Political discussion on this forum, perhaps every forum, tends to be overwhelmingly dominated by emotional poses. — Hippyhead

Almost all of the criticisms of Obama made by progressives are entirely factual and indicative of a conscience, not emotional fragility. People who are resistant to such criticisms are themselves deeply emotionally invested in the idea that the ends always justify the means and that constant moral compromise is necessary. This is not the case.

making him the biggest coward recent memory - because he still thinks he is a 'good man'. Obama fucking sucked, and he continues to suck. — StreetlightX

I just can't stand the emphasis on civility and compromise being presented by the centrists, trying to unite the country somehow, as if that would be a good thing. Fucking spineless. That's why I love Nina Turner; she knows who the enemies are. Would have written her in if I didn't live in a swing state.

edit: Trump and the GOP are also enemies, and I voted for Biden, if there was any ambiguity.

You are right philosophim, we weren't disagreeing, and I just posted some bullshit about representativeness and truth values. My bad to anyone reading this.

I should specify: by religious beliefs I mean believed characteristics and actions of god, not ethics and rules and such.

The problem of the language, is that the language is making a claim about reality, without evidence to reality. I am specifying what the specific problem of the language being used is: It intends to convey reality without any evidence of it. I don't believe we are in disagreement here. — Philosophim

The point I was trying to make, mostly for argument's sake, is that religious language, while conveying meaning, is so confused that religious beliefs cannot be subject to truth values and cannot even be potentially representational; the fact that no physical evidence supports what the language intends to convey is irrelevant. But I see where you are coming from.

One needs to find a balance between precision and accessibility. The more obscure and technical the topic, the more precise the language generally needs to be, without being so abstruse that it cannot be understood by the intended audience. If the intended audience is more general, then accessibility will generally win out, especially if the consequences of misunderstanding or not communicating the ideas incredibly precisely is not too important. But if the audience is general and the consequences of not communicating the ideas precisely is great, people should just do the requisite reading to understand the language imo.

The final stage is essential and the most difficult, it is the religious stage. Here you take a leap of faith, you belief in something that you can't possibly justify. It's for that reason alone called belief. You discover your meaning in life by resigning to the paradox of faith. — Wittgenstein

That sounds interesting. I'll definitely read some of him. I am inclined to think faith is undesirable being a humanist, but maybe faith does have a place? I'll have to think about that.

The primary purpose is moral/existential assurance from a divine being. You can sort of infer the intention/tacit agreement among religious people as a necessary condition. — Wittgenstein

Yeah, I agree to a certain extent. I still think religion has outlived its usefulness, and that viewing it as a collection of stories/metaphors/sources of existential assurance is the minority view, but still better than telling young children that they are bound for hell.

Here is the thing about language. We can invent whatever terms and ideas we want. But if we are going to claim these terms represent reality, we must show their actual or necessary existence in reality. — Philosophim

Why would someone need to demonstrate anything about reality if they are making a baseless claim?

In fact, Wittgenstein was brought up because it seems unlikely that religious people can demonstrate or describe anything about god. He is, as you say, imaginary. Your argument might be relevant against a theist, but we were not disputing whether or not religious people's claims actually represent physical reality; what is relevant is that they aim to represent reality and fail to do so due to problems inherent to the language used, which is, once again, where Wittgenstein comes in.

edited for coherence, sorry

Otherwise, you would need to explain how people seem to understand a paradoxical langauge. — Wittgenstein

What says that they understand it? There is nothing saying that there can't be dissonance.

I don't agree with Wittgenstein still. — Wittgenstein

Did Wittgenstein actually talk about religion? Or are you just applying what he had to say? Did some research and you seem to just be applying Wittgenstein's theories about patterns of intentions.

l think Wittgenstein was trying to make a more subtle point. It has got to do with psychology. The normative claims won't have the same force to them if you remove the existence of God from religious text but the faith in God according to Wittgenstein primarily serves as source of hope/salvation/peace/courage, it isn't a representation of reality but only used as such for its effectiveness. — Wittgenstein

Well, I can't disagree with that. I think religion serves practical purposes, and I also agree that religious people tacitly agree to use religion for its effectiveness. However, this psychological claim has nothing to do with how we should parse religious language in its usage by religious people when they talk about religious norms except insofar as it reflects on the psychology behind their beliefs; it is just an evaluation of religious language in terms of its effectiveness and psychological components, a way of understanding it from the outside.

If you rob religious language of its explicit, representational meanings religion is no longer religion in the commonly understood sense; it becomes less about a set of norms established by a divine creator and more about preserving a collection of backwards values by packing them into a loosely defined, metaphorical structuration.

I think you misunderstood what l meant by representational view. Wittgenstein thinks we should not see religious language as a reflection of reality (the world out there ) and for him it is perfectly okay to view religion as a collection of commands,hope, ethical viewpoints etc. You can strip away the metaphysics around it. I obviously don't agree with Wittgenstein. Religious language is actually a representation of reality ( according to religious people ). — Wittgenstein

I agree. People often consider the norms established by god to be part of reality, (god is omnipotent, so he could make them an objective facet of reality).Thus, I tend to think that Wittgenstein's view is incompatible with most religious people's beliefs. If they believe god has created objective norms, the representativeness of such commands or morals to those people is real; the metaphysics around it can't really be stripped imo for people who believe in representative norms established by god.

That doesn't really resolve the issue at hand. We don't understand such functions or attributes of God anymore than the word "create" in "God created the world". — Wittgenstein

I suppose so, but it makes sense to me that god's actions would be atemporal if god exists outside time. This can be understood, even if it is impossible to understand what it means to exist outside of time, so I think it is possible to understand the "create" in "god created the world".

I think it would be a misunderstanding to confuse our kind of love with God's love. — Wittgenstein

A totally subjective thing - and lots of religious people I've met seem to perceive god as having a loving nature not unlike themselves, even if it is a perfectly loving nature.

I think you misunderstood what l meant by representational view. Wittgenstein thinks we should not see religious language as a reflection of reality (the world out there ) and for him it is perfectly okay to view religion as a collection of commands,hope, ethical viewpoints etc. You can strip away the metaphysics around it. I obviously don't agree with Wittgenstein. Religious language is actually a representation of reality ( according to religious people ). — Wittgenstein

I'm saying that if you strip the language of its representativeness, its claim on reality, then you also deny revelation's explicitness; the commands, ethical viewpoints, etc. have no special weight; they are neither dependent upon a creator or commanded by a creator. Normatively it just isn't the same. This comes into conflict with the overwhelming majority of people's ideas of religion, something you seem to agree with.

Seriously? Only jews'/muslims' ideas of god?

If God is a transcendental being, existing outside of space and time, how do we make sense of religious language when it talks about the actions/attributes of God. For example, "God created the universe( along with time) " is not a usual statement. The word "create" in its usual/universal use implies a time before creation and a time after creation. — Wittgenstein

But even though the word "create" is incoherent in that context, bringing into play the fact that he/she exists outside of time makes sense of it; it seems to me that god's atemporal actions can be understood as a function of his/her attributes, namely being outside time and space - in this example. Whether or not it is possible for things to exist outside time and space is open ended I think; I am agnostic with respect to such a possibility.

The essence of God is beyond our mind, we cannot comprehend it. The attributes we give to God are unlike our attributes. Our understanding of personal attributes rests on the idea of having a conscious/mind etc but we are not capable of understanding what consciousness means with respect to God. It isn't like ours. As a whole, we don't really understand what we mean by God. — Wittgenstein

I think that people assign plenty of human attributes to god, such as a loving nature. And yes, omnibenevolence, for example, is unlike anything we possess, but it can still be understood and defined.

We should not take a representational account of religious language but try to see its appropriate use in a religious life in form of metaphor, paradox, expectation, commands etc. — Wittgenstein

That robs it of any normative weight. Revelation makes explicit statements that can only be understood in representational terms, such as: "But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you." (Deuteronomy 22: 20-21)

If you rob religious language of its explicit, representational meanings religion is no longer religion in the commonly understood sense; it becomes less about a set of norms established by a divine creator and more about preserving a collection of backwards values by packing them into a loosely defined, metaphorical structuration.

Sorry tim, forgot to tag you. Feel like an idiot. Just replied to your post.

Small steps - for me - to start. It seems to me you have a rules warehouse where rules are stored. But I do not know what that means. — tim wood

More like different, measurable rules are prepared for evaluation when they are needed proximately, and a selection process...selects...certain rules according to parameters. Their usefulness, if meant to create certain outcomes, can be measured and the rule can be modified, something that is an objective endeavor.

And in such a case, how do we know we need one or which one we need? I rather think it does not work that way but that rules are made, created, sometime in the vicinity of the determination of need, and thereafter refined. — tim wood

I'm proposing creating a set of rules that can then be selected from temporally close to when they would be needed, and then selecting from that set based on certain conditions. As for refinement - there is no reason these rules couldn't be measured and improved before being instituted imo. Maybe even science could give us an idea of which rules would work better.

It sounds universal and all-encompassing, while I think it's just a construction within a larger space it does not comprehend. — tim wood

I think you are imagining a larger space where there is none; nothing save god can provide the kind of morally universalistic obligations most people crave.

Sorry, forgot to tag you, I just responded to your post.

That'd depend on your meta-rule which governs selecting the rule. If your meta-rule says to change rules according to circumstance, then the current rule depends on circumstance. — Echarmion

What if the meta-rule were to select a rule via evaluation of a plurality of people's subjective/intersubjective values into which the circumstance is stipulated, along with another stipulation that the actor doesn't matter, that supports those same values? I suppose the meta-rule might be considered relative, however, to the intersubjective values of the plurality.

The rule chosen will always be based on the arbitrary parameters insofar as the parameter caused the rule to be selected. — Echarmion

But if a rule is selected that only exists to support values, and is derived from descriptive facts about people's values, it seems to be absent any arbitrary or subjective content to me. Formally I would frame it like this: "if we have value 'x', then moral rule 'y' supporting it follows." The content of the rule is derived from facts about arbitrary/subjective values, and exists only to further those values.

I think this only seems plausible if you imagine having a small number of rules. But if you had 5.000 different rules, and selected one, it'd be hard to argue the result isn't arbitrary. — Echarmion

Once again, what if the rules are for very specific circumstances? Not to mention if they are part of a set, I don't see how they couldn't be distinct.

Or am I getting my math mixed up with my metaphysics?

I am not sure how a rule could possibly mind-indendent. Rules are a mental phenomenon. — Echarmion

Yeah, you're probably right on that one.

Not sure what "selected" means in your OP. — tim wood

I really mean the rule is selected based on certain subjective parameters, or values, only insofar as they determine what rule should be selected that supports those same parameters or values. But is the rule itself subjective because the input is? Or is it mind-independent and free of subjectivity because it has a purpose that appears to be mind-independent and free of subjectivity?

the rule then becomes a rule, but as the gun was always a gun, so your rule was always a rule - as you observe. — tim wood

But which rule is selected is the result of a value judgement much of the time - especially with respect to moral rules. In fact, which rule is selected is a causal relation in this context; it is objectively true that certain rules will help support certain values more than other rules. So maybe a rule exists in the set, but it doesn't become a moral rule until it is selected for upholding certain values, if one says that moral rules flow from values.

And it seems to me that all rules are arbitrary with respect to raw ground. — tim wood

People's values can be described objectively, and, if a moral rule is selected only insofar as it upholds those values, I think the rule is nonarbitrary and objective as a function of a fact - people's intersubjective values. This follows if, once again, one claims that morals flow from values, values that can also be both subjective and reasoned themselves.

Correction: replace arbitrary with “subjective”

Sure, see ya around!

"If 'we' value X, 'then' Y moral/rule follows" — ChatteringMonkey

This reminds me a lot of the consensus view of morality I came up with. And I see what you mean about intersubjectivity; it is pretty much all we have absent revelation.

What is objective is the 'then' in the moral argument. This is basically a causal relation, certain moral rules will be better at attaining certain values than others, and this could in principle be measured. — ChatteringMonkey

The "then" really is objective. I also agree that certain rules would be better or worse at achieving desired outcomes, and that this could indeed be measured.

What is also objective about morality is 'enforcing' the rule, once you have established the rule. It's objectively true that once has follow or broken a rule. — ChatteringMonkey

I also think that the rule, once codified, is absolute, and that it is also a fact if one has broken it or followed it. I suppose that it would be objective; whether or not it has been broken or followed is an observable fact. And breaking the rule would be objectively wrong. So there is some room for justice.

Overall I couldn't agree more. I get the feeling you either read my consensus morality post or just happen to have an interest in almost exactly the same stuff as me. But I don't really care I guess; a good discussion is a good discussion.

If people bring their values to a vote and the plurality votes in such a way as to create rules for humanity that can be measured and lead to desired outcomes, then what obligates the rest to follow along is that the enforcement of the rule is objective and the rule itself is absolute; not only is there justice but there is such a thing as objective wrongdoing.

I think I can agree to this. There are certainly some objective parts to the process of developing morals, I won't deny that. — ChatteringMonkey

It's more a principle of non-arbitrariness; the definition of objective you are using is the more common usage of the word, not the way it is used in most of the philosophy I've read, which is "independent of the mind".

How are values, if not descriptive, not arbitrary? If it isn't descriptive and it's a value it must be arbitrary it seems to me. Trying to ground it in the social contract does nothing; even if one enters into a contract to uphold certain values that doesn't make the values non-arbitrary. It just means you are contractually obligated to uphold values that, while useful, are, once again, not descriptive.

we get educated in a certain culture and that socio-cultural context is vital for the devellopment of those values and morals. — ChatteringMonkey

Are you saying that since culture provides a system of values that abide by reasoning of some sort, cultural values are not arbitrary?

if you want a morality that works, that people are actually willing to follow, you'll have to take that into account. — ChatteringMonkey

Totally agree.

You might say: "but all ethics are arbitrary". This is not true: while they might not be objective, ethics like consequentialism dictate that the actor should not matter; what is correct for me is correct for you in the same situation, personal predispositions and values mean nothing. Btw I just posted without tagging you, don't know if one can edit in tags.

I think they are measured against values, a plurality of values. We have no absolute grounding in the descriptive for those values, and people do disagree about them, but from those values you can derive, or at least evaluate, morals, i.e. if you value x, then moral y follows... — ChatteringMonkey

I think that moral "rules" refer more to specific sets of regulations determining what is moral, while value is more about usefulness and worth. I think rules are more useful for assessing the morality of actions, while, as you say, values determine many of our moral beliefs. But this makes our moral beliefs entirely arbitrary; if they are derived purely from what each of us values then what is wrong or right depends entirely upon the actor; what is wrong for one person might be right for another person in the same situation. Literally anything could be considered moral, including something like pre-meditated killing.

This is actually similar to the main argument against divine command theory: anything could be considered moral if commanded by god.

correction: basically everyone finds it awful

I will say that relative to a culture one can make the statement that "this is correct for us", and it can be true, but that's not really a normative statement about right and wrong.

The problem with consequentialism is that it is really only feasible in theory, because we value a plurality of different things and it's often not possible to fully calculate the consequences of certain actions in practice because the world is complex. — ChatteringMonkey

That's where infusing a level of intuition into the calculations comes into play; we can operate largely on intuition for most issues, but rely on a calculus for cases that can be reasoned through, are outside intuition, are incredibly important, can be disentangled from local factors, or any combination thereof. For instance: the ethics around kicking a dog are pretty intuitive: don't do it; you wouldn't want to be kicked. But something like waging illegal offensive wars that could kill hundreds of thousands of people because of circumstantial evidence of WMD's? Something like that should be reasoned through.

Then there are certain extreme things I don't want to even think about, because they are just to awful instinctively, which bring in a deontological aspect. A more deontological approach can also be useful for children who don't yet have the ability to think about consequences... as a stepping stone to more mature ethics. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, infanticide, for example, is pretty fucked up, but just because something is awful instinctively that doesn't mean one should back down from it; that is part of why I like Peter Singer - he follows his own arguments to their conclusions, regardless of how awful they are. Sorry if mentioning infanticide ruffles your feathers; I am just using a well known example of an ethical conclusion most people find positively awful.

It might seem as if I am misunderstanding the social contract, but I'm merely working with this:

a way we tend to evaluate morals — ChatteringMonkey

Morals are often measured in terms of rules, so I am saying you need to have rules, which you seem to imply, but these rules have to be normative in ethical terms, not just standards for behavior dictated by a contract if you want to use them to measure the ethics of an action. Or you could go the direction of making a consequentialist argument for the social contract.

Well I guess you're right to to some extend that I don't subscribe to any particular normative ethics, they can all have their uses in different instances.... so if i'd be pressed to give an answer to that question, it's say it's a mix of the big three, with deontology coming last. — ChatteringMonkey

Different normative ethics often times come into conflict; I don't see how one can ascribe to both deontology and, say, consequentialism. One dictates that all that matters is consequences, the other says that the act itself matters and we should follow rules. The two can't both be correct, even if one or the other might seem more expedient depending upon the situation. And I think that you are automatically disregarding deontology if you say circumstances matter, not merely putting it in last place.

That's part of why I want to introduce the social contract, not only as a description of peoples beliefs, but also as a way we tend to evaluate morals... in a dialogue with other people and measured against values that are developed in a culture. — ChatteringMonkey

Once again, that entails only descriptive elements. If you subscribe to an ethic that dictates that people should follow rules that tend to create cooperation and maintain social order then you can weigh whether or not people make moral actions in upholding the social contract. It sounds like you actually believe in a deontological morality if you think that an action's morality can bet determined by a set of rules dictated by a contract, especially if it is tacit.

But yes, the is-ought problem seems intractable to me too. Divine command theory works, but it still sucks, and there is, of course, no reason to believe god exists

But there is nothing that makes moral actions right or wrong if you don't already subscribe to some value, even outside of social contract theory... you can't get an ought from an is regardless, unless you believe in God. — ChatteringMonkey

No, you just aren't subscribing to any normative ethics. The is-ought problem is different from claiming that something is wrong or right with no standards; it is about the coherency of moving from descriptive to normative claims. You are not moving from descriptive to normative claims - you are making purely descriptive claims about people's beliefs and their intentions, desires, or plans to act on those beliefs.

Yes I'm saying the standards come from culture, not from normative ethics. — ChatteringMonkey

But nothing makes those actions right or wrong; even if they fall in line with your descriptive ethics; those just describe what is believed to be wrong or right by people, they don't actually provide standards. You could say "this action is believed to be right by so and so, and they are going to act in accordance with that belief", but this doesn't make it right.

Ultimately, real world moral actions get the meaning and force from implicit or explicit agreements in a certain society... a social contract if you want. — ChatteringMonkey

I don't see how an agreement to give up freedoms for the greater good, or to cooperate, provide standards for right or wrong; some actions are in line with the contract, but that doesn't make them moral unless you already subscribe to an ethic that either explicitly or largely values cooperation and social order.

But first off, just to be clear, I think everything is a natural process, or maybe better a physical process.
Culture is a very specific one though, which only certain biological lifeforms make use of, lifeforms that are capable of creating and using language and meaning. Culture is transmitted by and is only possible for language-users. And evolution is a specific kind of natural process in it's own right, namely one which applies to biological organisms which use DNA. So eventhough they are both natural processes in the widest sense, there is a difference. — ChatteringMonkey

Actually it appears chimps have culture too if this is any good: https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/212/chimpculture/chimpculture.html

A call from a chimpanzee warning of danger I would argue has plenty of meaning. If all that separates culture from being the same as evolution is the ability to speak then this demonstrates otherwise; some chimps have evolved culture without language.

What that tells me - if nature tells us anything - is that we should use this ability, and talk to each other to develop moralities that fit our circumstances (locally and in our time), instead of trying to define once and for all what morality should be (universally, a-temporally and objectively). — ChatteringMonkey

I think you are discounting an entire ethic: normative ethics. Normative ethics prescribe moral actions that, according to some theories, transcend circumstance and are, if they are any good, non-arbitrary. What you describe is applied ethics, deciding how to put moral knowledge into practice. Applied ethics often times has to rely on normative theories, which you appear to disregard. What would real world moral actions mean if there were no standards for right or wrong?

That's partially the point, a simple crap analogy is the place to start. A car and a plane are extremely similar from a systems perspective, cut off the wings and there's a car. When taken apart, the parts will reveal themselves to be very complex. Materials, designed shapes, machining, tolerances, the way the parts must fit to create functioning subsystems are the work of 500 years of culturally acquired cumulative knowledge and technology. Even if it is an exact copy of the car, it will never work as well as an original because you are lacking a lot of the undocumented educated intuition of the original engineers.. — magritte

If anything I would say that the plane, as a system, is far more complex than any of the individual parts - unlike a function mapping the mathematical trajectory it follows (if that's more what you are talking about). It depends upon so many different factors to fly, including all the parts working in unison. What you seem to be saying is that disentangling the system and its subsystems is what is truly difficult. Or am I wrong? The plane is literally composed of thousands of interacting parts and who knows how many subsystems.

I think an evolutionary view of human nature will show that certain things like morality were offloaded from genes to culture precisely because we developed the ability for language, reason etc. — ChatteringMonkey

I think that culture can be viewed from an evolutionary perspective; David Sloan Wilson describes this well; altruism, for example, allows for better outcomes for communities, and thus the individual - on a non-local level. Unless I'm mistaken the arcing transition towards altruism is like any other transition. The evolutionary view is not limited just to what our genes dictate.

from a evolutionary perspective this makes sense because culture is more adaptable than genes, which would make an organism more 'fit' in a host of different and changing environments. — ChatteringMonkey

:up:

You see this is why I think these kind of approaches of looking to human nature for ethics, or any objectivist/essentialist approach for that matter, is exactly the wrong approach, because it one of those things nature 'delegated' to culture. — ChatteringMonkey

I agree: a child raised in a caste system would be different, in some ways, from a child raised in a highly socially mobile environment. But isn't all this a confusion of terms? Isn't human nature just what we possess naturally? Unless you want to claim that culture is the result of, or interacts with, evolutionary traits, in which case you are submitting at least partially to the evolutionary, and potentially objectivist, view. And even if culture were partially responsible, with the evolutionary view of culture I think it could be understood as a natural process like any other, and, thus, human nature can be understood fully from a nomological perspective.

nature tells us to talk and debate about it and create and agree upon our own morals, as an ongoing process... and not to definitively code them in genes or stone, because the world changes. — ChatteringMonkey

I kind of agree; the morality that I outlined a while back left more than enough room for talking and debating; while rules would be made, they would only last until as long as the plurality would want them to.

Its more like scavenging a plane for parts and then modifying those parts to make a heater and then assessing if the modified parts are still part of the original parts. If those parts could be unmodified could they be used for building a plane again? If so, then the makeup of the heater is compatible with that of the plane. Kind of a crap analogy though imo.