But the non-naturalist isn't a moral skeptic. He's a moral realist.

And no one is an essentialist anymore. It's like so yesterday.

I'm trying to make sense of it as well, and I don't know if I'm understanding it or just imposing some linguistic meaning = use philosophy into it. That is, what is any X other than a fluid set of non-essential criteria defined contextually?

A hat is thing you put on top of your head, but suppose it's a 5000 lb iron hat? I guess the putting on your head part is non-essential. And the same holds true for anything you say of the hat or of anything,. But that doesn't mean we don't know what hats are or that we don't know what anything is just because we reject essentialism as it pertains to definitions.

So, we can adjudicate what is the good, just as we can adjudicate what is a hat, and that holds true even though we have no essential element of either. I contend Moore still can provide specific reasons for why something is good, and those reasons are subject to debate and conclusions. If not, then he is saying "moral" is an empty concept, which is clearly not what he's saying.

If you want to say dictionaries have limited use because every word's meaning is contextualized, that is true, which can be taken to mean that terms generally are not fully defined, but that hardly means words have no meaning.

Hanover

Moore doesn't have a definition. As he says in the Principia Ethica:

‘Good,’ then, if we mean by it that quality which we assert to belong to a thing, when we say that the thing is good, is incapable of any definition, in the most important sense of that word. — Michael

He does have a definition of "the good" from what I quoted above, but he claims it is undefined because he says there is no essential component to it. He describes "the good" as having a variety of objectives, and so it is pluralistic, unlike saying the good = that which increases the most pleasure, which would posit a monistic, essentialist definition of "the good. " What Moore is saying is "the good" might include a variety of things, which may include pleasure and other objectives.

But to reject essentialism isn't to argue for meaninglessness or for intuitionism. It is to argue for contextualism. That is, the good is that which satisfies certain particular goals attendant to the circumstances and therefore based upon reason as to what you wish to accomplish under a given scenario.

And so when you ask this question:

Given that I believe that it is immoral to cause suffering, what follows if suffering is immoral and what follows if suffering is not immoral? — Michael

The answer is that the suffering you find immoral will not be moral if contextually it is not defined as moral. That is, if killing babies is moral and you find it immoral, you will be immoral if you don't kill babies, but that will require a rational basis for such killing to be moral under the circumstances at hand.

The consequence of doing wrong under this scenario is the same for the naturalist as the non-naturalist. One just has a simple equation defining the good. The other a fluid one context dependent.

Thoroughly offensive comments like this add to your charm.

It is in defining goodness in terms of some natural property – in this case, pleasure – that makes it an ethical naturalist theory. And then, according to Moore, deriving the normative claim that we ought pursue pleasure commits the naturalistic fallacy. — Michael

Moore's view is this:

"In applying this view, Moore gave it the form of what today is called “indirect” or “two-level” (Hare 1981) consequentialism. In deciding how to act, we should not try to assess individual acts for their specific consequences; instead, we should follow certain general moral rules, such as “Do not kill” and “Keep promises,” which are such that adhering to them will most promote the good through time. This policy will sometimes lead us not to do the act with the best individual outcome, but given our general propensity to error the policy’s consequences will be better in the long run than trying to assess acts one by one; however well-meaning, the latter attempt will be counterproductive (1903: 149–70/1993: 198–219. This indirect consequentialism had again been defended earlier, by Sidgwick and John Stuart Mill, but Moore gave it a very conservative form, urging adherence to the rules even in the face of apparently compelling evidence that breaking them now would be optimific. Principia Ethica made the surprising claim that the relevant rules will be the same given any commonly accepted theory of the good, for example, given either hedonism or Moore’s own ideal theory (1903: 158/1993: 207). This claim of extensional equivalence for different consequentialist views was not new; T.H. Green, F.H. Bradley, and McTaggart had all suggested that hedonism and ideal consequentialism have similar practical implications. But Moore was surely expressing the more plausible view when in Ethics he doubted that pleasure and ideal values always go together (1912: 234–39/1947: 144–47/1965: 100–02), and even when he accepted the equivalence claim he remained intensely interested in what he called “the primary ethical question of what is good in itself” (1903: 158, 26, 77/1993: 207, 78, 128). Like Green, Bradley, and McTaggart, he thought the central philosophical question is what explains why good things are good, i.e., which of their properties make them good. That was the subject of his most brilliant piece of ethical writing, Chapter 6 of Principia Ethica on “The Ideal.”

So he is a consequentialist, just making clear though that he doesn't what to take a very simple reducible definition of "the good" to be immediate pleasure like Bentham. He then goes on to explain. "The Ideal" to mean that which should be promoted (i.e. "the good ") is a number of things, and since it's not monistic, he somehow avoids being naturalistic. It's explained as:

"One of this chapter’s larger aims was to defend value-pluralism, the view that there are many ultimate goods. Moore thought one bar to this view is the naturalistic fallacy. He assumed, plausibly, that philosophers who treat goodness as identical to some natural property will usually make this a simple property, such as just pleasure or just evolutionary fitness, rather than a disjunctive property such as pleasure-or-evolutionary-fitness-or-knowledge. But then any naturalist view pushes us toward value-monism, or toward the view that only one kind of state is good (1903: 20; 1993: 72). Once we reject naturalism, however, we can see what Moore thought is self-evident: that there are irreducibly many goods. Another bar to value-pluralism is excessive demands for unity or system in ethics. Sidgwick had used such demands to argue that only pleasure can be good, since no theory with a plurality of ultimate values can justify a determinate scheme for weighing them against each other (1907: 406). But Moore, agreeing here with Rashdall, Ross, and others, said that “to search for ‘unity’ and ‘system,’ at the expense of truth, is not, I take it, the proper business of philosophy” (1903: 222/1993: 270). If intuition reveals a plurality of ultimate goods, an adequate theory must recognize that plurality."

My responses are this:

1. I think this gives short shrift to Mill. Mill's reference to happiness as being the objective of "the good" didn't at all suggest it was a reducible concept, but he was clear that happiness arose from a variety of factors and it was a holistic state that could not be achieved from just finding physical pleasure. I don't follow why Mill is a naturalist but Moore not.

2. Go back and re-respond to this here and explain why my response doesn't now apply, particularly to (b). Just plug in Moore's definition of morality into (b), and that offers a reason why it matters what you think is moral for a non-naturalist.

That would make my degree in Philosophy all the more impressive. — Michael

Good one.

Make me up a non-naturalst ethical theory.

Would an example be ethical itemizationism? That's the belief that something is bad if it appears on a random list of things we've itemized as bad.
This List of High Truths is accepted implicilitely.
There are no reasons why something is or isn't on the list and you can't determine any sort of consistency among the rules where you could figure out what additional rules may follow. It has no overriding theme either.

You can Google "ethical itemizationism" for more information on it, but you'll likely only pull up this post because this is its first appearance.

If this is a good example of ethical non-naturalism, and all other examples would follow similar trends, then I'd agree, ethical non-naturalism offers no reason to follow it.

I've lost count how many times the Palestinian areas have been built by outside money just for Israel to destroy the buildings as "terrorist strongholds". — ssu

My point remains that the usage of the terms "concentration camp" and "genocide" has been and continues to be used to create a moral equivalency argument between Israel and Nazi Germany. Acting as if those terms are just generic terms that can be used in all sorts of contexts of varying degrees is not taken seriously by anyone recognizing the context of upon which Israel was given statehood or by who resides in that land.

Meaning is use, and it's no coincidence that the language used to describe the Israeli response is intended to write an ironic and hypocritical narrative of the Jewish experience by comparing today's Israel to yesterday's Nazis. It's an argument of moral equivalence.

The terms bantered about here like genocide and concentration camps bear no resemblance to what those terms mean to Jews, and we cannot pretend they are not being used sardonically and intentionally to say "you escaped persecution only to be like those you escaped."

This is the Gaza "concentration camp" prior to the recent war:



I could share photos of Nazi concentration camps, but I'll do my ancestors the respect not to trot those out. They were death camps, designed for the separating, forcing into labor, gassing, and burning of an entire race. But you can compare the ways "concentration camp" is used and decide if it's appropriate to have a single word describe both situations.

As to genocide, this is what genocide looks like:



That's just Europe. Over 900,000 Jews have been expelled from the Middle East since WW2.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world

The Palestinian population has increased 9 fold in Israel since 1948.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-05/13/c_138055503.htm#:~:text=%22The%20Palestinian%20population%20in%20the,1948%2C%22%20said%20the%20report.

This is why we asshats quibble over your terms.

Is the above giving incorrect information? — frank

That deals more specifically with health insurance companies, and I can't speak as much to it. It's a very different industry, where quibbles over codings, limits over amounts paid for certain benefits, and the fine print in the policy come to play.

There is a different analysis when you're referencing 3rd party claims (i.e. when I sue you and try to seek recovery from your insurer (i.e. I am a third party to the contract)) versus 1st party claims (where I am seeking recovery under my own contract). The latter becomes complicated by the fact that arguments ensue over what you contracted for. It's not that common that the argument in the 3rd party dispute is over what the contract says. It is common in 1st party claims where someone is sitting there reading you your policy and telling you what you get.

Health insurers tend to be highly regulated in terms of the premium increases they can charge, so they have to reduce benefit payouts as much as possible to survive, but, as you know, those premiums rise annually. Health insurers are not subject to significant litigation like auto and premises carriers are, but they are in a constant battle to reduce benefits and to fight doctors over what they will pay for the services they render.

That's a whole nother ball of wax. It's the reason Obama made his effort, but that whole industry has its struggles, which I'm sure you're aware. There were counties in Georgia where no one would offer health insurance, although the state intervened and worked something out. But yeah, dealing with health insurers is a nightmare, but that whole industry is dysfunctional.

I understand what you're saying, and you've opened my eyes to what you have to contend with. But are you telling me it's not true that insurance companies try to avoid the obligations they've entered into with people by allowing things to play out in a courtroom? Are you saying there's nobody at the insurance company who is trained to deny claims and then see what happens? My experience is that you have to call them back and threaten to get a lawyer. Sometimes you have to get a lawyer to make them pay what they've contracted to pay (this is with health insurance). Tell me that this doesn't happen, and that this isn't part of what you do. But if you tell me that, could you also explain how you've avoided being involved in that? — frank

I'm not vouching for either claims adjusters, attorneys, judges, or juries. All do all sorts of wrong things.

Do they train the adjusters not to return calls and take risks with the hopes something will screw up the claimant, I doubt that. There is no loyalty among adjusters, management, legal departments, or really employees generally, so no corporation is going to formalize a training process that instructs how to engage in bad faith dealings. That is, even if management decided it would be best to be underhanded, if they teach you that, when you quit a week later, you get to expose the company to all they've been doing.

This has nothing to do with morality. It has to do with self-interest. You're suggesting that a multi-billion dollar insurance company with tens of thousands of employees might actually teach Billy Bob from Dothan, Alabama how to cheat from his cubicle. That's investing a whole lot of trust in Billy Bob. Billy Bob becomes, as they say in the insurance industry, a significant business hazard.

Are you asking if Billy Bob might not be an even tempered decision maker who might get into a petty arguments and make people's lives difficult? I'm sure that happens and my guess is that management would not want to see that happen and then Billy Bob becomes his manager's problem.

Insurance companies make their money by investing the premium dollars into the market. They act as a bank. As long as their return exceeds their cost to obtain their money, they profit. If for every $1 collected, they, for example, pay out $1.03 in expenses, but they get a 6% return in the market, they profit, even when operating at a loss. That is, they paid 3% for their money and they invested it at 6%.

Some of these carriers have 10 of millions of policies in force with billions in premiums, so their actual dollar profits are astronomical. As claims payouts increase, premiums rise to offset that, and as long as all competitors within the market are subject to the same forces, they're all dealing with the same profit margins. I'm telling you this so that you can understand that quibbles here and there over claims payments are not going to significantly affect profits. If the S&P drops, then that will really matter.

But, yes, if Company A has claims payments of a significantly higher percentage than Company B, Company B will see higher profits, but that's doubtfully the result of bad faith dealings by Company B in keeping claims payouts low, but it probably to do with a systemic problem in Company B's claims process where they either are inefficient, have bloated expenses, or they have a culture of over-paying claims due to risk aversion.

In other words if a company is losing profits, they probably first look to their investments and their expenses, as opposed to issuing a decree to reduce claims payouts.

Anyway, this idea that the way insurance companies profit is by hiring a bunch of cheap motherfuckers who screw people up envisions a very unsophisticated business world.

At this point, I think you're not capable of focusing on a specific individual that you've hurt. You just refuse to accept that you have done this. All the explanation of the "trick plays" tells me you have. You need an epiphany. — frank

What you need to understand is that the system does not work if there are not equally passionate people on both sides of the case. That is how our justice system works, without which we would not have justice as we define it. The word "verdict" means to speak the truth and that is the role of the jury. Through advocating for both sides, that enables that verdict to occur.

What would be monstorous (and unethical, and likely disbarrable) would be for me to abandon my duty to zealously defend my client with the thought that I can transcend the system and do what I happen to think is fair. If someone is screwed, the screwing is by the judge or jury because they are the ones who entered a judgment or verdict, not me.

And the medical bills are inflated and fabricated often times, meaning that if the doctor charges $10,000, at settlement time, he'll accept $5,000, which then offers a windfall to everyone else. In fact, there's an entire industry of doctors who work on a lien, meaning they perform all services without requiring payment until after settlement is reached. The bills they create are intentionally inflated well beyond what they ever expect to recover. It's all a crazy shell game. There are also financing companies that lend money against the expected verdict, charging usurious rates. You'd be amazed how many hands are involved when a settlement is finally reached, owing largely to the fact that sums of money are so large and the profit margins so large that many people get paid.

You just see a single deserving woman being jerked around and you think it's unfair, but she is working within a system that is very sophisticated with a trained attorney working for her with all sorts of ins and outs you have no idea about. If you have this thought that people get in wrecks, go to their trusted family doctor, get a prescription, maybe get few rounds of physical therapy and then the insurance company tells them to fuck off, you are mistaken. Those don't decribe the claims that have driven this system.

That is indeed one of my other gripes with ethical non-naturalism. It states what morality is not but seems to lack a substantive positive definition. — Michael

That's not just a gripe. That's a conversation ender. If you have an ethical position that lacks a definition of "ethical," then why should it come as a surprise that the position makes morality irrelevant?

Can you give me any example of an ethical system that claims itself non-naturalistic? Divine command theory, utilitarianism, Kantianism, virtue ethics, relativism, emotivism, or anything? If you can't identify the theory that's being shown to be irrelevant, then I'm not following what we've accomplished.

My guess is that any theory identified is going to be shown to be naturalistic at some level, but I'm curious if there's one theory that stands out as particularly non-naturalistic.

This is how morality works: If there was one single time when you attempted to or succeeded in screwing someone over, you have done something monstrous. That person was struggling, and you either tried to make it worse, or you succeeded in doing so. It doesn't matter that it was legal for you to do this. It was a terrible thing to do to someone else, and it wasn't the "system" hurting them. It was you. You could have done something else with your talents, but instead you worked it out in your mind that using the court system to intimidate and harass someone was ok. — frank

And if there were a single instance where an injured person overstated his injuries and recovered as a result, then that too was monsterous. I guess.

The whole system is a contrivance. The idea that my efforts reduced someone's pain and suffering from $100,000 to $10,000 can hardly be said to be immoral because that would suggest that $100,000 were moral by some objective standard. If you're interested, and I doubt you are, you can research the history of pain and suffering damages from their colonial roots to how they were advanced by Plaintiff's lawyers when automobiles arrived on the scene along with auto insurance. That is, pain and suffering damages as we known them today are a historical event arising out of cars, claims, and this new idea of insurance for the common man. Before that, they were a rarity.

From there, these attorneys needed to get paid, and their clients lacked the funds and it would do no good just to secure the medical bills, future treatment costs, and lost wages because the injured person would still be out of pocket his attorneys fees that he could not afford to front. The pain and suffering damages added a pad to that in order to pay the attorneys and greatly increase the amount of the payout. And that welcomed in the contingency fee, so that the attorney could receive 33% to 40% of the recovery, making it very lucrative to overstate the injuries as that would benefit the lawyer as well. That is, the pain and suffering are the attorney fees as much as they represent any actual pain or suffering.

And from there it became known that juries were computing pain and suffering damages based upon the amount of actual damages, meaning that if there were $100,000 in medical bills, the jury would award more pain and suffering than if there were $10,000 in bills, so much so that a direct statistical correlation has been shown.

And this ushered in sending Plaintiff's to doctors that worked closely with the attorneys who would inflate the medical bills beyond recognition and would peform procedures that were not needed. It's amazing to me how only the at-fault party seems to avoid injury in these claims I have. That is to say, if you incentivize conduct financially, it will happen. That's what capitalism is all about. If you get more treatment, you get more money, ergo, more treatment.

All of this is to say you can't evaluate morality in such a system except maybe to question the system. It's like saying a football team was immoral because it threw a trick play and won the game. If it's all a game, it's all a game. You may want it to be something else, but there are billions of dollars driving this industry and if you think it about something other than the billions of dollars, it's just because you don't know.

If I believe that eating meat is immoral, and eating meat is immoral, then I won' t eat meat.
If I believe that eating meat is immoral, but eating meat is not immoral, then I won't eat meat. — Michael

How do you define "immoral" in this sentence so I can substitute those words in where you've use "moral." It's not clear what you're referring to, especially in light of the non-naturalistic definition you're trying to use.

For example, if I used "that which causes more societal unhappiness than not" for the definition of immoral, we'd end up with this:

1. If (a) I do not believe eating meat causes (b) more societal unhappiness than not, and (c) if I believe morality is what one ought to do , then (d) I will eat meat.

2. If (a) I believe eating meat causes (b) more societal unhappiness than not , and (c) if I believe morality is what one ought to do , (d) then I will eat meat.

(a) is a statement of belief, with 1(a) being negative and 2(b) being positive.
(b) defines morality.
(c) is a statement of what you believe the purpose of (b) is.
(d) is your decision.

1(d) logically follows but 2(d) does not.

So which of (b), (c), and (d) do you not agree with? And, to the extent you don't agree with one, what do you substitue in to correct it? I beleive the insertion of (c) is what @Banno was getting at, indicating it was an assumed premise that was being ignored. I was focusing on (b) because I don't really know what it means in the context of non-naturalism, but there has to be something placed in (b) in order for this conversation to make sense. Otherwise you're left with the undefined term of "morality."

He was trying to keep his client from having to pay out what they owed. This lawyer does this everyday. It's what he does for a living. He tries to screw people over. — frank

What each side does is try to represent the interests of the other, regardless of whether you think their interests are worth protecting. If that lawyer didn't try to reduce the liability of his clients, then his clients would end up paying amounts that were beyond what they owed.

The caricature views aren't interesting, where the insurance company is painted as Satan and the Plaintiffs as these helpless figures getting abused at every turn. The other side being that Plaintiff's attorneys are all ambulance chasers and predators trying to extract the insurance money set aside for true injuries. That you think you can pick one of these sides and declare yourself a more moral person and ignore the not so subtle nuance that you will be necessarily aligning yourself with some pretty unsavory characters regardless of which side you pick just means you're unfamiliar with the territory.

But just to the basics: The American system of justice is an adversarial system by design. That is not the only possible choice, but that's what it has. That means that you have Person A versus Person B (quite literally) and each advocates for their side. They present their case in a way that most advantages their client (and calling Granny a greedy bitch probably will backfire, by the way), and a neutral (a judge or jury) hears the evidence and renders a verdict. It places trust in these neutrals to sort out the truth and be fair. This means that if that lawyer who you think is paid to screw people decides to have a nice streak and drop his defense, the other attorney will use that to increase the recovery beyond what is due. That is why it would be unethical for either side not to be zealous.

And there is another side to the Granny equation, and that might likely be some person who just didn't see the red light, made a mistake, and caused injury. He's not a terrible person and in need of a defense. You may find this hard to believe, but sometimes we have Grannys that haven't been able to turn their neck for years, have had arthritis up and down their spine for decades, and now this bumper tap is blamed for all their problems. Two and half years later, after orthopedists and radiologists have been deposed, the jury returns the obvious verdict that the bumper tap didn't cause these problems.

That's what I see every day, much more than the true injuries. The reason for that is because the vast majority of cases settle, with most real injury claims being settled prior to going into suit. I will only see the denied claims where suit has been filed. The insurance companies don't make money by denying legitimate claims just to have juries ring them up later. Their own self interest dictates resolution of the real claims.

And with this I could launch into the tort reform movement and why I do think it is necessary. The money that is being protected is the money of the commons whether you wish to think of insurance that way or not. That money does not come from the sky. It's the social security system of private enterprise, with each premium dollar paid a tax on those who seek stability in their lives in times of financial crisis. You don't have this sort of system in more socialist leaning countries because the government takes care of the medical bills and lost wages, but no one screams it is unfair when those systems don't hand out millions of dollars in recovery in addition to that, as if that is what fairness is about.

My impression is that sometimes you hurt people who don't deserve to be hurt, and these people you've hurt don't have the resources your clients do. Do I have it all wrong? Are the people you defend against all rascals? — frank

Yes, you have it exactly wrong.

The Plaintiff's bar is well funded, and you don't pay if you don't recover. People aren't wanting for representation. You live in the US right?

And no, my clients aren't always in the right. Was that a real question? You were wondering if I ever had a case with bad facts?

This conversation is pretty stupid btw. It started with a provocation along the lines of "how can anyone defend a company?" and now you're asking how broke people hire lawyers and if I ever had a bad case.

Type in "I've been hurt and need a lawyer" in Google and you can live chat with someone 24/7 and they can fill you in on everything you need to know.

If someone sues you though and you need representation, don't call your insurance company and don't have someone like me represent you. You should just roll over and die because you're above all that and that injured person has the right to everything you have.

Is that what you're saying? — frank

Is that what you're saying I said?

When you first described to me what you do for a living, I was a little shocked because you seemed kind of nonchalant about it. To me, it sounded horrible, though. You stand with a large company against people who are struggling. I didn't wonder: how does Hanover not see that what he's doing is against some objective moral code? I wondered how you sleep at night. To me, morality is visceral. What is it to you? — frank

What would be immoral would be not to represent someone's interests in an adversarial system and to think yourself the judge when you're an advocate and allow your client to go unprotected.

I suppose you might think every criminal guilty and so the prosecutor is the only moral person in the courtroom or perhaps you think they're all innocent, so the defense attorney is the only moral person. Or maybe you've thought deeper than that. Or maybe not.

I'm not a civil defense attorney just by coincidence. It's a passion of mine. That I don't hold to your naive view that every person who comes before the court asking for compensation fully deserves whatever they want doesn't make me immoral. It makes me realize the crazy racket the American civil justice can be if left unguarded.

We buy and sell pain and suffering like it's a commodity. I always like having the recent immigrant on my jury who is still ignorant to the nonsense we accept as normal.

It's a conversation for another day, but not one where I'd have to search very hard for examples of individuals obtaining benefits undeserved. Whatever limited view you have of the courtrooms I see every day doubtfully will add much to my opinion.

I get the feeling you don't know what innocence and guilt are. All you know is that you ought to because you ought to? Hmm. — frank

I do think @Banno correctly noted your allusion to the original sin myth. Not that the religious story can't be correct metaphor, but you do have to pause if you find yourself reciting the mythology of your culture to ask it's valid of or if its just bias.

It's not the case that we stumble about making countless serious ethical violations until we right ourselves. Most make missteps now and again, but we're mostly morally abiding folks.

I can't get into the whole we're damaged goods in need of salvation or some such. That's someone else's myth. I've got my plate full figuring out my own.

We only try the criminal for what she did, not what she will do. — frank

But the other 99% looked forward and didn't ever commit the crime because they knew it immoral.

@Michael

I'm not entirely sure what we discussed in this thread. I'm willing to admit it might be me in that my assumptions are so strong I can't see where the issue lies.

I may not have a full grasp of what non- naturalism is. The article I cited earlier offered so many objections and distinctions between the various forms, it's hard to say what it is generically.

What is an example of non-naturalist ethical theory?

If you believe that it is immoral to eat meat then it makes no difference if your belief is true or false. — Michael

The same holds true regarding the law. If I believe it's illegal to eat meat and it's not, but everyone acts like it is, and so you sit in a jail cell for having eaten meat, it becomes illegal by our response. That is just to say that legality is based upon people's beliefs, and it's not necessary for a law to be written for reference, but just because it is written and that is what assures one of it's illegality, it is not the writing that makes it illegal. It is our belief that does that.

If you want to say that the law is a seperate entity that exists outside our belief, as if it is a thing in reality that gains substance by its acceptance, the same can be said of morality. That would be the way to describe a moral realism.

All of this is to say (1) there are consequences to breaking moral codes, (2) the distinction between moral codes and legal codes is idiosyncratic to secular societies and not some metaphysical distinction, and (3) the truth value of a claim can be based upon a social norm that is reducible to nothing more than an idea or belief.

"It is wrong to kill babies" is therefore no different for our analysis here than saying "It is illegal to kill babies," and the truth value of either claim is determined the same way in both, which is to refer to beliefs. And even if you wish to elevate these claims beyond beliefs into a real thing in the actual universe, it's no more or less easy to do that to morality or to laws.

Assume that it is immoral to eat meat. I eat meat. What are the practical consequences?
Assume that it is not immoral to eat meat. I eat meat. What are the practical consequences?

Any practical consequences in the first case are the same as any practical consequences in the second case. As such, whether or not it is immoral to eat meat makes no practical difference. — Michael

Change the word "moral" to "legal." Now does it matter? One would expect more people to eat meat if it were legal (or moral) and the consequence would as to how many animals were killed and eaten.

Morality affects people's behaviors and it affects people's responses to you. So, if you it were legal to kill babies, it would change all sorts of things than if it were illegal. Why is it different with morality just because the penalties for violations are not formalized as they are in legal systems?

The idea of seperating the ethical from the legal isn't universal.

No, I'm just asking a question of non-naturalists: why be moral? It seems to me that if non-naturalism is true then moral facts are of no practical import and so I wonder why they'd be motivated to be moral. — Michael

I'm trying to understand what you're getting at I guess.

A divine command theorist would believe it's wrong to murder for some over-riding reason, which would be that the universe would be better in some meaningful way if the rule were followed. That they might tell you they don't know in what way because it's a mystery doesn't make them a non-naturalist because it is nature that is improved by the act.

And even with divine command theory there is the whole argument about whether God can do evil, which means the good is the good regardless of what God says, so it's not like God can decree baby killing God good and so you'd be right to reject such a decree.

I just think non-naturalism is untenable because I don't think it logically works. Is it to mean that baby murdering might be good even if all physical evidence is to the contrary and there's no way to disprove it by looking at outcome?

With your Muslim friend, I must assume she thinks her lesbianism is immoral because it is disrupting something in the universe, right?

Actually, I heard about the need for hatred from you for the first time. I was quite taken aback.
But some things started to make sense. — baker

I'm going to give you a chance not to be antisemitic and to clarify yourself.

First, Jews have no rule about hating their enemies. It has to do with responses to evil generally, but, like I said, if you want to know the Jewish rules on such things, Google it instead of spouting ignorance.

Second, what you're implying is that what now makes sense to you is that the response in Israel is motivated by Jewish law, meaning your condemnation of Israel is in fact a condemnation of Judaism. If that is your view, and I've read this correctly, please tell me so that I know that. Could be a misread by me, so clarify if I've missed it.

Is even possible to say something about Judaism without the Jews feeling offended? — baker

If your implication is that Jews are too fucked up to respond appropriately to comments because that's what Jews are like, let me know that so I can be clear where you stand.

In any event, when you say something offensive, expect it to be taken as offensive.

only it would be clear what "moral" means, in any particular instance. Hating your enemies (the persons), like the Jews do? Stoning infidels, like some Muslims do? — baker

Tread more carefully in your attempts to describe Jewish theology so as not to appear anti-Jewish. I don't trust that your description of the way Jewish theology describes evil is entirely a misunderstanding, but I am more convinced it's a desire to cast the religion in a bad light.

You are not asked to hate your enemy. Forgiveness is central to the religion, but I won't waste my time with a discussion of halacha with you. Instead, I'll just tell you to end your Judaism bashing.

course for her the choice is more difficult because she believes that she will be punished for doing wrong, but for the non-religious ethical non-naturalist, there's no such punishment. And so my question stands; what is the motivation to be moral? — Michael

In Judaism, there is no punishment for not being moral either, so why should a Jew be moral? Even for a Christian, you can murder babies and go to heaven if you eventually accept Jesus, so why be moral?

I also think it's possible to choose to be immoral, as in, I don't think pedophiles necessarily think they're moral or that your friend thinks she's moral.

If you arrive at a logical basis to explain your basis for morality, like say the categorical imperative, then you would be moral regardless of measurable consequence, but you must believe that is the proper expression of humanity or something along those lines.

Is your main point here just that you think non-naturalism doesn't work and you're therefore a naturalist consequentialist when it comes to ethics?

Yes, and what if you are absolutely sure that something you enjoy is wrong and something you're disgusted by is right? Would you change your behaviour to reflect your moral knowledge, or would you decide to not give a damn about what's right or wrong and continue as you were?

If it could be proved beyond all doubt that there was a God, that divine command theory is true, and that we have a moral obligation to kill infidels then I still wouldn't kill infidels because I don't want to be a killer. Morality be damned. — Michael

That's with everything. If you told me that my cat was a dog and insisted that God said the cat was a dog, I'd still say it was a cat. If you told me you had some special access to what a dog was and that I just couldn't see it, it'd take some convincing, but I can't say I'd always stubbornly insist to my view of cats and dogs regardless of the proof, but it's doubtful you'd change my mind about dogs and cats.

So it goes with murdering babies. I'm pretty clear on my moral dictates and that excludes murdering babies, and I can't imagine you'd convince me otherwise, but it's theoretically possible.

My guess is that there are some right now who insist upon their moral right to own their children and do with them as they may. I'd like to think they could be convinced otherwise, but I wouldn't want them to say "morality be damned" if they received convincing evidence but just didn't like it.

Just like I think my observations about cats and dogs are pretty much beyond question, I think that too of baby murdering, but I'm having trouble with the epistimological certainty you're trying to argue.

But there is a way to deal with the inequalities and be peaceful & honest.
What is the way? — YiRu Li

An ethical system.

Augustine, obviously a Catholic, was of the tradition of a specific heiracrchy having special authority to interpret scripture and understand its meaning. Those who held otherwise were a threat to that concept.

And so what followed was the Protestant revolution, which did in fact challenge that tenant, specifically holding that the common man had the authority to interpret and understand the Bible without an intervening human authority (like a priest or the Pope)..

https://theconversation.com/on-the-reformations-500th-anniversary-remembering-martin-luthers-contribution-to-literacy-77540#:~:text=Luther%20argued%20that%20ordinary%20people,God%20speak%20read%20Holy%20Scripture.%E2%80%9D

This authority to interpret required that greater numbers be literate and that the Bible itself be available for publication. None of this requres that the interpretative scheme be a four corners literalism, but it would allow just as well for metaphorical interpretations depending upon the intellect of the reader.

The question of when the brand of Christian fundamentalism we all know about today arose isn't debatable. It's just a matter of historical record. It is true it is a reactionary position, where inerrancy of text and simplistic, literal meanings are accepted in response to perceived threats by science eliminating the need for religion, but it is not true that this system existed since the time the ancient Hebrews first got hold of the consolidated Bible we now recognize.

This article pretty clearly sets out the history: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christian-fundamentalism

That is, the thesis that the world accepted a literal translation of the Bible up through modern times until science began posing threats to it, and then that resulted in people loosening the literalism of the interpretation is not what happened.

What happened was that religion was relied upon for all sorts of answers and the people who read and interpreted the Bible were highly creative (as in extremely creative) in using the Bible, passed down traditions, other writings, prevailing contemporary philosophies, logical reasoning, and whatever else they had available in figuring out how to run their worlds. As secularized views began to prevail, a particular reactionary branch of Christianity emerged that began demanding simplisitic literalism where any Tom, Dick, or Harry could read the words on the page and fully know that it meant only exactly what those words said.

Where the mistake is made is in thinking that these Christian Fundamentalists are comprised of the true primitive Christians, truly as they began and have existed for thousands of years. That might be the narrative they would like to advance in order to appear most authhetic, but it's just not the case. They are a modern reactionary group that presents a very limited and simplistic view of the Bible.

So you claim that the church hasn't changed its standpoints based on what science has found? Or do you claim that these standpoints merely changed from one figurative interpretation to another equally figurative interpretation — mentos987

What I claim is that the research shows the literalist tradition you reference is a modern invention and the way the ancient users of the biblical text is not as you've said.

You can read the articles or not, but your general opinions are no better than the information they are based upon, and that information is in fact very limited.

think you can deduce who won that war without opening any history books. Looking at the current flag of the US is a strong indication. — mentos987

And there might be more to learn about the war than looking at the flag.

I couldn't care any less about religion. I'm just saying your analysis is wrong, largely because you think you can determine history by just figuring out what you think likely happened instead of looking at what is documented.

You don't figure out who won the Revolutionary War by thinking about it. You look up what happened.

I am pretty sure the creation tale was only recently (100 years ago) accepted to be a figurative interpretation after science established that the 7 days of creation did not add up. There are many more examples like this so the trend is clearly going from literal towards figurative interpretations. — mentos987

Your assumption is wrong.

Figurative interpretations has been accepted since ancient times:

https://biologos.org/common-questions/how-was-the-genesis-account-of-creation-interpreted-before-darwin

Additionally:

"Biblical literalism first became an issue in the 18th century,[18] enough so for Diderot to mention it in his Encyclopédie.[19] Karen Armstrong sees "[p]reoccupation with literal truth" as "a product of the scientific revolution".[20]"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism

You need to look at the scholarship and not just surmise that since literal views appear outdated and scientific views current, then history must bear out that figurative views arose as the result of scientific advancement.

History is whatever it is, regardless of whether it follows what you think should have logically flowed. That you just keep saying what you think instead of looking at the research indicates you're not interested in taking your post seriously.

In both worlds we believe that it is immoral to murder babies. — Michael

Why are we unable to determine right and wrong in the non-naturalist world?

There would be a significant observable difference between living in that world and living in the world we're in now. — Michael

There would be an observable difference in either world. What would not be observable is the morality of the event.

I could tell if babies were murdered in a non-naturalistic ethical world as well, and I'd feel the same suffering in either. I'd just not link that observation of suffering to morality.

If you told me baby murdering were ethical, I guess I'd have to murder babies even if it made me sad to wrestle them from the hands of their mothers and dash them upon rocks.

If ethical non naturalism is true then it seems to be that whether or not our moral beliefs are true has no practical import. Our lives go on the same. — Michael

Why would it be different if ethical naturalism were the case? It might just be that murdering babies is moral in such a possible world.

I don't take non-naturalism to mean there is no reason for its immorality, just that whatever reason there is, it's not a natural one.

I used to tell my kids they were free to choose to get in the car to go to school or they could choose to have me throw them in there.

Freedom exists, but within varying parameters.

Why does it matter if we're wrong? It makes no practical difference to our lives. — Michael

This assumes a consequentialist justification is necessary for morality, which means your beef isn't against non-naturalism, but it's with deontolgy.

If the presumption is that we ought be moral as a matter of duty without regard to outcome, then you either assume you are a royal subject subservient to a higher master or you have a view that somehow fidelity to morality results in some very distant alignment of the universe that is of a higher order.

The latter is consequentialist, but it places concern for that consequence beyond the scope of any meaningful control, so just because it doesn't matter to our lives in the here and now isn't critical.

But let us assume consequences ultimately do determine morality, then you ought kill babies if that is moral, regardless of your confusion caused by your inability to see that distantly.

if ethical non-naturalism is true then these are two possible worlds:

1. It is immoral to harm others
2. It is not immoral to harm others

Assuming that in either case we believe that it is immoral to harm others, does it even matter which world we're in? — Michael

Ethical non-naturalism isn't at all a clear theory, so you'd have to define how you're using it to make sense of this. There seems little consensus on what it means. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/

Regardless, I think we can agree on some fundamental aspects of it: it is a form of realism, meaning morality exists outside of the observer, and morals are not reducible to physical properties.

This leads to certain epistemological issues, namely, how can we know them if they lack physical properties. This leads some to a form of intuitionism, where it is said the observer just recognizes right and wrong. Regardless of why a person believes something moral under non-naturalism, that doesn't change the truth value of the moral proposition.

That is, under moral non-naturalism if I say that murdering babies is ethical and I truly believe it is, the truth of that statement is subject to the non-natural reality (which itself is the most complexing concept in this theory), not my belief.

As to your specific question I quoted above, yes, it matters if we think we shouldn't harm others if we should because we'd be wrong if we didn't.

Your hypothetical is bizarre to be sure in that it hypothesizes what we accept as wrong and assume we're wrong about our wrongness.

Keep in mind as well that under non-naturalism, we're not saying the person dictates the truth, but there must therefore be some underlying non-natural cause resulting in the morality of the event. Just as we might think a flower red in the natural world based upon our eyesight, it is the flower itself that is causing that, not us.

I don't believe non-naturalism suggests no cause and effect, but simply just no natural physicality.

So, if I am in society A and we all believe slavery right, we are all wrong. The naturalist/ non-naturalist issue plays no role in that. If we think slavery wrong and we're wrong, then we'd be wrong not to enslave as well.

Some quibbles.

The thesis that the ancients began with a literal acceptance of the text and moved from it as difficulties arose isn't correct. The text was always modified by interpretation and by the adoption of other sources as authoritative.

Strict four corners literalism is a modern invention.

Keep in mind as well that the literal meaning of the words isn't always clear. In your example, the commandment is not that you should not kill, but it's that you not murder. The Hebrew term recognized different sorts of killing, with war killings not being "murder" as used in that commandment.

The Hebrew word for honor is an interesting one as well, and one you used in your OP. The term doesn't even require that you love your parent. It's been interpreted to mean you are to care for them when they're old.

Your analysis of 10 of the commandments is also arbitrary based upon the way Christianity has used the Bible, but.there are actually 613 commandments, ranging from not combining linen and wool in your clothing, to when you must sacrifice a red heifer, to how you should marry your brother's wife if he dies.

The variations and meaning of the decalogue can be reviewed here, pointing out the text is far from clear or consistent with regard to these commandments:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/decalogue

As to the question of the priority of the decalogue to other biblical commandments in non-Christian traditions, see https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/127235/are-the-ten-commandments-more-important-than-other-mitzvot

This is to say, I don't see how one could extract a single over-riding principle from "the commandments" without deciding which ones you were going to look at and which you were going to prioritize.

What i would say you have arrived at is a variation in the Christian concept of love, which you describe as a lessening of misery, but it seems most consistent with that tradition. https://groundworkonline.com/episodes/love-the-guiding-principle-for-christian-living

The Covid evidence base was tricky because it was a new element. I hate to admit to a little bit of conspiracy theory but I do think that on some level the time of lockdown was used as a basis for bringing in policy changes, in England anyway. So much has changed in a way which seems to be about making the gulf between the rich and the poor greater. — Jack Cummins

Interesting perspective. The more wealthy thought the opposite in that they felt the Covid regulations were meant to shake up the status quo and bring about more communal policies.

I can't say what the motivations of the policy makers actually were, but typically the most vulnerable always get the short end of the stick regardless of intentions. Those adept at figuring out a system typically do so regardless of how it gets set up.