That there are, nevertheless, absolute moral truths ("true" answers about, at least the foundational, moral questions), and though there may not be an objective procedure any two clear headed people could use to come to an agreement about there that there is nevertheless either other ways to the truths or truths nonetheless even if we can't get to them, is usually simply called "moral absolutistism" which is opposed to "moral relativism". Moral absolutists will accuse moral relativists of believing that moral relativism itself is a claim purporting to be absolutely true and thus a moral absolutist disposition, just in denial about it (a debate which goes back to Hellenistic skepticism as previously mentioned, though only on principle and without a cultural relativistic element of modern relativists).

Moral relativism should not be confused with pluralism, which is simply the observation by moral absolutists that it is not incompatible with a common sense approach to culture (that cultural diversity is not intrinsically bad nor is it intrinsically incoherent for moral absolutists to respect different cultures insofar as they represent an attempt to get closer to the absolute truths that do exist). — boethius

Both of these second types of relativism that I am against, for their being tantamount to metaphysical and moral nihilism respectively, hold that the closest thing possible to an opinion being objectively correct is its being the consensus opinion of some group collectively. According to such a view, agreeing with whatever beliefs about the world the group collectively holds is as close to correct as one can be about reality; and agreeing with whatever intentions about people's behavior the group collectively holds is as close to correct as one can be about morality. This group-relative sense of "correct" is where the term "relativism" comes from. But just making judgements that vary by circumstances or context is not relativism, and I am definitely not against that. That view is sometimes called "situationism" in the context of judgements about morality, and usually just taken for granted in the context of judgements about reality. The opposite of that view is the proper referent of the term "absolutism", even though that term is frequently misused to mean the opposite of relativism, which is better termed "objectivism". Absolutism holds that some judgements are correct not only regardless of anybody's opinions, but regardless of the details of the context or circumstances, and I am definitely not arguing for that here, only against relativism. — The Codex Quarentis: Against Nihilism

As regards the definition of philosophy and its demarcation from other fields [...] While it is a contentious position within the field of philosophy to conclude (as I do) that it is never warranted to appeal to faith, it is nevertheless generally accepted that philosophy as an activity characteristically differs from religion as an activity by not appealing to faith to support philosophical positions themselves, even if one of those positions should turn out to be that appeals to faith are sometimes acceptable.

But although philosophy relies only upon reason or evidence to reach its conclusions, not faith, it can also be demarcated from the physical sciences in that philosophy as an activity does not appeal to empirical observation either, even though a philosopher may conclude (as I do) that empirical observation is the correct way to reach conclusions about reality. It is precisely when one transitions from using empirical observation to support some conclusion, to reasoning about why or whether something like empirical observation (or faith, or so on) is the correct thing to appeal to at all, that one transitions from doing science to doing philosophy. — The Codex Quarentis: Metaphilosophy

If anything, maybe that just throws a further layer of complexity unto the issue. I agree with x, who disagrees with y, who agrees with z, who sort of agrees with x, who doesn't love y, etc. Complexity of disagreement. — Noble Dust

Disagreement fuels the fire of discussion, no? I guess the ideal is situations where there's "shades" of disagreement, but within the shades there's a sort of "general color" of alignment of ideas. — Noble Dust

over 87% of people who were asked how they escaped poverty said they did so through “individual initiative” — NOS4A2

Whether ethical principles are right or wrong is an ethical question — SophistiCat

Nonsense. It’s basically an exchange of value (including future value), which as I’ve explained can be generous from the lender side, fair, or exploitive. Whatever capitalistic incentives may lead to exploitation aren’t inherent in lending itself. — praxis

I've mentioned this before: There is no minimum cost to enter stocks or cryptocurrency. You could throw $5 into an extremely high risk one. — BitconnectCarlos

Lenders or renters may give more than they receive in order to help others, make a fair trade, or take advantage of those in a weaker position.

You seem to be claiming that lending is inherently predatory in nature. — praxis

All that planning is fine and good, provided that your saving for old age isn't at the expense of your present happiness. I suspect that that may be the case, but correct me if I'm misreading you.

If you're sacrificing or postponing some high value of yours simply because you're scared to be broke or homeless, I think a better balance is needed. — Xtrix

However, if you manage to do everything else you want to do, while also saving a bit of money, then I'm envious indeed! I have no savings for the future, no 401K, nothing. I don't have health insurance, and for years I had no car insurance (my car was fully paid, now I finance so I am required to have it). Maybe this is all very "risky," I don't know. I guess I figure there's social security and medicare, or else family and friends, and I'm confident in my resourcefulness. I don't require much materialistically in order to live well. That may change when I'm an older or elderly man, I don't know. Plenty of government help you can get, and if you live within your means that's generally good enough. If not, and I end up going bankrupt or accumulating a lot of debt that I'll never pay off, so be it. What do you make of this? Does this seem crazy to you? — Xtrix

predatory lending, which pretty much all banks are involved with — praxis

A sort of mirror image of beauty, I hold, is drama, by which I mean an umbrella category encompassing both comedy and tragedy. The common factor to comedy and tragedy, and what I hold makes drama like a mirror image of beauty, is that while beauty is about experiences of something seeming in some way right, comedy and tragedy are both experiences of something seeming in some way wrong. The distinguishing difference between comedy and tragedy is how they approach that wrongness: comedy approaches it frivolously, with levity, making light of whatever is wrong; while tragedy approaches it seriously, with gravity, taking the wrong thing to be a weighty matter. This wrongness can be of either a descriptive or prescriptive kind, just like the rightness of beauty can be. I think this is best illustrated in the wide varieties of comedy, ranging from slapstick (where people experiencing physical violence is treated lightly instead of as a matter of grievous injury) and roasts or other jokes explicitly at someone's expense (that are treated as an acceptable transgressions of social norms), which are both making light of prescriptively bad things; to jokes that hinge on setting up and then subverting expectations (where something that was thought to true turns out to be false), including postmodern comedy that violates medium conventions such as breaking the fourth wall, and even things like puns where the wrongness is just the use of the wrong word in place of the expected one. All comedy hinges on something being, in some way or another, wrong, and yet treated as not a big deal. Tragedy, on the other hand, depicts something being in some way wrong, and makes a big deal out of it being wrong. Both of them are, for that wrongness that they depend on, in some way un-beautiful. Yet both can nevertheless be, in the end, beautiful in their own way. Comedy, in making light of bad things, shows them as not so bad, and so correspondingly good, at least relatively speaking, and thereby beautiful in a way. And tragedy, in treating bad things as weighty matters, can speak hard truths about bad experiences that people can really have, and so, for that truth, also be beautiful in a way. — The Codex Quaerentis: On Rhetoric and the Arts

Yes, I understand that you have some pet utilitarian system — SophistiCat

The criteria of success for a system of ethics themselves belong in the ethical category. You have to have ethical judgment before you can judge a system of ethics. But if you already have ethical judgment, then what need is for a system? — SophistiCat

you can associate greater wealth with greater numerical gains just like you can associate greater wealth with greater numerical loss. — BitconnectCarlos

Whoever does that? We all know the citizens of our advanced economies are almost without exception dedicated to self-improvement, edifying spiritual and cultural pursuits, and the abandonment of hedonistic desires in pursuit of the greater good. (God knows I have never been able to live according to that standard.) — Wayfarer

Like Epicurus, in other words. — Wayfarer

Buddhism aims at the eradication of suffering, the complete going beyond of it. — Wayfarer

Buddhism and the God Idea — Wayfarer

As I said, I think appetites are altogether too limited a foundation for an ethical philosophy. — Wayfarer

I think your model amounts to a kind of hedonic utilitarianism — Wayfarer

The primary divide within normative ethics is between consequentialist (or teleological) models, which hold that acts are good or bad only on account of the consequences that they bring about, and deontological models, which hold that acts are good or bad in and of themselves and the consequences of them cannot change that. The decision between them is precisely the decision as to whether the ends justify the means, with consequentialist models saying yes they do, and deontological theories saying no they don't. I hold that that is a strictly speaking false dilemma, between the two types of normative ethical model, although the strict answer I would give to whether the ends justify the means is "no". But that is because I view the separation of ends and means as itself a false dilemma, in that every means is itself an end, and every end is a means to something more. This is similar to how the views on ontology and epistemology I have already detailed in previous essays entail a kind of direct realism in which there is no real distinction between representations of reality and reality itself, there is only the incomplete but direct comprehension of small parts of reality that we have, distinguished from the completeness of reality itself that is always at least partially beyond our comprehension. We aren't trying to figure out what is really real from possibly-fallible representations of reality, we're undertaking a fallible process of trying to piece together our direct sensation of small bits of reality and extrapolate the rest of it from them. Likewise, to behave morally, we aren't just aiming to use possibly-fallible means to indirectly achieve some ends, we're undertaking a process of directly causing ends with each and every behavior, and fallibly attempting to piece all of those together into a greater good.

Perhaps more clearly than that analogy, the dissolution of the dichotomy between ends and means that I mean to articulate here is like how a sound argument cannot merely be a valid argument, and cannot merely have true conclusions, but it must be valid — every step of the argument must be a justified inference from previous ones — and it must have a true conclusion, which requires also that it begin from true premises. If a valid argument leads to a false conclusion, that tells you that the premises of the argument must have been false, because by definition valid inferences from true premises must lead to true conclusions; that's what makes them valid. If the premises were true and the inferences in the argument still lead to a false conclusion, that tells you that the inferences were not valid. But likewise, if an invalid argument happens to have a true conclusion, that's no credit to the argument; the conclusion is true, sure, but the argument is still a bad one, invalid. I hold that a similar relationship holds between means and ends: means are like inferences, the steps you take to reach an end, which is like a conclusion. Just means must be "good-preserving" in the same way that valid inferences are truth-preserving: just means exercised out of good prior circumstances definitionally must lead to good consequences; just means must introduce no badness, or as Hippocrates wrote in his famous physicians' oath, they must "first, do no harm". If something bad happens as a consequence of some means, then that tells you either that something about those means were unjust, or that there was something already bad in the prior circumstances that those means simply have not alleviated (which failure to alleviate does not make them therefore unjust). But likewise, if something good happens as a consequence of unjust means, that's no credit to those means; the consequences are good, sure, but the means are still bad ones, unjust. Moral action requires using just means to achieve good ends, and if either of those is neglected, morality has been failed; bad consequences of genuinely just actions means some preexisting badness has still yet to be addressed (or else is a sign that the actions were not genuinely just), and good consequences of unjust actions do not thereby justify those actions.

Consequentialist models of normative ethics concern themselves primarily with defining what is a good state of affairs, and then say that bringing about those states of affairs is what defines a good action. Deontological models of normative ethics concern themselves primarily with defining what makes an action itself intrinsically good, or just, regardless of further consequences of the action. I think that these are both important questions, and they are the moral analogues to questions about ontology and epistemology: fields that I call teleology (from the the Greek "telos" meaning "end" or "purpose"), which is about the objects (in the sense of "goals" or "aims") of morality, like ontology is about the objects of reality; and deontology (from the Greek "deon" meaning "duty"), which is about how to pursue morality, like epistemology is about how to pursue reality. — The Codex Quarentis: A Note On Ethics

Thank you, now you're speaking my language. I agree! — BitconnectCarlos

The point is that the 'objectively measurable' is not subject to opinion, in the way that ethical and moral judgements are held to be. — Wayfarer

When it comes to tackling questions about reality, pursuing knowledge, we should not take some census or survey of people's beliefs or perceptions, and either try to figure out how all those could all be held at once without conflict, or else (because that likely will not be possible) just declare that whatever the majority, or some privileged authority, believes or perceives is true. Instead, we should appeal to everyone's direct sensations or observations, free from any interpretation into perceptions or beliefs yet, and compare and contrast the empirical experiences of different people in different circumstances to come to a common ground on what experiences there are that need satisfying in order for a belief to be true. Then we should devise models, or theories, that purport to satisfy all those experiences, and test them against further experiences, rejecting those that fail to satisfy any of them, and selecting the simplest, most efficient of those that remain as what we tentatively hold to be true. This entire process should be carried out in an organized, collaborative, but intrinsically non-authoritarian academic structure.

When it comes to tackling questions about morality, pursuing justice, we should not take some census or survey of people's intentions or desires, and either try to figure out how all those could all be held at once without conflict, or else (because that likely will not be possible) just declare that whatever the majority, or some privileged authority, intends or desires is good. Instead, we should appeal to everyone's direct appetites, free from any interpretation into desires or intentions yet, and compare and contrast the hedonic experiences of different people in different circumstances to come to a common ground on what experiences there are that need satisfying in order for an intention to be good. Then we should devise models, or strategies, that purport to satisfy all those experiences, and test them against further experiences, rejecting those that fail to satisfy any of them, and selecting the simplest, most efficient of those that remain as what we tentatively hold to be good. This entire process should be carried out in an organized, collaborative, but intrinsically non-authoritarian political structure. — The Codex Quaerentis: A Note On Ethics

I'm much more comfortable talking about investment here because it's something I do regularly and read up about. I guarantee you that wealth invested does not automatically mean more wealth. The more risk you're willing to take on the higher the prospective returns. — BitconnectCarlos

This is easy enough to accept, but at least sometimes what is good for yourself is at odds with what is good for your country, etc. Then how do you decide? — Pinprick

That would certainly be true if I was interested in seeking and maintaining power, or as a corollary, blocking someone from achieving it. — NOS4A2

It's not someone's fault for being [born] into poverty, but it is their fault if they die poor. — BitconnectCarlos

If someone retires with 0 in savings that's not the fault of capitalism or the evil system — BitconnectCarlos

I think it would be irresponsible to vote for someone along party lines or for strategic purposes, because to do so would be for the sake of power-grubbing, not principle. — NOS4A2

a brilliant, florescent yellow with an aroma and taste I am unable to describe — Michael Lee

The whole point of having agreed measures, peer review, and so on, is to screen out the subjective elements — Wayfarer

But it is the implicit bracketing out of the subjective which makes it radically different from the quality of sagacity as understood in the earlier, and broader, philosophical tradition. — Wayfarer

The issue being the fact that the reliability of science is based on quantitative analysis, whereas qualitative factors are intrinsic to moral principles. — Wayfarer

But implicit in that parable is the belief that the sage is someone who 'sees the whole'. — Wayfarer

And by what standard, pray tell, do you judge the reliability of your system of morality? — SophistiCat

You say first that I'm not reading carefully to give good feedback — boethius

careful reading is only needed for the first point, which I've already stated is very much related to the others — boethius

Well is "eventually" mean now or eventually. You should make this clear in the OP. — boethius

You make it pretty clear you want to know where the ideas you present might come from, if they're over 2000 years old, that's simply the case. The Hellenistic philosophers were amazingly sophisticated thinkers, there's no reason to dismiss them; in particular if you're interested in the history of ideas and where your ideas can be traced to.

If debates have been going for more than 2000 years, probably they are about something pretty relevant. If you're familiar with them, it's a lot more efficient to just say where you are positioned in relation to them, then assume that I'm able to assume that you already know these arguments and assume that I'm furthermore able to deduce where you stand in relation to them and also just assume that you'll get around to commenting on them later but that for now it would be a waste of time. — boethius