I don't know where you get this meaning of volition — Lionino

Primarily from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Our discussion prompted me to publish my recent thread, "The Breadth of the Moral Sphere." Here is a relevant quote from one of my responses in that thread:

The second objection says that culpable negligence is not deliberate. This is where things get especially complicated in the realm of volition (and Book III of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a standard text for a study of volition). First we should note that ignorance is capable of excusing, particularly in the case of what we now call "invincible ignorance." If someone neglects to do something with invincible ignorance, then they are not culpable for their "negligence" because their omission is not in any way deliberate. More precisely, they are not culpable because their omission is in no way traceable to their will. For example, suppose I am driving 55 mph on an unmarked road. A police officer pulls me over and tickets me for driving 55 when the speed limit is 45. I tell him that I did not know the speed limit was 45 mph because there are no speed limit signs. Did I neglect to drive the speed limit? — Leontiskos

Not a typo but I copy pasted straight from the OP's title when I shouldn't. You are right. I fixed it. — Lionino

:up:

That is true when it comes to degrees. The point you make about telephone hogging for example. A philosophically rigorous theory has to make away with this arbitrary line. — Lionino

Okay, I'm glad we agree. Persuasion on this website tends to be either effortless or impossible. :smile:

My point was more that consequentialism falls out of the common usage of "immoral" because it does not take intention into consideration, only act, making it seem like it is describing harmfulness rather than good and evil. — Lionino

There is an interesting debate about the topic of whether a consequentialist can ever be subjectively wrong or immoral when they act, and I think it relates to this question of intention. I think the consequentialist would say that morality is like mathematics, and that although mathematics is all about objective computations it is nevertheless true that one can hold to incorrect mathematical opinions, and even do so culpably. I'm not sure if this is the same thing you are speaking to? For more information see the link I gave here:

There is an interesting exchange on this very topic between two groups of philosophers. See my post on a different forum for links to the three papers in question (link). — Leontiskos

As Aristotle reminds his readers, Heraclitus said to some visitors who were surprised to see him by the oven warming himself:

Here too there are gods.

Cicero said:

Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens… and compel it to ask questions about life and morality.
(Tusculan Disputations V 10–11).

Xenophon wrote the Oeconomicus, a Socratic dialogue about household management.

The Stoics and Epicureans did not disregard daily life or human attachments either. — Fooloso4

Er, except Cicero, Socrates, Xenophon, and Aurelius were all married men. I'm not sure about Heraclitus. The Epicureans were somewhat averse to marriage, so one part of your point does connect with the topic of the OP. Again, none of the arguments you are giving really end up connecting with the conclusion you champion. This seems to be a general problem with your posts. You say something contrarian and then you make "arguments" that have nothing to do with the contrarian outburst. Hopefully you figure this out, because you do seem to have actual knowledge rattling around that head.

This is a good thread. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks!

First, an additional argument that might help out with these claims can be found in the part of the Summa Contra Gentiles in the section On The Human Good. There, St. Thomas points out that we must have some ends in order to explain action. If we have no ends, then we will not have any reason to act one way rather than another, nor any reason not to simply be passive. When people say acts have no moral valence, what they often imply if that they are done for no particular ends. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is a good point. Aquinas says that agents act for ends, and so the debate could take the form of asking whether every human act is for an end.

I think we need to understand the difference for Aquinas between a moral end and a natural end. Aristotelians hold that there are teleological principles in all of nature, but not that this teleology is necessarily mental or intentional. Yet for humans, we act for ends intentionally, through the power of our will. See especially ST I-II.12.5.

But in the modern view, we seem to want to reduce everything to quantitative measure that can be placed on a scale like the number line, where we can point to "more is better," or "variance from this point is worse." It's clear that this isn't always the case in normative measure. Plato makes a similar point in the Phaedrus when he has Socrates discuss what would happen if he claimed to be a doctor because he had all sorts of medicines, but then has no clue "how much" he should give to a person. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and Aristotle gets at a related idea when he talks about virtue:

...but to be thus affected at the right times, and on the right occasions, and towards the right persons, and with the right object, and in the right fashion, is the mean course and the best course, and these are characteristics of virtue. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II.vi

A similar idea holds with Aristotle's mean which is not merely quantitative and varies depending on circumstances. I think this idea that right action requires more than one reference point is often lost in modern culture. "Monomaniacal."

The point here is that I think part of what trips people up in ethics is the way in which the good is often filtered through practices that help us define our ends. These practices are socially constructed, but they are not arbitrary. They relate to "how the world is," prior to any practice existing and evolve according to things other than social practice. However, it seems impossible to reduce them to things outside social practices, and the human good is certainly quite bound up in practices and normative measure. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, but given that a "social construct" is often used to refer to something that has no underlying basis, I am wary of calling such practices "socially constructed." I agree that they are partly socially constructed. A classic example is the indeterminacy of certain aspects of positive law, such as which side of the road to drive on. In the U.S. we drive on the right side of the road and in the U.K. they drive on the left side of the road, but it does not follow that such determinations are entirely socially constructed. (It is interesting to debate which model was safer for a society that uses manual transmission cars.)

Practices relate to internal and external goods, and are situated within the pursuit of the higher human good. Without a "human good," it is impossible to explain how practices evolve. Practices make determining goodness difficult if we don't take account of them because they will seem arbitrary if we look at them in isolation, without their relevance to the human good. And they give us trouble because they are not easy to quantize into a model like the number line. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and I think liberalism has made it hard for us to see the higher good shining through our practices.

Hume famously denies this sort of good exists. However, I think he essentially just begs the question here. It isn't trivial question begging because he shows what follows from an attempt to reduce everything to the mathematical physics of his day, but it still assumes that oughts aren't observable in the way facts are. Obviously, for Aristotle, the human good is observable, and there are fact statements about (which entail ought statements.) This interacts with normative measure in an indirect way, in that Hume's view seems to end up denying normative measure if it isn't careful, even though it obviously exists. No one goes out to buy a car or house without any idea of what would make them good in mind. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, good.

Cannot all of this be said more simply? It seems to me that whatever anything is, it is by reference to other things, whatever they may be. Thus whatever morality is, it is, ultimately, by agreement. — tim wood

Well, one could of course argue that morality is defined in terms of agreement…

What flavors? For primitives probably the example of nature. Socrates, truth. For Plato, finding nature imperfect, the prefect forms. Aristotle, the telos. Christians, God. Kant, the logic of the thing. Mill, utility. — tim wood

...But given that none of the classic examples you provide would seem to accept your idea that morality is grounded in agreement (or consensus, or contracts), it would seem to follow that the claim that morality is a kind of agreement has no prima facie force or intuitive appeal. If this is right then one would truly need to argue that morality is a kind of agreement. Unless perhaps you meant "agreement" in some other way?

In the metaethical framework of moral naturalism, I think "the moral sphere" consists of natural creatures (i.e. any sentient species) which can suffer from – fears of – arbitrary harm (or injustice), especially, though not exclusively, moral agents which are also moral patients. — 180 Proof

Okay great, this is useful. :up:

I don't think these statements make sense or are useful (re: if "all" x = y, then ~x = y). — 180 Proof

I don’t follow your objection.

In the normative framework of negative utilitarianism, I think only judgments/conduct which (actively or passively) (a) prevents or reduces harm or (b) inflicts or increases harm are moral; however, those activities which are neither (a) nor (b) are non-moral (e.g. phatic, instrumental, involuntary) so that most "human acts", in fact, are non-moral. — 180 Proof

Okay, that makes sense. I think this succeeds as a coherent alternative. I think traditional utilitarianism would favor the broader scope that I outlined, but your negative version is clearly different.

In the applied framework of negative consequentialism, I do not think "interpersonal acts are justice acts" because "justice" pertains to impacts on individuals by institutional or group practices (i.e. policies) and not "interpersonal" – what happens between individuals. — 180 Proof

First, it seems to me that the impact of a group on an individual is interpersonal given that the group is composed of individual persons. In no way do I mean to exclude this sort of interaction as impersonal.

Second, this is the first time I have heard anyone define justice in a way that excludes interactions between individuals. Usually we would say, for example, that stealing an old lady’s purse or murdering a spouse is an unjust act.

It seems likely moral discourse is being conflated with discourse about culpability (although perhaps I am reading too much in between the lines): for example, I think it is perfectly valid to analyze whether or not a tornado is inherently immoral or not, and I see that, although a reflex-kick would not render a person culpable, a reflex-kick that is to the detriment of an innocent person is still wrong — Bob Ross

I would follow Aquinas in saying that morality and culpability go hand in hand, but whereas all discourse about culpability is also moral discourse, not all discourse about morality is necessarily about culpability. Culpability talk is only one kind of moral talk.

So the claim is that if culpability does not, even in principle, pertain to tornadoes or reflex-kicks, then these are not moral realities. If it is impossible to ever hold X responsible or culpable, then X is not a moral agent. Because of this "wrong" cannot be applied to tornadoes, for "wrong" is a moral predicate.

it seems like, and correct me if I am wrong, Acquinas is trying to limit the sphere of moral discourse to just "human acts". — Bob Ross

Basically, yes. More precisely, Aquinas would say that anything that is capable of deliberate action is a moral agent.

If all that is being conveyed here is that only acts which a person performs that is deliberate, or traced back to some deliberation prior, can be validly called a ‘human act’ in the sense of an act that would bind the person with responsibility for it, then I agree. — Bob Ross

That's basically it, but don't you think this also accounts for why a tornado is not a moral agent?

This is the conflation I am talking about (between moral discourse and discourse about culpability): morality is not just the study of culpability and responsibility. We can say, just like when analyzing a tornado, that a foot + leg kicking another (innocent) person is bad, without conceding that the person that performed the action is culpable for it; which is an eliminated possibility if I take the above quote seriously. A tornado is inherently (morally) bad, but we wouldn't say it is culpable for its effects (or 'actions' in a loose sense of the word). — Bob Ross

In moral philosophy a tornado is a natural evil, not a moral evil. Not all evil (i.e. bad things that happen) is moral.

Fair enough. I think your idea of “invincible negligence” clarified quite a bit of my contentions; and I am inclined to agree with you. — Bob Ross

Okay, good.

I think I understand what you are going for, but it doesn’t seem correct to depict it as about “the breadth of the moral sphere”: that would imply that you are discussing and analyzing what can be constituted as ‘moral’ whatsoever, and not about particularly what set of [human] acts can be constituted as ‘moral’ (which is what I believe you are trying to discuss).

As long as it is acknowledged that the breadth of the moral sphere is not limited to acts; then I am content. — Bob Ross

When I say that moral realities are not limited to acts, I am thinking about things like habits, intentions, societies, etc. I am not thinking about tornadoes. I hold the uncontroversial view that tornadoes are not moral realities.

The story of the subjective turn is well known... — Fooloso4

A well-known truth is not worse for wear. There are many in these parts who fall short for being enamored of novelty.

We should be able and willing to look back at what Descartes said and not simply accept the story as if that is the end of the matter. — Fooloso4

Midgley seems to be leveraging one part of the story for her argument, and I don't think there's anything wrong with this. Perhaps if her piece was entirely about Descartes then she should have offered a fuller analysis of his philosophy, but Descartes was just one of the dots she was connecting, if a notable one.

...the key idea shared by the members of the Quartet is to place the concept of life at the centre of philosophical attention. This commitment has at least four dimensions: (i) an interest in the ordinary; (ii) a focus on virtue, goodness and human flourishing; (iii) an affirmation of our animal nature; (iv) recognition of the normative landscape that structures our lives. — Bakhurst, David (2022). Education for metaphysical animals. Journal of Philosophy of Education 56 (6):812–826.

...a worthy antithesis to the crap that occupies some folk on this forum. — Banno

Agreed. Philosophers are often the butt of jokes, "those who have spent years trying to decide whether their dining room table exists." I think there is a place in philosophy for flighty ruminations, but the current state of affairs has gotten out of hand.

I commend you for the thoughtfulness which is exemplified in your OP, as it is well-written, succinct, and substantive. — Bob Ross

Thank you, although it turned out to be less succinct than I had hoped. :lol:

I also appreciate your thoughtful reply. :up:

The classical example, in my mind, is the common idea in modern society that 'morality' is personal, and that one should not mix their morals with what they vote into law: it is all a load of nonsense that, at worst, is deployed as a moral deception to silence moral views. — Bob Ross

Yes, good point. I hadn't thought of that one.

Let me begin by focusing on the part of your post that deals with volition and "susceptibility," for volition is a complicated moral topic. The OP only skims the surface of volition, and I saw this as unfortunate but necessary.

...but [negligence can only be moral] if not just deliberate acts are within the sphere of moral scrutiny. — Bob Ross

There are actually two objections here. The first is that negligence involves an omission, not an act. I grant this, and I said, "Morality is therefore not only about what someone does or considers. It is also about what they fail to do or fail to take into consideration."

The second objection says that culpable negligence is not deliberate. This is where things get especially complicated in the realm of volition (and Book III of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a standard text for a study of volition). First we should note that ignorance is capable of excusing, particularly in the case of what we now call "invincible ignorance." If someone neglects to do something with invincible ignorance, then they are not culpable for their "negligence" because their omission is not in any way deliberate. More precisely, they are not culpable because their omission is in no way traceable to their will. For example, suppose I am driving 55 mph on an unmarked road. A police officer pulls me over and tickets me for driving 55 when the speed limit is 45. I tell him that I did not know the speed limit was 45 mph because there are no speed limit signs. Did I neglect to drive the speed limit?

There only two areas that I would disagree with you, and that is (1) the credence that you give to the idea that "morality is nothing more than justice" — Bob Ross

To clarify, I don't agree that morality is nothing more than justice, but I declined to disagree with Objection 1 because the form of moral realism which reduces morality to justice is not really what my OP is concerned with. Beyond that, this dispute can end up being merely terminological, for there is a legitimate use of the word "moral" in terms of justice.

morality is broader than just acts — Bob Ross

I agree, and in footnote 1 I stated, "For the sake of simplicity I will speak about acts, but the logic of this thread is not restricted to acts."

With respect to #1, Morality is the study of intrinsic goodness and what is intrinsically good: both components are necessary to capture what ethics is about. — Bob Ross

I agree that morality involves a study of goodness, but in the OP I am focusing on the question of the breadth of the moral sphere. The idea is that we determine how far the moral sphere extends by comparing the set of all acts to the set of moral acts. My contention is that all human acts are moral acts, not merely some subset of them. I am not here directly interested in the question of what the science of ethics studies, except insofar as this overlaps with concrete things in human life that can be called moral.

Now, I did add Objection 5, and perhaps this is what you are concerned with? I want to say that ideas of goodness, normativity, and weighting are all implicit in the idea of ought-judgments, and I assume this will be teased out as the thread goes on.

an action is the synthesis, at least, of an intention, an effect, and an essence — Bob Ross

So the OP leaves some things unsaid, for I was not trying to write a textbook on ethics. :wink: I too think acts are a "synthesis," and in an early draft I laid out Aquinas' theory, but I removed that when I realized that it detracted from the focus of the OP and made it too long.

For an entry point into some of what you say, let's consider this part of your post:

We can say that kicking people is generally wrong, for example, because it produces consequences which violate our morals (whatever they may be); and so the act of kicking the doctor was still wrong, although we wouldn't hold the person, in this case, responsible for it. — Bob Ross

How would Aquinas respond to this?

• K1: If something is not a human act, then it is not a moral act
• K2: Only moral acts are moral or immoral, right or wrong
• K3: Therefore, if something is not a human act, then it is not moral or immoral, right or wrong
• K4: A reflex-kick at the doctor's office is not a human act
• K5: Therefore, a reflex-kick at the doctor's office is not moral or immoral, right or wrong

Why is a reflex-kick at the doctor's office not a human act? Because it is not something that the person did. Similarly, if you are sleeping with your dog at your feet, and I take your foot and slam it into the dog, have you performed a human act? Have you kicked the dog? Do we say, "Well, kicking dogs is wrong, but in this case we won't hold you responsible for it"? Of course not. You didn't kick the dog.

Ok, back to #1. Actions which are not deliberate, can still be analyzed, to some extent, in terms of their effects and essences, being that it is a synthesis of intention and effect. For example, other species cannot, for the most part, be meaningfully considered deliberately acting (like humans) so we don't really consider their intentions within moral scrutiny, but we do still analyze the effects and natures of the acts that they perform. If morality is just about justice or, more generally, human acts, then we lose this valid aspect of the study. — Bob Ross

If the acts of species which cannot "be meaningfully considered deliberately acting" are not "within moral scrutiny," then "the effects and natures of the acts that they perform" are not a subject of moral study. For example, when we study the effects of earthworms we are not engaged in ethics.

The effects of human acts are moral insofar as they touch on volition. Suppose the lake is perfectly still and you decide to hit a golf ball into the water. You tee off, and just before your ball hits the water a diver pops out his head, gets hit, and drowns. In court they will determine your responsibility by deciding how this effect of your action relates to your will. "Did he do it on purpose?" "Did he know there was a diver there?" "Was he being reckless?" "Is he aware that divers are commonly found in this lake?" If they find that you are "invincibly ignorant" then the effect of your action will not be attributed to you and you will not be punished.

Here's where I get a bit confused with Aristotle, because I agree that eudaimonia is the highest good because of its nature BUT I don't see how Aristotle is really arguing that; since his definition of intrinsic value is ~"that which is done for its own sake". It seems like something can be done for its own sake and be a matter of subjective disposition, no?

I think he would need to define intrinsic value not in terms of what is done for its own sake, but, rather, what can be assigned value in virtue of its innate (natural) insistence of being valued (e.g., pain is a great example, although not the ultimate good).

What am I missing? — Bob Ross

I think this is that question of goodness simpliciter vs. goodness for human beings. For example, you seem to be involved in the notion that "insisting on being valued" makes sense apart from agents who do the valuing. In your OP, rather than speaking about happiness "insisting on being valued," I would want to speak about the idea that happiness is (for humans) self-evidently valuable. The question is this: is eudaimonia valuable in itself, or is it valuable for humans beings? Or is it valuable in itself for human beings?*

rather, what can be assigned value in virtue of its innate (natural) insistence of being valued — Bob Ross

I would simply want to speak about what is correctly valued as opposed to what is incorrectly valued; or what is rightly done for its own sake as opposed to what is wrongly done for its own sake; or what is the highest good/end as opposed to what appears to be the highest good/end.

* This last sentence seems to represent Aristotle's thought. Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, and others go beyond Aristotle in this, but Aristotle's position is careful and easily defensible. He does not commit himself to goodness simpliciter in any substantial sense.

---

- :up:

-Reserved for future use-

Objection 1: “Morality is nothing more than justice”

There is a position which says that all interpersonal acts are justice acts, and morality pertains to interpersonal acts rather than to the entirety of human acts. More succinctly: acts that are not justice acts are not moral acts. I have no qualms with this position, at least for the purposes of this thread. It strikes me as a reasonable position, especially given our liberal intuitions.


Objection 2: The Moral Spectrum

A popular view would hold that acts exist on a moral spectrum, such as the following:

| Heroically virtuous | Mildly good | Neutral | Mildly bad | Heinous |

According to this objection the “neutral” acts are not moral acts.

I would respond by pointing to an analogous spectrum, the spectrum of color between light and dark. Although there is a sense in which we might point to a color in the middle of this spectrum and say that it is neither light nor dark, this is not a philosophically rigorous claim. All of the colors on the spectrum belong to the species of light-and-dark-colors, even the ones in the middle that are relatively indistinct. Drawing out their color will require greater scrutiny, but lightness and darkness are not entirely absent from them. The same holds for the moral spectrum. I grant that there are acts which are only mildly moral or immoral, but not that the spectrum admits of perfectly neutral acts.


Objection 3: “But we don’t use the word ‘moral’ that way”

I have received this objection often. This is what inevitably happens:

• Objector: No one says that walking the dog is a moral act!
• Leontiskos: My contention is that your understanding of the extension of moral acts is incoherent. Are you willing to try to provide a coherent definition of morality?
• Objector: No, I am not willing to do that.

With apologies to those who have taken the “linguistic turn,” lexicography is not philosophy, even if it plays an important role in philosophy. In philosophy one is not allowed to object with terms that they are unwilling or unable to define. It seems to me that the reason no one has taken up my challenge is because they know that their conception of morality is incoherent. even went so far as to admit that his metaethics is incoherent. In my addendum I provide the thread that, when pulled on, will unravel the source of the confused intuitions that underlie our modern language about morality.

Recall also Socrates’ challenge to stop producing random examples and instead provide an actual account or definition of morality. The challenge is to provide an alternative account of morality that is not incoherent. The method will end up being abductive. The colloquial understanding of morality is comfortable to us, but given its incoherence we will have to look for something else. Where else shall we look?


Objection 4: “Sitting down on the bus involves no intention vis-à-vis other people”

“When someone sits down on a bus they are usually not intending to render justice unto other people, and therefore their act is neither a just act nor a justice act.”

Note that this is parallel to the “finger crossing” example above, for the same question arises in mundane cases where fingers are not being crossed. Implicit volition tends to be a difficult topic for the modern mind given our consensual framework. First we should notice that someone who is playing loud music on the bus is also usually not intending to act unjustly towards the other passengers, but their act is nevertheless unjust.

The reason we can act well or poorly even without trying to act well or poorly is because we are creatures of habit (and Aristotle calls these habits virtues and vices). Yet we have control over our habits because habits flow from acts and we have control of our acts. Habits are what allow us to act in a determinate manner even when we are not giving explicit attention to that habitual aspect of action. Therefore we are expected to act in certain ways even without always explicitly thinking about those ways of acting, and this makes sense in light of habits (habitus).


Objection 5: Morality correlates to importance

• Moral acts are important acts
• Not all human acts are important acts
• Therefore, not all human acts are moral acts

This is similar to Objection 2. I would respond by saying that everything someone does is something they consider worthwhile or worth doing. The simple fact that time is scarce leads us to try to use our time wisely and do things that are worthwhile.

On the other hand, not everything is equally worthwhile, and someone might use the idea of morality to denote those things or rules that are worth taking especially seriously. This is fine so long as we do not forget that there is no qualitative difference between more important things and less important things, for all things that are worth doing have a minimum level of importance.

Addendum

I drafted this thread within a few weeks of joining TPF, almost a year ago. Confusion regarding the extension of the moral sphere strikes me as one of the most widespread errors on this website. The reason I did not post the thread earlier is because the topic has a tendency to keep sprouting new arms and legs. Let me gesture towards a few of those arms and legs even at the risk of derailing my own thread.

In one way it is true that the set of acts that are susceptible to moral scrutiny is coextensive with the set of moral acts, but in another way it is false. Consider Immanuel Kant and his Categorical Imperative. For Kant every act must take heed not to violate the Categorical Imperative, and therefore all acts are susceptible to moral scrutiny. Even practically we can see that it is common for someone to mistakenly believe that they have not violated Kant’s Categorical Imperative. Nevertheless, for Kant the morally praiseworthy act must do more than fail to violate the Categorical Imperative; it must in some sense flow out of respect for the Categorical Imperative itself. So for Kant taking the dog for a walk is in principle susceptible to moral scrutiny and yet it is not a moral act. For Kant only one part of life is moral, and morality does not extend to all of life in the way that it does for Aristotle or Aquinas. This is because Kant is—despite himself—fashioning a solution to a problem occasioned by Hobbesian cultural intuitions.* Those Hobbesian intuitions present the problem of achieving peaceful coexistence between autonomous individuals, and because this problem affects only one part of life, so too does Kant’s solution. In approximately the same way that Libertarians view the limited role of government, so too does Kant view the limited role of morality.

Not so for those coming from the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. Kant addresses the end of peaceful coexistence, and peaceful coexistence is not the whole of life; therefore the morality of Kant does not directly affect the whole of life. But for Aristotle and Aquinas the end is individual and communal happiness, not merely peaceful coexistence. Because they see happiness as the ultimate end of all of human life, the normative science of happiness will be coextensive with all of human life. All human acts are moral acts, because all human acts involve non-hypothetical ought-judgments ordered to happiness. The scope of one’s non-hypothetical ought-judgments will extend as far as one’s normative end(s) extend(s). The breadth of one’s moral sphere will depend on what they conceive of as the end of their life and perhaps of all human life. Still, it seems to me that Aristotle conceived of this end and its scope rightly.

* See especially "Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble," by Peter L. P. Simpson

Goodness can be deployed in a twofold manner... — Bob Ross

I think this is a decent paragraph, and shows some improvement in your ideas and rhetoric.

What can be predicated as morally good, then, is what can be said to have intrinsic value; and intrinsic value is value a ‘thing’ has in itself. To determine extrinsic value, is a matter of tracing the value to the “thing’s” (inter-)subjective (literal or theoretical) source—e.g., if one needs/wants something to tell the time, then a clock is really good (for this [subjective] purpose); whereas, to determine intrinsic value is a matter of analyzing how much, if at all, a ‘thing’ demands value. Intrinsic value is value which is innately insisted upon by the (objective) ‘thing’, and is not mere value dependent on a subject’s interpretation of it. — Bob Ross

This is an interesting paragraph. A week ago Pope Francis released a document called Dignitas Infinita (infinite dignity). I'm not sure how it will be received, but it is trying to do something similar to what you are trying to do here, saying that the human being itself has infinite value.

it cannot be intrinsic value if the value is dependent on a subject’s evaluation of it — Bob Ross

Aristotle says that eudaimonia is the highest end because of its nature, not because subjects happen to value it. But Aristotle and Aquinas immediately address the most obvious objection, namely that different people are made happy by different things ().

Here is how Aquinas puts the quandary:

So, then, as to the aspect of last end, all agree in desiring the last end: since all desire the fulfilment of their perfection, and it is precisely this fulfilment in which the last end consists, as stated above. But as to the thing in which this aspect is realized, all men are not agreed as to their last end: since some desire riches as their consummate good; some, pleasure; others, something else. Thus to every taste the sweet is pleasant but to some, the sweetness of wine is most pleasant, to others, the sweetness of honey, or of something similar. — Thomas Aquinas

I guess the tricky move is in not seeing the substrate as ontologically basic, which is how we tend to think of it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think what something like Paley's Watchmaker attempts to show is that if only the substrate is ontologically basic then you never end up with watches. Or, in a world full of dominoes with no minds to order them, you never arrive at the domino structure described in the OP. Orderly structures point to ordering minds. As I noted earlier, the order generated within a mind is being infused into material reality.

But we have to agree that there is indeed this third level of “is-ness,” of being, without which we’d be at a loss to explain almost all of the important facts about the "three objects on the museum floor" situation.

The two factors I would point to as most significant in making “Trio” an art object are, first, the meaning that is given to it by human consciousnesses, and second, the fact that this meaning is essentially relational, that is, at least one other person has to agree to see “Trio” as art. — J

I don't think this is parallel to the dominoes or language. In fact I think your example is somewhat similar to the idea of shape-meaning, for shape recognition is different from shape meaning (see below).

(Semiotic) Meaning involves the idea that one thing stands for or signifies something else. A sign could be purely conventional, where the the sign and what it signifies have no intrinsic relation. An example of this would be a stop sign, which signifies to drivers that they should stop, yet there is no necessary relation between a stop sign and stopping. At best, your "Trio" is a conventional sign, but I rather doubt that it rises to the level of a conventional sign unless we have some determinate idea of what "art" means. "This is art!" "What do you mean by 'art'?" "I actually have no idea." If its meaning isn't accessible to others, then it doesn't mean anything and is not a conventional sign. But perhaps someone could give a case for what they mean by 'art' in such cases - I will leave this question to the side.

The more important point is that dominoes and language are not merely conventional signs, and therefore even if it can be meaningfully said that the "Trio" is art this does not run parallel to the examples in this thread. Think about Paley's Watchmaker, referenced above. If an alien race discovers the dominoes among our remains 10,000 years from now, they will be able to understand that the dominoes "mean" a decision-procedure for determining whether a number is prime. The physical structure provides this meaning, this capacity, in a way that is not merely conventional.

And if the alien race looks at all of our artifacts of written language, they will to a large extent be able to reproduce the meaning of the language (just as we ourselves have done with dormant languages). The dominoes and language are not purely conventional because the relations between dominoes and the relations between linguistic units are not merely conventional.

Now one might argue that art is high culture and because of this is difficult to explain and recognize. That may be, but I don't think modern art of the type you have described is on par with the dominoes or written language. The relation between the dominoes and prime numbers is altogether different from the relation between "Trio" and "art." Indeed, I would argue that to name the trio "Trio" is more meaningful than predicating of it "art." :razz:

Now for the photocopy. I’m arguing that it isn’t yet a subvenient term because no human consciousness has entered into that relation with it. Nothing is “naturally” a subvenient, or supervenient, term, just as nothing is naturally an art object. If someone comes along and reads meaning into the copied page, we can now identify a supervenience relation, with the page + letter-meanings as the subvenient term, and the meaning of the page as a whole as the supervenient term. — J

I would argue that it is a subvenient term because someone can come along and understand it. The potential meaning is contained within the physical photocopy. On your reading it would seem that when our race dies out in 10,000 AD the photocopy ceases to be a subvenient term, and then when the alien race deciphers it in 20,000 AD it suddenly becomes a subvenient term again. In one sense this is true, but the pertinent question here is: how is it that the meaning can still be recovered from the physical object after 10,000 years? If what is at stake is merely a matter of human convention, then it couldn't be recovered.

I’m sure this is true, but aren’t you begging the question if you talk about a “shape meaning”? I’m questioning whether what we recognize in a shape is any sort of meaning at all. I think I have ordinary usage on my side, for what that’s worth. “What does that shape mean?” is an odd question, except under quite special circumstances. — J

Well, my point was that it is not meaning in the ordinary sense. That's why I gave a dyad to try to explain it:

I would either want to say that an upside-down G has shape meaning but not linguistic meaning, or else I would want to say that it has no (semiotic/linguistic) meaning, but it is nevertheless "mental." — Leontiskos

The mental "shape meaning" is perhaps better called shape recognition, and this shape recognition is precisely what constitutes one specification of the physical description of written language. The copy machine recognizes and reproduces shapes and thereby reproduces the subvenient term. You have been objecting that the subvenient term itself has built-in meaning, and therefore it is not the sort of thing upon which meaning supervenes. But have we now agreed that it does not have meaning and that meaning does supervene on this non-meaning term? The point I have been at pains to make is that linguistic meaning supervenes on a subvenient term which is mental, but less mental than linguistic meaning. In this case the less-mental subvenient term is shape recognition.

About music: Yes, there’s an up side to non-musical info creeping into our musical experience. When I’m working with music, I’m certainly grateful that I can place my musical materials theoretically into a larger context. They become richer, and my use of them, hopefully, better. — J

True. It's also interesting that jazz musicians often testify that knowing the lyrics to a song helps them to play an instrumental cover of the song. For example, Bill Frisell did an album of Beatles covers, and presumably the fact that he knew the words added to the musical quality of the album. Of course one could make more or less of this phenomenon, even to the point of reducing it to the simple question of how accurately the musician is able to mimic the original.

Unless by this you mean that the property of goodness is not identical to 'being in a state of eudamonia', which I completely agree with. — Bob Ross

Yes, that is the most important takeaway.

What is, according to Aristotle, goodness simpliciter, then? I guess I didn't grasp that when I read it. — Bob Ross

When thinking specifically about Aristotle, he rejected Plato's notion of The Good and tended to see goodness simpliciter as a logical, largely contentless predicate. He thought one always had to consider the context when using the word 'good', and that any usage which lacks a context is misguided.

I don't think the virtue ethicist will agree that it is a vice to do something you did not know had negative consequences, as humans we are always learning after all. — Lionino

If one does not know it has negative consequences (and they cannot be expected to know) then they do not have volition vis-a-vis the harm in question. Ignorance excuses because of a lack of volition.

That a moral theory does not get along with moral human intuition and with human semantic intuition (what linguistic subjects the predicate "is immoral" can apply to) is an indication that such moral theory is flawed or at least redefining what "moral" really means. — Lionino

As indicated above, I don't think our colloquial notion of "moral" is entirely coherent, given the way that it relies on arbitrary degrees (). If this is right then "moral" in the colloquial sense falls far short of philosophical rigor. ...But the genealogy of this colloquial term is a much larger topic. See, for example, my post <here>.

How so? — Lionino

For example, by stipulating that morality is a species of decision making, and therefore the child who ignorantly places their hand on a hot stove has not made a decision with respect to moral categories, such as harm. If someone does not know that their act involves moral consequences, then they cannot be said to be making a moral decision.

If we agree that the OP's premise includes awareness of the consequences of an action, for pretty much any ethical theory — including virtue ethics —, there would be no difference between things that aren’t immoral and things you shouldn't want to be the kind of person that does them. Because the "shouldn't want" basically collapses to "is wrong", which is "is immoral" in others words. — Lionino

Yes, I have been agreeing with you on this, although it would seem that you made a rather crucial typo in saying "aren't immoral" instead of "are immoral."

It would be another story if the OP said "between things that aren’t immoral and things you don't want to be the kind of person that does them". Then it would become an aesthetic issue... — Lionino

I don't follow the sentence you here rewrote. The OP is saying, "If I see some X and say, 'One should not want to be the kind of person that does X,' then does it automatically follow that X is immoral?"

I actually have Amadeus on ignore, for after extended exchanges with him I came to the conclusion that he is one of the dumbest posters on the forum. He was recently seen using AI to try to support Corvus' claim that denying the antecedent is not a fallacy. Of course he is a youth, so there is still hope. But let me wade through his trolling and look at what he said...

So I don't think there is any hard line between "aesthetic judgment" and moral judgment (what is being considered is actually aesthetic judgment of behavior). An infraction against norms of decorum is one of those things that our culture does not call "moral" because it does not rise to the arbitrary threshold set for "moral" acts. In the same way, we hold that minor slights are not immoral, such as inconveniencing another by hogging the telephone for longer than we should. One simply won't find this arbitrary use of "moral" prior to the modern period. But again, this is a larger topic.

(To be clear, historically we have always distinguished exceptionally bad acts from acts that are not exceptionally bad. This happens via law, for it is universally recognized that not all undesirable acts should be legislated against. But prior to the modern period we did not speak as if such distinctions were qualitative.)

And yet when I question the received interpretation you assume this is because I am fond of Descartes and upset, as it all of this is personal. — Fooloso4

We're still waiting for you to give an argument that bears on Midgley's thesis.

No one has the ability to anticipate all the different ways in which they will be interpreted. — Fooloso4

Sure, but what is at stake is not some bizarre or implausible interpretation.

I agree that this has led to confusion and that Descartes is as the center of the subjective turn. I also agree that it is a commonplace today. But philosophy has moved past this. Apparently no one told her. This movement began before her and has continued after her. — Fooloso4

It's as if you first concede that Midgley is right and then, unaccountably, assert that she is confused, again without a supporting argument. Your rebuttal? "Philosophy has moved past this. Nothing to see here, folks!"

- :up:

The end of human life, the human good, is happiness.* But happiness is the human good; it is not goodness simpliciter.

* Cf. Nicomachean Ethics I.iv; Summa Theologiae I-II.1 & 2

Even if Midgley has misconstrued Descartes, her misconstrual is shared by others. — Banno

It is shared by others, it is the fruit of a plain reading of his texts, and it is this received interpretation that has had its effect on the history of philosophy. If such is a misreading, then this misreading is in large part Descartes’ own fault. Philosophers should have foresight about how their texts will be interpreted and how their method will influence their message.

- I can see that you are very fond of Descartes, but what does this have to do with Midgley? It is commonly recognized that Descartes helped occasion a shift towards the individual subject, and thus Midgley’s reading is not controversial. Do you have any arguments to offer against Midgley’s thesis, or are you just upset that she spoke against a philosopher you are fond of?

Is it possible to be too preoccupied with defending Descartes to see Midgley's point? — Banno

I think some here are too preoccupied with defending Descartes to see Descartes' point. If someone wishes to engage in Descartes gnosticism, that is fine (e.g. revamping everything he wrote in terms of historical circumstances or imputed intentions). Some of that may even be true, but to excoriate Midgley for taking Descartes at his word is, well, dumb. Only in an age as silly as ours could one be taken to task for interpreting a philosopher in light of what he actually wrote. I think there are many philosophers who are rolling in their graves because people are paying more attention to the "subtext" than their texts.

I think it does matter, because that is the central distinction between consequentialism and non-consequentialist ethics. For the virtue ethicist, alcoholism, or any sort of self-harm would generally not be deemed as immoral if the subject did not know of the facts surrounding alcoholism.

The consequentialist will say that it is immoral for an ignorant child to touch the hot stove. — Lionino

It seems to me that the virtue ethicist and the consequentialist will agree that if volition is involved, then what is occurring may be immoral (and this will relate to "knowledge of the facts surrounding alcoholism"). Some consequentialists may hold that volition is not necessary for an act to be immoral (and that the child's ignorance does not excuse), but many other consequentialists would disagree. In fact both virtue ethicists and consequentialists are able to distinguish between culpable evil and inculpable evil (e.g. knowingly harming and unknowingly harming).

I would say that the key to this thread is to think about what is necessarily non-moral. There are many things that are non-moral in certain circumstances, but nevertheless are not necessarily non-moral. Alcoholism is one such thing, and @fdrake erroneously presented it as necessarily non-moral. Further, I think all moral theories are capable of coming to the conclusion that alcoholism is not necessarily non-moral, consequentialism included.

- Paul addresses almost this exact issue in Romans 2, especially vv. 12-16. Obviously this idea gets developed by Christians in all sorts of directions. ...So I don't really know what the OP hopes to achieve with his tautology, but I rather doubt that he will succeed in drawing any substantial conclusion.

- So you've managed to stumble upon the tautology that someone who does not believe in sin is not able to knowingly sin? Okay. :chin:

- You still require the distinction that I pointed out, and this is obvious given the way that you conceive of government epikeia as distinct from personal epikeia.

- You seem to be tying yourself up in knots. A large part of the problem is that you are equivocating on the term immoral, between what-society-deems-immoral and what-Janus-deems-immoral. Hypocrisy obviously pertains to the latter and not the former.

Yes, I do, if the subvenient term you’re referring to is the one that is subsequently going to be part of a supervenience relation with words and sentences. What the copier copies is a physical object, without any “meaning level.” No surprise, the copier can’t enter into any sort of relation with anything, so its copy isn’t a subvenient term. — J

I actually don't follow this argument at all. Why is it that the copy machine does not copy and produce the subvenient term? For reference here are some quotes from our conversation. I began:

I would want to say that the rational/mental meaning supervenes on the purely physical system, in much the same way that the meaning of a word supervenes on the written symbols or spoken phonemes. — Leontiskos

You introduced the notion of a "subvenient set":

What is the (allegedly) strictly physical description of the subvenient set? — J

...and then I pressed the idea of a copy machine: the physical item is the thing that the copy machine copies. I actually don't see how it can be denied that meaning supervenes on the physical thing that the copy machine produces. If I fax you a letter what you receive is a physical copy, and that physical copy is where the meaning comes from. If the copy is faulty then the meaning will be faulty, and if the copy is accurate then the meaning will be accurate. The meaning is clearly supervening on the physical copy.

It seems to me that on your view copy machines can't exist, because you think a strictly physical meaning-carrier cannot exist. Yet copy machines seem to simply prove, contrary to your presuppositions, that physical objects can have a "meaning level."

For this to make sense, you also have to accept a kind of “principle of indiscernibles” which states that a copied page can be two things at once, depending on who’s looking. Before you reject that out of hand, consider that this principle can explain, among other things, how art happens – how a physical object can be simply that, and also, under the right circumstances, a work of art. — J

Okay, but are you saying that the copy is simultaneously a subvenient term and not a subvenient term? Above I said, "In one way these two things are the same thing, and in another way they are different things" ().

Perhaps you are saying that the dominoes are strictly physical in one sense, and yet in another sense meaning goes before their physicality given their logical ordering? We could utilize a variant of Paley's Watchmaker and say, therefore, that someone who stumbled upon the dominoes would be able to infer a source of meaning (usually called a mind).

Interesting, I didn’t know that. So a proposition, say, has something resembling a matter/form division? — J

On this forum I have found that a lot of people conceive of propositions like objectively floating clouds that can be "tapped into," much like Plato's Forms. For Aquinas (and I believe also for Aristotle) a proposition is always dependent upon a mind, and therefore the material element in the mind that corresponds to the proposition will always accompany the proposition, yes. In the case of an immaterial mind I believe Aquinas would say that there is not knowledge that exists in a propositional or discursive form. Or else, if we don't want to quickly get off track, I would probably need to know how you conceive of a proposition.

Yes, but what they are true about can range on a spectrum from strictly physical to strictly mental. I admit I don’t understand why there can’t be anything non-mental. — J

Because truth is inextricably tied up with the mental, for we do not know anything apart from our mind. My mind conceives the shapes, the letters, the words, the sentences, the meaning, etc. In one way this represents an increasing sequence of mental-ness, for the latter terms presuppose the mental conceptions of the former terms in addition to other mental conceptions. Still, there is no first term that is a non-mental truth or is known non-mentally.

What's interesting here is that the copy machine does enter into a relation with the thing it is supposed to copy, namely at the level of shape. It is able to recognize and reproduce shapes.

Similar perplexity here. I suppose a hardcore idealism would insist that everything is mental, in the sense that everything we know about is a product of our minds... — J

It's not that everything is reducible to mental powers, but rather that there is no object of cognition that is known in a non-mind way; and it seems like your search for a "physical subvenient term" is the search for an object of cognition that is known in a non-mind way.

Maybe you could say more about the upside-down G shape understood as (semiotic/linguistic) meaningless but nevertheless “mental.” — J

"...an upside-down G has shape meaning but not linguistic meaning..." The ability to recognize shapes requires a sufficiently sophisticated mind and visual apparatus. You could think about this developmentally. Children can recognize shapes. Older children can recognize letters. Older children can recognize words, etc. Even the recognition of shape in that first step is mental.

I understand the Beatles example now, thanks. The phenomenon you’re describing is a common one for musicians, and often vexing. For instance, I would dearly love to be able to hear song X with an “innocent ear,” unencumbered by theoretical baggage, but since I’ve been a working musician all my life and my brain now performs certain kinds of analysis automatically, this is extremely difficult for me. So the Beatles lyrics are like the theoretical baggage, in that both obscure something more basic and, arguably, more purely musical. — J

Okay, great. But I think it is also worth noting how valuable and incarnational this phenomenon can be. It allows music to take on other dimensions. John Williams' Imperial March was surely better after Star Wars than before. In fact the more closely sound engineers and composers work with other members of a creative endeavor (directors, writers, poets, actors, etc.), the better the result and the less extricable the material music.

Nope. Not the acts. The moral judgment. — Vera Mont

The moral judgment judges an act, and therefore your evasion fails. By being unable to specify the acts, you are automatically unable to specify the moral judgments of those acts. As it turns out, personal hygiene and germs are closely related.

- So your position is that when I wash my hands to remove germs I am addressing personal hygiene, but when I wash my hands to remove ebola germs I am only addressing public safety? Apparently you are forced to conceive of these two things as entirely different acts, with no overlap, such that the latter act does not involve personal hygiene.

Your position is strange, to say the least. Again, I would suggest giving these issues a bit more thought than you have.

The answer lies on whether one sees morality in the act itself or in the person/intention. — Lionino

In responding to @fdrake’s claim I pointed to volition. Acts, intentions, and habits are all moral insofar as they are volitional. There is no exclusive dichotomy between the morality of acts, intentions, and habits.

What this means is that, in assessing alcoholism, it doesn’t matter a great deal whether alcoholism is viewed in terms of acts, intentions, or habits. What matters is whether it is volitional, and for this reason @fdrake’s A2 is central. He is viewing it as non-volitional, and for this reason your rejoinder stands.

- The claim that self-defense is murder would seem to beg the question at hand.

People do things they think to be immoral all the time if it suits them. — Janus

Obviously, but again, what in the world does this have to do with the OP?

The one who posed the question said people were hypocrites to morally condemn torture in any and all circumstances when most of them would torture the kidnapper in that situation. I said that was wrong—even if there is no good argument to support condoning torture in any circumstance, it is nonetheless understandable that anyone who cares about their family would torture the kidnapper in that circumstance and would not be concerned about being justified in doing so. They are two different questions. — Janus

He was right and you were wrong. They are hypocrites. It makes no difference whether their hypocrisy is understandable.

I didn't say it was a "non-moral issue". I said that its status as a moral issue may be irrelevant to the one defending themselves in the act of defense. — Janus

Therefore...?

I am imagining the parallel where we are having a discussion about whether one should eat unknown mushrooms, and then you come along and say, "Well, someone who is very hungry might eat unknown mushrooms." But what is the purpose of such a comment supposed to be? That people might do things they know to be stupid? Just as people might do things they know to be immoral?

That there might be pacifists whose ideology carries more weight to them than their own wellbeing or survival, even in the mortally threatening moment, doesn't seem relevant. — Janus

How do you figure that it is irrelevant that people will undergo harm for moral reasons? Why don't you try to set out some form of syllogistic argumentation for why you believe this to be irrelevant.

- Ebola, then. :roll:

- Maybe ask yourself the question of whether handwashing rose to the level of a "moral act" during COVID-19.

What might be, from an abstract perspective, immoral would be completely irrelevant to someone acting to save their own lives and/or the lives of their loved ones. — Janus

No. The moral status of self-defense is an age-old issue. It is not a de facto non-moral issue.

Neither is it practically irrelevant, for there are pacifists who maintain their pacifism even while in danger.

Most people believe it would be morally right and justified to kill someone to save yourself or someone else because it’s basic self defense whether the person you’re killing did anything or not. — Captain Homicide

"Whether the person you're killing did anything or not"? This sounds like the exact opposite of self-defense. Self-defense implies that the other person did something.

I would suggest reading the thread on How to Write an OP.

There is nothing immoral about lax personal hygiene, but nobody likes to be called Pigpen. — Vera Mont

We tend to use the word "moral" to identify that which surpasses an arbitrary degree of harm. Because personal hygiene usually only effects a negligible level of harm, it is not deemed moral. Yet if bad personal hygiene surpassed a certain threshold, such as when it would cause others to become physically sick, it would then be deemed "immoral." There is no qualitative difference between minor and major degrees of bad personal hygiene, and therefore there is no precise philosophical distinction between the two. No sound moral philosophy makes arbitrary distinctions. Or in other words: the uncritical, every day use of this term is not robust or ultimately coherent, and this is why moral philosophy has never defined the genus of the moral in terms of the casual speech of contemporary culture.