Thank you for this rich reply. I see more clearly now how you’re situating Kant’s “noumenon” inside the fabric of phenomenality itself - turning the supposed “otherness” of reality-in-itself into what you call givenness. That does help explain why phenomenology insists that we don’t need to posit some unreachable metaphysical substrate; the phenomenon is already the site of verification.

But here’s where I still feel some tension. If noumena are reinterpreted as “the mystery of appearance,” are we actually dissolving the distinction between appearance and reality, or are we simply redescribing it in a way that keeps philosophy “within the field” of what is given? In other words: does phenomenology abolish the metaphysical question, or only defer it?

Your remarks on emergence were also illuminating. I like the idea that “all is equi-derivative,” and that paradigm shifts in science are themselves a kind of metaphorical emergence. Still, I’m left wondering: if all emergence is intra-paradigmatic and metaphorical, doesn’t that undermine the very notion of an independent reality that science aims to describe? Physics then becomes not so much about “what the world is” but about “how our descriptions evolve.” That seems coherent, but it sounds close to a kind of conceptual idealism.

So maybe my question back to you is: do you think phenomenology, in the end, commits us to giving up on scientific realism as a metaphysical claim? Or is there still room in your view to say that physics, while mediated by paradigms, does latch onto structures of the world that exist whether or not we describe them?

There's no criteria for testing which of your experiences are of something real and which are false, for instance, drug induced, right? — frank

You may be right that there’s no absolute criterion. Every experience, whether sober perception or drug-induced vision, arrives through the same subjective channel. The difference is usually practical rather than metaphysical: some experiences cohere with others in stable, intersubjective ways, while others clash and collapse under scrutiny. But that coherence doesn’t prove we’ve accessed “reality itself,” only that we’ve settled on a framework that works for human purposes.

In that sense, the line between “real” and “false” experiences may be fuzzier than we like to admit. What we call “real” might just mean “reliably integrated into our form of life,” while “false” means “fails to integrate.” That’s not proof that reality-in-itself is off-limits, but it does suggest that our ordinary tests are pragmatic rather than metaphysical.

Why wouldn't the murder of 80 billion sentient land organisms and 1 to 3 trillion sentient aquatic organisms per year by non-vegans and for non-vegans be morally wrong when it is possible to make vegan choices which prevent so much pain and death?

Thank you, that’s a really thoughtful response. I like your idea that “reality-in-itself is not a thing” but rather a way of speaking about aspects, limits, and frontiers. The pulsar example is helpful, because it shows how what seems mysterious and “beyond us” can eventually be integrated into our conceptual framework without invoking any separate ontological realm.

Still, I wonder: if we treat “reality-in-itself” as simply “what resists explanation until new concepts arrive,” doesn’t that risk reducing it to nothing more than the horizon of human cognition? In that case, the notion stops doing the metaphysical work Kant meant for it, and becomes more of a pragmatic placeholder. Do you think that’s an adequate way to interpret the tradition, or is something lost when we set aside the stronger claim that something exists independently of our ways of knowing?

On your last point, I agree that philosophers often overgeneralize. But if “reality-in-itself” and “being-in-itself” are different, as you suggest, how would you articulate the difference without collapsing one into epistemology and the other into ontology? What criteria let us say: “this is about reality” vs. “this is about being”? Or is the best we can do to recognize that the distinction is heuristic rather than hard and fast?

Is there any way to know for sure what is right and what is wrong?
— Truth Seeker

Observations on the circumstances with evidence, reasoning and logical analysis on the case are some tools we can use in knowing right and wrong. — Corvus

Vegans say that veganism is right and non-veganism is wrong. Non-vegans say non-veganism is right and veganism is wrong. They can't both be right. How do we decide whether veganism is right or wrong?

Thank you for the detailed response. I think I follow your point that science always already operates within experience, and that perception is not an afterthought to objects but inseparable from them - the “perception-of-the-peak IS the peak.” That’s a powerful corrective to the picture of brains as if they were somehow standing outside of experience, receiving inputs like a machine.

But here’s what I’m struggling with: if everything reduces to the playing field of experience, how do we avoid collapsing into a kind of idealism? You say it’s not “all in the head,” but once we deny any perspective outside experience, what secures the distinction between the cup itself and my experience of the cup? Isn’t there a risk that “ontological foundations” become just redescriptions of phenomenology?

Also, I’m not sure I fully grasp your critique of emergence. You suggest that calling subjective experience an “emergent property” is incoherent, because everything we can talk about is an emergent property. But doesn’t that simply mean “emergence” is a relational notion? Temperature emerges from molecules, but molecules emerge from atoms, and so on. If experience emerges from brain states, why isn’t that just one more layer in the same explanatory pattern, rather than a category mistake?

In other words, does your view amount to saying: experience is foundational, and any talk of emergence must be subordinated to that? If so, what does that mean for scientific realism? Can we still say that physics tells us something true about the world, or only that it gives us a useful way of describing how experiences hang together?

I appreciate your honesty about not being entirely sure what “reality-in-itself” means - that’s partly why I asked the question, since the term itself is slippery. Kant framed it as noumenon, that which exists independently of our forms of cognition. But, as you point out, every example we can give (light spectra, bird magnetoreception, etc.) still relies on human conceptual frameworks to describe it. So maybe “reality-in-itself” always risks being a placeholder for “what we don’t yet know how to grasp.”

Your examples show how science extends perception beyond its native limits, which suggests that even if we begin with projection, careful cross-checking can reveal where we’ve mistaken appearance for reality. Still, I wonder: do those successes give us reason to think we are asymptotically approaching reality-in-itself, or only that we are continually refining the human image of the world?

On the second issue, I like your thought that “reality does not equal existence.” That helps explain why “reality-in-itself” and “being-in-itself” might not be identical. The first emphasizes the independence of what is (an epistemic concern: what exists beyond our categories?), while the second stresses sheer givenness without relation (an ontological concern: what is apart from consciousness?). Perhaps they are two faces of the same riddle, but one seen through the lens of knowing, the other through the lens of being.

Do you think it’s coherent to maintain that these distinctions are useful heuristics even if, in practice, we can never step outside cognition to test them? Or do you lean toward collapsing them into a single problem about how language points beyond itself?

That’s an intriguing way of putting it. If I understand you right, you’re linking “real” not so much to existence as to coherence - something is real if it has logical grounding, even if it is radically unlike our ordinary world.

That makes me wonder, though: does “logical grounding” mean internal consistency within a system, or correspondence with the structures of our actual world? A toon world might be internally consistent but still disconnected from what we ordinarily call reality. Similarly, “magic” in a fantasy novel can follow strict rules (e.g. conservation of energy in a different form), but is that “real,” or just “fiction with rules”?

Maybe the crux is whether logical grounding alone is enough for reality, or whether we also need some bridge to empirical verification. Otherwise, couldn’t we end up calling any consistent fiction “real” in its own frame, even if it has no existence beyond the story?

That’s a thoughtful response. I like your framing of limits not as static barriers but as moving frontiers that expand with discovery. It raises for me two further questions.

First, when you suggest that “partly” knowing reality-in-itself implies that we do in fact know something of it, what safeguards do we have against simply projecting structures of our cognition outward and mistaking them for reality? Kant, for example, would say phenomena always bear the stamp of our categories, so even our best science may be telling us more about how our minds structure experience than about things-in-themselves. How do we tell the difference?

Second, you asked how “reality-in-itself” differs from “Being-in-itself.” For me, “reality-in-itself” gestures toward what exists independently of any observer, while “Being-in-itself” (to use Sartre’s term) connotes the sheer presence of things apart from consciousness. They might overlap, but one emphasizes ontology, the other epistemology. I’m curious: do you see them as distinct, or just two ways of naming the same riddle?

Thank you for laying this out. I see what you’re doing - pulling back from all cultural and contextual frames to speak about suffering as a pure phenomenon, rooted in Being itself.

But I struggle with your claim that suffering is ‘inherently auto-redemptive.’ From my perspective, suffering simply is. A burn, an illness, a grief - they happen, and they devastate. Calling them ‘auto-redemptive’ risks sounding like a metaphysical gloss over lived harm.

If suffering is inherently what ‘should not be,’ as you say, then how is it redeemed simply by being recognized as such? Recognition does not stop the pain, nor prevent the recurrence. Children still die, animals are still slaughtered, injustices still multiply. If the redemption isn’t concrete - if it doesn’t reduce or relieve suffering - can we honestly call it redemption at all?

It seems to me that redemption requires change in the world, not just reinterpretation of phenomena. Otherwise, aren’t we just sanctifying the very thing that cries out to be abolished?

Humans and all the other living things are physical things. We are all made of molecules. Our subjective experiences are produced by the physical activities of our brains.
— Truth Seeker

But a thought is not a thing, nor is an anticipation, a memory, a sensory intuition, a pain or pleasure; caring is not a thing. These constitute our existence. — Constance

That’s a good point - experiences like thoughts, pain, anticipation, and caring aren’t 'things' in the same way molecules or neurons are. But they do seem to be processes or states that depend on things. For example, pain isn’t a molecule, but it is a state produced by particular neural firings and pathways. Pain relievers are also molecules that physically intervene to relieve the subjective experience of pain.

So perhaps the relationship is like this:

Physical things (neurons, molecules) provide the substrate.

Subjective experiences are emergent properties of those physical interactions.

Calling experiences ‘not things’ doesn’t necessarily make them non-physical - it may just mean they belong to a different level of description. The same way 'temperature' isn’t a molecule but arises from molecular motion.

I’m curious how you see it: do you think subjective experiences point to something beyond the physical, or are they just a different way of talking about physical processes?

a human being never was a physical thing...was it? — Constance

Humans and all the other living things are physical things. We are all made of molecules. Our subjective experiences are produced by the physical activities of our brains.

Thank you for unpacking your view - I see now you’re drawing on a phenomenological line of thought where ethics arises directly from Being, not from rules or doctrines.

I think I understand your point that suffering itself is the ethical injunction (‘do not burn the hand’ precedes theory, rules, or society). And you’re saying this injunction is what you call ‘God.’ That’s clearer to me now.

Where I still struggle is with the word redemption. You describe existence as ‘meta-redeemed,’ but for the billions of animals in factory farms, or for children dying of preventable diseases, I don’t see how their suffering is redeemed simply because it issues an ethical command. Isn’t it just there - brute and tragic - unless someone actually relieves it?

So my lingering question is: if God is this eternal ethical injunction, does God do anything beyond obliging us? Or is it really up to us alone to respond, and the word ‘God’ is simply a way of naming the ultimacy of the demand?

Thank you again for such a detailed engagement with each of the positions I listed. I appreciate that you are trying to find a more holistic framework rather than getting stuck in one perspective. I am replying to you again because I have some additional thoughts that I didn't have during my first reply four months ago.

I agree that solipsism and cosmic solipsism look ego-centric, and that pantheism/panentheism often rely on redefining words. I also agree with your point that simulation theory, whether true or not, makes little practical difference - if this is the only reality we can access, it is our reality.

Where I’d like to push back a little is on panpsychism and nihilism. On panpsychism, you treat it as mostly untestable, but I wonder if you’re open to the possibility that even if we could measure gradients of consciousness, the deeper question of what it feels like to be matter will still elude science. And on nihilism, you suggest that it’s just “depression before we create our own meaning.” But what if the human capacity to invent meaning is itself fragile and contingent - isn’t that a reason to take nihilism seriously as a persistent condition, not just a passing phase?

I also like your suggestion that empiricism, rationalism, phenomenology and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive. Maybe the question isn’t ‘which is right?’ but ‘how can they work together?’ to give us the most complete account of reality.

For me, the open problem is: if all our approaches (empirical, rational, phenomenological, pragmatic) remain within the limits of human cognition, how do we ever know we are not simply locked inside those limits rather than perceiving reality as it is? Do we need to accept that reality-in-itself will always remain partly unknowable?

I appreciate the clarification, but it seems to me your reply doesn’t really answer the questions I raised. If “God” is simply another name for “the inescapability of ethics” or “the ground of value,” then my challenge about extinction, predation, and mass suffering still stands.

Because if God = metaethics, then this God is not protecting anyone, not reducing harm, not preventing injustice, and not promoting well-being. It seems indistinguishable from saying “ethics exists,” which is true, but doesn’t explain why harm, cruelty, and death dominate so much of life on Earth.

So I’m left wondering: does calling the ethical dimension “God” actually add anything beyond rebranding metaethics? And if so, what work is the word “God” doing that “ethics” or “value” cannot? Also, no dictionary defines the word "God" the way you have defined it. I don't think your definition is correct.

What God and ethics? God IS ethics. — Constance

If God is ethics, as you claim, why are at least 99.9% of all the species that have existed on Earth already extinct? Why do non-vegans cause pain and death to 80 billion sentient land organisms and 3 trillion aquatic organisms per year? Why do humans cause harm and death to other humans? Why do living things have to consume other living things to live? Why didn't the God, who is allegedly ethics, prevent all harm, injustice, and death and make all living things forever happy? I posit that God, if it is real, is the source of all evil.

I like the way you frame suffering and well-being as the shared ground of our moral experience - I agree that this is where ethics takes root. Where I hesitate is when the language of “divinity” comes in. To me, that seems like a metaphor that some people use to capture the depth and seriousness of these experiences, but not something that adds explanatory power.

People may well have experiences of awe, transcendence, or radical transformation that they interpret in religious language, but it seems more parsimonious to call these profound human experiences rather than “divine” ones. The risk, as you noted, is that once divinity is invoked, interpretation tends to drift into dogma.

That said, I don’t think the sincerity or transformative depth of those experiences should be dismissed. What matters is how they connect us back to the ethical fact you began with: the reality of suffering and the reality of well-being. For me, that is grounding enough without having to posit an “unknown X” within us - though I understand why others feel drawn to that language. Your "unknown X" reminds me of what Richard Dawkins called the "God of the gaps".

I appreciate the depth and range of your reflections. Where I find common ground is in the idea that ethics has to be grounded in something more than language or convention - in something apodictic, as you say. For me, suffering provides that ground. The experience of pain, joy, fear, compassion, etc., is not reducible to definitions or analyses - it is lived and felt.

That’s why I don’t think we need to invoke divinity to account for ethics. The “otherness” you describe, which religion often clothes in the figure of God, can also be understood simply as the givenness of being - the fact that suffering is bad in itself and joy is good in itself. This “absolute reality” is accessible to all of us, without appeal to metaphysical theology.

So I would put it this way: suffering and well-being are not just contingencies of language, but the shared, universal ground of our moral experience. Whether one interprets that as divine or not, I think we agree it is where ethics takes its root.

But that doesn’t make suffering reducible to “just a judgment.”
— Truth Seeker

No, I certainly didn't intend that reduction, especially the 'just'. Pain is real, and judgements are real, and suffering is real. The point I want to emphasise though is that the idea that suffering is not bad is contradictory, and thus that the reduction of suffering gives a necessary and real foundation of morality.

And compare this to my earlier suggestion, in relation to communication:

Consider the proposition, "Falsehood is better than truth."
If it were true, then it would be better to believe that truth is better than falsehood.
If it were false, then it would be better to believe that truth is better than falsehood.
'Therefore, 'truth is better than falsehood' is the only tenable moral position on truth.
— unenlightened

To be alive as a human, is to make judgements of oneself and of the world, between edible and poisonous, true and false, friend and foe, and so on. And though one can be mistaken, one cannot actually prefer foes to friends, falsehood to truth, poison to food, or suffering to comfort. — unenlightened

That’s beautifully argued. I like how you’ve shown that some values are not arbitrary but built into what it means to be human. Just as “truth is better than falsehood” cannot be coherently denied, the same seems true of “suffering is bad and reducing it is good.”

To exist as humans is indeed to make judgments - about nourishment, danger, truth, comfort, trust and so on. These aren’t optional preferences, but conditions of survival and flourishing. The contradiction comes when someone tries to deny them while still living within them.

So morality, at its root, doesn’t need to be imported from outside - whether from religion or abstract metaphysics. It arises from the unavoidable reality that suffering presses itself upon us as bad, and well-being presses itself upon us as good. Ethical systems differ in details, but they converge here because this is the ground we all stand on.

Pain is not the same as suffering. One might say that pain is the alarm system of the body's damage control function. Sometimes the alarm can go off because there is a fault in the system.

Suffering is a response; an attitude one takes to pain or to other experience; a judgement. One can suffer from guilt, from ennui, from despair, as well as from pain.

So the essence of suffering is the negative judgement of the sufferer. Thus the endurance athlete has to learn to withhold that negative judgement and thus overcome the 'pain barrier' that would otherwise limit their performance.

But this means that suffering is totally in the experience of the sufferer, and it makes no sense to say, therefore, that suffering is good, because suffering is constituted by the judgement that it is bad.

I can still say, though, that your suffering is good for me, if I find it amusing or consoling, or gratifying in some way, but it is not the suffering that you feel, but the idea thatI have (of you suffering) that I am gratified by.

3) Talk therapy for managing pain.
Psychotherapy includes different methods to help you understand and change unhealthy feelings. It also helps you to understand unhealthy thoughts and actions. It can help you manage or change how you feel the pain.
https://nursesgroup.co.uk/pain-management-in-nursing — unenlightened

That’s an interesting distinction. I agree that pain and suffering aren’t identical - pain can be a biological signal, while suffering often involves the added layer of how consciousness registers and appraises the unpleasantness. But that doesn’t make suffering reducible to “just a judgment.”

The endurance athlete shows that mindset can modulate the degree of suffering, but the fact that it takes so much training to endure pain without suffering suggests that suffering is not simply optional. And in cases like torture or sadism, we see why: the deliberate infliction of suffering is universally condemned, precisely because suffering is intrinsically bad for the one who endures it, regardless of whether someone else finds it gratifying.

So therapy and mindfulness can help people manage suffering, but they don’t show that suffering is illusory. They show it’s real enough that both ethics and whole fields of medicine and psychology are devoted to alleviating it.

That’s a beautifully put reflection. I think you’ve touched the heart of the matter: suffering is not merely a social construct or a linguistic convention, but a fundamental experience that resists reduction. When we ask, “What is bad about suffering?” the most honest answer might be that it needs no further justification - it reveals its badness in the very act of being endured.

Language and culture may frame or contextualize suffering, but the raw experience of agony, despair, or anguish is prior to those frames. That’s why so many ethical systems, despite their diversity, converge on minimizing suffering and promoting well-being. They are built on the foundation that suffering is not an arbitrary preference but an undeniable reality, and well-being is its natural counterweight.

In that sense, good and evil are not metaphysical mysteries but responses to the lived fact of suffering and flourishing.
— Truth Seeker

Yes, prior, logically prior, meaning if this dimension of our existence were to be removed, then the very concept of ethics becomes meaningless. So here, one has to step out of language andlogic entirely for the logical ground to be what it is. Now, the same canbe said for science, I mean, remove, well, the world, and science vanishes, but science only cares about quantifications and causal connections and works entirely within the structure of thought of its paradigms. It doesn't ask about the nature of scientific observation, say, because it doesn't care since this kindopf thing; it doesn't have to. After all, the color red, say, just sits there. It is nothing without the language that discusses it analytically. The phenomenon itself has no qualities that are not reducible to the categories of language contexts.
But that sprained ankle, not like a color (as such) at all. The very salient feature of its pain is the very essence of the category! This empirical science cannot deal with this, and analytic philosophy simply runs away, because to admit this is ,like admitting an actual absolute. Like admitting divine existence in their eyes.
But are they wrong? After all, this IS the essence of religion: an absolute in the metaethical analysis. — Constance

That’s very well put. I think you’re right that suffering is not like the color red, which only becomes “red” in relation to our perceptual and linguistic frameworks. The sting of pain is not dependent on cultural categories - it is what it is in a way that forces itself upon us prior to analysis.

That doesn’t mean it becomes some kind of metaphysical deity, though. It simply means that suffering is an undeniable experiential absolute in our lives, much like gravity is a physical absolute in our environment. We don’t need religion to acknowledge it; we only need to pay attention to lived experience.

From there, ethics is built not on arbitrary rules but on responding to this reality: suffering is intrinsically bad to the one who endures it, and well-being is intrinsically good. Ethical systems differ in how they propose to minimize suffering and maximize well-being, but they converge on this foundation because it is pre-linguistic and universal.

In my view, recognizing suffering as fundamental doesn’t point us to the divine, but to the very real ground of our shared experiences, such as pain, pleasure, fear, love, hate, grief, sadness, rage, happiness, compassion and so on.

Is right and wrong just a matter of thinking something is right (e.g. it is right to save and improve lives) and something is wrong (e.g. theft, fraud, rape, robbery, enslaving, torture and murder are wrong)?
— Truth Seeker

This claim can be cashed out in many ways. I will focus on one common way. I will take the claim to be:

X is right = I have a positive attitude towards X.

I think this view of 'right' is incorrect (and the same for 'wrong'). When discussing ethics, that simply does not seem to be what is meant by the terms.

For instance, it makes sense to hold the thought "I think death penalty is right, but is it right?" Under the view above, this would translate to: "I think I have a positive attitude towards the death penalty, but do I have a positive attitude towards it?" This makes ethical reflection seem trivial, when it does not seem to be trivial. So that is a problem for the theory.

It also fails to handle disagreement. If I disagreed with the previous speaker, and said: "No, the death penalty is definitely wrong", it seems like I tried to contradict them. However, this would not be the case if I'm just reporting my own attitude. To illustrate:

A:"I have a positive attitude towards the death penalty!"

B:"No, I have a negative attitude towards the death penalty!"

A and B are not making contradictory propositions. Both can be true simultaneously. But in these exchanges, we are often trying to contradict the other person. So there is something problematic with the subjectivist theory.

Is there any way to know for sure what is right and what is wrong?
— Truth Seeker

Knowing for sure might be difficult for any form of potential knowledge. Can one know for sure that one is not currently living in a simulation? Probably not. Can we still be justified in our beliefs about the external world? I think so.

One should be humble about many ethical beliefs, given that there are often clear uncertainties. Still, one must also take it seriously. Even if it is unfeasible to be absolutely sure, that does not mean we should compromise ethical beliefs, at least not fully.

If someone kicks a dog, even if I cannot be 100% sure that it is wrong, I think I'm justified to take it as such, and prohibit people from abusing their pets. One can be uncertain and serious at the same time. — GazingGecko

I agree with you that reducing right and wrong to “just my attitude” makes ethical reflection seem trivial and misses how we usually use those words. Ethics isn’t just about reporting preferences, it’s about evaluating them and testing them against reasons, evidence, and the lived reality of sentient beings.

I also think you’re right that we can’t get 100% certainty about morality (any more than we can get certainty about whether we’re in a simulation). But just like in science, we don’t need absolute certainty to act - we need justified beliefs based on the best available evidence.

For me, the clearest anchor is suffering and well-being. If someone kicks a dog, the dog suffers. That suffering isn’t a matter of attitude - it’s a real experience in the world. And since suffering is universally aversive, preventing it gives us a solid grounding for calling something “wrong.”

So maybe we don’t get certainty, but we do get enough clarity to live by: wrong = actions that inflict unnecessary suffering, and right = actions that prevent or reduce suffering and promote well-being. That keeps ethics from collapsing into “just my feelings,” while still leaving space for humility and reflection.

Good = actions that prevent or reduce suffering and promote well-being for sentient beings.
Evil = deliberate actions that cause unnecessary suffering or destroy the capacity for well-being in sentient beings.
— Truth Seeker

Yes, I think you are closing in. But there does remain the final question: what is there that is bad about suffering? You may, as I do, hold that this is self evident, though this gets lost in our entangled affairs, where competing goods and bads struggle. But the question is now momentous, not mundane: Suffering is now not a convention of the language and culture that talks about it, talk that leads to variability because suffering is inevitably caught up in uses and purposes. Suffering is the bare manifestation of that terrible pain in your ankle, and this, if you can stand it, transcends the finitude that language that would hold it down, keep it familiar, contained in reduction to the ordinary. But suffering is not ordinary, not an institution. It is that original that institutions of ethics have their foundation in. — Constance

That’s a beautifully put reflection. I think you’ve touched the heart of the matter: suffering is not merely a social construct or a linguistic convention, but a fundamental experience that resists reduction. When we ask, “What is bad about suffering?” the most honest answer might be that it needs no further justification - it reveals its badness in the very act of being endured.

Language and culture may frame or contextualize suffering, but the raw experience of agony, despair, or anguish is prior to those frames. That’s why so many ethical systems, despite their diversity, converge on minimizing suffering and promoting well-being. They are built on the foundation that suffering is not an arbitrary preference but an undeniable reality, and well-being is its natural counterweight.

In that sense, good and evil are not metaphysical mysteries but responses to the lived fact of suffering and flourishing.

I already defined good in my post. Evil is the opposite. — MoK

Human nature is good; by good, I mean humans prefer pleasure over pain. — MoK

Humans do evil things, such as murder other humans and other organisms. If human nature is good, why do they do evil things?

What is right depends on your alignment, good or evil. Humans have evolved socially and physiologically over the Ages. Human nature is good; by good, I mean humans prefer pleasure over pain. The social laws that everybody is talking about are the result of the social and physiological evolution, which is, of course, biased by human nature. — MoK

How do you define good and evil?

Good is saving and improving lives. Evil is deliberate harm and the murder of sentient beings. How do you define good and evil?
— Truth Seeker

I wait until the argument settles. What good is saving lives? Saving a life is one thing--there, you saved me from injury, but there is nothing in the term "saving" that has any ethicality to it. I can save this cup of coffee from being tossed down the drain. And life? what is it about life that makes it part of a moral conversation? — Constance

It’s true that “saving” by itself isn’t always ethical — saving a cup of coffee from being spilt doesn’t have moral weight. But when we talk about saving and improving lives, the ethical significance comes from the fact that sentient beings can experience suffering and well-being.

A cup of coffee has no capacity for suffering, but a sentient being does. That’s why saving a life (human and nonhuman) carries moral weight: it preserves the possibility of future experiences, prevents suffering, and maintains the capacity for joy, connection, and flourishing.

So for me:

Good = actions that prevent or reduce suffering and promote well-being for sentient beings.
Evil = deliberate actions that cause unnecessary suffering or destroy the capacity for well-being in sentient beings.

Life matters morally not just because it exists, but because it is the vessel of sentience — the ability to feel, to suffer, to love, to flourish. Without life, those possibilities vanish.

I'm sorry, but I see contradictions here. — Astorre

Please let me know what contradictions you see.

Thank you for the links and for the clarification.

So your system is valuable to you, but just an empty template to others? — Astorre

I don’t see Compassionism as just “my personal template,” but as a principle anyone could adopt because it’s grounded in something universal: the capacity to suffer and the desire to avoid harm.

Of course, people may or may not value compassion as highly as I do — but that doesn’t make it empty. It’s like honesty: not everyone practices it, but most would agree it’s better than dishonesty when building trust. Compassion works the same way — it has value beyond me because suffering and wellbeing are real for everyone who can experience them.

Stones, as far as we know, don’t have any capacity to feel pain or pleasure, so they wouldn’t be included.
— Truth Seeker

I hope the stone consciousness supporters will pass by and not look in here :lol:

Compassionism isn’t about self-destruction — it’s about balance. I
— Truth Seeker

The balance offers a scale. This is Relativism again. Maybe this is an unsolvable problem.

By the way. There are systems of views (ideologies) in which what is good and what is bad is prescribed in advance, and the choice is practically prescribed to the person (for example, Chu che). You don't need to think about what is good or bad. It has already been written for you. In my opinion, most people in the world don't even think about it; they simply believe in their ideologies (including those that emphasize personal responsibility for one's choices).

Going back to the question: does a person really need to have their own choice, or is it easier to follow a pattern? (For example, if you get on a full bus and there's only one seat available, you'll sit there instead of searching for a better spot if the bus is empty) — Astorre

On balance and relativism: I think balance isn’t the same as “anything goes.” Relativism says all views are equally valid, but Compassionism does not say that. It is about reducing the suffering of all sentient beings and helping oneself and others flourish. It gives us a clear direction, even if the details vary depending on circumstances.

On your bigger question: I agree that many people just follow ready-made systems. It feels easier, like taking the only open seat on a bus. But I think there’s value in choosing consciously instead of outsourcing morality. Even if we borrow ideas from traditions or ideologies, ultimately, it’s our compassion and responsibility that give them meaning. Following a pattern blindly might be simpler, but it risks causing harm without ever asking whether it could be avoided.

You write compassion for all sentient beings. Ok. Let's define who is sentient and who is not. Here on the forum there are many adherents of the idea that stones also have consciousness. Or again set boundaries - these are sentient, these are insensitive. Then what can this be based on? Just believe you or someone else?

then what is the limit of compassion? Sell a kidney and feed starving children with the proceeds? — Astorre

Great questions. For me, sentience means the capacity to feel pain and pleasure. That usually includes humans and non-human animals, and possibly conscious aliens from other planets. Stones, as far as we know, don’t have any capacity to feel pain or pleasure, so they wouldn’t be included. The boundary isn’t arbitrary — it’s based on whether there is scientific evidence of consciousness and the ability to have painful and pleasurable experiences.

As for the limits of compassion, I see it less as an all-or-nothing demand and more as a guiding orientation: do what you reasonably can to help, and avoid causing harm where possible. Compassionism isn’t about self-destruction — it’s about balance. It includes compassion for self and compassion for others. If I act with compassion within my means, I contribute to less suffering and more well-being in the world.

I don't like any of the approaches. That's how we live.
In the deontological approach, you have to believe in something (but what about non-believers?)
In the utilitarian approach, everyone can have different values, which leads to chaos
In the existential approach, if you are a maniac and act in accordance with your aspirations, things don't work out very well either

Nihilism is also not a solution

What would you suggest for people like me? — Astorre

I can understand your frustration — every ethical system seems to run into problems:

Deontology can feel too rigid or tied to belief.
Utilitarianism can clash when values differ.
Existentialism can be misused to justify harmful actions.
Nihilism leaves us without direction at all.

That’s why I’ve found it helpful to think in terms of Compassionism, which is compassion for every sentient being. Instead of relying on rigid rules or endless calculations, the guiding question becomes: Does this choice show compassion, or does it cause harm?

Compassionism doesn’t depend on religion, and it works even when people’s values differ — because compassion is something we all understand as a sentient being. It’s not about being perfect, just about orienting ourselves toward helping rather than harming, moment by moment.

Attempts to answer these questions historically led to the creation of the Deontological (correct is what is prescribed) and Utilitarian (correct is the least of two evils) approaches and their combination. — Astorre

How would we know which is correct? The deontological approach contradicts the utilitarian approach.

Veganism is more ethical than non-veganism because it reduces suffering and death by a massive amount. [ ... ] Now that I have provided argument and evidence, is it now the truth?
— Truth Seeker
Yes, but that "truth" does not entail that "non-veganism" is immoral or necessarily so. Imo, eating either non-industrial or vat-grown/3-d printed meats is no less ethical than a strictly plant-based diet.

How can consciousness be an illusion when I am experiencing it right now and you are experiencing it right now?
— Truth Seeker
Given that the human brain is transparent to itself (i.e. brain-blind (R.S. Bakker)), it cannot perceive how the trick is done and therefore that consciousness is an illusion (i.e. not the entity it seems to be or that one thinks it is).

Also, as Libet's experiments have shown, one is not "experiencing right now" but rather conscious perception occurs up to 550 milliseconds after a stimulus. And what one is conscious of is a simplified representation of the salient features of the perceived object; thus, "consciousness" is only a simplification of a much more complex process that one cannot be conscious of (like e.g. a blindspot that enables sight).

Consider Buddhist no-self, Democitean swirling atoms, Humean bundle theory, Churchlands' eliminativism ... Nørretranders' user-illusion, Hofstadter's strange looping, Metzinger's phenomenal self model, etc: some philosophical cum scientific 'models' of the entity-illusion of consciousness. — 180 Proof

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I’d like to engage with both parts of what you said.

On veganism:
You’re right that lab-grown or 3D-printed meat could potentially be just as ethical as a plant-based diet, since it wouldn’t involve animal suffering. That’s an exciting possibility for the future. But in the present, the overwhelming majority of non-vegan consumption comes from industrial and even small-scale animal farming, both of which involve suffering and killing that veganism avoids. So while non-veganism could be ethical in theory, in practice it mostly isn’t.

On consciousness:
I agree that our conscious experience is a simplified, delayed model of reality. Libet’s experiments and theories like Metzinger’s self-model do show how much is happening outside of our awareness. But calling consciousness an “illusion” may go too far. An illusion is still an experience — like a rainbow. The rainbow isn’t what it seems, but it’s still real as a phenomenon. Similarly, consciousness may not be what we intuitively think it is, but the fact that we have experiences at all means it isn’t unreal.

In short: veganism reduces real suffering today, and consciousness, while not what it seems, is still a real phenomenon of experience.

How do you define good and evil? — Constance

Good is saving and improving lives. Evil is deliberate harm and the murder of sentient beings. How do you define good and evil?

Veganism? A fine topic, I suppose, but hardly the yardstick by which morality is measured. — LuckyR

I am not measuring morality with veganism. Veganism is an example of a moral position.

I agree. Thank you for your detailed reply.

good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil. — Truth Seeker

Albert defined good and evil. Veganism is good because it saves and improves lives. Vegans value all sentient lives - not just human lives.

What is the ground of ethics? — Constance

"Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.” – Albert Schweitzer, “Civilization and Ethics”, 1949.

↪Truth Seeker

You can observe brain activities corresponding to pleasure, pain and even consciousness on functional MRI scans.

We know these states "correspond" to pleasure or pain because people tell us they do. A huge amount of neuroscience in this general area presupposes that people are accurate reporters of real, private, mental states. If we didn't assume that, did not presuppose it as fact, then all of our "measurable, third person data" would only tell us about how different stimuli cause different responses in different parts of the body, e.g., "do this and people emit this sort of sound wave." This is why some philosophers and neuroscience argue that we should declare consciousness a sort of unscientific illusion.

Anyhow, if this counts as "observing" inner life, how is goodness not observed? Isn't medical and vetinary science incoherent without the good of the body, health? Isn't most of the field of psychology incoherent with the assumption of a mind and what is good for it? "Psychology" is itself the "discourse of the soul." So too, engineering as a science, architecture, etc., all sorts of arts and sciences, are quite incoherent without a notion of goodness. How can one decide between a good bridge and a bad one, or a good water treatment plant and a bad one, without ends you want to achieve? If a building that falls down is just as good as one that stands, or a treatment that kills patients just as good as one that heals them, these disciplines disappear.

Hence, the good (ends, desirability, choice-worthyness) seems to be everywhere. Further, if it is in the mind, and the mind comes from the physical, then ends, desirability, etc. come from the physical.

I guess that's my point. Your division here seems to beg the question, and I don't think it's actually a wise thing to just assume. IMHO, it's unclear exactly why pleasure should be so different from goodness, one "real" the other illusory for instance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You have raised valid issues. Just because morals and laws are mental constructs, it does not mean that they are not real. I think morals and laws matter because they have real consequences for real sentient organisms. We have no way to directly access the sentience of another organism. You can't know what it is like for me to be me, and I can't know what it is like for you to be you. As we are both humans, I imagine that we have similar pleasures and pains. How can consciousness be an illusion when I am experiencing it right now and you are experiencing it right now?