks about that thing.

On the other side of this subjective, call it a deficit, there is the true object, the qualified existent, the phenomenon of deliciousness, say, or misery. — Astrophel

Wherein lay the problem.
1.) The true object is not in the same system as affectivity and its structure. The true object is an effect on the system such that the system is affected by it. The true object is external to the system it affects.
2.) It is implied that the true object and the qualified existent are indistinguishable. While it may be necessary that a true object is an existent, it remains that there are no conditions under which its qualities are given from its mere existence.
3.) Phenomena are the affects of true objects on the system of sensibility in humans. If it is the case that no qualities are given from a mere existence, and mere existence is necessary for phenomena as affects of those true objects, then it follows that qualities do not belong to phenomena.
4.) Because qualities are determinable, but cannot belong to phenomena as an element in a system of sensibility, it follows that qualities are determinable by a method in a system which is itself affected by phenomena.
5.) Deliciousness does not belong to, is not a quality of, phenomena. The true object that effects, and the qualified existent that is an affect, are in fact distinguishable. Deliciousness, and all qualities, cannot be determined from a given object by sensibility, but must arise from a system incorporating a method capable of it, such that qualities can be determinable as relating to an object.

There is a valid “other side of this subjective”, but it does not entail an affectivity, which belongs to the affected subject alone. A cake sitting on the table is a true object, from which its affect on a subject as a phenomenon is given. Whether the cake is made with sugar or gasoline, by which the quality of its existence is determinable, cannot be ascertained from its merely sitting on the table.

That I will act when an act is called for, is given. How I should act is not given from the mere fact an act is called for. That I will act in a prescribed manner is not given from the mere fact I should act. If ethics is the compendium of acts, a description of personal conduct in general, nothing whatsoever is given from that, that suffices as determination of the acts themselves.

Consequentialism, therefore, is valid on the one hand for its effect (there are acts), yet insufficient on the other for a cause (that which determines the act)
—————-

we are res affectus, a "thing" of affectivity" — Astrophel

Yes. WE.....are. Not another thing not us. It is we alone that is affected and exhibit affectivity. All else is merely occasion for it.
—————-

.....value: the "impossible" goodness of something we call good. Non contingent goodness. — Astrophel

No such thing. Any good-ness is contingent on the something said to bear the quality of good. To call something good immediately makes it goodness possible.

Non-contingent good, on the other hand, is that good which has nothing related to it. Contingent on nothing. Good in and of itself, as that by which relative.....contingent.....goodness is judged.
—————-

It is the entirety of phenomenal possibilities we classify as value that I am saying is the essence of ethics. — Astrophel

Value is THE existential foundation of ethics, something existence "does" — Astrophel

Might it be that the entirety of phenomenal possibilities we classify as valuable serve as essence of ethics? In which case, consequentialism holds. But if we classify something as valuable, value is then a contingent assignment, and cannot be existential in that to which we assign the value, so consequentialism fails.

Closer to the content of the topic at hand.....true story......the other day I anonymously bought dinner for a young family unknown to me, for which I had no prior experience. If I understand you correctly, there was something about my immediate phenomenal experience of that family that was of such value as to cause my donation. Admittedly, I noticed a variety of existential matters of fact, insofar as they were not all that well-dressed, ordered less expensive items from the menu, ordered no dessert even with the presence of youngsters who would have appreciated a bowl of ice cream.
(This place....their in-house chocolate/peanut butter cheese cake is superb)

When there are a myriad of reasons for any of those existential matters of fact.....how is it possible to assign value merely because of an immediate observation? If the kids were lactose intolerant, if the whole family had just left the house they were in the process of remodeling, if nothing on the menu suited their tastes......all sufficiently explain what I observed, but do not necessarily explain why I paid for the dining occasion.

Nahhhh.....my ethical contribution was the consequence of my having already assigned the value of “deserving” as an aesthetic judgement, which may have been an affect of my observations, but cannot thereby be predicated on them alone. I judged them as deserving because I related that value in that instance, to another in which it was absent. It follows that the observation, the phenomenal experience, was valuable, in that it elicited an assignable value to my ethical act, but contained no predicate value in itself.

Again, the consequentialist ethics was given in the act; the cause of it was not.
————

I do have my arguments. — Astrophel

Yes, you do. But are they enough?

And also The Embodied Mind, the Varela/Thomson/Rosch book that initiated the enactivism school. That is basically a combination of phenomenology and abhidharma. (Thomson has recently published a book Why I am not a Buddhist, but I don't think that detracts from the Buddhist philosophical elements of the original work. ) I think this kind of approach manages to step out of the whole 'reason v faith' dichotomy that bedevils so much mainstream thinking. — Wayfarer

Joshs wrote a paper on this book and I read it and the book. The book quite accessible, the paper difficult. I find cognitive science decidedly not philosophical, on the one hand, and the Madhyumika fascinating. In the west we have apophatic theology/philosophy. Jphn Caputo wrote a couple of books, The Weakness of God and The Tears of Derrida, that in one way of another defend the apophatic resolution in the discovery that the world that stands before us impossible to understand, and our "totalities" that is, our coherent systems for taking it up and dealing with it lead to this final aporia. What I am trying to say in this OP is inspired by this as well as Mahayana "no self" insights. In my opinion, philosophy has come to an end, but philosophers don't know this, yet. It came to and end in India long ago (reading the Abidhamma is a very tedious thing to do, and I could never wrap my mind around all that pali language. But pull back from this, and see that its basic assumption is about "seeing" the world in a pure, dynamic way).

I think the origin of metaphysics, specifically with Parmenides, was grounded in such a vision. There's a (somewhat maverick) classics scholar by the name of Peter Kingsley who explores those themes. (Fascinating recent review on that.)

But subsequently to my exploration of those ideas through the Eastern sources I mentioned, I came to realise that many of these themes are also to be found in the Western tradition. There is that thread in Western philosophy but it's basically been rejected by most analytical philosophy as such, although it lives on in European philosophy. I'm trying to join those dots now but it takes a lot of reading. — Wayfarer

I have Kingsley here. I'll read it.

Being and non Being are impossibly contradictory. But I never really bought this. Apophatic thinking is revelatory not logical. Parmenides is more about those "impossible" performative contradictions like, "I am lying." I have always thought Hume was right in saying that reason is an empty vessel that would just as soon scratch humanity existence out of existence. It bears no ill will or good will. It is merely formal. It is the content that has meaning, and reason has no limitations at all regarding content. God could literally show up and reveal an order of glory and beauty that is eternal, and reason would not flinch.

The proof is in the pudding: an examination of the foundational structure of experience. It has been done many times I know, and I have benefitted from these, but due regard is not given to affectivity (value).

I ask "what Is Ethics" because an analysis of ethics bring forth the Real (or, irreal?), which I think is affectively defined. I look at it like this: transcendence is by definition unspeakable and unencounterable; material substance is simply a way to reify scientific theories into an ontology. We are not, in all these endeavors, trying to affirm a thesis, even when this is exactly what we are doing. We are really trying to affirm some value: it is the desire, interest, and so on FOR this existent value. Analysis ends here in the actual concrete existent of affectivity.

Then the question goes to a hierarchy of valuing (not values. That is misleading) , and here, the Eastern notions make a great leap into the argument: They are saying, very generally, that it is not an argument at all. It is existential. It becomes, at the threshold of philosophy a search for greater and greater value, and this is an internal discovery.

Well, they are different things, aren't they? The first one means a state of being comfortable, healthy or happy. The second one is much more general and it can mean that which is right (in general), a benefit or advantage to someone or something, etc. I have clarified the word since a lot of people start asking questions like, "OK, but what is (considered) good?" etc. — Alkis Piskas

It's just that "well" and "good" are synonyms.

Please, give me something easier to do! :grin: For instance, answer to your own viewpoint(s).
In in fact, I am more interested in first-hand --people's own-- than second-hand opinions. — Alkis Piskas

Sorry, I don't mean to "give" it to you. I just write what comes to mind and I thought of Oldenquist.

n the first place, according to this scheme, "you" are more important than your "family", since you are the smaller than it, right? Well, this is one of the reasons why marriages fail. And if your marriage fails and you break up, then you get "smaller": you are retreating into your shell.

Then, how can your family be more important than your country if you need a country to live and work in, in order to sustain it?

Then, if your country is more important than the world, could you go against the whole word to defend it? If another country attacks yours, who would be there to support your country since it behaves as being more important than every else? Why do you think coalitions are created in wars?
Your country cannot live isolated except in a jungle! — Alkis Piskas

Oldequist was trying to take a conservative stand against treating third world moral obligations as equal to moral obligations at the national level. He conceived of the de facto condition that we do indeed care about family first and friends and neighbors second and so on, as a ground for de jure thinking about obligations. He wanted to give a rationality for ignoring the suffering of, and the exploitation of those abroad who have resources we can use, but we want these at a minimal cost.

You know, this is the way conservatives think. They are in this deeply immoral people, I think. But it is a good issue for arguing.

I'm not sure, but maybe "There is a no sovereign 'right'" ?
If you meant that, there is such a right. This is where customs, traditions, laws, etc., come in.
But above these, "public good" is what benefits society. And I think everyone knows what. It's another thing if people chose to ignore it or do the opposite. This has to do with personal ethics. Only insane people usually cannot distinguish right from wrong. — Alkis Piskas

Well, this these pathetic nobodies stand in the way of making our country great, and by great I mean greater wealth throughout the land, more "being comfortable, healthy or happy", More! But what about those who stand in our way? those Uyghurs in China that will not toe the line, the poor who not find a job, the useless, the mentally diseased, and so on. We could make the greatness happen if it wasn't for those that hold us back.

How does your thinking on this go?

But what is it one has to think about? — Astrophel

Thinking about acting – learning to act ("fail") better – while acting rather than ex post facto, concretely (re: Peirce, Dewey) and not merely in the abstract.

More prolix nonsense with respect to "what is ethics?" :confused:

Think about acting – learning to act ("fail") better – as one is acting rather than ex post facto, concretely (re: Peirce, Dewey) and not merely in the abstract. — 180 Proof

Sure, thinking about acting. But our thinking doesn't arise ex nihilo. If I were born a 19th Zulu warrior, I imagine my moral thinking would be very different than it is. Or in the American south 200 years ago.

But is this local sense of right and wrong all there is? Isn't there a way to bring moral understanding to a higher ground?

But, more interesting: if ethics is about "learning to act better" there is beneath this a deeper assumption, which is that human being (or dogs and cats) are worthy of our better acts; that a person deserves this consideration at all. Of course, this is not unfamiliar thinking: we look to intent, for example, in criminal assessment. We also look to vulnerabilities to determine degree of culpability. If a person has no caring for another, then the other cannot be accused of mental duress. I mean to say, in all ethical conditions qua ethical, the analysis always turns on the existence of that which is in play: some caring, desire, indulgence, affection is, I argue, what ethics is "all about".
What follows from this is the next concern, but initially, in a philosophical analysis, ethics is this. Acting entirely depends on this.

... some caring, desire, indulgence, affection is, I argue, what ethics is "all about". — Astrophel

That's as misguided as saying "appetite, urinating, flatulence, defecating ..." is what metabolism is "all about". :roll:

e conceived of the de facto condition that we do indeed care about family first and friends ... — Astrophel

I see. Then yes, most people think first about themselves, etc. But this depends on the culture. It has to do with social conscience. In Greece, for example, this is quite low in relation to other European countries.

But what about those who stand in our way? those Uyghurs in China that will not toe the line, the poor who not find a job, the useless, the mentally diseased, and so on. We could make the greatness happen if it wasn't for those that hold us back.... — Astrophel

I think I see what you are talking about, although these things are not so real to me, living in a totally different society than yours. Anyway, to stick to our subject of ethics and well-beingness, I could say that each country thinks more about its own good than the good of the world, even if Unions of countries are created for supporting each other. For example, I don't think that Germany as a state thinks more about the good of the EU than about its own. And I also think it's not the only one. This is what I call "lack of ethics". In other words, we cannot talk about ethics on a social plane. Ethics is a personal thing.

Sure. It remains that the point of ethics is to act. — Banno

Could we instead say that the point of ethics is to communicate? A good counselor, parent or friend can save lives and souls through words. Well chosen words, backed up by careful thought. I worked as a counselor with severely emotionally disturbed and psychotic young adults. My prior armchair introspections were invaluable in making sense of and coming up with strategies of helping them. My thinking and writing constitute my ‘bible’ , the guide for all my social-ethical interactions. Every significant insight I incorporate into my writing changes my outlook on life and has direct effects on my concrete behavior with others. These days my writing constitutes my acting.

Good isn't found, least of all by philosophical discourse. That's part and parcel of rejecting the philosophical method of seeking essences, or setting out definitions, or fathoming the a priori...

There is no feature common to what is good, as Moore showed - apart from being good. Like all definitions, those for "good" are post-hoc rationalisations. But that does not prevent our using the term well and effectively. — Banno

Good may not be found by philosophical discourse, at least as a universal a priori, but in saying there is no feature common to what is good, one is still assuming the coherence of the concept of ethical good, and as such is remaining within the familiar territory of religious metaphysics. Martin Hagglund has made this argument in his critique of the Leviniasian ethical stance of writers like John Caputo and Simon Critchley.

But if we classify something as valuable, value is then a contingent assignment, and cannot be existential in that to which we assign the value — Mww

Do you have any reservations about this vocabulary — that we classify something as valuable or assign it value?

I just don’t think we experience the world that way — not universally. Maybe in some cases, we do something like “assigning” value, I don’t know. I think we mostly recognize value, understand things to have value. In this, I tend to think to think we are much like other animals: the world has things in it to be sought, and things to be avoided. Those are facts, not choices, not assignments.

I mean, I get that a biologist or a psychologist is going to say things like this: the organism, or some subsystem of it, classifies a given entity encountered as “food” or “predator” based on this or that, and assigns it a role, as if the world were a play the organism is putting on. I’m not disputing accounts of how it’s done, what the mechanism is. But that’s not the organism’s experience, which is of a world populated with good things and bad things. We’re capable of theorizing that, of seeing around our own corner to some degree, so we’re in a position to say, it’s all assignment all the time: nothing has inherent value. But of course you can only say that and mean it if you’re not a human being or a dog or an amoeba, if you’re not a living thing at all. So it looks to me like an answer to the wrong question. We want to know how we find value in things and what it means for us, and end up describing what that would be like if we were completely different from what we are. Yes, we could happen to have grown up elsewhere, at another time, speak a different language and have different customs and traditions, but none of us only happen to be human beings and could happen to have been something else.

Jphn Caputo wrote a couple of books, The Weakness of God and The Tears of Derrida, that in one way of another defend the apophatic resolution in the discovery that the world that stands before us impossible to understand, and our "totalities" that is, our coherent systems for taking it up and dealing with it lead to this final aporia. — Astrophel

You owe it to yourself to read Martin Hagglund’s critique of Caputo’s attempt to ‘theologize’ Derrida. I’m sure you won’t agree with it , but at least it will articulate the differences in outlook between the religion-beyond -religion approaches of Caputo, Critchely and Levinas (along with religiously oriented phenomenologists like Marion, Henry, Scheler, Anthony Steinbock, Dermot Moran, Edith Stein) and what I see as the post-religious thinking of Heidegger and Derrida.

Being and non Being are impossibly contradictory. — Astrophel

My heuristic for this idea is that the subject of such discussions is really the nature of existence as distinct from the nature of being. This distinction revolves around the specific meaning of 'exist' - from 'ex-' outside of (e.g. external, exile) and -'ist' to stand. So 'to exist' is to be a separate entity, this thing as distinct from that thing. ('No entity without identity'.) Whereas 'to be' has a much broader range of meanings that 'to exist' (recall that the explication of the different senses of the verb 'to be' is central to Aristotle's Metaphysics.)

What exists are phenomena - that which appears - and 'what appears' or exists is invariably delimited in time and composed of parts. (Name a counter-example!)

As an illustrative example, you find in Mahāyāna literature the frequent expression that 'everything that exists is subject to birth and death'. Nirvāṇa does not exist, but is the reality beyond the vicissitudes of birth and death. So, beyond (the vicissitudes of) existence.

I make this distinction because when you encounter the puzzling phrase 'beyond being', I think what you're really reading is 'beyond existence', where 'existence' means 'phenomenal existence'.

See this example from the SEP entry on Eriugena (by Dermot Moran) where I have interpolated 'to exist' for what was written as 'to be'. I think this interpolation makes the passage considerably easier to interpret (although still obviously a very deep subject!)

Eriugena proceeds to list “five ways of interpreting” (quinque modi interpretationis) the manner in which things may be said to be or not to be to exist or not to exist. (Periphyseon, I.443c–446a). According to the first mode, things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to be exist, whereas anything which, “through the excellence of its nature” (per excellentiam suae naturae), transcends our faculties are said not to be exist. According to this classification, God, because of his transcendence is said not to be exist. He is “nothingness through excellence” (nihil per excellentiam).

A similar intuition is also found in Tillich's apophaticism:

Religion is direction or movement toward the ultimate or the unconditional. And God rightly defined might be called the Unconditional. God, in the true sense, is indefinable. Since the Unconditional precedes our minds and precedes all created things, God cannot be confined by the mind or by words. Tillich sees God as Being-Itself, or the "Ground of all Being." For this reason there cannot be "a" God. There cannot even be a "highest God," for even that concept is limiting. We cannot make an object out of God. And the moment we say he is the highest God or anything else, we have made him an object. Thus, beyond the God of the Christian or the God of the Jews, there is the "God beyond God." This God cannot be said to exist or not to exist in the sense that we "exist". Either statement is limiting. We cannot make a thing out of God, no matter how holy this thing may be, because there still remains something behind the holy thing which is its ground or basis, the "ground of being."

In short, 'existence' is what 'the transcendent' is transcendent in respect to. Whereas to all intents, 'existence' or 'the phenomenal' defines the entire domain of operations for naturalism.

I ask "what Is Ethics" because an analysis of ethics bring forth the Real (or, irreal?), which I think is affectively defined. I look at it like this: transcendence is by definition unspeakable and unencounterable; material substance is simply a way to reify scientific theories into an ontology. — Astrophel

The proper context for such an understanding is that of the transformation of perception which was traditionally called metanoia. One of the epiphets of Buddha is yathābhūtaṃ, 'one who sees things as they truly are'. The figure of the Sage is a counterpart in the Greek philosophical tradition. Sagacity in that sense requires a kind of unitive or holistic understanding, rather than the merely analytical. Again the origins of this in the axial age philosophy was with the visionary sages such as Parmenides.

So maybe the reason for its 'unspeakability' is that, in seeing it, you realise truth, probably for the first time - which is impossible to convey to those lacking that vision. (Although the tradition of empowerment in Zen Buddhism is aimed at the transmission of that kind of vision.)

God could literally show up and reveal an order of glory and beauty that is eternal, and reason would not flinch. — Astrophel

Maybe there's a different conception of reason now to what the ancients understood as 'logos' (a word which was unfortunately incorporated into, or appropriate by, Christian theology.) But in, for example, the Aristotelian aitia, understanding the reason encompassed the reason for its existence and the end towards which it is directed, something that has been dropped from the modern understanding.