It's not that I think the person matters for the validity of the argument, it's that I think often it's not the argument that matters in a discussion, but what the person is getting at when making a particular argument.... what their motive is.

Consider the example of the bigot/racist making some seemingly good argument about racial groups I gave earlier in response to another poster. When confronted with that argument, I don't think one should engage with the argument, I think one can disregard it because the argument itself is not really what he is getting at ultimately. I'm certainly not interested in playing the game they are trying to set up.

Maybe this is a somewhat sideways answer to your question in that I kindof changed the terms of the discussion, but I do think that generally in the real world this is what matters. People aren't that rational and rarely I find myself in a discussion where both interlocutors are predominantly interested in the argument for the arguments sake.

Arguments, on the other hand, are impersonal. Logic has no face, identity, color or smell. — Alkis Piskas

An argument is always made by someone. While an argument in the abstract ( which is a fiction) may be impersonal, the act of making an argument is not. Someone's making a choice in why one wants to make a particular argument and not make others.

Here's an example. Sometimes a random right winger will bring up some empirical data and statistics about racial groups in relation to crime or intelligence or something along those lines, and then proceed and formulate a conclusion that seems to follow those data and stats. In the abstract, and looking only at the argument, he would seem to be making a solid argument. But if we look at the person making the argument, maybe we could say based on his history, that he is making that particular argument only to justify or promote racist views.

Often in public debate it's not really about the argument an sich, but what is implied by making a particular argument. An argument can be used as a rhetorical device, and is often very good at persuasion because who can argue with some solid logic right?

OP wants to say we should ignore the person making the argument and only look at the merits of the argument. I would say it depends. In an ideal world where everybody is an honest philosopher making desinterested arguments, yes by all means look at the arguments only. Things don't work like that in reality however, people do have agenda's and arguments are made to steer people into certain directions. Therefor I would say, it does matter who is making what argument.

Additional takeaway: Why not present and consider political arguments, rather than elect officials with an agenda? Why not address each issue democratically, rather than allow politicians to wheel and deal with each other? Anyone who wants to participate is welcome, so long as they operate within the landscape of the arguments. To fail in doing so is to fail to participate. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

It would probably be impractical, as is any form of direct democracy.

Conclusion: Seeing as we need not evaluate the characteristics of the person making an argument, and that by doing so we allow our biases to influence the way we consider them (risking ad hominem attacks), we should indeed listen to arguments rather than people. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I do generally agree with this. Probably because i'm personally a bit more predisposed to the rational than most, I tend to look past the person making the arguments generally... but I do think an argument can be made that the person and his history/values does matter a lot. As did Nietzsche for example:

"I have gradually come to realize what every great philosophy so far has been: a confession of faith on the part of its author, and a type of involuntary and unself-conscious memoir; in short, that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constitute the true living seed from which the whole plant has always grown."

My tendencies to ignore the person making the arguments notwithstanding, I have found this to be largely true. People are not really rational at base, but often rather "rationalizing". And so in that sense it does also matter who is making the argument and for what reason, aside from arguments also having some merit on their own in the abstract.

I kind of like the Bayesian approach to all of this, which does take into account peoples histories and their specific experiences - which can wildly differ for person to person - as constitutive for how people come to their beliefs... but it also tries to incorporate a measured and reasoned approach to adjusting those beliefs.

I have become nuclear absolutist, anything else is just tampering in the margins... it's the power of the atom or back to the stoneage.

Oh I agree. But the problem is when the discourse stays on that level when making actual decisions. Politicians just love grandstanding and hence the problem is that rhetoric and actual decisions can part to totally different realms. When an administration that likely has few years to go until the next election makes an "ambitious" plan for the next twenty years, one can be doubtful of what actually will be done in the next decade or two.

This is a basic problem especially in energy policy, which is quite central to the actual environment policy. Since at least 40 years the emphasis has been to "transfer to renewables". Well, that's really happening only now and the current energy crisis shows just how much dependent we are on oil and gas. — ssu

I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that because the discourse is too extreme, politicians make their plans too ambitious to soothe the public who internalised that extreme discourse... and because those plans are too ambitious, nothing gets done?

I don't know how it went down in various countries, but I don't think too much ambition was the real culprit the last 40 years. I think the problem was simply that it costs a lot of money, the effects would only be felt in a few decades way after election cycles, and ultimately people didn't care that much either. Alarmism and Greta Thunberg only really were a thing the past 5, maybe 10 years.

So yeah, the problem I'd say was mainly apathy because the effects were still so far in the future. That, and yes definitely also the fact that our dependence on fossil fuels is much more difficult to get away from than environmentalist and left parties have been making it out to be. But notice here the issue is not an overestimation of the gravity of the problem (i.e. alarmism), but an underestimation of how tied in with fossil fuels our economy really is and an underestimation of the effort required to build alternative energy-sources... those are two distinct things.

In short, the diagnosis is not the issue, the lack of good workable solutions is.

Sorry about that. The body and conclusions aren't pessimistic. They admit it's going to be a challenge and conclude that multiple technologies are a better than a single solution. — Tate

No problem.

I have nothing against such potential solutions in principle, but I am a bit skeptical yes. Usually they can work fine as prototypes in a lab - which is the context wherein they are studied - but ultimately they often fail as real world scaled up solutions because of the energy or other costs.

This is by no means restricted to greenhouse capture innovations, but applies to innovations in general. Scientists do have some incentive to shed a positive light on their research projects, because that is more likely to secure future funding... and they typically don't have all that much specific knowledge of what it takes to successfully place something in the market.

And so very little of these lab-innovations actually end up being a success. Also energy presumably will be even more expensive if we need to phase out fossil fuels, so operational costs being high doesn't bode all that well going forward.

Check out this article. It's a review of several potential approaches. — Tate

I can't read the whole article, only the abstract, but it does seem to be going for more or less the same conclusion as I have been earlier, namely that it works but isn't efficient/is to costly, which makes it doubtful that it could be scaled up.

"Besides several advantages, NETs present high operational cost and its scale-up should be tested to know the real effect on climate change mitigation. With current knowledge, no single process should be seen as a solution."

The models really need to be accurate, realistic and not simple extrapolations from linear models, where the end result is that you are forecasting the year when the human race, or all species, are extinct. — ssu

I don't think anybody seriously invested in the topic is really claiming definitively that we are going to go extinct, they're just using 'existential threat' as concept that isn't technical but rather figuratively and political, to indicate that it's going to be really really bad if we don't do anything. I think it means something like an existential treat to our current way of life, loosely... and not to the species.

Wrong models could inform bad policies, but we aren't really talking about the models here I don't think. The climate models themselves are, in all their uncertainty, actually pretty clear. If we emit x amount of greenhouse gasses we can expect between y and z amount of global warming. We are talking about what the effects on human civilizations would be, and as far as I know there are no models for that because it's just to complex to model. Nobody can really predict these kind of things beforehand with any kind of certainty.

To demand accurate, realistic non-linear models before we can make any sort of claim about this is effectively the same as saying we should just remain silent about it, which can't be a good idea either because then we would have no impetus at all for said policies. So saying it is an existential treat to our way of life and building policies on that, doesn't seem to far off base, even if it is unsure.

Yes certainly, we are part of the biosphere and it is part of us. Case in point the recent revaluation and attention for the gut-microbiome in medicine and dietary sciences.

Yes, I know. I just meant that switching to electric cars won't limit CO2 emissions until we have a replacement for coal and gas power plants. — Tate

Ok, yes sure... but we need both rather soon.

Forests scrub the atmosphere every summer. I think we can come up with something. Or at least it's too early to give up. — Tate

Scientific consensus seem to be that it's really hard to get greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere, and that it's also hard to see inventions or innovations that would do it. Forests can help a bit, sure, but from what I gathered it's not that big of a percentage.

You're saying a global catastrophe could be the solution to global conflict. Could be. — Tate

Yeah something like that, I guess. We'll see what Europe ultimately does in reaction to the energy-crisis, but it certainly has changed a lot of minds in a short time. For instance, a lot of countries were set on phasing out nuclear for years now, and now they are all reconsidering. A crisis certainly seems to create political will like nothing else does.

I think nuclear is the higher priority, though. Electricity is mostly generated by coal or gas. — Tate

Nuclear is electricity-production, that would have to replace all other current electricity-production (which is 20% all total energy-use) and also everything else that uses fossil fuels directly as energy, like transport or factory-ovens (which is the other 80%). That latter 80% needs to be electrified first, before we can use electricity as the energy-source, like we are doing now with the electric car.

Really? Is there research on that? Just curious. — Tate

I'm just relying on experts here that seem reliable to me. We have scrubbers already as prototypes, but they seem woefully inefficient energy-wise, and therefor hardly scalable... which makes sense if you consider that greenhouses gasses, while high enough to raise temperature, are still very small concentrations in the air.

Yes, but it doesn't seem to be in the direction of global cooperation. And democratic governments are generally screwed. Apathy takes over. — Tate

I think it could go any way still. Apathy, or even open conflict because of higher stressed relations and scarcity, are all definite possibilities... but so is cooperation, for instance if the need is truly high. In WWII the US and the USSR commies were besties and fighting side by side to defeat the fascists... go figure.

Feasible in what sense? If every nation converts to nuclear power and we start building large scale scrubbers, we could at least reverse some of the changes we've already contributed.

Is that feasible for our generation? No. — Tate

Nuclear (maybe some renewables) and electrification of everything, is what is needed, as well as a fundamental rethinking of agriculture. Forget scrubbers, concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the air are to small to make it worth it to actively pull them out.

It's not feasible in normal times, no, because of the sheer scale of it. Maybe it would be possible in something akin to a transitioning to a wartime economy, like the US or Germany in WWII. That may seem unlikely right now, but we don't know what will happen in volatile times... look at the war and energy crisis in Europe right now. Nobody could have predicted that a few years ago.

Times are definitely a changing.

I agree.

Just as in the Zeihan example, over dramatization still is not great when you are dealing with facts. It's far too easy to ask the question: Is China really to collapse now immediately and get the answer "Likely not". The same happens if we take the most dire forecast in the shortest time period. When that most dire forecast doesn't happen (in the few months or one year) it's supposed to happen, you can seriously question then the forecaster.

To think that the most dire forecast is just a way to "wake up" people and hence it's OK to be alarmist, then one should remember that to get most closest to what happens will be the best forecast. — ssu

Ok, maybe I agree that this kind of alarmism as a political strategy isn't all that helpful, in that it potentially alienates those that weren't already convinced even further. But I'm not sure really, maybe it did help to some extend, climate change certainly is high on the agenda now.

But I wasn't talking about political strategy. Aside from any political impact one may want to have, I just think the truth is that the problem is very very serious, and one is entirely justified in being alarmed, as a normal human reaction to something like this.

Like, we are leaving behind the only climate in history wherein human civilisation have developed and existed thus far, probably permanently for all our intents and purposes... that is quite something. Climate change at the very least will be a risk or stress multiplier on all or most of our vital system, energy, food, water, shelter... for centuries to come. And then we are one of the most adaptable species with our technology, a lot of the rest of the biosphere will have less of a chance to adapt to this unprecedent rate of change.

All of this is pretty bleak and depressing I think, and the mental tax from this on young and future generations is by itself already a tragedy it seems to me.

A good while back I read this book that dealt with these questions, a preface to Plato (history of the Greek mind). I thought it quite interesting at the time :

https://monoskop.org/images/0/0d/Havelock_Eric_A_Preface_to_Plato.pdf

Part of differences between myth an philosophy have to do with the transition of an oral tradition wherein myth originated, to a written tradition. Purely from a practical point of view alone, it is perhaps easy to see that oral pieces that are preformed, will tend to have different characteristic, like how they sound (instead of read) and the fact that you have to memorize them. Verse, narrative, rhyme all are mnemonic devices that you strictly speaking don't need anymore if a text is preserved in written form.

And that's alarmism. Call something existential when it's really existential, then you don't fall into alarmism: of making unwarranted claims. The Sun poses an existential threat to life on Earth as current theory on the sun's stages in the future holds, but that is in the billion year time scale. This isn't just a rhetorical question, it really drives the discussion. Because pointing this out, I am categorized as being non-alarmed about climate change, as simply giving a "meh" about it. When doubting the most severe predictions is labeled as being a denier of the whole problem, that is a real problem for honest discussion. We have to avoid the lures of tribalism and making making issues to be like religious movements with their proper liturgy and other views considered blasphemy. — ssu

I actually made more or less the same point a while back in a discussion with Xtrix in the climate change thread, so I do sort of agree, existential threat is a technical term with a specific meaning and therefor shouldn't be used to describe the threat:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11305/climate-change-general-discussion/p6

But my point this time was that it doesn't really matter that it isn't an existential threat, it is still or should be very alarming nevertheless.

I had this same issue come out on the Xi Jinping and the CCP has no clothes thread where, yes, China is facing real difficulties and no, China isn't going to collapse. Again the love affair we have with "end-is-nigh" thinking. — ssu

Peter Zeihan seems a bit too much of a demographic determinist and he also constantly over-dramatizes things, probably because it increases his value as a geo-political pundit in times where extreme positions are rewarded by algorithms... So I would take everything he says with a grain of salt, but I do agree to some extend that China has an enormous challenges purely based on demographics and water/food security. You cannot really replace all those aging people, and if climate change causes more droughts and famines it could go fast... every regime-collapse in China's history has been about food at base.

Or it's similar when talking about the financial system. I believe that sooner or later our international monetary system will have a huge crisis and something new will replace this present system. Yes, it's also a big issue, even if climate change is a fa larger issue. But that collapse doesn't mean a societal collapse. The last time when the monetary system collapsed, many didn't even notice what had happened. — ssu

But we did avoid a far bigger crash back then, right? And even if avoided, it still caused a lot of issues for a lot of people.

Again the love affair we have with "end-is-nigh" thinking. — ssu

Sure this is definitely a thing, and we should try to avoid it... but at the same time we shouldn't disregard serious issues either because some people are prone to doom.

Those numbers are a bit disingenuous SSU. It's not now that matters most or the positive trend up till now (as if that trend is automatically going to continue/is empirically proven!).... It's the future impacts of climate change that are the real problem. We only have had what, 1.1 or so increase in temperature as of now? The problems are already being felt now, but the real problems only start with 1.5°, 2° C increase in 10 or 20 years, and then it could get really tough by the end of the century if we get to 3° or more... for centuries to come.

Not being an existential problem is a very low bar. I know there's people focusing especially on existential risk, for humans to survive as a species, but frankly I couldn't care less about "the species" if the world is turned into an arid hothouse where most of the other species have died off and only small portions of the globe are really livable without technological assistance. Seriously, I don't get this type of reasoning, it's like saying to someone you will lose most of your limbs, your eyes, your stomach etc, but don't be alarmed we can keep you alive just fine by hooking you up to this machine for the rest of your life.

This is a pretty common idea, but what is exactly the logic behind it?

What is the exact mechanism that requires modern economies to grow in order to be considered healthy?

Perpetual growth seems more like a demand of governments that need to compete with their peers (think for example the US-China rivalry; to stand still is to lag behind), compensation for extremely irresponsible fiscal policy and monetary policy and to keep afloat a system of social security that is not economically feasible in the long run.

Just some questions / thoughts your comment raised in me. — Tzeentch

I'm no economist, but from what i've gathered one of the reasons is that we need growth to offset all the debt we accumulate.

Debt is essentially a claim on the future. Take a house loan for example, you already have the house and can live in it, but haven't yet paid for the labor, materials, value of the ground etc etc... You need money to pay it off, and you need to produce goods or services to accumulate that money. So essentially debt means you have to do work in the future to pay back something you get right away.

Taken as a whole, a lot of debt is accumulated in our economies, more and more actually, which means we will have to produce a lot of stuff in the future to pay that back. If the economy shrinks, we would have trouble making good on all those claims on the future because we produce less (that is what shrinking means in economic terms)... and presumably that would break the system.

Maybe this is a bit simplistic, but it does sound plausible to me.

However, to the people who disagree that global warming is a threat, that climate change isn't real, I would like to have a polite and interesting discussion about why you feel the way you do. — SackofPotatoeJam

Climate change would be our greatest threat if we keep emitting greenhouse gasses at the same pace or even at a reduced pace. I don't think we will, not necessarily because we will reduce emissions voluntarily, but because of collapse or reduction of industrialization.

Basically the idea is that economic growth (that is linked almost 1 to 1 with energy-consumption) as we had for a couple of centuries now, is not the norm nor 'business as usual', but mostly something that was and is only possible because of burning of cheap fossil fuels. They are reliable, energy-dense, easy to use... and most importantly they also have been cheap. As they are limited and easily available stocks run out however, they will get progressively more expensive. As economic growth relies on cheap energy, it will halt and this will eventually also crash our economy because it is essentially set up around the idea of perpetual growth. Presumably all of this will stress relations in and between countries even further, probably leading to a lot of conflict and wars.

So in short my guess is that we will keep emitting for a while until we can't anymore at the cost we need, which will crash industrial globalized civilization or peg it down a serious notch... which will presumably reduce emissions even further. This will probably still amount to 2 to 3 C° rise in global temperature, which is really bad to be clear, but not that bad relative to the other problems we will be dealing with.

The point of the research is that a lot of policies that seem economically effective, like tradeable carbon credits, are hated because people consider them unfair.. — Benkei

Sure, but that's part of the problem, no? If we wait to do something about climate change until we a have policies that impact everybody equally, we might have to wait until it's to late. The rich are rather good at avoiding taxes and social responsibilities. And then across countries you also have the tragedy of the commons/prisoners dilemma, in that in a world of competing countries you don't want to be the first to make sacrifices that makes you weaker competitively.

People have no problems with making sacrifices as long as everybody does. — Benkei

I don't see evidence for this specifically in the study, but I only skimmed it so maybe I missed it.

They hardly mention any sacrifices that would have to be made to implement the policies, as that doesn't seem to be the subject of the study.

A ban on the combustion engine is hardly a sacrifice if it is understood that they can be replaced by electric engines, a transition that would probably have to be be subsidized by the state anyway.

Also, agreeing with investment for a green transition if they get the money for the investments from the rich is no sacrifice at all:

"Figure A6 shows the answers to the question about which sources of funding respondents would consider appropriate for public investments in green infrastructures. Respondents tend to agree that appropriate funding sources are higher taxes on the wealthiest and a carbon tax. They are much less likely to agree with additional public debt, reductions in social spending, reductions in military spending, or increases in the sales taxes as appropriate sources of funding."

Loosely translated, they would agree to more green investments if it doesn't cost them anything.

Anyway, talk is cheap, across Europe governments are falling over eachothers feet now to reduce energy-prices for the public, which is the opposite of what a green policy should look like because it incentivizes energy-consumption which leads to more emissions.

Yes voluntary degrowth isn't going to happen, since politicians that would push that agenda wouldn't stay in power for very long. Case in point, Europe's current energy crisis. They'd rather turn to coal than accept they will have to do with less energy... And this from the continent that was arguably most willing to try and do something about the climate crisis.

Since voluntary degrowth is no option, we need to try to innovate and transition our way out of it. We especially need more Nuclear power plants, as fast as possible, to try and replace some of the energy we get from fossil fuels. It's the only carbon-free energy source that is reliable and energy-dense enough. Renewables can complement those, but can and should never have been the main replacement. They are simply not energy efficient enough, and you'll always have intermittency problems.

The alternative is involuntary degrowth, or collapse... and that would presumably be even worse since then one tends to turn to the more low-tech energy-sources, which also usually happen to be the most pollutant, like coal.

Anyway, in short, we need more nuclear power. It's safe, it's reliable, it's clean... only problem is, it has a bad rep. The alternatives are a hothouse earth, or a total collapse of industrial civilization.

My counter would be that as a living being it's weird to prefer death over life, as sustaining its lifeform over time, and propagating it, is essentially what life is. That is what defines living beings/sets life apart from non-living things.

So in other words, preferring life over death seems to me a default, almost axiomatic valuation of living beings, and doesn't need any further justification really.

Considering that, my question to you then would be, what prompted you to flip this basic instinctive valuation on its head?

What causes life to turn on life?

You ask for a reason to live, but at base this is not a question about 'reason', or abstract arguments that need to be given for life... but more a question of personal motivation, which is concerned with the affective and aesthetic. What really moves you, what do you find beautiful? What do you feel? If you can answer that, and organize your life around that, I'd think you'll find that the need for coming up with abstract reasons to live goes away.

I think it's a problem for all political parties: when your base intensely believes in some myth which isn't true, they won't start to correct their supporters, even if they know it's not true. — ssu

Yes one of the functions of a political ideology is also that it appeals to, recruits and ties people to a political party. And since people tend to like simple narratives more than say the intricate minutia of public policy, I don't think there's a way around this really.

We are seeing now quite clearly that the mantra "we just have to turn to renewable energy sources" isn't the short term answer that we can pick. — ssu

No that's right, yet it'll take a while still until parties will change that mantra... unless of course an energy crisis will take political parties in speed.

I wonder how long it will take political parties to come clean on the myth of progress and perpetual economic growth ;-)

I think France is just fanatic about other things than Germany... :-) — Olivier5

No doubt :-)

On the green movement, I'm critical of it because I think it could be the one political movement with actual solutions to our current predicament. We definitely need an ecological perspective of some kind going forward. But as it stands, the movement usually doesn't deliver, because I think at base it's a bit confused and can't seem to decide between being a real political player that wants to shape current society, and being this impractical back-to-nature fantasy that can't be realised. It probably should let go of the latter, but then that is what seems to appeal to a lot of people. That's why nuclear power plants are such a hard issue for them, and not only in Germany.

Yes maybe that comment wasn't entirely fair towards France... I just wanted to show Germany screwed up because of their ideological inflexibility and despite their best efforts to do 'good'. France is generally a bit less 'fanatic', or maybe more 'lax' than Germany, depending on how you want to frame it... and yet it is still better of energy-wise.

I know France has a decent amount of renewables, I've just been there a few days ago, and the landscape is absolutely filled with windmills along the big highways.

It's funny and ironic too in so many ways, because no other country probably has done so many investments into renewables and such to actually try and do something about climate change. That is unlike say France for example, but they just lucked out because of their historical investments in Nuclear (before carbon was an issue) which now makes them one of the least Carbon-emitting countries relatively.

It's fear of the bomb... combined with an aversion of technology, human hubris, of which the splitting of atoms is a prime example.

That's how it goes I suppose, ideologies are historically contingent. There is some weird 'logic' to them in the way they evolve over time. When confronted with environmental problems, the green movement latched onto some pre-existing religious myths that seems vaguely applicable. Looking for something familiar is probably not a bad idea if you are looking for a way into the hearts and minds of people.

And then, when an ideology is established, when confronted with some new eventuality, it initially doesn't really matter what the facts are because of the inertia of people believing in a story that has been told in a certain way over the years.

Anyway, what this whole affair illustrates to me is 1) that we don't really have that much collective agency as we would like to think, and 2) that ultimately when a country has to make a choice between the two, energy-security will take precedence over measures to combat climate change.

It's a useful convention, allowing us to apply logic, make inferences, abstract and generalize etc etc... enabling us to built up knowledge.

It's important to keep in mind that the law of identity, and logic in general, is not about the world, but about language only.

We arbitrarily split classes of particular things off from the whole/the flux of existence by giving them labels, and decide that classes of things that are given the same labels are equal to themselves.... even though 'in reality' only particulars are equal to themselves, and only at the exact same time.

The fact that x is not exactly equal to x generally, doesn't matter all that much, because it still works for our intents and purposes. And we need this basic 'falsification', because without it we wouldn't be able to abstract from particulars to something more general... any kind of knowledge would be impossible.

And those changes we cannot say are from a tradition. — ssu

I think they are ssu. This will no doubt be a contentious point, but I'd say the whole recent 'woke' flare is a direct continuation of the Christian tradition with its focus on suffering, victim-hood, the individual etc... Of course those taken in by these morals will claim to have some a-historical objective source for them, but that's par for the course... it's always more convincing to have morals spring from the fabric of reality itself than to acknowledge that they are something we create as we go.

You didn't really address the point I was making. We can use our judgement when deciding on how to act, we can be more aware or sensitive to moral issues, etc... this is all fine. I'm saying, when making these judgement, the values and ideas you use come from somewhere. It's not God, it's not pure reason and it's not intuition or some pristine awareness of right or wrong... it's traditions and culture in the broadest sense.

Why does this matter? Because if you let tradition or culture turn to shit, you will end up a lot of people using shit ideas when making these moral judgement. But it's all fine, let's just tell that gen Z kid who grew up on a diet of internet adds, instagram posts and Tiktok vids to cultivate and nurture some moral awareness on his own.

Ethics are more bound to autonomous moral agents, doing right in whatever given situation regardless of traditions; traditions are more bound to culture, following whatever has been done before regardless of doing what's right. — jorndoe

Yeah I think people, or maybe better western philosophy since Socrates, are confused about there being something right regardless of context. I don't think the idea makes much sense without God, which is why western philosophy has been struggling with moral foundations ever since.

You obviously have different ideas and opinions within traditions, but then you are not evaluating tradition to some outside fixed moral standard, but to just another strand within said tradition.

The idea of autonomous moral agents acting morally regardless of traditions is also a bit of a misguided idea I think. We don't pop into existence as blank adult moral agents, but are gradually educated in certain moral ideas given by our cultures and traditions. Moral intuitions are also formed by the traditions we grow up in, not some pristine moral judge we can rely on the find moral good and bad without context.

There is nothing outside. People seem to have trouble accepting that.

What I'm saying is that they aren't so interdependent as to say ethics = tradition. Ethics can change due to events, public and political debate about ethical issues and changes in the society. That doesn't mean that ethics are linked to traditions of the culture and society. — ssu

I'm not sure you're making a real distinction there, or what that distinction would be exactly? Isn't something that changes due to events, public and political debate, a kind of tradition, something that is socially constructed? Moral constructivism is not saying all tradition is ethics either, but that what is ethical or moral is determined by societal traditions... those traditions would be larger than merely ethics or morals strictu sensu, but do include them. So maybe we don't really disagree.

Ethics can obviously change, hence ethics ≠ traditions. — ssu

But traditions do change, which is why ethics change.

I'm a bit confused because usually the argument against moral constructivism is something like
1. slavery used to be accepted by certain ancient traditions
2. slavery is obviously wrong
3. therefor tradition cannot be the thing that determines ethics and morals.

The argument against tradition as morality is typically one in which morality is seen out of it's historical context (slavery is morally bad regardless, always, everywhere), and therefor contrary to what you seem to be saying, 'unchangeble' or absolute.

I don't see ethics changing as a problem for moral contructivism.... it's rather a problem for moral realists, absolutists, universalists etc.

Ethics ≠ traditions. — jorndoe

I guess this is where the divide in views springs from, for the moral constructivist, the traditions, the mores (customs) actually are the ethics and morals. In this view, if you dissolve these traditions for whatever reason, you have nothing left, or rather they get constructed in other unconscious and perhaps unfortunate ways, like say by corporate advertising. This is not to say that you can't critique traditions if you hold a constructivist view, but that the critique will necessarily be formulated from within the constructed system, immanent, and not by holding it up to some absolute moral standard that exist outside of time or context, transcendent (because that simply is nonsense in that view).

Conclusion: If we do not have public figures who would sacrifice themselves in order to defend our land, politics (both left and right) are not long relatable. Political figures were representatives of our traditions back then. But now they are kidnapped by money and sinful practices. They do not have honour nor ethics. It looks like they do not even assume responsibilities. They [politicians] do not care about us and our identity problem.
They are so coward that they would not be brave enough to sacrifice themselves to save the country. — javi2541997

I think even this is merely a symptom and not the 'cause'. An individual is also mostly a product of the society they grow up in, more than the other way around at the very least. Or put in other words you tend to get these kinds of politicians because there is already something rotten in society.

What is missing after dissolution of traditional structures in the past centuries is an idea of 'societal good', or even 'ecological good' that transcends individuals. This idea of a hierarchy of values should be evident, we simply cannot survive as individuals, or at least not flourish, if society collapses or if the biosphere dies for instance... we depend on the functioning of larger structures.

A society needs to venerate something, put something at the center of it's valuations, that is larger than a mere sum of individuals to function properly. The problem is not one of individual character, i.e. that these people are not brave enough to sacrifice themselves, the problem is that the idea that one should sacrifice something for the greater good has become laughable in current societies.

I want to say confidence in fiat isn't entirely made out of whole cloth. People come to these conclusion because the times, the socio-economical climate is pointing in that direction. In other more stable times one wouldn't deem it worthy of consideration.

Yes inflation is I guess always to some extend about confidence, that is what ultimately keeps increasing the velocity of the inflation-ball. But the ball has to start rolling somewhere. Gas-prices in Europe are 5x to 10x of what they where last year and summer is only beginning. These increases are not a confidence issue, but competition on the energy-market driving up the prices. There is the Ukraine war too yes, but prices were already peaking before the war. This is a long-term structural problem, because climate change, because increasing scarcity of resources, because a badly managed energy-transition, because rising geo-political tensions etc... I don't think it's going away any time soon.

Mostly what I see is record profits. For those without record profits, the usual happens: they enrich themselves to the bitter end, then file for bankruptcy while giving themselves huge bonuses. — Xtrix

Yes tacitly, and even not so tacitly, this is what is generally understood as the maxim of our societies, get ahead by whatever means, whatever the cost... just don't do it overly explicit.

But you are right, it is a belief and could be otherwise. What that otherwise entails though is another question, and one to which one might not altogether like the answer.

You say part of the problem is that the populace has "subscribed to the bullshit ideas of corporate America". But that isn't exactly how it works, one does not choose to subscribe to one of a wide range of possible and available options, more apt would be to say they have been conditioned in the corporate consumerist bullshit. Corporate advertising has largely replaced or subsumed societal myth/religion/traditions/mores, whatever you want to call it. and part of what made that possible are historical movements to dissolve those societal structures.

Anyway I could go on, but my point I guess is that the problem runs a bit deeper than expecting corporations to unilaterally and suddenly change their goals to something other than profit-seeking. They are also imbedded in systems that give them certain incentives and constrain them.

Sure, but when profits are so high it's worth asking whether or not these corporations can absorb the cost. Turns out they could -- I see no reason why they can't, or no good reason. Rather, they raise prices -- which is passing the extra cost onto others. Why should this be ignored? It's glaringly obvious this is just rampant greed. — Xtrix

Right, you're asking for systemic change then, because companies are no social organisations but specifically set up to make profit. In the current set-up one would expect corporations to try and keep their profit margin, right? I mean, I certainly would be surprised if corporations all of a sudden would collectively and voluntarily decide to absorb the cost themselves.

And I will say, I doubt all corporations could absorb the increase in cost all by themselves. Some, the bigger ones probably could, other ones I'm not so sure.