This is false. — Terrapin Station

What is it that assigns phenomenological significance to my immediate sensory experience? The mind. Without thought/belief to mediate my raw unintelligible sensory data, there is nothing but the fleeting variegated mirage of direct existence.

What we need to be more careful about is equating arbitrary causes with the phenomenon in question. — Terrapin Station

That is precisely what a multi-varied analysis would prevent.

Btw. Such a hardcore physicalist as you shouldn't mention the phenomenological, all phenomena is a product of the mind. This only makes you sound uninformed.

That's like saying that anything requires a camera to photograph it. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that only cameras exist. — Terrapin Station

Terrible analogy.

Shouldn't we focus at least as much on a phenomenon as the phenomenon rather than just talking about preconditions for it? — Terrapin Station

Not when we're talking about it. You are getting religious.

Don't let me get off topic. Let's experiment.

If we establish (not really) an incontestable premise in thought/belief, then let's just pretend, how would we begin to flesh out a method?

Perhaps you can enlighten me here with a hypothetical test run. And then, perhaps, run the "source of morals" through it. I'm willing to offer my ignorance to the effort (add. I mean that in the sense that I have nothing else to offer - I am a simple man.

Versatile approach.

Well, to be looking at it is something quite different from overly simplifying, despite how difficult it may appear to be.

So what is the source of moral? Being. — Shamshir

I think that is overly-simplified, and I'm the king of oversimplification, just ask @S.

You modest sunavabitch! :grin:

If anything we are discussing can be accused of having a priori significance, it is the notion of thought/belief. 8n relation to the tabula rasa of thought/belief, any cosmological or neurobiological explanation are as much a matter of a posterior understanding as any explanation concerning the ethical or its source.

Word is born my man. I can learn a lot from you. :up:

So it is a more primitive morality, more closely related to the autonomic processes of the nervous system, whereas a more sophisticated mode of morality would render the autonomic process so insignificant as to bypass any potential effect it may have on subsequent behavior or disposition.

If all thought/belief share a common core, and cosmological and neurological explanations are kinds of thought/belief, then they too share a common core. — creativesoul

I understand what you are saying. The cosmological and neurological are type of thought belief too, as in they have zero a priori significance. Thought/belief, as we use it here is the bedrock for all further investigation. In this case, you seem to be making an obvious distinction between the the neurological, cosmological, and ethical. I am inclined to think that they would figure as independent categories whose pathways of rationale incidentally intersect on occasion. Although each would be unique in its content, all would share a basic conceptual framework based on an incontestable premise.

Some moral thought/belief is prior to language acquisition. — creativesoul

Can you give me an example?

Can't be coming from me. Prefixing the term "truth" with the term "the" is not a practice of mine. — creativesoul

If I could, I would prefix ∨ term with the term "the". :joke:

A bit regarding a couple of key points. — creativesoul

Please, point them out. I'm ignorant to them.

Is that Spock logic: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth" ?

In the creativesoul sense, I might argue that socio-cultural factors stand as the primary ethical influences on the thinking/believing individual. In effect, ethics are primarily apprehended from an external source, yet it appears as though the ethical only becomes existentially charged in the thinking/believing individual. I feel that it is somewhere in the internalization of morality tha the source of morals lies. (At this point, we are far removed from any cosmological or neurological explanation, as they have previously been synthesized into the notion of thought/belief, of which morality represents one type.)

But, maybe I'm jumping the gun.

What can you agree to?

Morals consist entirely of thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. They are one kind of thought/belief. All thought/belief share a common basic core. They all have the same basic elemental constituency, so to speak. As a result of having knowledge of the basic minimalist criterion of all thought/belief, there is ground to talk of the origen of one particular kind. Some would agree that there is no stronger justificatory ground than a conceptual scheme following from and/or built upon uncontentious true premisses that has no actual nor conceivable/imaginable examples to the contrary. — creativesoul

I would agree. This would represent the bedrock upon which all manner of conceptual edifice could be constructed. But it seems a bit idealistic. I don't know if this actually exists (other than as a hypothesis); and, if it does exist, it seems as though it would be practically impossible to validate. It is as though we would have to become identical to each other, in the strictest sense, to establish such an apodictic ground of certainty. I would even be willing to suggest that the notion of an epistemological bedrock is a cleverly veiled a priori category.

Nevertheless, I'm willing to try to find it.

I can agree with the utility of assuming everything up to this point, all those factors that lead up to and produce thought/belief - here we can mark a point of origin. But this is only the origin of the source of morals, we must go further. So I suppose, I can say: I hold an open mind in regard to existential quantification.

Btw, great job reframing the issue! :up: :up:

Shouldn't we focus at least as much on a phenomenon as the phenomenon rather than just talking about preconditions for it? — Terrapin Station

We could, say, restrict the entire conversation on the source of morality to ethical terms. But that would rule out all reference to the authority of other disciplines (e.g. science or history), and drastically diminish our ability to explain it.

But I don't think such a thing is necessary. I think a multi-varied analysis from the perspective of many disciplines can reveal a lot about any topic. We just need to refrain from committing the reductionist error of equating the explanation with the thing we are trying to explain.

Should we list all of the causes/preconditions? Wouldn't that be encyclopedia-length? — Terrapin Station

We should include all the preconditions and limitations for any explanation we set forth. If we did it exhaustively, it would be an immense amount of material, but philosophy is, indeed, a vast field of discovery and creativity.

Absolutely. We need a multi-varied analysis.

So "the big bang" isn't coherent, has no consequence or authority? I must not know what those words refer to very well. — Terrapin Station

The big bang is a cosmological event. How are you using it to explain the source of morality? Explain yourself.

If your explanation is sufficiently coherent, and provides a reasonable degree of consequence, you might actually say something valuable regarding the source of morality. Otherwise it is just a bunch of confused rhetorical blabbing.

What makes a cause adequate or not? — Terrapin Station

I'm not sure what makes a cause adequate or not. What would an adequate cause look like?

I do know, however, that which makes an explanation adequate is coherence, consequence, and maybe a little authority.

So why would that be any less the source of morality, per the way that you're using the term "source," than any other cause you're suggesting, where the cause isn't itself morality? — Terrapin Station

If you regard the big bang as the source of everything, then it is correct to consider it a necessary factor when explaining the source of anything. Yet, although it is a necessary factor in such explanation, as it stands, it is detrimentally inadequate for explaining the source of morals, just like the neurobiological explanation. Both astrophysical and neurobiological explanations of the source of morals may open up the possibility of an ethical reality, but they stop short and leave much more to be desired.

:up:

Thickets upon thickets.

Passion is a drive toward something, a compulsion. — whollyrolling

Don't forget it is, at a primal level, like fear and sex

Also explain self-actualization or doing something you're passionate about, isn't that love? — SethRy

Like the love of wisdom, right?

Your the best...always looking out for me. Me so happy :cry:

:joke:

I agree, we should have taken a step back probably 8 pages ago.

Do it!!!...introduce the categorical imperative...you instigator you.

I think if it takes 80 pages, we should keep going.

Simpleton or Oblivion, pick a side.

I was making that connection myself, influenced in part by Hume, who made the connection between morality and its emotional source. — S

Ok. I understand where you are coming from now. I must have missed when you mentioned Hume earlier.

Unfortunately, Hume concluded that our emotions are a matter of conditioning. Hence there is no free will, only the last and strongest passion, as determined by one's past impressions. Hume's position nullifies the possibility of ethical responsibility - and I would argue that free will and responsibility are necessary factors of ethical existence.

Neurobiology then makes the connection between emotions and their neurobiological source. — S

This coheres with Hume's ethical philosophy. But it does nothing to make the ethical a matter of personal responsibility or free will. Rather, it reduces morality to nothing but the stimulation of pleasure and pain responses in the autonomic nervous system. If this is the case, then there really is no morality, and consequently, no source of morals.

I have the hunch that there is more to it than this.

Love isn't an emotion, it's a biological commitment to mating for life. It might raise emotions within us, but it's based on something primal. — whollyrolling

That is how love is in the sense of eros. But at the level of philia, storge, or agape, such an explanation does not only seem inadequate, but also somewhat perverse.

Correct. I'm a serial killer. — S

:rofl:

Running water never goes stale.

@Edward

Don't think. FEEL. It's like a finger pointing at the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all of the heavenly glory. — Bruce Lee