For the - what? Fifth? - time: it's about SURVIVAL. I'm reasonably sure you'll let your bottle of wine and deck furniture be taken rather than your life. — Vera Mont

But for the fifth time, survival is question begging. To survive as such has no ethical meaning. One survives FOR or motivated BY, but never in itself. In itself survival serves NO purpose at the level of basic questions.

So, let Philosophy inquire to its tiny heart's content, it won't find anything deeper than survival as a basis of basic values. Once you're dead, you stop asking questions. — Vera Mont

Well, if the issue is about doubting the point of asking philosophical questions, then you have other issues entirely. Odd you would be in a "philosophy" club, though.

By the 'one' who can't conceive, I have to assume you mean yourself. The value of things is tertiary. The value of civic responsibility is secondary; the value of social cohesion is primary. The value of keeping peace in the community - whether through the protection of property or of institutions or of traffic laws or of civil deneanour - is far more important than how anybody feels about their stuff. — Vera Mont

So be it, if by important you mean simply attending to pragmatic challenges in society and the like. Philosophy is more about understanding the questions that underlie such things, so that before one steps into action she has understood the full depth of the issue. One has to have a curious nature for basic questions.
Something being important entirely depends on the context of the discussion.

The internet.
But I think it's had more than a fair run. — Vera Mont

I think you question the value of philosophy, which is understandable given that anglo american analytic thinking has turned serious foundational ideas into nihilistic dead ends. But consider that, as a practical function of critical thinking at the basic level, philosophy serves to disabuse society of it's misguided religious absurdities.

Asking questions about the nature of ethics, tha t is, metaethics, is to ask about the metaphysics of value, and this is important because as long as popular religions rule the minds of people, the more inclined people are to be held in the sway of dogmatic thinking in ethics, and this leads to policy making that is not grounded in well reasoned thought. Foundational issues like this go to the basic rationality of the things you rightly take to be important. Religion deals with the basic indeterminacy of our existence, and the ethical indeterminacy especially, that is, people really don't have a grasp of why we are all born to suffer and die. This is an ETHICAL problem in the metaphysics of our existence. Sound thinking here can make the difference between a holy war and policies of equality and acceptance.

Not "to structure" in the above; rather "NO structure." No structure, No talking (talking understood as having the logical form familiar language use has. Dogs and cats don't "talk" in this.....or do they?).

They were two irrelevancies among many. Ethics isn't about your preference or what you happen to value at any given moment. It's about interpersonal transactions conducted in such manner as to promote the cohesion of a social unit. — Vera Mont

Yes, but you see, this begs the question: what is this social cohesion all about, essentially? We are a cohesion that has its ethical cement, if you will, in this feature of our existence referred to by the general term 'value'. So, philosophy wants to inquire as to the nature of value. It may be that pain and bliss as such and the like have no analysis (as I hold), that they are irreducible (Wittgenstein, notably). But then, this has to be acknowledged, and if this is true, it has strong implications for metaethical theory.

It doesn't need an 'ethical dimension' - whatever an ethical dimension is - because survival is the root cause of the need for social systems, moral codes, ethical and legal frameworks.
Whether you value something or not is irrelevant to the prohibition against stealing. The point of a prohibition is that if people take one another's stuff without the owner's permission, it causes strife within the community. If a supplier of meat sells tainted meat, it hurts the members of the community. If a soldier skives off for an assignation while on guard duty, he puts his comerades in danger. If a carrier of disease breaks quarantine, he endangers everyone he meets. If a man seduces his colleague's daughter, that causes conflict in the workplace.
It's not about how you feel about your things - it's about the welfare of the polity. — Vera Mont

MY feelings?? I thought this clear. These are just examples. And when you say "Whether you value something or not is irrelevant to the prohibition against stealing" you stand in contradiction, for one cannot even conceive of a moral prohibition without conceiving value."

To see this, you have to have an interest that goes to a more basic level of inquiry. Philosophy deals with the most basic sense, so if questions are begged, here is where analysis begins. I mean, if I say NO value, NO ethics, this is serious. It's like saying no language, no speaking; or, no logic, no reasoning. It is not a historical proposition determined by what people have done in organizing themselves (unless you are Heidegger and hold that language is innately historical. But this is a different matter), or a cultural anthropological statement that notes how the species creates institutions of survival. All of the things you mention are true! But the philosophical question remains: In all of the ethical dealings with "strife" and the rest, what is the underlying basis that makes this discussion even possible? Like asking in all the talking and language use we deploy in living our everyday lives, what is it that provides the structure for things to be at all intelligible? So, Kant steps of (in the heels of Aristotle and others) and does an analysis of pure reason. You don't have to agree with him, but at least see the point: To talk requires structure. To structure, no talking. Because in our talk is evidenced a non arbitrary disclosure.

You could turn to Kant and give, say, an evolutionary account or language, or reduce language use to basic biology or physics (Quine thought ALL things re reducible to physics), and, had he known of such things, would say no problem! He is not talking about these alternative fields of inquiry. He is talking about the phenomenological analysis of judgment.

Same here, only it is value, not reason. All you say is not wrong at all. It is simply not philosophy.

Sorry; I see no case to answer.
If you have made a case for something or against something, I can't follow what it is. I sincerely do not believe that your taste in wine, or concern for your lawn-chair is the basis of an ethical system. — Vera Mont

Those are simply examples, the wine and the chairs. This was clear, I thought. The lounge chair, an example of how the term 'survival' is of no help in explaining ethics. It is a term with no ethical dimension to it. Things survive, don't survive. Qua survival, it matters not. This is the point. Clear, I think.

Taste, or some appetitive indulgence, taste being one of many. This, too, I thought clear. When one seeks an understanding of the nature of ethics, one must look to things like this in order to understand how it is even possible for, say, the ethical issue of taking another's wine (who values it for its taste and other qualities--it's just an example, and not about my love of wine. You see this, right? Nothing to do with my personal distaste for brussel sprouts, either. These illustrate a point) has any meaning at all.

I am frankly a bit at a loss, here. The reasoning seems without argument. A person loves wine, cares about this bottle, and this creates the material basis for the defeasible moral prohibition against stealing it. Of course, it is only a prime facie obligation not to steal it, and I am guessing you know what this means; it is not absolute, but subject to being defeated by a conflicting obligation (perhaps the wine is stolen to protect the other owner from her alcoholism, or the like. You get the idea).

All I am saying is that the concrete ground for there to be an ethical situation at all, for it to even be possible, regarding this example regarding the wine, is for there to be caring and valuing in place. No valuing, no ethics. Something so transparently obvious I hardly see the need for clarification. So all analytic eyes turn to this actuality, this love of something, adoration of something, interest, repugnance, revulsion, and so on. And terms like this take us directly to episodic affairs: the actual experiences of the revulsion, and the rest. This ties ethical obligation to actuality, and the strongest way possible: analytically! How? NO value; therefore, NO ethics!

Now, I don't think it is possible that, as you say, you "can't follow what it is." There simply is no ambiguity.
Unless, of course, you see an ambiguity. I would like to hear this. It would philosophically interesting.

So, do you agree that some concepts are absolutely simple, and thusly unanalyzable and incapable of non-circular definitions, but yet still valid; or do these so-called, alleged, primitive concepts need to be either (1) capable of non-circular definition or (2) thrown out? — Bob Ross

On circularity, consider the way this philosopher addresses the problem of defining what art is:

But how are we to be certain that we are indeed basing such an examination on art
works if we do not know beforehand what art is? And the nature of art can no more be
arrived at by a derivation from higher concepts than by a collection of characteristics
of actual art works. For such a derivation, too, already has in view the characteristics
that must suffice to establish that what we take in advance to be an art work is one in
fact. But selecting works from among given objects, and deriving concepts from principles, are equally impossible here, and where these procedures are practiced they are a
self-deception. Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought, assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work,but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.

All concepts are like this, circular, that is, empirical, apriori, it doesn't matter, because when the matter as to a concept's ontology is raised, there is this dynamic that looks to the concept, and looks back at what the concept is "about" and tries characterize the relation. But this never yields something definitive. It continues on, for all concepts are ontologically indeterminate. They are works always in progress, so to speak. Try finding something definitive is like looking for Moses' stone tablets.

You all require miracles and pretend you don't. I have actually been very clear about this. The fact that no one is mentioning it supports my claim about their positions. — AmadeusD

Buthow is what I require is miracles? This is the question. And what about the idea that ethics is analytically bound to value? This was the major thesis! But you never mention it. Look, I wrote quite a bit that you had nothing to say about. I think you should at least say something like, here is where you go wrong. Here is a brief exchange:

Showing that these are part of the essence of ethics, I mean, it is analytically true the ethics IS what ethics is about.
— Astrophel

YOU: Sure. But it gives us no reason to care, other than our own discomfort.

And such things are not invented.
— Astrophel

YOU: They are. You're giving me states of affairs. Morality is not states of affairs.

But if it is not grounded in a state of affairs, it is nothing! You just said that the pain of a toothache (I think it was) is invented! I mean, it is impossible to hold such a monumentally absurd idea. There you are, stricken with plague, you fingers black with gangrene, vomiting endlessly, writhing in a a dark corner begging for death! And you reasoning steps in, "well, not to bother so much. It is after all, all in your head." Do you realize the patent stupidity of such a position?; not that you, dear Amadeus, are stupid. Nothing personal. But the "position" is wildly off the charts ridiculous!

And the argument that shows without a speck of doubt that IF, in a given ethical situation, this value dimension is withdrawn, THEN the ethicality vanishes!. THIS remains untouched in your thinking so far. You have to deal with this. The essence of something is that such that the thing is no longer what it is if this were to be removed.

SAYING you are a physicalist says nothing. Anyone can do this. Deals with nothing the argument raises. I am a flat-earther--- So there.

I mean, look at this argument. Air tight!

That's because it's been around a whole helluva lot longer than ethics; the concept of ethics comes long after animals with brains big enough to think of it. They couldn't have got there without surviving the evolutionary steps that precede it. Nor will you have children, wine and Brussels sprouts without having survived to get them. (Also, I fail to see the ethical component of Brussels sprouts, but that's just me. ) — Vera Mont

But you are not arguing the case put before you. As to the brussel sprouts...really?

I say: No, what hte hell, Its literally in the mind of the actor. There is no value 'in the world'. Value is a function of cognitive judgments. I agree, this is philosophy, and if you want to settle for one free miracle, that's fine. My point is this is not acknowledged — AmadeusD

I think this is disingenuous. The pain in my sprained ankle IS in the world. Where else? And referring to a miracle, well, this is just strawman arguing, construing the argument in blatantly indefensible terms, and announcing that this is where it fails. No one but you is talking about miracles. UNLESS, that is you can show, that is argue, how what I am saying can be rightly construed as miracle mongering. If you can't do this, then you are simply being, as I said, disingenuous.

See? It's probable we're not disagreeing. But there's no way to ascertain some objective ethical consideration without arbitrarily deciding what is worth caring about. There's an inference that one can be ethically 'wrong' which begs the question as to what 'wrong' is. — AmadeusD

But this is philosophy. If we were talking about reason, we would move past that-which-is-reasoned-about and on to reason as such, or logical form as such. One can argue that reason is, say, an evolutionary phenomenon, and they would not be wrong in that context. But philosophy takes value as thematic, or it can do this.
The wrong and right will always be indeterminate. Because this refers to actions, and actions are entangled in facts. My sister loaned me her car. Fact. I dented the fender. Fact. I am obligated to tell her. Now wait a minute...She would get very angry and she just got divorced and maybe I should fix the dent myself and say nothing....But then, if she finds out...
But the engine that drives the whole affair is this caring about something, and the value in play. And this value is solidly IN the world. If I am enraged, or someone is pulling my fingernails out, this is real. I mean, what could be more real that this? And the moral obligation not to pull someone's fingernails out is grounded in just this dreadful reality.

This, to me, is prevaricative poeticism. There's nothing in this statement. It is just empty concepts. Nothing gives me any reason to think Ethics exists, at all, outside of Human deliberation. — AmadeusD

No one said ethics exists outside of human deliberation. It is a matter of what human deliberation is grounded in. Any ethical rule, law, principle we DELIBERTATE about has its final meaning grounded in our existence in this world. This is essentially what has been said. Our existence, the conditions of our being in the world. There is nothing poetic about this. Purely descriptive: what is our existence in the world? This is easy. We love, hate, struggle, suffer, rejoice, celebrate, despair, etc., ABOUT the things we are attached to. All of these relations are value relations, the taste of fine wine, the love of a child, the revulsion of eating brussel sprouts. If one wants to talk about the nature of ethics, one MUST talk about this kind of thing. Period! It is analytic. You can only commit an ethical offense to me regarding brussel sprouts if I CARE about brussel sprouts. So what is this caring about? It is the palpable revulsion I have when I get within ten feet of them, that's what. Ethics is "made of" this existential counterpart to caring.

Not clear why this is not clear.

For some people, it's no use at all. But for the majority of living things, it's the primal drive. It doesn't need a specific utility: it is the rock-bottom foundation of awareness and effort; the first cause by which all things needful, useful and beneficial are measured. — Vera Mont

But the term as "the rock bottom foundation of awareness" has no value in a discussion about ethics if there is nothing IN the term that is inherently ethical. I would argue that it is not the primal drive at all. This concept of survival is just general term for something more primordial, which is found only in the conditions of actual engagement. Take someone reaching to overcome in a case where survival is threatened. In the drive to survive there is the deeper analysis of caring and all of the affectivity in play in the desperate move that can see a possibility, and hope emerges, but is dashed and misery reasserts itself, a deepens as the physical pain or the the dread comes over one. Compared to this living reality, a term like survival is a mere abstraction, used in discussions about how traits in one species survived over others, or, as with your account, the primal drive that thrusts the organism into struggles to overcome. But there IS no such primal drive any more than there is the Freudian libido. This are theoretical terms that are constructed out of the living realities so we can talk about things.

Take General Motors, the car company. Does GM "exist"? Of course not. It is a pragmatic concept that we treat AS IF it existed so we can organize our affairs. One could argue that all of our cultural institutions are like this.

So the attempt here is to arrive at what does exist in ethics that makes it more than just a mere organizing principle, like GM. Existence in the "hard" sense of the term. Is there such a thing? Yes. It is found in the value dimension of our existence.

Pink herring, conflating a careless figure of speech with the primal instinct. The lawn chair was never alive. You might go out into the storm to save your neighbour or your dog, because life matters - fence-posts don't. — Vera Mont

But whatever I do, it is going to be a matter of importance to me. If this importance is absent, then all motivation is lost and the possibility of it as an ethical issue is lost. This is the point: ethics is "made of" value, and value has its essence in the actualities of our engagements.

That's backward. What makes anything ethical is its contribution to survival. — Vera Mont

Then show how survival qua survival does this. This is why I opened with the lounge chair. Survival AS SUCH has nothing of the analysis of what constitutes an ethical matter.

I don't think it needs to be exposed any more times than I've already done.
If you have a more convincing source for the concept, by all means, expose away! — Vera Mont

Done already.

The concreteness of our existence is that we have physical and mental requirements and an innate will to survive. In isolation, very few humans can survive on their own in adulthood; none at all from infancy. So ethics and morality are constructed on the requirements for survival in groups. — Vera Mont

This seems right to me, and I have no issues with this kind of thinking at all. Just as I have no issues with science. But then, what good is survival? What is in this will to survive that is really at stake?. Survival as such applies to anything, as in, I hope the lawn chair survives the storm. But lawn chairs are not agencies of ethics, that is, they don't, given what they are, generate ethical possiblities. Nor can a rock or a fence post. Our survival is different in that it IS capable of ethicality. The ideas expressed above try to show what it is that makes our survival (and those of animals) ethical at all. For that the essence of ethics has to be exposed.

For Derrida an element of meaning, an ‘identity’, can only be what it is by relying on something absolutely foreign to it and outside of it. But this outside doesn’t sit alongside an inside of meaning but inhabits it , belongs to the inside itself.

"The iterability of an element divides its own identity a priori, even without taking into account that this identity can only determine or delimit itself through differential relations to other elements and hence that it bears the mark of this difference. It is because this iterability is differential, within each individual "element" as well as between "elements", because it splits each element while constituting it, because it marks it with an articulatory break, that the remainder, although indispensable, is never that of a full or fulfilling presence; it is a differential structure escaping the logic of presence.” — Joshs

I am reminded of Zeno's paradox of the arrow never arriving at its target. The iterable "moment" itself analytically reducible to constitutive iterability, thereby rendering the iteration an endless a never ending cycle. I want to be Diogenes and walk across the floor and then consider the matter refuted. But as I see it, there is only one thing that can make it all the ways across the room, and that is value-in-being (as I call it, grasping for the right way).

This not sitting "outside" and "along side" is to me, extremely insightful, for the silence of meditative gelassenheit, if you will, shows that what one seeks, in this pursuit of a profounder wisdom than thought can think, has been there all along, in the eye that "sees" the seeing, the cogito that thinks the cogito.

And the repetition in the discover of the "repetition" as Derrida lays it out, is itself thereby annihilated. There is in this what in Zen is called satori, a jolting realization.

Except clearly, there is no consensus on this and it has changed over time. If you want to claim that the vast majority of history has been Ethically "wrong", I would have to chuckle.

So, if the language of Ethics is 'good' and 'bad', lets say, prior to their enunciation and being understood to agents (i.e justification) ... it is useless. And Im fine with that. There is no such thing as absolute good and bad. Im fine with that. — AmadeusD

But it is not a historical claim, that is, it is saying nothing about ethics as it is entangled within a culture, generating rules of behavior and speaking. This analysis is logically prior to this. When one receives a culture and thrown into a whole body of institutionalized norms, the question I am talking about here is something presupposed by this. Here is a simple line of reasoning: Laws tell me not to speed on the highway. Why should I obey? Not because it is the law, and say no more. Rather because it is practically efficacious in many ways, for me, for others. It works, and this seems to be the bottom line, but there is still a more basic question yet again: why should one do what works? Here one encounters a stumble for facile thinking. To ask such a basic question seems at first absurd. One doesn't want a ticket, doesn't want to live in a dangerous world of insane driving with no limits, doesn't want harm to come to anyone, especially children, and so on. But this simply brings the question into focus, which is, why don't I want harm to come to myself of others? ALL of a culture's institutions are analytically reducible to this in the discovery of their ethical foundation.

Cultures are different and can't agree on things, this we know. But this reduction takes the matter closer and closer to the bottom line which is universal. Kant did this with reason, not that he was right about everything, but the point is, this is what philosophy does. It seeks the universal essence of things that we encounter when the questions run out and we face "the world," the basic givenness of experience.

Or look at it like this: Take a given ethical rule or law and ask what is this in the most basic analysis? Looking here for that which, if it were to be removed, the possibility of being a rule/law at all would vanish. In ethics, that essential feature is value found in the concrete value of a thing, like the taste of good food or the pain of being assaulted. The point is clear: take this dimension of our existence away and ethics vanishes. Therefore, an inquiry into the nature of ethics must look here, in the concreteness of our existence for the essence of ethics.

But this concreteness is not born of language. Ethics' essence lies in this existential primordiality, the pure givenness of the world. Hence, the arguments for the relativity or contingency of ethics appears to have failed to follow through, stopping at the way common entanglements create discord. One has to make the last final step toward essence.

Except clearly, there is no consensus on this and it has changed over time. If you want to claim that the vast majority of history has been Ethically "wrong", I would have to chuckle.

So, if the language of Ethics is 'good' and 'bad', lets say, prior to their enunciation and being understood to agents (i.e justification) ... it is useless. And Im fine with that. There is no such thing as absolute good and bad. Im fine with that. — AmadeusD

But it is not a historical claim, that is, it is saying nothing about ethics as it is entangled within a culture, generating rules of behavior and speaking. This analysis is logically prior to this. When one receives a culture and thrown into a whole body of institutionalized norms, the question I am talking about here is something presupposed by this. Here is a simple line of reasoning: Laws tell me not to speed on the highway. Why should I obey? Not because it is the law, and say no more. Rather because it is practically efficacious in many ways, for me, for others. It works, and this seems to be the bottom line, but there is still a more basic question yet again: why should one do what works? Here one encounters a stumble for facile thinking. To ask such a basic question seems at first absurd. One doesn't want a ticket, doesn't want to live in a dangerous world of insane driving with no limits, doesn't want harm to come to anyone, especially children, and so on. But this simply brings the question into focus, which is, why don't I want harm to come to myself of others? ALL of a culture's institutions are analytically reducible to this in the discovery of their ethical foundation.

Cultures are different and can't agree on things, this we know. But this reduction takes the matter closer and closer to the bottom line which is universal. Kant did this with reason, not that he was right about everything, but the point is, this is what philosophy does. It seeks the universal essence of things that we encounter when the questions run out and we face "the world," the basic givenness of experience.

Or look at it like this: Take a given ethical rule or law and ask what is this in the most basic analysis? Looking here for that which, if it were to be removed, the possibility of being a rule/law at all would vanish. In ethics, that essential feature is value found in the concrete value of a thing, like the taste of good food or the pain of being assaulted. The point is clear: take this dimension of our existence away and ethics vanishes. Therefore, an inquiry into the nature of ethics must look here, in the concreteness of our existence for the essence of ethics.

But this concreteness is not born of language. Ethics' essence lies in this existential primordiality, the pure givenness of the world. Hence, the arguments for the relativity or contingency of ethics appears to have failed to follow through, stopping at the way common entanglements create discord. One has to make the last final step toward essence.

This makes no sense to me at all. A toothache is a toothache. End of. — AmadeusD

If you give an exhaustive account of what a toothache is, then yes, end of. Here is the problem spelled out: There are two kind of good and bad, the contingent and the noncontingent, or absolute. Contingent examples are easy, as with this is a good pair of shoes or a bad coffee cup. These are everywhere in our language use. But note, as contingent goods and bads, they are not stable, not fixed by logic; their status is contingent and accidental. A coffee cup isn't necessarily good or bad, but it depends. Maybe I want an awkwardly shaped vessel that leaks, just for fun. Now those those standard good qualities are bad.

That is how contingency works. Even simple matter like definitions are up for grabs. There is this essay or book (I don't remember) Is There a Text in this Class by Stanley Fish that goes after this. What is a text? See how different contexts give us different meanings. Is it a book left behind by the student? Is it a body of assumed ideas? Is it a designated textbook the prof has chosen? Even basic meanings can be put in play. If I take a stapler and hold the door open, is it still a stapler? Well, yes and no. Is ANYTHING stable, unmovable regarding what it IS? Some think logic is like this, but then, while it is impossible gainsay logic, the "what is it?" question is going to be answered in words and sentences, and so what gives these this noncontingent status?? This is a big philosophical problem.

But ethics "speaks" a language that is not words and sentences, because the value put at risk is not reducible to what language can say because its meaning doesn't come out of language. It comes out of "the world" which Wittgenstein proclaimed to be unspeakable. Logic has this weird insistence that cannot be spoken. But ethics and its good and bad, these have a "voice" and it is not merely the form of meaning possibilities (logic). It is palpable, in your face reality, this "thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to." One can imagine choosing one bad alternative over another for one has greater utility, as it goes, but what makes the both bad is inviolable.

We don't know the reasons for life on earth. The human being, as a species, is just one small part of the overall organisms, just like you and I are just one small part of humanity. We do not give our individual selves special preference amongst the whole of humanity, and we ought not give human beings special preference amongst the whole of life. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not a special preference, but an equal one, or nearly so. I think animals are just as important as we are, yet we have always ignored this. I suspect the elephant, with a brain three times heavier than ours, experiences living with greater breadth than we do. Perhaps there are subtleties of rapture we can't imagine.

Isn't it as simple as harm/suffering is negative and therefore bad, and hence, causing harm/suffering (for reasons that do not benefit the person/animal/living thing) is also bad? This seems to be a fact which is not reliant on people's beliefs, opinions or social conventions/norms etc — Beverley

Yes, it is that simple. Stick my hand in boiling water, and the pain has nothing at all to do with beliefs, opinions, etc. Animals are in their own way just as vulnerable, making them agents of moral concern. Why this is so philosophically troubling lies here: The right or wrong found in ethics, as opposed to contingent matters like bad couches and good baseball bats, is absolute. See Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics and his Culture and Value where he says the good is divinity. Absolutes, for W, are nonsense because one cannot speak the world. Speaking is confined to what logic permits (in the Tractatus), and the world "shows" itself but one cannot get "behind the world" to see what the world IS from some absolute perspective and "say" the world is this!, so talk about absolutes is nonsense, yet utterly important in their existence. The very ground of importance itself is beyond saying. Calling ethical matters nonsense elevates ethics to a transcendental standing.

But the trouble: ethics so elevated now has the status of being written in stone on a mountain top. It is, in its essence, non contingent, absolute, indefeasible.

It's the only way you're going to get an ethical standard beyond that set by human societies. — Vera Mont

Or just think of the strong examples themselves and their content. If you are in very intense agony, then do what a good scientist does, which is observe. What you find in the matter is not a language game nor a placement on the logical grid of facts (Wittgenstein) nor is it merely empirical or phenomenological in the mundane sense (as with the way Dennett treats qualia, if you are familiar). The "bad" of burning live flesh, say, belongs to none of these.

So it is certainly not of God, which is one of the pseudo problems traditional philosophy has created. Nor is it beyond what is IN the world, for it stands there before you, the sprained ankle, the delicious dessert and the rest. It is IN the world, like mundane qualia (being appeared to redly, as they say), yet the value "speaks" the bad of the affair.

Keep in mind that Wittgenstein, the god of analytic philosophy, put a muzzle on what philosophy could say not because of his love for ordinary language, but for his love of the Real in play in ethics and aesthetics that was invisible, what G E Moore called a non natural property: the good (and the bad). What cannot be spoken is far to important to be trivialized by philosophy's traditional bs.

And yet, here we are, existing out of context, notwithstanding the context of saying this. There is in this, some elusive and profound affirmation that has nothing do to with context, though as with all things, nothing stops it from being categorized. God could appear in actuality, some entirely novel insight into eternity, and if this were shared, we could talk about it all day. All this about things language cannot say I think is overplayed. Language is an empty vessel.

I incidentally noticed I said "ethics IS what ethics is about." Meant to say, "this dimension of our existence is what ethics is about."

"Good" is clearly defined by a larger context than the social context. This is evident in principles which relate to respect for other life forms which do not partake in human society, and respect for the planet in general with issues like climate change. "Good" truly transcends the context of human society, because human beings are only a small part of life on earth, and we're all integrated. — Metaphysician Undercover

So with climate change and the rest, it is not just us, but the many animals that live on this earth also, and this is what you have in mind, right? I agree with this. There is, however, a lingering question, which is what is there, then, about animals that make them included in concerns about the Good?

It is, though. Nothing you've said comes close to even a reasonable objection to it. Those more meta-ethical bits you put forward do nothing to this account. Can you explain why it's not defensible? That's a very, very bold claim. — AmadeusD

I asked what value was. You mentioned the "collective emotional discomfort" as being foundational, and I asked what this emotional discomfort was all about. A fair question, I think. For while this may be a way to say something true, it is also incomplete. Ethics is not just about this discomfort or emotional regard. Rather, there is something in the world that this is about, the sufferings and blisses of people and animals that are the object of our sympathy, approval, objective needs to regulate, make laws, and otherwise respond to.

The bold claim I am making is simply analytical: no value, that is none of this dimension of suffering, misery, pleasure and happiness, and ethics vanishes. Showing that these are part of the essence of ethics, I mean, it is analytically true the ethics IS what ethics is about.

And such things are not invented. They are in the world. A toothache is much more than the sympathy one may have for someone with a toothache, and the toothache is not to be relativized to a collective public sentiment.

The metaethical discussion about why a person might find something morally interesting isn't that relevant to the thread. The thread assumes S has a moral outlook, and acts can be permissible but they wouldn't want to do them. — AmadeusD

not my original intention, but then you did say, "Yep. Morals are emotional positions and nought else, on my view." Which I couldn't help wondering about. It's not a defensible position.

If I'm understanding you, I think its redundant question. We are 'ethical' about many things, but this is also a function of our position on what is morally interested. — AmadeusD

If I have a moral regard for something, some issue about acquiring something, preventing something, and so on, I have an interest in that thing. Not so much what the thing is, but simply that one cares about it. This caring has to be in place in order for ethics to be part of an issue. No ones cares, no ethics. It is this caring I am interested in. Why does one care about a thing? It must have value for that person. So again, no value, no ethics. So what is value?

Yep. Morals are emotional positions and nought else, on my view. Its a good idea to discuss them, and form groups of affinity. Some would very much enjoy seeing a woman 'engage' with her dog on a bus. It may be their optimal fantasy, in fact. — AmadeusD

So the ethical prohibition against torture is all about my emotional regard for torture, the empathy, compassion and so forth that step forward when such a thing is witnessed, and the laws we have about this are grounded in this same thing, only collectively. Let's say this is true. But is this only what ethics is about, or is there that which we are ethical ABOUT that is also in ethics?

without moral sanction or legal repercussion. In most human cultures, no such prohibition applies to other species, which are considered legitimate prey. Many cultures have permitted or do still permit some unfavoured members of their own society to be treated that way. — Vera Mont

Well, herein lies the rub: You seem to be saying that the world of animals and their lack of ethical principles provides the substratum for the analysis of our world's ethics. This has to be shown, not assumed.

And "every legal code ever devised" really says nothing about the generational ground of ethics. I mean, even if they all DID say explicitly that social institutions AS institutions exhausted ethical meaning, that wouldn't make it true. (Of course, among these legal codes are the biblical ones, and they certainly thought quite the opposite.)

If you profess faith in a supreme being, you are required to believe there is. — Vera Mont

A supreme being would be question begging, for one has to first show what it is about ethical matters that would even warrant such a thing.

Beyond.... to where? — Vera Mont

For this, one need only look at a given ethical situation and discover its essence. I don't think this is a very demanding analysis. Begin with strong examples because they are the clearest: take the moral obligation not to bludgeon, burn, rip and tear, or otherwise offend and afflict another's living body, assuming all things commonly in place in average conditions (the living body in question is not hypesthetic, e.g.). Is this morally exhaustively conceived in the social institutions that would express the prohibition? Or is there more to it than this set of rules, laws, sentiments toward, and so forth, that the put forward this prohibition?

One doesn't. One separates the mores and laws that make sense according to one's own judgment from those that are outmoded or counterproductive. Beyond socially imposed limitations, there is no "law of the jungle" or "natural law". — Vera Mont

Not unless they're handed down from heaven. — Vera Mont

So ethics really has no foundation at all? "Outmoded" and "counterproductive" confer nothing beyond utility of ethics. But principles of utility have an "end" or telos. I mean for every practical measure, there is purpose, but if this purpose has no end in itself, then it either moves on for its justificatory basis to other assumptions, and these on to others, and there really is no end to this, or one simply has to stop inquiry at some point and declare there to be no grounding "in actuality" for ethics. Ethics thus just stands exclusively in the social construction. Both of these are the case, perhaps, but the trouble is, not so much heaven, a term of dubious meaning, but grounding real meanings apart from their mere cultural sources. The ethical violation of Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov lies beyond breaking a society's rules, don't you think?

Yes. Alcoholism. — fdrake

Closeted alcoholism, perhaps. But who lives like this? Some, yes. Off they go, then. But most bring their issues into this public arena, and this is where ethics gets its irritating ambiguity, for there is she is, my daughter, and there he is, an Adonis, looking so cool drinking and smoking, and she learns this from him, and so his right to drink publicly undoes my right to raise my daughter as I see fit.

One way to look at it is, it is a matter of positive and negative rights: One's positive right to drink publicly intrudes as a negative right on my part to live absent of this. Almost no one lives in a vacuum. I hold that a free society is very strong in the direction of positive rights as a default tendency.

Everything to do with morality and ethics is good or bad only because "we say so". — Vera Mont

But how does one separate what is "merely" said from what has a grounding apart from the mere saying? The mere saying includes attitudes, historically based beliefs, enculturated taboos, cultural institutions that contain moral precepts, and so on. One grows up and then, once there, in the midst, if you will, of one's own culture, only then can step back and question, and here, one can ask if it is all just this collective sentiment, or is there something about the essence of what it is to be ethical that is for basic than this.
Ethics gets interesting when we move into the uncertain territories of underlying assumptions. Laws, rules, norms, principles are at best, prime facie compelling. Is there anything in ethics that is more than this?

The moral good and bad is supposed to transcend all differences of social context. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is a loaded statement. If true, then one would have to identify something that is good or bad "outside" of social contexts, but how is this possible since the good and bad are essentially social, conceived only in societies and about social circumstances. Can one "reduce" ethics to something not "social" in its nature?

Is there anything wrong with eating the flesh of a member of one's own species? Some tribes considered it a homage to the departed relative to retain some portion of their being; some paid their slain enemies a compliment by partaking of their might, or to communicate with the gods or to demonstrate their power over another group. There is some mystery (and pay-walls) over how cannibalism actually become a taboo. But you still wouldn't want to be the guy that ate his neighbour. — Vera Mont

But if his neighbor was okay with it, and this has happened, then part of the immorality of this vanishes, for certainly consent is mitigating. All we are left with now is mere sentiment we all share, and this is difficult to make into a meaningful basis for a taboo like the one that exists. The question is, is cannibalism, or incest, or any of a number of victimless immoralities, only "bad" because "we" say so? Arguments like this apply to contemporary issues like same sex relations and the indeterminacy of sexual practices and identity. One looks at the direction, the "slippery slope," of this: Today same sex marriage, tomorrow

Mid: This is my view of morality, and we're lucky that only humans are sentient enough to be considered moral agents. This means most people's morality will align on my account, even if they have different moral frameworks for arriving at the "yes/no" portion of whether to act.
Long: Ah, well. There are millions. Millions of things make me uncomfortable, and I'd rather not be the kind of person who did them because that would be, on my account, shameful or embarrassing. These extend to no one else, even in cases that would effect someone else, attitudinally speaking. I don't want to be that person, regardless of who is effected — AmadeusD

But it really doesn't get interesting until one brings up the hard cases that challenge our collective comfort. I recall a philosophy class in ethics that began with an article called On the Bus, or something similar, and it brought the reader through a process of increasing discomfort by describing scenes of increasing physical intimacy between a woman and her dog sitting across from you on a bus.

You know your moral intuitions are being directly assaulted when they start erupting in protest. The final scene I would rank as "unmentionable". It is a fascinating analysis, nevertheless: One the one hand, I am simply as liberal minded as a person can be, which means if this woman takes her behavior int he confines of her own home, then I cannot see the basis for moral concern, notwithstanding my physical revulsion. I am actually pretty proud I can think like this. Who am I to judge others? How about men with boys, fairly common, I have read, among certain of our ancestors. THAT is a tough case!

BUT: On the bus???? In front of everyone, this raises an entirely different question. My ethics is pretty simple: do no harm. Of course, this is an entangled mess in practical situations. The woman is doing no harm at all considered in itself what she does. But then, neither am I if I shout horrible epithets all by myself at the wall. Context is everything. In public, violations take on a different set of standards.

The question is, in my mind, IF an act is not morally objectionable as a private act, then what does this say about the public judgment that it IS objectionable? Isn't the latter rendered vacuous, no better than the same the personal "feelings" of revulsion that I suspend when trying to be objective and fair and nonjudgmental?

The Taoist practices I try to work at don't frame the quiet as substance or emptiness but as what happens when the chatter stops. My brief encounters with it have changed my expectations. There is a timing to reactions that shape events. I have no idea why. It is like a point of leverage to lighten the energy needed to move something. — Paine

There is an uncanny space that opens up when the chatter stops for some people. While for others, most, it is simply the same old perceptual encounter with the world. This space deserves analysis, the rigorous kind that discovers the structure of consciousness itself.

On Zhuangzi. Consider this passage:

......whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Hsi-shih, things ribald and shady or things grotesque and strange, the Way makes them all into one. Their dividedness is their completeness; their complete­ness is their impairment. No thing is either complete or impaired, but all are made into one again. Only the man of far­ reaching vision knows how to make them into one. So he has no use [for categories], but relegates all to the constant. The constant is the useful; the useful is the passable; the passable is the successful; and with success, all is accomplished. He relies upon this alone, relies upon it and does not know he is doing so. This is called the Way.

The point of this is to show how language makes issues out of thin air, dividing the world (categorical thinking) that is an original pragmatic singularity. Human discontentment lies with this false sense of a world divided. Further on, the matter is spelled out in clarity:

There is a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is being. There is nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. Suddenly there is nonbeing. But I do not know, when it comes to nonbeing, which is really being and which is nonbeing. Now I have just said something. But I don't know whether what I have said has really said something or whether it hasn't said something.

There is nothing in the world bigger than the tip of an autumn hair, and Mount T'ai is tiny

There is in this, something definitive and is, of course, not definitive at all: Definitive because the final wisdom clears the playing field, and yet not definitive because the act of doing this is itself categorical since all language and meaning is categorical: words divide the world.

Jacques Derrida, that annoying French deconstructionist that is so difficult to read, is intentionally annoying. He wants the reader to see, in his own way, this Taoist point in his analysis of the "difference and deference" of the structure of language and the basic idea is that language not only does not tell us "about" a world in any foundationally determinate way, but does not divide the world with its categories. The world is entirely "outside" of this, yet to say this at all obviously is an exercise in language.

So my interest in this "space" can be approached here. It is where one's existence and the existence of the world is realized by "the person of far reaching vision" is released from the grip of language. But what is THIS about? There is a LOT to "say" about this, paradoxically. Or is it a paradox? For language and its "distance" from the the palpable, pragmatic (the "constant" is "useful" says Chuangtzu) world are themselves IN this world and allow us to realized this very thesis. The tao is conceived in language! How does this work? Language itself, and its categories, must also be of the tao, not apart from it, perhaps it most essential feature. To reject categorical thinking occurs in categorical thinking.

Thought is not to be simply suspended. My thoughts say language is the greatest expression of our existence. It is "useful" to have a more penetrating view.

You believe goal of physicists' "T.O.E." is to explain "everything"? that it's not just physics but some final (super-natural) metaphysics? I thought the aim was to produce a testable unification of the fundamental forces of nature – to demonstrate they are aspects or modalities of one another – that's formulated into a G.U.T. (which would include QG). What does "everything" have to do with it? That's not physics. How is it even possible to test a purported explanation for "everything"? — 180 Proof

You at the very least begin with the groundwork of scientific inquiry. This has nothing to do with what science says.

Is there something the matter with my prose style? Am I being obscure? — Wayfarer

No, no. Sorry about that. I did forget previous things mentioned.

So, in Zhuangzi, the problem is shown in our speech but not explained. Even saying that is too much. — Paine

I think this taboo on speaking is overplayed, and yet, not played enough. One can speak anything, its just that there has to be a shared experience. You could report to me that you had an excellent meditation or insight, and all crude meanings vanished revealing something profound and beautiful . Words like profound and beautiful are common, as in, that was a profound chess move, but in the context of Eastern enlightenment, we think of something else because this region of thought is contextualized with a greater sense of the mystery of existence. Even as I use terms 'mystery' and 'existence' I take your thoughts and sense of things INTO a world of orientation that makes sense. This is the point: talking like this doesn't degrade the essence of this weird, marginal way to encounter the world.

When we use language, we almost always are talking about mundane things, and it is this that has to be put aside. Brings the whole matter into familiar contexts where it doesn't belong.

The clearest statement of this form of barbarism is Daniel Dennett. But I've been arguing against philosophical or scientific materialism here since day one so it's not news to me. — Wayfarer

But I can't imagine Dennett arguing the way Henry does. I read his, or read through it, Consciousness Explained. Dennett It does a good job of showing me what I am up against. I know this thinking, we all do, just not as well as he does. We grew up with it, this common sense that assumes science is basic. Our familiarity is called public education. This is why phenomenology is so hard: such thinking as Dennett's has to be "read out of" like a child reads of other lands and discovers there is so much more out there. But I haven't read Dennett on barbarism, and likely will not, even though he may have interesting things to say.

It is said that the Buddha was the quintessential phenomenologist, for no one made a stronger case for the kind of thing Henry argues for: the more appearing, the more being. What is being? It is affective-ontology. What if I asked what nirvana is? We would still have as an implicit premise that it is just an emotion that issues from material being, but has no being of its own. This is the hard part, this freeing being from implicit materialism (always there, trivializing existence) for this is a thesis that makes experience derivative. But meditation and its apophatic "method," that is, the method of negating common sense which is our everyday world, turns this entirely on its head. Nirvana (affectivity) IS Being, it is the essence of being, not derivative of anything. Affectivity is the ontological foundation. The materialist assumption is constructed OUT of this, just as all of our thoughts and ideas.

At any rate, I get rather up on my high horse when Dennett comes mind.

This resonates strongly with Krishnamurti, who's books I read ardently in my twenties. One of them is called 'The Ending of Time' and it's a theme that's always present in his talks. He says that the observer IS the past, that freedom from thought is 'freedom from the known'. A few weeks back, I enrolled in an online seminar run out of Ojai, which was to run over the next two years, comprising recordings of his talks and an online discussion group. But I cancelled my enrollment, for the same reason I stopped reading his books decades ago. I felt that I understand what he's saying, but I can't find my way into it. He would say, meditation is never the effort to meditate. I've got a quote from him on my homepage 'It is the truth that liberates you, not your effort to be free'. But all I know of meditation is the attempt to meditate (which incidentally I stopped making four years ago.) — Wayfarer

There are other yogas. Jnana yoga is also very effective if it cuts through the mass of presuppositions that rule our thinking in a default way. As I see it, the strongest pillar of dogmatic insistence is physicalism. You might not agree, but I argue, once one sees that any of the varieties physicalism or materialism and their counterpart, idealism, is simply the worst and most inhibiting metaphysics that we all carry around with us, and it is carried with an implicit unbreakable faith. It is a reduction to dust, as Michel Henry says.

Consciousness conceives first, is ontologically first in any conception. You might want to give Henry a listen on youtube at Michel Henry By Steven Delay. One has to put aside the Christian orientation. It really doesn't matter. But he is worth it.