But you literally captured the post-blame conception in popular culture, i.e., "Leave him alone, he's doing his best!"
I think you yourself will end up sneaking blame in through the back door as well, unless you yield to (psychological) determinism — Leontiskos

What do you want to tell the person who I say is doing their best? Try harder? What’s the difference between the person you praise and the one you blame other than the difference in the result you’re looking for? Are you judging their motives based on your disappointment? How can you tell the difference between the one who is doing their best and the one who isn’t? Or are you arguing that no one is ever doing their best? If I say that a decision always represents the best one can do given the circumstances, I am not saying that the decision is nothing but the effect of a cause , I’m saying that the decision is formed by the circumstances but always transcends it. Any choice must be defined by a background, or else it isn’t a choice at all, but is only the freedom of utter meaningless chaos.

To say that someone could have done better is to miss that what they did choose already leapt beyond the conditions that formed their background. Can anyone know in the instant of that choice what its consequences will be? Because the choice is utterly new, so are the consequences, and only the unfolding of events will tell whether it will be validated or invalidated. A choice is an experiment, the venturing of a bet that one hopes will pay off. Are you to judge its success based on what new consequences it puts into effect for them, or on the basis of an old standard? In either case, who are you to judge what must be their own decision, based on their vantage, and how can you judge the necessity or wisdom of the decision based on its originally unforeseen outcome rather than how things seemed to the person at the time they chose? Isnt this 20/20 hindsight?

What do you want to tell the person who I say is doing their best? Try harder? — Joshs

I say not that no one is doing their best, but rather that not everyone is always doing their best. Again:

If everyone is doing the best they can at each moment of their life then no one is responsible for anything, and therefore it is entirely backwards to say that humans are responsible because they are always doing the best they can. — Leontiskos

Also from my last, in an edit:

There is a legitimate way in which the analytic philosophers tend to neglect the bigger picture, but it is simultaneously true that the continental folks tend to struggle with logic. When the continental folks promote a blameless society I think a logical mishap is occurring. — Leontiskos

What’s the difference between the person you praise and the one you blame other than the difference in the result you’re looking for? — Joshs

It is the difference between the role they play in causing a good or bad effect, such as scoring on the penalty kick or missing the net. And the difference between the person I blame and the person I do not blame for a bad effect consists in their causal role in producing the effect. Not everyone who produces a bad effect is to blame.

The problem here is that you're oversimplifying the vast complexity of moral philosophy, and ignoring all sorts of subtle distinctions.

How can you tell the difference between the one who is doing their best and the one who isn’t? — Joshs

By my knowledge of their capacity as a cause. Ergo: I am best situated to praise or blame myself given my uniquely informed knowledge about myself, and I blame myself precisely when I fail in relation to my capacity and my ability.

Or are you arguing that no one is ever doing their best? — Joshs

To say that not everyone is doing their best does not mean that no one is ever doing their best. This is basic logic.

If I say that a decision always represents the best one can do given the circumstances, I am not saying that the decision is nothing but the effect of a cause , I’m saying that the decision is formed by the circumstances but always transcends it. Any choice must be defined by a background, or else it isn’t a choice at all, but is only the freedom of utter meaningless chaos. — Joshs

To say that someone has acted as a cause of an effect does not mean that there are no circumstances to their act.

To say that someone could have done better is to miss that what they did choose already leapt beyond the conditions that formed their background. — Joshs

Do you have an argument for why you think that no one could ever do better? Because when you say that everyone is doing their best this is entailed.

Can anyone know in the instant of that choice what its consequences will be? — Joshs

Everyone foresees and anticipates certain consequences of their actions. That is why they act in the first place.

Because the choice is utterly new, so aren’t the consequences, and only the unfolding of events will tell whether it will be validated or invalidated. — Joshs

Within the consideration of consequences, an act is judged not primarily on the basis of the consequences that come about, but primarily on the basis of both the consequences that are intended and the consequences that could reasonably be expected to occur.

I still feel the guilt, but that doesn't mean I'm really sorry or think of myself as not-good or needing-to-be-good. — Moliere

I don't understand, unless you are describing the internal conflict?

So help me out here. Bob wants to rape and feels it very much a part of his intrinsic nature and he doesn't want to be judged for it. He asks me why it is immoral to rape. What do I tell him?

Am I immoral when I condemn him? Why? — Hanover

The intrinsic nature of a human is to be a social animal. Bob's experience has taught him that there is only one form of sociality which is hierarchy based dominance/submission relations imposed by coercion and violence. He does not understand voluntary cooperation and believes it to be a variant form of manipulation.

It is probably going to be impossible to explain all this to Bob in ten minutes, and you will have to deal with him in the only way he can understand, with physical restraint. Once he is not in a position to dominate and control, then you can perhaps start to model a cooperative and respectful relationship to him. I believe this is called in legal circles "reform". It may not work, because old habits die hard.

As far as I can see (…), any philosophy that specifies how other people should behave, is not moral at all, or even really a philosophy. — T Clark

That's pretty much as I would have it as well. How people in general should behave is reducible to mere administrative codes of conduct, and THAT is reducible to a member-specific personal moral disposition.

The consequences related to codes of right action, is very different than the consequences related to one’s own code of proper action.

Moral principles

As far as I can see, all formal moral philosophies, and certainly any philosophy that specifies how other people should behave, is not moral at all, or even really a philosophy. It’s a program of social control - coercive rules a society establishes to manage disruptive or inconvenient behavior — T Clark

Yes, I agree. If there were only one sentient being in the universe, it would go around gobbling at will. There would be no other to impede it. If there are more than one, it is possible that the stronger eats the weaker. Still no morality. Morality happens when two sentient creatures of roughly equal power encounter each other, and they have to come to terms. Morality is the terms that they come to, perhaps. It's is about controlling the behaviour of the other, so they are less of a threat, or so they work for you. Morality is always about others, what you want them to do and what they want you to do.

It might be contrasted with virtue ethics perhaps, where the concern is to be virtuous, and the focus is on oneself and not others, perhaps.

So help me out here. Bob wants to rape and feels it very much a part of his intrinsic nature and he doesn't want to be judged for it. He asks me why it is immoral to rape. What do I tell him?

Am I immoral when I condemn him? Why? — Hanover

I don't think you can do much until he actually rapes somebody. Then you have to call the cops.

Yes! though I'm hesitant with "conflict" because, in some sense, we are all of these at once -- the contraries conflict with one another: I am guilty and innocent ,and comprehend each emotional moment within some frame of evaluation. But I am the one who feels the conflict and am this conflict. In some sense I am both-and.


Or, to use a less-moralized emotion than guilt, if a song triggers anxiety, I am the anxiety now, the memory of anxiety past, and the present knowledge that this anxiety isn't related to anything but the song which happened to be playing during a traumatic event. The attachment is to a very powerful memory which, in turn, triggers the psychosomatic associations of a panic attack.

No one thinks someone who undergoes a panic attack is culpable, exactly, for that panic attack, which is why I'm bringing it up as an analogy to the lines of thinking on guilt that I'm attempting here. I'm suggesting that guilt trips are similar to panic attacks, and that these sorts of events suggest that emotions need not be attached to some rational basis. These emotions can be Pavlovian, where the bell is rung and so one feels guilt (and so a guilt-tripper moves in to ask for something to relieve the guilt)

Of course they can be sensible. When I feel guilty because I've done something I believe to be wrong then I go about and attempt to rectify it, and have no problem with such feelings -- they make perfect sense. But this is a different sort of guilt than what I mean -- it's a sensible guilt based in relationships with others, whereas I'm thinking our emotional lives, while they can develop into these communal and loving relationships, also can develop into irrational brambles and strange, senseless shapes.

Why do you think the younger child is not able to figure out what the older child does concerning the balancing of wants? Is it as simple as selfish needs being primary, or is the dichotomy between ‘self’ and ‘other’ too simplistic a way of treating the nature of motivation? — Joshs

The ages were picked arbitrarily: obviously, there is some variation in the rate at which children develop. There is also variation in the innate temperament of children: some are observant and patient; some are impetuous and headstrong; some are more selfish, some more generous.
'Self', 'outside self' and 'other' are recognized very early, in the first weeks of infancy, as the baby experiences privation. Whereas, before birth, all of its needs were automatically met without it ever feeling a want, now, food and warmth and comfort come from outside.... and sometimes the baby has to express its need for them. It has to learn to communicate. That's awareness of another sentient, responsive being.

For a long time - which is to say a baby's entire lifetime, its whole experience of the world - all of the wants are broadcast outward and the response comes from out there, from one or more caregivers, whose only function , as far as the baby knows, is to fulfill its own wants. Nothing is asked of the baby. Where would it get the idea that the others also have wants? Yet, even so, most babies - eight, nine months old - come up spontaneously with the idea of giving to another, sharing their food or offering their toys. I suppose it's a mirror response to being given things and offered things. And there is gratification in the positive response, the praise and petting when others are pleased with its behaviour.

It doesn't take a great leap of reason for a child to understand that other people are like themselves - separate individuals: the realization grows gradually, with varied experience and interaction. So, when they have acquired enough language to understand verbal requests, commands, warnings and admonitions, they are able to formulate an appropriate response.

No, I wasn't saying that, though your statement seems fair, I just meant that "morality" has contradictory characteristics due to the differing meanings of the word in various contexts. Though they aren't real contradictions, only appearing due to ambiguity as to which "morality" is being referred to. — Judaka

I agree with that too.

I'm not sure what you mean by "nothing more than social control". It reads as being very cynical, though you acknowledge the necessity for it, do you deny its potential beauty and desirability? I think those feelings you refer to as your "personal morality" are often parents to this morality as social control. To me, it's inevitable that this will happen, because of the inevitability of politics. For example, if one loves animals, how can they not act in their defence when others try to harm them? Only a specific set of morals can flourish without turning to social control, entirely inward-facing ones. Is there any separation between thoughts & feelings that guide our own behaviour and those that motivate us to influence others? — Judaka

I'm not a cynical person, although I am annoyed by philosophical muddy-headedness. I've tried to make it clear that I recognize the necessity for social controls in general and many specifically, including your example of protection of animals. I also recognize that different types of social control are less coercive and more benign than others. On the other hand, I think formal systems of moral philosophy generally give special status to social rules that don't deserve it. "Don't do that because it's wrong" generally just means "Don't do that."

Though I've yet to hear a description of "personal morality" that would allow me to identify it by myself, one possible "personal morality" is our biological morality. A psychologically in-built morality, made up of our able to perceive fairness, experience empathy and possessing aversions to incest etc. Different forms of this are observable in other pack mammals such as dogs and lions. — Judaka

What Chuang Tzu calls "intrinsic morality" has a lot in common with what you call "a psychologically in-built morality," i.e. conscience, although there's more to it than that. And I think that's the problem with what he, Emerson, and I have written. Most people don't recognize, as you note can't identify, this seemingly amorphous agent.

Though that doesn't mean they'll be persuasive. — Judaka

Clearly, from the responses in this thread, that's true.

Though coercive morality would surely exist without personal morality, it's inconceivable to me that personal morality could avoid resulting in the coercive kind. — Judaka

This I don't agree with, although I think it's just a difference of language.

That's pretty much as I would have it as well. How people in general should behave is reducible to mere administrative codes of conduct, and THAT is reducible to a member-specific personal moral disposition.

The consequences related to codes of right action, is very different than the consequences related to one’s own code of proper action. — Mww

I agree with this. I've been surprised at how many respondents have been sympathetic to this way of seeing things, although many others have been strongly in disagreement.

Morality happens when two sentient creatures of roughly equal power encounter each other, and they have to come to terms. Morality is the terms that they come to, perhaps. It's is about controlling the behaviour of the other, so they are less of a threat, or so they work for you. Morality is always about others, what you want them to do and what they want you to do. — bert1

This is a bit more cynical than the way I see it. As I say over and over, humans are social animals. We like each other, want to be around each other, want to take care of those we are close to.

So help me out here. Bob wants to rape and feels it very much a part of his intrinsic nature and he doesn't want to be judged for it. He asks me why it is immoral to rape. What do I tell him?

Am I immoral when I condemn him? Why? — Hanover

Because the only moral rule is, "Don't tell others what to do."

What’s the difference between ‘I’ and ‘other’? — Joshs

That's where I get stuck a lot. Recently I've been thinking about this distinction by blending Sartre with Levinas -- Sartre has the "I", and Levinas has "the Other" figured into their philosophy, as a whole, but there are bits here or there in each philosophy that I sort of shy away from, and this sort of "synthesis" between them is a way of attempting to "fill in" the "gaps" (from my perspective, of course -- not for everyone) in each philosophy with each philosophy.

So the "I" is myriad: The cogito of "I think, therefore I am" doesn't follow because "I think" isn't the same "I" as in "I am": thinking is being-for-itself ,but the I-am is being-in-itself.

The Other, though, is exteriority (like Levinas' -- so "outside of experience" rather than "internal/external) -- the face-to-face relation is our recognition of the alien outside of ourselves as more important than our elemental attachments. (The non-self "I", ipseity, is that which is attached to: though of course ipseity is never alone unto itself and is also only known through attachment)

Is the ‘I’ a single thing or a community unto itself?

Both a single thing and a community! :D

Communally we recognize ourselves as responsible agents, as "I's" who are responsible or culpable for various things.

But if the community didn't care for such an "I", then the I would change.

We have bank-accounts and property rights to our bodies which give us a sense of individuality because the legal framework is set up to give individuals power over themselves.

In a lot of ways "Individuality" is a communal dance of respect for others', and Robinson Crusoe is no "I" except in relation to his past.

Perhaps the difference between self and other is an arbitrary distinction we fabricated , and it’s really a matter of degree?

I think so! Though for good reason, probably too. It's arbitrary, but with a point: understanding myself as a person who needs this or that, and another as a person or needs that or this, and that these things are equally valuable requires me to develop this sense of self and other -- else I'd just continue on in my own projects, absorbed in a world away from everyone.

In other worlds, the notion of selfishness is incoherent, because it isn’t a unitary ego we are protecting, but the ability to coordinate the myriad bits within the community of self that makes up our psyche so that an overall coherence of meaning emerges. the sense of a unified self is an achievement of a community , not a given.

Bingo!

Or, at least, it only becomes coherent upon a social dance that we're participating within where selfishness is seen as something to be avoided such that (this that or the other -- some communities prefer asking for forgiveness with various rituals, and some are fine with no more than an acknowledgement)

Whether we do things for ‘ourselves’ or for ‘others’ , the same motive applies, the need to maintain integration and consistency of meaning. None of us can become altruistic, generous, selfless, sharing unless we can find a way to integrate the alien other into ourselves. This isnt a moral achievement , but an intellectual one.

Exactly! At least, this is the sort of thing I'm going for.

The moral achievement is in the doing.

Intellectually speaking we can see that the Other is always radically alterior, and as such my own elemental projections of what the psyche is aren't always going to apply. The intellectual achievement is in coming to be able to distinguish between self and other (collectively?) and realizing that Alterity, Otherness, is not the same as badness -- it's discomforting, but a mature, moral sense of self emerges from recognition of this alterity and giving it moral weight in our deliberations.

I don't know about all this.

A life lived to please one's mother sounds alright enough, but does that strike anyone as ethical? Isn't ethical maturity reached by coming to see your parents' as equally human, weak, and pathetic as yourself? And loving them anyways, in spite of the flaws you know all too well?

***

Levinas' philosophy, if we read between the lines, indicates this occurs after having children: Now you are the parent and you care about the son in a manner that isn't the same as your elemental projects.

But I suspect that people can come to care about others' without having their own children. Growing up is this process of taking on cares outside of the self, no?

It's the part before that that's more important : "If I'm certain of this or that, then I'll interpret your acts (speech and otherwise) into my frame."



-- "Guilt" becoming a tool, like a knife, to shave away parts of another in the name of the good has it backwards to my mind.

Rather, I have to grab the knife to cut away from myself when I see the need.

Now, in a particularly drastic situation, perhaps, this ideal can't be followed. But it is better that way because using a knife to cut the soul without having any idea how any of it works may or may not help someone after all.

If everyone is doing the best they can at each moment of their life then no one is responsible for anything, and therefore it is entirely backwards to say that humans are responsible because they are always doing the best they can. — Leontiskos

If we are always doing the best we can, this means no one is responsible for immorality. But one is responsible for rethinking one’s premises when things go badly, and one is responsible for audaciously envisioning new vistas of thought even when things are going well. Being responsible means we are never the victims of circumstances. The reason I say we are not responsible for immorality is because I believe that equating moral harm with intention conflates the positive, productive nature of choice, desire, want, preference, decision, agency, response, intention with the negative nature of the sufferings, harms and deprivations that we are used to associating with the immoral.

Let me elaborate. I believe there is a positive and a negative freedom that characterizes human experience. Positive freedom is the freedom to produce new options of understanding and of action, it is the freedom of new insight, of finding new connections, relations, unities, patterns where previously these were not seen. Positive freedom always moves in the direction of greater intimacy of relation with ourselves and others. We never just desire things. Desire is always directed toward as far reaching an anticipation of events to come as we can manage. Furthermore, because our psychic system is functionally unified at a superordinate level , even the most trivial day to day choices are authorized and guided by our most super ordinate concerns , which always have to do with our core sense of our relations with others, where we see ourselves fitting into larger webs of social dynamics. So even the most trivial choices are aimed at deepening the intimacy of our anticipatory understandings within the social groups that matter to us. Emotions are not separate from these aims. Rather, emotions are the barometers that inform us of how well or badly our efforts are working out. Emotions are not physiological reinforcers, randomly assigning reward to certain actions and punishment to others. Pain and pleasure don’t motivate us in this extrinsic , reflexively causal way. What motivates us, what produces pleasure or pain, is the success or failure of our efforts to make sense of the world.

This is where negative freedom comes in. Negative emotions like guilt, anger, anxiety and despair alert us to the fact that such anticipatory efforts have failed, and we are about to be plunged into the fog and confusion of anxiety, anger and guilt. Negative freedom is the freedom of the flow of events as we perceive them to violate our expectations, to disappoint us, to leave us groping for firm footing. Negative freedom is not much of a freedom at all, because it is only the freedom to experience unproductive chaos. When we find ourselves plunged into this kind of freedom, we can’t go forward or backwards.

It seems to me that you see two kinds of positive freedom, the freedom to do what is morally good and the freedom not to do so. And that these two kinds of positive freedom appear simultaneously in the same decision. For instance, we desire to torture someone. In this instance , my intention is at the same time the cause of my own pleasure and my awareness that I desire to be the cause of the other person’s pain. I think you would consider this a paradigm example of ‘not doing the best I can’. You may also be able to see that from my vantage, desire is never primarily about hording as many pleasurable morsels as I possibly can within a fortress-like self and having to learn to share my things with others. Rather , it is expansive and world-oriented. This doesnt mean we are naturally selfless and altruistic rather than selfish. Both ways of thinking utterly miss the point , which is that there is no hedonic self. It is not selfishness but self-consistency that motivates us.
We want to greedily assimilate the world into ourselves in terms of anticipating events within an ordered system, as we expand ever outward into that world. The choice of doing for self versus doing for others only comes up when others put up barriers to our ability to integrate them consistently within our self-understanding.

The suffering other can only be acknowledged if they can first be identified and made sense of as a suffering other. What matters to us, what we care about, whose suffering we empathize with, is dependent in the first place on what is intelligible to us from our vantage. We can only intend to recognize and welcome the Other who saves us from chaos; we intend to reject the Other who offers the oppression of incommensurability. Freedom from incoherence implies a sense of liberation, freedom from the order of intelligibility and intimacy a sense of subjection. We always have intended to welcome, sacrifice ourselves for the intelligible Other, and always disliked, `chose against' the incommensurate Other. What is repressive to us is what we cannot establish harmonious relation with.

In sum, I would argue that one of the two forms of positive freedom you formulate , the freedom to desire the other’s suffering , or to not care about their suffering, is adding a freedom which is really an enslavement , the freedom to be confused, to decide with blinders on. It seems to me that what you have done is to borrow from negative freedom, the bad things that happen despite our best intent, and attach it to intention itself ( I WANTED to be callous, insensitive, cruel, immoral). This reduces the real positive freedom of desire, intention and choice by compromising its creative, expansive novelty. Because for you there is always the threat that the intent itself is corrupted, positive freedom is partially unfree, and this is just as much the case when we are ‘doing our best’ as when we supposedly are not. It is only because the criterion of ‘doing our best’ is tethered to norms that restrict positive freedom to imagine new realities that the idea of corruption of intent makes any sense.

Intellectually speaking we can see that the Other is always radically alterior, and as such my own elemental projections of what the psyche is aren't always going to apply. The intellectual achievement is in coming to be able to distinguish between self and other (collectively?) and realizing that Alterity, Otherness, is not the same as badness -- it's discomforting, but a mature, moral sense of self emerges from recognition of this alterity and giving it moral weight in our deliberations — Moliere

Philosopher and cognitive scientist Shaun Gallagher has recently written some interesting things on reconciling self and other in human and animal ethics.

Gallagher links justice with the enactivist concepts of relational autonomy and affordance.

“Play involves action and interaction and the ability or possibility of the participants to continue in play. It's defined by a set of interactive affordances. When one animal starts to dominate in playful interaction, closing off the other's affordance space (or eliminating the autonomy of the other), the interaction and the play stops. Self-handicapping (e.g., not biting as hard as the dog can) is a response to the other's vulnerability as the action develops, based on an immediate sense of, or an attunement to what would or would not cause pain rather than on a rule. Role-reversal (where the dominant animal makes itself more vulnerable) creates an immediate affordance for the continuance of play. If in a friendly playful interaction one player gets hurt, becomes uncomfortable, or is pushed beyond her affective limits, this can generate an immediate feeling of distrust for the other. That would constitute a disruption of the friendship, a break in this very basic sense that is prior to measures of fairness, exchange, or retribution. Robert Solomon captures this idea at the right scale: “Justice presumes a personal concern for others. It is first of all a sense, not a rational or social construction, and I want to argue that this sense is, in an important sense, natural.”

“Justice, like autonomy, is relational. I cannot be just or unjust on my own. So an action is just or unjust only in the way it fits into the arrangements of intersubjective and social interactions.” “Justice consists in those arrangements that maximize compound, relational autonomy in our practices.” The autonomy of the interaction itself depends on maintaining the autonomy of both individuals. Justice (like friendship) involves fostering this plurality of autonomies (this compound autonomy); it is a positive arrangement that instantiates or maintains some degree of compound relational autonomy.”“Accordingly, although one can still talk of individuals who engage in the interaction, a full account of such interaction is not reducible to mechanisms at work in the individuals qua individuals.”

“ As the enactivist approach makes clear, a participant in interaction with another person is called to respond if the interaction is to continue. My response to the other, in the primary instance, just is my engaging in interaction with her—by responding positively or negatively with action to her action. Although research on primary intersubjectivity provides a detailed model of elementary responsivity, it may also be useful to consider Levinas's analysis of the face-to-face relation in order to explicate what this research tells us.” “…according to Levinas, the face-to-face relation primarily registers in an ethical order: the other, in her alterity, is such that she makes an ethical demand on me, to which I am obligated to respond…In contrast to Heidegger who might speak about a system of involvements that consti tute the pragmatic world (characteristic of secondary intersubjectivity), Levinas describes a direct embodied encounter with the other.…the failure to enact that transcendence [recognizing the alterity of the other], as when we simply objectify or reify the other person, is also a possibility of relational contingency.

"Guilt" becoming a tool, like a knife, to shave away parts of another in the name of the good has it backwards to my mind.

Rather, I have to grab the knife to cut away from myself when I see the need. — Moliere

I don't think incurring guilt necessarily involves bad motives. Using a knife to injure another person and using guilt to injure another person are both bad, but it does not follow from the fact that such injury is possible that every time a knife or guilt is utilized this is what is occurring. If knives and guilt could only be used to injure other people, then we should get rid of both. But that's not the only thing they are used for.

For example, a surgeon can use a knife to cut away a malignant tumor, and guilt can be used in much the same way. Now some who are beholden to a strict form of autonomy might say that we should only ever perform moral operations on ourselves, but I would say that there are strong similarities between the moral order and the physical order. Just as there are physical surgeons, so too are there moral surgeons, and there are tumors which cannot be self-excised. For an example of a moral surgeon, see Nathan in 2 Samuel 12.

You are imputing bad motives again — Leontiskos

Not bad motives -- just ignorance.

For example, a surgeon can use a knife to cut away a malignant tumor, and guilt can be used in much the same way. Now some who are beholden to a strict form of autonomy might say that we should only be able to perform moral operations on ourselves, but I would say that there are strong similarities between the moral order and the physical order. Just as there are physical surgeons, so too are there moral surgeons, and there are tumors which cannot be self-excised. For an example of a moral surgeon, see Nathan in 2 Samuel 12. — Leontiskos

I understand the concept; but even a surgeon asks permission before excising a tumor, right? Autonomy is an important part of any medical approach to ethics: especially judging when someone is no longer autonomous or in need of intervention.

For my part I tend to think we're pretty ignorant of one another, so it's best to leave such tools to the professionals. (EDIT: Or, really all I mean here, is that they are dangerous and not cues to knowledge -- they are tools that can be used to shape the soul, but the soul can be shaped as well as it can be mis-shaped, too, and if we're ignorant then which is to happen? )

Now that ending there: That sounds like something I ought read. Thanks!

The intrinsic nature of a human is to be a social animal — unenlightened

We are naturally social and rape violates the nature of humans to be social? And I suspect that each human is equal under this scenario, meaning we can't treat women or minorities as lesser, so this imposes the rule of egalitarianism.

This sounds like a vague notion of morality that we just sort of twist around until it meets modern liberal progressive morality.

But, should we tinker with this some more, I think we end up with the golden rule.

Because the only moral rule is, "Don't tell others what to do." — Leontiskos

Can you tell me not to tell others what to do? That seems immoral.

A life lived to please one's mother sounds alright enough, — Moliere

No, it doesn't!!! I wasn't talking about a life lived to please one's mother. I was talking about a single decision to defer to her want over one's own. Maybe tomorrow, another such decision - to do what one is asked without coercion; maybe in the next several years, one or two every day; maybe even volunteering to help in the garden, wear the new shoes to an aunt's wedding, do one's homework, be polite to the fat lady who pinches one's cheeks. Probably, between ages 13 and 18, hardly any at all (that's most boys; most girls are more compliant or sneakier). Later on, it depends on how close the relationship is. Some children become estranged from their parents; some remain dependent; some stay in close touch; some come only when they want something... Relationships between parents and children are variable.

Isn't ethical maturity reached by coming to see your parents' as equally human, weak, and pathetic as yourself? And loving them anyways, in spite of the flaws you know all too well? — Moliere

Ethical maturity isn't necessarily predicated on the child-parent relationship. Many people never reach it at all: though they part from their parents, they follow gurus, heroes and idols and never make decisions of their own or ask why the rules are what they are.

Loving people is not an ethical decision; it's an emotional fact. What you do for parents at any given moment, in any given situation, those may be ethical decisions at any age. Calling every Tuesday to see if they're all right. Listening to your father's jokes the seventeenth time. Praising the fruitcake you never really liked. Spending Christmas with them instead of going to Bermuda. Driving the old lady to her bridge game when it's really not convenient. Taking a weekend to install a wheelchair ramp. If you love people, most of these decisions are not ethical - you just do things to make them safe and happy, because their safety and happiness matters to you.

Growing up is this process of taking on cares outside of the self, no? — Moliere

Of course. You start caring about your siblings, pets and playmates quite early. By the time they're ready for pre-school, children should be emotionally mature enough and socialized enough to compromise between their own wants and the wants of other people, as well to know right from wrong in terms of social mores.

Relationships between parents and children are variable. — Vera Mont

Right.

But so far all I've been given here the relationship to mothers as a kind of point of departure for thinking ethically, at least conceptually -- and it seems we agree that, yes, we grow beyond our parents and see them as human, rather than superhuman, and at least in a loving relationship we come to love them in spite of the flaws: which seems to me to indicate that the mothers are not all the Others, but that there is a community that is much wider than the family unit.

Basically, as important as they are, it's not the whole picture -- and furthermore, it seems to me that what we were as children isn't as important to what we are now, though you can see some similar traits that live on over time if you know someone long enough.

Loving people is not an ethical decision; it's an emotional fact. What you do for parents at any given moment, in any given situation, those may be ethical decisions at any age. Calling every Tuesday to see if they're all right. Listening to your father's jokes the seventeenth time. Praising the fruitcake you never really liked. Spending Christmas with them instead of going to Bermuda. Driving the old lady to her bridge game when it's really not convenient. Taking a weekend to install a wheelchair ramp. If you love people, most of these decisions are not ethical - you just do things to make them safe and happy, because their safety and happiness matters to you. — Vera Mont

Aren't the two linked? Ethics and emotion? (coincidentally, or not, that was the impetus to a lot of this thinking: that question of ethics and emotion)

There's something oddly inconsistent in the implicit claim that we ought not expect others to follow any moral precept.

How is that not, thereby, itself a moral precept?

The pretence of stepping outside moral discourse in order to discuss moral discourse is exposed.

But so far all I've been given here the relationship to mothers as a kind of point of departure for thinking ethically, at least conceptually — Moliere

Primary caregiver - not necessarily the mother, but usually - in the first two years makes the deepest impression on a child's perception of the world and its own place in the world, yes. Just because she's walking on virgin sand, with no other footprints.

which seems to me to indicate that the mothers are not all the Others, but that there is a community that is much wider than the family unit. — Moliere

Didn't I mention siblings, playmates, pets and pre-school? There may be other people in the community who become significant, but in the first four years, the child's life is pretty much surrounded by family.
Later comes school, teams, scouts, church or whatever. And reading - although that's not usually significant until age 12 or so, but stories can also make an impression, as they often carry a moral message.

t seems to me that what we were as children isn't as important to what we are now — Moliere

On the contrary. It's crucial. Often decisive. That's why churches start indoctrinating very young children in Sunday school, why Olympic athletes and world-class musicians begin training discipline at age 6-9.

Aren't the two linked? Ethics and emotion? — Moliere

Linked, yes, but very often as antagonists wrestling.

we ought not expect others to follow any moral precept.
How is that not, thereby, itself a moral precept? — Banno

It has the word 'ought' in it; that's a dead giveaway.

I suppose the part I'm missing here is: where is the adult?

We are influenced by what we grow up around.

Sure.

So, what ought we to do? Whatever our mother told us?

Linked, yes, but very often as antagonists wrestling. — Vera Mont

Also, this part always seems weird to me. If I'm antagonistically related to this or that ethical principle and am both at once then I'd prefer to either let go of the emotion or the ethical principle or rectify it in some manner. Why bother holding onto an ethic which is antagonistic towards feelings?

Well, the feelings would have to be bad in some way. Fair enough, sometimes they are bad.

Are they always bad, or can we ever feel good when thinking about ethics?

I suppose the part I'm missing here is: where is the adult?
We are influenced by what we grow up around. — Moliere

We are influenced by the adults who guide us through youth, by our peers, by the media which present us with a sense of our culture, by our academic and religious education, by our own aspirations and what's required to attain them, by role models and heroes, and in adulthood, by a spouse, if we're lucky enough to get one who engages our intellect.
The more clever among us are also greatly influenced by books, especially in the formative first two decades, but later, too. As I mentioned, that begins with fairy tales in early childhood and progresses to adult literature. Why, some young people even read philosophy! I myself was impressed with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in my late teens. (I got over it.)

So, what ought we to do? Whatever our mother told us?

In some cases, that's not a bad idea. What we ought to do is whatever we believe to be right at the time of decision. On most of those occasions, we'll chicken out or compromise or fudge, because the principled action is too dangerous, difficult, expensive, uncomfortable, unpleasant or inconvenient.
If we live up to our highest expectations once in ten tries, we're doing pretty well.

If I'm antagonistically related to this or that ethical principle and am both at once then I'd prefer to either let go of the emotion or the ethical principle or rectify it in some manner. — Moliere

You know from experience that the antagonism is not the usual state of affairs. Most of the time, your heart tells you the same thing your head knows is right.
We have a great many emotions. Some of them are antisocial, and therefore urge us to commit acts we know to be wrong. Also, there are some rules of social behaviour that are inconsistent and self-contradictory. (Because everybody has a lot of different feelings about a lot of different things and they can't always be categorized neatly.) Sometimes you have to pick your way through a dark labyrinth of desires, impulses, injunctions, principles, sentiments and conscience.

You may be very angry at someone, but you know you should not kill them. That's the extreme example, where ethics generally triumphs over emotion, and we're all a little safer because of that.