You mean that any being cannot escape its own subjectivity?

Yes, but the word 'subjectivity' does not (in my opinion) encompass the totality that word 'being' is capable of expressing.

The bird is as tightly caught in the spell of its own being as we are tightly caught in the spell of our own being. A bird can't sense the beauty we see it in any more than we can sense the beauty a higher being (might) see in us.

Interesting article by Alan Dershowitz

The second question is why did Mueller charge Flynn only with lying? The last thing a prosecutor ever wants to do is to charge a key witness with lying.

Isn´t the problem of subjectivity, only a problem because questions that contain in them ideas that are thought to be "subjective", don't actually contain in them, or in the context that they are put in, the necessary information for objective valuation, thus making the question unanswerable?

A certain amount of circularity is involved. I must sense the object in order to know that it is an object outside me. The experience of a tree is never just of a tree, we experience a tree in a setting, at a particular time and we are at a distance from it.

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

What is objective is the experience of the tree. It is only by deconstruction of our experience that the tree can be conceptualized as part of that experience...as part of the scene. The tree assumes an objective role, a presence, because it is at a distance from us, it is not part of us. Good theater.

Is 'information' physical?

All information is intentional, and none of it is physical unless you really believe that Jesus put his face on a tree burl or perhaps its him on the Shroud of Turin, pareidolia.

Forgetting is kind of a filtering process that enables us to remember significant experiences and disregard insignificant ones.

according to a new review paper from Paul Frankland, a senior fellow in CIFAR's Child & Brain Development program, and Blake Richards, an associate fellow in the Learning in Machines & Brains program, our brains are actively working to forget. In fact, the two University of Toronto researchers propose that the goal of memory is not to transmit the most accurate information over time, but to guide and optimize intelligent decision making by only holding on to valuable information.

Because we are human beings and perhaps because we are the only sentient race we know of, we assume that it is a given that the human race is 'good' but if our behavior isn't that different to viruses and or invasive species should that lead us to reconsider the notion that it is a given that our race is 'good'?

Nature and Life seems to be pragmatically inclined, is this what you mean by "good", I am assuming that we cannot ascribe any moral value to nature or life as such.

It is not obvious to me why there should be some causal link between natural features and such sensations of awe in this way. It is also perhaps surprising that such landscapes enjoy an almost universal ability to bring about such feelings - film and poetry have so often relied upon this idea by using location as a means to convey drama / wonder.

The sense of awe at power, tremendous force of nature is not confined to mountains. The idea that mountains provide ample opportunity was put forward by Kant and then was taken up primarily by the British on their Grand Tour to Italy as a way to have a peak aesthetic experience as part of the trip.

This conception of "awe" experienced of nature's immense power, which pushes man's sensibilities beyond their imaginative capability (Kant). It can't be conceptualized, but it can be felt as a kind of negative pleasure, which moves vision to the visionary.

You appear to be suggesting that slavery is good if one is a slave to the right person or thing. Strange, as I remember you being on the "tear down any 'Confederate' statue" boat because they represented slavery, presumably.

Paul is expressing slavery to Christ as a way of being in Christ, not by shackles, whips, or physical force but in a free act of the will. Your OP asked if belief was necessary for salvation. The Bible's description of what happened to Paul on his way to Damascus suggests that the Lord can choose his own instruments.

The Lord replied to Paul (2 Cor 12:9)
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness"

This is what I find fascinating about Paul, this conception of infinite power in powerlessness.

Physical, forced labor as part of an economic system built on a slave class is immoral. Being a willing slave to one's conception of God is very different kind of slavery. There are few slaves that choose to become or remain slaves, unlike Paul who freely made this choice. It is a radical move for one who previously persecuted Christians.

'Saul' was a noble and kingly name. His switch to 'Paul' was to a diminutive nickname given to a slave. He became a slave to the Messiah, "For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2Cor:12:10)

His strength and his brilliance came from his weakness, slavery to God set him free.

Act 9

As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

Paul gave up eating donuts.

we are the way we are.
— @VagabondSpectre

This does not imply that we are the way we ought be.

"we are the way are" because that is the way we imagine our self as acting in our relationship with our self and others.

How "we ought to be" suggests to me a mysterious tableau somewhere outside "the way we are", and I suggest that our code of conduct already contains this tableau ( & others) which are already manifest in the way we are.

The ancient saying "know thyself" applies.

↪Cavacava Are you are stating that pragmatism is the best system? Or are you open to a plurality of competitors to pragmatism?

I am suggesting that pragmatism may be a way to confront relativism from within a relativistic standpoint. If our description of the world on a perspective basis leads to a plurality of possible interpretations, then pragmatism may be a way to thin out this plurality by choosing those interpretations which are better because they are more useful in living our life and similarly discounting those which are not.

What competitors do you have in mind and are they viable in a similar manner?

What if someone says, "I don't find pragmatism appealing....I like X instead." Must he be converted to pragmatism?

No, but that person must be able to show their "system" is a viable or superior contender.

It also seems to me that relativism is meaningless, so objectivity wins out over relativism.

Everything objective must be first thought, but there is no way to confirm that what is thought is the way things are. Perhaps the only way around relativism, while still retaining it and and at the same time limiting its scope, is pragmatism where only what fits and works out for us becomes the "correct" view of reality".

Suppose that we have evolved to behave in a certain way.

It remains an open question as to whether we ought behave in that way.

History tells us how we have behaved for the last 5000 years, and we are still looking into it, still going to war, still making the same mistakes we have always made.

I think we know what we ought to do, we just don't do it.

I agree that all that we experience is natural, all our works, thoughts and actions, but this concept is non-differential, and therefore I don't think it is useful. It is in drawing distinctions between nature made, animal made or man made that differences can be significant and useful for us.

My thoughts seem to be close to what you have outlined.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", reminds me of Protagoras "Man is the measure of all things", subjective yes, it is a form of relativism and perhaps pragmatism is the only way around relativism. The only pragmatic aspect to beauty as I see it, is the qualification of the beholder's ability to recognize Beauty, be able to distinguish creativity from that which is derivative. The combination of history, natural talent and education which enables a sense of Taste in the beholder.

Resonance. The beautiful (is that which) causes resonates. This allows for the beautiful to be either created or natural - the effect is the measure! The beautiful, then, is within us and nowhere else, or so it must seem.

If it is a measure, then it is a measure of affective intensity, and not signification or meaning. When I view a great work of art, it announces itself, and yes the effect is within me, but at the same time these works differentiate themselves from all other objects. If I recall correctly, Hanna Ardent called art works thought-objects.

As affect, the beautiful seems to be that which gives the moment its greatest presence, its greatest fulfillment with that which we always want more of (even if it inspires awe, even a kind of terror!)

There are different aspects to beauty, so yes beauty gives "moment its greatest presence" but the immediate beauty in a complex line of poetry may be paralleled by a less immediate, more contemplative beauty embedded in our imagination. (I think terror is in the provenance of The Sublime.)

The beautiful, then, seems to be a kind of communication or encounter with an other, whether inter- or intrapersonal, that, being perceived, causes a momentary (for however long the moment lasts) peak experience. What there is in the communication that stands as the cause (aka the beautiful) depends both on the recipient as individual (I'm a swine, you're not), as member of a culture (they're swine, we're not), and as a member of humanity (no swine here).

We live in a world full of narratives, they enable us to communicate with each other. The beautiful suggests its own narrative, which when successful gets incorporated into this world of narratives. The creativity of a beautiful narrative enables us to expand our concepts. It opens up space in our imagination by struggling against existing narratives, in this strife the work's truth either prevails or it is still born,

It is good only in so far as it suggests that truth is not the exclusive provenance of academics, lawyers and others whose supercilious views treat ordinary people like something to be swept under the rug. Like Hillary telling coal miners:

"We Are Going To Put A Lot Of Coal Miners & Coal Companies Out Of Business"

That leaves questions: beauty is arguably a product of struggle. But the struggle itself is not product; it's producer. Can the production be beautiful? Clearly it can be.

No less a philosopher than William Fenton Russell makes the point: if basketball is ever beautiful, that beauty comes out of the struggle, the contest. If instead of competing (he argues) the athletes carefully rehearsed pas de deux with supporting corps de ballet, the results would not be beautiful.

The artist's production of a work of art is a struggle for a) the artist, b)the viewer c) and for society. The artist struggle is with the paint, the basketball, all of the matter and instruments used in the production of the work, shaping them to his will in with the creation of form making the invisible visible. The style of the work is like the flow in team sports. All goes well when the viewer's mimics the artist's creative struggle because the work, if beautiful, give us pleasure which enables us to move beyond our determinate concepts, in pleasure and pain, in the aesthetic effect, we move beyond the visible. Maybe like 'hang time'



Beautiful art pushes against norms, declares itself against the preconception of our normative ideas, like Michael's hang time. Art that is merely political is kitsch. The artist pushes against norms and the beauty of the work is its battering ram and its siren.

So, what are we to make of politicians who intentionally create a narrative that does not educate the people on the known effects/affects of the policy in question; the one which the narrative means to 'sell'?

Trump's " true hyperbole" ("Art of the Deal") argues for the productive effect of innocent exaggeration, as opposed to negative exaggerations and fabrications. The rhetorical effect is like that of the unreliable narrator. He is only concerned with his audience acceptance. He wants his audience to take him seriously, but not literally.

He speeches are almost impressionistic, bouncing around from topic to non-sequiturish topic. spiced with truths, exaggeration or all kinds, as well flat out fabrications. His audience does not care, they understand that if something he says does not appeal to them or make sense, he has a whole gaggle of other points that they can accept. His points are like free floating signifiers with indeterminate meanings, meanings that you are free to accept, connect or reject. It's all OK as long as you are entertained, because that's Trump's ultimate shtick.

He is not presenting his audience with logic, he is much more affective. Listen to his vocabulary which valuates with simple words like "nice", "so great", "loyalty", "beautiful", always expresses his "love" or "hates" of this or that. He does not approach a topic like a lawyer, with cool hard precision, rather his approach is on an emotional level connecting with his audience's hopes and fears.

So unlike Hillary, whose approach is coldly logical and dismissive of Trump's populism, she can never reach his level of connection. Trump said that Mexico is sending bad people into the US, "rapists", he at the same time he says he loves the Mexican people. Hillary never said she loves the Mexican people. Trump got 29% of the Hispanic vote, which was better than the 27% that Romney got when he ran against Obama.

Trump identifies with the working person, the poor, uneducated worker and he juxtaposes this population, his audience, against the academics, the lawyers and others, who cannot understand him because they assume a logic, a discursive basis for rhetoric.

Is it not foolhardy just to seek vein pleasures and not swim the depths of sorrow that seem so much deeper and more important?

She shoots up her "vein pleasures" by the shot. She silently dances to her sadness, oblivious to the rest of the world. A negative pleasure.

My wounded rhymes make silent cries tonight
My wounded rhymes make silent cries tonight
And I'll keep it like a burning
Longing from a distance

Hegel's concept of alienation has to do with human powers, and needs, which form reality for a man who finds himself in a certain context or history.

Man takes needs which he can't realize, which in fact disappoint him and he posits these needs to a fictional entity which has them in abundance, and he gives that entity power over what he ought to do, thereby alienating himself from his own power. As man develops his technology and rationally, it enables him to satisfy the needs the aspects which he initally posited to god. which are overcome enabling man to now get back the powers he posited in god. God then becomes more abstract, god is love, justice and so on.

It is part of Hegel analytical method...initial meanings, a state of alienation, and then overcoming of alienation asserting new meanings. Marx adopts this schema.

His treatment of god in his aesthetic theory is different. He says (SEP):

In religion—above all in Christianity—spirit gives expression to the same understanding of reason and of itself as philosophy. In religion, however, the process whereby the Idea becomes self-conscious spirit is represented—in images and metaphors—as the process whereby “God” becomes the “Holy Spirit” dwelling in humanity. Furthermore, this process is one in which we put our faith and trust: it is the object of feeling and belief, rather than conceptual understanding.

The critical parts of being able to distinguish truth from falsity?

Perhaps like trust (as a needed part) being certified by a third 'neutral' party consensus as a regular part of what we receive from media. Decisions concerning the truth of the matter are then is up to you, and your interlocutors based on trusted sources. Of course 'neutral' is still problematic, but it at least, it always has been problematic. People will still disagree but, on something that really happened and not an invented story, or on what people actually said, and not false statements.

Local knowledge starts with Trust and that is exactly what Google and Facebook are initiating.

These new indicators, being launched by Facebook and Google but created in consultation with 75 news organizations worldwide, will appear as “i” symbols alongside articles posted online and will indicate how a story was reported, the media company’s standards and the writer’s credentials.

We can be clear about breakdowns in translation when they are local enough, for
a background of generally successful translation provides what is
needed to make the failures intelligible.

This is not enough for Davidson, but I think it may be the best place to start. Local constellations, or domains, where we have a familiar basis for differentiating truth from falsity and thereby, perhaps enabling a discussion of the critical parts which, if they can be determined. can/ought be used to approach the whole.

I don't support a naturalistic, causal explanation of this process.

Not sure what you mean with the last statement. I think we agree on the rest.

I mean that I don't think that evolutionary explanations, or explanations of actions which rely on the physical happenings in the brain, or its chemical composition are explanations of moral behavior. They may illuminate what is happening or even provide a basis upon which to view actions, but they do not explain why people act morally or immorally.

What people think is moral is often quite unreasonable (see: all superstitions that have moral ramifications). Sometimes starting values are inherently unreasonable (pleasing god) and sometimes methods are unreasonable (honor killing), and sometimes both (honor killing to please god), and so I would posit that such positions, being unreasonable, are not actually moral by rational standards.

During WWII Stuart Hampshire, an English philosopher, was in France working with the French Resistance (WWII examples are the best). He was tasked by the Resistance with questioning a man about German plans but the Resistance told Hamphsire that after he spoke to the man they would kill the man regardless of what the man said or didn't say.

When Hampshire quizzed the man, the man said that he would give him information if he promised that he would be handed over to the British. Hampshire said no he could not promise that, and the man said nothing and he was latter shot.

The most reasonable course of action, the one with the most utility, in this situation would have been to lie to the man, which might have saved French lives, but Hampshire could not compromise his ow integrity (read honor) and lie to the man about such a thing. Can you question his moral position.

I think the identification reason=utility=justice, leaves out some critical moral aspects of what it is to be a moral agent.

Regarding honor killings:

The examples you give are "moral decisions", but the values which support them are not widely agreed upon at all, which is what makes them easily contestable and weak.

I think morality arises somewhere in the distinction between justice and utility, where some actions we take may be viewed as being just but not serving a public sense of utility (serving the public's interest). Societies where religious and familial values are manifest in daily life view what is just differently, and not primarily based on a notion of utility.

BBC’s Asian network, 1 in 10 of the 500 young south Asians surveyed said they would condone any murder of someone who threatened their family’s honor.

Wikipedia also suggests that in some societies, very little, if any social stigma is attached to honor killings. Defense of the family honor is considered just in these societies.

I don't think it is a weak claim, even Christ brought up honor killings. It is an established tradition some societies, part of a very different belief system. So how would that conversation go...I don't think it would go well or very far. It is perhaps in a way similar to the conversation between a slave owner and an abolitionist in the 18th century.

Old traditions don't change readily or all that rationally, unless new value systems are systematically enforced. Ultimately, I think it was establishment of a multiplicity of laws which have evolved over many generations that have changed public opinion, and continue to shape our considerations

"reason" is the value; the why of the ought.

Reason has no value other than its own inherent utility, but what is moral/just is not always what is most reasonable.

A mutation similar to what it took for us to develop and use language. Real esp?

Maybe truth today has to be local, familiar, in the neighborhood. Once you get away from home territory it is easy to get lost, confused by competing claims to truth and falsity.

Can you give an example of a moral agreement that is not based on some shared value?

How about honor killing, or suicide bombing..I guess divine command theory in general?

When we limit what counts as a moral claim to only utterances of ought, we continue to work from an archaic impoverished notion of what counts as a moral claim.

I think we all make moral claims to objective rightness, which must be judged on the basis of rational arguments based on our convictions and beliefs regardless of normative contexts. Arguments to support our beliefs, feelings, and convictions can be measured against one another and judged based on their soundness and validity. Defective judgements do exist.

I don't support a naturalistic, causal explanation of this process.

@VagabondSpectre

In order for a moral agreement/system to actually exist between two or more parties, they must necessarily share some beliefs about what constitutes harm and happiness. Where conflict might arise that can infringe or damage our mutually shared values/beliefs, it becomes rational and appealing for us to come to an agreement in order to protect those values.

I am not sure that this is the case. I think that all actions require a cause or a reason, and that some reasons for actions are better arguments than others regardless of whether or not we share the same value or belief system.

I have read Davidson's essay "On the very idea of a Conceptual Scheme" a few times, it seems to me that he reaches a paradoxical conclusion:

It would be wrong to summarize by saying we have shown how
communication is possible between people who have different
schemes, a way that works without need of what there cannot be,
namely a neutral ground, or a common coordinate system. For
we have found no intelligible basis on which it can be said that
schemes are different. It would be equally wrong to announce the
glorious news that all mankind -all speakers of language, at
least - share a common scheme and ontology. For if we cannot
intelligibly say that schemes are different, neither can we intelligibly
say that they are one.

This seems (to me) to leave us with an ongoing problem of ambiguous translation.

How?

Being social then, according to this, is not acting as we see fit...

Doesn't make sense.

Nature forces us to be social, but to be social means that we respect of the rights of others, we become moral, the topic of discussion. The laws of nature are swapped for normative laws, the laws of men.

Makes a lot of sense.

How is that not natural?

The distinction has to do with nature's forcing us to be social, in spite of our natural instinct to act as we see fit. It is a defensive maneuver that sets man against nature, this maneuver enables man to attempt to conquer nature to make life livable.

The idea - not too controversial I hope - is that the typical behaviour of individuals in society is shaped - but not 'determined' - by what might be called the 'incentive structure’ of that society: the rough system of rewards, punishments, pleasures, accolades and disincentives that permeate it

Social behavior must confront the reality of where it finds itself. A city has highways and byways, is set in the middle of a desert or on the mouth of a river, it has a down town an uptown, and an out of town. What people in any city can do is not entirely up to them, there is a large confluence of real structures and junk space, historical facts, and chance occurrences that effect what has and what can be done and thereby what can be thought. Following Rem Koolhaas thoughts and investigations.

By gratuitous assertion?

What is the criterion which when met, counts as being by nature?

It sounds reasonable to me, hardly gratuitous.

As stated our sociability is necessary for our survival, even though this sociability goes against our natural impulses to satisfy all our desires.

By what standard are you determining human nature?

Aristotle. The following from Leo Strauss "The City and Man":

Man is not by nature social, i.e. Nature dissociates men. This however means that nature compels man to to make himself social; only because nature compels man avoid death, as the greatest evil can man compel himself to become and to be a citizen. The end is not something toward which man is by nature inclined but something toward which he is by nature compelled; more precisely, the end does not beckon man but it must be invented by man so that he can escape his natural misery, Nature supplies with an end only negatively: because the state of nature is intolerable.

Humans are both, reasonable and sensitive creatures. The Rousseau quote implied otherwise, as if we could not be both.

Yes, I think affects are blind without reason, but reason is practical, the only 'ought' it subscribes to is its own soundness and validity,