Argue something Rowena.

So presumably you think that if a metaphor was used in philosophical investigations, then it is a good one regardless of what you're using it as a metaphor for? Brilliant. Have you seen the sketch 'Thick people' in the comedy series 'Jam'? You bear an uncanny resemblance to Rowena.

This is a misguided metaphor. Better, the feeling of pain is itself the pain. — Banno

Er, no, Banno. Just no. That would be a really stupid metaphor, as pain is individually subjective. The feeling of pain is the pain. The feeling of falling is not the falling. See? (No, obviously).

Here's something that's going to blow your mind: some features of reality are individually subjective....and some aren't. Pain and funniness are individually subjective. Rightness and wrongness are not. For an analogy: some things are parsnips. But not everything is a parsnip.

How do we tell which is which? Well, that's where we have to use our reason.

This argument is sound:

1. If I feel in pain, I am in pain
2. I feel in pain
3. Therefore I am in pain

This argument is unsound

1. If I feel xing is wrong, xing is wrong
2. I feel xing is wrong
3. Therefore xing is wrong

Which premise is false in the second argument? Premise 1.

Would premise 1 be false if morality was individually subjective?

No.

So, is morality individually subjective?

No.

Can you feel in pain and not be in pain?

No.

Why?

Because pain and the feeling of pain are one and the same.

Can you feel that Xing is wrong and Xing not be wrong?

Yes.

Would that be possible if the feeling of wrongness was the wrongness?

No.

Well done for just ignoring the refutation and continuing to assert your theory.

The theory you're asserting (not defending) is the metaethical theory known as 'individual subjectivism'. It's a theory no professional philosopher defends. But any introduction to ethics will go through why it is confused (though popular among - exclusively among - the ignorant and bewildered).

Funniness is individually subjective. Nobody seriously disputes that. That is, funniness is made of a feeling - the feeling of amusement. And thus if something causes that feeling in you, then it is funny for you, and there's nothing more to it than that.

Morality is not individually subjective. For if it was, then feeling that an act is wrong would entail that it is. And it doesn't, right? So morality 'isn't' individually subjective.

I mean, look at who agrees with you......Banno! I rest my case.

Experts don't defend it. Those who haven't a clue, think it is obviously true and can't fathom why anyone thinks otherwise. Why do experts not defend it? See above. It is demonstrably false. And those who think it is true have committed fallacies in arriving at that conclusion. Such as you: you confused a vehicle of awareness with an object of awareness. This, you think, is good reasoning, right? "I feel that xing is wrong......feelings are subjective.....therefore morality is individually subjective". That's a fallacious argument. But you think - and will continue to think - it is great. Yes? And Banno thinks it is the best argument ever.

I agree, my argument about your resentment was invalid, which, as you note, I acknowledged. That doesn't mean what I said was wrong. — T Clark

No, you did not acknowledge it, you just made it in ignorance of the fact you were committing the very fallacy you had just mentioned. That's how inept you are at being consistent.

Now, you also said this in your earlier post:

One characteristic of rational people is that they respond to the argument that's actually made rather than one they imagine. — T Clark

I then responded with an argument. Here:

It is widely recognized that it is wrong, other things being equal, to do things to others without their prior consent. We ask people if they'd like a coffee, we don't ram one down their throat.

There are lots of exceptions. But the exceptions aren't arbitrary. They seem invariably to be cases where a person is unable to consent and furthermore not doing the thing in question would most likely result in them coming to serious harm. That is, it doesn't seem sufficient that the act will benefit the person. If the person can't consent to what you're proposing to do, then the default is you are not morally permitted to do it unless that's the only way to prevent this person from coming to a serious harm.

Acts of procreation clearly involve doing something to someone else without their prior consent, for none of us have asked to be born.

Is it an exceptional case, though? No, for although we can't consent to be born, not bringing us into being here can't reasonably be considered to be something that would likely result in us coming to serious harm. For either we do not exist prior to birth, in which case our non-existence poses no risk of harm to us. Or we do exist prior to birth, but given our total ignorance of what pre-birth life is like, we are not entitled to assume that it is any worse than life here. Either way, procreative acts come out as acts that we are not morally entitled to perform.

That's just one of a whole battery of arguments that can be made for the antinatalist conclusion.

What have you got? — Bartricks

You then reply:

As you will note, I didn't make any case against your argument at all because that, according to the OP, is not the subject of this thread. — T Clark

So I take it that you admit that by your own lights you are not rational? For you had accused me of making no arguments - false, I made one and made it again and again - then you accuse me of not being rational, then you identify a characteristic of rational people, and then you demonstrate that you lack it. Good job! Like I say, totally inept.

You also do not seem to understand the OP. In the OP the question is whether there are any reasons to have kids. Normative reasons. I am saying that there is positive reason not to have them. Moral reason. Instrumental too, but I am focussing on moral reasons. (Moral reasons are among the normative reasons that there are).

You are conceptually confused.
To 'feel' that x is wrong is to feel that it is proscribed. You are talking about the feeling, but the feeling isn't what morality is, for it is a feeling 'of' wrongness. The wrongness itself consists of the proscription, not the feeling that the act is proscribed.
The feeling that I am falling is not itself the falling, and likewise the feeling that an act is wrong is not itself the wrongness. This can be simply demonstrated if it is not already obvious - if I feel that an act is wrong, that does not entail that it is. Yet it would if wrongness was that feeling.
Anyway, the mistake you are making is to confuse the object of a feeling or belief with the feeling or belief itself.

I think this is at the heart of it. I can see your opposition to having children includes rational reasons, but, based on the quoted text, it also includes a lot of resentment. — T Clark

No, resentment plays no role at all. But, even if it did, that's to focus on my motives and not the quality of my arguments (something you seem unable to avoid doing). Note as well that it is question begging, as resentment is an appropriate attitude to adopt towards acts that have wronged one. So if it is wrong to procreate, then it appropriate to resent the fact that one's parents have subjected one to a life.

I recognize that questioning a persons motives is not a valid argument, but you're the one who started it. — T Clark

I don't think you do recognize that at all, as you did it in the preceding sentence! (See above) But just to be clear: you started it when you said that the thought of me having kids made you shudder. That's a personal slight, not a rational consideration.

So far as I can see you have not have advanced any argument at all. I, on the other hand, have.

It is widely recognized that it is wrong, other things being equal, to do things to others without their prior consent. We ask people if they'd like a coffee, we don't ram one down their throat.

There are lots of exceptions. But the exceptions aren't arbitrary. They seem invariably to be cases where a person is unable to consent and furthermore not doing the thing in question would most likely result in them coming to serious harm. That is, it doesn't seem sufficient that the act will benefit the person. If the person can't consent to what you're proposing to do, then the default is you are not morally permitted to do it unless that's the only way to prevent this person from coming to a serious harm.

Acts of procreation clearly involve doing something to someone else without their prior consent, for none of us have asked to be born.

Is it an exceptional case, though? No, for although we can't consent to be born, not bringing us into being here can't reasonably be considered to be something that would likely result in us coming to serious harm. For either we do not exist prior to birth, in which case our non-existence poses no risk of harm to us. Or we do exist prior to birth, but given our total ignorance of what pre-birth life is like, we are not entitled to assume that it is any worse than life here. Either way, procreative acts come out as acts that we are not morally entitled to perform.

That's just one of a whole battery of arguments that can be made for the antinatalist conclusion.

What have you got?

If we identify with our physical form, then we have not always existed, but if we identify with the present moment, then we have always been here, in the now. — Present awareness

That's surely confused. I am not the present moment. I exist in the present moment, but that doesn't mean that myself and the present moment are the same. That's a category error. I am a thing. The present moment is not a thing, but a temporal property. I have now-ness, but I am not now.

I think you are confusing a definition of moral good and bad with a view about what it is that all cases of moral goodness have in common apart from being good.

Let's just imagine that what all unambiguous cases of moral goodness have in common is happiness promotion. That is, all clearest cases of morally good states of affairs are states of affairs in which happiness seems to be at a maximum; and all the clearest cases of morally good acts are ones that seem to promote happiness.

Well, even in the unlikely event that that is true, that would not furnish us with a definition of moral goodness. For the goodness itself is what all those cases have in common, but it would be to confuse the 'is' of prediction with the 'is' of identity to conclude that therefore we now know what 'morally good' means. (And this is what Moore's 'naturalistic fallacy' seems to involve - confusing the 'is' of prediction with the 'is' of identity).

Moore, of course, thought that moral goodness is indefinable. But I do not think that's correct. Moral goodness is that which would render our rational intuitions that this or that is morally good, 'veridical'. That is, moral goodness can be defined as the veridicality condition of our rational intuitions of moral goodness.

Let's say I know with 100% certainty that I exist. Can I then prove that I know this? (It's one thing for something to be true and another to know that it's true.) — Cidat

You don't have to know you know something in order to know it. After all, if one did, then no one could know anything as to know something would knowing that you know it, which would then require knowng that one knows that one knows it, and so on forever.

So, you know you exist. Why? Because your belief that you exist is true, and there is reason to believe it. You do not know have to know that your belief possesses these properties in order for it to possess them. So knowledge does not require knowledge that one knows.

If “ NOW” has always been, then we must have always been, as well. — Present awareness

I do not see how that follows. To be clear: I think we have always existed. But I do not see how this follows from the fact that now is the time at which all things exist.

I take it that things in the past 'did' exist, but no longer do; and that things in the future 'will' exist, but do not yet. So, that I exist means that I exist in the present, for that is where things that exist, exist. But how does it follow from this that I always exist? For it seems consistent with me existing now, that I did not exist in the past, and that I will not exist in the future.

And your question also seems inconsistent with your claim always to have existed. For if you have always existed - and, like I say, I think that is the case though for reasons different from yours - then there was no point at which you came into being.

You don't seem to understand what it is to be rational or to be very yourself or recognise it in others.

You seem to think - question beggingly - that if you have kids you're thereby showing concern for others! Er, seriously? It's those of us who have decided not to have kids for moral reasons who are showing concern for others. I think you're suffering from what Satre would call 'bad faith'. I doubt very much moral reasons played any role whatsoever in your decision to breed, because most parents when asked why they had kids do not appeal to any moral considerations at all. My experience politely listening to parents drone on about their banal decision to breed is that most of them decided to do so for either no real reason at all - they just sleepwalked into it - or for the kind of utterly unhealthy self-indulgent reasons some of which have already been surveyed above. Concern for others wasn't in the mix. Yet they don't hesitate to give themselves a big slap on the back for doing something that was unbelievably easy, namely the act of breeding itself (sex isn't hard, is it?) or else they want praise for doing something they jolly well ought to have done, such as dedicating time and effort to looking after the poor victims of their immoral and self-indulgent decisions (you forced them into being here, 'of course' you now owe it to them to do all in your power to ensure their existence here is a nice one - you owe them a living for christ's sake!!). Maybe you're an exception. But for whose sake did you have them? Did you think the kids you had already existed somewhere and needed rescuing? Or did you think the kids you had didn't already exist, in which case how on earth could you be doing it for their sake given they didn't exist to have sakes until you created them?

Please don't expect to be taken seriously by those of us who try to understand and care about people other than ourselves. — T Clark

I don't expect to be taken seriously by those who have already procreated. For they have a huge vested interest in telling themselves they haven't committed a serious wrong, but are instead saints who are privy to some profound insight into the meaning of things thanks to their decision to let some ejaculate linger in a womb for too long.

My view is that you are wrong. Wrong to think that it is ok to subject people to lives here for your entertainment; wrong to think that we are here for entertainment purposes. We can't both be correct.

so the thought of highly rational people having kids makes you shudder, but you're okay with thoughtless people having them. Okaay, and they wonder why IQ levels are dropping.
Nobody should have kids, it's both immoral and, in most cases, imprudent too. But of course, it requires some thought to recognize such things. Hence the thoughtless procreate and thoughtlessness gets passed on. Oh joy.

Sounds psychopathic

Yes, I accept that some may have benevolent motives. But frog-marching someone to the secret place (which is also quite a dangerous place) would still be wrong even if benevolently motivated.
It has been noted by others, notably the philosopher Seanna Shiffrin, that when it comes to conferring benefits on others without their prior consent, this is wrong unless needed to prevent the person in question coming to harm. Persuading or inviting an existing person to share in a pleasure you have discovered is one thing, but subjecting someone to it is quite another. If I am enjoying the heroin, that doesn't justify me in injecting you with the stuff without your consent.
And isn't that what benevolent procreative acts are like? Life here is addictive like heroin (people typically want more of it even when it isn't going well for them). And benevolent breeders are akin to those who want to share their addiction with someone else and so inject others with it even if they haven't asked.

I don't think all parents are culpable for their decisions, or equally culpable. It depends on what informed the decision. And it depends on the circumstances. I think there's a limit to what morality demands of us and probably most decisions to breed were made in circumstances where not breeding would have subjected the non-breeder to such hardship they can't reasonably be expected to have made a different decision. That probably applies to most decisions to breed, historically speaking. But it doesn't apply to many of those made in wealthy western democracies.

As for wanting to share love - well, let's be clear: they want someone to love. That's fine - nothing wrong with that desire. But there's everything wrong with deciding to satisfy it by forcing into existence here someone you know will unthinkingly love the first faces they see. If you want to be loved, find someone who already exists and try and make them love you by doing your best to inspire those feelings in them in ways they could agree to.

I mean, what if I want to be loved and so I manufacture a love potion and put it in Jane's tea. Is that okay? Obviously not. So there's wanting to be loved and there's how one goes about satisfying that desire. 'Making' someone love you by means that do not involve appealing to their own informed judgements - so methods that involve bypassing their rational faculties - are wrong, or at least are wrong when used intentionally. Yet isn't that what a parent who wants sincerely to 'share the love' is doing?

Show me a screwed up kid and I will show you a bad parent. — Book273

Ted Bundy. Parents good (as parents). Him, not so much.

Anyway, even if kids are cool - and they're not, it is an undignified state to be in as most kids themselves recognize (when you were a kid, did you want to stay one?) - the simple fact is other people are not our toys. To subject someone to a life - a life here, of all places - simply because you want something cool to have around is flagrantly immoral. Buy a motorbike instead. It'll cost you less and isn't immoral, so far as I can tell.

I couldn't agree more!

We all know that life here is fraught with risks and that we have to work to survive and that for large portions of our lives we have no dignity and must depend on others to care for us. So those who, knowing that, nevertheless subject someone else to a lifetime here are doing something seriously immoral, other things being equal.

And their motives for doing so are often very bad indeed. For instance, they just want a project, or they are megolomaniacs who want their own little tribe to lord over, or they want a distraction from their grotty life or relationship, or they are egomaniacs who want to be loved blindly, or they are sick in the head and want someone else to depend on them, or they're just unbelievably unimaginative and like the fact that if you breed your life is suddenly all mapped out for you.

Anyway, it is - upon a bit of reflection - a clearly highly immoral thing to do, other things being equal.

There are those who harp on about the environment and the damage we all do to other creatures and their habitats and how we should divest ourselves of the luxuries of modern life and live like Neanderthals but who nevertheless think nothing of breeding (even though short of starting up a rubber burning plant, that's about the most environmentally unfriendly thing one can possibly do).

The simply fact is that it is our parents' fault that we exist and so they owe us a living, and owe it to others to protect others from us if we turn out to be a bad apple, and any sacrifices that need to be made to make-up for the harms we do to others just by leading an enjoyable life are sacrifices they owe, not us.

The only upside to their unjust decision to breed is that they thereby render all the risks of harm that they subsequently face in their lives fully deserved. For by breeding they do unto others what was done unto them.

The WHO's guidelines are issued by persons. Who do you think wrote them, exactly? Was it a person or persons? Yes. And when we talk of an institution or organization 'prescribing' something this is clearly shorthand for 'a majority of those in charge of the institution issue this prescription'. So the guidelines, prescriptions, what have you, express the desires of some person or persons. You mention consensus - yes, a consensus of what though? Desires of minds, yes?

The simple fact is that any prescription expresses the desires of some mind or minds. If you think otherwise you need to present a counterexample that is a) clearly not a mind or an institution whose edicts give expression to the desires of minds, and b) that is not question begging (so, for instance, appealing to norms of reason - such as, if you want healthy teach, brush them regularly - is question begging given that moral norms are among the norms of reason and so the same divine analysis applies).

If instead you want to insist that morality itself might be composed of the edicts of an institution, then a) the edicts of an institution are fairly obviously metaphorical and express the desires of persons composing it, or a majority, whereas moral edicts are not metaphorical and b) even if 'a' is false, the simple fact is that any institution's edicts are themselves subject to moral assessment and thus moral norms cannot be identified with them.

So, again, replace 'morality' with 'jam'. I have argued that jam is made of strawberries boiled with sugar. Your reply

"Humans enforce, discuss , and modify strawberries. I don't this is controversial"

Irrelevant. You're talking about what people do with strawberries. I'm talking about what jam is made of.

Jam is made of strawberries boiled with sugar.

"There's nothing strange (or at least nothing out of the ordinary) about a community subjecting strawberries to assessment."

Er, what? Where have I denied this? I am saying that Jam is made of strawberries boiled with sugar. And you're still going on about what communities do with strawberries.

"We are highly complex animals, endlessly innovating, discussing, adjusting, strawberries. Nevertheless, it's the deepest jam that make conversation about the more controversial jams possible in the first place"

Again, what? Strawberry jam is made of strawberries boiled with sugar. You haven't said what you disagree with about that analysis. Do you think strawberry jam is not made with sugar? Or perhaps you think the strawberries are not boiled at all?

"I deny both. It is not made with strawberries, because humans modify strawberries. And the strawberries are not boiled, but just our strawberries - the human construct strawberries"

That is how our debate has gone. Strawberry jam is made of strawberries. Moral norms are made of norms - prescriptions (that's why they're called 'moral prescriptions').

Only a mind can prescribe or value anything. If you think otherwise, provide an example of something that is not itself a mind and that issues a prescription.

Moral prescriptions are obviously not our own. If you say "do X" that does not making doing X right, does it? That's more obvious than that strawberry jam is not just a strawberry. Here's a strawberry. Is it some jam? No, it's a strawberry. Here's a prescription of mine "understand things!!". Does that make it the case that you have a moral obligation to understand things? No.

Well, this is pointless as you're not grasping the point.

When you 'assess' a norm you do so by reference to a standard - or...norm. When we 'morally' assess a community's set of beliefs (and that's all you're talking about when you talk about a communty's norms, for community's can't issue prescriptions becsaue they're not agents....but I've said this numerous times and you don't seem to get it), we assess them by reference to a 'moral norm'. It's that norm that is neither our own - for, once more, I can't make an act right by issuing a command to do it - or the community's (because community's can't issue norms, and even if they could, it would make no sense to assess them given they'd be self-validating).

So, it's now been about seven times that I have given you the same points. Perhaps you think - like many here - that simply ignoring them and repeating your fallacies and assertions will somehow constitute addressing them. But no, it won't.

You have no grounds for denying 3. You're just denying it. Well, anyone can do that. You need to refute it by showing that its negation follows from premises that are more self-evident to reason than mine.

4 is demonstrably true. Again:

1. If I issue a prescription, that doesn't make the act I prescribe morally right
2. If moral prescriptions are mine, then it would
3. Therefore moral prescriptions are not mine

Show that 3 is false by showing how its negation is entailed by premises more self-evident to reason than 1 and 2 above.

Again, a 'community' is a person. To think otherwise is to commit the fallacy of composition (a group of people is not a person).

But even if it was and could issue a norm, it demonstrably wouldn't be a moral norm as it itself would be subject to moral assessment.

Same refutation.

Plus, as well as being demonstrably false, you're not even engaging with the apparent demonstration that moral norms and values are those of God. Again

1. Moral norms and values are prescriptions and values
2. Only a mind can issue a prescription or value something
3. Therefore, moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of a mind
4. Moral norms and values are not my prescriptions and values, or yours, or any collection of ours
5. Therefore, moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of some other mind (not one of ours).

Which of those premises are you denying?

Moral norms and values are norms and values.
A norm is a prescription. A value is an attitude.
Only a subject - a mind - can issue a prescription or value something.

Moral norms and values are not ours: I can't make an act right just by issuing a prescription to do it. Nor can you. Nor can any of us. Same with values.

So moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of someone distinct from any one of us.

And she'd be God. Not because I want her to be, but because she's be the arbiter of right and wrong, and good and bad, and rational and irrational.

The question - the question to which metaethical theories are proposed answers - is "what are moral norms and values made of?"

So let's change it to "what's strawberry jam made of?".

My answer: strawberries that have been boiled down with sugar.

Your answer: strawberries are social constructs. And/or - strawberry jam has played important roles shaping the taste of toast and as fillings for cakes for generations; human society couldn't really operate without it. Strawberry jam is therefore a social construct. Oh and here are some supposedly insightful things wittgenstein said.

A) as claims about strawberries and jam they are wrong or wild exaggerations, but more importantly b) what you are saying is mainly irrelevant to the question and your conclusion simply doesn't follow. Strawberry jam is not a social construct for clearly even if society ended tomorrow, strawberry jam could continue to exist.

Once more, you simply ignore the decisive refutation of the view you keep asserting.

The moral beliefs of a group of us are a) not norms, but beliefs about norms and b) they can be false, thus the truth-conditions of moral beliefs are not sociological facts about humans. Sheesh, how many times does the same refutation have to be given before it gets some traction?

You really don't, otherwise you'd address the actual argument.

This is how silly our exchange has been. Imagine that I had argued not that morality is made of God's prescriptions and values, but that human bodies are made of flesh and bone. You could have made exactly the same reply. Namely, that humans are social animals and that humans do not exist outside of human societies. Now, how would such silly claims address my argument thatt human bodies are made of flesh and bone? They wouldn't.

A mind is a thing. An object.
— Bartricks

Don't think that can be right.
Objects tend to be breakable (under conservation), whereas things associated with mind are interruptible (experiences, thinking, etc).
So, processes, occurrences, though maybe memory is an exception.
The quote looks like a category mistake, and that's going by evidence mind you. — jorndoe

No, ironically it is you who is making the category error. Mental states are states. A state is a state of a thing. Just as water is sometimes in a fluid state, minds are in mental states. (Water can be solid, gas, or fluid; minds can be thinking, hoping, intending, desiring and so on).

It is a category error to confuse a state of a thing with the thing itself. This category error is extraordinarily common when it comes to the mind, as there is a tendency to use 'mind' and 'consciousness' interchangeably, even though minds are objects and consciousness is a state (a state of mind, with 'mind' being the thing that consciousness is a state of). This error is facilitated to some extent, no doubt, by the tendency to confuse the 'is' of predication with the 'is' of identity ('my mind is conscious' does not mean that my mind is consciousness, but rather that my mind is in a conscious state).

Anyway, an 'object' is a bearer of properties. That's a non-question begging definition. That is, it is a definition that doesn't just assume that all objects are material.

Exactly what properties are definitive of a material object is a matter of debate, but I will follow Descartes in holding that the defining property of a 'material' object is 'extension'. That is, it takes up some space (and by virtue of this there will be a boundary between the space it occupies and that which it doesn't, and that boundary will describe its shape).

When it comes to minds, their defining state seems to be consciousness. This is not to say that minds are always conscious (although that is what Descartes thought). But rather, that if an object is in a state of consciousness, then it qualifies as a mind by dint of that.

There's a big philosophical question over whether consciousness is a state of material objects. If it is, then minds are, or can be, material. But they'd still be objects, it is just that the objects in question would be composed of matter (our brain being the most likely candidate). So there isn't a debate over whether minds are objects; the debate is over what kind of objects they are or can be.

If consciousness is not a state of material objects - and again, I follow Descartes, Plato, Berkeley, Locke and plenty of others in holding that it is not - then minds are not material. They are objects; they bear properties (one being the property of consciousness), but they do not have the kinds of properties that material objects have (extension, shape, size, location, colour).

You must not, then, beg the question by simply assuming - as so many do nowadays - that all objects are material. There is nothing in the concept of an object that requires it to be material.

And if one follows Reason diligently - as diligently as Plato, Descartes, Berkeley and others did - one will arrive, as they did, at the conclusion that the mind is an immaterial object. (And of course, now - as ever - most people couldn't give a rat's arse what Reason says about the nature of reality, preferring to listen to themselves in one form or another).

One route to this conclusion (and there are lots) is via free will. We obviously do have free will. Any decision I make was made freely, even if the circumstances under which I made it were not under my control. For it was 'my' decision - my response to the situation. But of course, that would be an absurd contention if I myself was the product of alien forces. To hold myself morally responsible for my decisions but not for my circumstances would just be arbitrary. But it is not arbitrary. To hold oneself morally responsible for one's decision is rational; but to hold oneself morally responsible for one's circumstances is irrational. So, as it is rational to hold myself morally responsible for my decisions - something that would only be rational if I was free in respect of them - my reason is thereby telling me that I, the producer of those decisions, am not a product of alien forces. For if i have free will but would not have it if I was the product of alien forces, then I can conclude that I am not the product of alien forces.

Yet all material objects seem to be the product of alien forces, including - obviously - my body and its brain. Thus, I can conclude that as I have free will and am therefore 'not' a product of alien forces but a source of origination, then I am not a material object. (Which should have been obvious anyway - I 'have' a body, but I am not my body; I 'have' a brain, but I am not my brain and so on; my body is my body because I am in it, not becuase I 'am' it).

Obviously this argument - deductively valid and apparently sound though it is - will not move those who have already decided that everything that exists is material, and thus that free will, if it exists, has to be made sense of in material terms. But then those people are just dogmatists and their views about free will patently absurd.

Like I say, you're just not addressing the argument. Your position, which is asserted and not argued for, is demonstrably confused. But only someone who respects Reason would care (and of course it is unlikely that such a person would ever acquire such a view in the first place).

I mentioned Crusoe already. I think you are missing the point. — T H E

No, you're just making points that are false, but anyway orthogonal to the argument I have made.

You don't show something to 'be' part of a community by showing that it was 'created' by a community. But anyway, our minds are not created by, or dependent upon, a community. I mean, how could any community of minds ever arise if minds themselves have to be created by communities? You're putting the cart before the horse.

But anyway, which premise in my argument do you deny? Are you denying that prescriptions require prescribers? Are you denying that the prescriber whose prescriptions constitute moral prescriptions is external to all of us? Which one?

I think it's false that you can have a reasoning mind without community. — T H E

It's obviously true. Just imagine that everyone apart from you has just fallen down dead. Okay - are you still a mind and can you still reason? Yes and yes.

But again, you don't even offer any support for your clearly false claim. What argument do you have in support of the apparently false claim that minds can't exist outside of communities?

As for the rest, you don't seem to be engaging with anything I've argued.

That was not aimed as a criticism toward you but just a point that rationality has a moral component. — T H E

I do not know what you mean. You mentioned biases and motivations.

I don't think you've made a strong case against us being the source of our own norms. The individual mind is secondary to the community mind inasmuch as we think with shared, inherited 'software' (language and other conventional practices.) — T H E

No, communities are made of collections of minds. So the individual mind is primary. You can have a mind without a community, you can't have a community without any minds.

But anyway, you're just making wild and incoherent assertions, not showing how anything you say is implied by self-evident truths of reason.

Once more: the norms of any community are themselves subject to moral assessment. Therefore, they are not constitutive of moral norms.

One ought to transcend one's biases. One ought to acknowledge (reasonable) criticism and adapt one's judgments accordingly. — T H E

You don't seem to have an objection to the argument, but just an unfounded psychological thesis about my motives.

I do not 'want' morality to require God. It just demonstrably does. It's not in my interests to believe such a thing. But even if it was - even if I was the most biased reasoner in history - that would not affect the validity of my case. That's why the ad hominem fallacy is called a fallacy. You can't judge an argument by its arguer.

Moral norms and values appear external: there is no serious dispute about this, at least not among moral philosophers. So, if it turns out that such appearances are false - as they will be if we ourselves are the issuers of the prescriptions - then morality is illusory.

So, what it would take for morality really to exist, is for there to exist external norms and values. And what it would take for those to exist, is for there to exist an external prescriber and valuer. Not us or some group of us - the former are not external and the latter is not itself a mind. And furthermore, it is clear that any groups 'norms' are themselves subject to moral evaluation and are therefore not constitutive of moral norms.

Minds aren't 'really' individual though. — T H E

They surely are: my mind is mine, yours is yours. I am not part you and you part me. I am entirely me and not in any way you, and vice versa.

You seem to be appealing to a transpersonal rationality (a sort of morality of judgment-making) to deny the possibility of what you are doing as you are doing it. — T H E

I do not understand what you are saying here. I am simply noting that morality is composed of prescriptions and values and that prescriptions and values require a prescriber and valuer respectively.

If you are claiming - and you seem to be suggesting this - that the externality of moral prescriptions and values is illusory and that they are in fact prescriptions and values that we ourselves are issuing, then you are denying the reality of morality, not its need of a god. That is, if the prescriptions are in fact our own, then we have not discovered that morality is made of our prescriptions, but rather that morality is an illusion. For an analogy: if I discover that what I have been taking to be the external sensible world is, in fact, internal - a creation of my imagination - then I have discovered that the external sensible world does not really exist, but is an illusion of my mind.

That seems to be somewhat of a distortion of Wolf's view. — Pierre-Normand

Yes, perhaps. But if she's defending a symmetrical view then there's not much that's new or interesting in her view. She's just a standard compatibilist, a capacity junky who thinks that all we need to be morally responsible is to be running on a certain programme or to be behaving in ways that express our values or what have you. All the time ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that if we are wholly the creation of alien forces then it doesn't matter what other capacities we have, we are not morally responsible for anything. You need to be alive before a healthy diet can improve your life, and you need to be morally responsible for how you are before the addition of this or that rational capacity can make you morally responsible for how you use it.

Yes, human laws are not constitutive of moral norms. So 'moral law' is ambiguous between a law that is moral (that is, a law that there is a moral prescription to follow) and a law constitutive of a moral norm. Human laws are clearly not constitutive of moral norms. But that does not stop them being moral. The point is that their being moral or immoral would be a matter of them conforming with moral norms, and thus the moral norms exist independently of them.

Like I say, if you've nothing philosophical to contribute, shut up and go elsewhere.

But the point here is not to do with the justification of human laws, but the constitution of moral norms and values.

Imagine that someone objects to my analysis of morality by asserting that morality is made of apricot preserve. I object that this cannot be so for all manner of reasons including that even ifthere was no apricot preserve in the world some acts would be right and others wrong. They reply that though this is so we should not overlook the many useful qualities of apricot preserve. Well, yes. But the fact remains morality is demonstrably not made of it. And that applies to human laws too, I think.

But if you accept that without human laws moral norms and values would still exist, then this suffices to establish that moral norms and values are not made of our laws.
There are human laws, and there are moral norms, and they are not equivalent. We can and do make moral judgements about human laws - "this law is just" and so on - but when we do so we are not judging that human laws are human laws, but rather that some conform to and others flout moral norms.

But unless a law says no more than 'do what is right and do not do what is wrong' (in which case it refers to moral norms but does not itself constitute one) we can always conceive of the possibility that the law is immoral. Which seems to show that moral norms are not made by human lawmakers.
We can also imagine a lawless land and it still seems clear that some acts will be right and others wrong in it. We set up laws because we think it right to do so, and people resent laws when they judge them unjust. So morality seems external to any system of laws we create, for any such system is both informed by and itself subject to assessment by moral norms and values.