I have been faced with similar situations when I approached some religions/spiritualities. But I wasn't actually sure that something I enjoyed was wrong, and I wasn't sure that something I'm disgusted by was right -- instead, I felt enormously pressured to have such surety, and my continual involvement was predicated on at least aiming for such surety. I couldn't stand it for long, though, and eventually broke off my involvement with them. I'm also facing such situations in relation to politics, and as things stand, my current means of coping is cynicism.Yes, and what if you are absolutely sure that something you enjoy is wrong and something you're disgusted by is right? Would you change your behaviour to reflect your moral knowledge, or would you decide to continue as you were? — Michael
While a person's moral stances can remain the same for long periods of time, things can change. External events might provoke one to think and act in ways that one previously thought unimaginable, not only impossible.If it could be proved beyond all doubt that there was a God, that divine command theory is true, and that we have a moral obligation to kill infidels then I still wouldn't kill infidels because I don't want to be a killer. Morality be damned.
The problem is the bit about _everyone_. It's usually not the case that everyone thinks the same way. This is why the issues of whether moral facts exist or not and whether a belief is true or not come into play. As soon as someone is "different" than the majority, this will have some practical consequences for the person (often adverse ones), and the person will try to make sense of this being different and of how other people treat them because of it.1. No morality but everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
2. It is immoral to kill babies and everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
3. It is moral to kill babies but everyone believes that it is immoral to kill babies
What is the practical difference between these worlds?
It seems to me that only moral beliefs matter. Whether or not the beliefs are true has no practical relevance. — Michael
Because you haven't internalized the metaphysical framework needed for said obligation to make sense.Perhaps I should have said that it isn't necessarily a sufficient reason. If I were to somehow know that I have an obligation to kill children, I would need a more convincing reason to carry it out. That I am obligated isn't reason enough for me. — Michael
For most people who (claim to) obey God's law, that motivation appears to be pre-cognitive; ie. they have internalized it before they were even old enough to think about it.So what is the motivation to obey God's moral laws? — Michael
Moral obligation only makes sense in a religious framework to begin with.I, for one, am not motivated simply by the belief (or knowledge) of what I ought to do. — Michael
As is inevitably the case for someone who is not religious or whose sense of morality is not shaped after religions.I can't make the possibility of any kind of moral obligation believable. That's really what I'm trying to show here. — Michael
Because moral obligations only make sense in the framework of religion. Only religion has the metaphysical underpinnings needed for making moral obligations intelligible (and the practical means for raising prospective believers).If it's logically possible for there to be a moral obligation to harm and if it's logically possible for there to be a moral obligation to not harm, and if there's no practical difference between being morally obligated to harm and being morally obligated to not harm, then moral obligations are a vacuous concept.
Again, "Why be moral?" is an infelicitous question - being moral is what you ought to do. Hence the answer to "ought you be moral?" is "yes!" — Banno
Insanity.Perhaps we could say that it is best for us to live the truly moral life. But what if what is right is what we find reprehensible?
/.../
Would you accept a morality that stands in stark opposition to your personal values? What would it mean for you if you'd found this to be the case? — Michael
Insanity.And what difference would it make if there was no morality at all?
It seems to me that the implicit assumption in all this is that people don't know, aren't sure about what is moral and what isn't. That there is a fundamental possibility of moral doubt (in every person?).It seems to me that the only difference is that in the second one we would be correct in believing that it is immoral to kill babies. But what difference would being correct make to being incorrect? Presumably, regardless of what is or isn't the case, you wouldn't kill babies. Or would you convert to baby killing if you'd found it to be moral? In the unlikely case you'd say yes: then it's your belief that matters, not the fact-of-the-matter -- what difference does the fact-of-the-matter make?
If you told me baby murdering were ethical, I guess I'd have to murder babies even if it made me sad to wrestle them from the hands of their mothers and dash them upon rocks. — Hanover
It seems the OP and several other posters here take for granted that the meaning of hate/harm (as well as goodness, evil, etc.) _should_ be transparently obvious to everyone. And that if a particular person doesn't think/feel the way they do, then the fault is with that person (ie. said person is "morally or cognitively defective").Are we to simply presume that what these terms stand for is transparently obvious to everyone? — Joshs
Yes and yes, I agree.Isnt the problem of interpretation the central issue of ethics? And doesn’t this problem make all ethical questions inherently political?
How do you propose to measure this?More or less – I'd put it: 'Prevent or relieve more suffering than you cause'. — 180 Proof
And yet there are people who pretty much live like zombies, at least some of their time. Not people in a coma, but people who mindlessly peruse Facebook and such.
— baker
Those people are not physically identical to us, and so aren't relevant to Michael's argument. — wonderer1
Or, to quote you, "Don't be a cunt."Are these sorts of maxims ultimately just variations on, 'Do not cause suffering?' — Tom Storm
Of course it does. Your system of morality is structurally the same as a religious one, except that in your case, it isn't a god sitting at the top. But you operate from the same assumptions of objectivity and universality of morality as religion does.The OP thought-experiment mentions "commandment" for nonreligious persons. Nothing I've said here has any whiff of "divine command theory". — 180 Proof
commandment for anyone that isn't religious — mentos987
society — FrankGSterleJr
I don't see why he's fighting to be on any ballot considering he's already told us the elections are rigged. Why does he want to enter a contest where he knows the result is already decided against him? — Hanover
But you believe commands command and orders order.
— NOS4A2
Yes, just as guns kill.
I’m just trying to wade through the magical thinking here.
— NOS4A2
It's not magic, it's common sense. The problem is that your position is nonsense. — Michael
I think the most reasonable perspective on p-zombies is that they are an incoherent idea. — wonderer1
I wonder if people realize that this thread in a nutshell explains why Trump might win a second term.
The disdain for ordinary people, the "all means necessary" approach confirming one's own moral bankrutpcy while pretending to have a moral high ground, etc. — Tzeentch
What kind of person would do what Giuliani did? You ruined people's lives, and for what? To prove your loyalty to Trump? — GRWelsh
How he can remain a candidate in light of all this beggars belief. He's seeking popular support to overturn the constitution. The electors want the right to overturn elections. Makes zero sense. — Wayfarer
This is the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics. Moral realism – like non-cognitivism, subjectivism, and error theory – is a theory in metaethics. Utilitarianism and deontology are theories in normative ethics. — Michael
This is doubtful, already physiologically.I would expect that an infant sees what I see when it looks at a flower, despite it not having any sense of what is socially agreed upon. — Hanover
The standard counterargument to this is the complexity of color words across different languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_termThis concept would apply cross-culturally as well, lending support to the idea that we reach out to the flower to pick it not due to some inter-subjective, socially agreed upon basis, but because we think the flower it out past our hand ripe for picking.
I know you can't drop all that nonsense about things in themselves and phenomenal states of consciousness, and although it provides a basis for some wonderful pretence, in the end it confuses you. — Banno
If it bothers you that I'm labeled with a disability, and that I outperform you in most ways. — Vaskane
The flower has four petals regardless of what you suppose. — Banno
Exactly. You're thinking like a lawyer, not a philosopher. Except that we're at a philosophy forum.Ah, if only we were in a court of law. I would object to your "response" as being unresponsive, and I think any Judge in the external world would sustain the objection. — Ciceronianus
But in this unhappy, imperfect universe we must make judgments without the benefit of absolute knowledge, on the best evidence available at the time we make them. And we do, in real life, if we're wise. — Ciceronianus
That was actually the prevailing belief back then: that children are just like adults, only smaller. The belief was that children were only quantitatively different from adults, but not qualitatively. (I read somewhere Kant believed children cried because they were angry because they couldn't use their bodies properly yet.)Have you ever thought that those children in pre-Renaissance painting actually were little adults? Or just that the artists who painted them thought they were?
The psychological equivalents of solipsism are narcissism and egoism. Which are fairly common, and appear to be on the trajectory to becoming virtues.Ask yourself when you last acted as if there were no other people, no things, no animals, i.e. nothing other than yourself. — Ciceronianus
Actually, children do such things, according to Piaget's theory of cognitive development. :)When did you last believe, and treat, people you see across the street from you as if they were only, e.g., 6 inches tall because that's how they appeared to be when you saw them, and thought that they became 6 feet tall when they crossed the street to speak to you?
When did you last ponder whether the car you're driving was in fact a car having the characteristics of a car as you understand them to be, or instead something else you can never know (if, indeed, it was anything at all)? When did you last question whether the office building in which you work remained the same building, because it looked one way when you entered it in the morning, when the sun was out, but did not look the same as it did then when you left it at night?
Chances are you never did anything of the sort.
Object permanence is the understanding that whether an object can be sensed has no effect on whether it continues to exist. This is a fundamental concept studied in the field of developmental psychology, the subfield of psychology that addresses the development of young children's social and mental capacities. There is not yet scientific consensus on when the understanding of object permanence emerges in human development.
/.../
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence
Western philosophy has affectation built in as a feature, in the assumption that an argument can somehow "stand on its own", regardless of who is making it; "a fallacious ad hominem" is considered a pleonasm, as if every argument against the person is automatically fallacious.I don't say certain philosophers are hypocrites, or even that they're disingenuous when they contend that what we see and interact with every day without question isn't real, or can't be known, but when what we do is so contrary to what we contend, or what we contend is so unrelated to what we do as to make no difference in our lives, I think we have reason to think that we're engaged in affectation.
How could we possibly know?Does the world have any kind of coherence at all without us providing a point of view and the language to 'demonstrate' the relationships we see? — Tom Storm
What do you mean here by "responsibility"?
— baker
Responsibility for what you say and do; to answer for it, to make it intelligible, clarify, qualify, be read by it, judged by it, held to it, make excuses for it, etc. That words not only do not stand outside of the circumstances in which they are spoken, but that an expression is an event that has an afterwards, to which you are tied. — Antony Nickles
People also like 'standing up to the man' etc.. and these misguided emotions often land people in prison. — AmadeusD
/.../Those are facts of our human condition, but outside the realism/anti-realism distinction, which is just the desire to avoid our responsibility for our acts by making it about just doing what is right, what we “ought” to—made certain (apart from me) by “facts”. — Antony Nickles
It's not about others lying or being mistaken.I'm not sure if "on trust" is entirely accurate. I think it would be more a case of making a judgment based on the weight of the evidence, which may be indirect. What's the probability that everyone without the problem would lie to us, or be mistaken? — Ciceronianus
The problem has more to do with how it's projected or sold as a goal to everyone, which included myself. I firmly believe it's incredibly unhelpful and even harmful to become a Buddhist for the purpose of attaining nirvana. It's akin to studying maths to win the fields medal or solve one of the 7 millennium problems. I can almost guarantee disappointment to anyone who does this.
— Sirius
It's 'projected and sold' to those who want to it to be, of which there are many. — Wayfarer
That's not the recognition of diminishing returns I'm talking about. I'm talking about someone who works hard in order to be able to afford the proverbial eating, drinking, and making merry, and who realizes that the eating, drinking, and making merry don't compensate for the hard work needed in order to be able to afford the eating, drinking, and making merry. I'm talking about people who, for example, one day realize that they need to work for an entire day in order to earn the money to be able to go to the cinema, and that the pleasure of watching the film doesn't outweigh the hardship needed to earn the money to be able to go see the film.If you want me to be completely honest. I have felt and do feel the diminishing returns thanks to my depression. — Sirius
Who gave you that medicine?I know what is it like for nothing to satisfy you, not even an hour long meditation session, medication, a dedicated study of the religious scriptures of all major world religions does the job for me
Why am l bitter ? Cause the medicine l was given didn't cure me of my illness.
I think perhaps, I would say, the correct sentence structure (in this particular context) for a realist then, would be "I think xyz about, what I think, is London".
But i do think the force of habit is strong enough to explain why realists talk in those absolutes anyway. — AmadeusD
Only on the assumption that everyone is equal.Questions of morality are about what everyone should choose. — Banno
It's subjective in the sense that it's people who are talking about its existence.
— baker
I think it goes further. It's subjective in the sense that it is an artificial label upon something that has no conformity to the label other than in the mind of a subject who has accepted the command to apply the label to that plot of land. — AmadeusD