Notice that this doesn't follow? Another use of false dilemma, a pattern in your posts here. It's not that either something is the result of a constitutive rule or it is "not from the hand of man". — Banno

Alright, then to the point. We have a proscription. Where did it come from?

In the last page or so it was pointed out that ethics might not be algorithmic, that there might be no rules that suit all situations — Banno

But there are rules in particular situations, as in not stomping babies for fun. That rule, where did it come from? Surely there was a day it was not known. How was it found?

Think of it this way: treating a rule as absolute is giving succour to the devil, who will delight in inventing traps in which following the rule leads to cruelty. — Banno

In any scenario rules must be interpreted and considered against conflicting rules. It's not as if the followers of the absolute rules don't spend considerable time in their interpretation. Isn't that the entiety of Western jurisprudence (and rabbincal law)? Not only do we look at our rules, but also at how we've previously interpreted them, analogizing through precedence.

Ethical rules (e.g. "thou shall not kill") are not just a handful of literal words (yes, the literalism I complained of earlier), but are interpreted within the entire context of the tradition.

Why do you have such fear of misuse of moral absolutes but not of legal absolutes? The law in a nation is set forth clearly, and surely it could be misused, but you don't suggest a nation without laws is superior to one with?

The same for ethics: They are laws, interpreted through principles, reason, analogy. etc.

The distinction between ethics and law is only upon where each originated. Laws originate in the minds of men and women. Ethics either do the same or come from somewhere you've yet to identify. If, though, you think morals are human inventions, just like laws, then the moral/legal distinction collapses. They are just two sets of rules passed and codified differently, but not importantly.

You see ethics as a set of rules. Better to understand it as a conversation, or as a progression in our acts.

There is something repugnant, something lacking, in those who refrain from stomping on the heads of babies for fun only becasue it is against the law, be that a moral or a legal code.

We have a proscription. — Hanover

proscription: from Latin proscriptionem, "a public notice; proscription, outlawry, confiscation," noun of action from past-participle stem of proscribere "publish in writing"

BRIAN: Why aren't women allowed go to stonings, Mum?
MANDY: It's written. That's why.

This by way of trying to show that the premise of your last post, is muddled.

The distinction between ethics and law is only upon where each originated. — Hanover

Well, no.

You see ethics as a set of rules. I see it as a conversation, or better, as a progression in our acts. — Banno

No, we see that the same. What we see differently are (1) you think ethics are interpreted differently than laws, and (2) i think ethics aren't man made, regardless of whether they are rule based or arise from conversations.

As to #1, this is our perennial dispute in these religions threads. You think religious rules are interpreted just by reading the rule ""women shalt not attend stonings" and suddenly we know the entiety of the rule.

That is, it is my position that the 613 commandments of the Hebrew Bible are part of a conversation. This literalism where you just read a set of words in isolation, non-contexualized isn't a thing in ethics or law.

You can no more read a legal rule forbidding murder without reference to other legal code sections, the dozens of prior opinions written on matter, the Constitution, and the full complexities of the people doing the interpreting. Same for ethics.

As to #2, once you've arrived at a moral decision, is your knowledge dependent on your justified belief or on your justified true belief? What makes it true? Just that you believe it.?

No, we see that the same. — Hanover

Then where does your emphasis on proscriptions come from.

When the US was formed they asked Thomas Jefferson to rewrite the laws of Virginia for the new country. Virginia was a big state and it was known that all the smaller states would do whatever Virginia did. Jefferson refused saying that the meaning of the law had been created by centuries of lawyers wrangling over every syllable. Jefferson said if he rewrote the law, it would condemn future generations to redoing all that wrangling.

So the law isn't words hanging in a void. Today's law has meaning forged from yesterday's problems.

Gesundheit. Need a hanky?

This seems to conflate happiness and eudemonia with pleasure. — Hanover

It doesn't. Pleasure has as it's opposite pain. Happiness has as it's opposite suffering.

My response here is just a push back on the comment regarding the ubiquity of happiness seeking by all life forms. — Hanover

OK. Still, that wasn't the pivotal issue addressed.

The answer is, of course, that such an authority is not much use. Do you think that applies to God? I fear it does. — Ludwig V

I do think it applies to God. According to general Abrahamic religious doctrine God can only be known via revelation, and the works of revelation are human works and thus cannot be considered infallible. Even if it is accepted that the voice of Gi9d was directly heard by the prophets, they are still just fallible humans, and their writings must be acknowledged to be infected by their own interpretations.

Ultimately the idea of God as authority must come down to considering some humans to be authorities, if not infallible, in their interpretations. We see the Catholic notion of the infallibility of the pope for example. I can't see how the same would not apply to the Eastern idea of spiritual enlightenment.

Regardless, change from what I said to "thou shall not stomp babies for fun." Is this just our rule, like a ball in the net counts as a goal, or is it immutable? — Hanover

That moral injunction is just an expression of a healthy human disposition. There's something wrong with you if you don't think stomping babies is wrong, and arguably almost every person recognizes this fact.

A "hinge proposition", if ever there was one.

A hinge proposition", if ever there was one. — Banno

What about "genocide is wrong"? Is that a hinge belief?

What about "genocide is wrong"? Is that a hinge belief? — Hanover

Not according to the God of the Old Testament.

Not according to the God of the Old Testament. — Janus

Literalism again. Super. I'm as interested in conducting an exegesis on Amalek as you are. Suffice it to say, there is no virtue in sympathizing with the devil.

Anyway, regardless of what the Bible says, is it a hinge belief or not?

A faith based belief in the existence of a moral force sounds theistic, suggesting that without this moral force, it wouldn't matter if we murdered. Meaning is implanted in this belief isn't it? — Hanover

I don't think I've ever considered the idea of a "moral force" before. It's an interesting concept, but after reflecting on it, I don't see how it provides the religious with a stronger moral foundation than the non-religious. Could you clarify your perspective? Are you suggesting that the non-religious lack a moral foundation or have a weaker one?

Literalism again. — Hanover

Any declaration can be made compatible with any theory with the addition of suitable ad hoc hypotheses.

I do much prefer literalism. Especially over sophistry.

"Genocide" is not so easy to pin down as head-stomping. What says the "moral force"? Do we need "Moral Jedi" to do the interpretation?

Ultimately the idea of God as authority must come down to considering some humans to be authorities, if not infallible, in their interpretations. We see the Catholic notion of the infallibility of the pope for example. I can't see how the same would not apply to the Eastern idea of spiritual enlightenment. — Janus

That's correct. Though I don't know enough to pronounce on Eastern ideas, interesting though they are. I got the impression that the idea was that a guru (who is himselt Enlightened) is able to discern whether someone else is Enlightened. I think of it as something like the idea that a trained musician is better able to detect when a note is out of tune than a member of the public.

I don't think I've ever considered the idea of a "moral force" before. It's an interesting concept, but after reflecting on it, I don't see how it provides the religious with a stronger moral foundation than the non-religious. — praxis

There's something odd about the idea of a moral force, if that means something that forces one to obey it. The whole point of morality is that one must obey the rules of one's own free will. But it might be more like the meaning of a moral rule.
The idea that religious people are more moral than irreligious people has been endorsed by some religious people for a long time. It is obviously very convenient for believers who wish to demonize people who disagree with them. But I don't think there is any decisive empirical evidence that it is true.

Anyway, regardless of what the Bible says, is it a hinge belief or not? — Hanover

I'm not very clear about hinge propositions, though I know they are quite popular these days. Wittgenstein doesn't give us much to go on. But my understanding is that we can choose what propositions we make the hinges of our debates. Presuppoisitionalist theologians, apparently, arbitrarily decide to mke the truth of the Bible a hinge of their reflextions and debates. That seems rather extreme, especially as it is open to anyone who disagrees with them to make a different choice. I guess they are not much interested in missionary work.

Do we need "Moral Jedi" to do the interpretation? — Banno

We've already got them. They come in two flavours, religious and secular. The former are called priests. The latter are called ethicists.

Believing that putting the ball in the net counts as a goal is not an act of faith but simply to understand how to play football.

Consenting to our social institutions is not an act of faith. — Banno

The act of faith here is not believing in specific rules, but belief in the relevant institution's (IFAB here) authority to will rules in and out of being, and for their intercessors, ritually outfitted with uniform, cards and whistle, to arbitrate them.

Similarly, faith is not in a rule that stomping babies is bad, but in the belief that underpins that rule, be it God/Gods, religions institutions, or the sanctity of human life.

That's correct. Though I don't know enough to pronounce on Eastern ideas, interesting though they are. I got the impression that the idea was that a guru (who is himselt Enlightened) is able to discern whether someone else is Enlightened. I think of it as something like the idea that a trained musician is better able to detect when a note is out of tune than a member of the public. — Ludwig V

The point remains that the enlightenment of the guru must be taken on faith, whereas a note's being out of tune can be rigorously determined. Perhaps the aesthetic quality of a piece of music or performance would be a better analogy.

As I see it to be enlightened is not to know any extraordinary propositional thing about anything but rather to be in an altered state...of equanimity for example.

But then it remains questionable that those in such states know how to guide others to personal transformation. As an analogy, aesthetic judgement and creative vision cannot be taught.

The point remains that the enlightenment of the guru must be taken on faith, whereas a note's being out of tune can be rigorously determined. Perhaps the aesthetic quality of a piece of music or performance would be a better analogy. — Janus

Perhaps so. Yet rigorously identifying an out-of-tune note still depends on someone knowing how to do it. And identifying the aesthetic quality of music is learnt and requires practice.

As I see it to be enlightened is not to know any extraordinary propositional thing about anything but rather to be in an altered state...of equanimity for example. — Janus

That's my impression as well. So I would have thought that identifying Enlightened people was a special case of identifying someone state of mind (mood) - anxiety, joy, etc. That's not like identifying the Word of God. And you need to learn how to do that from someone else who knows. It's a social/cultural tradition.

But then it remains questionable that those in such states know how to guide others to personal transformation. As an analogy, aesthetic judgement and creative vision cannot be taught. — Janus

They cannot be taught like a mathematical calculation, which is a matter of drills and habits. But they are certainly learned and the reports of practitioners is that some people can help that process. It's a different kind of teaching for a different kind of skill. Perhaps we should not say that they are taught, but acquired through practice and that more experienced or expert practitioners can foster that process.

I see religion as ultimately the quest for eternal truths. Nothing we observe in the eternal world will, by itself, tell us what, if anything, will last forever. The universe might end at some point, and both physical laws and fundamental values, such as the mass on an electron or the speed of light, might change over time. So to believe that something will last forever has an element of choice. Choices are motivated, and motivation always has an emotional component.

But also science is based on a faith in the ever-lasting. In it's foundation one finds the induction principle which has to be accepted as self-evident. (Betrand Russell explained this very well in his book "Problems of philosophy".) A simple way to understand why we regard the induction principle as self-evident is that we expect reality to be rule bound. And we expect reality to be rule bound forever. But there's nothing illogical per se about a reality where every seeming rule is just an illusion.

One distinction that is very difficult to make is between wishful thinking and intuition. If I maintain faith in the existence of Santa Clause, one might have me suspected of wishful thinking. But I assume fewer would make the same claim if I assert that conscious beings have free will. And the reason is that everyone, including those who reject the existence of free will, have an introspective sense of it. I would argue that believing in free will (Which I do) has an element of choice, and hence of faith, while also being based on intuition.

There is something repugnant, — Banno

Further making clear your ethical system is emotivist at base. This isn't particualrly a dig at you -

I just cannot understand why people have such a hard time noticing that every moral claim they make is an emotional one (or maybe accepting?). There are fairly universal emotional reactions (such as the one Banno lays out here) that have infomed policy in almost every single instance there has been a policy across all of human history. Some instances notwithstanding due to overriding emotional positions, such as having a female baby being repugnant in many Asian cultures, this seems a truism and seems to make it perfectly clear that sans religion, this is how it works. Not theoretically, but literally how ethics is done. Call it a conversation? I could. But then Banno's further remarks make it clear he's not talking about ht same thing, I don't think.

Emotions are not the beginning and end of ethical deliberation. There is more to ethical truths than just the expression of an individual's emotional response.

Emotivism denies this, in various ways.

Games come about as a result of constitutive rules.

See John Searle’s work on speech acts, where he differentiates between constitutive rules that create the possibility of a certain activity, like "checkmate ends the game of chess", and regulative rules that manage existing activities, such as traffic laws. Constitutive rules create the game as such—without them, the game wouldn’t exist.

The act of faith here is not believing in specific rules, but belief in the relevant institution's (IFAB here) authority to will rules in and out of being, and for their intercessors, ritually outfitted with uniform, cards and whistle, to arbitrate them.
Similarly, faith is not in a rule that stomping babies is bad, but in the belief that underpins that rule, be it God/Gods, religions institutions, or the sanctity of human life. — hypericin

Games come about as a result of constitutive rules.
See John Searle’s work on speech acts, where he differentiates between constitutive rules that create the possibility of a certain activity, like "checkmate ends the game of chess", and regulative rules that manage existing activities, such as traffic laws. Constitutive rules create the game as such—without them, the game wouldn’t exist. — Banno

I found these quite thought-provoking.
I'm inclined to think that faith in institutions or people is trusting that they are doing the right or appropriate institutions thing. That implies a criterion for rightness or appropriateness. One doesn't have faith in rules (whether they are constitutive or regulative rules), unless there is a criterion for assessing whether they are right or appropriate.
I think that faith that a proposition/statement is correct or true is different from that. One doesn't trust or mistrust a proposition, but one can believe it or not on grounds or not; either way faith that it is true implies that there is a criterion of truth or correctness.

I figured people in this thread might find a perspective outside the Western tradition interesting:

The Nature of Faith

It is the Orthodox Christian faith – the faith which was once delivered unto the saints[xxi] – that will be addressed here, a faith uniquely distinct from what is articulated in other religions and other Christian faiths. Furthermore, “Faith is not a psychological attitude,” as Alex Nesteruk states, “it is a state of communion with God that provides ‘an ontological relationship between man and God.’[xxii]”[xxiii] Faith, in other words, is a way of being, a way of existing in communion with God that restores the nature of man in the deepest sense.

Let us now consider how faith relates to knowledge. Just as there is assumed knowledge particular to philosophy and science (assuming that knowledge can be sufficiently grounded and justified), there also exists knowledge that is particular to faith. Unlike the West’s project of Natural Theology, however, the Orthodox Church makes no separation between natural and supernatural revelation. For as Dimitrue Staniloae explains:

Natural revelation is known and understood fully in the light of supernatural revelation, or we might say that natural revelation is given and maintained by God continuously through his own divine act which is above nature. That is why Saint Maximos the Confessor does not posit an essential distinction between natural the revelation or biblical one. According to him, this latter is only the embodying of the former in historical persons and actions.[xxiv]

Therefore, there are those things which human reason can discover from nature only if grounded in the light of supernatural revelation, and then there are those hidden mysteries of God that require special divine revelation, without which they could not be known.[xxv] By the assistance of grace from God, faith is seen to be of a different order than the knowledge obtained from natural revelation through discursive reason, which relies on sense perception and experience, and is often assumed by those outside the faith to operate on the powers of the intellect alone.[xxvi]

In Orthodox theology, knowing (scientes) about God is done primarily through humility and ascetism...

Recall Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai when he is told that no one can see God’s face and live. On the surface this is a puzzling passage, since it causes one to wonder how God, who is Life itself, could cause death upon seeing Him. However, St. Gregory of Nyssa explains this passage and the relationship between life and intelligibility in his Life of Moses:

Scripture does not indicate that this [to see God’s face] causes death of those who look, for how could the face of Life ever be the cause of death to those who approach it? On the contrary, the divine is by its nature life-giving. Yet the characteristic of the divine nature is to transcend all characteristics. Therefore, he who thinks God is something to be known does not have life, because he has turned from true Being (tou ontōs ontos) to what he considers by sense perception to have being. True Being is true Life. This Being is inaccessible to knowledge …. Thus, what Moses yearned for is satisfied by the very things which leave his desire unsatisfied.[xxviii]

According to St. Gregory, “to think that God is an object of knowledge is to turn away from true Being to a phantom of one’s own making.”[xxix] This is why, at least in part, the West’s scholastic project of natural theology as an attempt to seek God as an object of knowledge and prove His existence using philosophy leads the West to worship their idea (the phantom of their own making) of God rather than God Himself.

https://www.patristicfaith.com/senior-contributors/an-orthodox-theory-of-knowledge-apophaticism-asceticism-and-humility/

https://www.academia.edu/45384040/An_Orthodox_Theory_of_Knowledge_The_Epistemological_and_Apologetic_Methods_of_the_Church_Fathers

Or maybe people have emotions vis-á-vis questions of value because the events in question are good or bad? That is, "I feel repelled by x because x is evil," as opposed to "x is evil because I feel repelled by x."

To use the unpleasant example brought up earlier in this thread, that "being stomped" is bad for infants would appear to be about as obvious of a truth of medical science as there is. We might suppose that people have negative emotions as respects "baby stomping" in virtue of this fact.

However, the dedicated emotivist often ends up resorting to claims like: "being stomped isn't actually bad for babies," and defending this claim (which I think most would judge to be obviously false) by appealing to the notion that all value judgements are just statements of emotion. But that's obviously question begging.

Even if emotion always accompanied value statements, this wouldn't indicate much. Presumably, a sense of conviction also always accompanies genuine statements of knowledge (assertions of facts). Yet the fact that the two coincide hardly should suggest that "language about truth is just language about a sense of certitude and conviction," or that "truth is nothing but a subjective feeling of confidence in speakers."

As someone who was dunked in a bucket of Orthodox-Christian-blessed water shortly after birth - while I’m not a Christian (being more of a pantheist / panentheist myself) - I do appreciate the quote you gave regarding the Christian Orthodox notion of faith. Cheers for it.