I think there is a serious problem for morality especially secular morality when people suffer a serious crime like being murdered and there is no justice. It makes morality obsolete.

People have been killed in terrible ways or died in slavery and there has been no justice. It is rather futile moralizing about an event like this when there is no hope of justice. Religious moralities have offered an afterlife justice of some sort or karma. But if you don't believe in this or objective morality then lots have people have suffered with no recompense, recognition or hope.

So just "feeling" X is wrong at some stage after and event or conceptually doesn't really help anyone.

So how does reason relate to feelings?

My experiences led me to moral nihilism because of the unreliability of guilt feelings and other emotions and the lack of a moral authority.

And this is why I think feeling something is wrong is not adequate for a morality.

Now you yourself have even said "if some people thought about this more" which seems to invoke reason.

So you think it would make sense for someone to say, "I don't dislike rape representations in pornography, but I feel that rape representations in pornography are morally wrong"? — Terrapin Station

I think feeling that rape is wrong is adequate to make rape representations problematic. I think it is possible with porn to be aroused by things we would not do ourselves.

People can even become aroused against their wishes when being raped.

People can have a wide range of conflicting emotions. I don't think these are all moral assessments. I like to reach a moral conclusion through reason maybe in a way like Christoffer outlined

At any rate, there's zero evidence of there being moral rules built into the world somehow. — Terrapin Station

Isn't the challenge to try and find a valid morality and not just to be fed the rules deterministically?

I am agnostic about this. I think that I would behave differently if I knew whether or not there were rights and wrongs.

For example I grew up being told numerous things were wrong like shopping on a Sunday and watching television.
Now I have abandoned some of these beliefs altogether so I am free to act. But there are cases when I don't know what my intuition is. I still struggle with sexually related phobias.

I think people do restrain their actions or act based on moral beliefs and that if there moral beliefs changed they would behave differently so they need some notion of moral truth to justify their attitudes to themselves.

Do you think it would make sense to say, "I don't dislike this, but I morally object to it"? — Terrapin Station

I don't want to be too crude but what about rape representation in pornography? Or maybe pornography in general? People can probably have opposing drives especially with the sex drive and the drive to respect other people.

War is something some people enjoy or war games.

(..)all matters of human psychology essentially boil down to ethics. — Wallows

Why is this so?

Can a psychologist generalize findings towards a larger group of people and achieve a normative stance? — Wallows

It is probably best to treat each case individually.

I think mental states do present a problem in terms objectifying them and evaluating them. But mental health might be assessed base on how a person feels or functions. There is nothing preventing large groups of people having similar mental states I would imagine.

Any supposed difference seems ultimately to amount to nothing other than a difference in feeling. When someone tries to give an example of, say, someone feeling that something is wrong, but it not being wrong, they seem to just be comparing this other person's feeling with their own feeling, but presenting their own feeling as a "moral fact" or whatever you want to call it. — S

But someone can base their morality on harm assessment. So they can refer to objective suffering and harm in making a moral claim and their objection to another persons moral intuition can be based on the persons failure to take into consideration harm.

Like I said in another post this is how I differentiate between things I dislike and thinks I morally object to.

I had a long discussion about this in my "quality of life" thread and I think that facts about the world can cause feelings and these feelings can be predicted from facts about the world. So that it is unlikely that feelings completely severed from what actually happened like can happen with a random emotional bout of sentiment.
This correlation between external facts and predictable emotional responses makes certain emotions seem inappropriate or absurd in response to certain scenarios. It is as if the scenarios demand certain responses.
Then again a lion can eat a deer alive without negative emotions. Natural examples of this kind make nature seem quite amoral. :chin:

No one values all actions equally. So they don't all have equal status — Terrapin Station

But you said values are brain states. So the actions are the same but the brain states are different.

I think it is problematic if some actions causes intense suffering but someone does not believe it is wrong.

But people have caused intentional immense suffering and believed they were not doing wrong which seems nihilistic to me. I think we should hope for an objective standard by which to have justice and a deterrent and rationale for justice framework.

(..)but you can't get right or wrong whether it was morally right or wrong to kill Pete, or whether it's morally right or wrong for Pete's family to wind up on welfare, etc., because there are no facts regarding whether such things are morally right or wrong. — Terrapin Station

What if there was a law giver like a deity or innate moral rules in reality (a la the laws of physics)?

Feelings of the one making a moral choice cannot be a foundation for morals, only the concept of what is essentially good for you and others combined can be used — Christoffer

Isn't what someone thinks is good for them based on feelings?

The problem is that moral philosophy has failed to reach a consensus about morality or resolve moral issues. Materialism or the scientific don't appear to leave room for moral or value claims.

So now thinkers are resorting to the idea we should just go with our feelings of what is appropriate or harmful.

I think reason can be a useful tool and moralizing but it does not seem to resolve moral disputes.

Feeling that something is wrong is what morality is. There is no objective wrong (for values). — Terrapin Station

What would class as objectively wrong? What is the value of a morality based on fluctuating feelings with no truth value beyond how one individual feels?

I am concerned with moral nihilism being reality where no one can do anything wrong and all actions have equal status. I think if this is the case we should acknowledge it and decide where to go from their in justifying moral sentiments.

It's not eating bacon that causes that sensation. It's your brain states relative to eating bacon that causes it. Someone else eating bacon can love the taste. Something has to account for the difference.

Ethical stances are likewise brain states. — Terrapin Station

It is not clear what brain and mind states are in relation to experience. But the mind has representational qualities so that they can be about something.

So If I think about The Empire State Building I have to represent that in a brain state giving it its "aboutness" or mental content.

I would account for the different response to bacon by referring to differences in peoples sensory receptors. But moral statements have conceptual content as opposed to just immediate sensation.

Now compare mental content about mathematics to mental content about the taste of bacon. We can use our mind to assess mathematical and logical statements for validity.

I don't think brain states are just deterministic uncontrolled reactions.

It is not clear on your position what would cause the feeling someone has.

If I dislike the taste of bacon it is eating bacon that caused that sensation. If I dislike seeing someone getting beaten that is what triggered a feeling in me. (some people might call the feeling an intuition)

The "moral fact" here is that if we are going to live together we have to find ways of dealing with each others' emotions. — Bitter Crank

Is this pragmatism?

I think morality should be a guide for action. But I don't see how it can be a guide for action if there are no right answers.

I also think that the idea that atrocities are not wrong is disturbing. Humans have usually wanted justice and have an ongoing justice narrative.

I am distinguishing between separate feelings here. The feeling or experience of something as unpleasant but not immoral (like the taste of food you don't like). And the feeling that someone has done something wrong.

I don't think they are on the same spectrum. I don't think people think their morality is just preferences.

I am referring to harm is the basis for a moral judgement as opposed to someones feelings. Something perceived as harmful or shown to be harmful is more likely to arouse morals sentiment.

I would agree that people just "feeling something is wrong" is a very unreliable system of morality. — Bitter Crank

I have not read your whole post yet but I am not saying that it is unreliable to feel something is wrong, but rather that it is not evidence that something is wrong. The same goes for feeling something is right.

The problem for me is that morality is only this feeling and that nothing is of value beyond individual emotion. Collective morality can simply be the emotions shared by a majority which is hence completely fallible.

Feeling that something is wrong is what morality is. There is no objective wrong (for values) — Terrapin Station

What about actual harm? For example people have felt repulsed by homosexuality, women and different races etc. But harm is not evident by being one of these things.

I can differentiate between things I don't like and things I think are immoral. The problem is when something is utterly appalling but not wrong. I can absolutely loathe something without thinking it is harmful or immoral. So what differentiates these feelings?

If the reader knows it's fiction, it's not a form of deceit, so whatever form of lying remains is fairly harmless. — Baden

I think even though we know something is fiction it can still effect our beliefs and emotions. This happened to me as a child.

I think in order for fiction to make sense it has to use realistic elements and these are the things that could deceive us.

I could compare it to my dreams as well which I often find psychologically disturbing and remember even though I accept that what happened was imaginary.

So I think fiction has some responsibility not be be too manipulative or propaganda. If a novel wanted to campaign against an injustice it should not distort facts or be too reliant on emotion over reason.

It also seem to me that parents justify creating a child based on their claim or feeling that their child will have a good quality of life. But you can't justify having a child based on what the child might feel about life which is pure speculation..

This is simply not true. — Andrew4Handel

I think my social worker example illustrates this concerning when they intervene to take a child from his or her parents having made an executive decision that the child will not thrive in that environment and they will not trust the child's assessment alone because children often are not aware how bad their environment is.

This happened to me as a young adult when I started to reassess my childhood and feel traumatized.

How people feel can be coherently correlated with facts. You might compare this to the mind body problem and I don't know your stance on that.

If you poke someones brain in a certain area and they have a redness perception that kind of event is used to claim the mind is the brain or in the brain even though the brain activity and redness have different qualities.

So if things like poverty and disease lead people to feel their life is poor quality that is a sound correlation to need a causal account. But it may also be necessary causation that without out the poverty and disease people would not give negative life assessments.

However I also believe there are transcendent or conceptual values. That don't reduce to materialism that I've compared to mathematics and logic.


For example I think almost everyone could imagine a better world and no one believes this is the ideal world. So people can imagine a better quality of life to the one they have. Even if I became really happy tomorrow I could still judge that life was not ideal. This also one argument against God or gods creating life because they claim it is too imperfect.

I feel that people have motivations not to think to clearly or rigorously about quality of life because it has upsetting connotations and so for example some people won't watch the news because it's to depressing.

I wish more people would give input on this subject other than just us two.

When we're talking about quality (of life), value, etc., we're talking about someone's personal assessment, how they happen to feel towards something. There's nothing to match or fail to match. There's only something to report--the person's assessment or how they feel. It's not a matter of right or wrong. It just tells us something about that person, something about their dispositions, their preferences, their tastes. — Terrapin Station

This is simply not true.

Your post doesn't make sense.

There is no significant difference between being in pain and a value judgement. Being in pain is the experience that X is undesirable. I don't know what other value judgement you could referring to?

I am certainly confused by your stance.

You can't say that it doesn't have the particular physical effects it does, but those facts imply nothing about any value judgments. So we'd need to cleave using "harm" with a value judgment connotation (which it usually has) from using "harm" to refer to a set of objective physical facts that we're arbitrarily setting off from other physical facts. You're wanting to conflate the two. — Terrapin Station

If someone is a pain you don't need to invoke a magic value judgement to assess that situation. There is no magic leap between assessing someone is injured, depressed or in poverty to the claim they have a poor quality of life.

The reality of pain and pleasure forces a value onto life anyway.

This is one reason I rejected Christianity because I don't think biblical claims such as the hell doctrine and God's conduct and doctrine in the Old Testament can be put in a positive life. My intuition that a religion or ideology is wrong is when it tries to justify pain.

I think your apparent position that physical harm, does not lead to a value judgement is implausible. The success of pain in biology is to alter behaviour for survival means and indicate negative stimuli.

Nevertheless I am confident in my ability to judge when people have a poor quality of life based on a complex system of assessments and arguments.

If you think it is valid for someone to assert their quality of life based on how they feel, then I can assess their quality of life based on how I "feel" about it. In fact this an assessment that is regularly carried out. Social workers intervene in a family to protect the children or vulnerable people based on their assessment of the situation. Children in particular and adults don't often realize when there is serious harm and dysfunction in the family because it is their norm.

I understand. A complete solution should involve the welfare of children but isn't that another issue. The two issues are related, yes, but they can be considered separately, no? — TheMadFool

It depends on how an anti abortion argument is framed. On the future value of life argument that video presents a refutation.

I think the value of a child's life is quite tied up with the environment they will be in. That has been my own experience.

I could argue that I would have been better off being aborted and people do commit suicide everyday which is a rejection of life.

I am not sure what the value of someones life is. But I have a whole thread on quality of life. I am not sure if value of life can be separated from quality of life.

I have mentioned the spirit or soul in another thread and if you believe in a spirit or soul I don't think these can be destroyed and that might be where the value lies. Some people are dualists (I am probably one) What matters is the quality of life and one may have an abortion to prevent the unborn child having a poor quality of life.

This relates to the morality issue.

You can say "It is not wrong, in my opinion, to stab someone" But you can't realistically say it is not harmful to stab someone. And even for a moral nihilist actions can be guided by an assessment of harm.

The problem with conceptual value claims is whether they have a reality out side of concepts. But Harm has a reality. You might even compare it to where mathematics exist in reality.

Of what relevance is how common something is? — Terrapin Station

It is relevant for making causal explanations and predictions.
If someone was going to cheat on their spouse they might not cheat on their spouse because of the evidence that it usually harms the spouse.

So they are making an assertion about how their behaviour will effect someones quality of life by using empirical statistics because there is a good causal case for certain actions leading to the same reaction except in a minority of cases.

This is how we can predict someones quality of life reliably by their circumstances.

"Personal" is a feature of quality period. Quality (of anything, in the value sense that we're talking about) is an assessment that individual people make. — Terrapin Station

This is just a bald assertion your making. Things have functions such as the human heart and there is telos they can be described in terms of. If a car is designed to travel on the road and fails to do that that is objective evidence of it's lack of quality.

Like I have said quality only exists in the context of their being an external world that effects the individual unless you are a solipsist. So someones personal feelings cannot constitute the entirety of anything.

How do we get to non-personal quality? — Terrapin Station

What does a personal quality mean?

Are you referring to individual conscious experience regardless of the functional state of the body and environment?

Why would how the person feels about their spouse cheating on them be irrelevant to their quality of life? — Terrapin Station

Like I said in my last but one post the way they feel is dictated largely by their spouse cheating on them.

It might be that they are really happy to be cheated on but that would be a small minority of cases and an anomaly.

I am not sure if you are saying quality of life is only how someone feels, or whether you believe it is how someones feels and the circumstances that caused them to feel that way?

We seem to be focusing on individual cases but life is not just one person. That is like solipsism.

I think that there is a solipsistic feel to consciousness and perception though. But I don't think we can base societies and values coherently around that.

You don't believe that a quality of life assessment is the same thing as whether their spouse is cheating on them, do you? — Terrapin Station

Quality of life is their spouse cheating on them. The assessment does not equal the quality of life. Quality of life is someone living in poverty not how they feel about it.

The exceptions I would make is mental illnesses where the quality of life is the mental state. But even with mental illness it can be correlated with bad life circumstances.

I think that if someone thinks they have a great quality of life, but their spouse is cheating on them, then they have made a false assessment and their real quality of life is different.

I understand if you think quality of life is how someone feels at a given moment because that seems like all quality of life is, but it seems to me that our quality of life is actually based on other factors and the personal sentiments come after our quality of life has occurred.

For example if someone is hit over the head and then they claim they have a headache and poor quality of life, the poor quality of life is being hit over the head, not just how they felt after. If someone is chronically depressed the poor quality of life is an objective illness.

So I don't think poor quality of life is caused by a persons personal assessment. It is just obvious some scenarios will lead to people making a poor quality of life assessment.

Your point (suffering children) is relevant to abortion only to the extent that a child born because abortion is illegal will suffer. Is this always the case? I don't think so. — TheMadFool

What doesn't make sense is if someone opposes abortion but does not help suffering children.

If someone thinks abortion is wrong then why would they not think all suffering of children is wrong and take action?

As the saying goes actions speak louder than words. So children are not being brought into a fair world where they can be guaranteed a good outcome and that is not just something created by humans but inherent in nature.

If abortion is illegal people will either try and abort the child themselves, or have backstreet abortion or abandon the child at birth which increases the ,Likelihood of it having a poor quality of life.

The reason I posted that video is to illustrate that there are children suffering appallingly with no opportunities and yet people want more children born that are unwanted that could be aborted painlessly before they have left the womb and experienced life fully.

I am not desperate for people to have abortions but I think it is the route of least suffering.

I could ramble so much on this subject.

To the average person, quality of life is wholly about feelings, their feelings as to how good their lives are. — Pattern-chaser

I agree. I think obviously we would want each individual to feel good about his or her life (I hope) and value their feedback. But like I said in my last post life is in a wider context.

Society effects well being and trends and stats. If you live in a low income high unemployment are you will often report worse outcomes.

Ii would not go up to someone and yell at them "you have a terrible quality of life". But I would be concerned about society as a whole and groups of vulnerable people.

It is a problem if a rich person feels great about his life and also does not want to give to charity or pay taxes then we would be tempted to intervene in his selfish but pleasurable quality of life.

Do you understand why we're coming to different conclusions? — Terrapin Station

You originally said:

When we're talking about quality (of life), value, etc., we're talking about someone's personal assessment, how they happen to feel towards something — Terrapin Station

I am saying this personal assessment is not everything and can be wrong. I am not reducing quality of life down to what one person thinks at one moment .

And I am not just referring to how someone feels at the time but to every scenario involved in life..

I am also including ethical considerations. I think if something like a genocide is occurring or people are happy whilst exploiting slaves then how they feel in that scenario has far less weight.

Like I think I said if you reduce quality of life and values down to how one person feels that is a nihilism where everyone else experiences are irrelevant.

I think it is a calculation probably where if millions of people are unhappy that should concern the whole of society where as if only one person is unhappy in a thousand people that can be treated as a personal issue. Another example is if one person is sick because the water is polluted that should concern everyone. I don't think one persons well being, or lack of, is self contained.

"No man is an Island" John Donne.

Someone can assess their quality of life based on misinformation.

Someones quality of life can depend on objective facts and the access they have to them.

A person for example might think they have a great marriage because they are unaware their partner is being unfaithful to them.

If you know this persons spouse is unfaithful then you know that they have made a quality of life assessment based on misbelief.