I'm not sure there are ancients who are as explicit as Hume -- so I'm saying he's making an advance in ethical thinking in pointing out how is/ought frequently get conflated as if they have the same import. — Moliere

Do you know of ancients who say that you cannot get an ought from an is? Is Hume progressing something that already existed, or is he doing something new?

The important thing to note that I think might be misunderstood is that this doesn't mean we can't be moral beings -- one interpretation of Hume's ethical theory is that morality is real, and justified by the passions. — Moliere

Hume doesn't develop his is/ought thought at all. It is later thinkers who follow through, taking it to its logical conclusion (and this is where the cited examples of Michael or Amadeus come in).

Hume's clarification is an advance in thinking because it was a point of confusion which could hide arguments prior to him. — Moliere

I mean, if everyone prior to Hume thought that one could get from 'is' to 'ought', and Hume showed that that is impossible, then that would be an enormous change with the modern period.

He is for me the most important and impressive "modern" moral philosopher because he framed the problems with enormous originality and insight, raising questions that have been impossible to ignore ever since — J

Compare:

As for the continuity question, I see nothing in Kant's ethics -- apart from the Christian aspects -- that Socrates would not have both understood and been eager to debate. — J

So Kant was enormously original and insightful, raising questions that have been impossible to ignore, and there is nothing new in Kant - nothing that Socrates would not have already had. This is a contradiction.

-

I wish I knew what "modern thinking" consisted of, that supposedly made it either so unique or so pernicious. — J

Aristotle often sounds to me as if he believes he's achieved complete wisdom in all matters — J

The problem with "time-tested wisdom," of course, is that we are still in time — J

I also think, as I wrote somewhere recently, that the "loss of fundamental truths" picture is meant to go hand in hand with a picture of actual moral decline, such that Western society is now supposed to be much worse, ethically, than it used to be. — J

This idea of philosophers being "uniquely correct" is a fantasy. — J

This is a lot of soapboxing and witch hunting. I'd prefer philosophy rather than signaling our virtue about how inclusive, open-minded, and non-deplorable we are.

I'm saying he's making an advance in ethical thinking in pointing out how is/ought frequently get conflated as if they have the same import.

I'd say it's question begging sophistry (in precisely the way Plato frames sophistry). To make the distinction is to have already presupposed that there are not facts about what is good. Now, thanks to the theological issues I mentioned earlier in this thread, such a position was already common by Hume's time. It went along with fideism and a sort of anti-rationalism and general backlash against the involvement of philosophy in faith (and so in questions of value), all a century before Hume.

Hume argues to this position by setting up a false dichotomy. Either passions (and we should suppose the appetites) are involved in morality or reason, but not both. Yet I certainly don't think he ever gives a proper explanation of why it can't be both (univocity is a culprit here of course). For most of the history of philosophy, the answer was always both (granted, Hume seems somewhat unaware of much past philosophy, and his successor Nietzsche seems to get his entire view of it from a particularly bad reading of the Phaedo and not much else from Plato).

It's sophistry because it turns philosophy into power relations and dominance. Hume admits as much. "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (T 2.3. 3.4)." This is Socrates fighting with Thacymachus, Protagoras, and that one guy who suggests that "justice" is "whatever we currently prefer" in the Republic (his name escapes me because he has just one line and everyone ignores him, since, were he right, even the sophists would lose, since there is no need for their services when being wrong is impossible). The only difference is that now the struggle is internalized. This certainly goes along with Hume (and Nietzsche's) view of the self as a "bundle of sensations" (or "congress of souls"). Yet, Plato's reply is that this is simply what the soul is like when it is sick, morbid.

Just from the point of view of the philosophy of language it seems pretty far-fetched. Imagine someone yelling:

"Your hair is on fire."
"You are going to be late for work."
"You're hurting her."
"Keep doing that and you'll break the car."
"You forgot to carry the remainder in that calculation."
"You are lying."
"You didn't do what I asked you to."
"That's illegal."
"You're going to hurt yourself doing that."
"There is a typoo in this sentence."

...or any other such statements. There are all fact claims. They are all normally fact claims people make in order to spur some sort of action, and this is precisely because the facts (generally) imply oughts. "Your hair is on fire," implies "put the fire on your head out." And such an ought is justifiable by the appetites (desire to avoid pain), passions (desire to avoid the opinions of others related to be disfigured or seen to be stupid), and reason (the desire to fullfil rationally held goals, which burning alive is rarely conducive to).

At least on the classical view, the division is incoherent. There are facts about what are good or bad for us. To say "x is better than what I have/am, but why ought I seek it?" is incoherent. What is "truly good" is truly good precisely because it is desirable, choice-worthy, what "ought to be chosen" (of course, things can merely appear choice-worthy, just as they can merely appear true). Why should we choose the most truly choice-worthy? We might as well ask why we should prefer truth to falsity, or beauty to ugliness or why 1 is greater than 0.

For the second, could you perhaps say briefly how analogous predication would apply here, in the case of what looks like two usages of "good"? It's quite possible I don't yet understand how that would work.

Short answer: just as the measure of a "good car" differs from the measure of a "good nurse" (the same things do not make them good) the measure of a "good act" or "good event" will differ from that of a "good human being" (and in this case the former are not even things, not discrete unities at all, which is precisely why focusing on them leads to things like analyzing an unending chain of consequences).

I can share a long (but still cursory) explanation when I get to my PC, but the basic idea is that "good" is said many ways. The "good" of a "good car," a "good student," and a/the "good life" are not the same thing. Yet a good car certainly relates to human well-being, as any

More specifically, to make these sorts of comparisons/predications requires a measure. This is in Book 10 and 14 of the Metaphysics I think (and Thomas' commentaries are always helpful). Easiest way to see what a measure is it to see that to speak of a "half meter" or "quarter note" requires some whole by which the reference to multitude is intelligible. Likewise, for "three ducks" to be intelligible one must have a whole duck as the unit measure.

For anything to be any thing is must have some measure of unity. We cannot even tell what the dimensive quantities related to some abstract body are unless that body is somehow set off from "everything else" (i.e., one cannot measure a white triangle on a white background—there are a lot of interesting parallels to information theory in St. Thomas).

I think I already explained Plato's thing about how the "rule of reason" makes us more unified and self-determining (self-determining because we are oriented beyond what already are and have, beyond current beliefs and desires). Next, consider that organisms are proper beings because they have a nature, because they are the source of their own production and movement (not absolutely of course, they are not subsistent). Some non-living systems are self-organizing to some degree (and stars, hurricanes, etc. have "life cycles").The scientific literature on complexity and dissipative, self-organizing systems is decent at picking up on Aristotle here, but largely ignores later Patristic, Islamic, and medieval extensions.

Yet non-living things lack the same unity because they don't have aims (goal-directedness, teleonomy) unifying their parts (human institutions do).

The goodness for organisms is tightly related to their unity. In general, it is not good for an organism to lose its unity and die. "Ok, but sometimes they do this on purpose, bees sting and stinging kills them."

Exactly! Because what ultimately drives an organism is its goals. Brutes can't ask what is "truly good" but they can pursue ends that lie beyond them. And note, bees sacrifice themselves because they are oriented towards the whole, just as Boethius and Socrates do. This is because goodness always relates to the whole (because of this tight relationship with unity).

So to return to how goodness is said in many ways, goodness is said as respect to a measure. The measure of a "good house" is a house fulfilling it ends (artifacts are a little tricky though since they lack intrinsic aims and essences; people want different things in a house). The measure of the "good duck" is the paradigmatic flourishing duck (no need to posit independent forms existing apart from particulars here BTW).

Because equivocity is so rampant in our day, essentially the norm, let's not use "good person." Let's use "excellent person." The excellent person has perfected all the human excellences, the virtues. "It is good for you to be excellent." Or "it is excellent for you to be good." In either case the measure for "you," as a human, is human excellence, flourishing.

But because reason is transcedent, we can aim at "the best thing possible," which is to be like God. God wants nothing, lacks nothing, and fears nothing. Yet God is not indifferent to creatures, for a few reasons but the most obvious is that the "best" lack no good, and love is one of these.

God can also just be the rational limit case of perfection, having the best life conceivable. We might miss much in this deflation, but it still works.

We want to be the best person and live the best life possible. At the same time, goodness always relates to the whole, to unity. No doubt, we can usefully predicate "good" of events, but this goodness is parasitic on things. There is no good or bad in a godless world without any organisms (anything directed by aims). You can't have goodness without wholes with aims.

The predication vis-á-vis some good event has to be analagous because nothing can be "good for an event." The event is good or bad for some thing, according to its measure.




In the 19th century there were many competing theories of heat and electromagnetism. There was phlogiston, caloric, aether, etc. Are we best of returning to the specific, isolated theories, or looking at how what is good in each can be unified?

You might say "but the natural sciences are different, they make progress." And I would agree. It's easier to make progress when one studies less general principles. Yet they don't always make progress. Recall the Nazi's "Aryan physics" or Stalin's "communist genetics." The natural sciences can backslide into bad ideas and blind allies. It is easier for philosophy to do so.

I'm saying he's making an advance in ethical thinking in pointing out how is/ought frequently get conflated as if they have the same import. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This supposed conflation IS NOT a conflation at all. It is trivial to understand this IF the base model of reality is correct. That is there is ... passion (desire), reason (fear), AND ... BEING (anger). Being is the IS and each emotion contains a third of ought. That is to say ought is NOT merely desire. It is most associated with desire ONLY because we experience and communicate naturally AS IF time were unidirectional. Desire is the pull of perfection upon us, upon being, coming from the past accessible via only memory (and memory includes the current state of being from which the past may also be researched). But that limited association is WRONG.

Ought is included in all three emotions. There is an ought to reason. Some reason is done properly. There is an ought to being. You SHOULD be a better ... whatever. There is an ought of course to desire, as desire shows us the general direction of all oughts, towards perfection. But, as my previous post mentioned, hyperbolae is everywhere. Desire unbent PROPERLY by reason(fear) and being (anger) can miss the mark of perfection. Then it is immoral desire and causes rot and ruin and a presumed ought fails us. That shows that desire has oughts. There is an OBJECTIVE moral truth. And that destination, perfection, is the only CORRECT desire, the ought of desire. Again, BECAUSE of the differing current states of being, the linear path to perfection is different per chooser, giving rise to the confusion of morality being subjective.

I'd say it's question begging sophistry (in precisely the way Plato frames sophistry). To make the distinction is to have already presupposed that there are not facts about what is good. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That presupposition is a dangerous immorality. There are facts about what is good. It is very hard to state them because our state is not perfection and we are trying to speak on perfection.

Now, thanks to the theological issues I mentioned earlier in this thread, such a position was already common by Hume's time. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If I follow your tack here, you are suggesting that the assertion that 'there are NOT facts about what is good' was THE position that was already common by Hume's time. That means to me that the foolish and immoral confusion of subjective morality had become tempting to reason (fear) at least by Hume's time. In truth, immorality is (being) always tempting in exactly the three ways, cowardice(fear), self-indulgence(desire), and laziness(anger). If I am misunderstanding you, please let me know.

It went along with fideism and a sort of anti-rationalism and general backlash against the involvement of philosophy in faith (and so in questions of value), all a century before Hume. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, well, historically 'faith' has been an exercise in rampant idealism/desire and rampant fear. Left out often enough is wisdom itself. You can certainly understand why philosophy would represent a clear and present danger to religious pundits (being in essence). Clearly stating or trying to clearly state wisdom removes power from the pundits who prefer an impenetrable mystery behind which to hide (their immorality). The denigration of anger, of being, of WHAT IS, is typical of most aims at so called ideals. The tacit presumption is that there is something BASE about WHAT IS. As such, the immoral implication is that some form of desire (idealism) can get us to the right place, AWAY from this being thing. Likewise, the other large camp favors fear (pragmatism) and their cowardice presumes that near impossible seeming aspirations should be shunned, limiting what is possible to what is currently understood, rather than the infinity of truth that ACTUALLY IS, amid free will.

Hume argues to this position by setting up a false dichotomy. Either passions (and we should suppose the appetites) are involved in morality or reason, but not both. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your meaning here is unclear as the sentence structure is confusing. This is especially true for a reader that includes reason within morality, like me. So, I am forced to pick the idea apart in parts.

Either passions OR WHAT are involved in morality or reason?

To me passion is desire renamed. To me reason is only fear, always fear. And both are each 1/3 of moral force. Anger and being is the other third.

Yet I certainly don't think he ever gives a proper explanation of why it can't be both (univocity is a culprit here of course). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Both passion and WHAT? Reason I suppose is the other side. Correct me if I am wrong. But the trouble in the math and the model is the missing third part, anger and BEING. The correct model is a trichotomy, not a dichotomy. And that tripartite system collapses into monism quite nicely, with love, the entire system, being the monad. Again, it cannot be reiterated enough that truth, God, ALL, etc are just synonyms for love. Consciousness is just another synonym.

For most of the history of philosophy, the answer was always both (granted, Hume seems somewhat unaware of much past philosophy, and his successor Nietzsche seems to get his entire view of it from a particularly bad reading of the Phaedo and not much else from Plato). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Although I have read much of each of these, I confess that I take reading for what they invoke in me as ... ENOUGH ... and that I shy away from saying I understood the other. My assertions then are only a confident stand on current belief. I offer that other takes on this are just more delusion. We only ever have our current stand to assert. Even if we take the supposed position of another philosopher to stand on that is our current state, performing an AS IF with no certainty of being right.

It's sophistry because it turns philosophy into power relations and dominance. Hume admits as much. "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (T 2.3. 3.4)." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Although I have had this very thought concerning reason, it is only tempting, a sure sign of immoral desire. So, this slavery thing, sort-of IN GENERAL has been shown to be immoral, yes? Do we believe that? If so, then enslaving fear seems immoral and I would assert that it is. Yes, I realize I am working with my model, and not maybe others' meanings.

Idealists show us the GENERAL path towards perfection. They are sensing the perfection with its being in essence, desire. But, fear, to me the eternal juxtaposition of desire, uses its tool reason, structure, ... really ORDER is the best term, to focus and refine desire. This is specificity. This is identity. This is distinction. From this limiting and refining force comes the truth of direction itself, of accuracy. Order restrains chaos and that can be done appropriately or inappropriately. But the general and the specific are ubiquitous, omnipresent. Like truth they are rather dull, and yet perfect, by themselves. The specific that unveils the challenge of free will is BEING, the middle ground where these pesky CHOICES play out.

So, again, the anger of being is required to assist us in this puzzle. This anger is responsible for the STATE of things currently. It is responsible for the eternal moment we refer to as NOW, and thus it SEEMS so vastly different and smaller in a way than the gulf of the past (fear) and the infinity of all possible futures (desire). But that middle path of now is where everything actually IS.

Not fear, not anger, not desire, none of them, are slaves to the other. They are equal forces, perfectly and precisely equal.

The temptation to make reason a slave is a misunderstanding of fear and a rejection of its sin, cowardice. Self-indulgence is thus immorally handed the reigns.

But anger knows. The middle way understands. Anger demands that fears and cowardice recede. Anger demands that desire and self-indulgence are not the way. Anger stands and IS amid courage. Anger demands that in some way, there is already a connection to the divine, self-sufficiency. This demand is the recognition that any current state is not a prison AND that any dream is possible and really already available (perfection, objective moral truth, does exist). You can tell that although anger is only an equal force to the other emotional forces, it is somehow closer to truth or unique in its presentation, the uniqueness of state, of being, in any case, in every case. Notice that the eternal NOW is still infinite though.

This is Socrates fighting with Thacymachus, Protagoras, and that one guy who suggests that "justice" is "whatever we currently prefer" in the Republic (his name escapes me because he has just one line and everyone ignores him, since, were he right, even the sophists would lose, since there is no need for their services when being wrong is impossible). — Count Timothy von Icarus

It only seems like some points of view are invalid. They are part of all only so that they may suffer examination and amid being, change by reason of unhappiness/suffering as a consequence of not BEING at/with/for perfection (THE GOOD).

Justice cannot be random desire. Instead, there is only one right desire, objective, the GOOD, perfection. The act and process of wisdom is to determine what the GOOD is and become it.

I detest the colloquial definition for sophistry. The 'art of wisdom' is a part of wisdom and NOT JUST charlatanry. So, the word (sophistry) is poisoned by foolish Pragmatists, that eschew desire (expressed via art) by way of reason as they APPLY a false definition to a RELATIVELY innocent term. Once they get you in their books, they 'know' (another delusional term) that others will believe their immoral definition. The art of wisdom can be beautiful and NOT charlatanry. That possibility must be respected and honored. It exists. What then is generally, or specifically GOOD wise art called? Is it then JUST wisdom? It is hard then to speak of wisdom in terms of anything but itself, or perfection. We then tend to lose track of the relative value of some wisdom to other wisdom. This then is an Idealist immoral tendency. This is all or nothing thinking. It is not perfect, so poo poo it. No! Relativity is real. The current STATE of being of things is one thing. Any given choice may in fact BETTER that state and thus be clearly MORE ... GOOD ... than not. I am speaking here of OVERALL state, not state with respect to any given or just a few virtues.

It is hard in life amid being (imperfect) to practice wisdom (the aim at perfection). Interestingly, it is worth noting that whereas some skill are indeed hard to practice, the skill of wisdom is THE SINGLE HARDEST skill that there is. That is because it is THE skill OF perfection (in every way, including being).

Note the sin of anger. Laziness in not challenging fear and desire is the core sin of being. That is not BEING enough to have the courage to stave off fears and desire, cowardice and self-indulgence.

The only difference is that now the struggle is internalized. This certainly goes along with Hume (and Nietzsche's) view of the self as a "bundle of sensations" (or "congress of souls"). Yet, Plato's reply is that this is simply what the soul is like when it is sick, morbid. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Plato, again, for the win.

Just from the point of view of the philosophy of language it seems pretty far-fetched. Imagine someone yelling:

"Your hair is on fire."
"You are going to be late for work."
"You're hurting her."
"Keep doing that and you'll break the car."
"You forgot to carry the remainder in that calculation."
"You are lying."
"You didn't do what I asked you to."
"That's illegal."
"You're going to hurt yourself doing that."
"There is a typoo in this sentence."

...or any other such statements. There are all fact claims. They are all normally fact claims people make in order to spur some sort of action, and this is precisely because the facts (generally) imply oughts. "Your hair is on fire," implies "put the fire on your head out." And such an ought is justifiable by the appetites (desire to avoid pain), passions (desire to avoid the opinions of others related to be disfigured or seen to be stupid), and reason (the desire to fullfil rationally held goals, which burning alive is rarely conducive to). — Count Timothy von Icarus

This explanation is VASTLY insufficient. The relative value of any ought is many-fold. That is to say each virtue has to weigh in on that choice. And EVERY virtue SHOULD weigh in on EVERY choice. leave even one out and you fail in that degree.

Consider:

"There are times when hair should be on fire"
"Being late to work can be acceptable"
"Hurting her is relative to truth as some suffering (hurt) is wise."
"Breaking the car may be morally necessary from this state to get to a better state even if there was also a way to improve without breaking the car."
"Forgetting as an act is the means by which we suffer and earn the wisdom showing the need for accurate memory."
"Deception is sometimes a path to better outcomes, even though it is a shame that should be used only sparingly; but deceiving a deceiver is a service to them, allowing them the suffering opportunity (seeing themselves in other choosers) to earn wisdom and revealing that intent is the proper thing to judge amid choice, not the consequences."
"I understand what you did not do what I asked you to." or "This is WHY is asked you to do it (followed by the actual reason)."
"Although that is illegal, order (fear) is NOT the only source for moral choice aimed at the GOOD."
"There may be a moral reason to hurt yourself, and you seem to be trying to hurt yourself."
"A typoo is actually an alien from the planet Yiaghall. If you refer to them in any way, they bless you with their 5th dimensional aid." And "OK smarty, you KNEW what that word was supposed to be, and you KNEW that upon review I would agree, so, why the intentional misunderstanding?"

At least on the classical view, the division is incoherent. There are facts about what are good or bad for us. To say "x is better than what I have/am, but why ought I seek it?" is incoherent. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I disagree. To invoke a lack of desire, to point it out, is an attempt, which could indeed be wrong, to express the fact that what IS currently is only a state and not perfect. There is then a tacit implication of a perfect state, a non-moving goalpost, to which one may aspire. Laying out this challenge is always wise unless the assertion is that perfection is already present and represented by this state of being.

What is "truly good" is truly good precisely because it is desirable, choice-worthy, what "ought to be chosen" (of course, things can merely appear choice-worthy, just as they can merely appear true). Why should we choose the most truly choice-worthy? We might as well ask why we should prefer truth to falsity, or beauty to ugliness or why 1 is greater than 0. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Acting in 'good faith' is a sword of Damocles proposition. This is again why Deontological morality is valid and Utilitarianism is a dangerous and immoral lie. If one acts with the strength of one's convictions TOWARDS or INTENDING the GOOD, that is generally good. This is the general OUGHT. It implies a destination. I name that destination perfection, and suggest it is best to consider that an objective state.

The state of perfection may be the most impossible state of being that there is. It sure follows reasonably that this is true. And then how to appeal to reason itself in approaching that state? After all, if we use reason and we admit that reason is making the more probable choices, then reason points AWAY from perfection. Is that really reasonable? So, reason is again seen to contain its primary sin, COWARDICE. The reasonable goal is always perfection, and it is the ONLY reasonable goal. It is also the least likely goal, and therein lies the challenge that anger understands, and reason often flees from.

J - For the second, could you perhaps say briefly how analogous predication would apply here, in the case of what looks like two usages of "good"? It's quite possible I don't yet understand how that would work.

Short answer: just as the measure of a "good car" differs from the measure of a "good nurse" (the same things do not make them good) the measure of a "good act" or "good event" will differ from that of a "good human being" (and in this case the former are not even things, not discrete unities at all, which is precisely why focusing on them leads to things like analyzing an unending chain of consequences). — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is INCORRECT reasoning.

Truth does not change. Perfection does not change. It is objective.

If you cannot communicate why being a good car and a good nurse are defined in the same way that is only because you do not understand the GOOD. You have denied blame for your own imperfection in that understanding by pretending that the GOOD can change. You are WRONG.

I can share a long (but still cursory) explanation when I get to my PC, but the basic idea is that "good" is said many ways. The "good" of a "good car," a "good student," and a/the "good life" are not the same thing. Yet a good car certainly relates to human well-being, as any — Count Timothy von Icarus

If the GOOD is properly understood, then it will be the same GOOD in every way at the same time to everything in the universe, unchanging and omnipresent.

More specifically, to make these sorts of comparisons/predications requires a measure. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agreed that at least an understanding is required, which is what measurement implies. Measure infinity! That challenge seems hard, yet we dabble in the concept.

It is the nature of perfection to remain elusive to understanding. This is why COURAGE to be (anger) is required. As our state approaches perfection, the strength of that elusiveness increases. Each step on the moral ladder is harder and harder. The cowards will be tempted to skew off in any direction. Notice then how fear becomes chaotic like desire when it is immoral, even though it is the general source or force of order.

This is in Book 10 and 14 of the Metaphysics I think (and Thomas' commentaries are always helpful). Easiest way to see what a measure is it to see that to speak of a "half meter" or "quarter note" requires some whole by which the reference to multitude is intelligible. Likewise, for "three ducks" to be intelligible one must have a whole duck as the unit measure. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Indeed and this immoral act of separation is useful only amid the DENIAL of a final whole (objective). We cannot be objective. We can only TRY to be objective. Writing it that way EVERY TIME is required to be honestly trying. Be careful with assertions regarding subjectivity. "You are going to hurt yourself doing that." (ha ha)

For anything to be any thing is must have some measure of unity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If it is a fundamental truth that anything is a part of everything and that there is no real live between them, then anything IS everything at some level of awareness. Unity was always true. This is the source of compassion and that is a result of the force of anger. This relationship seems counterintuitive, but it is not finally.

We cannot even tell what the dimensive quantities related to some abstract body are unless that body is somehow set off from "everything else" (i.e., one cannot measure a white triangle on a white background—there are a lot of interesting parallels to information theory in St. Thomas). — Count Timothy von Icarus

And these observations offer a staggering assertion. All fear, all separation, is delusional. This is a tautology, if the observer is wise enough. The difficulty of wisdom is thus again shown. How do we leverage this wisdom in our choices to generally increase the GOOD?

We can realize that the need to measure is cowardice in part. It IS delusional. We cannot be separated from ALL. The only right measurement is ALL. But, to increase the comfort or at homeness within each deluded part (us), what force is needed? I ask with reasonable humility, could it be anger (confidence and courage)? Could it be also a desire that truth be truth and believed as such? Is that belief then in that way some OBJECTIVE thing, a single hardest right way to want, to fear, and be at home with in balance?

I think I already explained Plato's thing about how the "rule of reason" makes us more unified and self-determining (self-determining because we are oriented beyond what already are and have, beyond current beliefs and desires). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ah yes, the delusion of self-determination, reinforcing the delusional identity of the self. The self-made man is another hilarious immoral non-sequitur. We could go on and on. But the unity principle is that "you are me and I am you" The unity principle is that 'you are ALL and cannot be made to un-belong". You are a white triangle on a white background. And you may 'for the moment' consider the triangle or the background, but there is always finally only the whole.

The struggle to find for any distinction is the delusion that will cause the suffering to allow for that distinction to earn wisdom and reunite with all. The whole flux of this, the process of it, is guided along a single objective path, towards perfection, the GOOD.

Next, consider that organisms are proper beings because they have a nature, because they are the source of their own production and movement (not absolutely of course, they are not subsistent). Some non-living systems are self-organizing to some degree (and stars, hurricanes, etc. have "life cycles").The scientific literature on complexity and dissipative, self-organizing systems is decent at picking up on Aristotle here, but largely ignores later Patristic, Islamic, and medieval extensions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That which contains the seed of life is itself alive, obviously.

These distinctive delusions will hurt you (cause suffering) to (anyone that chooses to believe in them).

Yet non-living things lack the same unity because they don't have aims (goal-directedness, teleonomy) unifying their parts (human institutions do). — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is an immoral lack of awareness. Clearly, that which contains the seed of life, is itself alive.

Animism was always far more correct than religion ever has been.

The goodness for organisms is tightly related to their unity. In general, it is not good for an organism to lose its unity and die. "Ok, but sometimes they do this on purpose, bees sting and stinging kills them." — Count Timothy von Icarus

You show the contradiction and continue as if that is ok. Is that reasonable?

The white triangle is still there. But it behooves it to accept belonging amid belief. The delusional assertion of a sub-unity is finally unwise unless belonging is also equally accepted and there then is less stress on the separation, the sub-unity, as 'put upon'. Yes, the burden of choice faces each sub-unity. That is because it is alive. Any sub-unity, like the whole, is alive BEYOND even what humans currently imagine.

Exactly! Because what ultimately drives an organism is its goals. Brutes can't ask what is "truly good" but they can pursue ends that lie beyond them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your self-contradiction without synthesis is STUNNING to behold.

Indeed they (all things) pursue ends that lie as just another part of all, more moral agency. That is what evolution is and it proceeds from the dawn of time until time's end and the source of that evolution as a drive is objective perfection, the GOOD. Thus, all organisms, and even all rocks, because they are organisms of a kind, DO IN FACT ask 'what is truly GOOD'? because that is the only real question in existence. That question CAUSES existence.

And note, bees sacrifice themselves because they are oriented towards the whole, just as Boethius and Socrates do. This is because goodness always relates to the whole (because of this tight relationship with unity). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agreed. Why is this not included though in the realization of all parts being the whole (for you, seemingly)?

So to return to how goodness is said in many ways, goodness is said as respect to a measure. The measure of a "good house" is a house fulfilling it ends (artifacts are a little tricky though since they lack intrinsic aims and essences; people want different things in a house). The measure of the "good duck" is the paradigmatic flourishing duck (no need to posit independent forms existing apart from particulars here BTW). — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a delusional nod back to separation and identity, itself a delusion. The only GOOD identity is ALL. You are separate from ALL only by immoral choice. The act of being and even dying is your participation in the effort to overcome all of your delusions and admit to being all in the first place by re-becoming it. What part of all will you deny is you, is to be properly included in the final all?

Because equivocity is so rampant in our day, essentially the norm, let's not use "good person." Let's use "excellent person." The excellent person has perfected all the human excellences, the virtues. "It is good for you to be excellent." Or "it is excellent for you to be good." In either case the measure for "you," as a human, is human excellence, flourishing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Renaming something DOES NOT change it in truth. Sophistry is still the 'art of wisdom' and that is despite the colloquial accepted definition, possibly a GOOD thing and not charlatanry.

Likewise, the GOOD must be realized and admitted as objective. Failing this, excellent can become 'good enough', a deeply immoral state. The only fair stopping point is perfection. This DOES NOT deny the good of resting.

But because reason is transcedent, we can aim at "the best thing possible," which is to be like God. God wants nothing, lacks nothing, and fears nothing. Yet God is not indifferent to creatures, for a few reasons but the most obvious is that the "best" lack no good, and love is one of these. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Reason is UNLIKELY to aim at perfection. It limits us via cowardice, its typical sin. If you are a proponent of reason OVER desire or anger, you ARE being cowardly as a guarantee. If you instead DO NOT ENSLAVE reason to passion (desire), and yet admit its grounding in BEING (anger, a current state), you can begin to realize and accept the profoundly equal forces of fear, anger, and desire; the ONLY three forces that are love when combined in all permutations. This love is God and truth and ALL. They are again, synonymous terms.

God can also just be the rational limit case of perfection, having the best life conceivable. We might miss much in this deflation, but it still works. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Nothing is missing if it is perfection.

It is a question to me still: "Can we really experience perfection?" Are there moment of it all the way? I say or assert NO. We are always only able to experience a less than perfect state. So, perfection as experience is an immoral error MOSTLY. I do not want to discourage it, the pursuit. So I caution only that perceived perfection is just BETTER than where we were as a state and that BETTER can seem like the best, even when it is clearly not ALL (the real perfection).

this quandary leaves us wondering what grand entity of moral agency will populate the end of the universe. Must they all, even amid their amazing levels of near perfection, submit to loss of delusional identity and merge to become perfect? How hard must that act be? Why is the separation 'bad'? Once reunified, does this longing for more and the need to have distinction CAUSE the next 'Big Bang' or other analogy/meme for the dawn of time? Restart!

{Humorously I hit the length limit on a post (lol). So this reply will be continued in the next post as a restart underscoring this point. The IMMORAL arbitary limit here is sad. It wasn't even as large a length of symbols as I can type in in one day. How terrible!}

{Continued}

We want to be the best person and live the best life possible. At the same time, goodness always relates to the whole, to unity. No doubt, we can usefully predicate "good" of events, but this goodness is parasitic on things. There is no good or bad in a godless world without any organisms (anything directed by aims). You can't have goodness without wholes with aims. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And these realizations are meaningless because no such world exists. This one is alive in every way. All parts of it start with and cannot escape free will. They are all possessed of aims linking to all aims, towards the ultimate aim, perfection. It is only our lack of perfection that in every way suggests otherwise, encourages delusions like identity and 'alive'.

The predication vis-á-vis some good event has to be analagous because nothing can be "good for an event." The event is good or bad for some thing, according to its measure. - Moliere — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is fairly nonsensical.

The good or bad of anything is related only to the sub-whole intent. Obviously, the intent of ALL is perfection. This causes evolution and desire itself. So, intents of sub-wholes (delusional) are immoral in part ALWAYS until perfection, the objective GOOD, the hardest intent in the universe, is chosen. It really seems that that choice WILL END this universe. I kind of hope that I am wrong in that supposition in the sense that instead of IT ending, that is the growth step transfering what choice is in this sub-dimension to the next dimension, and ... on we go (the real afterlife). That whole (ALL) is fully subsumed by the next dimension, so all death is the same death in this one. Most delusions still work. As in 'we will be together in heaven' is just DUMB code for (this) ALL has been perfected, ... (on to the) Next! (ALL)

In the 19th century there were many competing theories of heat and electromagnetism. There was phlogiston, caloric, aether, etc. Are we best of returning to the specific, isolated theories, or looking at how what is good in each can be unified? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The obvious answer is yes. That is to say, all (or both in this limited case).

You might say "but the natural sciences are different, they make progress." And I would agree. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Progress that is not moral is delusional (not really progress).

Luckily there is no nothing. That is to say all something, even immoral choices, are still partly GOOD. So, the connection to GOOD is found in ALL. Fear is again seen as delusional. Desire is again seen as delusional. But there is a sliver of fear (order) and desire (chaos) that is a single line pointing to a single destination, the infinite now (balance, being).

How much faith is found amid SOMETHING, amid being?

It's easier to make progress when one studies less general principles. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, the delusions of specifics pretend to allow progress, and can, if and only if that progress is LATER related to other progress which readdress ALL. 'Filling out the space' of immorality seems to be required to accept morality (as objective).

Yet they don't always make progress. Recall the Nazi's "Aryan physics" or Stalin's "communist genetics." The natural sciences can backslide into bad ideas and blind allies. It is easier for philosophy to do so. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, naming the study of the highest skill within reality is a GOOD idea, but naming it will not change it, because it is objective (truth).

We understand all the time that we named things as truths that were only states. If a thing can change, it is not truth, it is only a state. Truth NEVER changes. That is why what is GOOD for one thing or person is ALWAYS also GOOD for all others. This is a tautology and (thankfully) it cannot be changed.

OK. I still see problems with equivocation, and unless I missed it, you haven't addressed the use of "good for me" as in "beneficial,"* but I will definitely spend more time on this.

*Unless, once again, we just have to accept that being virtuous is the most beneficial thing for me. I still think this is being set out as a conclusion without an argument, and that one is entitled to ask how it can be that death by torture benefits me.

As for the continuity question, I see nothing in Kant's ethics -- apart from the Christian aspects -- that Socrates would not have both understood and been eager to debate — J

It sounds like you believe that the part of Kant’s ethics that exclude the Christian aspects comprises the core of his ethical thinking. If that’s the case, then am I right to assume you believe that Socrates would have understood the core of Kantian ethics? Am I right to further presume that, given that Socrates was capable of-comprehending Kant’s ethics, he could conceivably have though up something similar himself, in spite of the fact that he lived two thousand years before Kant?

Good questions. To the first, yes, I think an interlocutor of Socrates (let's call him Kantias) could have posed theories about the moral value of motivation, and whether in order for an act to be virtuous, it would have to be something that anyone would do in the same circumstances. Those two questions alone would get us quite deeply into Kantian ethics. Kant's emphasis on freedom would, I think, be harder for Socrates to understand, but if Kantias laid it out in terms of physis and nomos, and then led the discussion into whether there is a law for humans that we may freely follow, Socrates would probably have some good insights.

To the second, I'm not entirely sure what it would mean to "think up something similar." Socrates was more of a dialectician than an armchair thinker, so let's switch it from Socrates to Aristotle. Could Aristotle have come up with the idea that an act is only virtuous if it can be recommended as a universal maxim? I suppose so. I'm not sure the question would have interested him very much, but that's not the same thing as saying it would be opaque to him. He might not have cared whether the virtues were applicable to all people in all (similar) circumstances. His emphasis seems to be on how I may live a good life, not so much on whether living that good life involves defeating selfish motives and willing a universal "kingdom of ends." I'm not really entitled to an opinion here, as Aristotle isn't my forte. If someone can point me to something like "A Kantian interprets Aristotle," I'd love to read it.

I do want to affirm something you don't come right out and say, but that I think is implied in your questions. Creativity is socially constrained; it has a history and a context; and to ask "Would X have understood A?" is not the same as asking "Could X have created A?" In one of my fields, music, we often kick around stuff like "What would Bach make of Stravinsky?" Well, given enough time and examples to acclimate himself to Modernism, Bach might well have loved Igor. But there is absolutely zero chance he could have written Rite of Spring in 1725. So I read you here as pointing out, rightly, that we mustn't engage in some sort of "leveling of history" and imagine that Socrates, Aquinas, and Kant all spoke essentially the same creative language. They did not. And I suppose, if that is all MacIntyre's thesis amounts to, then I don't really disagree. I'm just troubled by this idea of incommensurability and decline, which seems too strong.

….we mustn't engage in some sort of "leveling of history"….. — J

Well said.

Shoulders of giants all the way down.

I'm just troubled by this idea of incommensurability and decline, which seems too strong. — J

A priori or a posteriori? Because when someone who offers very few arguments and has a self-admittedly thin exposure to philosophical history opposes theories of decline (or also unique excellence), it seems that they have some a priori bias.

<The ancients are not superior to the moderns>

This proposition can be supported with arguments and evidence, or else it can be supported by a priori prejudice (which in this case looks something like egalitarian "tolerance").*

It looks to me that the modus operandi of Pyrrhonian skepticism is utilized by a number of people on this forum, often for different reasons. That approach is skepticism via infinite questioning and doubting, combined with the move of always placing the burden of proof on the other guy. When attempts to offer a positive reason for his own position, he moves into a more reasonable space, a space of transparent arguments and motivations.

With that said, I do think that incommensurability tout court is too strong. And if there is decline from A to B then A and B are simply not incommensurable, which is a problem for MacIntyre.


* Of course, it can also be "supported" by nescience, but axe-grinding over time precludes this option.

To the first, yes, I think an interlocutor of Socrates (let's call him Kantias) could have posed theories about the moral value of motivation, and whether in order for an act to be virtuous, it would have to be something that anyone would do in the same circumstances. — J

What do we think the Gadfly would say after he hears Kant speak on morality?

I do want to affirm something you don't come right out and say, but that I think is implied in your questions. Creativity is socially constrained; it has a history and a context; and to ask "Would X have understood A?" is not the same as asking "Could X have created A?" In one of my fields, music, we often kick around stuff like "What would Bach make of Stravinsky?" Well, given enough time and examples to acclimate himself to Modernism, Bach might well have loved Igor. But there is absolutely zero chance he could have written Rite of Spring in 1725. So I read you here as pointing out, rightly, that we mustn't engage in some sort of "leveling of history" and imagine that Socrates, Aquinas, and Kant all spoke essentially the same creative language. They did not. — J

Yes, and I would go beyond that and argue that intelligibility is socially constrained. This point is fundamental for any theory of ethics, and for addressing the question the OP asks. You see, I believe that the musical sensibilities of era are inextricably linked to the way that the sciences are approached in that era , and the framework of understanding that undergirds the sciences is closely tied to that of philosophy , and the epistemic presuppositions grounding philosophy are related to that of poetry and literature. I’m not trying to suggest that a single monolithic episteme underlies all forms of cultural creativity in a given era for a given community, but I am saying that these systems are interlocked, such that it makes sense to talk about Romantic painting, literature, music philosophy and science and mean more than just that these domains all belong to the same chronological period.

More importantly, when we move from one era to the next
a certain discontinuity and incommensurability is involved. Not so much for those looking back to previous eras of thought and reinterpreting them from the present vantage, but for those who remain wedded to the old ways in the face of paradigm shifts and are not able to fathom what is in the process of replacing their system of thought. An entire metaphysics of ethics is dependent on flattening and ignoring these discontinuities in intelligibility. As a result, ethical values (the ought)) are spilt off from matters of fact (the ‘is’), as one assumes that it is a simple matter of introducing the new ways of thinking to any reasonably intelligent person and understanding is all but guaranteed. Why shouldn’t Socrates be able to understand Kant, the thinking goes, given a sufficiently thorough period of study? Why shouldn’t the Qanon -touting Trump voter sitting next to you be able to absorb the raw facts when conferences directly with them? According to this dualism of ethical value and matters of fact, the ethical disagreement between a neoliberal and a progressive socialist is based on considerations entirely different from those having to do with matters of fact. This flattening of discontinuities in intelligibility between eras, and between individuals, provides justification for the idea that there is such a thing a a universally shared notion of the ethical good that comprises not just the desire to be moral, but a shared conceptual content that is as transparent as matters of fact.

But if matters of fact depend for their understanding on systems of intelligibility which are contingently culture-bound, why should notions of the ethical good be any different? We live in a society carved up into myriad communities united by their own systems of intelligibility. The fact that we are all able to share the roads together and communicate in public spaces on the basis of general and superficially shared understandings masks the extent to which our worlds only partially link up. When we fail to see this we force the ethical into the position of subjective will. The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure.

We live in a society carved up into myriad communities united by their own systems of intelligibility. The fact that we are all able to share the roads together and communicate in public spaces on the basis of general and superficially shared understandings masks the extent to which our worlds only partially link up. When we fail to see this we force the ethical into the position of subjective will. The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure. — Joshs

I find this particularly interesting. Does it follow from this frame that no one is ever knowingly dishonest or has evil intent and that the matter can always be understood as arising from incommensurate perspectives?

intelligibility is socially constrained — Joshs

We need, in a word, hermeneutics.

I’m not trying to suggest that a single monolithic episteme underlies all forms of cultural creativity in a given era for a given community, but I am saying that these systems are interlocked, such that it makes sense to talk about Romantic painting, literature, music philosophy and science and mean more than just that these domains all belong to the same chronological period. — Joshs

Yes, with a heavy emphasis on your warning about simplistic "single monolithic episteme" talk. The interlocking is complicated, and the parallels are stronger or weaker from era to era. Also, the role of science here is, to my mind, by far the most problematic. "Romantic" science? I'd need to hear more about what that might be. We all remember the Sokal hoax . . .

More importantly, when we move from one era to the next a certain discontinuity and incommensurability is involved — Joshs

Put this carefully, I think you're right. . . .

An entire metaphysics of ethics is dependent on flattening and ignoring these discontinuities in intelligibility. — Joshs

. . . but this is very sweeping, and needs arguing for. Rather than simply assume these "discontinuities in intelligibility," why not put them in question? Again, a hermeneutical approach can help us understand the limits -- but also the strengths -- of interpretation across cultures. We need, at the least, a sophisticated understanding of the concept of intelligibility.

But if matters of fact depend for their understanding on systems of intelligibility which are contingently culture-bound, why should notions of the ethical good be any different? — Joshs

I think this is indeed the conclusion we'd be forced to draw, and I think it's the wrong one. So I'd want to go back to look more closely at the fact/system/intelligibility relationship. How much of this is cultural? Do all matters of fact really depend on such radically contingent systems? Is there no value in the distinction between the natural sciences and human sciences?

I think that Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Habermas have a lot to teach us here.

Why shouldn’t Socrates be able to understand Kant, the thinking goes, given a sufficiently thorough period of study? Why shouldn’t the Qanon -touting Trump voter sitting next to you be able to absorb the raw facts when conferences directly with them? — Joshs

The pairing of these two questions is a bit alarming! I think Socrates probably could understand Kant, if we could imagine the impossible situation of someone being magically transported back to Athens to explain it to him using the language of Greek thought. But the Qanoner is not in the business of trying to understand anything. Giving them "raw facts" (presumably about the lack of sinister conspiracies?) is not the same as introducing Socrates to the idea of the kingdom of ends.

According to this dualism of ethical value and matters of fact, the ethical disagreement between a neoliberal and a progressive socialist is based on considerations entirely different from those having to do with matters of fact. — Joshs

I've lost you here. I thought you were arguing the opposite -- that the problem is a lack of shared, mutually intelligible facts. Could you say more?

This flattening of discontinuities in intelligibility between eras, and between individuals, provides justification for the idea that there is such a thing a a universally shared notion of the ethical good that comprises not just the desire to be moral, but a shared conceptual content that is as transparent as matters of fact. — Joshs

This is interesting. The implication is that "the desire to be moral" can exist without some particular "conceptual content" -- that the desire can be present from era to era, but with a differing notion of the ethical good. Are you sure that's possible? What is this common denominator of desire? I'm not saying that there is no such common denominator, of course; I'm arguing, in the opposite direction, that in addition to such a common desire there is also ethical conceptual content that is translatable from era to era and individual to individual.

The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure. — Joshs

To me, this describes the process of "othering," in which opponents or adversaries are assumed to be in disagreement with us due to certain traits they possess, rather than because there is genuine, potentially resolvable disagreement. Oddly, I see this as erasing the similarities between their world and ours, not the difference. But I think we may be getting at the same idea. Your point, perhaps, is that reducing ethical dispute to some sort of character failure makes the assumption not only that the other is wrong in ethical terms, but also that those terms are already quite clear to all concerned. And what would my ethical duty be, in such a case? Just as you say -- try harder, keep trying to stay in "communicative action" (Habermas), don't simply give up and start "othering."

The above, rather rosy description, has an important caveat: Some people really are hateful and cruel. There is such a thing as moral failure. An entire society can even approach such a dreadful state. But to begin from such a premise, when in disagreement, is foolish and unjust.

I’m not trying to suggest that a single monolithic episteme underlies all forms of cultural creativity in a given era for a given community, but I am saying that these systems are interlocked, such that it makes sense to talk about Romantic painting, literature, music philosophy and science and mean more than just that these domains all belong to the same chronological period.
— Joshs

Yes, with a heavy emphasis on your warning about simplistic "single monolithic episteme" talk. The interlocking is complicated, and the parallels are stronger or weaker from era to era. Also, the role of science here is, to my mind, by far the most problematic. "Romantic" science? I'd need to hear more about what that might be. We all remember the Sokal hoax . . . — J

I’m thinking here of Foucault’s historical analysis of scientific epistemes. He grouped the period from around 1400 till today into three epistemes, the Renaissance, the Classical period (roughly 1600 to 1780) and the Modern episteme (1780 to today), and showed how theories of language , life and economics within each episteme shared many common features. Relevant to your question concerning Romantic science, he argued that the science of biology could not exist until the modern period because the classical episteme’s notion of natural history lacked a concept of holistic organization and history as self-reflexive change. These notions are central to Romanticism as a whole. He cites Romantic philosophers such as Kant , Schelling and Hegel as contributing to this new organicist
thinking in linguistics, economics ( Marx) and biology (Darwin).

I think this is indeed the conclusion we'd be forced to draw, and I think it's the wrong one. So I'd want to go back to look more closely at the fact/system/intelligibility relationship. How much of this is cultural? Do all matters of fact really depend on such radically contingent systems? Is there no value in the distinction between the natural sciences and human sciences?

I think that Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Habermas have a lot to teach us here. — J

Dilthey made a sharp distinction between the methods of the natural and human sciences, believing that hermeneutic method only applies to the latter. Gadamer, by contrast, and like Kuhn, applied hermeneutics to both the hard sciences and the human sciences. Gadamer, like Kuhn and Rorty thought that one could talk about a progress in the sciences, but this is not to be interpreted as a securing of matters of fact independent of schemes of intelligibility. Rather, the sciences, as part of the continuing conversation of man, can benefit humanity in increasingly useful ways in spite of the discontinuous nature of successive schemes of empirical factuality.

. The implication is that "the desire to be moral" can exist without some particular "conceptual content" -- that the desire can be present from era to era, but with a differing notion of the ethical good. Are you sure that's possible? What is this common denominator of desire? I'm not saying that there is no such common denominator, of course; I'm arguing, in the opposite direction, that in addition to such a common desire there is also ethical conceptual content that is translatable from era to era and individual to individual — J

I would say that the common denominator of desire is the normative aims of anticipatory sense-making. Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making. The ethical conceptual content you refer to , such as the Golden Rule, is what happens when sense-making breaks down and leads to blame and a concomitant collection of ‘oughts’ , which all come down to variations on the theme of ‘Thou shalt not act in ways that exceed my sense-making capabilities’.

The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure.
— Joshs

To me, this describes the process of "othering," in which opponents or adversaries are assumed to be in disagreement with us due to certain traits they possess, rather than because there is genuine, potentially resolvable disagreement. Oddly, I see this as erasing the similarities between their world and ours, not the difference. But I think we may be getting at the same idea — J

The essence of the concept of Othering is not simply seeing
someone else's views, behaviors or traits as alien with respect to oneself and one’s own community, but judging these as unethical in their failure to conform to some universal. Levinas’s philosophical approach putting ethics before ontology captures the move made by a variety of approaches in contemporary philosophy. “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… 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.”(Shaun Gallagher)

/.../ The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure.
— Joshs

I find this particularly interesting. Does it follow from this frame that no one is ever knowingly dishonest or has evil intent and that the matter can always be understood as arising from incommensurate perspectives? — Tom Storm

It doesn't follow.

A person can be dishonest, act with evil intent. The point of contention is that it's not up to the other person to decide that.

Usually, people are eager to ascribe motivations to others, to project into them. They consider it their right, a matter of their self-confidence. But what they are basically saying is:

"You feel whatever I say that you feel.
You think whatever I say that you think.
Your intentions are whatever I say that your intentions are.
I am the boss of you.
If you in any way disagree, you are bad, evil, deserving punishment."

Sure, and I understand (roughly) how Ethics is taught. But this literally foregoes any meaningful answer to the question, and returns to circularity. I'm not particularly intending to further some philosophical position but to address why I think the question itself is a bit moot. "X is good" requires my bolded to be sorted through. "You should do X" requires the previous sentence to be adequately addressed. So, I think this is prima facie a pretty unhelpful way to think about what to do in life.

Ignoring that "good" and "right" can come apart readily, I can't see how this conceptualisation is anything more than paternalism, rather than learning how to think and assess claims — AmadeusD

For the most part, ethics and the discussion of ethics are about controlling people, about getting them to do what one stakeholder wants them to do. But in order to avoid the controlling from becoming too obvious and too easy to rebel against, the discourse of ethics is often formulated in objective terms, as if indepedent from the people who promote it. "It's not I who wants you to do that, it's God." "It's not I who wants you to do that, it's simply how things really are."

This is one of the reasons why the discourse of ethics so often goes nowhere and why it logically doesn't add up.

Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making. — Joshs

Sorry, this is opaque to me. Could you expand? And, no offense, but in your own words if possible? I'm less interested in what other philosophers have said about this than I am in what you think.

I had to look up "virtue signaling." Could you explain how it connects to meta-ethics? I'm not seeing it. — J

People are often prone to give socially desirable answers.

In social science research, social-desirability bias is a type of response bias that is the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others.[1] It can take the form of over-reporting "good behavior" or under-reporting "bad", or undesirable behavior. The tendency poses a serious problem with conducting research with self-reports. This bias interferes with the interpretation of average tendencies as well as individual differences.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-desirability_bias

What this means for discussing ethics, among other things, is that in discussions of ethics, people can present and defend socially desirable views in order to appear ethical to others (ie., they signal their virtue), when in fact they don't actually hold those views, or at least not as strongly or as consistently as they claim.

This then leads to those strange situations where, for example, someone talks about the importance of empathy or the importance of interacting with others in good faith, but their own behavior (even in those very discussions) indicates that they don't actually believe in those things. So one has to wonder what is really going on.

I think that at least some (if not many) traditional problems of ethics are born precisely out of this virtue signaling, creating artificial ethical problems that nobody actually has or cares about, but they just want to make themselves look good.

A naive and goodwilled person can waste a lot of time and energy on those problems, failing to realize they are artificial and merely there for the purpose of keeping up appearances.

Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making. — Joshs

How do you explain that religions/spiritualities that focus heavily on love and compassion also "balance" this out with extreme violence, such as Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism (the Secondary Bodhisattva vows, where a person basically vows to kill, rape, and pillage in the name of compassion -- for the killed, raped, and pillaged person!!)?

Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making.
— Joshs

Sorry, this is opaque to me. — J

While waiting for @Joshs --

The way I understand it is that empathy, love, and compassion as fundamental attitudes will inform how we make sense of other people's words and actions.

So that, for example, instead of interpreting a particular child's action as "evil" (and feeling justified and obligated to punish the child), one interprets it perhaps as a cry for help, or a consequence of parental neglect, or something else altogether.

It's important to note that often when people claim to exhibit empathy, love and compassion, they are actually practicing contempt, or at best, pity. They tell you they love you, but they still believe you're bad, wrong, and deserving punishment. In their mind, it's love, or compassion, if they don't criticize you or punish you when they believe they should do so.

- :up:

Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making.
— Joshs

Sorry, this is opaque to me. Could you expand? And, no offense, but in your own words if possible? I'm less interested in what other philosophers have said about this than I am in what you think. — J

The question of how to be compassionate toward others and to be alive to each being's suffering, assumes a need to resist the unjust desire or intention not to be alive to the suffering of others, that is, the unethical impetus to inter-affect with others by excluding their experience. But the suffering other can only be acknowledged if they can first be 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 situated vantage of participation within multiple practices. We can only intend to recognize and welcome the Other who saves us from sense-making chaos; we intend to reject the Other who offers the oppression of incommensurability.

Freedom from incoherence strengthens ties of relevant social relationality , freedom from the order of intelligibility fragments the integrity of social bonds. What is repressive to us is what we cannot establish harmonious relation with. To choose to embrace the other is to discover and construct that aspect of the other which is knowable and relatable, which offers us the hope of avoidance of the abyss of senselessness and incoherence. We cannot get beyond this link between the lovable and the recognizable without losing the basis of any ethics, which is the ability to distinguish between, even if without yet defining, what is preferred and what is not.

Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making.
— Joshs

How do you explain that religions/spiritualities that focus heavily on love and compassion also "balance" this out with extreme violence, such as Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism (the Secondary Bodhisattva vows, where a person basically vows to kill, rape, and pillage in the name of compassion -- for the killed, raped, and pillaged person!!) — baker

The fact that love and compassion aren’t functions of successful sense-making for these religions, but must be attained by an act of will, demands that those who fail to desire correctly be dealt with in a punitive manner.

OK, thanks.

We cannot get beyond this link between the lovable and the recognizable without losing the basis of any ethics, which is the ability to distinguish between, even if without yet defining, what is preferred and what is not. — Joshs

I liked what you said about the important connections between recognition and empathy. I might have put it a bit more directly -- it's hard to love, and stand up for, someone you can't even recognize as suffering.

But the quoted passage above seems out of phase with this. If the basis of ethics is only about distinguishing what's preferred, how does that create any impetus to change preferences? I would have said that that -- the desire to prefer what, to the best of our knowing, is truly empathetic, or just, or compassionate -- is central to ethics, not so much the act of preferring itself.

Is your contention that it isn't beneficial for us to be virtuous? So being prudent, courageous (as opposed to brash or cowardly), scientifically minded, loving (as opposed to hateful or indifferent), temperate (as opposed to glutinous/licentious or anhedonic), etc. isn't better?

It seems to me that you are committed to something like: "being virtuous might tend to be better, but only because, on average, the virtues tend to lead to avoiding unpleasant states and experiences and achieving pleasant ones. If they don't, if being virtuous leads to unpleasant things like having negative experiences (e.g. hunger, sorrow, pain, being executed, etc.) or to missing out on positive experiences, then being virtuous simply isn't better for us and isn't good. It has led to bad things that are bad for us and it would be better to be less virtuous and avoid them.

I've made the argument. It's unclear what you don't accept to me? Since you seem to accept that it is better to be Socrates than cowardly Socrates and that Socrates made the best possible choice for himself vis-á-vis defending his philosophy and refusing to flee.

It seems to me like you are committed to the idea that "good" must refer to egoism in some sense, that Socrates, Boethius, etc. in some way did something foolhardy because flourishing and well-being, a "good life" entails avoiding certain negative stimuli and experiences, particularly an early death (although Socrates, St. Polycarp, etc. were exceptionally long lived for their eras and had lived full lives).

But people talk about dying as "good for" someone all the time. I was at a funeral yesterday where people were making this point; it is better to die with less suffering on one's own terms, etc.

Good and bad are contextual and contrary as opposed to contradictory opposites, so we can think of all sorts of situations where it might make sense to speak of things normally thought of as good as bad or vice versa. This doesn't make the term equivocal for the same reason that "dimly lit" or "bright" might be said of different things with the same luminosity without there being many different sui generis types of light or no clear opposition between total darkness and maximal luminosity.

The peak, what is "truly best" for the individual, I would argue, is what is truly best for the whole and involves man being situated in wholes as a part and participating in a common good. It is to be a citizen in utopia than a fabulously wealthy and powerful dictator on an island.

If the basis of ethics is only about distinguishing what's preferred, how does that create any impetus to change preferences? I would have said that that -- the desire to prefer what, to the best of our knowing, is truly empathetic, or just, or compassionate -- is central to ethics, not so much the act of preferring itself. — J

Preference isn’t arbitrary. It is the measure of successful sense-making. All of our construals are interlocked and organized hierarchically with respect to our most superordinate concerns, how we understand ourselves with respect to others, and how we understand others to construe us. Our core sense of self crucially depends on how well we anticipate others’ behavior relating to us. Empathy and compassion don’t need to be taught, since our ability to empathize is only constrained by the limits of intelligibility. We only ‘desire’ against empathy to the extent that, as I said earlier, we are unable to recognize any basis of relatability between us and them. The experiences which are capable of producing the most profound anguish and suffering are directly tied to failure of social intelligibility. Our preferences are directed by the goals of sense-making; sense-making is directed toward optimal anticipation of events. The actions of others in relation to us are the most important events in our life.

We are motivated to change preferences when we experience a crisis in intelligibility. Our reliable ways of understanding others has broken down and we feel devastated, angry, hurt, betrayed and confused. We are left with only a few options. We can dig in our heels and try and extort validation evidence to justify our crumbling schemes of interpretation. This is the hostile option. Rather than exploring alternative ways of understanding the actions of others, we blame them for our failure to comprehend. Much of traditional ethics is hostile in this way, blaming the intent, character, or will of others when they fail to meet the standards we have set for them based on our criteria. The more effective , but far more difficult, approach is to experiment with fresh ways of interpreting the motives of others.

I'd say it's question begging sophistry (in precisely the way Plato frames sophistry). To make the distinction is to have already presupposed that there are not facts about what is good. Now, thanks to the theological issues I mentioned earlier in this thread, such a position was already common by Hume's time. It went along with fideism and a sort of anti-rationalism and general backlash against the involvement of philosophy in faith (and so in questions of value), all a century before Hume.

Hume argues to this position by setting up a false dichotomy. Either passions (and we should suppose the appetites) are involved in morality or reason, but not both. Yet I certainly don't think he ever gives a proper explanation of why it can't be both (univocity is a culprit here of course). For most of the history of philosophy, the answer was always both (granted, Hume seems somewhat unaware of much past philosophy, and his successor Nietzsche seems to get his entire view of it from a particularly bad reading of the Phaedo and not much else from Plato).

It's sophistry because it turns philosophy into power relations and dominance. Hume admits as much. "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (T 2.3. 3.4)." This is Socrates fighting with Thacymachus, Protagoras, and that one guy who suggests that "justice" is "whatever we currently prefer" in the Republic (his name escapes me because he has just one line and everyone ignores him, since, were he right, even the sophists would lose, since there is no need for their services when being wrong is impossible). The only difference is that now the struggle is internalized. This certainly goes along with Hume (and Nietzsche's) view of the self as a "bundle of sensations" (or "congress of souls"). Yet, Plato's reply is that this is simply what the soul is like when it is sick, morbid.

Just from the point of view of the philosophy of language it seems pretty far-fetched. Imagine someone yelling:

"Your hair is on fire."
"You are going to be late for work."
"You're hurting her."
"Keep doing that and you'll break the car."
"You forgot to carry the remainder in that calculation."
"You are lying."
"You didn't do what I asked you to."
"That's illegal."
"You're going to hurt yourself doing that."
"There is a typoo in this sentence."

...or any other such statements. There are all fact claims. They are all normally fact claims people make in order to spur some sort of action, and this is precisely because the facts (generally) imply oughts. "Your hair is on fire," implies "put the fire on your head out." And such an ought is justifiable by the appetites (desire to avoid pain), passions (desire to avoid the opinions of others related to be disfigured or seen to be stupid), and reason (the desire to fullfil rationally held goals, which burning alive is rarely conducive to).

At least on the classical view, the division is incoherent. There are facts about what are good or bad for us. To say "x is better than what I have/am, but why ought I seek it?" is incoherent. What is "truly good" is truly good precisely because it is desirable, choice-worthy, what "ought to be chosen" (of course, things can merely appear choice-worthy, just as they can merely appear true). Why should we choose the most truly choice-worthy? We might as well ask why we should prefer truth to falsity, or beauty to ugliness or why 1 is greater than 0. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Part of what philosophy does is seek the truth. I think that in seeking the truth we find out that the myth of the charioteer is a fantasy born of the ancient's preoccupation with invulnerability -- the invulnerable man could guide the horses, the truly great man would be in control of the self, etc.

However I think what we learn from psychology is that people do not control themselves in this manner. There isn't a charioteer that's part of the soul, but rather, this is an image to aspire to that no one achieves.

This is because we are human. It's our finitude.

What this doesn't do is say there are no facts involved in moral decisions. Rather, in order to make an inference with an "ought", one needs a passion to connect the fact to the "ought". There is no "normal situation" which these statements sit within wherein they can be generically evaluated as usually this or that way -- or, rather, we can but all it really says is "This is what I think", or "Where I come from, this means that"

Nor does it turn philosophy into a power struggle. It's an honest appraisal of what makes the philosopher tick: a love for wisdom. The philosopher isn't any less human than anyone else, they just care about reason more than most do. Were it a power struggle then reason wouldn't be the tool being used. Guns are better at that than words.

In the 19th century there were many competing theories of heat and electromagnetism. There was phlogiston, caloric, aether, etc. Are we best of returning to the specific, isolated theories, or looking at how what is good in each can be unified?

You might say "but the natural sciences are different, they make progress." And I would agree. It's easier to make progress when one studies less general principles. Yet they don't always make progress. Recall the Nazi's "Aryan physics" or Stalin's "communist genetics." The natural sciences can backslide into bad ideas and blind allies. It is easier for philosophy to do so. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Heh -- I would not say that the natural sciences make progress in any way which differentiates it from the other disciplines of human beings. Human beings continue to engage in various practices, and they change based upon what those human beings care about and do. Theatre has advanced from a previous period, and yet it has no ultimate teleology towards which it should strive. Likewise for science, and philosophy.

Progress is a measure of how impressed people are with a series of events, rather than a thing which happens.

In that vein it seems to me that going back to Aristotle as if he knew the good is definitely a step back. If someone owned slaves I sort of have to take what they have to say about goodness with a grain of salt -- we clearly have different priorities.

Rather than exploring alternative ways of understanding the actions of others, we blame them for our failure to comprehend. Much of traditional ethics is hostile in this way, blaming the intent, character, or will of others when they fail to meet the standards we have set for them based on our criteria. The more effective , but far more difficult, approach is to experiment with fresh ways of interpreting the motives of others. — Joshs

Fair enough. How would this work in practice, in the context of a man who perpetuates domestic abuse? How might such an approach bear useful results? The conventional view might be that the violent perpetrator who assaults his partner, is doing so to exert his power and control of them by using fear and force.