I appreciate that reference to Wittgenstein. :smile: — Janus

To be fair, creativesoul was the first to reference that on this thread.

How about if "legal" was replaced by 'cultural'; would that work for you? — Janus

Works even better. :smile:

As someone once said:

we're systematically replacing the faulty rungs, until - in the end - they're all based upon, agree with, and/or effectively supplant parts of the current knowledge base.

Paradigm shift. — creativesoul

Then we can kick the ladder out from under us? :grin:

The point is that our subconscious mind... how should I say this, isn't as aligned with our conscious mind as we might think it is. This is shown in other ways as well, like hypnosis or placebo/nocebo, or just intuition in general.

This is meant to support the theory of ethical intuitionism. — praxis

Consider the moral judgement: "that killing is wrong". There are two modes of judgement. One comes in the opinion of moral thought/belief, it is indirectly related - detached - from the actual act of killing. The other is in the decision of action when confronted by the ethical choice to kill or not; it is based in moral feeling/intuition. This is why I can say, "killing is wrong", and then go out and kill when I'm confronted by the decision. I always think it is wrong, but when the moment to kill arrives, I feel it isn't. Rational thought and irrational feeling can be misaligned.

As you say: "our subconscious mind... how should I say this, isn't as aligned with our conscious mind as we might think it is"

The opinion is the rational part of morality, the decision is the irrational part.

To be aligned in opinion and decision might be termed: "ethically principled".

I think I would leave out the yellow ring as well, then what is left is exactly what I envisaged. — Janus

I Google searched an image for "ethical and moral venn diagram".

I think we could keep the yellow ring if we take "legal" to mean "established normative assessments."

Exactly! If I knew how to produce a Venn diagram on here without a ridiculous amount of effort, I would draw a large circle called 'ethics' with a smaller circle within it called 'morality'. :cool: — Janus

Like this, without the black blue and yellow rings?

Morality and ethical are interchangeable terms, in most cases. But strictly speaking, morality is always ethical, while the ethical does not always include morality.

morality is specifically about right and wrong behavior towards humans and their domestic animals. Is that what you meant? — Janus

Firstly, I like how you included "domestic animals". (For expediency's sake, we can ignore livestock on factory farms).

I think what you say here is a more acute application of how I defined morality. So, I do not object.

I am clairvoyant , doctor. :eyes:

I might say, the ethical is a broad category that includes morality as one of its essential terms. I would say the ethical is about right/wrong in general, whereas morality is specifically about right/wrong human behavior.

@Terrapin Station

If ethical existence is represented by a circle, individual morality would be represented by a dot in the center.

So in my view, morality works the same way. — Terrapin Station

I agree there.

@Terrapin Station (Is there any way to perfectly reconcile the incongruities between actual thinking, and speaking about thought? Probably not. Nevertheless, we can approximate our meaning so that we can arrive at some degree of unification of concepts and speak on reasonably common ground.)

At any rate, you don't think the fact that thinking is "of" each individual implies that my thinking is somehow internal to you, do you? — Terrapin Station

Your welcome.

No I don't. I was just working out our misunderstanding from a previous post. But I think we're on the same page.

Communication can adequately mediate realities which cannot be apprehended directly, like thought

What would be an example of something mental, that you don't directly apprehend, that you can know (propositionally)? — Terrapin Station

Thought.

I would concur. Parents are part of the community. Usually it is the parents who are the authority, however, it is well worth noting that some cases it is not and in all cases, the morality being implemented is adopted(mostly). — creativesoul

The notion of "absentee parental figure" is not too much of an issue. In such cases, ethical conditioning bypasses the parental figure, and begins with other societal influences (friends/enemies, teachers, acquaintances, &c.). Everyone is eventually confronted by these influences, and they are all, more or less, quantitatively identical in respect to being an ethical authority. They provide the substantive material which the individual appropriates into a personal morality.

Morality becomes adopted through a complex process of appropriation, in which the ethical authority serves as the primary influence.

It turned out that "habitualize" was closer to what was being said. — Terrapin Station

Internalization is analogous to appropriation. Habitualize is an inadequate term.

Do you think that every single mental thing that goes on in the mind of another is something you can directly apprehend? — Terrapin Station

No.

you can't know that I pictured something? — Terrapin Station

I can't

I agree with what creativesoul pointed out.

Some things are neither external nor internal. Some things consist entirely of different elements from both groups. Those things cannot be properly accounted for by using one or the other. — creativesoul

Morals require others. Others are external. Morals require external. Morals require brains. Brains are internal. Morals require internal.

Need we go on here? — creativesoul

The dichotomy of internal/external has been rendered inherently inadequate for the task of setting out the origen of morals. It's a sideshow that leads to gross misunderstandings... — creativesoul

@Janus

The tide is coming in, and with it the interlopers. :grin:

The ego doesn’t just show up after you got to see the world for a bit. It is forming and active even during infancy. Ego must be the origin of any valuations. — BrandonMcDade

You already agree with the basic premise that we've built the entire experiment upon. What you call the "ego", we have termed: thought/belief. We have taken notice of everything you have said here, for example, the infant represents the age of prelinguistic thought/belief.

fantasy’s start very young through the ego to stop the torment given to them by parents or neighbors. — BrandonMcDade

This might be true, but we need to take a step back and as creativesoul says, do the groundwork, to establish that all conditioning, moral included, is some kind of trauma. I think that is a worthy thing to explore. Let's set it on the margin for now. (Could make a good thread, or not.)

Apologies, of it seeming rushed, — BrandonMcDade

No problem. You shouldn't rush though. In philosophy, clarity is always better than speed.

Why is it there valuations and dialect change once they’re isolated or come across opposing knowledge or opinions? Where does this defense mechanism come from, and why is the conscious not allowing the host to understand of its own arrogance or ignorance? — BrandonMcDade

That is the question. Why is it so hard to share our pressuppositions and build hypothetical constructs that may improve understanding by highlighting basic error? Arrogance and ignorance.

Would you like to touch upon dialect or mien? Or would you rather talk of codependency? — BrandonMcDade

I'm not familiar with mein, but as a dialectician myself, how can I resist the former, so both I suppose. Codependency too. :grin:

Most ethics comes from the fact we will soon reach an inexorable demise. “The anxiety of death.” — BrandonMcDade

I'm willing to stretch our thought experiment to the point of considering this. But first things first...

You seem to have a decent grasp of history. Do you know anything about Hegel's dialectic of the lord-bondsman?

What you said had relevance, it was how you said it that was troublesome. I think looking to the history of ethical philosophy would tell us much, not to mention save us from retreading old ground.

parents and teachers — BrandonMcDade

I would say they impart a feeble and primitive morality to the child, but sometimes it can really stick.

So I don’t know if parents and teachers are the right way to find the right and wrong ethics. — BrandonMcDade

I appreciate your input. But to clarify, we are not attempting to discover right and wrong ethics. We are investigating the source of morals. Other than the definition of morals: "that which concerns right and wrong human behavior", the question of "right and wrong" is not our interest here. What we are doing here is meta-ethical.

is it possible to view the morals of a community as a sort of 'strongly recommended advice' to people who might wish to join that community without causing significant internal agitation or potentially upsetting another community? — Couchyam

This has some relevance in respect to ethical authority. As an example, it could be further simplified to have a wider scope of application and "explanatory power".

Ethical authority is found in many relations, between: individual and individual, individual and collective, collective and collective, and individual/collective and principle.

before moving to the more advanced considerations, we still need to examine the ethical authority of the individual/collective in relation to the individual.

It is either granted or usurped. — creativesoul

The result of this struggle to the death is "consensus".

Ethical authority is the power to write and/or enforce the rules regarding what counts as acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. That is to have power over people. All power over people is obtained in one of two ways. It is either granted or usurped. — creativesoul

The first relation between follower and usurper is found between the child and parental figure. I would surmise that in all ordinary cases, the parental figure factors as the first ethical authority for everyone.

What is the most dependable method of approach to this topic? I mean, ought we not put good reason to good use here - sound - if at all possible. There's no disagreement concerning whether or not we have morals. There's no disagreement concerning how we come to adopt our first morals(original language acquisition). I assume that we all agree that morals must begin simply and grow in complexity along with our understandings/worldviews. I assume that none of us are going to argue that a zygote has morals. In general, human thought/belief about morals has grown in complexity along with our knowledge regarding the history of morals/morality throughout the world. A robust account/theory of the origen of morals ought be able to take proper sensible account of all of these considerations and more.

Methodology seems to be the contentious issue.

Like some of you, I also agree that the approach needs to be multi-faceted. Empiricism looks towards physical observation. Morals aren't just physical. Thoughts aren't just physical. Beliefs aren't just physical. Rationalism looks towards pure(a priori) reason alone. There is no such thing. Methodological naturalism requires quantification. Does existential quantification count? There's some sense of verifiability/falsifiability possible if we're careful how we frame our line of thinking/vein of thought. Conceptual scheme(linguistic framework) is paramount here.

I disagree with Witt on this matter. The ladder cannot be kicked out from beneath us - unless it is utterly inadequate for justificatory support to begin with. Not all metaphysics shares the inadequacies of metaphysics based upon historical dichotomies unless it is also based upon them.

Even then, we're not kicking it out by virtue of taking it into logical notation - contrary to Quine. Taking inadequate common language use into proper logical account transmits the inadequate explanatory power of the common language use.

Subject/object. Internal/External. Mental/physical. Material/immaterial.

None of the above dichotomies are capable of taking proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither.

All thought/belief is one example of a plurality of different things that consist of both, and are thus neither. The presupposition of truth(as correspondence) inherent to all thought/belief somewhere along the line is another. All attribution of meaning is yet one more.

Connections. Associations. Correlations.

Thought/belief is formed when a creature draws a mental correlation between different things. All thought/belief consists of mental correlations drawn between different things. All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content regardless of subsequent further qualification.

All meaning consists entirely of drawing mental correlations, associations, and/or connections between that which becomes sign/symbol and that which becomes significant/symbolized. All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content, regardless of further subsequent qualification as 'real', 'imagined', and/or otherwise.

Rather, we're systematically replacing the faulty rungs, until - in the end - they're all based upon, agree with, and/or effectively supplant parts of the current knowledge base.

Paradigm shift. — creativesoul

This was the post that ushered the discussion into a period of enlightenment. I felt it necessary to repost it in its entirety.

I must say, I enjoyed your theatricality. :cheer:

robustness — creativesoul

I like that term.

There are many here, including myself, who consider history to be an immensely important factor in the source of morals. But the discussion has not yet arrived at the point where we can get deep into it. But, barring any extreme interloping, we will get there sooner or later.

Right now, we are milling around the notion of ethical authority. I have posited history and consensus as the primary source of ethical authority. Not much else has been said about ethical authority.

Look to how different people employ the term "moral". What do all those different people's uses have in common, if anything at all? If there is a central vein that is part and parcel to each regardless of that which is subject to particulars, then we bookmark it as a means for setting it aside. We must do that prior to establishing/determining the scope of it's relevancy and what can be garnered and/or gleaned from it. — creativesoul

There is something some people don't seem to understand (I don't necessarily mean Janus, I haven't been following your conversation). Sometimes it is impossible to investigate directly. For instance, when the subject matter is a "universal thread that unifies a concepts across all particular instantiations", broad/general speculation does not tell us much. Here, it is wise to elucidate the more relevant particulars of morality in order to adequately understand the universal thread that binds them all.

There's much to liked about many of the veins of thought herein. It would serve us well to find the common threads binding them all. — creativesoul

Time to get to it.

The dichotomy of internal/external has been rendered inherently inadequate for the task of setting out the origen of morals. — creativesoul

I concur. Inadequate, irrelevant, superfluous, confounding.

Up to this point, we've done fine discussing the source of morals without resorting to the dichotomy of internal/external. The notion of internalization that has been thrown around here should not be understood as an antonym to externalization, but more as an analogue to personalization or appropriation.

I woot'n be uh nuthins with mah head all full uh stuffins... — creativesoul

Mammy?

Morals require others. Others are external. Morals require external. Morals require brains. Brains are internal. Morals require internal.

Need we go on here? — creativesoul

Well said.

In addition to the ones we've already arrived at, I presume? — creativesoul

You wise ass. :grin: Of course.

If morals/morality is only internal to individuals, then my morals/morality are internal to me, Joe's is internal to Joe, yours are internal to you, etc.

But you somehow took this to imply "So then, your morals, and praxis' morals are internal to me." So I'm asking you to explain how you're figuring this. — Terrapin Station

I'm figuring this, because if there is no way for me to apprehend the morals of others, how can I claim, with any reasonability, that they actually have morals too. And even if there was something in another, something that I could not deny, there still remains no way to determine that it is morality.