Soviet Russia murdered more than 20 million and Maoist China more than 60 million of their own people. — Apollodorus

Kindly provide us with the statistic of the abortions that Christian women have had.

Philosophy is self-serving nonsense - as Witti showed. It is easy to mythologise the philosopher king, to suppose that the philosopher has something worthwhile to add to the discussion. Mostly this is a mistake. — Banno

Philosophy as one massive argumentum ad absurdum?

Philosophy as elitism.
— Banno
yells the mob. — Wayfarer

Only the elite have the time for philosophy.

It's highly useful. The issue is how do we identify moral behaviour in doctors (or anyone)? We only have one way: their actions. The fact that you may not see them at work is irrelevant to the point. The point is ethical behaviour is demonstrated you can't discover it by what someone says publicly or writes about it. In the case of doctors and mental health professionals - given that they work openly with patients every day - it is actually very easy to see what kind of person they are. — Tom Storm

Except that the relevance of this observation depends on one's position in the hierarchy. A patient's perception of their therapist's behavior is irrelevant, because the patient has no actual power in the situation. Similar to the way a student's perception of their teacher's behavior is irrelevant, or the employee's of their employer.

Yet only psychologists/psychiatrists have the legal right to interfere with the lives of others. There's a clear power imbalance.
— baker
This is factually wrong.

Now who's pessimistic?
The pair being discussed was philosophers vs. psychologists/psychiatrists.


Which gets me to my point: In practice, what gets to count as moral has a lot to do with one's position in the hierarchy.
If a child lies to her parents, that is morally wrong. If parents lie to their child, it's generally not. If the child lies to a stranger in a white unmarked van offering her sweets and a ride, it's not wrong.
Taking eggs from a hen is not stealing. Using the company's car for your own private things is.
And so on.

So, perhaps it is similar to the case when we state, “Onions taste awful,” that the syntax is configured in such a way to be making a general statement when in actuality, we are making a particular subjective statement.
— Cartesian trigger-puppets
/.../
But I do think that as our language evolved it was heavily influenced by the absolute and objective sense of moral values (and to a lesser extent an egoistic sense of aesthetic values) imposed by religious authority and thus retains a theocentric syntactic structure of the vast majority of time that our language's has undergone it's development. It is reflective of a time when divine command was the objective truth and fact of moral value. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

There is also the issue of cognitive economy and other issues of practical economy.
In the light of this, a list of commandments like the biblical ten commandments is actually to be read as a bullet point list where each point is intended for further elaboration and where contextual knowledge determines what the proper elaboration is.
Much like a shopping list: when you make for yourself a shopping list, you write just "bread" and not the specific type of bread you intend to buy, even though only a few types of bread are acceptable for you. Someone else who is not familiar with your bread preferences doesn't know this and couldn't adequately shop for you merely from reading your shopping list.

We can surmise from the Old Testament which provides the context for the ten commandments that the ten commandments, even though they are composed in an absolute form, are not to be taken that way. For example, in the OT, there are many God given laws as to who is supposed to be killed, even though a commandment states that one should not kill. So the OT's stance is not "killing is wrong", but, at most, "killing otherwise than stated in laws given by God is wrong."

(Leaving aside for the moment that chiseling all those additional words onto stone plates is rather laborious and would require them to be much bigger and heavier than they are (which is an issue when you travel by foot or donkey).)

Somewhere along the way, by omitting references to the divine source of morality, some people ended up with a simplistic notion of moral commandments that is impossible to live by without such adherence becoming detrimental to one's survival and wellbeing.

We need the input of an actual proponent of moral realism here. The only one I can think of is .

Let's contrast taste with morality. That you do not eat onions is perhaps a preference you would not insist applies to everyone. That folk should not lie is presumably a preference that you and I would insist applies to everyone. That is, one of the characteristics of moral statements is that they are not only about how the speaker should act, but how everyone, in comparable circumstances, should act. — Banno

The problem is, what makes for "comparable circumstances"?

Comparable age, socio-economic status, sex, race, relative position in the socio-economic hierarchy between the parties involved (e.g. whether one is the boss or the employee, the parent or the child, etc.), relative position in the situation at hand (e.g. a court hearing about a traffic accident with a fatal outcome; parent asking the child about whether she's using drugs)?

We might usefully analyse a belief as a relation between an individual and a statement, such that the individual takes the statement to be true. What is gained by describing it as subjective? — Banno

Perspective, contextual placement, relativization, optionality, ownership, responsibility.

So was I. It can work and treatment has probably (for all the mistakes) provided more happiness to people than philosophy or pondering moral facts ever did. — Tom Storm

Oh? You'd tell Plato to go seek the help of a psychiatrist?
I'm sure some people benefit more from psychology/psychiatry than they do from philosophy. And then there are those who benefit more from philosophy than they do from psychology/psychiatry. Yet only psychologists/psychiatrists have the legal right to interfere with the lives of others. There's a clear power imbalance.

Like any group they are not monolithic and hold diverse beliefs. But I am not all that interested in the moral beliefs people hold. People's actions are more significant.

I'm not asking about the moral beliefs they profess to have, I'm asking about those they actually have (which they may or may not speak of openly).
If you look at the DSM, for example, you can infer that it espouses the morality and worldview of the atheist, secular (upper) middle class, even though officially, psychology/psychiatry is supposed to be morally and religiously neutral.

But I am not all that interested in the moral beliefs people hold. People's actions are more significant.

Sounds like a good slogan. But it's quite useless, given that one gets to see only a small fraction of another's actions, and that those one does see are still up to interpretation.

It's seems to me that given the chance people will look for ways to build communities, i'm thinking of fans of sports-club for instance, or even the recent rise of far-right/nationalism/populism can be seen under that light. It won't be the same (and maybe that's a good thing), but new forms of community will be built it seems to me. — ChatteringMonkey

Of course people build communities. But I'm pointing at the difference between a community build for the purpose of survival and a community built for some lesser purpose, such as the purpose of entertainment. Nowadays, people seem to be willing and able to build mostly the latter.

So beware what you wish for. "Valuing what we do together", building communities usually implies values and stories build around common goods and goals, and those usually end up not being very sensitive to particular individuals. Or do we really think we can have our cake and eat it too? — ChatteringMonkey

No, I think this is backwards anyway. Once the original sense of community is lost, it cannot be rebuild. It's like an arm that was cut off and then sewn back on: it's never quite the same and doesn't have the same functionality.

The full Thatcher quote is actually more interesting than the simple phrase that always gets clipped.

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. — Tom Storm

And it's a strawman.

Dang. Looks like I've ended up in the wrong century. :cry: — Wayfarer

You're not the only one.
Dinosaurs are bound to become extinct. You can't stop progress!

But yes, hospital work can be cursory and bad and some shrinks are patronising and medication without psychosocial support is not great and the hospitals and medical services can treat people like numbers. — Tom Storm

I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the nature of psychological/psychiatric intervention and treatment as such.

And to tie this to the thread topic:

Psychological/psychiatric intervention and treatment are inherently of a moral dimension. Psychologists/psychiatrists intervene because they believe there is something wrong with the person, that the person is acting wrongly and shouldn't act that way.

How do psychologists/psychiatrists define morality, what do they base it on?
Do they believe in moral facts?


(As for Styron's essay not being particularly nuanced: I gathered that this is so by design. The first thing that struck me about it was how superficial it is; but then I concluded it must be deliberately so.
And as for people who are successfully helped by psychological/psychiatric intervention and treatment: sure, the types you describe are so far gone that only an authoritarian approach can help them. But that doesn't mean everyone who gets charged with a psychiatric diagnosis is in the same category).

I disagree with what Wittgenstein says there. — Banno

While you're a proponent of virtue ethics?

Can you sketch out your brand of virtue ethics?
What is your virtue ethics based on?
In your virtue ethics, what are other people?

I very much doubt that. Think through the implications of 'correspondence' and you will see that it must have profound problems: in what sense does an idea or a proposition correspond to a state of affairs? To even ask that question immediately opens up the whole subject of semiotics and theory of meaning - what 'correspondence' entails, and how it relates to facts. The expression that such-and-such a proposition 'corresponds to the facts' is really just a vernacular expression. It is common-sense realism as an epistemological stance. — Wayfarer

Some people seem to think that the correspondence theory of truth is unlike other theories of truth in that the correspondence theory of truth makes claims in accordance with facts, while other theories are about making claims in accordance with other criteria (such as consensus etc.) and less or more denying the relevance of facts or ignoring them (while fully knowing that facts exist and what they are).

A common-sense realist proabably cannot even understand what the concept of "theory of truth" is about.

But if morality is about how we treat other beings, and if most people are common-sense realists, then this is something that a theory of morality must take into consideration.

Read William Styron's "Darkness visible" his account of his dealing with depression and with the medical system. He says that at some point, he realized that the only thing worse than his depression was the psychiatric treatment he was receiving for it and that he focused on doing everything just to get out of the system. And no, he wasn't referring to the specific medical treatments they were using back then which would now seem cruel, but to the nature of the psychiatric approach itself, ie. that of being an inmate in a total institution. This has not changed.

Psychologists/psyhiatrists don't seem to be taking into account that patients will sometimes feign compliance just to get out of the system.

I have known many people who, once they have a diagnosis and are in treatment, they claim to not only be the happiest they have ever been, but feel a sense of coherent identity for the first time in their lives. Being diagnosed can also be like a form of empowerment; being known and finally understood. — Tom Storm

Sure. Thinking of oneself as, "I am defective" -- what's not to be happy about??!

Psychology/psychiatry, like religion/spirituality, prefers compliant, obedient people.

Early Buddhism is discriminatory against women and favors men, it's doctrinally so.
— baker

Although women became part of the Buddhist sangha in the Buddha’s lifetime. Yes, more rules to observe than the men, but even so, hard to make the case for actual misogyny. — Wayfarer

And I'm not saying that it's Early Buddhism that is misogynistic. It certainly is discriminatory against women. But discrimination and misogyny are two different things. The way some Buddhists (and others, too) have interpreted that discrimination is that they turned it into misogyny; they turned a neutral enough selectiveness into misogyny by assuming said selectiveness is or should be motivated by contempt and hatred.

Early Buddhism: A New Approach: The I of the Beholder Sue Hamilton-Blythe — Wayfarer

I found it on Google books. I skimmed it. It doesn't seem to be anything special, although I'm sure there was a time in the past when it was.

I have no beef with entomology or evolution, but I refuse to admit that they teach me much about ethics. — Richard Polt

He further says:

So why have we been tempted for millenniums to explain humanity away? The culprit, I suggest, is our tendency to forget what Edmund Husserl called the “lifeworld” — the pre-scientific world of normal human experience, where science has its roots. — Richard Polt

I disagree.
The aristocrats and the wannabe aristocrats who have been popularizing "man is an animal" (or "You're just meat") certainly don't apply this to themselves. They apply it to the poor, the blacks, women, children, the Jews, and to anyone else they don't like or whenever they don't like them. "Man is an animal" is first and foremost an ideological statement, used for ideological purposes. Sometimes, it is covered up with a veil of science.

Polt mentions religion in a positive light. Again, I disagree. It's common for religions to dehumanize outsiders and those insiders who fail to live up to the religion's standards. By the standards of some monotheists, for example, you and I are incapable of any genuine and deliberate good deed (because we're not acting with the intention to please God). Or consider the practical application of the anatta doctrine by Buddhists sometimes, the way it translates into indifference and even violence toward others, justified as "You don't really exist, you don't matter (but I do) ".

A similar dehumanization is carried out by psychology/psychiatry, where, once a person is branded with a psychiatric diagnosis, they cease to be relevant as a person and all that matters is that diagnosis, and the doctors and many interested others see that person only through the lens of that diagnosis.

In short, humans display a tendency to explain away the humanity of others, if doing so serves their agenda, but they don't do so in general or in the absolute, even though they might superficially formulate it that way.

Feminists who spend too much time around intelligent, but chauvinist men usually come to the same conclusions and are often unwilling to listen to the good advice that they should just find some other sets of society to participate in. — thewonder

Eh, no.
For one, the worst and the most misogyny and chauvinism I have experienced in life has been from women, not from men.
For two, Early Buddhism is discriminatory against women and favors men, it's doctrinally so. Women interested in Early Buddhism tend to cope with this by being pious, but since I didn't have that in me, I felt the full force of the blow.
For three, I'm not a feminist. Blegh.
For four, I'm not interested in other schools of Buddhism, because I'm just not convinced that they can veritably transmit the Buddha's teachings.

But in short, the moral sense is pre-intellectual, as evidence by chimp tribal morality. — counterpunch

If we were to dress up a tribe of humans into chimp costumes and have them act the way humans usually do, but speak a language that the observers don't understand (say, Armenian): Would we be able to distinguish the behavior of humans-dressed-as-chimps from the behavior of the real chimps? By what markers?

My point is that there is a clear observational bias that favors humans in the research of human vs. animal morality, and behavior and cognition in general.

How can we say that animals seek food instinctively, but that humans do it deliberately?
How can we say that animals seek sex instinctively, but that humans do it deliberately?

Does instinct become irrelevant once one lives in a building with indoor plumbing?
How is eating with a fork and knife not instinctual, but eating with the hand is?

If there are moral facts, how can we know them? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Psychologically and socially, there is potentially a lot at stake in terms of morality. I think that sometimes (often?) it is because of these high stakes that moral statements become artificially elevated to the level of facts.

Of course, if the stakes being high is itself a fact, then the moral statements related to those high stakes should also be facts or inherit that factness.
But it could also be the other way around, and the stakes are high because the moral statements are facts.

So, perhaps it is similar to the case when we state, “Onions taste awful,” that the syntax is configured in such a way to be making a general statement, when in actuality, we are making a particular subjective statement. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Language affords one many options for expression, including sentences like "I find onions awful", "I don't like onions" and "I think onions taste awful".

So why is it that some people say “Onions taste awful,” and others say "I think onions taste awful"?

Is this the result of a conscious choice?
Do people less or more mindlessly repeat the types of sentences they've learned in primary education?

Or perhaps it is a realistic truth and our ideas and beliefs are simply streams of synaptic electrochemical nerve signals lighting up the the apparatus of the brain. We just get to interpret them phenomenologically instead of sociologically.

But then how do we explain the differences between people? E.g. some like onions and some don't: does this mean that there is something physiologically or otherwise wrong with one of the groups?

Perhaps you are around the wrong kind of people. — synthesis

Your idea of "learning from experience" has some major lacks.

Seems wasteful, but then TV sets and other electronic equipment are incredibly cheap these days. Cheap to build, cheap to buy, impossible to fix. — T Clark

And impossible to deal with all the resulting trash.

With that one command, God puts Abraham in a tight spot - he has to treat that which he loves as that which he hates. After all, Abraham may have surely met someone whom he'd have loved to use his dagger on and relate that to what he's commanded to do, off his child with his dagger. God then is attempting to teach Abraham a moral lesson - treat the ones you hate same as the ones you love. — TheMadFool

Because, as God commandeth -- Thou shalt have no other gods before Me!

...and no basis for calling it true. Reincarnation becomes a form of life that does not make contact with truth or falsehood. It's use - meaning - can only be in its social function. — Banno

It's jargon. Why concern yourself or even just think about the jargon terms of a social group of which you're not part?

You probably don't concern yourself with souffles, bob haircuts, or some fancy engineering term that is hard to spell correctly, so why concern yourself with reincarnation? What's so appealing about it? Can you tell?

That's a good interpretation. But the problem is, I think, the obvious fact of the karma that we're born with. Even if it's a metaphor, in effect it's indistinguishable from the consequences of a previous life (which we will often say in a jocular way, 'in my last life I was a....'). So it might be a metaphor, but it's not only a metaphor, or rather, even if it is a metaphor, the message is bracing - whatever unfinished business you leave at the end of this life, will have to be picked up by another, it will play out in 'some other life'. — Wayfarer

Something about the appriopriate time and place for discussing Dhamma comes to mind.
And then that about the Dhamma being likened to a water snake.

The distinction between faith and believe does not just apply to religious faith. You've posited this notion of reincarnation while being unable to explain what it is that is reincarnated. That strikes me as pretty fundamental.

One is supposed to "take it or leave it". One either understands it, or one doesn't. One either agrees with it, or one doesn't. That's it. The only action one is intended to take in regard to a religious claim is to try to make oneself see the truth of it.
— baker
That looks like a description of faith. — Banno

The fundamental mistake you've been making all along is assuming that I'm speaking in favor of religion. When in fact, all along, I've been making the case for why there cannot be a philosophical justification for reincarnation/rebirth. Philosophically, the matter can only be addressed on a metalevel, metaethically and metaepistemically (like I did, in the crude terms you cite above). It's how I finally learned to stop worrying about religion and love the bomb!

You owe me an apology for insisting in this mistake.

But anyway, (1) to exercise our gray cells or mind and (2) to show believers in reincarnation that their belief isn't irrational. — Apollodorus

And you really think they care about such help?

Firstly, it can give them more understanding about themselves and the culture they grew up with by explaining why it can influence their decisions and those who share their culture. — Tiberiusmoon

Why should such understanding be relevant?
If anything, internalizing and mastering a cultural bias is advantageous for a person, as it helps them to function better in their culture.

It can strengthen their self confidence, the bonds of others who share their culture like family and friends by understanding how it is different and removing some uncertainties a person may have about their own identity.

How would it do any of that?
How does being aware of one's own cultural biases strengthen one's self confidence?? If anything, such awareness would undermine it.

If left unaware it can leave an individual open to manipulation by simply using their culture as a means to gain something, say if a politican said they are from that person's town or praising their town with a minor understanding of the town's culture with no real understanding of what policies the politican wishes to use or how it would affect the individual.

Okay, but this is a bit naive.

As humanity is mixing and exploring cultures, this awareness of cultural bias can give them insight as to why another culture would think their culture is weird, or by understanding another culture give a person insight as to why they think its wierd.

It's not clear how being aware of one's cultural biase accomplishes the above. Rather, being aware of one's cultural biases would make one more confident to judge others as weird.

Critically this lessens the unknown factor about other cultures that may cause xenophobic attitudes or actions, especially if influenced by media or other sources in a negative light.

Cultures that weren't xenophobic enough have not survived.

Thinking about it, you could explain it in this analogy:
What is the difference between being angry and being aware that your angry?
Then consider which can blindly cause harm or poor choices.

It's not clear how the analogy applies.

You should read some primary Buddhist texts.

Here’s my view of what happened. Of course it’s true that we all passed through the tortuous process of evolution from simian forbears. But what imposes moral necessity on us, is not an instinct, like that by which salmon return to their home stream. It’s because we became independent arbiters of what is good. We could decide, we could judge. We had possessions, things to call our own, and language by which to name it. That is the origin of the moral sense. No doubt, we evolved to the point of developing that sense, but to say it is merely or simply an adaptive necessity is to entirely mistake the existential predicament of the emerging self of h. Sapiens. When we evolved to that point, we also escaped the gravity of biology to some degree. We were no longer simply a creature, but a creature who could ask ‘what am I?’, and ‘what is this world I find myself in?’ — Wayfarer

Says he, against the backdrop of his nice suburban house with cars and pool.
But would you say the above about, for instance, an Eskimo? An African bushman? A factory worker in the textile industry in the early 1800's? How about a worker in a warehouse of a big online company who wears a diaper and pees into it so as to not have to take a toilet break? Those poor sods, eh. Then how about some reality tv star -- would you say the above about them?

Who are the reference group for your description of Homo sapiens? Can you put names and faces to them?

Do provide a scriptural reference for the claim "one of buddha's teachings or will [is] that his followers thought for themselves and that they are not constrained by his teachings".

I just don't have the opportunity to ask Buddhists directly — Johnny5454

Yes, you do: go to some Buddhist forums, e.g.:

Theravada: https://www.dhammawheel.com/
Mahayana: https://www.dharmawheel.net/
(Early) Buddhism: https://discourse.suttacentral.net/

Isn't it one of buddha's teachings or will that his followers thought for themselves and that they are not constrained by his teachings? — Tiberiusmoon

No, it isn't.

There's really nothing to argue for, it's only about getting an insight, understanding the principles of religious ethics and religious epistemology. This is because I surmise that those principles are a matter similar to the hidden curriculum, something that "everybody knows or is supposed to know" but nobody will openly admit to. Because of this, it's impossible to make an argument for those principles and support it with empirical or doctrinal evidence. Yet for one's success in religion/spirituality, it is paramount to master those principles.

The poster who inspired this thread backed off. He accused me I didn't understand Buddhist epistemology, but then refused to explain where my mistake was. It's through this type of incidents that one learns the hidden curriculum of Buddhism.

No, the question is:
Which Buddhist school/tradition does this Buddhist propose to be a member of?
Is this person a Mahayana Buddhist, a Theravada Buddhist, a Zen Buddhist, ...?

You didn't answer my question, and you're giving an impertinent example. People can do something a lot, but this still has no bearing on whether their skills at doing it will improve or not. A person can bake a hundred loafs of bread poorly, repeating the same mistake over and over again, learning nothing from merely doing. Were it not for a measure of external oversight, a surgeon could botch dozens of operations, repeating the same mistakes, learning nothing from merely doing.

Like I already told you: your experience of religion/spirituality most certainly differs from mine, given your education and socio-economic class, as well as the fact that you're male.

Should I take solace in the fact that you're having it better than I do, and should I base my faith in religion/spirituality in the belief "Oh, but some people _are_ having it good, so even though I never get to experience the positive effects of religion/spirituality, I should still have faith in it, because it's good and it works for others" --?

Like the way Western medicine expects us to have unquestioning faith in and obedience to medicine, even though it has let us down so many times?