No they do not remain unsupported, we support them all the time, by referring to ethical principles. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is true. Very true. The saddest part is, that ethical principles are what each person who refers to them calls them. They are arbitrary, while appearing to have a certain theme (but that is only appearance.)

Ethical principles either don't exist, or we haven't discovered them yet. Therefore the referring to ethical principles is a snow job, a wool over other's eyes, it is a pungent force of argument, without any essence or logical backing.

Given an ethical model, or morality (classification of human events as moral or immoral), the realisation of right (moral) action involves applying one of the following:
1) General approach (e.g., Master Rule, or Method)
2) Particular approach (e.g., Virtue) — Galuchat

Galuchat, I am impressed how methodically you have thought this through.

My only objection to your presentation is the notion of "given ethical model". It is given either in a general approach, or in a particular approach, and both approaches involve a basic sense of morality, but neither approaches spell out what that basic sense of morality is.

Basically, you have designed a well-balanced description of what morality ought to be, or is, without touching the delicately elusive and dangerously explosive task of naming what the essence of morality is.

And whithout that, anyone can state anyting as being moral, without the need, or rather, without the possibility, of proving it, or of getting it proven wrong.

This renders the moral action more than just not scientific; it renders it undefinable and thus: ether, hot air, poof she's gone, a mirage, an illusion.

This is actually the basis of my total objection to invoking morality as the backing for an argument: it IS, it exists, but nobody can own it, nobody can put it in a frame that is true, and accepted by all parties.

What good is something, that we know exists, but we don't know anything about it? What possible use can we get out of something that is all effect and affect, but we can't poinpoint it and delineate it from the chaos of concepts humans can't define?

At least with pornography, the product and the bait are one and the same thing.

This never stops to amaze me. They show naked women available in all possible variety of attractiveness, in actions that are diverse to satisfy anyone's interest. Then they put an ad there: "YOU can watch this very same thing right now, if you pay some money pronto." This is not marketing. This is not adding. This is not Zen.

"Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am"

Gerry Rafferty

1. If you don't go to other people's funerals, they won't come to yours.

2. Being totally selfish and greedy does not contradict giving back to society. A greedy person is part of society. He is giving to himself, that is, to part of society. Generally, no specifications exist WHICH part of society one must give back to, other than in specific instances of law or of religious law. So one can give back to ANY part of society, and if that given part of society is restricted to the self, then that's still legitimately fulfilling one's duty and obligation, if one exists, to society.

Oh, I get you. You meant to say we don't know WHEATHER g or not g.

I agree with your position 4.

I beleive that the existence of god can be neither proven nor disproven. But god has not given any revelation to humans as to its own nature, qualities, and specifications. Therefore any attribution to that is mere fantasy, or else a lie. Heck we don't know anything about him, and nothing of his attributes. Event his attribute of existence is hidden from us.

0. definition: No knowledge (contingently or necessarily)* that g/G or not g/G. — 180 Proof

(pointing out problems with definition)

The claim is false, because this is necessarily true knowledge.
This is certain knowledge that God or Not God. Either God or else Not god must be true; they both can't be false at the same time; therefore the OR connector renders the expression always true.

Haha... everyone is an agnostic. "We don't know if god or gods exist." Anyone who claims they KNOW there is no go or gods, and anyone who claims they KNOW that there are gods are liars, or else under an illusion.

So if everyone does not know whether there is a god, then it's a matter of belief.

You can belief there is a god. You can believe there is no god. But you can't believe both at the same time, and you can't believe the negation of either at the same time.

To claim someone is an agnostic, is fine. But to mean NON-commitment with this claim whether they believe or not in a god, is ludicrous. By the law of the excluded middle.

You like to unreasonably derail valid criticism. That is perfectly ego-driven, not reason-driven.

Check the circumference of your ego, my friend. If it reaches somewhere between 13 to 16 billion light years in its radius, you just about got it right.

Why would you accept an unjustified proposition, @banno? Give us three examples in which you have accepted propositions without justification.

Yeah, it is. Unless you want to indulge in special pleading - arguing that it can't be a proposition because it doesn't do what you expect propositions to do. — Banno

Thank you for further proving your inaccurate knowledge of English and of meaning in general.

proposition: "a statement or assertion that expresses a judgment or opinion."

It is not your judgment that you like vanilla. It is not your opinion. An opinion is a statement which is uncertain. You are certain, because it's your preference. A judgment it is not, because you did not decide for someone else or about someone else. You did not estimater. (As in "I judge the distance to be 2 Km.) you just stated a status quo.

If you want to argue that it is one or both of the two of judgment or opinion, then you further prove your inaccurate knowledge of English and of meaning in general.
-------------------
You, Banno, just are a self-effacing, bloated, narcissist. <- THIS was an opinion.

What could possibly count as a reason here? — Banno

With all due respect, there may be no reason, but there may be a cause. Which is as good as a reason.

However, "I like vanilla" is not a proposition. It is a statement of status quo. I propose that it is reasonable to expect philosophers to recognize a proposition, and it is a status quo that you failed at it, @Banno. The original proposition, which you called "rubbish" was about accepting propositions as true only if they are reasonable.

What do you think about validation in general? — even

I don't understand your question. This entire "validation" thing bothers me. It's so 1970s.

Assertiveness training. Women's liberation. Gay people being a reality. Stop the Viet Nam war. Let's have sex. Listen to "Dark Side of the Moon" or to "Stairway to Heaven". Disco sucks. Validate things. Get a higher education and a well-paying, secure job. The "Me" generation.

social validation a necessary precursor to survival. — even

I don't see how that is a necessary condition. What's a social invalidation? The word just does not fit the concept of "excommunication" or non-acceptance. Much like social validation is automantic; you have to work hard to not get it.

Let's consider intellectual validation a subset of social validation, — even

I don't know how that is possible. I can say something that is really smart to some people, but really stupid to some other people at the same time and in the same respect. "You can validate yourself to some of the people all of the time, to all of the people some of the time, but you can't validate yourself to all of the people all of the time." -- There, I put a 70s spin on it for you.

Is intellectual validation a necessary motivator to you? — even

Would you ask the question if it weren't for you?

Unnecessarily rude comment deleted by user.

I am an agnostic who has clearly stated my agnostic position...and anyone supposing I am a closet theists is just being an asshole. — Frank Apisa

I am an asshole and you are CLEARLY a theist. Not even a closet theist, but a full-blown, all-out theist.

There are many wrong things in your post that merely concern meaning and nothing else. I have pointed out many times before in other threads by other closet theists, similar to you, where their mistakes, identical to yours, CLEARLY lie.

I am just fed up with the theists who think every discipline of thought is a religion. I shan't touch your thread, because you will learn nothing from it.

It's a dismissal of the very practice of moral philosophy thus far. These people are not merely wrong on technical ground. If that were the case then Anscombe is either an unrivalled genius or she's missed responding technically to the thousands and thousands of pages which have been written about each of these theories, each of which clearly disagrees with her in more complex ways that she addresses. No, she's dismissing the entire endeavour. No need to get into the technicality. Like dismissing the need for a Window 7 handbook, it doesn't matter about it's technicalities, Windows 7 has gone so the handbook's no longer needed. — Isaac

This is what I got out of her article, too. And I completely agree with the notion.

My addition to your comment would be that as Anscombe points at the chaos on ethics, I point at the undefined nature of ethics, and the fact that no consensus of what "ethical" or "moral" behaviour actually is exists. To continue your metaphor, everyone is busy writing Windows 7 handbooks, but Windows 7 is not only possibly considered obsolete, it never even existed.

These laws are flawed. — Qwex

interesting life-experience. I am sure you have a story behind this.

So. My problem with the detail starts at 'brute facts'. It seems to me from the opening that Anscombe is looking to a more psychological understanding of morality. So we could see what is 'unjust as a fact about the psychological state of justice (rather than the legal one). But if that's the case, then we just have morality brought into Naturalism, which I'm fine with - but then this weird argument about brute facts, as if there were something further to say, other than the standard argument for Naturalism, and I just don't get what she's trying to do with it. Is it her personal defense of naturalism, or some other point which I've missed completely? — Isaac

I think Anscombe's criticism of Hume's stand is that if you take the non-causation principle to its completion on all aspects, then it destroys the power of rational reason, and that leads to not Naturalism, but to nihilism, inasmuch as you can't rationally say "this causes that" (X causes Y) because you can't prove this, in the absence of deterministic causation. By deterministic causation I mean that you KNOW that there is a causation process, not just a simple coincidence of events. Therefore, according to Hume, who believes in no possibility of certainly seeing causation in processes,when this causation is inherently absent, then one can argue as well that "This causes not that, but something else", (X causes not Y, but it causes Z) just as comfortably. The article expressed it as "for Hume, "is becomes ought" is just as likely as "is becomes must" or "is becomes needs" etc." This is not a direct, verbatim quote.

Anscombe's argument has nothing to do with private languages. It is only a presuasive use of the word "legislate". See p. 11. She uses a single sentence: It is absurd. — David Mo

My impression was that maybe the original user of the word "legislate" meant to say that there is in each person at least two, and maybe more inner voices that argue with each other when it comes to moral choices, and the upshot of their argument is reflected by the behaviour of the person that obeys the votes these inner voices cast.

This is not to be confused with a schizophrenic psychotic state, in which people hear voices. Instead, it is a process of thought, where a person debates what he should do: similarly to when he finds a wallet, he contemplates whether he should return it to the owner intact, or take out some or all of the cash first and then return it, or not return it at all. In cartoons the debate is sometimes depicted by a white angelic self of the person sitting on his right shoudler, and a dark, satanic self sitting on his left, and the two suggesting inspiring thoughts to him why he should do one or the other of several equally available possible actions. This is what the original quote "legislation" could have referred to. Possibly.

If I may also say a few words providing the Good Self-Appointed All-Knowing Lord, Banno, does not smite me for doing so.

What I got out of the article is not that Andscombe seeks and points at a direction of where and how moral philosophy should inquire and advance. That is the essence that the foregoing contributors have opined, and they pointed at how Andscombe uses historical and dynamically developing theories of ethics as, so-to-speak, fighting-dogs that bite and destroy each other. Each time a dog survives the malee, they opine that perhaps Anscombe appoints that particular (but only temporarily) victorious dog to be the leader in the direction of further enquiry of what morality is. These contributors to this thread have a consensus of sorts, that Anscombe has a hope, and a rational hope at that, to sometime find the real moral basis of ethics.

I read that she just throws her hands in the air, so to speak, and declares a state of being completely at a loss seeing or intuiting any direction out of our dilemma about the self-contradicting nature of morality, and expresses despair how our present systems are frought with contradictions that can be practically damaging, not only theoretically..

There is a difference. Hope that has no straw; this is how I read her essay. Others here who have also contributed read it with the impression that she has some sort of an idea how we ought to proceed. I deny she hints at having some idea how to discover the basic fundamental ways to create a road map to find a true theory of morality and ethics/ She bemoans, indeed, the complete chaos ruling moral considerations, as at the present state our best efforts at moral judgment still can send an innocent person into a punishing conviction.

Please don't misconstrue that I read her essay as that of a nihilist. She is not a nihilist; she desparately wants a moral system, she yearns for one, one that is true, and unassailable; she wants one, and she is grieving the fact that humanity still hasn't found one.

what he did is not evil enough to justify impeachment — Michael Lee

I am not quite sure if it's a witchhunt that the impeachment's mandate is, like you say, or else it is a venue to find guilt in the legal sense of the process.

If it's a witchhunt, where the evil is to be chased out of the bodies of humans, or else burn them at the stake if they devil refuses to leave their bodies, then I think we should exorcise Trump, not try him for fitness of impeachment.

I agree with every word you say! It is a sad state of affairs that one has to point out the limits to growth to Americans, as it is the major area of the world with economic and ecological impact that still puts the word of the Bible, that is, word of superstition and faith in the supernatural, ahead of what can actually be seen, heard and measured.

One may say yes, but the world is more than just what can be seen, heard or measured, so to speak. They are right. But belief in the supernatural can be misleading and damaging when the answers to the question posed must be based on a belief in the actual events that take place in the world, and are threatening our survival, over the expense of the answers found in the bible.

The merit of this book that you are advocating is pure gold. The problem is that it ought to have been blindingly obvious by now to all, yet the biblical belief "trust the Good Lord and he shalt provide" is still the main belief in the larger part of the population of the USA, as opposed to seeing the dire straights we are in, and looking for a good doctor to remedy the situation.

'll let that rest here, in suport of my previous comment. — Banno

You spake as if you had an alternative.

Further to my one previous comment: the cases in point are focussed on by the following parts as quoted from the article:

This part of the subject matter of ethics , is however, completely closed to us until we have an account of what type of characteristics a virtue is -- a problem not of ethics, but of conceptual analysis

This word "ought" ... could not, in the character of having that force, be inferred form anything whatever.

... in such-and-such circumstances one ought to procure the judicial condemnation of the innocent. And that is my complaint.

I finished the article. It says that there is no determination whatsoever what ethical or moral is. Then it shows that ethics can be used to prove a moral action to be unethical.

The author throws a light on the question: will we ever find the golden key (so to speak) that unlocks the problem (elusiveness) of what is ethical?

The author has shown how each ethicist errs in his or her philosophy. This is actually quite easily done, if one applies the "exception" or "contradicting example" mental experiment. The author takes the proof a bit further, and she asserts the logical self-contradiction of each prior ethicist with more than that: the author builds a case of logic that in general terms, not just in a specific example, destroys the case of other ethicists.

It is clear to me too that you don't have the mental capacity to appreciate my level and quality of insight. So what you wrote is an obvious effect. Thank you for supporting my theory. Which in my opinion is not so much a theory but a status quo.

But instead of personal mud-slinging would it not much better to focus on your topic? I'm in the middle of reading the article. I just got up to take a pain killer for 1. arthritic pain and 2. you. I'll be soon reporting my to you not even existing insights.

private language argument; that is, one cannot make sense of following a private rule, because one could have no way of verifying that one was indeed following the rule. Consider the case in which you believe you are following a rule, but actually you are mis-remembering the rule — Banno

If you wrote down the rule, to refer to it from time to time, would the rule lose its quality of being private? I hardly think so.

I should read Wittgenstein to verify that he is overrated and actually his only true observations are the blindingly obvious, or else they are (in the majority) plain wrong. This is a theory I should embark on showing evidence for, much like to show that and how Kant overthought himself, and nicely bound himself (meaing his philosophy) into a bunch of self-contradictions. Wittgenstein does not contradict himself, he just states the (ibid) or else he is (ibid).

I disagree, and again you misconstrue my meaning-while power structures may always play a role in human social behaviour, hoarding and the concept of private property is specifically linked to the development of agricultural/civilization...i am not saying that it never existed, surely greedy bastards have always existed, but it was a rare behaviour that wasn't encouraged by collective/tribal systems...much of the concept of elitism was — Grre

You disagree because you equate greed with being power-hungry. The two may have a common overlapping area, but greed is also a survival tool. If not greed, then hoarding definitely is. And the word greed is nothing but a value-laden, morally deploring word to mean "hoarding".

I now get your meaning, but again, your concepts are not separated from closely related concepts, in your text, and therefore your writing is imprecise, misleading, and even wrong. Not that your ideas are wrong, but your way of putting them down.

Greed is a human (and also an animal) characteristic, you may not like it personally, but it is a human trait, part of human nature.

I noticed, actually, that those who gripe about greed of others, are basically crying sour grapes, as they are envious people who got wealth. The complainers only complain about the greed of the wealthy because they themselves are not wealthy.

It is really an ugly, hypocrytical scene to complain about manifestation of aspects of human nature.

I meant "ideal" in the common-day sense. — Grre

Maybe. But Plato did not say it in the common-day sense, and you immediately quoted Plato as the believer in the same thing.

I am glad you clarified this, but please be more precise in your text. You are misleading for no reason, and also inadvertently. I got mislead, and you did not mean to mislead. If I were you, I would pay closer attiention to the wording and not let the style carry you away.

between the historical system of divinity/divine — Grre

You can't say this if you are an atheist. This what you said here affirms there is divinity / devine power.

I am not going to argue what you believe or not, it would be too stupid of me. But in my opinion your wording of the issue is not quite right. You are talking about the divinity as if it were a fact. You ought to talk about it as it pertains to its believers.

(for lack of a better term to term to describe the conceptual parrarells between divine/unquestionable worship of a monotheistic god (and those deemed to represent Him) and that of wealth accumulation and the wealthy)? — Grre

Outside of the USA, no able-bodied government or country and their denizens believe any more that power derives from god. This is a stupid idea, if you don't mind my saying so. It is only the USA in the industrialized world that everything is permeated by religion and god-worship.

It's time for all good men to get their heads out of their assholes, and realize that superstition has no place any longer in the world, other than in the minds of the fucking stupid.

Please don't mind my language, but I got a bit riled by your assuming that god plays any role in the governance of the world. And you got this from law school. This is staggering the reasonable mind in biblical proportions.

Sh'ma o Yisroel! Hear this, o Israel!

But one has to look at anthropological history then and see how the Indigenous/nomadic pre-agricultural societies functioned well enough without either divine rule or any form of class stratification, let alone based on systems of wealth/property hoarding — Grre

Eyyeyyey... the entire hoarding behaviour has developed for the necessity of hoarding supplies and food for the tribe to survive over period of non-availability of supplies and food. It was present in the pre-agricultural societies much like in today's societies.

And the devine rule... they definitely had some idea of a kind of theist mythology that gave them moral and legal guidance, so to speak.

Your argument is based on non-true premises.

Anyways, my question then, appears to be a pretty straight forward one. If historically, divine rule is seen as a contradiction to the doctrine of the rule of law (and subsequently other incumbent ideals such as democracy, equality ect.) then under late-stage capitalism, can wealth/money be seen as a parallel to this idea of divine rule, and thus contradictory to the rule of law... — Grre

All authority derives from god. Whatever the ruler is, be it a person, a body, or the entire population, its mandate and power comes from god. There is only one contradiction: why did god allow godless powers to rise, such as communist rule? They persecuted the churches and religions. Now THAT's a contradiction. A contradiction in which god gives power to advocate the non-belief in god.

It is an ideal...to Plato — Grre

I don't know if I can agree that governance is an ideal. It can cast no physical shadows, and only phyiscal objects have ideal manifestations in the ideals of Plato. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my impressions. Concepts have no ideals according to Plato, as they can't be "made" into a physical object.

A quart of 18 percent cream for $1.99 comes to mind. It's a loss leader.

What of the idea of a true leader? Have you ever encountered anyone that fits the description? There must be a couple of such people out there somewhere. — TheMadFool

Lenin and Hitler come to mind in recent political history. Their goals were wrong, but boy they could lead.

I can't decide if it's the selfs that change guards, or else the self gets into different moods, so different from each other, that the self's own mother won't recognise the self.