I don't follow. Sorry.

Yes, but there is a secondary process ("entropy") that sabotages the main process ("preservation of energy"). — Tarskian

Entropy and energy are well-defined physical terms. They have nothing to do with the thread or what Tom Storm is talking about. Hence he not understanding.

I don't follow. Sorry. — Tom Storm

You describe a process that tries to achieve a result without describing the inevitable process that will seek to undo its results.

It's like when people describe the process of how a wind turbine generates electricity. That is only half the story. The other half is more interesting. It is about the process that will inevitably seek to let the wind turbine go up in flames.

There is always a second process that seeks to undo the first, main process.

You seem to be jumping ahead of the story for reasons unclear to me. :wink:

All I am saying is people will have views and talk about 'oughts' and 'ought nots' as a by-product of human community life. The kind of processes or dynamic which might follow are not in scope - I'm simply describing the original impulse.

All I am saying is people will have views and talk about 'oughts' and 'ought nots' as a by-product of human community life. The kind of processes or dynamic which might follow are not in scope - I'm simply describing the original impulse. — Tom Storm

I just wanted to point out why the results of that societal conversation will tend to be poor and increasingly corrupt.

I just wanted to point out why the results of that societal conversation will tend to be poor and increasingly corrupt. — Tarskian

Ok. I was just waiting to point out that morality probably has mundane origins.

I don't think the societal conversation has been increasingly poor or corrupt. But this might be down to the values one holds or how unhappy one is.

I don't think the societal conversation has been increasingly poor or corrupt. But this might be down to the values one holds or how unhappy one is. — Tom Storm

With wind turbines, the secondary process of corruption is very visible.



With societal morality, it is not necessarily visible. A corrupt morality is still a morality. How do you even see the difference? If a morality is corrupt, how can we detect it?

It is probably enough to argue that this is the new morality and that is necessarily excellent because it is new and therefore constitutes progress.

You seem to be hard wired to root out corruptions and inadequacies. I don't share this way of looking at things.

A wind turbine is not morality, the analogy would seem problematic. But I get the point.

Morality is a social conversation. What is or isn't corrupt will be part of that conversation. Not that 'corrupt' is a word which resonates with me in that context. I don't believe there is such a thing as perfect morality.

But your broader question is how do we know if morality is sound or helpful? Perhaps we don't. But I would say a moral system that executes gay people is worse than one which grants them equal rights. If this point requires debate, then I suggest a forum for haters to explore this further.

I don't believe we have access to absolute truth or perfection and that these are abstract human notions. The best we can do is minimise harm and suffering and promote the well-being of all conscious creatures. Which has been the trajectory of moral development over time. But obviously not everywhere.

Which has been the trajectory of moral development over time. But obviously not everywhere. — Tom Storm

I believe that the trajectory of moral development is increasing corruption, for the exactly same deep underlying reason why the trajectory of a wind turbine is increasing corruption. There is no process that does not have a secondary process of corruption attached to it.

You see, an "improvement" to morality will never get enough political support unless there is a powerful constituency that will benefit from it, usually, to the detriment of everyone else. Therefore, I believe that morality never gets better. It always gets worse.

Therefore, the older the morality, the more likely that it is sustainable on the long run. This is also what the Lindy effect predicts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

The Lindy effect (also known as Lindy's Law[1]) is a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age. Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy. Longevity implies a resistance to change, obsolescence, or competition, and greater odds of continued existence into the future.[2] Where the Lindy effect applies, mortality rate decreases with time. Mathematically, the Lindy effect corresponds to lifetimes following a Pareto probability distribution.

If morality is corrupt, it has the capacity to destroy society. If it has been around for long enough, it won't. Otherwise, it would have done that already. That is one reason why something that may look like a new morality tends to be the repackaging of an existing morality. For example, the morality that you can find in the books of Moses, at the beginning of the Bible, is the repackaging of something that was around long before Moses. That is the only safe way to do it.

Surely you can see why I have problems untangling the meaning/position you are trying to convey here? — I like sushi

I was trying to accommodate what you said here, " but in this instance I would have to argue against this as ethics is about analysis of moral positions." The awkwardness of this really has no bearing on the intelligibility of the idea. The issue is generally conceived as metaethical not metamoral.

Morality and the interplay of reason to distinguish poorly constructed views/arguments ( — I like sushi

Morality begs the same question: what is morality? It is of course an interplay of reason, but then what isn't an interplay of reason? All things have this underpinning of reason and justification, ready at the glance. So we have to think, surely; metaethics asks us to think about the nature of ethics.

Then there is also the stance that ethics is generally referring to the application of moral principles to society at large - as a means of analysis. — I like sushi

Sure. But take the matter another step: When the term is used at all, what is there in a case that makes it ethical? A "meta" question.

Ah! So we are looking at the essence of morality then rather than ethics (as I outlined it)? The 'being' of morality rather than ethics? I will need confirmation here. — I like sushi

See the above. But t is a distinction without a difference, for both terms beg the same question. Some call my position moral realism, yet the ontological question refers us to metaethics. See John Mackie's book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, in which he specifically addresses the issue brought up here, though not as I am defending it, and there are lots of others.

I would have to say we are then looking for the root of judgement rather than ethics, as ethics is a judgement as is prudence. Morality is not intrinsic to value. Valuse can emerge in areas that have no prominent claim to ethics or morality. — I like sushi

No, for Wittgenstein judgment is about all those "facts" on the logical grid (Tractatus and Lecture on Ethics). Prudence presupposes value: why be prudent at all? Morality presupposes value: Remove the value a thing has, it the ethical dimension of the thing vanishes. Simple as that. All ethical situations reduce to this analysis. The many conflicted problems of our ethical lives have to do with facts that in themselves have no ethical dimension. You want to steal meds from the pharmacy needed for a loved one's illness, but you haven't the money because you were born into poverty, and so on. But being born into poverty, the pharmacy having the meds you need, the law that could put you in jail, and all the rest are facts, just as the moon reflects the light of the sun is a fact, and no more than this (unless you want to give this analysis as well). There is nothing ethical about the fact of moonlight. It can be put into circumstances that make it part of an ethical equation: all one has to do is care about it.

It is to ask about practical use of rather than an emotional judgement of 'right or wrong' flavoured values. — I like sushi

No doubt the practical use goes to dealing with the world, and the point is to do things right. The Greek arete comes to mind; and of course, the principle of utility. But this presupposes the more fundamental analysis: what is ethics? Ethics as such, the essence of ethics, that is, that, if it were removed from a situation, the ethicality itself would be removed. This is value.

I cannot even begin to see where/how/if you are trying to insert religion into the scheme, or what you actually mean by religion if you are essentially stating it is synonymous with 'ethics'/'moral laws' (which I still need clarity on also. — I like sushi

What is value? It goes back to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which is open for discussion, but one has to give value a proper analysis, and this takes analysis to palpable events in the world, like putting someone in thumbscrews or stealing their dessert. Why are these prime facie wrong? Because one likes dessert and hates thumbscrews, obviously. No liking or disliking, to put it generally, no ethics. But what is liking? This is what I will call truly primordial: it is "among" the facts of the world, but it is not a fact. The good of ethics (and the bad) is not contingent, as Witt said. It is not like a good knife, say, contingent because one can explain it. Ethical goodness is very different. Explaining suffering is just a tautological exercise. It is what it is, or, it stands as its own presupposition, an absolute. It is, like logic, apodictic. Kant found apodicticity (apriority) in logic, I find it in value. The latter is far, far more significant.

Of course, there is the fascinating post modern complaint that even logic is cast in language, and language is contingent, historical (Heidegger), and even the term 'apodictic' is given to us as part of this. Apodicticity really is a term under erasure because it has no language counterpart. This is a tough issue, so I won't go there unless you want to. But the idea here is that even if logic cannot say what logic is, that is, as Witt said, it "shows" itself, but no further. But I do not let this to second guess modus ponens which is intuitively absolute. Nor can one second guess the "bad" of the pain of scorching of live flesh (masochists notwithstanding. Such an issue does not enter into the matter at hand). It would be just as "impossible" to deny the badness of such a thing as it would be to deny modus ponens.

Value as such is not relative or interpretatively derived. It is "the world". Not IN the world. Ethics is IN the world. Metaethics is about the world as world. Our existence is the world. We are IN a world, as well, and we ARE the world. This is something that has to be understood.

This, I am guessing, is unfamiliar language to you. This is due to anglo american philosophy's divorce from metaphysics. It might as well divorce itself from the world itself, which is exactly what it has done. A failed attempt.

Religion: If ethics is discovered to be an existential absolute, in its essence, as I am claiming, then the world is a very different "place". Our familiar ethical entanglements are now matters of far deeper significance. This deeper significance is what religions strive to affirm dogmatically. Here, it is demonstrably done, I claim, after all is said.

Thank you for taking the time to respond — I like sushi

Same here. All of the above is argumentative and confrontational. And quite right, by my thinking. It does take a certain openness and pulling away from standard assumptions. It is an ontological argument, a "what IS it? at the most basic level of assumptions argument.

Part of common sense is knowing when there is no rational answer. — Tarskian

I agree and disagree. Realizing that the pain "as such" of this sprained ankle is in no way at all a discursive event, in no way derivative through logical avenues of inference, is itself rational judgment. On the one hand, nothing escapes this rationality. the moment one brings the matter up at all, one is already IN a rationally structured environment, and the very idea of something being not having an answer is "conceived" rationally. Even the term 'rationality' is interpretatively embedded.

But that sprained ankle and its pain: clear as a bell this is stands "outside" of what reason does. So it is like all things: language and its reason saturate experience WHEN a thing is brought before judgment. But prior to this, it "stands in the waiting" as when someone asks you about the sprain.

The OP is about this sprain and its pain and the ontology of this pain.

Is it really that difficult and elusive? We live together as community and this means holding values. It's impossible not to. Ethics emerges from the resulting conversation just as surely as poo comes from eating. We couldn't avoid the subject of morality even if we wanted to and the only magic or transcendence inherent in such moral conversations (that I can see) is there if we confuse morality with mysticism — Tom Storm

If questions about the epistemic, ontological and ethical foundations of our existence didn't exist, then I would completely agree. But they are there, right in our midst. Ask the timeless question, how does anything "out there" get into a knowledge claim? So simple and accessible. Just look at the lamp on your desk and ask, how is my knowledge of this lamp even possible? You are not in some abstruse and abstract argument. You are IN the world of eating and pooing, just asking a simple question.

It is difficult to see "through" habits of thought and familiarity. The whole world is like this epistemic problem. The world is a "meta" problem, just sitting there staring back at you.

The world is a "meta" problem, just sitting there staring back at you. — Constance

Only if you insist.

I'm not pretending that I have answers to old epistemological questions. I'm not even sure that they matter. But it's not hard to see how morality is pragmatic consequence of experience. Why confuse this with questions about how my knowledge of a lamp works? If we don't know the answer to this (and I suspect there are many healthy explanations already: scientific and philosophical) it would be a shame for an appeal to ignorance to lead us into accepting transcendence as the only explanation.

If morality is corrupt, it has the capacity to destroy society. If it has been around for long enough, it won't. Otherwise, it would have done that already. That is one reason why something that may look like a new morality tends to be the repackaging of an existing morality. For example, the morality that you can find in the books of Moses, at the beginning of the Bible, is the repackaging of something that was around long before Moses. That is the only safe way to do it. — Tarskian

I suspect our world-views are too far apart. There are lots of undemonstrated claims here.

What is corrupt morality? Can you provide an example?

The Bible borrows lots of stories, not just morality. If would help if you could demonstrate this process working over the past 1000 years, say, in order to illustrate this corruptive process in action?

For instance, I would maintain that the UN Declaration of Human Rights outlines a superior and more sophisticated set of moral principles than the Ten Commandments - of which only 6 pertain to morality and 2 or 3 of those are dubious at best.

My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption. This latter is the essence of religion, and I further claim that in proving such a thing, I am giving the world and our existence in it exactly the metaphysical satisfaction is seeks. — Constance

Moral redemption doesn't require religion, and religion may or may not provide it. The essense of religion is simply binding a community in shared values, narratives, etc.

Only if you insist.

I'm not pretending that I have answers to old epistemological questions. I'm not even sure that they matter. But it's not hard to see how morality is pragmatic consequence of experience. Why confuse this with questions about how my knowledge of a lamp works? If we don't know the answer to this (and I suspect there are many healthy explanations already: scientific and philosophical) it would be a shame for an appeal to ignorance to lead us into accepting transcendence as the only explanation. — Tom Storm

Well, just to follow through briefly, there is no answer to epistemic crisis. Not a matter of ignorance. Ignorance implies that there is something that can be known, and one just doesn't know it. Not the case here. There is NO way for knowledge claims to penetrate through the "distance" between objects and knowing. Healthy explanations? Neither healthy nor unhealthy. There simply isn't one.

Epistemology's radical indeterminacy is part of a general indeterminacy of all of our thinking in the world, and one is not going to really understand religion until one cuts loose from "common sense".

But you're right, talk about knowledge issues in philosophy is not immediately to the point; so to the point: You said, "We live together as community and this means holding values." The matter at hand is not about values with an 's'. It is about value, a philosophical inquiry into what it means to value something at all. So before talk about the "resulting conversation" about what to do given that we live in a world filled with values (family values? Cultural values? Workplace values? Child rearing values? Etc.?) there is the unaddressed question about the nature of valuing. Philosophy wants to know.

I won't bore you with a thesis. Just this: If I asked about the nature of logic, what would you say? Logic is there, and it has structure made visible in symbolic logic, the bare bones, if you will, of ordinary talk and thought. Weird thing about symbolic logic: pure formal truths come out of it. One big tautology, the entire system. And each propositional structure is apriori, that is, necessary and universal. So, "beneath" our conversations about this and that, there is this discovery of structure.

Value then: abstract from ordinary situations to discover what value IS, just as is done with symbolic logic. Is there anything "behind" the many occasions of valuing this and that to be discovered? Yes. It is the ethical good and bad. Nothing is all of existence more odd. Value and the good and bad of valuing is entirely sui generis. You are invited at this point to consider G E Moore's way of addressing this: What does it mean for something to be "good"? Not a good couch or a good deal on a car, but good AS SUCH. And bad: what is the bad of a sprained ankle? Yes, we get sprains and have to deal with them, but what does it mean for something to hurt? Moore called it a non natural property. Why non natural?

For this, I leave to you to consider, if you are interested. But I will say this: Facts of the world, natural facts like the atomic weight of helium of the weathering processes that made the Grand Canyon are VERY different from value "facts". Wittgenstein would not call value facts, facts all all. See his Lecture on Ethics (online and very accessible). It is because value cannot be observed at all!

This is the beginning to understanding the nature of religion.

None of what you say is new to me. My point is it need not worry us. Just act and reflect. We have more than enough to work with in order to talk meaningfully about morality. Leave transcendence to the academics and the religious apologists. :smile:

But I am curious - what use do you derive from this:

there is no answer to epistemic crisis. — Constance

If the situation is hopeless (as Casals said) we must take the next step.

You are invited at this point to consider G E Moore's way of addressing this: What does it mean for something to be "good"? Not a good couch or a good deal on a car, but good AS SUCH. And bad: what is the bad of a sprained ankle? Yes, we get sprains and have to deal with them, but what does it mean for something to hurt? — Constance

We can make even the simplest things complicated and impossible. It's one of the great human gifts.

I need not have a full account of 'good' or 'bad'. We can understand them in quotidian contexts without needing to contrive a thesis on the subjects. We already do and it works reasonably well. Abstractions like 'good' or even 'truth' vary with the context. In most usage, I don't need to have a full account of such terms to make robust use of them. That's all I am saying. And if the epistemic crisis is as thick a fog as you suggest, then better to say home.

The issue is generally conceived as metaethical not metamoral. — Constance

I can live with that.

Some call my position moral realism, yet the ontological question refers us to metaethics. See John Mackie's book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, in which he specifically addresses the issue brought up here, though not as I am defending it, and there are lots of others. — Constance

What kind of area would you say you are talking in? Is Moral Realism appropriate? Such categorising may be messy but it is useful to understand the general gist of where you are coming from.

No doubt the practical use goes to dealing with the world, and the point is to do things right. The Greek arete comes to mind; and of course, the principle of utility. But this presupposes the more fundamental analysis: what is ethics? Ethics as such, the essence of ethics, that is, that, if it were removed from a situation, the ethicality itself would be removed. This is value. — Constance

Of course, we judge through values. Ethical judgement is one value judgement of many. The same would be left if we removed what is prudent. My question would then be does judgement about what is prudent come before the judgement about what is ethical. If so, we can then say that what is prudent is the 'essence of ethics' right?

So a scheme of Value < Judgement < Prudence < Ethics < Religion ... not that I believe all Religion is is its relation to ethics in its original formation.

No liking or disliking, to put it generally, no ethics. But what is liking? This is what I will call truly primordial: it is "among" the facts of the world, but it is not a fact. The good of ethics (and the bad) is not contingent, as Witt said. It is not like a good knife, say, contingent because one can explain it. Ethical goodness is very different. Explaining suffering is just a tautological exercise. It is what it is, or, it stands as its own presupposition, an absolute. It is, like logic, apodictic. Kant found apodicticity (apriority) in logic, I find it in value. The latter is far, far more significant. — Constance

No liking, no ethics? Mmm ... I guess so. But that is basically like none of one category of judgement means no ethics. Nothing is surprising there. One would still make other kinds of judgements.

The 'essence of value' is emotion. I think there is something to the whole "boo!" and "hurrah!" of emotivism in regards to moral judgements. Drinking water when you are thirsty is 'good' (beneficial/targeted), while stealing water from someone else is 'not good' ("boo!").

Of course, there is the fascinating post modern complaint that even logic is cast in language, and language is contingent, historical (Heidegger), and even the term 'apodictic' is given to us as part of this. Apodicticity really is a term under erasure because it has no language counterpart. This is a tough issue, so I won't go there unless you want to. — Constance

Probably better to leave that alone for now :D I have been more than aware of the problems surrounding the application of the pure logic heuristic to language.

Nor can one second guess the "bad" of the pain of scorching of live flesh (masochists notwithstanding. Such an issue does not enter into the matter at hand). It would be just as "impossible" to deny the badness of such a thing as it would be to deny modus ponens. — Constance

If my hand is burning it is not an ethical issue. If someone sets my hand of fire then it is "Boo!"

Value as such is not relative or interpretatively derived. It is "the world". Not IN the world. Ethics is IN the world. Metaethics is about the world as world. Our existence is the world. We are IN a world, as well, and we ARE the world. This is something that has to be understood. — Constance

This is so obvious me to I am puzzled why you even have to point it out. I am not entirely sure why there is a fixation on ethics though as you could name other judgements OR just say Judgement instead. Is there something I missed in your meaning?

This, I am guessing, is unfamiliar language to you. — Constance

Not really. I have read Husserl quite a bit and Heidegger.

Religion: If ethics is discovered to be an existential absolute, in its essence, as I am claiming, then the world is a very different "place". Our familiar ethical entanglements are now matters of far deeper significance. This deeper significance is what religions strive to affirm dogmatically. Here, it is demonstrably done, I claim, after all is said. — Constance

You can probably tell by now that I think you missed some significant steps in your reduction. Ethics is layers above what matters. Ethics comes through other value judgements (it is not THE value judgement, if that is at all what you were hinting at), and value judgement is embedded in emotion ... now we do hit a rather hard problem because what emotion is is also a matter of sedimentation.

I came to Husserl via studying the Cognitive Neurosciences, and I am rather inclined to use what I have learned there as a check on what is feasible. I do not really see that Emotion is something that can exist separate from Logic. I have been of the broad opinion for some time that they are effectively two sides of the same coin, each necessitating a kernel of the other to exist.

Much like Kant espoused with his “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.”, I am inclined to say “Reason without emotion is empty, emotions without contexts are blind. Logic can intuit nothing, the emotions can think nothing. Only through their unison can value arise.”

None of what you say is new to me. My point is it need not worry us. Just act and reflect. We have more than enough to work with in order to talk meaningfully about morality. Leave transcendence to the academics and the religious apologists. :smile:

But I am curious - what use do you derive from this: — Tom Storm

Academics, religious apologists, and don't forget philosophers. Isn't this a philosophy forum??

Hmmm, What use is it to ask basic questions of our existence? Curious question. I bit like asking what the point is to ice skating, going round and round in circles. One is either engaged or one isn't. Hard to argue against indifference. Questions like Why are we born to suffer and die? have to be meaningful at the outset for understanding religion.

Part of the response to this question certainly lies in the need to be attuned to basic questions. Kant through Derrida and beyond. Anglo American philosophy is what you get if you ask a logician philosophical questions. An abstraction. Only in continental philosophy does one discover the hidden questions that have always been there but have been pushed out of place by science and technology. See Heidegger's Question Concerning Technology. See Husserl's Cartesian Meditations. See Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety. See........

Look, you are what you read.

I need not have a full account of 'good' or 'bad'. We can understand them in quotidian contexts without needing to contrive a thesis on the subjects. We already do and it works reasonably well. Abstractions like 'good' or even 'truth' vary with the context. In most usage, I don't need to have a full account of such terms to make robust use of them. That's all I am saying. And if the epistemic crisis is as thick a fog as you suggest, then better to say home. — Tom Storm

It is only a fog because it is in the language of these philosophers that the clarity of these issues can be revealed. It is the same fog one has about physics prior to taking any physics classes at all If you are on the outside looking in, it will all seem like bullshit.

Academics, religious apologists, and don't forget philosophers. Isn't this a philosophy forum?? — Constance

Isn't the point of philosophy to examine the hell out of basic assumptions and our glib answers? Isn't it the case that some of the most obvious questions may well be pointless? Is it not also the case that sometimes the pragmatic response to philosophical questions is better than theoretical dead ends or infinities?

There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.”

― Richard Rorty

How do you know that the transcendent significance you identify is not merely something we/you put there?

What use is it to ask basic questions of our existence? — Constance

Not just basic questions. Specific questions which you have already stated are impossible to answer.

One is either engaged or one isn't. Hard to argue against indifference. Questions like Why are we born to suffer and die? have to be meaningful at the outset for understanding religion. — Constance

Whoa there, partner, you are rushing ahead. Did I ask about why we are born and suffer? No. Did I say I wasn't engaged? No. I'm simply expressing a different view to yours. Does it follow from this that I am therefore against all of philosophy? :wink:

Rorty again:

The purpose of philosophy is not to discover timeless truths, but rather to provide better ways of living and understanding.

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity" (1989)

I'm just trying to cut to the chase. Is there any merit in lingering in the mist and miasma of transcendence when we have practical responces we can actually use? You don't have to agree with me, but that's my take on this philosophical conundrum.

So back to my question -

But I am curious - what use do you derive from this:

there is no answer to epistemic crisis.
— Constance — Tom Storm

If there is no answer then what's next?

What kind of area would you say you are talking in? Is Moral Realism appropriate? Such categorising may be messy but it is useful to understand the general gist of where you are coming from. — I like sushi

If you begin from a position of categorizing, with an intent to bring ethics to heel is a coherent system of thought, then you will be missing the essential idea. Certainly not to take issue with sound thinking, but soundness is about the world, and philosophy taken to its metaphysical threshold has to yield to questions of meaning that are powerful, yet take the matter where understanding has to let go of categorical thinking: One has to witness the world first, is the point, and witnessing cluttered with assumptions that impose clarity that issues from standards that are not fitting to what is witnessed and this leads to nothing but bad thinking. You've read Husserl, so you know he intended his phenomenology to be like a science. He has the most trouble because he cannot liberate the pure phenomenon, his foundation for science, from the nexus of intentionality. I mean, there is nothing "pure" about a phenomenon that is received and constructed in language.

But see philosophers like Michel Henry and Jean Luc Marion: Husserl has to be understood in the blatant, palpable living experience. One simply does not sanely deny, say, the agony of suffering. This is where categorical thinking must yield to a world that has nothing categorical about it.

The general gist lies in first questions, ones that issue from the world. The question Why are we born to suffer and die? is one of these.

Of course, we judge through values. Ethical judgement is one value judgement of many. The same would be left if we removed what is prudent. My question would then be does judgement about what is prudent come before the judgement about what is ethical. If so, we can then say that what is prudent is the 'essence of ethics' right?

So a scheme of Value < Judgement < Prudence < Ethics < Religion ... not that I believe all Religion is is its relation to ethics in its original formation. — I like sushi

One should prima facie be prudent, given that prudence can on occasion be counter productive. Why? Cut to the chase: being prudent generally maximizes utility. And what good is this? Well, utility, happiness and well being, and it avoids unhappiness, not to put too fine a point on it. There it is. The bottom line, for we have now reached "the world". Why be ethical? It is the same reduction. And by world, it is not important to distinguish between scientific metaphysics, some kind of physicalism or naturalism, and phenomenology. The prima facie ethical injunction against torturing our neighbors finds its essential ethicality regardless.
A scheme? Too messy? Think, again, of Husserl and his claim about the absolute primordiality of the pure phenomenon. He meant this to give science and everydayness a true foundation, but the "messiness" of meaning made this untenable. Ethics is messy, too, entangled in the "states of affairs" of the world. But when we look at vivid examples of ethical normativity, like the prohibition against murder by a thousand cuts, we see something decidedly not messy at all: intense pain. The moral authority of intense pain: this has the kind of authority Husserl was looking for, and it is both epistemic and ethically grounding, for intense pain isitself entirely noncategorical, and yet, it is "originary" and “every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition.” (Ideas I) Husserl was shooting for closing the epistemic distance between agency and the transcendent object, and this is debatable (one has to go through Heidegger's complaint the he was trying to "walk on water"); but intense pain, is there really any epistemic distance between me and my pain? No, I am arguing. Calling it pain, and describing what causes it, and explaining it, these constitute "distance". And what about the authority this invests into the ethical injunction against handing this out to others? It is an absolute. Not discursively determined and not derivative of anything more basically justificatory. It is not IN the world; it IS the world.

How is this possible? How can a moral injunction find its grounding outside of language? This is the question. It is the kind of thing religion is "essentially" about.

No liking, no ethics? Mmm ... I guess so. But that is basically like none of one category of judgement means no ethics. Nothing is surprising there. One would still make other kinds of judgements. — I like sushi

Liking is not a category until one talks about it. The pleasure of this Hagen Dazs as such is not a categorical "discussion". Value, the general term borrowed from Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which is part of the basic thinking here, does not belong to the mere "facts" of the world.

The 'essence of value' is emotion. I think there is something to the whole "boo!" and "hurrah!" of emotivism in regards to moral judgements. Drinking water when you are thirsty is 'good' (beneficial/targeted), while stealing water from someone else is 'not good' ("boo!"). — I like sushi

No, I am saying. The essence of value is not emotion. The essence of emotion is value. Value is the foundational phenomenal ontology. Quenching thirst is good. Stealing water can be good, can be bad, and there is an indeterminacy of the affair that is lost in entanglements of the case at hand. But this has nothing to do with the thesis here. Here, it is not the utility being weighed, nor some inviolable sense of duty. All of this kind of thing is off the table. I ask a particle physicist what the world IS, what constitutes the world and I will get an account of energic transformations and a lot of technical talk, mostly, if not exclusively, quantitative, but the physics issues, at root, from observation about the behavior witnessed, what the world DOES if you will. My point is simple: Quench your thirst, and observe. Reduce the event to the aesthetic/valuative/ethical essence --- phenomenological reduction, suspending the science and the many assumptions always already in place in the "totality" that makes for the potentiality of possibilities (Heidegger's dasein). There is the residuum, which is "the good" of the quenching. This good, I am arguing, is the essence of ethics and religion. Wittgenstein agrees, indirectly, in the Tractatus.

If my hand is burning it is not an ethical issue. If someone sets my hand of fire then it is "Boo!" — I like sushi

And this is directly to the point. If your hand is burning, it IS an ethical issue. All that makes an issue ethical is the some value-at-risk or in-play. All that is required is a value-agency, a person, for example. Boo! is a deflationary attempt to trivialize the world by reducing its affairs to manageable concepts. It is the great sin, if you will, of analytic philosophy.

This is so obvious me to I am puzzled why you even have to point it out. I am not entirely sure why there is a fixation on ethics though as you could name other judgements OR just say Judgement instead. Is there something I missed in your meaning? — I like sushi

It is not about judgment. Being six inches off the ground in love is not making a judgment. Nor is Hagen Dazs (for me, anyway) and nor is having your kidney vivisected without anesthetic. The idea here is that ethics qua ethics is not grounded in judgment. It is grounded in the world, and that would be Wittgenstein's world, not Heidegger's. Heidegger's world is grounded in hermeneutical finitude, onto theologically defined (historically, that is). The world, Witt wrote, is mystical. This is was not received well by Russell and positivists, and Witt told them to take a hike. The good is what I call divinity, he writes in Culture and Value. He understood this.

I think most think as you do, that it is too obvious to say, just as when I ask how things in the world get "into" knowledge claims, they generally scratch their heads. What is missed is that one's experience IS the world. Events are IN the world, and these are hermeneutically indeterminate, but qualities, the being appeared to redly quale, say, ARE the world. The trouble with qualia is that minus the contextuality of talking about it, there is nothing "said". And Dennett was right about this ( I seem to recall); but value qualia is a very different notion. Pain "speaks". It speaks the defeasable injunction NOT to do something. This prohibition issues first from the world, the qualitative actualities that our existence encounters.

You can probably tell by now that I think you missed some significant steps in your reduction. Ethics is layers above what matters. Ethics comes through other value judgements (it is not THE value judgement, if that is at all what you were hinting at), and value judgement is embedded in emotion ... now we do hit a rather hard problem because what emotion is is also a matter of sedimentation. — I like sushi

It is not a matter of ethics. It is one of metaethics, the nature of ethics. And hence, the nature of religion.

I came to Husserl via studying the Cognitive Neurosciences, and I am rather inclined to use what I have learned there as a check on what is feasible. I do not really see that Emotion is something that can exist separate from Logic. I have been of the broad opinion for some time that they are effectively two sides of the same coin, each necessitating a kernel of the other to exist. — I like sushi

To be clear, emotion, logic, affectivity, reason, pragmatics, and so on, these are analytic terms. Value does not exist. It is a dimension of our existence discovered in the "openness" made by language (gelassenheit). Emotion is not separable from logic because the analysis that produces categorical thought is an analytical imposition. You know, there is no "logic".

Sticky wicket. And as to two sides of the same coin, for me, that is epistemology and ontology. To be is to be known. A cat is not a cat until I bring catness to the cat. Only one thing I can think of that stands as its own presupposition, and that is value-in-the-world: The good cannot itself be bad any more than modus ponens can be a contradiction.

Much like Kant espoused with his “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.”, I am inclined to say “Reason without emotion is empty, emotions without contexts are blind. Logic can intuit nothing, the emotions can think nothing. Only through their unison can value arise.” — I like sushi

I quite agree. Reason without emotion is an abstraction. One can think about reason independently, of course, just as we think about knitting without thinking about the molecular structure of the material. But knitting and physics are taking the world "as" these. The world sustains many interpretative values at once about the "same thing" (though this same thing is transcendental and under erasure, as Derrida put it). The question is, is there anything that can be acknowledged as truly primordial, as God is for many? This is value, though I do not expect to be agreed with on this. Value as such is absolute.

From my brief exploration so far (Cartesian...) Husserl rests in the same place as Descartes: not far enough. Both are happy to assume that because the ego is the last trace back (reduction) in knowledge, that in ego appearance is present (I get the sense, like being).

But the step further to which I have found History has brought us, is that all appearance (phenomenal) is fleeting, including the ego; not present, not that which we can be certain of as ontologically ultimately real, not that place upon which we hang our hats, but just another appearance, only seemingly special because of its consistency etc. (Brief read of Being and Time shows a deeper complexity...but just of deeper reconstruction kf the structures of mind; appearance reconstructing appearance; not an understanding of the simple truth. Yes, everything I write or think is the same. And you, etc.)

What Husserl was really after, and reached very far, far enough to get us here, was the being of this organism which we identify in the world of appearance as human (let alone, as image of God), and thus far our ignorance (arrogance?) has blinded us from the simple truth. The being of this organism is this organism being. Not in the appearances cast by the images, specially evolved and structured, in its memory, forming a system called Mind, tapped directly into the animal's feelings, senses, drives, movements.

But there is no escaping appearance. I am not a believer of any religious dogma, but, this attachment to the images appearing in our inner imaging sense is our original sin. We are banished from Nature and destined to construct and project knowledge--good and evil, this and that.

From Husserl, and through Freud, and, Derrida, etc, etc,(I'm not going to list the thousands of thinkers) we can leap away from attachment to all appearance, even from I, my so called self; and through philosopy--not the essence of religion with its precarious myth and ritual--and at least "knowingly" carry on the business of the phenomenal (and noumenal; both Mind), at least cognizant of "really" (whatever that means in a world without "meaning") being an animal being, even if obstructed from being aware-ing of it in its presence.

If your hand is burning, it IS an ethical issue. All that makes an issue ethical is the some value-at-risk or in-play. — Constance

This makes ethics essentially a meaningless term if it can mean anything. I cannot agree nor see the point in pretending to do this.

Either way, if you happen to write an in-depth paper about this I would interested enough to read it.

Thanks again for your time

Isn't the point of philosophy to examine the hell out of basic assumptions and our glib answers? Isn't it the case that some of the most obvious questions may well be pointless? Is it not also the case that sometimes the pragmatic response to philosophical questions is better than theoretical dead ends or infinities? — Tom Storm

One has to know how to judge what pointlessness is. You seem to take a lack of definitive answers to things as evidence that they have been exhaustively examined and deemed pointless. But this is not where arguments lead. They rather show us that all along we really didn't know what the questions were. We thought we did, but we were in that world of glibness and bad assumptions and idle talk and banter. Why not read Heidegger's Being and Time to find out? You know, he breaks radically with tradition, and so one can read him with a sense of an entirely different approach. Husserl is like this as well. See how he begins his Cartesian Meditations:

Philosophy wisdom (sagesse) is the philosophizer's quite personal affair. It must
arise as his wisdom, as his self-acquired knowledge tending
toward universality, a knowledge for which he can answer from
the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute
insights. If I have decided to live with this as my aim the
decision that alone can start me on the course of a
philosophical development I have thereby chosen to begin in absolute
poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge. Beginning thus,
obviously one of the first things I ought to do is reflect on how
I might find a method for going on, a method that promises to
lead to genuine knowing.

You will NEVER find an analytic philosopher talking like this.

Husserl will find a great deal of resistance, but, as he says, it is a "personal affair" of the reader. One is taken to a world of inquiry and one has to go there to be rid of the "tranquilized" existence of "idle talk" (Heidegger, Being In As Such). Heidegger sounds just like someone you could relate to. Two, three months study and you would start to see what it is really like to be free of "glib answers."

How do you know that the transcendent significance you identify is not merely something you put there? — Tom Storm

Exactly what I am talking about. It is argued, that is how. One has to read the arguments, and they are thick and difficult. Kant dominated philosophy for a hundred years, and still does, indirectly. This is for a very good reason. One has to read The Critique of Pure Reason. It'll drive you a bit insane, but in the end, you will be a very different thinking person.

Not just basic questions. Specific questions which you have already stated are impossible to answer. — Tom Storm

Impossible without drastically modifying common sense, that is. It is not the answers that matternearly so much as it is the questions; the world does not wear its philosophical insights on its sleeve. Rather, insight is constructed out of the language of engagement, like everything else. One engages through inquiry, and discovers a new world of "openness" which is one's existence: freedom is our essence (Heidegger). A question IS freedom. If you find this puzzling, it can be argued if you are interested.

What is religion? It is the response to the foundational indeterminacy of our existence, above all, ethical indeterminacy. This is not merely a proposition being either true of false. It is a revelation about one's existence. This is the answer to your Why bother? question. This argument about the essence of religion, if followed through, reveals that in the midst in our living affairs, there is the gravitas of religion, without the churchy fetishes and bad metaphysics. Consider what religion does: it takes this embodied finitude that issues from, as Heidegger put it, the "potentiality of possibilities" of our inherited language and culture, and attempts place human signification in an absolute setting in an effort to resolve the matter of our joys and sufferings: The joys are now consummated; and the sufferings redeemed. This can be, again, argued. See the OP: there is an absolute discovered in the analysis of our everydayness. One is already IN an absolute setting!

Whoa there, parter, you are rushing ahead. Did I ask about why we are born and suffer? No. Did I say I wasn't engaged? No. I'm simply expressing a different view to yours. Does it follow from this that I am therefore against all of philosophy? — Tom Storm

I had read, " We have more than enough to work with in order to talk meaningfully about morality. Leave transcendence to the academics and the religious apologists" to mean you had no interest in basic questions. Oh well.

I'm just trying to cut to the chase. Is there any merit in lingering in the mist and miasma of transcendence when we have useful practical responces we can actually use? You don't have to agree with me, but that's my take on this philosophical conundrum. — Tom Storm

Heh, heh, philosophy....useful?? One has to think of it in Husserl's terms above: It is a personal engagement into the questions of one's own (and others') existence. This openness I speak of (derivative, of course, of those I read. And they derived from and of what they read), this indeterminacy, is US. I try to make this clear to myself constantly: me and my world of rising early in the morning, making breakfast, and the calling, the talking, the cares and interests rising and falling during the day, and so on: THIS is a life, a human existence. Physics cannot discuss this, and if it tries it commits the absolute worst "sin" to the integrity of what we are. Take this Heideggerian "dasein" and put it under the analytic microscope, and now you have an ontology. Taking my trash to the corner for pick up is now an ontological event, not a physical incident. Remember, I often say, ALL one has ever witnessed in the world is phenomena. Impossible to witness anything else, for a phenomenon is "to be wittnessed."

Anyway, of course, I understand this immediate rejection of "transcendental" talk. But transcendence is always already there in the world, and all of those practical matters rest with this openness of our existence. The only issue is whether one takes an interest. You know, starry night, one looks up at the night sky (aka, the inside of one's cranium), and wonders. Wondering deeply enough, one discovers religion. One wonders thoughtfully enough, one moves to Kierkegaard. Then Kierkegaard opens the door to one's self.

If there is no answer then what's next? — Tom Storm

See the above.

This makes ethics essentially a meaningless term if it can mean anything. I cannot agree nor see the point in pretending to do this.

Thanks again for your time — I like sushi

And thanks for yours, for reading. One parting thought, though. Can't be helped:

Thrown into a setting of wretched suffering then death. If this were a given a social setting, then it would be "to arms" against it. We would be outraged and heartbroken and would seek remedy and justice. You know, innocent child kidnapped and "things done" to the child: the very idea makes us shudder with disgust. Such is suffering, and we all are "thrown" into it. And yet, when the phenomenon is lifted out of its context of familiarity, as is done when analysis discovers "responsibility and accountability" empty into indeterminacy at the basic level, this moral dimension does not simply vanish. And it is not just the outrage, the "boo" factor: It is what the outrage is about: The suffering itself.

Anyway, I will shut up. Thanks again.

Moral redemption doesn't require religion, and religion may or may not provide it. The essense of religion is simply binding a community in shared values, narratives, etc. — praxis

If the whole affair were not entirely set against radical indeterminacy, then I would agree. Caring in a truly finite setting only has a finitude of redress, a foundation that could be spoken and laid out clearly as one would talk about the nature of a bank teller or fence post: just look in the dictionary and there it is. But the "binding a community in shared values, narratives, etc." begs more basic questions: what is a value? Why bother to bind? What are these narratives there for? Look in a dictionary, and you find more questions just like these. This is because all of our affairs lack a final vocabulary, as Rorty put it, and this "lack" is not simple definitional; it is existential. I mean, ask why we bind, and you may follow Hobbes or Rouseau in some social contract theory, and this justified social binding, the question of why bother in the first place looms large. It is for protection, greater security against threats, in short, it has greater utility than not binding. So what are threats about and why the need for security, and so on? You see, ALL such matters reduce to the ethical structure of our existence: we are "built" to care, and caring refers us directly to what is IN existence to care about: the joys, pleasures, the wretched suffering and terrors.

I think this clear enough. Analysis always goes to the most basic questions. Here we have arrived at the most basic analysis of religion, what it essentially is, and this is a littl difficult: it is not about fear, simply. Think of Ahab from Moby Dick. He is not pursuing in hateful revenge a whale that took his leg. He wants what is "behind" the4 whale. The Being that was there prior to whale and leg that gave forth the reality of the horrors of flesh being torn and shredded. It is the reality that is our world. The plague must have been lovely; and being consumed alive by fire speaks for itself. But this fills the world, saturates it, thinking of the tonnage of suffering our current existence emerged from. Same is true for love, happiness, pleasure, and so on. This is the value dimension of our existence.

Value: what IS it? This is THE question of religion. What is the good and the bad of ethics? There is a way to address this, but it takes analysis.

You seem to take a lack of definitive answers to things as evidence that they have been exhaustively examined and deemed pointless. — Constance

That's not really what I am saying. That was me reframing your point about the epistemic hopelessness before us. Which I take to be the similar Rorty's view that everything we believe is essentially a product of contingency - of culture and shared linguistic practice. The point is to move on and get things done.

Remember, I often say, ALL one has ever witnessed in the world is phenomena. Impossible to witness anything else, for a phenomenon is "to be wittnessed." — Constance

Sure. That's pretty much what I say too. It's a post-Kantian world. But the point remains; what is next?

Heidegger sounds just like someone you could relate to. Two, three months study and you would start to see what it is really like to be free of "glib answers." — Constance

Heidegger's unpacking of our mistakes and assumptions since Plato and all the advanced theorising about being that this entailed, didn't prevent him from getting involved with the ultimate in glib answers, Nazism. So even Heidegger had to step away from theory and his remarkable, nascent post-moderism - what hope for the rest of us?

Anyway, of course, I understand this immediate rejection of "transcendental" talk. But transcendence is always already there in the world, and all of those practical matters rest with this openness of our existence. The only issue is whether one takes an interest. You know, starry night, one looks up at the night sky (aka, the inside of one's cranium), and wonders. Wondering deeply enough, one discovers religion. One wonders thoughtfully enough, one moves to Kierkegaard. Then Kierkegaard opens the door to one's self. — Constance

This sounds more like an aesthetic response.

You're right that I don't take much of an interest in transcendence. As a reluctant post-modernist (by culture) I don't think it is possible to arrive at any conclusions about reality - just tentative theories and speculations. Most of which are cheap.

You know, starry night, one looks up at the night sky (aka, the inside of one's cranium), and wonders. Wondering deeply enough, one discovers religion. One wonders thoughtfully enough, one moves to Kierkegaard. Then Kierkegaard opens the door to one's self. — Constance

Hmmm. You sound like a romantic. The point of philosophy is how much I as an individual need to engage with it, not whether it is good for the world or whether Heidegger or Kant were revolutionary thinkers. These are very different matters. I am primarily interested in what I need from philosophy.

I doubt most people who read Heidegger understand him or gain a useful reading of him. Even academics seem to struggle. I think this is material for formal study, not for someone like me who doesn't read philosophy or have time.

If there is no answer then what's next?
— Tom Storm

See the above. — Constance

I don't think you have really answered this question.

Enjoyed the chat. :up:

From my brief exploration so far (Cartesian...) Husserl rests in the same place as Descartes: not far enough. Both are happy to assume that because the ego is the last trace back (reduction) in knowledge, that in ego appearance is present (I get the sense, like being). — ENOAH

Enjoyed the chat — Tom Storm

Same here.:ok:

From my brief exploration so far (Cartesian...) Husserl rests in the same place as Descartes: not far enough. Both are happy to assume that because the ego is the last trace back (reduction) in knowledge, that in ego appearance is present (I get the sense, like being). — ENOAH

Wait a minute. You are reading Husserl? And not Wiki'ing him? This is earth shattering! I'll get back to you, soon. A bit busy now.

No hurry.

Edit:
Can I just share this thought having emerged from Cartesian...so far. I'm not half done. It's short but I'm an extremely patient reader. Impatient writer. Says something about my own loud mouth ego.
Anyway, take a year to reply, but so you know where I'm wandering...

Here's the thought:
H's TransEgo is not a return to organic aware-ing or conscious living (I think, though expressed in different terms, that's what he thinks he's providing a method to reach), but rather, TransEgo is an experience mediated by mind. Why? Because ego--no matter how polished up-- is still assumed the experiencer. Organic aware-ing has no agent. It is aware-ing. Not I am aware-ing; and not I am aware-ing in the third person. Rather, real organic consciousness or being is the activity of present aware-ing. Not, some imagined agent doing the aware-ing.