So many things really where it would be much better to seek out someone who actually knows what they're talking about and follow what they say word for word. — Judaka

But I think this a case of taking advice. I agree that there are authorities if you need to achieve a certain goal. But I don't see that they should be given a dictatorial status.

A problem is that not all areas of life have experts. There may be a computing expert but is there an equal parenting expert or life coach? It would actually be great if someone could solve a personal or psychological problem in the manner that a computer expert can solve a computing problem.

Nevertheless I still process advice through reason and do not just obey instructions unthinkingly.

Far too easily people look at obedience as some kind of social power issue and not a result of simple necessity. — ssu

I think an orchestra is based on an agreement. You can leave the orchestra if repeatedly frustrated by the conductor.

I think the necessity of obedience is only partially true. Such as in the orchestra example. It is pragmatic to cooperate with an authority to maximize a desire.

But I do not think it is a perpetual justifiable excuse. For example if you are starving you may do all manner of things including prostitution to earn money to buy food. But not every case of acting is based on immediate survival. Creating a necessity can lead to a tyranny. Someone can just withdraw resources from you to make you compliant.

What if the legislating authority and the obeying subject are the same? It would appear that obedience in such case could hardly be irrational. — Mww

What do you mean by the legislating authority? I don't think legislation is irrational but I think you should only adhere to it based on rationality.

The problem arises is when you have a legitimate and logical objection to authority and norms and then face an arduous struggle or sense of oppression in trying to fight your case.

I think most people can just obey authority unquestioningly until it infringes on a value or intuition they have. But even if society seems progressive and reasonable is not a justification to become complacent or apathetic.

It can further be reasonable to invest this authority with force that is not subject to immediate questioning. — Echarmion

Before you set up an authority you need to know if it is justified.

The Police is a controversial area but I think The Fire service is more straightforward. A command by the fire service is assumed to be reasonable because there goal is to prevent fire or help you escape from fire.

In this case obedience to a command is based on an assumption of rational governance. But that appears to be a minority case. And nevertheless one could still disobey the fire service. It is the cases were the most authority is that require scrutiny.

To be rational is to be in conformity with a grounding principle of rationality — Joshs

I think that rationality leads to an is but not to an ought. Obedience is an ought.

Rationality may be very persuasive about a course of action but I don't think it has the compulsion of obedience.

You have to try and seek out reasonable people wherever possible.

I have not been a huge fan of any of them but I have listened to lots.

Philosophy bites is conveniently short and covers a wide range of topics.

Partially Examined Life is long and quite meandering and it is probably best to have read on the topic first. You might like the style

The Philosophy Now Podcast is well moderated.

In Our Time philosophy episodes are quite succinct and vary based on guests.

In my view they clearly are identical. — Terrapin Station

I think there is a difference between something being identical and something being the same thing.

An apple is considered to be made up of atoms but an atom is not identical to an apple. I am not sure what, for example, is identical about my thought that China is undemocratic and my neuronal activity.

I'm saying that the idea, the concept of nonphysical things is literally incoherent. So if we're going to posit them and take the notion seriously, we need to be able to characterize what nonphysical things would even be, in terms of any positive properties, so that we could make some sense out of them, in general ontological terms. — Terrapin Station

I do not see how math and concepts are physical or pain and color sensations. I do not need to offer an alternative explanation to not believe they are physically explicable.

However my original point was that people do not accept your physicalist premise which seems to underlie your belief that morality isn't objective. I am agnostic but billions of people are religious or esoteric and probably will not accept a morality on your basis.

I think the purely physical does not leave room for values and morality and is just about mechanics and facts.

You don't want an ethical system that is concerned with people and what they like or dislike, enjoy or not enjoy, desire or don't desire? You just want to base it on facts, — Terrapin Station

I think how people feel is a fact, but it does not mean they are right in what they feel. It can be a fact that I believe the earth is flat.

If someone is psychologically harmed because they are prevented from beating their girlfriend then I have more sympathy with her harm from being hit than his mental anguish because he can't harm someone else. I would advise him to seek therapy.

I don't think atrocities like the slave trade and genocide should only be bad based on personal feeling.

If it is not objectively wrong to kick the puppy I don't see why it wold be subjectively wrong either.

I would rather base a moral system around objective facts about harm then peoples feelings.

I don't think a subjective system is more tenable than an objective one.

Everything you imagine is a state of your brain. — Terrapin Station

This just means correlated with the brain because they are clearly not identical.

Earth to Andrew4Handel. You'd have to set out demarcation criteria as I outlined above if you want me to have an explanation discussion. — Terrapin Station

I don't now what you mean then, because I have offered a framework for the explanation which is that if mental states are physical brain states then brain states explanations usurp subjective ones.

(This is the same picture as when people commit themselves to the mind being Epiphenomenal)

If you are committed to the mind being the brain then this leads to the redundancy of the mental which is a position several thinkers are committed to.

I am a pointing out why values become worthless in a purely physical world because they are either epiphenomenal or determined.

Physics hasn't been determinist in over 100 years. — Terrapin Station

But indeterminism does not imply free will. However there is a certain level of determinism and regularity in a system.
You can easily prove someones actions were out of their control by manipulating their brain with medication or some other stimuli to illicit spontaneous behaviour. You would have to give a good reason to hold someone accountable for something they did.

Saying that the nonphysical is the "reality of our mental life" is just completely empty. You'd need to try to make any sense whatsoever of what nonphysical things are supposed to be ontologically, what their properties are in general, etc. — Terrapin Station

I don't know what mental things are made of but I have compared them with things that are spatial temporal and have energy. You could also say things that are measurable directly. Just because someone cannot explain an experience to someone else does not mean it doesn't exist. The problem with the mental is that it defies our current methodologies of explanation and causality.

Free will is a problem for any moral theory and a physicalist theory is far less likely to allow for freewill.

You could give an explanation of why someone held a certain opinion by explain how it was determined by her brain states
— Andrew4Handel

Again, I wouldn't get into an "explanation" discussion without the demarcation criteria discussion (re what counts as explanations) as I outlined above. — Terrapin Station

The idea that brain states are determined is a common belief. If the mind is the brain then brain events are determined by other physical events. This explanation would usurp the subjective as an explanation.

For example say I saw a woman get hit and felt anger or concern, the theorist would say that this was a determined response. So that any moral response would be forced on us by a prior cause. So if light hits my retina and presents an image of a woman being hit, to my brain, the neural activity created from this incident is not in my control and my emotional response is determined by other neural activity.

This would square with what I said elsewhere about the external world almost determining a moral response.

Again, the very idea of nonphysical anythings is incoherent. You could try to make it coherent, but that would require a lot of work. — Terrapin Station

It is not at all incoherent because it is the reality of our mental life. The only way you can make the mental seem physical is based on a crude mind brain correlation.

If the mind was physical then everything I imagine, however silly, would be physical (such as me imagining a purple giraffe juggling bananas on Pluto.)(Or phlogiston and the ether which are considered not to exist)

The idea of the physical is not a scientific concept, it does not really refer to anything specific unless you attach it to specific concepts like spatial-temporality, energy and matter.

These however are the same concepts that fail to account for the mind.

I'm a physicalist/identity theorist. — Terrapin Station

I don't know what identity you are positing?

I do not see how something like nerve fibres firing is identical to brain states. if that is what it means then you are making our mental realm objective where you can just read someones mental states off brain states.

You could give an explanation of why someone held a certain opinion by explain how it was determined by her brain states

I think the notion of the nonphysical is derived from the mind and personal experience where I can think about something and not see it or have a pain and not see it because it is not spatial temporal.
Physicalism can lead to idealism or panpsychism and the idea that every thing is mental.

i think what ever goodness is it does not seem to be physical.

Complete absence of evidence for anything supernatural. Also, some of the things posited are incoherent. — Terrapin Station

How does the mind fit into the natural realm since we do not have an explanation for it and mental phenomena?

Some people believe in a non natural realm so won't have ruled this out.
— Andrew4Handel

Yeah, but those people are wrong. — Terrapin Station

What is your argument against a non natural realm?

Teleology is nonsense by the way. — Terrapin Station

Teleology is very useful if you want to learn how to drive a car.

. . .and given that there is no "supernatural realm" (unfortunately, because I like the idea of things like ghosts), then there is no objective property of "goodness." — Terrapin Station

Some people believe in a non natural realm so won't have ruled this out.

I think goodness as a preference is not entirely coherent. It is trivially true that if we enjoy X we might consider it Good in one sense, because pleasure is a positive sensation that can easily be conflated with the good.

But I don't think preference can instill moral status on something. Like as before I have distinguished between things I enjoy and things I moralize about. I don't think you can just make something good by having positive attitude towards it.

I think teleology is a much stronger anchor for the good where something can fulfill a purpose optimally. the problem with nature is it allows everything that happens so nature does not restrict behaviour we consider bad.
That is why I think only a transcendent standard that was not part of nature would have the power to judge nature so to speak. If the mind transcends nature then maybe we can do that.

I think if goodness is a property it must exist in the supernatural realm.

Then you're not arguing against what I actually said in response to that topic when you raised it the first time around, and you're therefore missing the point yet again. — S

You said in your first post.

Any supposed difference seems ultimately to amount to nothing other than a difference in feeling. — S

This In Response to my claim that there was a difference between something being wrong and feeling wrong.

That is why I have pointed out that the feeling wrong is usually connected to harmful events.

Any moral intuition I have now is based on actual harm not on my emotional response to it. I don't see how you can present a moral argument that relies on how you feel.

My moral nihilism does not result from my failure to emotionally respond to harm but the lack of evidence of moral authority and moral facts. Moral nihilism does not entail that you believe all behaviour is acceptable but rather that there are no moral facts.

Obviously it is people, like you and I, who judge what's better or worse. And you've already suggested that you consider your current outlook to be better than your past outlook. — S

The problem with my past outlook is that I tolerated harm to myself. I don't need to have developed morally to stop tolerating harm to myself. The reason I see that a lot of people do not leave things like religion is because they haven't experienced the harm. I am gay and grew up in a fundamentalist background so that was obviously going to be more harmful to me than to my heterosexual siblings.

I am certainly not a masochist so I cannot stay indefinitely in a harmful environment. In a very banal way non moralistic way I consider any non harmful environment better than a harmful environment.

The fact you haven't divulged your personal circumstances here does not make your position less emotive than mine it just makes it less grounded in facts. If my position seems more emotive than yours then based on your own position that lends it more credibility.

To me the main problem is in enforcing morality. Having moral rules that are (rationally?) compelling and legitimate.
— Andrew4Handel

That's a separate issue to the meta-ethical issue that we've been discussing — S

I think a moral system is most undermined based on the degree to which it is unenforceable and the level to which it resolves moral disputes. That is one of my key criticism of the feelings method. I feel that the feelings method will only be enforced by brute force as the final way to resolve moral disputes. Whereas a position like utilitarianism could be enforced by calculation and pragmatism.
Deontology could be enforced consistently because you have set of rules like the law to follow.

I think morality should probably be classed under psychology. And in psychology I favour the qualitative method of exploring individual cases in rich detail.

I think asking individuals many questions about their morality and life would come up with a rich source of material to explore the issues and from just analyzing myself It is very convoluted, problematic and multi faceted.

Then you have the burden of explaining a whole bunch of counterexamples which seem to make little-to-no sense under your understanding, like why slavery was considered acceptable for hundreds of years. Your account lacks explanatory power in comparison to my account. — S

I am currently a moral nihilist so I don't have an ethical position per se. I was arguing against the disconnect between emotions and events.

I think your ideas are much more undermined by slavery than mine. Slavery supports moral nihilism if anything. But on the emotive position people continuously failed to have the appropriate attitude towards gross humans suffering and exploitation.

I didn't say that bad events automatically lead to moralizing but that moralizing was reliant on aspects of events.

However I think emotional manipulation is probably the reason lots of atrocities have happened. For example telling people that other people are inferior, stirring up fear about certain behaviors. Notice how much propaganda the Nazis had to use. The persecution of homosexuals has not been based on reason largely.

The way my family and church enforced a draconian morality was through fear and threats. It was so over the top that it eventually prompted me to leave because of anxiety. Society often just results to emotional manipulation to enforce a moral issue.

My own experience of my failure of moral intuition counts against a theory of valid moral intuition/feeling.
— Andrew4Handel

No it doesn't, not to anywhere near the level required to reject the theory. That would be like saying that we should reject the scientific method because of superseded theories like phlogiston theory. You can see that that's a poor argument, right? — S

I said my experience counts against the theory I didn't say it defeated it.

In science my type of evidence would not defeat the methodology but it would count against the theory that people have adequate moral intuitions. It is like a scientist replacing one tool with another to get better results.

What happened when I became an adult is not that I developed better intuitions but that I had new ones. It is controversial to claim I had better intuitions, because who is to judge and what is that fact?

I have been trying to recover from religious indoctrination since childhood and I find emotions are probably the key thing trapping me. Because I intellectually rejected the religion along time ago. I came across a web site in my early twenties outlining numerous contradictions in the bible and other problems with it.
So I know my emotions are giving me false signals.
This kind of personal account to my mind is more realistic than conceptual theorizing because this is the kind of complex milieu moralizing happens in.

I think work is problematic for many reasons.

The reason you have to work is not through choice (even if that work is just cleaning your teeth or walking around).
You did not sign a contract to agree to embark on life and the effort involved.

The next big problem is the inequality and exploitation of others created by the division of labor. By being alive and being a consumer you rely on a complex system of exploitation with winners and losers and unsatisfactory jobs.

And finally you are forced into the company of other people and as we all know, hell is other people.

Did I say that feelings aren't provoked by events? — S

Your position apparently implies a disconnect between moralizing and the activities that provoke moralizing.

If a situation is clearly harmful then that would be sufficient reason to moralize about it without emotions. I am making a general point on the topic that external events are more of a cause of morality than how we feel.

To me the main problem is in enforcing morality. Having moral rules that are (rationally?) compelling and legitimate.

So, just because you can't change your own past, you now see no "point" in moral intuition? — S

My own experience of my failure of moral intuition counts against a theory of valid moral intuition/feeling. It is not the only source of evidence. I have also used the example of the history of cruel human behaviour which appears to be a failure of moral intuition.

But the other point I was making is the concerning failure of morality to help people in their time of need and prevent immorality. We only have our own life to lead and the success of moral intervention is someone else's life is not justice for us individually.

Ironically i think when I was child that my religious beliefs such as that people were sinful and fallen and the idea of an afterlife justice made me not concerned with defending myself. I had an optimism founded in the afterlife and was juggling all sorts of religious beliefs including personal unworthiness.
My mind is wandering a bit but I think it shows how complex moral intuitions and scenarios are. I think reason led me to my current moral nihilism and rejecting Christianity.

I feel that dogmatism and psychopathy. a lack of empathy or even fantasy might prop up some other peoples moral confidence and that being reasonable and sensitive is not sufficient to weather life's storms. I mean like being a ruthless business person that tramples on peoples feelings isn't empathetic and flourishes, or being very religious fantastical, esoteric and dogmatic or heavily relying on revelation about morality

I think when someone says "Murder is wrong" they mean it is wrong to inflict serious harm on someone and rob them of life.
— Andrew4Handel

That only makes sense in the hidden context where they already feel that serious harm is wrong. Whatever you say, you can always go back a step until you can't go back any further, and that's where it ends in the emotional foundation. — S

If someone says "The Eiffel tower is a tall structure" What they are referring to is something in the external world. The harm of murder and the suffering is real and in the external world.

I am not saying people do not have an emotional feeling that it is wrong but that this feeling is provoked by the event. It is not the feeling that makes the event seem wrong but features of the event itself.

Someones belief that the Eiffel tower is tall is caused by something external.

I am not saying the harm of murder justifies a moral stance but I don't see how it can be completely irrelevant and subservient to how someone feels about it.

The role of emotion in morality has been one among different postulates.
— Andrew4Handel

So? These comments are irrelevant or at least incomplete — S

The argument people have been making is that our moral ideas are just feelings. and that things we thought were objective morals were actually subjective feelings.

I am saying that moral philosophy has been aware of this idea for a long time. It is not the case that moral philosophy has been one long mistake where they failed to realize they were just actually talking about feelings. It is a contested position.

The feelings I am referring to in my open post are not actually those of any theory but the idea that we don't need to theories because we just have our feelings to go on.

What motivated thread was this ending quote to an article
" On morals (....) they are our revisable attempt at a code that will enable us as a community to live happy, productive and fulfilling lives."
This comment comes after the author has explored the problems with various moral positions. And after outlining the apparent failures he just resorts to invoking "happy, productive and fulfilling lives"

But if you can't get a moral agreement how are you going to get an agreement on what a happy, productive, fulfilling life is? It seems he's resorted to emotivism that we can just some how know instinctively what these things are despite the failure of arguments

https://www.thinkingabouthumanism.org/humanism/the-source-of-morality/

I don't think people would believe something was wrong if they perceived no harm from the action, unless they were under duress.

For example, no one I know thinks eating bananas is wrong

In order to convince someone this was wrong you would have to provide good evidence or a threat. You might say bananas were poisonous or that God would strike you down if you ate bananas, or that bananas caused cancer. Or just create a threatening environment around bananas.

So I think a lot of basic instinctual morality is based around actual harm or threat and not simply derived from emotional responses to it.

I think a morality divorced from actual real world harm would be absurd

namely that it's justified to reject a position just because it is fallible — S

I am not sure what position I'm supposed to be rejecting.

My initial argument is that feelings is not a sufficient basis for morality.
The reason is that it is not sufficient to resolve moral disputes or to enforce morality or reflect the gravity of a harm.

For example imagine your family (god forbid) were murdered. Would you put any significance on my feelings in this situation?

You seem to be saying that because my intuitions don't match yours I am misguided and not you, when we are both apparently restricted to the same methodology.

My bullying experience is troubling because I spent years being victimized without defending myself. Now that I have a more robust intuition paradoxically I am not facing that situation. I would like to have recognition of childhood abuse that happened to me but people claim it is unfeasible and to pull your socks up. Now that I judge my whole childhood to be abusive in various ways no one is interested in compensating me for that. What is the point of moral intuition at this stage?

I think when someone says "Murder is wrong" they mean it is wrong to inflict serious harm on someone and rob them of life.

I do not think they are saying "I feel it is wrong to harm someone" I people usually mean it is the harm that makes the action wrong.

So the problem is it actually wrong to murder someone or does it just feel wrong?

No, you can deduce what is good for you. — Christoffer

I think you can deduce what is good for your physical body but not necessarily what is a good action or purpose. I think physical health can be fairly uncontroversial but as to what we should do with our lives I don't see answers.

You just go with what you feel and think is right at the time — S

That is highly problematic because people feel all manner of things at different stages in their life and different moods. My ethical intuitions lead me to moral nihilism based on the evidence from human behaviour, history and the innate lack of justice. I don't think the fact that I don't like a certain behaviour makes it wrong.

It sounds like you are just selecting some things you like and calling that your morality.

I don't think reason and empathy can resolve moral disputes and they certainly haven't resolved all the on-going moral disputes including meta-ethical disputes. I think you are putting too much faith in peoples moral discernment.

I was badly bullied in school and in my local area until I was in my late teens and I did not realize it was inappropriate at the time. Now that I look back and think how terrible it was it is too late. People can have all sorts of confused emotions and a lack of intuition and cultural or peer group generated emotions.

How would you provide justice for every person murdered? There's often no good evidence regarding just who perpetrated a murder. — Terrapin Station

I am not attempting to do that I am just pointing out the failures of morality.

Another problem for morality is humans persistent bad behaviour. Humans don't even abide by their own moral codes. We have done slavery, war, racism,sexism etc.

But there's no other way. It's either that or nothing, and nothing isn't a real option. You can't just switch off your moral feelings.

The experience you've described in this discussion is of feeling and thinking about the stuff of ethics differently over time. That's not so unusual, and it's no reasonable basis for rejecting a position such as mine. — S

I am not sure what you position is. However It does not follow that if you reject objective morality you have endorse a "feelings" approach.. People have spent a lot of time and effort on and written a huge amount on morality wherein they have not simply been referring to their feelings

The equivalent is the notion of ether in physics. The ether was believed to exist and was a serious postulate that turned out not to exist. People have rigorously examined moral issues and that is what might lead them to moral nihilism. The role of emotion in morality has been one among different postulates

I don't see how feelings can resolve a moral dispute or how you can know which of your feelings is the appropriate one.