Some rules must always be obfuscated

Good question. To be honest, I would not pay anything to “not suffer”... — javi2541997

Really? I regularly pay for food for some reason. Hopefully, I can learn to transcend that practice. Or at least pretend to

Well, if I have to be a failure than I'm pleased that it's in performative rhetoric.

How much would you pay to suffer versus how much would you pay not to suffer?

1. Is it Morally wrong to destroy a beautiful painting?
2. What if no one would have ever seen it?
3. What if you painted it? — Cheshire

1. It is immoral and without further qualification it is impermissible.
2. It is immoral and without further qualification it is impermissible.
3. It is immoral and permissible.

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" — Alkis Piskas

There's no benefit in imagining unexplainable things; of which this is oddly an example or not.
That's my takeaway. I don't charge for it.

Hopefully I don’t sound like I am going off topic but take the example of mob psychology and how a large group of people can encourage bad behavior in individual or encourage to behave differently. — SteveMinjares

It's technically raising the matter of relative morality, but ascribing it to an imagined subset. So, on topic but with a white nationalist sorta subtext vibe. If you are looking for honest impressions of the text presented.

The lecture really was an eye opener into his process; at least in the sense I know he is deliberately speaking in a way that he knows is hard to understand on purpose. I can't imagine looking at a crowd and saying "try and get at my meaning" without knowing the following will intentionally be difficult for people to understand. I don't mean these as even passive judgements, but it makes me wonder for what purpose was this form of communication. It doesn't seem like an end in itself. Years ago I used to play with the idea philosophy was a victim of argument as much as the content of argument. Speaking vaguely and without stated or implied opposition would promote agreement. If I am always permitted first to make you agree with my Why?, then my What is delivered presold. So, it seems to solve a problem I thought I saw as well; naturally I prefer my solution, but at least seeing the common ground in the distance is encouraging(even if its incorrect).

have always loved that brain in a vat notion that is supposed to rattle epistemology students. On the simple level of a physical reduction, we most certainly already are a brain in a vat; I mean actually, for the vat in question is a human skull and there we are "wired up" to receive the world. But the implications are never given their due. — Constance

It is a fun exploration. I took my first philosophy class the year after the matrix came out, so it was all the rage. I believe the scenario is shown to be in error (like other epistemological assumptions) because it suggest an infinite regression could exist. If I'm a brain in a vat, then some one is putting brains in vats, who could themselves be a brain in a vat, who must then account for some one putting brains in vats.

Right at the outset, he makes that cryptic statement about passing over in silence that which cannot be spoken. There is a lot written about your objection, and I mean a lot! Recently, I have been reaading Michel Henry and Jean luc Marion, and Jean luc Nanci and the theological turn of phenomenology, putting a great deal of emphasis on Husserl. Husserl's phenomenological reduction suspends judgment to allow the world to become phenomenologically clear. Was Wittgenstein a phenomenologist? Maybe. — Constance

Thanks! It's always nice to find I'm at least wandering down a path others see as well. I do intend on at least reading over the lecture on the ethics. What little I've gleamed is he seems like a secular phenomenologist. I read a stack of paper produced by Hegel and could only tell you he wants to see what God sees in order to make sense of things to humans. I think Einstein's approach of accounting for what things look like from the subjective and then explaining it from the objective was the reconciliation phenomenology required. Thanks again for the references; I'll look forward to seeing what the developed form of my objection entails.

Morality is a form of social survival, humans depend on people to survive. And morality is a set of rules you need to follow to benefit from the community protection and care. You don’t follow the social rules you get exiled and you will have to find another community that thinks like you. Hopefully, you can benefit from there protection and care. — SteveMinjares

I wonder if the level of group reliance and the strictness of moral enforcement are correlated. Like, the difference in enforcing a tribal law versus the permissibility of social deviance in modern societies. In a study of behavior there are surely elements of evolution. The anxiety of losing social connections or dysregulation of sleep cycles from isolation points to a biological need for us to attain social involvement.
However, anytime we invoke evolution to explain everything there's the danger of reciting an anthropic principle. Yes, evolution must have functioned in such and such a way to produce this outcome or otherwise it wouldn't be here. The complication arises when trying to say what type of environment resulted in what type of evolution. Did the moral animals survive extreme circumstances better from strict group allegiance or was it a greater aid to proliferation when things weren't as stressful. So, simply stating it aids survival because it survives requires further investigation. But, inarguably is going to be the context of a scientific understanding; if one is ever fully formed.

He typically would refuse to talk about ethical foundations because he was convinced it was nonsense to do so, and this was because language and logic are simply not able to speak about it, for value is there, like qualia, like a pure phenomenon, a presence, and there is nothing one can say, because, reading the Tractatus, there is nothing observable about the "Good". — Constance

How does he account for these statements if he can't say anything? I suppose that comes up at some point. Observing a deficit is something if I can speak about it. I used to have the same intuitive opinion concerning ethics, but I've been talking about it for a week, so something is clearly there; strange we would hold something in such high regard and not manage to attach words to it. I might wait and see if the world produces a genius that writes more readable books. Thank you for the recommendations.

True. Had he understood AND rejected it then maybe we'd have something. But, misunderstanding it and accepting what it does not in Mad-Hatter type contract leaves just a trail of ..

It is a bit of an experiment in dogmatism. What happens when some one doesn't participate in the observation of a prescribed set. I'm not suggesting this is the best way to examine it, but it carries a novelty of the primary participant selecting a label of thought and then proceeding to huff gas fumes as a method of translation. A type of naive found art.

That's why the right uses it to manipulate it's base emotionally. Once people are that enraged, you can feed them any lie you want.

An act can be judged apart from the measure of suffering involved, but I certainly don't think this is an ethical judgment. A pragmatic judgment works like this, the kind that ignores suffering for some higher end, that is, utility. — Constance

Well, in the case put forward by the OP there is no stated suffering to ignore.

But even here in this contingent world of utility, attention must come to rest on actual value as the point of it all, whatever one has in mind. — Constance

The idea that value and that suffering is a type of assault on value is becoming significant to my current working model. If this isn't the case then I'll have to rethink quite a bit to account for the error.

I think it is absurd to think about things having value at all apart from what is attributed to them in a conscious act. — Constance

Imprecise or subjectively driven perhaps, but there is no reduction to absurdity in the practice. We bury treasure, rent storage spaces, and purchase insurance with the understanding objects can be a store of value,

As to the scientist, well, all science begins with what is there, at hand. A geologist first has the object to be analyzed, then there is the classificatory work, techniques for measurement are called in, more classificatory work, etc., but it all begins with observation. — Constance

Witty got this bit wrong. Popper has excellent refutation of it in Chapter 1 Conjectures and Refutations. Available on audio for free on youtube.

the former rational end is itself ethically arbitrary. — Constance

I'm going to have to reread this section several times to understand exactly what information you intend for me to possess. I haven't spent enough time reading Wittgenstein, so his communication style which is often adopted is very difficult for me. I do intend on rereading and editing this bit, but any clarifications or simplifications that could be made even tentatively would aid in my understanding of your position on the matter. I believe you are saying that ethical matters are often matters of reality even though they are subject to entanglement with less well grounded notions.

Wittgenstein himself didn't read any books I'm told. Also, please go through my reply to StreetlightX. — TheMadFool

He was an aeronautical engineer and his position was validated by Russell at least initially. If you want to keep running backwards in this corn field then by all means.

Instant karma? Someone watching? These are metaphysical I cannot support because I don't understand where they get their basis for belief. — Constance

I completely support that notion. Without any rational basis we are dealing with myths or poetry. It is derived from the modern concept of integrated information theory. What Russell would have called panpsychism. But, I agree it is speculation that nears irrationalism.

Alas, given the embeddedness of ethics in ethically arbitrary conditions, our acts will never be perfectly right, whatever that means. But we are bound, as Mill put it, to do no harm and to pursue the good of others, notwithstanding the difficulty in conceiving what this is. — Constance

Another poster came to a similar conclusion. We have a moral system that attempts to correctly identify morality accurately, but is subject to influence. If it's a consensus of sorts then a new thread separating what is impermissible from what is imaginary may be in order.

That was a great response.

We must make a distinction between how language is (ordinary language) and how language should be (ideal language). — TheMadFool

Let me stop you right there. I'm going to read the rest but this is a full stop in itself. Ideal qualifying language outside of a Russian lease agreement is frankly an upsetting term. Alright, I'll give the rest due diligence and respond tomorrow.

But then we're still left with the problem of distinguishing which is which. — baker

Which means we've identified a problem. I'd call the thread a success based on that much clarity alone.

Words don't have an essence; — Cheshire

How so? My explanation is able to account, albeit only in a simple way, for the linguistic entity Wittgenstein calls family resemblance. — TheMadFool

I'm thinking about the context of poetry which couldn't exist without the open ability to manipulate words meanings subject to the other words that are surrounding them. — Cheshire

Ergo, the lack of essence allowed us the ability to assign words to things. Did we sit around guessing the animals name until we were presented with the essence sounding word for a goat? It isn't obvious if it is true. It is obvious if it is a goat; which is goatist falsification.

my explanation is the best one among others if such exist. — TheMadFool

If I ever say this; then I guarantee what ever follows will be wrong.

You see the problem, right? — TheMadFool

You are accusing him of putting a foot on the scale of (not)essence by using an unrealistic standard for maintaining it and yet acknowledging a more open standard in a tangential matter? Words don't have an essence; they have community usage and agreed upon translations. As well as their particular appearance in a game. Which I maintain is a clumsy word for context until either clearly refuted or I begin to make sense of this black book I purchased in misplaced optimism that I understood the English language; many years ago.

Where Cheshire and you concur and what I have an issue with is that both of you rely on the notion of context albeit not in the same sense. Needless to say Cheshire is referring to context as it applies to family resemblance as described above. About this, I've already made my thoughts as clear as I could in the preceding paragraphs. — TheMadFool

I'm thinking about the context of poetry which couldn't exist without the open ability to manipulate words meanings subject to the other words that are surrounding them. Limiting context to saw or saw is kind of misleading and kind of not. What if I saw the saw through the beam? What am I doing or seeing? Looking at a tool under a light or have I strapped a tool to a workable material and proceeded to cut both in half? If the speaker means the latter they will be poorly understood. Unless they are in a well lit room in the business of manufacturing saws and needed a process to stabilize the operation. We say it all the time that things must make sense. Things without sense fail to obtain as the most learned say more correctly to each other.

I'm sympathetic to Wittgenstein's idea that philosophy may be hostage to language i.e. some features of language may generate what Wittgenstein calls pseudo-problems - issues that seem to be philosophical but are in fact like the dents/small depressions around nail heads in wood, more about the tool, the hammer (here language) than about nails or wood (here philosophy) — TheMadFool

They weren't; but they are now as a result of posing the question.

No, this "same moral judgment" is not requited at all, and indeed, such an agreement between is never a real agreement (this is a Quine/Derrida position). All that needs to be demonstrated is that there is a noncontingent part of the essential ethical affair. — Constance

I agree. A failure to establish that all three acts are immoral doesn't negate the existence of objective morality. If it could be shown they were all indeed immoral it would make for a tidy compelling position. I tried to reduce bias by using three cases and a gradual increase of intuitive permissibility. It is also a case I personally witnessed years ago with a friend who failed to meet the art school entry requirements, but whose work was already on public display and then destroyed by the artist after it was returned.

You're not going to get people to agree on the radically diverging and different entanglements ! These are impossible to pin down and are, in themselves, ethically arbitrary "facts" of a particular case. — Constance

I wasn't thinking like a philosopher. My purpose wasn't to produce a known result and pretend as if it was a discovery. It was scientific in the sense I hoped I would learn something.

This lack of agreement is inevitable and it is foolish to think otherwise. — Constance

It would have been bold to assume all three would be considered immoral by everyone; foolish to think they would be considered equally immoral.

However, what is agreed upon is the phenomenological analysis: put aside all factual entanglements and the residual value is not disputed, is cognitively coercive. — Constance

I think this was the most notable point set down by the responses. The observation that harm came to a store of value. It does seem to suggest that we can act on the world in a way that carries some objective element apart from the variance that arises. And that an act can be judged apart from the measure of suffering entailed. The paintings did not suffer. Which isolates a major common thread in known moral theories. The scientific approach asks if there is a better test or way to realize more informative results. You say it's "coercive", but I'm not sure in which direction you mean.

I feel the obligation to return it and this conflicts with my suspicion that were I to do so it could lead to a terrible crime. — Constance

It also puts you at a personal liability of having possessed a murder weapon. Your fingerprints and DNA could be caught up in the handle. The matter is best resolved by covering the replacement cost of the axe and be done with it. When axe murder is in play the risk of withholding property wrongly is out weighed by a perceived non-trivial involvement in serious injury. How your complaints of entanglements exist above and are reconciled here is difficult to articulate. But, I understand the scenario introduces the seemingly conflicted nature of perception into a question of objectivity. But, having a known immoral act as the subject of perception in a way fabricates some of the matter or not. Criticism is difficult to establish; like so many things the differing suppositions of the context conflict with the desire for a clear analysis. Interesting points though; it does have informative value.

I take being on the court a good start,

Could have sworn I was agreeing.

You see the problem, right? — TheMadFool

Nope. Might as well be a different language. I'll check tomorrow though.

No, he isn't. "Context"? FFS. — Banno

Nah. I kind of am. Like, in your article you ignore the non-Euclidian triangle with "straight lines", but we still know what a triangle on a ball looks like..

↪Cheshire doesn't seem to be even on the same cricket pitch, let alone playing the same game. — Banno

Probably an accurate assessment. Under the impression the meaning of game was essentially a context. Is the irony of a discussion about language being least intuitively decipherable particular to my "rules" of information word sounds.

What does this mean for Wittgenstein's much beloved theory of language games? — TheMadFool

It means Wittgenstein is correct that words mean things in a context. Which is why we string them together in different ways. Expecting to isolate a word and some how extract every possible way it could exist in a context is an irrational activity. Was some one doing this at some point?

I think I am right on this qualified ethical realism thesis. The consequences are staggering, for if this is true, then there IS something absolute about ethics, and this means ethics carries the gravitas of a God. — Constance

I agree with the implications. There would technically never be a case of doing the right thing when no one is watching and instant karma might have some basis.

I'm not sure whether you're actually asking this, or whether it is just part of your discussion. — baker

I miss understood what you meant the first time. I agree that a lot of our conviction concerning moral judgement is based on the perception of them being a matter of reality. But, so does our value of fiat currency.

I wonder if some of the immorality we perceive is subjective impressions while other matters are actually immoral. We do know people can disagree. At one time drinking and dancing on Sunday was considered immoral.

That's another symbolic that is lost on me. — god must be atheist

Or the literal description of institutionally themed interior space.

This is, I suppose, a symbolic culture-driven reference which I don't get. A white paper in a white room by a white philosopher who is a white folk? I don't know what you could possibly mean. — god must be atheist

Big door, tiny window.

Nothing has a bearing on an act whether it's moral or immoral, other than people's views. — god must be atheist

In some cultures cannibalism is opined to be acceptable and is encouraged, in most cultures it is rejected and deemed immoral. — god must be atheist

We have your claim and supporting evidence presented above? It would be a shame to lose it the moment things seem untenable. My irritability is with being told how "right I am" repeatedly. If you've closed the matter then fine move on. If you are indeed correct some one will let a distance relative who doesn't understand it know. In the next 160 years. Till then, it's understood to be an open question.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that you are stuck at the same hurdle as Kant, when it comes to lying (Kant said you can't and must not) and lying for the effect of effecting a moral good. You and Kant can't come to terms with the flip-flop nature of moral conviction, and its effect on people. — god must be atheist

First, I maintain that was a misinterpretation of Kant's work that was referenced in it's refutation. The original work is discussing lying in Kant's legal sense as whether or not it is a liability to tell the truth.

The fact people can rationalize an immoral act has zero bearing on whether it is an immoral act. Because the act takes place outside the mind of the agent. How do you reconcile this matter?

Since we are making personal assessments. I think you're having a bit of fun with me. Except you already had that document ready; which makes me wonder if you are typing in a white room.

Well......if no one has ever seen it, there is no beauty. We observers are not passive receivers of some beauty that is "out there". What, did you actually think this to be the case? Not only does beauty vanish in an unobserved world (an impossible thing to even imagine, really), but reason and meaning vanishes as well. — Constance

The idea was to establish objective morality. If the answers are different, then morality is not from the act but rather a subjective notion of the observer. The same willful act of destruction of the same object should in theory produce the same moral judgement. Or not. An attempt at an inquiry.

So, even in a case like this, there's going to be an objective component. — Sam26

I think I'm in agreement. I suppose harm implies there is an understood value in the subject of harm. Others being high value and self-portraits held for disposal would be low value. The more I look at it we're just discussing criminal law without specific precedent.

You can't make me read that.

More or less the unstated thought process I'm going with at the moment. See if it can move from less witchcraft to more science based.