It's a pity you think that.

Sure, we have feelings. One's own feelings are all well and good, and you might do well to work towards feeling good rather than feeling miserable. But that's not the foundation of ethics.

Ethics concerns itself with how one is to relate to others. — Banno

But this with others, what is it? Saying you have concern for others turns the table to you, because you are an other to others, and the most accessible possible examination would lie in an examination of yourself.
You see this, no? It is not saying that ethics is not about others at all. It is sayning what IS it about others that makes for the ethicality of ethic?

I consider this to be wishful thinking and mysticism. You said earlier that I was making it more complicated than it need be and now here you are saying something serpentine like this. :razz:

Sounds like you want a transcendent or magical foundation point to this question and this may well be an emotional reaction. You won't be the first to reach this position.

Human flourishing does raise the question what does human flourishing look like when done well? We know that pretty much all people are attempting to achieve this. Even the Taliban - they, like all fundamentalists, think a particular interpretation of God's will leads to human flourishing - generally flourishing in the afterlife.

We can debate how best to accomplish human flourishing but there seems little doubt to me that pretty much all people have agreed in their own way that this is a starting point. I don't think we need any more than this. — Tom Storm

Nothing mystical about a knife in your kidney. That matter is much more basic than you would have it. You, I surmise, would like to treat that knife as Hume and Wittgenstein treat facts. But there is something in the occurrent event of misery, I mean while one is actually miserable, that needs attention. the habit we have, and this I take to be seriously understood, the habit that language imposes of the world both lifts it into understanding as well as silences and occludes. What I am saying is that the "magic" is magical to you because is unfamliar. Face it, Heidegger was right: the more science and technology dominates thinking regarding the place and status of what it is to be human, the more the powerful and profound are pushed out of existence, and by existence, read the manner of our thoughts and feelings. Cell phones are more real to modern sensibilities than existential matters. The fact that almost no one at all takes up such matters is exactly what makes them strange and magical.
That knife in the kidney. Answer me this: what would be a complete analysis of teh bare features of the one sitting there in misery? Spare me the medical contingencies, as well as what a biologist might say, or an evolutionist. Just observe what is there sitting before you.
Clue: there is in the event, at its final determination, something that defies explanation, but is the most salient feature.

But that's an argument, not phenomenology, right? It's also not an argument I find all that persuasive as it stands: I've always been struck by the Nazis trying to destroy evidence of the Holocaust as the red army advanced -- they were like children caught doing something they knew perfectly well was wrong.

But, yes, history and anthropology seem to teach us that different communities have different values. Some apparently have no problem with practicing slavery, say, or genital mutilation, and then we seem forced to conclude that there is something relative about our moral judgments. This is all still argument though, rather than a phenomenology of ethical experience. It's just that the argument suggests such a phenomenology is useless, because in every case we'll find people experiencing what seems to them ethical in the same way. (Orson Welles explained Touch of Evil by quoting Jean Renoir: "Everyone has their reasons.")

There are two ways to begin to answer the relativist (or perspectivist): one is to say that the claims of variation are overblown, that there is obvious and substantial overlap in the mores of different communities, and even some research to back that up; the other is to question the experience more closely. If those who practice genital mutilation have to overcome their recognition of a young girl's fear and trauma, have to suppress their sympathy for her, then that's not evidence that their conscience is constituted differently from ours, but that they choose not to listen to it, that they let some other consideration overrule it.

I think the jury is still out on whether phenomenology is doomed to failure here. — Srap Tasmaner

I am not trying to defend phenomenology, and it I were, I would be in a poor position. That would be an true academic's job. I do defend the phenomenologist's approach to basic problems, and I defend things the way I think along these lines.

Phenomenology cannot be doomed to failure, unless Trump destroys the world and all is lost like the library of Alexandria. It is too intuitive. I mean, this and that can be argued, dismissed, and so on, but phenomenology is what you might call a profound and enduring insight.

What I do here is not about what is at issue in all you talk about. What is not arguable is the presence of affect, no matter how this term finds context. And affect (happiness, sadness, misery, joy suffering pleasure, and so forth) is foundational for ethics.

... since there are no limits to the ways that we can re-organize how we make sense of things. Our feelings will tell us which channels of construing make the world a more creatively anticipatable place and which channels lead to the incoherence of negative moods. — Joshs

Sounds right to me. But one can ask, why make the world a more creatively anticipatable place? If there is no answer to this, then the mundane objection still holds: there is question begging in the assumption that "we should do X". Why?

Rorty was accused by Critchley of being a contradictory "liberal ironist, someone who is committed to social justice and appalled by cruelty, but who recognizes that there is no metaphysical foundation to her concern for justice." I think there is a foundation, though it is no stone tablet, that is, it is not language the world that "speaks" but intuition.

Unassailable, given in the barest sense. I am reading Derrida on Levinas, and he expresses it, in his exposition, thusly: "A thought for which the entirety of the Greek logos has already erupted, and is now quiet topsoil deposited not over bedrock, but around a more ancient volcano. A thought which, without philology and solely by remaining faithful to the immediate, but buried nudity of experience itself, seeks to liberate the Greek domination of the Same and the one."

I know he not going to defend this, (though he admires it. He called Totality and Infinity a work of art) but this brief flourish puts the matter forth with a nice rhetorical lift. Notwithstanding the prestation, though, his "ancient volcano" is an apriority to all systems of understanding.

For me this is as real as it gets. But capital R types usually want more, as you did in the previous post. You want to justify these intuitions, not realizing that any possible justification must take place within the framework of these intuitions.

In fact, the idea is so obvious than I cannot even imagine seriously dismissing
— Astrophel
What follows is so far from obvious as to be incomprehensible. — hypericin

Framework of intuitions? I don't follow. What is this framework? As to taking this seriously, you wrote: Do you seriously think there is a material basis for ethics?

Why I think there is such a thing is frankly complicated. But it does begin with a "reduction" of the world to its essential givennes. An odd idea if you've never considered that there is such a thing to do, but initially I did invite one to consider a moral affair as it stands, the way a geologist might observe a rock or a mineral. First observe what is there, in your midst. Categorical placement comes after (though, the mere approach is always already categorical, but never mind that) and identify the features "present". Again, there is Astrophel, the ax, the man who murdered his beloved cat and the law that prohibits murder (or assault, etc.). At the very basic level of analysis, what is there? Rules and consequences swimming around my head, rage, conscience in an epic struggle, but more essentially, the possible act itself: WHY ALL THE FUSS?
The fuss is because there is some pain, misery, horror, unpleasantness (or then, joy, pleasure, bliss) that is AT STAKE. This is the foundational premise the this argument: These words of affect, joy, pain, pleasure, wretchedness, and so on: If these are absent, then the ethics vanishes completely. It is not simply a necessary condition, like say, reason; I mean, one has to have the ability to reason through competing ideas in order for ethics to rise up and be what it is, we might say. But note: take the matter of the ax being buried in another man's back. Remove the rational dimension and the essence of the affair still remains, though mysteriously. There is something horrible about the pain apart from the way pain is contextualized in a situation or even a theoretical rationalization. Mysteriously, the ethical objection sustains, and you can disagree with this, but it would by my thinking be disingenuous. It is too obvious. this brief idea sketched out here of a contextless horrible pain is in itself an argument, a very powerful intuitive argument, against ethical nihilism.
It is not the objection that is the focus of this argument. It is the intuited negative affect. This is something that issues from t he fabric of things, if you will, buried in contingency, but unmistakably there: wretchedness is unassailable by circumstances.

Well its strange, there are people who find the phenomenological perspective intuitively appealing, and others just don't understand why. Perhaps there is a phenomenological explanation for that, but it's beyond me. lol. — ernest

Likely that you have not read Husserl's Ideas I? I remember reading Kant for the first time and I was bewildered. I understood the words and the logical constructions, but I would look out the window and think, but there is obviously a tree and a sky and this guy is just insane. Later I read Some Kierkegaard and to this I can wrap my mind around his Concept of Anxiety to the degree of 60 percent or so. I had to read Hegel, and Hegel is fascinating madness, to be sure.

The more I read, the more I see that THIS is really where philosophy must go, and the most compelling case for this, I think, lies with Husserl's Cartesian Meditations.

I would hazard that no one at all gets comfortable with continental philosophy without doing some very difficult reading. But having said this, I think "some people" are intuitively inclined to take existence as a theme more seriously than others. Analytic philosophy KILLS this intuition.

So affectivity cannot be presuppositionless. Rather, it produces the frame of presuppositions( a way of comporting ourselves) that interpretation develops further in our everyday dealings with others. But the frame is always being reframed. — Joshs

Of course, I see this (not, of course, I understand Heidegger so well. This certainly isn't true). But to pre "suppose"-- this goes to comprehension. Affectivity may be "of a piece" with the future making event, but, I would argue, affect is not interpretative. I admit, it can be called this, and if the case is being made that when one comprehends, one is doing so affectively, so taking up the world AS is to take it up as in an affectively qualified way, and the thought and feeling are not different things in the construction of an actual future existence. they are only different in the analysis. Dewey held the same kind of view.

I guess, to use Heidegger's language, I am looking at affect in a "present at hand" way: it is there, this misery is there, and among all the descriptive things one could say about an actual situation, there is one that is THE most salient feature, which is this undefinable part that is the ethical dimension of it, which is: I find this misery, just awful, dreadful, appalling, and so on, all of which are synonyms, but what is the defining thread? It is undefinable, for it lies in the givenness, regardless of how what is given is given in a structured presuppositional (or predelineated) way.

Comprehension is term that encompasses affairs of the understanding, or believing, knowing and thinking, and for Heidegger this knowing is instrumentality, the localized way of "dealing with" a thing. So the presuppositions for knowing hammers are prior dealings with hammers and their regional equipmental environments. Affect is an intrinsic part of all this, the caring. Dewey called this the aesthetic dimension of consummatory experience, and he, too argued that this is bound up in the forward lookingness of apprehending an object. But he was also dismissive of the present at hand of the affect:

In fact emotions are qualities, when they are significant, of a complex experience that moves and changes. I say, when they are significant, for otherwise they are but the outbreaks and eruptions of a disturbed infant. All emotions are qualifications of a drama and they change as the drama develops.

Outbreaks and eruptions? He means considered apart from any possible context of experience. He doesn't want to talk about what will not be talked about, which is the mere presence of affect, and he is, right I think. It is the one reason philosophy will pass over any discussions of the presence (the "metaphysics of presence") of what lies before one.

But I challenge this idea. I think there is something critically important about things being miserable and delightful. Not just important, THE most important part of our existence. Even Levinas doesn't go into the palpable presence of it (though granting through all of this that I really don't have the detailed grasp that you do. I read, think, that's all) . The face of another in misery, to be significant requires misery to be significant. How is misery significant? It is "presuppositionlessly" misery, stands as "its own presupposition" as Kierkegaard put it (though he wasn't talking about this, precisely) because the understanding lies in a different dimension of how things are intimated.

One's misery may bound existentially to ready to hand environments, and the temporal structure of this carries misery into a future creation of a "displacing" future, but misery exceeds utility, it is, again with Levinas, something in the "ideatum" of misery that exceeds the ready to hand. It is a presence at hand that "speaks" the injunction not to do X if X makes misery.

I think I'm trying to say that we experience the ethical as absolute, as something beyond our opinions, not up to us, something in a way external.**

There is a word for this experience: 'conscience'. Maybe it's more phenomenologically sound to start with conscience than with The Good, which looks a little theorized already.


** There’s a nice bit of writing in “The Train Job” (Firefly, episode 2) that captures a difference I’m interested in:

“Sheriff: When a man finds out more about a situation like ours, well, then he faces a choice.
Mal: I don’t believe he does.”

What the Sheriff says is nice, spotlights individual responsibility — things don’t just happen, people do them. Acknowledge your part. That’s a solid starting point, certainly. Mal’s not disagreeing with that, but shifting the locus of responsibility away from the choice. If you know what is right, the real question is whether you will do it. It’s not a matter of choice but of character.

You see that sort of thing all through Confucius, as well: there are no moral dilemmas, there’s only degrees of courage and fortitude in doing what everyone acknowledges is right. — Srap Tasmaner

I think you are right about courage and fortitude and a number of other virtues that describe a "good will". This is an essential point. There are good acts and their are good wills. This latter is not to held accountable for maximizing the former. But what does this mean, this "desire to do good" regardless of the efficacy or consequences?

This is quite a thing to say, and I think defending it puts one very hot water: after all, didn't Hitler think he was doing the right thing? And that serial killer, didn't he believe there was in place a clear rationalization for all he did (or she!), so the "good" of it did have its defense, no? But also there are those who wish to do well, nothing but good intentions, but their best laid plans go horribly wrong.

Very difficult issue, I believe. But I think the couple that goes off to dangerous environments to help people and infinitely more moral and decent and worthy of our praise than the wealthy one that gives thousands or millions to these same people and does many times more good. Bill Gates and his wife were great philanthropists??? Really? Where does greatness lie? My thought: it lies in sacrifice, unsung, often as it goes.

This one seems uncomplicated (however I confess to finding Dostoevsky dull). Are you a Jordan Peterson neophyte?

If you believe in moral realism (derived via God or some kind of idealism) then you are likely to think killing is wrong.

If you believe there is no foundation, then you need to approach such questions existentially - what do you consider right and why. Maybe virtue can guide you, or principles like human flourishing - it's an open question. — Tom Storm

No, I despise Jordan Peterson. Too smart for a conservative, and that makes conservative views sound better than they are.

Moral realism is not about this or that idea. It is a discovery in the analysis of what makes ethics, ethics. Is there something that defies contextuality that also makes ethics what it is? This is like asking, is there something in the nature of ethics that is absolute, that is there, logically prior to any ethical situation or discussion about it? the answer is: well, we all know there is something that is not us, and it "shows itself" in our affairs, imposes upon us needs to pragmatically engage. But all that is imposed is taken up in our world AS part of the way we deal with things. This "being taken up AS" is language and culture. So, I have a bit of moral reasoning, should I assault the old lady for her cookies? The context is the incidentals, how cruel she is, how she is a serial killer and deserves to die, but then, there is no solid proof of this, and she is owns an animal shelter, but those cookies are sooo good. And so on. The question is, in an analysis of this ethical case, is there anything that is to be conceived that is not defined by context? Most think this is an invitation to talk about evolution or biology, but then those are contexts. What about affective meaning? The pain of the bludgeoning qua pain?
Human fourishing simply begs the question: why should humans flourish? Something more basic is required. Something that cannot be analyzed because it issues from t he world itself.

Yes, I would agree with all that, considering your disposition towards consequentialism. On the other hand, from another disposition rather than yours, ethics in itself, as a doctrine, is neither discursive nor intuitive; it is aesthetic. This follows from the notion that ethics presupposes morality. Whether or not that presuppositions holds, is what the philosophy is all about.

The key, I think, is your “what is there” is in need of something that says how “what is there” got to be there, and perhaps more importantly, what the “what” actually is.

To put aside intrusions into matters by interpretations of them, is counter to basic human epistemological nature. We want to know stuff, always have, always will. Even granting that intrusions, re: analysis, of matters sometimes just makes the matter less explained, isn’t going to prevent us from doing it. — Mww

Aesthetics and ethics Wittgenstein puts in the same bin. They are value generated. (Note how modern art aligns with ethical complexities: ANYTHING that can have an impact of an affective nature is both ethically and aesthetically viable.)

I have never appreciated any meaningful distinction between ethics and morality. They are the same problematic. there are "dictionary differences" I am aware.

This last is stickier. The history you refer to, the "how it got there" is important, for nothing meaningful is ever presented ex nihilo. That is, there is history in the understanding-- the acquisition of language, the acculturation process, and so on, and encounters we have bring that history to bear for interpretation. This is, roughly, the issue. Do I ever observe anything at all that is free of the temporal structure (the anticipation of a recollection that is projected into a future) of perceiving? Is all perceiving apperceiving?

The answer seems to be, yes, all that can be understood about what stands right before us is, if you will, an historical event. BUT: does this mean one cannot apprehend IN the language and culture matrix, something that stands outside of it?

It depends on what you mean by "apprehend". I know there is a cup on the table because I learned about cups and tables all my life and this recognition is actually a occurrent recollection. Repetition is what we are! But in the ethical problem, there is this unknown X, call it, in the spirit of Kant. As is, and this is a big point, I believe, speaking of Kant: where did Kant ever get that idea of noumena? He grudgingly had to postulate it, but why? It is because he could "see" the noumenal IN the phenomenon.
Noumena is not some impossible "out there"; it is an impossible "in here". This then moves to ethics, putting Kant aside, completely.

I suspect many are built into our lizards brains and may not be related to rational thought. Some are about survival and procreation. I hate it when people rest all things on evolution but I suspect that we are repulsed and attracted by biological imperatives which then work their way up over history into predilections and imperatives.

Curious point - many animals have strong codes of behaviour. Where does that come from? Same as above I'd say. They keep it simple, they clearly don't go on the lecture circuit advocating mindfulness or contemplative prayer. — Tom Storm

I agree. And animals are, in my thinking, ethically included in our concerns about others. I also agree that "all things resting on evolution" is not the way to go. To me, evolution is a well established body of theories, but there is nothing in these that tell us anything about the qualitative nature of what is experienced beyond, This here was able to win out in the competition with alternatives for survival and reproduction. Pain is an evolutionary plus, but all this says is that pain is useful.

The question in my mind is, pain (and pleasure) was there, in the possibilities of genetic construction (randomly "chosen", of course). What is something like a living hell even there......AT ALL?

Of course, it is almost just a rhetorical question because there is no answer, one might say. I think there is an answer, but it lies in metaphysics; it isintimated here.

There is no ‘foundation’ for phenomenological investigations. That is basically one of the greatest benefits of phenomenology. It doesn’t adhere to any particular ‘foundation’ although it was created (by Husserl) to provide a better grounding for science (not ethics). It is a ‘science’ of consciousness.

If it was used for ethics it would have to take on other forms. Heidegger and others (the hermeneutical types) probably go there in part with their slither the greater phenomenological body (meaning based principally on interpretations of mere words tangential to experience). — I like sushi

This is rather to the point. What does one do with a phenomenology of ethics? I opened with the idea of attending to the case itself that stands there for determination, like a star to the astronomer. An astronomer will deploy paradigms of normal science, and this is not at all unlike what we do all the time: we observe a blade of grass and already the interpretative resources are in play, making the encounter a "regionalized" event. The assumption you bring to light is that this regionalized event of a singular apprehension fills the horizon of understanding. Kant was there before Heidegger: (sensory) intuitions without concepts are empty. But Husserl was revived after Heidegger and in spite of Derrida: Even in this hermeneutically saturated world, we still defer to what is there and it would be ac hoc to dismiss something that is firmly in our intuiitive midst. Husserl reduction is a method for discovery which he believed uncovered the intuitive world that stands before us unregarded (a Douglas Adams word that deserves respect!) There is trouble defending this, for intuitions are "of a piece" with interpretation and it cannot be otherwise. I think this right, but..
Enter ethics. In the analysis of a exemplar of ethical affairs, there is something there, int he intuition that is affective in nature, while certainly conceived AS (as Heidegger would put it) in the language taking it up, an existential residuum that defies deconstruction, tha t is, is analytically unassailable for it is not contignent, not a thing "of parts". Obviously, we understand it contextually, but IN all of this, something tht is not contingent stands before us.
Wittgenstein (in Culture and Values) says his idea of the Good is divinity. WITTGENSTEIN said this!! Why would he? I mean, there is a very good reason he went to al that trouble in the Tractatus to speak "nonsense".

Kant and Bentham-Mill would've never formulates their theories sans a definition i.e. answering the question "what's ethics?" is first and foremost.

For Kant, ethics is simply a universal law! Consequences, ergo what an act leads to, whether happiness/sorrow, are immaterial.

For Bentham-Mill ethics is grounded in the happiness-suffering duo! Consequence, happiness/suffering to be specific, matter.

Are these not the same thing?

My best guess: Bentham-Mill ethics is basically an interim solution to ethical problems/dilemmas until such a point when Kantian ethics becomes practicable/implementable. — Agent Smith

I've always thought Kant's imperative rested with utility, notwithstanding the "good will". How can I universalize my maxim in any meaningful way unless the principle details the specifics of the case? And what is a case if not for the real value that is in play? Act utilitarianism seems right.

Well yes - we kind of have two loose options - taking the Platonic ideal that all balance, goodness, order is located in the Logos and knowledge of this is available to all of us if we have the right teaching. Or we can take a more Nietzschian view, that all human truth is perspectival. Nietzsche has that great line - if you believe in grammar, you're a theist? — Tom Storm

But you make it all so complicated. As for me, I observe the world, not at all like a scientist would. What is there, in the ethical case. There is the old lady, and there is Raskolnikov, there is the bludgeoning. What about this is there of Plato or the logos?If not here, in this typical case, then nowhere. One should not think down from established ideas to and interpretation of a particular; one has to first discover what is IN the particular given case that might warrant a dramatic move toward metaphysics.

Just to add, the argument for moral realism I defend is quite involved. This is but an iceberg's tip.

Ethics doesn’t exist. The illusion is believing in a system of laws to the point that it overrules what you actually want/need/wish to do with your life.

The selfless man is spineless, selfish man is spineless. But the man who cares for being neither one nor the other … is the Self. — I like sushi

But to see this point, you have ask analytic questions. Sure, a system of laws. Now, why do we have laws? Asking why will eventually lead to foundational justifications. Indeed, all contingent goods and bads eventually go this way: It a great lamp because it's bright and so on. What good is brightness? Well, it good for this and that. And what good are these? It may sound tedious, but note where this line of questioning ends up: with some claim of inherent goodness. If this is not there, then you have a mere abstraction, nothing can be good for no reason that does not have its implicit foundational claim in the fabric of existence. Of course, it is not as if this being a good couch or that a bad pair of shoes is written in stone....or is it? The goodness of the couch is certainly tied to the vagaries my likes and dislikes, but the liking itself, the occurrent affair of liking something, something AT ALL, this is is beyond contingency. It doesn't matter why, or in what circumstance, or how evil one's intent is--- liking something, adoring it, despising it, and so forth, have in every case an existential counterpart: that which is in the world which is adored, despised and the rest.

Ethics is something to do with behavior, and in particular something to do with our behavior towards one another, but there are many ways to describe two (or more) persons in relation to each other without an ethical ‘dimension’, as we might say — biological, economic, and so on.

I’m tempted to say something like this: suppose we start not with persons only, but with another element, something like The Good. Seriously, full-on Plato. Suppose we think the minimum configuration we’re interested in is two people in relation to each other and also in relation to The Good. This, rather than just taking “good” as a way we might categorize the relations obtaining between people, because we want more than that: an ethical act, an ethical moment would be one that is not just a matter of what I do to you “being good” or not, but also of my “being good”, of my acting out of goodness, of my sharing in goodness with you, inviting you also to be good, of inviting you also to take up a relation to The Good as I have, recognizing your capacity to relate to The Good as I do, and so on. Not a matter only of categorizing an action, but of a multifaceted interaction with this third thing.

Reifying it like this can also serve to cut off the temptation to ‘finish’ good instrumentally — that is, as “good for” something or other. An ethical action is one that is good, full-stop, not good for you, or for your happiness, or your well-being, or for society, or for anything. Not in furtherance of some purpose, higher or lower, something we might eventually attribute simply to individual (or social, or biological) preference or habit or desire, but only in relation to The Good. If I act with one eye on you and the other on this third thing, The Good, with a commitment to you but also to this other thing, that is ethical. It’s not just you that has a claim on me, but this other thing as well.

I generally go in fear of Platonism, but off the top of my head I can’t really think of another way adequately to convey the absoluteness of the ethical, if you see what I mean. And I can’t imagine how we give substance to this third thing, The Good. I’ve no idea what to say about it. Maybe it’s just a way of throwing everything that touches our ways of behaving toward each other into one basket — all the biological, social, cultural factors, all those little hints and warnings and exhortations about what is good. All of that taken together seems to have a life, or at least an existence, of its own, that we find ourselves beholden to as much as we are beholden to ourselves and to each other. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, you sound you would very much enjoy Emanuel Levinas. It's a tough nut to crack, requires patience if you've not read anything like this. But his Totality and Infinity is a revelation.
When we think of the Platonic Good, we think of the Republic, right? And the cave, the shadows, the sun and so on. Now, Plato was, I guess, the father of rational realism, and we think of the Good, it is some IDEA that all instantiations of good are of.

There is only one way to reify the Good, and that is, find what is Good (and Bad) in the fabric of things: just what is so bad about, say, a toothache?

What we believe will nearly always overwhelm what we observe. This is especially the case for pillars upon which we orientate our lives - rightly or wrongly. We need to be delusional and misinformed in order to grasp at understanding as if some ultimate understanding exists … that is basically the core of ‘ethics’. — I like sushi

Depends on what is at issue. More to the point is when what we observe overwhelms what we believe. Language brings the world to heel with pass the salt and talk about late buses and busy family life and so on and so on. This world is where people live, but pull apart from this enterprise of busyness and ask basic questions, you discover all knowledge claims implicit in this are "open". This is a radical, and overarching openness that runs through all things, and is overwhelmingly alien to familiar thinking.

You do. Your choice is just not blatantly apparent because it readjusts constantly (to some degree). The taste of something will vary due to mood, environment and patterns. An example would be symmetry … it is generally a pleasing feature. There are circumstances where symmetry effects taste. Such experiences refine/readjust initial experiences. — I like sushi

You said it yoursef: your taste will vary due to mood, etc. I am not a mood. When a mood comes to me, I can deal with it, true, but the mood and its alternatives are givens. You are thrown into a world of givens. Choice intervenes, but choices are only among what is given to choose; and so many are now beyond choice: I can't choose to hate chocolate or adore traffic noise.

If these studies conclude that history is a progression, then they are already assuming a fixed basis of the movement of history, a founding value defining the progress as progress rather than mere change. Progress is a ‘good’ kind of change, a change that conserves its origin. This conserving is the good isn’t a placing of ethics in first position, it’s a confusion of ethics with Nietzsche’s aesthetic ideal, the attempt to freeze history. — Joshs

If the history is IN the occurrent ethical issue then I follow the epoche down to the wire: I call the history incidental, Hume's facts, along with everything else that would steer judgment that is factual. This would include physiological details, the dialectic tension between opposing values, claims about our natural constitution, legally and culturally arguments, and so on. You see, I am convinced Husserl was on to something in his reduction to essentials, the "originary presentive intuitions" but everywhere I look, I see Derrida deconstructing what is supposed to be originary. But then I follow follow Michel Henry's Four Principles of Phenomenology: So much reduction, so much givenness; so much appearing, so much being.
What then is given, and is there more or less givenness, being, appearance? Is there anything that can survive, that is, be intuitively free of, the "play of difference and deference," free of "taking something AS"? The answer, it seems, is yes nd no. No, because, and I am still working on the way to caste this, no, because language is the "through which" the given is given. Yes, because language does not construct affectivity (to speak broadly of feelings, likes, dislikes, etc.).
I don't want to freeze history. I want to discover what is "presuppositionless" in historically structured occurrent affairs, and affectivity (broadly conceived) is this.

We can still ask what is there in ‘ethics’ that cannot be taken out. That would be up to you … you see the problem therein? — I like sushi

But it is not up to me, I mean, I don't decide what is delicious, disgusting, joyful, wretched and so on. I may choose among things, but choices all presuppose an established value, which is there, in the ethical matter, and ethics and all of its complications turns on this.

I don't follow.

Good. What does phenomenology make of ethics - isn't this the approach you are suggesting? For my money what sits before ethics is behaviour that either repels or attracts us. Then comes the postulation. — Tom Storm

I ask then, what is in an attraction or repulsion?

Sorry about this elentic method of going about this. My argument is not popular, so I am not going to simply lay it out for all to misconstrue. Best if I let others come to see it as I do through their own reasoning. At least they can't blame me when they themselves have constructed the premises.

Except, our innate moral intuitions already underlie any such review. Reason here can only rationalize what we already feel to be true.

You are one of many who feels compelled to believe that ethics is Real with a capital R. I don't sympathize. Do you seriously think there is a material basis for ethics? This is
philosophically naive. — hypericin

Odd here: You speak of innate moral intuitions, then deride ethical Realism with a capital R.

At any rate, no it's not naïve at all. In fact, the idea is so obvious than I cannot even imagine seriously dismissing it. Keep in mind that an ethical situation is what I am calling a thing of parts, and what I mean by this is that is stands analysis as a simple ethical case apart from any theory, empirical or otherwise. There are the facts of a case, then there is the intuitive essence. This latter carries the argument.

Human beings are meaning making creatures. We can't help but contrive and codify, systems, rules, positions, behaviours. Why is ethics different to any other human behaviour? Or are you coming at this from a foundational position? — Tom Storm

If there is a foundation that reveals itself in the inspection of the phenomenon of ethics, then what would that be?

To ask “what IS reason, you mean? Otherwise, I don’t understand the question. Anyway, not so sure it makes sense to ask what reason is. To reason about reason is intrinsically circular, whereas to reason from an ethical...or more accurately, a moral, predisposition.....is not. Ethics presupposes reason; reason does not presupposes ethics. So I don’t think there’s sufficient justification to substitute one for the other. — Mww

I don't wish to discuss reason beyond saying, with Hume, that reason is just a vessel (and Kant did analyze reason, calling it a synthetic principle, but then, you are quite right to say, as Wittgenstein would tell us, that this would be an analysis that presupposes exactly what is to be questioned. That's most egregious question begging. Then again, it is well understood that that Kant was not assuming the perspective of God. He was very clear about this).
The point I was making is that rationality as such, as principled thinking, is not sufficient for an analysis of ethics. But, one can say the same for anything at all one an think of; it's trivially true, for anything that can be thought at all requires reason, making reason always a necessary but insufficient condition.

Reason does not presuppose ethics? True. But it is more interesting than this in actuality. Not ethics, but value, and value is a presupposition of both ethics and aesthetics. Reason is, after all, an abstraction from the experience. There is no "reason" as an observable existence. There is judgment, then there is abstraction from judgment, which we call reason. Nor is there value which can be laid before our eyes. Value is rather an abstraction from experience.

So, to make the point I m defending, I think when one looks closely at an ethical matter, and puts aside all else that would otherwise intrude into an interpretation of what is there, one will "see" that matter for what it is, and it is not a discursive discovery, it is intuitive. Ethics has an intuitive dimension that exceeds the contingencies of theory.

What makes you think we should talk about ethics ‘in general’ before talking about Mill or Kant? This reminds me of what Foucault does with concepts like sexuality
or morality. Rather than giving us a history of something , which pre-supposes the meaning and then inserts it into the history, he gives us a genealogy of a concept, showing us that its history isn’t a history of changing applications or attitudes towards what has already been assumed in its basic structure. Rather, a genealogical analysis reveals a thoroughgoing transformation of the concept itself from one historical
period to the next. So in looking for the ‘parts’ of ethics which are transcendent to cultural contingency, we have to ask what it is that belongs to the genealogical structure in general. That may bring us to something on the order of local systems of intelligibility and their transformations. Ethics ‘in general’ may then be analyzed in terms of a drive toward creating new futures, an impetus to societal transformation oriented around diversification of values. — Joshs

But you know what I'm going to say already, I suspect. In what I have read of Husserl and his intuitive foundation as a bedrock of philosophical analysis, I do not find a suitable account in the reduction of ethical issues. Only Levinas sees this. All matters bow low to ethics/aesthetics, for here is existential basis for all conceivable matters. And studies in the principles of historical progressions presuppose something more basic, and this is the intuited presence of value-in-the-world.

Is this to say that ethics is grounded in something apodictic, intuitively insisting, like the principle of sufficient cause? Yes, I actually believe this is the case.

Apostrophel, did you mean to say what we came up with speculatively trying to understand you? — god must be atheist

Not much in the way of speculation is called for. Merely description. When we want to philosophically analyze ethical issues, we generally look to theory. I am asking that this be put off until we actually know what it is that sits before you that you are theorizing about. Is there an objection to this?

Sorry, I couldn't make sense of this. — john27

You said, "Meh. Ethical actions tend to betray rationality more often then not, I'd think." I take this to mean you think talk about ethics is reducible to what reason can say qua reason. So, I am an ethical agent in so far as I am rational, and it is rationality out of which ethics comes into existence.
Something like that?

Ethics seems to me the study of how to discern adaptive conduct which optimizes – from maladaptive conduct which fails to optimize – habits/customs of (i.e. individual preferences/social priorities for) non-reciprocal helping. — 180 Proof

What is non reciprocal helping? I, mean, someone is not reciprocating in their .....help?

I wrote the following two papers explaining why ethics can't be defined. The thrust of my thesis was that ethics in fact comprises two separate and irreconcilable systems, each of which can be defined, but the two are always lumped together into one, and that causes a lot of confusion for philosophers. There are distinct similarities and differences between the two systems which I tried to describe in the papers.

Everyone on this site poo-pooed on these papers, those who criticized them, but mainly those who never even bothered to look at them.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10744/ethics-explained-to-smooth-out-all-wrinkles-in-current-debates-neo-darwinist-approach/p1

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10903/shortened-version-of-theory-of-morality-some-objected-to-the-conversational-style-of-my-paper — god must be atheist

I'll read one. Then I'll get back to you.

But the distinction I pointed out to Mww seems pivotal: ethics is not about what is the case but what to do. It is not to be found by looking around at the world, but in deciding what actions one will take.

SO there's a start. — Banno

But you already know how this goes. One doesn't do until one know what lies before one. And further: the question cares nothing about what to do. It assumes one has an issue and things are in the balance. Philosophy steps in with its inexhaustible curiosity and asks the question about a thing's nature or essence. Asking such a question may not solve any particular ethical problem, but that is not the point. The point is, what IS an ethical problem qua ethical? The answer may reveal something that has meaning beyond actions, for in this analysis, the inquiry at one point has to be about ethical agency. Asking what ethics is implicitly asks what ethical agency is, and things get far more interesting.

Meh. Ethical actions tend to betray rationality more often then not, I'd think. — john27

But then, it is certainly a different matter using a conditional logical form to talk about the weather, on the one hand, and talking about assaulting Mrs. Griswald for her cookies. Reason is omnipresent. Perhaps, so is ethics, in a way. But one cannot call ethics an exercise in reason and think the matter done.

Ethics in general, is the nature of man.

A theory on the nature of man gives a ethical doctrine related to it.

Same as it ever was..... — Mww

Well, this just a tad general, don't you think? Reason could be here substituted for ethics and it would still be true. What kind of doctrine would an ethical doctrine be? And once you have that doctrine, what are the assumptions built into it that would expose a deeper understanding of ethics?

This answer seeks to smuggle a specific position on metaethics into the very definition of the subject matter. This is all too common in discussions such as this. — SophistiCat

Keep in mind, there are metaethical answers to this question that vary wildly.

This answer seeks to smuggle a specific position on metaethics into the very definition of the subject matter. This is all too common in discussions such as this. — SophistiCat

Why, metaethics? Whatever cold you mean by this?

No, you got the wrong idea. Read on. — SophistiCat

Note how the definition is supposed to identify " the target of moral theorizing. So, social theory, e.g., finds this target and then can organize its theorizing with this as its objective. It enables "empirically-oriented theorists to design their experiments or formulate their hypotheses without prejudicing matters." Well said, I say. Alas, if one is looking for something substantive about the nature of ethics, one is directed toward what it is these disciplines tell us.
Calling ethics the target of all thinking that deals with ethics is vacuous. This is a philosophical problem, not an empirical one.

What it is is a codification, elaboration, ossification, (and in some cases, perversion),of innate concepts and feelings of fairness and justice that are inborn in most of us, and in most social species.

Consider, after all, the first moral utterance of every child: "It's not fair!" This is an untaught appeal to fairness and justice. — hypericin

What you describe is a structured event whereby "inborn" feelings of fairness and justice are taken up in fixed systems of thought. I am sure this is somewhere close to right. But those inborn concepts and feelings, how inborn are they? what is the separation between what is acculturated and what is "natural"? And even if something natural is discovered, ain't this at best a prima facie part of the normativity? That is, if I have a feeling, a pang of conscience, isn't this to be brought up under review to see if it's right? And this applies as well to way we apply the established code: we have laws, rules, legally determined or otherwise, but the ethical correctness of these is complicated.
Of course, we all see where this goes: These complications are what underlies any given determination, prescription, decision. One has to work things out if one is to go beyond the reflexive obedience of a traffic light, and this leads to interpretative trouble. But beneath this trouble (which is beneath the reflexive act) isn't there something more analytically fundamental?
I think there is. I think ethics is Real, not just a construct. All constructs are constructs OF something. All meaningful affairs are meaningful only to the extent that there is a material basis for them.

sn't ethics about deciding rationally what you ought to do? — Banno

Of course. But oughts are about normativity and they are everywhere. One ought to put on socks before shoes. But all oughts have their terms of engagement. At the basic level, what are the "terms" of ethics? Of course, there is a long history here, but Mill or Bentham, say, begged this question.

Rationality follows these terms rather than dictating them.

Good question, but it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that it's been given some attention already. — SophistiCat

It is not the definition of moral theory I am after. Note how this "definition" puts the burden of analysis on the "target", then proceeds to defer to psychologists, anthropologists and the rest. I ask, in order tp have a moral theory at all, you have to have something before you to theorize about. What is it there, in the reduced analysis of actual moral affair, that can make moral theorizing possible? If an anthropologist is going to proceed with an anthropological take on ethics, she is going to have a tendential perspective. I want to know, a tendential perspective about what? Does this yield yet another perspective that is deferred to? Or, if not this, then what?

We should all be crying our hearts out, but that's hilarious! — Agent Smith

Saved by irony? Is this truly the best we can do? Does "the world" really hand this to us as its essential bottom line?
Art in literature and history (difference? I think they are nearly identical), of course, are nothing without irony, and humor is literally made of it. Nietzsche loved Wagner, but his thoughts were bound up with drama. He loved the "narrative" (read "affect" of irony) of life brought into existence. This is what you get with a sick man who has known only physical suffering his whole life: for Nietzsche, living and breathing was an epic struggle. Naturally, he would work this up into a world view of inherent annihilation. What I mean is that when all affirmation of the world is denied any genuine foundation that can validate it, one ends up with tragedy. All of our affairs are tragic, therefore. But then, is this where thoughts on the matter end?
To speak of Gods, with a capital G, not as fictions but metaphorically as standins for something actual and basic, is to speak of underpinnings that are, if you will, their own presuppositions, that are flat out unanalyzable, and defy reduction altogether. What is Apollo? Is he the Socratic principle? And Dionysus, the impossible defiance of just this impulse to order? Impossible because the thing that can stand against reason cannot be conceived (to do so would be to bring the world to heel under the Socratic tyranny).
To me, this is where it gets interesting. Take the Birth of Tragedy for what it is: a meta narrative that presents a world lost in struggle and tragedy. But then, take a close look at this: the struggle itself is analyzable, for struggles are never abstractions. It is not as if we are in a failed logical proof whose conclusion is an ad absurdum. What is in play is actual value. The question is, what is this?