Suffering is indeed objectively bad, since nothing else can possibly be bad and the very meaning of bad is in suffering. Whenever you deem something to be bad, you mean you dislike it either because it produces an uncomfortable feeling, that is suffering, in yourself or in others, or you think it might lead to something bad, that is, ultimately cause discomfort or suffering. (Discomfort is just a mild form of suffering.)

Of course we shouldn’t try to avoid all immediate suffering, since it is often necessary to suffer a little in order to avoid a greater suffering later. You suffer through work so you can make money and avoid starving. But in itself, when disregarding the outcome, suffering is bad and only bad. Why would anyone want to suffer if it had no positive results whatsoever, if it led to nothing? (The objection of sadomasochism is not relevant since the sadomasochist derives pleasure from suffering, so it is not really suffering at all.)

why is suffering regarded as bad? is it only because we have not a good feeling when it happens to us? are feelings even rational to consider in this situation — Augustusea

Feelings are certainly relevant since the goal of everyone’s life is to obtain good feelings which is the same as what is usually called happiness. Happiness is the ultimate goal for everything we do. We want to achieve it for ourselves or for others.

humans value wellbeing — Bert Newton

Although correct, it is somewhat superfluous to make such a statement, at least if it is meant to be an observation about how humans behave.
Human beings value well-being, animal beings value well-being, any beings imaginable value well-being.
It’s an a priori statement. Anything that is, wants to/strives to be well.

It’s not possible to do anything that you don’t consider, at least at the moment of action, to be good for yourself.
Suicidal people kill themselves because they think that’s the best thing to do.
Heroes sacrifice themselves (only seemingly giving up their well-being) because they consider it better for themselves, think it will make them happier to see other people happy, or just long for the happiness of martyrdom.

Since this IS the case, and it is so evident that it cannot even be empirically refuted, the SHOULD follows from the fact that it cannot be otherwise.
A carpenter IS someone who builds, therefore if someone wants to be a carpenter, he SHOULD build.
A being IS something which is, therefore if something wants to be, it SHOULD do what supports its being.
Everything that IS, participates in being, therefore everything SHOULD support being. (Supporting being means supporting well-being)

I think we both have a pretty good understanding of what the word “chair” means. We rarely confuse the object it refers to with something else, and if someone asked me to get them a chair, I’m quite confident I could handle the mission. A chair is simply that thing. We know it.

But then try to define a chair, and even this very simple concept poses difficulties. How tall must the back be for it to be a chair and not a stool? If the legs are so high that you can’t climb up on it, is it still a chair? What if the seat is broken? Dictionary.com defines chair as:
“a seat, especially for one person, usually having four legs for support and a rest for the back and often having rests for the arms.”
but that doesn’t sound quite accurate. Any seat is not a chair and we know it doesn’t need four legs and armrests. Still, I’m quite sure the dictionary authors have an understanding of the word that is as good as ours.

We have the right understanding of many words, and that understanding doesn’t come from the definition. The dictionary definition is only needed when we don’t have an understanding or suspect our understanding is not in conformity with the generally accepted meaning, but when we have gained a sense of its meaning, that understanding becomes a notion that goes beyond the written definition.

There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition. — Banno

Of course we already have an understanding of what the words mean. (I wrote that sentence without consulting a dictionary.) It is only when we want to convey that understanding to others that we have to use the only tools of thought transfer that we have: words. It is imperfect an inaccurate since it is always difficult to find the right words for our thoughts. The right understanding of word is the one we have without using words (provided that understanding is shared by other language users)

the cow is probably content to eat juicy grass in the same green field tomorrow, and your dog probably has no other ambitions than falling asleep on your couch.
I could be wrong about all this,
— Congau

Yes you are, it is all a made-up story in your head. — A Seagull

How interesting. That means you think differently. You must think that animals have a rich mental life. Maybe cows form secret societies, have a well-developed language and discuss philosophy while just pretending to be solely occupied with their green pastures. Maybe. I can’t argue against that since I have no evidence, but somehow I don’t think so. You don’t have any evidence of their inner life either, but I would be really interested to know what you think about it. What do you think cows think about?
Since you already took the trouble to tell me that I’m imagining things (which would have been insulting if I hadn’t already admitted it), I would rather hope you could manage more than that one-liner.

Killing a human being means killing a unique life, a unique consciousness and unique hopes and dreams. An animal seems quite similar to other animals of its species and although you think your dog has a unique personality, you must admit it is not that different from other dogs. Animals hardly have any complex consciousness of their own existence, and as to hopes and dreams the cow is probably content to eat juicy grass in the same green field tomorrow, and your dog probably has no other ambitions than falling asleep on your couch.
I could be wrong about all this, maybe your dog actually has a rich mental life doing math equations in its head, but somehow I don’t think so, and neither do you.

Physical pain, on the other hand, is probably the same for humans and animals. It just hurts and no degree of understanding is required to feel it.

another bias alot of humans have especially westerners is that it's "wrong" to eat certain types of animals — Gitonga

I agree that if it’s ok to eat some animals, it’s ok to eat all of them, but if one insists on making a distinction between different animals’ mental capacity it should be more acceptable to eat dogs than pigs since pigs are considered to be more intelligent than dogs.

The “art” part in the “art of rhetoric” probably serves the same function as in “the art of building”, “the art of war”, “the art of the deal” which has less to do with the modern meaning of the word as it stands alone then with the more ancient meaning as in the Greek “techne” which rather means “skill”, but is still translated as “art”. Rhetoric is a skill.

That being said, rhetoric does seem to be more artistic than other more artisan skills. It may be considered a form of literature even when only spoken since it is about putting words together in a way that produces an aesthetic effect rather than just being plain communication.

Against that, one could argue that we all use rhetoric whenever we try to persuade anyone of anything without thereby having any reasonable right to call ourselves artists. But I think it’s important to retain a difference between good art and bad art. If I draw a stickman on a scrap of paper I am strictly speaking an artist, although a horribly bad one. Art as such is nothing rare and special and we all engage in it whenever we do anything that is slightly creative, for example when we try to persuade.

It seems funny to me than an accusation of someone being a "speciest" (sp?) is considered a serious accusation — BitconnectCarlos

The word “speciesism” is modeled after “racism” and “sexism” and refers to the belief that one’s own kind is inherently better and more valuable than other kinds. It is a prejudice that favors one’s own just because it is one’s own, presumably without rationally considering their real merits. (A person is not a racist if he thinks his own race is inferior.)

If upon reflection, you still think that humans are more valuable than animals, you are not necessarily speciesist since you are now supposedly armed with rational arguments and the fact that you happen to be human yourself, is not a part of your consideration. A rational approach would however require that we don’t completely disregard the needs of those other species. They can’t be completely without value just because they are not human, and so this anti-speciesist approach may serve as an argument for treating animals with consideration.

That being said, the analogy between speciesism and racism doesn’t quite work since someone who claims to have rational arguments for why one race (for example one’s own) is superior to the others, would be considered a racist in a very strong sense. So you are right, an accusation of speciesism does seem rather funny.

The right thing to do has nothing to do with the law. The standard example would be helping Jews to escape the Nazis. Would you say it was wrong to help Jews because the person doing it risked severe punishment?

You are right, however, that feeling good has something to do with morality. Normally it is called happiness, and it is certainly right, and natural, for anyone to pursue happiness. But for a moral, virtuous person, the happiness of others should be included in one’s own feeling of happiness, and a morally conscious person would train himself to feel good when helping others feel good. The right thing to do is making yourself feel good while doing the right thing.

The law gives you very little indication of what the right thing may be since the laws may be bad. Sure, you can choose to believe that the laws of your country are generally not immoral, but it should be a requirement for any morally conscious person to critically assess the law before obeying it. If in the end you do accept most laws, it’s not because they are the laws but because your own moral standards have approved of them.

Let’s construct a relativist argument even an objectivist would seem to agree with: “Joe thinks it is right for him to study philosophy, therefore it is right for Joe to study philosophy.” (How a person treats himself is also a moral issue.) This could be based on the assumption that anyone should pursue whatever calling seems right to them, and that does appear to be a common relativist standpoint that even objectivists could subscribe to. But let’s suppose Joe can’t even read. A relativist would still have to recommend him as a philosophy student, while the rest of us realize that that wouldn’t be such a good idea. What seems right to the person isn’t really right. Let’s now suppose Joe is highly qualified for pursuing philosophy. In that case we would be more likely to recommend it for him, but just like in the first instance, the reason for our recommendation is not only his personal idea of what is right. We do look at objective factors and if we let Joe’s own idea weigh heavily, it is because in this case it is indeed an indication that it is objectively right, but we are aware that it is only an indication and it may be wrong.

What do you actually mean by “A is right for Joe”? Do you mean “Joe thinks A is right and therefore I think Joe should do A” or do you mean “I think Joe should do A whether or not he thinks it is right”? The first position is relativist, the second is objectivist.

Objectivism is not about reaching a common agreement. If you think Joe should do A, and both Joe and everyone else in the world disagree, you are still claiming that A is the objectively right thing to do for Joe. If you leave the decision entirely to Joe, you take a relativist position. That is not to say that an objectivist would not find it necessary to look into Joe’s special circumstances to reach a conclusion. It might be the case that Joe’s doing A would be immoral while Jack doing the same A would act morally. (Say Joe was poor and let his wife and children starve to spend money on A, while Jack was rich.)

The main point for an objectivist (and I hope and think most of us are objectivists) is that nothing is ever right just because someone thinks it is right.

I don't think your reasoning works... it seems to presume that all moral options are either objectively well ordered, or have no ordering. As such, your reasoning is easily defeated by an objective partial ordering. For example, suppose it's simply the case that among 5 possible options A, B, C, D, and E; that A is worse than each of C, D, and E; and B is also worse than each of C, D, and E, and that these are the only objective orderings. — InPitzotl

I don’t see why that would cause a problem for the definition. OP states that

for any particular event, in its full context, there is some moral evaluation of that event in that context that it is correct for everyone to make — Pfhorrest

and in your example there is clearly some evaluation
You evaluate that both A and B are worse than C, D and E. That is a universal claim, it is enough to call it objective. There are certainly many instances where only a partial ordering is possible, and that’s sufficient to identify it as a moral issue and therefore give it objective validity. C, D and E may very well be morally indistinguishable and then it doesn’t matter which one you choose, but you should definitely avoid A and B.

A moral relativist could never make any universal moral recommendations, not even partially. He could only say “whatever feels right for you” (or maybe not even that since it sounds like a universal recommendation to follow one’s feelings)
He could also not recommend to others what feels right for himself, since he would immediately be aware of his irrational bias.
However, such a person hardly exists. I think anyone would recommend me not to kill random people on the street just for fun, but a relativist would have to say: Well, to me it feels like a bad thing to do, but I know I’m being irrational, so my more rational and tolerant self must accept your indiscriminate killing.

I certainly hope there are more moral objectivists than relativists here, since moral relativism effectively means the belief there is no morality. If something is right for me and another thing is right for you, and we are somehow both right, the real implication is that none of us is right. If your culture and upbringing, your habits and feelings, justify your moral behavior in the sense that I am forced to acknowledge that you acted in the right way although I would have acted differently myself, there is no morality. Whatever a person does, can be explained by his background and will be consistent with it, and if that is the measure, it will not be possible for a person to act wrongly unless he himself admits his wrongdoing. So, if nothing is wrong, there is no morality.

That being said, different circumstances and different people do require different actions. For a big and strong man, it may be right to stay and fight the intruder, while a small and weak person should better run away. That is not moral relativism.

I doubt that some of the self-proclaimed moral relativists really hold that view. Everyone thinks that some actions are wrong.

So how has Denmark meddled in other countries domestic policies? Or Iceland? — ssu

Denmark works for the interest of ethnic Danes inside Germany. Iceland has lobbied to secure its fishing right with the EU. Deals have been made and during a negotiation you can’t expect everything to be in the open. No doubt, secret agreements have been made, but you and I would know about them, since they are, well, secrets.

the US is totally incapable of keeping secrets for a longer time. Their policies are well known especially on the level of — ssu

Why do you think secrets are always revealed? Sometimes historians dig up and reveal unknown events that happened many decades ago. What happened in the Bay of Pigs, what led to Hiroshima? Old secrets are revealed, but about some historical events we will never know the truth.

the vast majority is open, public and done by diplomats. — ssu

How do you know that? Of course it’s impossible to prove a negative. You can never say for sure that X doesn’t exist, especially when X is a secret.

German Red Army Fraction terrorists were hell bent on that West Germany was totally similar to Nazi Germany and they had to fight it and their actions would light the turmoil of a proletariat revolution in West Germany in the 1970's. Talk about societal criticism. — ssu

I’m not saying that all criticism is good. In fact, I would rather prefer that everyone who disagreed with me would shut. A conservative world view is, in my opinion, never healthy for society, just as the RAF criticism was unhealthy, but since I believe that the principle of free speech is healthy, I just have to accept it all. It would be much more unhealthy for society to clamp down on it.

To say that something is free is not quite the same as saying it has no rules and boundaries. To be free is to be able to move according to one’s inclinations without any external impediment. If there were no laws and no limits, everything would be arbitrary, and there would be no way of predicting what anything could lead to. In that case, any choice and any action would be meaningless, and there would be no freedom at all.

A person is free if he is able to do exactly what he wants, but that requires rules so that it is known that what is done actually happens. If I want to raise my right arm, the laws of nature, neural system and gravity, must be in place. If everything were arbitrary the outcome of my simple action could be just anything, I would have no control and thus lack any freedom.

A thing is free if it can continue on its path and develop according to its own system as opposed to being manipulated by outside forces. But without rules there would be no system and the thing would not have a particular path that would be its own, and consequently it wouldn’t make sense to call it free.

You seem to take the large social perspective on the origin of morality, as if there was once a lawgiver who could view a culture from above before that culture was even created and then introduce the measures that would make the system work on a grand scale.

But no one has ever been in any other position than you and me, born into a certain culture and taking part in it as an insignificant cogwheel. Have you ever asked yourself before acting, if your action would somehow contribute to the great product of human flourishing? I doubt it. We all operate on a microlevel, at best considering the direct consequence of the small act we are about to commit, or just behaving out of habit or from some preconceived principle.

Collective morality is formed by ongoing communal activity in a similar way to how a language is formed: No one controls it, and no one has any purpose that goes beyond the immediate act of communication. Only when we occasionally soar to a bird’s perspective in capacity of linguists or philosophers do we see a system and think it all makes sense. The language has grammar, and a culture has customs that make it all fit together into a whole contributing to its self-preservation. It looks like it is all there for the purpose of human flourishing, but that begs the question since you are already looking at a system, and any system necessarily works towards its own flourishing as far as it is a system. A system of human interaction, which is what a culture is, is no different.

Meddling means espionage and manipulation, and all countries engage in those activities, especially the big powers. Do you think that it doesn’t exist just because those moralizing Western powers don’t like talking about it? What makes you think that because they are open about something, they are open about everything? Every once in a while, a scandal emerges and naïve believers in their government think it is an exception. Remember how it was revealed that even the German chancellor had been spied on by the Americans. If that can happen to a friendly government, it is more than likely that it happens to the many countries the US has a strained relationship with, not just its outright enemies.

The Russians apparently wanted Trump to get elected and if you say his election made the political situation worse, I’d say you are right. But if we assume that not all Americans were manipulated by the Russians, they must have brought that bad situation on themselves, don’t you think?

Healthy criticism of our system can go too far you know. — ssu

That’s a very dangerous comment if you believe in free speech. No, healthy criticism can ever go too far. If you limit free speech to only what you think is useful for the country, next thing you know the government will start controlling information claiming public utility.

Everyone is meddling. When you know that as a starting point there is not much to be morally upset about every time it happens. The Russians, the Americans, the Chinese and any other decent sized power are scrambling to extend their influence and we should just be content if they refrain from using outright violence to obtain their goals.

Of course the Russians try to influence elections, just like the Americans do all over the world. Is that any worse than having filthy rich oligarchs from inside your own country manipulating elections? In any case, we concede that the electorate is not capable of rational choice but are like clay in the hands of money men. That in itself is what should bother us, and not the nationality of the money.

Don’t blame the Russians for learning to play the game the West already knows so well. Blame the system that allows it to happen. Blame the long tradition of money and power and electoral manipulation.

Maybe in a way it’s good that the Russians are doing it. We seem to be blind to our domestic meddlers, but maybe now the scales can fall from our eyes we can clearly see the ugly face of manipulation

What, if any, is then the incentive to actively try to have an impact on other individuals? — Alejandro

You mean from the standpoint of an ethical egoist? A complete egoist would of course only try to impact others when he sees the opportunity to personally benefit from it. It is to be assumed that only a real advantage would count as a benefit and not just any amusement that a person may get from using others as playthings. But how are we to distinguish a real benefit from an imaginary one? Many people certainly get a lot of enjoyment from wielding power over their fellow humans and if you count that as a legitimate befit, anything should be allowed including bullying and torture.

However, if the assumption of ethical egoism is that everyone is better off when left to themselves, unnecessary impact must be avoided. What would then be called necessary for one’s own benefit? If it’s your goal to make money, it’s impossible to do that without impacting others: You work for them, or they work for you. If you made them work harder and paid them less, you would have a greater impact and benefit more. The strange thing is that if you paid them more than you had to, you would be helping them while impacting them less. Ethical egoism is hardly consistent.

I believe that people who consciously or unconsciously choose to escape from reality in the name of happiness are far more than they seem. Especially if we include those who turn away or think about something else when they encounter something they don't like. There are billions of them. — David Mo

Yes, there are billions of them, myself included. But when we do it consciously, we always make sure we still have some access to reality. People take drugs and they do it on purpose to escape from reality for a while, but they never consciously intend to leave it permanently. They need to believe they are anchored in reality to enjoy their vacation from it.

There’s a human need to be curious about their environment, even as trivial as the urge to know what one’s neighbor is doing, and consciously giving up reality would mean giving up any possibility of knowledge. It’s a pleasure for us to think that we know something, and we couldn’t do without it. Therefore we would never choose to do away with this pleasure. In the moment of choosing, it would be too painful.

Many people prefer to believe illusory things — David Mo

People don’t choose to believe in illusory things knowing they are illusory when they choose it. It’s rather a gradual process of self-deception. Otherwise they would both believe and not believe at the same time, which is logically impossible. (I’m not talking about a 50-50 belief. That wouldn’t be a belief in anything.)

If something gives you pleasure, it gives you pleasure, be it something imaginary or real — David Mo

Yes, but the moment before choosing the illusion of the machine you, or while still being aware that it is imaginary, the pleasure is not existing. Before giving in to the illusion, we can’t believe in its pleasure.

The reason we reject the experience machine is still about pleasure. If we lived in an unreal world, our pleasure wouldn’t be real either and so it wouldn’t be really pleasurable. It is true that we wouldn’t know that while plugged in, but we know it now and we are making our decision based on how pleasing we now find the idea.

We don’t want to have illusions either and we don’t wish we believed in something we believe is untrue even if the idea in itself is pleasing. We see it as fake pleasure, and therefore no pleasure at all.

We don’t wish we lost our mind or were changed into a dog, even if it often seems to us that insane people and dogs are happier than we are. Since you are not a dog now, you don’t want to be a dog. Because you are human you don’t believe in the pleasure of a dog even though you would enjoy it if you were actually a dog.

We can only imagine pleasure from the perspective we now have. It’s not possible to imagine liking something we don’t like. I don’t like fish, so even if I were told that I have now magically started to like it, I wouldn’t feel tempted to eat fish.

Our prediction of pleasure is a pleasurable feeling we have in advance.

If the harm they choose is indeed a lesser harm, it is not a matter of self-harm at all. We do that all the time. A student goes through the pain of doing homework to avoid the greater pain of flunking the exam. So a person may conceivably cut himself to escape an emotional pain if the physical pain is really smaller. If that is the case, this example is just like any other instant of sacrifice for a greater good. But sometimes that immediate relief from emotional pain will later cause more pain than what it was meant to relieve. The cutting may cause permanent damage and end up making everything worse, but the person, maybe understandably, had no thought of that at the moment of anguish. It is still not what he really wanted, because he couldn’t possibly want to make everything worse than it already was. Our immediate action, what we think we want at the moment of decision, is not always what we really want once we have thought it soberly through (that’s what I meant by “insanity”, not in the literal sense)

Self-harm in the proper sense, that is something that does more harm than good in total, is not something we can possibly want, since everyone wants what is good for oneself. Self-harm, hurting oneself against one’s wish, is therefore immoral.

At a given moment people may seemingly want to hurt themselves, and since people do it all the time, that appears to be good evidence for what they wish. But no, all of us do stupid things that we later regret, realizing that we didn’t actually want it. A wish must be considered in a broader perspective. You may feel you want to drink a lot, but then you’ll be badly hung over, and you don’t want that. Still looking back at a last weekend, you may think that the fun you had outweighed your hang-over – it’s debatable. However, when it comes to self-harm that had no perceivable benefits, it’s easy to conclude that the person didn’t really want it beyond the moment of insanity. Cutting off your fingers because you are angry with the world may seem a good idea to a disturbed mind when it happens, but if he ever regained his reason he would understand that he had acted contrary to his own wish.
Now, I may concede that your objection has some merit, only I wouldn’t consider it a harm if it’s a temporary alleviation with no side effects. I have myself combated tooth ache by inflicting some other distracting pain, and it actually felt good in a way. But for that reason and because the contrary pain soon disappeared, it can’t really be counted as self-harm.
The logical conclusion remains: No one can want what is bad for themselves.

If you think you have an obligation to something outside of yourself, to God or society, and also if you think your life has an external meaning, that may provide you with a reason why it would be bad for you to hurt yourself. But then you’d first have to argue for that meaning and obligation and that’s ultimately a matter of belief. However, if we restrict the argument to internal reasons, we avoid that difficulty. A self cannot want to harm itself since it contradicts what it means to be a self.

Self-harm is definitely immoral. In fact, it is as immoral as harming others. Why? Well, why should we bother to be moral at all? If we assume for the sake of argument that life is meaningless, and there is no reason why we are here, it would still be contradictory to hurt oneself. If there is no meaning outside there is still meaning inside a thing. Any entity or organism has a purpose within itself and that is to uphold itself. The purpose of a machine is to run well and an animal organism works to try to stay healthy. What is right is according to the nature of a thing even if there were no purpose outside it.

Self-harm is a contradiction since nothing can possibly want to hurt itself. It is only possible to really want what one thinks is good for oneself. If you argue that it is wrong to hurt others because it goes against their will, the same holds true for hurting yourself because it is actually against your own will. If you think you want to hurt yourself, you are simply mistaken about your own will.

The basis of Aristotelean virtue ethics is to be in harmony with one’s nature, and obviously by hurting oneself, one destroys this harmony.

It’s easy to observe that the general moral view of society is often in harmony with the view of those in power. That could be a chicken and egg observation, though. No doubt it goes both ways: the opinion of the powerful is reflected by the general social morality as well as vice versa.

But let’s suppose you are right, and it only goes in one direction. You observe that your fellow citizens mostly accept the view of the powerful and you call that right. How about yourself then? Do you always accept the ethical viewpoints of your authorities? If you answer yes even though you have seen through it all, it means that you really don’t have any morality and you can’t criticize anyone who live under other authorities. Why would it be wrong to own slaves, for instance, if the laws of one’s country accepted it? If you answer no, you acknowledge that there is a morality independent of the powerful since you yourself use another standard.

Let me ask you, does an individuals moral view matter if it's contrary to what society thinks? And if it does matter how can you validate it? — Gitonga

It certainly matters to me what kind of morality a person has, but validate it? I don’t expect the laws of any country to be in full harmony with any ethical standard. Law and morality are two different things. I just hope that the laws will not be too far removed from good ethics, but most of all I hope as many people as possible will act morally whether that means following the laws and customs or breaking them.

Do you always agree with the views of those in power? Do you automatically change your opinions as the dominant forces in society change? Would you have been against homosexuality if you had lived a hundred years ago? If so, why don’t you think homosexuality is wrong now? (If that’s your opinion.) If you were consistent, you wouldn’t have had an opinion about anything since you claim to have seen through the insincere origin of right and wrong.

If I decided to murder someone just for fun, would you condemn me? I hope you would, but how could a murder really upset you if you knew you were just copying the attitude of the powerful? Why do you have to support them? They are certainly doing fine without you.

No, I don’t believe you. You really think murder is wrong, and if the authorities of your country were to make it legal tomorrow, you would still think it is wrong. Or are you saying that your feelings have been so thoroughly molded by the powers above you that you can’t follow your own reason? You just feel that murder is wrong, but you don’t think so?
Don’t you have your own sense of what is right and wrong?

Philosophy, as opposed to the sciences, is pure thinking, and the purest pure thinking within philosophy is metaphysics.

Metaphysics does not have any empirical connections, whereas the other branches of philosophy at least make some reference to the physical or the empirical world.
(Logic (and math) is an empty category waiting to be filled with physical content.)
All science is knowledge about what is. Philosophy is about what is in the realm of pure thought.
Metaphysics is about being as such, being in itself, and therefore the philosophy of the rest of philosophy.

Can you please explain to me why people of Middle Eastern origin often face discrimination (racism) in the West even though there is no racial term to signify that group?
— Congau

the fact of non-race based discrimination does not mean we should not make efforts to eliminate race based discrimination. — dazed

I’m again trying to make you answer my question. People from the Middle East suffer from racism in Europe and North America. Or do you deny that? If so why?
They are being discriminated against because of the color of their skin, which is a phenomenon normally referred to as racism. Yet, there exists no particular racial term for that group of people: They are called white.

According to your theory racism against people from the Middle East wouldn’t be possible since a racial term is lacking, but as far as I can see, it is clearly happening. Please explain!

People would continue to discriminate people of different skin colors and differences in appearance that indicate that their origin (their own or their ancestors’) was somewhere else. Sometimes these dissimilarities are very small as when regional characteristics in appearance are said to be detected even within the same country and sometimes large as when it refers to separate parts of the world. The larger the differences the greater the danger of discrimination, but not necessarily. People who look like they come from the Middle East probably have greater problems with discrimination in the West than people from East Asia.

There are no racial terms referring to differences of a more regional nature, but there is still significant discrimination. Would you call it racism when a person from the Middle East faces discrimination in the West? Whether you do or don’t, the phenomenon is not dependent on what anyone calls it since discrimination against Arab looking people is in principle exactly the same as discrimination against sub-Saharan looking people, even though there exists a racial term for the latter but not the former.

Can you please explain to me why people of Middle Eastern origin often face discrimination (racism) in the West even though there is no racial term to signify that group?

case in point look at all the physical differences between people who are currently placed in the category of "white"
there are a variety of skin tones, hair textures and colours and yet those people are all seen as the same "white" — dazed

That is a good point actually, but the argument works in my favor. There are no words for the subdivisions of the white race, but there is certainly racism among whites. In Northern Europe, Southern Europeans are being looked down upon as they tend to have darker hair and skin. There is no doubt that the Turks are discriminated against in Germany even when they are completely assimilated and speak perfect German. Even though they belong to the white race and there is no particular racial term to denote them, their racial difference works against them.

In the US the racial term “brown” is relatively recent, but of course there has always been racial discrimination against the nameless racial groups that now self-identify as brown.

People of Arab descent and people from the Indian sub-continent have always suffered discrimination in the West without there being a definite racial term for them.

People tend to dislike those who look different from themselves. Kids bully other kids for their looks and grown-ups are skeptical towards people whose appearance indicate that they belong to another group. No particular word is needed in each case for this lamentable but quite universal phenomenon to exist.

There is no difference between ethics and morality. One is Greek and the other is Latin, the latter being a translation of the former. The terms are used interchangeably and when they are not, a distinction is made that is completely artificial.

In philosophy we don’t need two terms for the same phenomenon. Language is too confusing as it is, and a lot of philosophical discussion is merely caused by a confusion about the meaning of words. Simplification and reduction is a good method for finding a common understanding, and the last thing you want is to invent subtle distinctions that can be avoided.

Ethics/morality is what concerns right or wrong human behavior. We need one word that covers that entire area and not two words that each somehow covers two different parts of it.

That being said, there may be stylistic and idiomatic reasons why you would want to choose one word and not the other. We talk about work ethics and prefer to say bourgeois morality. That has to do with linguistic tradition and in a well-crafted text one can of course never be indifferent to the choice of words. Two synonyms that have the exact same extension may still have a different emotional value. It is important for literature but shouldn’t worry us in philosophy.

A psychologist would never make an assumption without asking that question — Possibility

The psychologist wouldn’t necessarily have to ask a question about the exact issue at hand to make a qualified assumption. After having gotten to know his patient he might for example have acquired a better understanding of why she wears high-heeled shoes than she has herself. If he asked her and received the reply “because high heeled shoes are comfortable”, he may have good reasons to disregard that answer altogether.

It isn’t about getting the ‘right’ answer, but about recognising that she has her own inner process — Possibility

When asked a question about oneself, “the inner process” that is supposedly revealed is sometimes quite irrelevant to the question. The person might try to think of a clever answer that really has nothing to do with what she has previously thought. That wouldn’t even be false consciousness but fail to express any consciousness at all.

Although there are of course individual reasons why a woman chooses the clothes she wears, we don’t have to disregard general reasons (I’m not saying you are, but your emphasis on individual explanations might be problematic.) The question “why do some women wear sexy clothes?” could be given a general answer that is likely to be true for most of them. It is not much different from asking any other question concerning human behavior.

I don't understand women all that well. I see women railing against their objectification by men and yet the choices they make in their clothing suggests they wish to be treated as such. — TheMadFool

No person, woman, man or any other kind of rational being, wishes to be treated like an object. I could say that without much understanding of anything in the world; it is simple logic. “Objectification” means turning something into an object (presumably something that wasn’t originally an object) and the only thing that isn’t an object, is a person.

No thinking being could possibly want to be a non-thinking being, because if it were, it wouldn’t want anything. Moreover, every conscious being wishes to be respected as such since its idea of itself necessarily includes its consciousness. We all, men and women, want to be respected and admired, and although some of us don’t mind presenting ourselves as something different from what we really are, we need to think that what we show the world is somehow attached to our personhood, or else we are not the ones who have these characteristics. Accordingly, an attractive woman needs to think she is attractive as a person and not as an object.

you could take the time to ASK her if there’s a particular reason why she wore that outfit today - and then LISTEN to what she has to say. — Possibility

I don’t believe much in asking people why they perform their habitual actions. You may of course get the right answer, but it’s also likely that they don’t have sufficient self-consciousness to see through their own real reasons. Very often a psychologist would do a better job explaining their behavior, and sometimes simple logic does the trick.

Socrates would in many cases use the word “to know” without necessarily employing it in a strictly literally sense. We use it in much the same way, exaggerating our certainty. “I know he will come tomorrow,” you might say, although you are fully aware that you can’t predict the future. Our language just can’t be totally logical all the time. If it were, we would hardly be able to say anything. We assume that people know more or less what we are talking about and move on.

That is also true for the second part of your question. You know perfectly well what Socrates himself or the paraphrase intended to express, but if you attempt to be strictly logical about it you inevitably run into a paradox:

“I know nothing.”
“Not true. At least you know that.”
“Ok. I only know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
“You mean, you only know one thing and that is that you know only one thing.”
“Right. I know only one thing and that is that I know only one thing, which is that I know only one thing, which is that I know only one thing, which….” Wait a minute, how many things do I know?

If this gives you a headache, you may find comfort in the fact that it is not philosophy. It’s sophism, and that’s not what Socrates was doing.

In a case like this, where inaction is given as a definite choice at a definite moment, inaction is no different from action. You can’t choose not to get involved because you are already involved.

It’s very different in a case where inaction refers to a remote possibility. If you acted now you could save a starving child in Africa, you merely had to go there and find the child, ignoring all your other obligations and make this a priority over any other good deed you may think of. Your inaction towards this child is no more morally wrong than all the other millions of theoretically potential actions that you abstain from doing.

However, most of the time “inaction” refers to something more intermediate than these two extreme examples. The action is considered a realistic possibility, but it may not be obvious when and where it is to be done, or if you are the person who should do it. It would have to be a separate moral question in each particular instance: Is inaction here the same as action? Is it somewhat similar or different?

you can't obligate someone, without violating his rights to freedom — Marin

The question of freedom is not relevant here since any obligation is a restriction of freedom. Of course you can obligate someone to do his duty even though it means a restriction his freedom.

I can define ad hoc an ethical system consisting entirely of moral obligations and sins and wrt that system, yes, there's no merely virtuous act. That doesn't eliminate morally virtuous acts from ethics, merely from that one of a potentially infinite number of ethical systems.

I can also more easily and more acceptably define a system of ethics containing no obligations whatsoever. It would look pretty similar to modern secular Western ethics. Wrt that, finding morally virtuous but not obligatory actions would be a piece of cake. — Kenosha Kid

It would be interesting to hear you defend either ethical system. Of course it’s a piece of cake to put a label on something and claim that it’s something that really exists, it’s a lot more difficult to say why it is so.

I think we should accept @JacobPhilosophy’s premise for this thread and assume that both obligations and virtuous acts exist.

An ethical system that emphasizes obligations might also acknowledge virtuous acts. You could say that whenever an act is an obligation, it is virtuous to perform it, although that probably involves playing down the significance of virtue.

The other way around is also possible, any virtuous act may be considered an obligation and that’s probably what puzzles @JacobPhilosophy since obligations seem to carry a stronger force which would push the significance of virtue aside. (You say “Do!” or “Don’t!” and all doubt is removed.)

However, even if you call all virtuous acts an obligation, the nature of the obligation would necessarily vary in strength. No one can seriously think you have the same strong duty to take care of any child as you have toward your own child. Virtue covers everything that’s good, but strong obligations must be limited in number.

Any action that represents a good thing to do is virtuous if it is done for the right reason, that is without an ulterior motive. A morally virtuous action requires the right intention and the right disposition. Saving that drowning child because it blocks your path would not be virtuous nor would a donation to charity if it was done only to secure a tax reduction. But given that the right disposition is in place, any good action would also be a virtuous action.

An obligation, on the other hand, has a narrower extension. All virtuous acts are not obligations, but any fulfilled obligation is virtuous (if done for the right reason).

An obligation is a possibility for a virtuous act that is given particularly to you. You acquired it when you were placed in a particular circumstance. Since you happened to pass that child in the pool the obligation to rescue it was given. At other times we acquire an obligation by committing ourselves to something. If you marry or have children, you are obligated to take care of your family, but you probably have no obligation towards other people’s children (although it would certainly be virtuous if you took care of them anyway).

you are also pretty much arguing that there is something that actually exists "race" that we still need to refer to, the approach I am advocating for here is for those of use who see that there is no such thing in our reality just as we know the world is not flat — dazed

IN REALITY some people look like their ancestors came from sub-Saharan Africa, some seem to be of European descent and some of East-Asian. Is that relevant for anything? Probably not, but there are those who think it is, and they are the ones who are called racists. They would keep noticing it even if they had no word for it. They see that those people have an origin different from themselves, and they don’t like what seems foreign. The problem is not really the black hair, for some of their own have black hair, and it’s not really the dark skin, for they admire a nice tan, but the totality tells them they are dealing with something foreign.

How are we to explain that people with curly hair tend to be socially disadvantaged. That doesn’t make any sense, does it? It must be due to some arbitrary circumstances then and not at all anything caused by what used to be called racism since we are now not allowed to use that word.

You and other well-meaning anti-racists (or whatever it should be called) may perhaps stop using words that refer to race, but the racists will sure find a term to designate what they consider significant. By taking away the word you just reduce your own ability to talk to them and explain their error.

How can we stop racism if we don’t talk about it? What would it have been like if it wasn’t mentioned that Floyd was black? “A man with dark hair wearing --- was beaten to death by the police.” That would correctly draw attention to police brutality, but if it had a racial dimension (which most people think it had) it would be neglected.

We need is words that approximately refer to the phenomena we have in mind and if there’s no word for it, it inhibits our ability to talk about it. A description of hair color and skin complexion would in this case totally fail to get the point. The victim was not a dark-haired person with a tan of European descent but of African descent, and therefore it’s likely to have been a racist incident.

unscientific to describe these physical characteristics using terms like
"black" "white" — dazed

Most words we us are not “scientific”. We don’t attempt to make a precise description of a thing when merely using a word to refer to it. Why is it called a smartphone when it’s much more than a phone? How imprecise! Why do we call something a shoe and something a boot? How high around the ankle should the shoe be to become a boot? No one knows exactly, so it’s unscientific! Yet, we are quite comfortable with using those words.

you are starting from the position that in fact racial categories exist that people should be put in
what is this something that you posit exists? — dazed

We notice that a person looks as if his ancestors came from sub-Saharan Africa. We notice that a person looks Chinese. (He could be Japanese, Vietnamese or American, but he looks like people generally look in China.) A person has an Indian or Arab appearance, we notice that, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We put people into categories whether we like to or not and there’s no use pretending it isn’t so.

It would be rather silly to avoid talking about what everyone is thinking about. Concealing one’s thoughts in vague language is one definition of hypocrisy.

Suppose one person in a group is a friend of yours and you want to point him out. He happens to be the only black person in the group. Why wouldn’t you just say “That black man is my friend” instead of going through an elaborate description of his clothes or other characteristics that he may share with other people in the group?

Why is it that you understand exactly what I mean when I say “black”? If it wasn’t something existing, you wouldn’t have understood what I meant. You know that people of European descent have certain general characteristics that distinguish them from people of east-Asian descent so why pretend otherwise? We notice it anyway.