Are there things that arent immoral but you shouldnt want to be the kind of person that does them?
I was reading a thread about whether in and of itself incest between consenting adults is bad which made me research the philosophical concept of supererogatory and subererogatory acts. We can all easily imagine things that arent harmful in the traditional sense but are still weird, deviant or something we apprehend you shouldnt want to be the kind of person that does even if we cant give a deeper explanation as to why it repulses us like something typically seen as wrong like murder, rape, theft etc.
With this in mind do you think there things that arent immoral but you still shouldnt want to be the kind of person that does them even if youre the only person affected?
With this in mind do you think there things that arent immoral but you still shouldnt want to be the kind of person that does them even if youre the only person affected?
Comments (142)
Mid: This is my view of morality, and we're lucky that only humans are sentient enough to be considered moral agents. This means most people's morality will align on my account, even if they have different moral frameworks for arriving at the "yes/no" portion of whether to act.
Long: Ah, well. There are millions. Millions of things make me uncomfortable, and I'd rather not be the kind of person who did them because that would be, on my account, shameful or embarrassing. These extend to no one else, even in cases that would effect someone else, attitudinally speaking. I don't want to be that person, regardless of who is effected.
I second this.
There are actions that aren't considered immoral, but I wouldn't be that person. Rudeness is not illegal or immoral, but I wouldn't do that face to face with people.
There are other more grievous actions that I know of. I say, no thanks.
Is there anything wrong with seeing the nakedness of one's father? Or anybody? The people who had not yet invented clothing couldn't afford to think so. Contrary to the biblical version, people invented clothes to keep their bodies warm, and only much later realized that clothes also concealed their genitals.
Is there anything wrong with eating the flesh of a member of one's own species? Some tribes considered it a homage to the departed relative to retain some portion of their being; some paid their slain enemies a compliment by partaking of their might, or to communicate with the gods or to demonstrate their power over another group. There is some mystery (and pay-walls) over how cannibalism actually become a taboo. But you still wouldn't want to be the guy that ate his neighbour.
You also probably wouldn't want to be the kind of person who pisses in bus shelters (somebody does!) or wipes his nose on his sleeve or never leaves a tip at restaurants. There are many, many social conventions that we observe simply because we have been brought up to respect the sensibilities of our fellow citizens.
I wouldn't want to live an 'unexamined life' or without ever wholeheartedly loving anyone else. I also wouldn't want be a coward or servile. (I'm sure there's more ...)
Quoting L'éléphant
I believe that's known as "manners". Which manners are adhered to, differs according to social context, and manners can be classed as good or bad relative to that context. However, the good or bad which is associated with manners, since it varies according to social context, is not considered to be a moral good or bad. The moral good and bad is supposed to transcend all differences of social context.
But it really doesn't get interesting until one brings up the hard cases that challenge our collective comfort. I recall a philosophy class in ethics that began with an article called On the Bus, or something similar, and it brought the reader through a process of increasing discomfort by describing scenes of increasing physical intimacy between a woman and her dog sitting across from you on a bus.
You know your moral intuitions are being directly assaulted when they start erupting in protest. The final scene I would rank as "unmentionable". It is a fascinating analysis, nevertheless: One the one hand, I am simply as liberal minded as a person can be, which means if this woman takes her behavior int he confines of her own home, then I cannot see the basis for moral concern, notwithstanding my physical revulsion. I am actually pretty proud I can think like this. Who am I to judge others? How about men with boys, fairly common, I have read, among certain of our ancestors. THAT is a tough case!
BUT: On the bus???? In front of everyone, this raises an entirely different question. My ethics is pretty simple: do no harm. Of course, this is an entangled mess in practical situations. The woman is doing no harm at all considered in itself what she does. But then, neither am I if I shout horrible epithets all by myself at the wall. Context is everything. In public, violations take on a different set of standards.
The question is, in my mind, IF an act is not morally objectionable as a private act, then what does this say about the public judgment that it IS objectionable? Isn't the latter rendered vacuous, no better than the same the personal "feelings" of revulsion that I suspend when trying to be objective and fair and nonjudgmental?
But if his neighbor was okay with it, and this has happened, then part of the immorality of this vanishes, for certainly consent is mitigating. All we are left with now is mere sentiment we all share, and this is difficult to make into a meaningful basis for a taboo like the one that exists. The question is, is cannibalism, or incest, or any of a number of victimless immoralities, only "bad" because "we" say so? Arguments like this apply to contemporary issues like same sex relations and the indeterminacy of sexual practices and identity. One looks at the direction, the "slippery slope," of this: Today same sex marriage, tomorrow
That is a loaded statement. If true, then one would have to identify something that is good or bad "outside" of social contexts, but how is this possible since the good and bad are essentially social, conceived only in societies and about social circumstances. Can one "reduce" ethics to something not "social" in its nature?
Yes. Alcoholism.
Everything to do with morality and ethics is good or bad only because "we say so". This includes crimes like murder (killing a member of one's species not only okay but applauded in one situation, punishable by death in another, but the one who kills the illegal killer is hired for the task but shunned socially.) Our ideas of right and wrong originate from what is, or once was, considered harmful or beneficial to the social unit.
Much of written law is a holdover from religious taboo - not necessarily rational; often anachronistic. Some of it is preemptive against the threat or perceived threat of the abuse. For example, legalizing assisted suicide could result in murders in the guise of assisted suicide; legalized incest could lead to child abuse; letting people smoke marijuana could tempt them into the use of hard drugs. What our lawmakers don't like to admit is that people don't wait on legal permission to commit harmful acts, and that decriminalizing the harmless ones make no difference to social welfare - only to arrest statistics and police funding.
But how does one separate what is "merely" said from what has a grounding apart from the mere saying? The mere saying includes attitudes, historically based beliefs, enculturated taboos, cultural institutions that contain moral precepts, and so on. One grows up and then, once there, in the midst, if you will, of one's own culture, only then can step back and question, and here, one can ask if it is all just this collective sentiment, or is there something about the essence of what it is to be ethical that is for basic than this.
Ethics gets interesting when we move into the uncertain territories of underlying assumptions. Laws, rules, norms, principles are at best, prime facie compelling. Is there anything in ethics that is more than this?
Closeted alcoholism, perhaps. But who lives like this? Some, yes. Off they go, then. But most bring their issues into this public arena, and this is where ethics gets its irritating ambiguity, for there is she is, my daughter, and there he is, an Adonis, looking so cool drinking and smoking, and she learns this from him, and so his right to drink publicly undoes my right to raise my daughter as I see fit.
One way to look at it is, it is a matter of positive and negative rights: One's positive right to drink publicly intrudes as a negative right on my part to live absent of this. Almost no one lives in a vacuum. I hold that a free society is very strong in the direction of positive rights as a default tendency.
One doesn't. One separates the mores and laws that make sense according to one's own judgment from those that are outmoded or counterproductive. Beyond socially imposed limitations, there is no "law of the jungle" or "natural law".
Quoting Astrophel
Not unless they're handed down from heaven.
Quoting Vera Mont
So ethics really has no foundation at all? "Outmoded" and "counterproductive" confer nothing beyond utility of ethics. But principles of utility have an "end" or telos. I mean for every practical measure, there is purpose, but if this purpose has no end in itself, then it either moves on for its justificatory basis to other assumptions, and these on to others, and there really is no end to this, or one simply has to stop inquiry at some point and declare there to be no grounding "in actuality" for ethics. Ethics thus just stands exclusively in the social construction. Both of these are the case, perhaps, but the trouble is, not so much heaven, a term of dubious meaning, but grounding real meanings apart from their mere cultural sources. The ethical violation of Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov lies beyond breaking a society's rules, don't you think?
It has philosophical foundations. Philosophy is also a product of human thought in response to human social interaction. Moralities are founded in the perceived welfare of the social unit.
Quoting Astrophel
Exactly. If a rule doesn't apply to current social reality, or is no longer useful in promoting the well-being of the polity, why keep adhering to it? In fact, people don't. Laws usually get struck off the books long after people have been ignoring them and officials ceased to enforce them. It's how a society that actually operates that determines what's good and bad for it. How it usually happens is: social philosophers publish treatises, then journalist popularize their ideas, then people protest - it's the legal machinery that lags far behind.
Quoting Astrophel
What else could it be? Of course, you have to remember that 'social construction' has its roots in a 250 million-year-old termite mound. We descended from a very long line of social animals, all of which had and have rules of acceptable behaviour. When a species evolves out of a previous one, its abilities, requirements and behaviours change accordingly, an so must its social conventions. When the environment changes, or the social organization gains complexity, its mores are adjusted to the new configuration. The conduct or war is different from the rules of peacetime; what is acceptable in times of plenty becomes a crime in a time of famine.
Quoting Astrophel
Beyond.... to where? Seems a common enough crime to me. Of course, most criminals do not confess voluntarily.
For this, one need only look at a given ethical situation and discover its essence. I don't think this is a very demanding analysis. Begin with strong examples because they are the clearest: take the moral obligation not to bludgeon, burn, rip and tear, or otherwise offend and afflict another's living body, assuming all things commonly in place in average conditions (the living body in question is not hypesthetic, e.g.). Is this morally exhaustively conceived in the social institutions that would express the prohibition? Or is there more to it than this set of rules, laws, sentiments toward, and so forth, that the put forward this prohibition?
Yes, in every legal code ever devised. Also every unwritten social convention among wolves, elephants, dolphins and apes. Limited to one's own tribe, that is: the enemy or prey is available Quoting Astrophel without moral sanction or legal repercussion. In most human cultures, no such prohibition applies to other species, which are considered legitimate prey. Many cultures have permitted or do still permit some unfavoured members of their own society to be treated that way.
Quoting Astrophel
If you profess faith in a supreme being, you are required to believe there is.
That's an interesting one. What do you mean by alcoholism? Alcohol use disorder includes a broad range of behaviours.
Well, herein lies the rub: You seem to be saying that the world of animals and their lack of ethical principles provides the substratum for the analysis of our world's ethics. This has to be shown, not assumed.
And "every legal code ever devised" really says nothing about the generational ground of ethics. I mean, even if they all DID say explicitly that social institutions AS institutions exhausted ethical meaning, that wouldn't make it true. (Of course, among these legal codes are the biblical ones, and they certainly thought quite the opposite.)
Quoting Vera Mont
A supreme being would be question begging, for one has to first show what it is about ethical matters that would even warrant such a thing.
If morality involves the kinds of things that you do to yourself, which it should, no. Morality is generally the set of rules that we should upkeep in our demeanour. If we shouldn't do something, you can typically say that behaviour is immoral.
But I will say that, from a different perspective, 180 proof's answer is also quite agreeable.
I've just been through a section of Parfit's Reasons and Persons which deals with exactly this issue - whether future reasons constitute 'now' reasons. Parfit feels that a bias toward the near, as he terms it, then means neglecting these reasons one will have - which means, overall, your life will go worse. An interesting position.
Quoting tim wood
I personally take this sort of rule-following as non-moral. This person is just obeying. They haven't considered the morality of their acts outside of whether it is permitted.
I don't think the followers of rules are doing anything moral - the creator/s may be, though.
:ok:
Quoting Astrophel
Yep. Morals are emotional positions and nought else, on my view. Its a good idea to discuss them, and form groups of affinity. Some would very much enjoy seeing a woman 'engage' with her dog on a bus. It may be their optimal fantasy, in fact.
So the ethical prohibition against torture is all about my emotional regard for torture, the empathy, compassion and so forth that step forward when such a thing is witnessed, and the laws we have about this are grounded in this same thing, only collectively. Let's say this is true. But is this only what ethics is about, or is there that which we are ethical ABOUT that is also in ethics?
As to the description of ethics generally - not yours. The collective emotional discomfort with it is what leads to policies. But, quite obviously, it is your moral position that prevents you from doing it regardless of policies.
If I'm understanding you, I think its redundant question. We are 'ethical' about many things, but this is also a function of our position on what is morally interested.
People who think that something is morally permissible but yet no one should do it, are either (1) confused about what morality is, (2) what they believe is actually immoral, or (3) holding onto an irrational belief.
If I have a moral regard for something, some issue about acquiring something, preventing something, and so on, I have an interest in that thing. Not so much what the thing is, but simply that one cares about it. This caring has to be in place in order for ethics to be part of an issue. No ones cares, no ethics. It is this caring I am interested in. Why does one care about a thing? It must have value for that person. So again, no value, no ethics. So what is value?
The metaethical discussion about why a person might find something morally interesting isn't that relevant to the thread. The thread assumes S has a moral outlook, and acts can be permissible but they wouldn't want to do them.
The OP didn't stipulate this. The OP stipulated that S thinks act A to be morally permissible, but they shouldn't do it. This is perfectly fine. It's permissible to have children on a lot of people's view, over the age of 35. But one may think this a bad idea.
not my original intention, but then you did say, "Yep. Morals are emotional positions and nought else, on my view." Which I couldn't help wondering about. It's not a defensible position.
It is, though. Nothing you've said comes close to even a reasonable objection to it. Those more meta-ethical bits you put forward do nothing to this account. Can you explain why it's not defensible? That's a very, very bold claim.
I'll just go by a dictionary definition for the purposes of the thread since I don't think it matters. Only one thing matters to me really - finding an example of a something which isn't immoral but you shouldn't want to be the kind of person who does it. In my case, alcoholism and being an alcoholic.
Referring to "alcohol use disorder" as "alcoholism". So I'm making the claim that having alcohol use disorder isn't immoral, but simultaneously someone should not want to be an alcoholic.
Instead of finding necessary and sufficient conditions for being immoral, or for "a kind of person you should not be", I just want to demonstrate that you can be one but not the other. In order to do that I think it suffices to show they're not the same concept. Principally, an act can be immoral and a person can be said to be immoral. But only a person can be an example of a type of person which you should not be. There is thus a sense (in the OP) of immorality which may apply to acts, as well as another (not necessarily distinct) one which applies to persons.
( A1 ) Alcoholism is an illness.
( A2 ) A person who has any illness is not immoral on that basis alone.
( A3 ) Any alcoholic is not immoral on the basis of their alcoholism alone (from A1, A2)
The sense of "shouldn't" in the OP is also worth examining. As there are things we shouldn't do which aren't immoral - they may instead be foolish, irresponsible and other nice words for things which we shouldn't do for some reason. For example, sticking your hand in a fire, misplacing your wallet, never cleaning your house, walking out of the house without putting a shirt on when it's -1 Celcius outside...
I'm just going to assert without argument that an alcoholic behaving in a manner that sustains and potentiates a dependence on alcohol is very irresponsible. And for now assert without argument that people shouldn't want to do anything which is very irresponsible. Also assert without argument that someone will be an alcoholic if and only if they act in a manner which sustains and potentiates a dependence on alcohol.
That would give you:
(B1) Behaving in a manner that intentionally sustains and potentiates a dependence on alcohol is very irresponsible.
(B2) A person who wants to be an alcoholic behaves in a manner that intentionally sustains and potentiates their dependence on alcohol.
(B3) You shouldn't want to do anything very irresponsible.
(B4) You shouldn't want to behave in a manner that sustains and potentiates a dependence on alcohol. (from B1,B4)
(B5) You shouldn't want to be an alcoholic (from B2, B4)
( A3 ) and ( B5 ) taken together give you a sense in which someone shouldn't want to be an alcoholic (the type of person that an alcoholic is...someone with alcoholism), but that alcoholism isn't immoral.
The crux of this is really a distinction between the "should" of immorality (a thou shalt not!) and the gentle "should" that we shouldn't wish to behave foolishly. Is it immoral to want to be an alcoholic? No, but it is a rather silly aspiration. A supportive parent would not want their child to have that as their profession.
"Good" is clearly defined by a larger context than the social context. This is evident in principles which relate to respect for other life forms which do not partake in human society, and respect for the planet in general with issues like climate change. "Good" truly transcends the context of human society, because human beings are only a small part of life on earth, and we're all integrated.
Not their lack of ethical principles; their social mores, which are not articulated as an abstract concept. Everything grows out of all that went before.
Quoting Astrophel
I can't possibly show you the entire spectrum of social behaviours in other species. Here is a starting point.
Quoting Astrophel
That was in answer to :
Quoting Astrophel Not to:
"What is the generational ground of ethics?"
The answer to that one is my comment about social animals and normative standards of behaviour.
Quoting Astrophel
It's the only way you're going to get an ethical standard beyond that set by human societies.
I asked what value was. You mentioned the "collective emotional discomfort" as being foundational, and I asked what this emotional discomfort was all about. A fair question, I think. For while this may be a way to say something true, it is also incomplete. Ethics is not just about this discomfort or emotional regard. Rather, there is something in the world that this is about, the sufferings and blisses of people and animals that are the object of our sympathy, approval, objective needs to regulate, make laws, and otherwise respond to.
The bold claim I am making is simply analytical: no value, that is none of this dimension of suffering, misery, pleasure and happiness, and ethics vanishes. Showing that these are part of the essence of ethics, I mean, it is analytically true the ethics IS what ethics is about.
And such things are not invented. They are in the world. A toothache is much more than the sympathy one may have for someone with a toothache, and the toothache is not to be relativized to a collective public sentiment.
Quoting fdrake
I'm not sure what your intention is in saying a person 'who wants to be an alcoholic'. Do you mean this literally, or do you take it as the implication of their behavior? Many problem drinkers don't want to be this way and others don't even know they are problem drinkers. But I get your boarder point.
So with climate change and the rest, it is not just us, but the many animals that live on this earth also, and this is what you have in mind, right? I agree with this. There is, however, a lingering question, which is what is there, then, about animals that make them included in concerns about the Good?
I incidentally noticed I said "ethics IS what ethics is about." Meant to say, "this dimension of our existence is what ethics is about."
This makes so much sense to me.
Quoting Astrophel
Isn't it as simple as harm/suffering is negative and therefore bad, and hence, causing harm/suffering (for reasons that do not benefit the person/animal/living thing) is also bad? This seems to be a fact which is not reliant on people's beliefs, opinions or social conventions/norms etc
We don't know the reasons for life on earth. The human being, as a species, is just one small part of the overall organisms, just like you and I are just one small part of humanity. We do not give our individual selves special preference amongst the whole of humanity, and we ought not give human beings special preference amongst the whole of life.
I don't understand why that's being asked, though. The proceeding passage doesn't help me I'm sorry.
Quoting Astrophel
Ethics claims this. I think it fails. Ethics is just discussions about what we should do. IT doesn't ipso facto import any particular framework or conclusory criteria, I don't think.
Quoting Astrophel
Sure. But it gives us no reason to care, other than our own discomfort.
Quoting Astrophel
They are. You're giving me states of affairs. Morality is not states of affairs.
Quoting Astrophel
This makes no sense to me at all. A toothache is a toothache. End of.
Or just think of the strong examples themselves and their content. If you are in very intense agony, then do what a good scientist does, which is observe. What you find in the matter is not a language game nor a placement on the logical grid of facts (Wittgenstein) nor is it merely empirical or phenomenological in the mundane sense (as with the way Dennett treats qualia, if you are familiar). The "bad" of burning live flesh, say, belongs to none of these.
So it is certainly not of God, which is one of the pseudo problems traditional philosophy has created. Nor is it beyond what is IN the world, for it stands there before you, the sprained ankle, the delicious dessert and the rest. It is IN the world, like mundane qualia (being appeared to redly, as they say), yet the value "speaks" the bad of the affair.
Keep in mind that Wittgenstein, the god of analytic philosophy, put a muzzle on what philosophy could say not because of his love for ordinary language, but for his love of the Real in play in ethics and aesthetics that was invisible, what G E Moore called a non natural property: the good (and the bad). What cannot be spoken is far to important to be trivialized by philosophy's traditional bs.
Yes, it is that simple. Stick my hand in boiling water, and the pain has nothing at all to do with beliefs, opinions, etc. Animals are in their own way just as vulnerable, making them agents of moral concern. Why this is so philosophically troubling lies here: The right or wrong found in ethics, as opposed to contingent matters like bad couches and good baseball bats, is absolute. See Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics and his Culture and Value where he says the good is divinity. Absolutes, for W, are nonsense because one cannot speak the world. Speaking is confined to what logic permits (in the Tractatus), and the world "shows" itself but one cannot get "behind the world" to see what the world IS from some absolute perspective and "say" the world is this!, so talk about absolutes is nonsense, yet utterly important in their existence. The very ground of importance itself is beyond saying. Calling ethical matters nonsense elevates ethics to a transcendental standing.
But the trouble: ethics so elevated now has the status of being written in stone on a mountain top. It is, in its essence, non contingent, absolute, indefeasible.
Not a special preference, but an equal one, or nearly so. I think animals are just as important as we are, yet we have always ignored this. I suspect the elephant, with a brain three times heavier than ours, experiences living with greater breadth than we do. Perhaps there are subtleties of rapture we can't imagine.
Yes, I see the problem. Transcendent ethics almost seem to be an ethics of the gaps to me.
You have completely lost me.
If you give an exhaustive account of what a toothache is, then yes, end of. Here is the problem spelled out: There are two kind of good and bad, the contingent and the noncontingent, or absolute. Contingent examples are easy, as with this is a good pair of shoes or a bad coffee cup. These are everywhere in our language use. But note, as contingent goods and bads, they are not stable, not fixed by logic; their status is contingent and accidental. A coffee cup isn't necessarily good or bad, but it depends. Maybe I want an awkwardly shaped vessel that leaks, just for fun. Now those those standard good qualities are bad.
That is how contingency works. Even simple matter like definitions are up for grabs. There is this essay or book (I don't remember) Is There a Text in this Class by Stanley Fish that goes after this. What is a text? See how different contexts give us different meanings. Is it a book left behind by the student? Is it a body of assumed ideas? Is it a designated textbook the prof has chosen? Even basic meanings can be put in play. If I take a stapler and hold the door open, is it still a stapler? Well, yes and no. Is ANYTHING stable, unmovable regarding what it IS? Some think logic is like this, but then, while it is impossible gainsay logic, the "what is it?" question is going to be answered in words and sentences, and so what gives these this noncontingent status?? This is a big philosophical problem.
But ethics "speaks" a language that is not words and sentences, because the value put at risk is not reducible to what language can say because its meaning doesn't come out of language. It comes out of "the world" which Wittgenstein proclaimed to be unspeakable. Logic has this weird insistence that cannot be spoken. But ethics and its good and bad, these have a "voice" and it is not merely the form of meaning possibilities (logic). It is palpable, in your face reality, this "thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to." One can imagine choosing one bad alternative over another for one has greater utility, as it goes, but what makes the both bad is inviolable.
Quoting Astrophel
With you so far, and no objections..Quoting Astrophel
Still with you, and clearly that's an interest for several hundred hard-working writers.
Quoting Astrophel
Yes it is.
Yes it does.
Quoting Astrophel
Except clearly, there is no consensus on this and it has changed over time. If you want to claim that the vast majority of history has been Ethically "wrong", I would have to chuckle.
So, if the language of Ethics is 'good' and 'bad', lets say, prior to their enunciation and being understood to agents (i.e justification) ... it is useless. And Im fine with that. There is no such thing as absolute good and bad. Im fine with that.
:100:
By whom? Defined where? What larger context?
If you mean that some humans are able to see a larger picture than is depicted in our social codes, yes, I agree that has always been so. Do these big-picture individuals attempt to communicate their vision? Of course they do. Do they make social policy, determine legal, ethical and moral codes?
No, never.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
'Supposed' is the operative word here. And that supposition is erroneous. Point to the Good, sans human interaction?
It literally doesn't come into contact with anything but human minds. 'Good' does not exist outside of human expectation. I think the futile, millennia-long attempt to confer on that word some objective meaning would show this fairly well.
:up:
I mean it literally. As it's all that is required from the OP - find a thing which isn't immoral but we shouldn't want to be. I realise that it's absurd. I think that's a strength of what I'm saying - no one gonna wanna be an alcoholic, no one who has any understanding of addiction gonna think it's immoral. It could very well sound like I'm being discriminatory against alcoholics, or saying somehow that alcoholics want to be alcoholics... I'm not. I'm saying that someone who would aspire to be an alcoholic would be being a fool (and thus shouldn't want it). But wouldn't be doing anything immoral by being an alcoholic.
Never say "never". You appear to be not well educated in the history of humanity.
Quoting AmadeusD
That is correct, "supposed" is the operative word here, and its selection was deliberate. However, whether or not the supposition is erroneous is debatable, that's why I used that term rather than "known" or something like that. Therefore the mistake is yours, to assert that the supposition is erroneous, when the truth or falsity of it is unknown.
You ask a very ridiculous question, point to something without interacting with it. To sense it, thereby point to it, requires interaction, so I dismiss your question as nonsense. The way that we come to know that the supposition of an independent "good" is a requirement, necessary, is a logical process. The independent good is not something sensed, whereby we might point to it, it is determined to be real through logical necessity.
Quoting AmadeusD
See, you even knew that the good is not something which could be pointed to. Therefore I am justified in dismissing your question as an act of deception, and you, as the fool who thought that they could get away with such an obvious deception.
Okay: I should have said: Never in the modern world, or never in the written, civilized history of mankind. Certainly in the early millennia, when people lived in nature and had direct contact with the non-human world, they were more aware of other creatures, of water and trees and landscape. Some, like the Australian natives, set up a system of stewardship over the resources they needed to survive, while other hunted entire species to extinction.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's true; I have not made an exhaustive study of it. Could you give some examples of benevolent visionaries who made national policy or church doctrine?
But it is not a historical claim, that is, it is saying nothing about ethics as it is entangled within a culture, generating rules of behavior and speaking. This analysis is logically prior to this. When one receives a culture and thrown into a whole body of institutionalized norms, the question I am talking about here is something presupposed by this. Here is a simple line of reasoning: Laws tell me not to speed on the highway. Why should I obey? Not because it is the law, and say no more. Rather because it is practically efficacious in many ways, for me, for others. It works, and this seems to be the bottom line, but there is still a more basic question yet again: why should one do what works? Here one encounters a stumble for facile thinking. To ask such a basic question seems at first absurd. One doesn't want a ticket, doesn't want to live in a dangerous world of insane driving with no limits, doesn't want harm to come to anyone, especially children, and so on. But this simply brings the question into focus, which is, why don't I want harm to come to myself of others? ALL of a culture's institutions are analytically reducible to this in the discovery of their ethical foundation.
Cultures are different and can't agree on things, this we know. But this reduction takes the matter closer and closer to the bottom line which is universal. Kant did this with reason, not that he was right about everything, but the point is, this is what philosophy does. It seeks the universal essence of things that we encounter when the questions run out and we face "the world," the basic givenness of experience.
Or look at it like this: Take a given ethical rule or law and ask what is this in the most basic analysis? Looking here for that which, if it were to be removed, the possibility of being a rule/law at all would vanish. In ethics, that essential feature is value found in the concrete value of a thing, like the taste of good food or the pain of being assaulted. The point is clear: take this dimension of our existence away and ethics vanishes. Therefore, an inquiry into the nature of ethics must look here, in the concreteness of our existence for the essence of ethics.
But this concreteness is not born of language. Ethics' essence lies in this existential primordiality, the pure givenness of the world. Hence, the arguments for the relativity or contingency of ethics appears to have failed to follow through, stopping at the way common entanglements create discord. One has to make the last final step toward essence.
- Doing things that are ugly/disgusting
- Looking stupid or embracing falsehoods
- Preforming practical tasks poorly/incompetently
These can have a moral component, but they don't need to.
This lines up with the proposed "three types of judgement:"
-Moral/practical - good/bad
-Theoretical - true/false
-Aesthetic - beautiful/ugly
Unfortunately, these all tend to be open ended as well. As Moore points out, questions of goodness are open ended. The enduring legacy of radical skepticism shows that truth can always be questions. Likewise, "is it beautiful?" or "why is it beautiful?" is also open ended.
People don't want to be seen as having either bad judgement (of any sort) or of being unable to follow their judgement, i.e., lack of self-control.
I think this ties in quite well with Robert Sokolowski's reformulation of Aristotle's "man is the rational animal," as "humans are agents of truth." We don't want to be seen to be doing things that show poor judgement because ultimately it reflects poorly on our ability to live into veracity, to be agents who are accountable to truth.
But it is not a historical claim, that is, it is saying nothing about ethics as it is entangled within a culture, generating rules of behavior and speaking. This analysis is logically prior to this. When one receives a culture and thrown into a whole body of institutionalized norms, the question I am talking about here is something presupposed by this. Here is a simple line of reasoning: Laws tell me not to speed on the highway. Why should I obey? Not because it is the law, and say no more. Rather because it is practically efficacious in many ways, for me, for others. It works, and this seems to be the bottom line, but there is still a more basic question yet again: why should one do what works? Here one encounters a stumble for facile thinking. To ask such a basic question seems at first absurd. One doesn't want a ticket, doesn't want to live in a dangerous world of insane driving with no limits, doesn't want harm to come to anyone, especially children, and so on. But this simply brings the question into focus, which is, why don't I want harm to come to myself of others? ALL of a culture's institutions are analytically reducible to this in the discovery of their ethical foundation.
Cultures are different and can't agree on things, this we know. But this reduction takes the matter closer and closer to the bottom line which is universal. Kant did this with reason, not that he was right about everything, but the point is, this is what philosophy does. It seeks the universal essence of things that we encounter when the questions run out and we face "the world," the basic givenness of experience.
Or look at it like this: Take a given ethical rule or law and ask what is this in the most basic analysis? Looking here for that which, if it were to be removed, the possibility of being a rule/law at all would vanish. In ethics, that essential feature is value found in the concrete value of a thing, like the taste of good food or the pain of being assaulted. The point is clear: take this dimension of our existence away and ethics vanishes. Therefore, an inquiry into the nature of ethics must look here, in the concreteness of our existence for the essence of ethics.
But this concreteness is not born of language. Ethics' essence lies in this existential primordiality, the pure givenness of the world. Hence, the arguments for the relativity or contingency of ethics appears to have failed to follow through, stopping at the way common entanglements create discord. One has to make the last final step toward essence.
The concreteness of our existence is that we have physical and mental requirements and an innate will to survive. In isolation, very few humans can survive on their own in adulthood; none at all from infancy. So ethics and morality are constructed on the requirements for survival in groups.
This seems right to me, and I have no issues with this kind of thinking at all. Just as I have no issues with science. But then, what good is survival? What is in this will to survive that is really at stake?. Survival as such applies to anything, as in, I hope the lawn chair survives the storm. But lawn chairs are not agencies of ethics, that is, they don't, given what they are, generate ethical possiblities. Nor can a rock or a fence post. Our survival is different in that it IS capable of ethicality. The ideas expressed above try to show what it is that makes our survival (and those of animals) ethical at all. For that the essence of ethics has to be exposed.
For some people, it's no use at all. But for the majority of living things, it's the primal drive. It doesn't need a specific utility: it is the rock-bottom foundation of awareness and effort; the first cause by which all things needful, useful and beneficial are measured.
Quoting Astrophel
Pink herring, conflating a careless figure of speech with the primal instinct. The lawn chair was never alive. You might go out into the storm to save your neighbour or your dog, because life matters - fence-posts don't.
Quoting Astrophel
That's backward. What makes anything ethical is its contribution to survival.
Quoting Astrophel
I don't think it needs to be exposed any more times than I've already done.
If you have a more convincing source for the concept, by all means, expose away!
Got ya.
There is no good answer to this question. I have read the remainder of your reply, and i appreciate it. But this question just doesn't have an answer unless you stipulate an arbitrary aim. By way of brief extension..
Quoting Astrophel
This, to me, is prevaricative poeticism. There's nothing in this statement. It is just empty concepts. Nothing gives me any reason to think Ethics exists, at all, outside of Human deliberation.
I understand that you are refusing to engage with what you have obviously understood:
Your position makes no sense. Which is why that question is obviously absurd. You can't have cake and eat it too.
But the term as "the rock bottom foundation of awareness" has no value in a discussion about ethics if there is nothing IN the term that is inherently ethical. I would argue that it is not the primal drive at all. This concept of survival is just general term for something more primordial, which is found only in the conditions of actual engagement. Take someone reaching to overcome in a case where survival is threatened. In the drive to survive there is the deeper analysis of caring and all of the affectivity in play in the desperate move that can see a possibility, and hope emerges, but is dashed and misery reasserts itself, a deepens as the physical pain or the the dread comes over one. Compared to this living reality, a term like survival is a mere abstraction, used in discussions about how traits in one species survived over others, or, as with your account, the primal drive that thrusts the organism into struggles to overcome. But there IS no such primal drive any more than there is the Freudian libido. This are theoretical terms that are constructed out of the living realities so we can talk about things.
Take General Motors, the car company. Does GM "exist"? Of course not. It is a pragmatic concept that we treat AS IF it existed so we can organize our affairs. One could argue that all of our cultural institutions are like this.
So the attempt here is to arrive at what does exist in ethics that makes it more than just a mere organizing principle, like GM. Existence in the "hard" sense of the term. Is there such a thing? Yes. It is found in the value dimension of our existence.
Quoting Vera Mont
But whatever I do, it is going to be a matter of importance to me. If this importance is absent, then all motivation is lost and the possibility of it as an ethical issue is lost. This is the point: ethics is "made of" value, and value has its essence in the actualities of our engagements.
Quoting Vera Mont
Then show how survival qua survival does this. This is why I opened with the lounge chair. Survival AS SUCH has nothing of the analysis of what constitutes an ethical matter.
Quoting Vera Mont
Done already.
What? Where are you getting that?
No one said ethics exists outside of human deliberation. It is a matter of what human deliberation is grounded in. Any ethical rule, law, principle we DELIBERTATE about has its final meaning grounded in our existence in this world. This is essentially what has been said. Our existence, the conditions of our being in the world. There is nothing poetic about this. Purely descriptive: what is our existence in the world? This is easy. We love, hate, struggle, suffer, rejoice, celebrate, despair, etc., ABOUT the things we are attached to. All of these relations are value relations, the taste of fine wine, the love of a child, the revulsion of eating brussel sprouts. If one wants to talk about the nature of ethics, one MUST talk about this kind of thing. Period! It is analytic. You can only commit an ethical offense to me regarding brussel sprouts if I CARE about brussel sprouts. So what is this caring about? It is the palpable revulsion I have when I get within ten feet of them, that's what. Ethics is "made of" this existential counterpart to caring.
Not clear why this is not clear.
See? It's probable we're not disagreeing. But there's no way to ascertain some objective ethical consideration without arbitrarily deciding what is worth caring about. There's an inference that one can be ethically 'wrong' which begs the question as to what 'wrong' is.
That's because it's been around a whole helluva lot longer than ethics; the concept of ethics comes long after animals with brains big enough to think of it. They couldn't have got there without surviving the evolutionary steps that precede it. Nor will you have children, wine and Brussels sprouts without having survived to get them. (Also, I fail to see the ethical component of Brussels sprouts, but that's just me. )
But this is philosophy. If we were talking about reason, we would move past that-which-is-reasoned-about and on to reason as such, or logical form as such. One can argue that reason is, say, an evolutionary phenomenon, and they would not be wrong in that context. But philosophy takes value as thematic, or it can do this.
The wrong and right will always be indeterminate. Because this refers to actions, and actions are entangled in facts. My sister loaned me her car. Fact. I dented the fender. Fact. I am obligated to tell her. Now wait a minute...She would get very angry and she just got divorced and maybe I should fix the dent myself and say nothing....But then, if she finds out...
But the engine that drives the whole affair is this caring about something, and the value in play. And this value is solidly IN the world. If I am enraged, or someone is pulling my fingernails out, this is real. I mean, what could be more real that this? And the moral obligation not to pull someone's fingernails out is grounded in just this dreadful reality.
I say: No, what hte hell, Its literally in the mind of the actor. There is no value 'in the world'. Value is a function of cognitive judgments. I agree, this is philosophy, and if yuo want to settle for one free miracle, that's fine. My point is this is not acknowledged
I think this is disingenuous. The pain in my sprained ankle IS in the world. Where else? And referring to a miracle, well, this is just strawman arguing, construing the argument in blatantly indefensible terms, and announcing that this is where it fails. No one but you is talking about miracles. UNLESS, that is you can show, that is argue, how what I am saying can be rightly construed as miracle mongering. If you can't do this, then you are simply being, as I said, disingenuous.
But you are not arguing the case put before you. As to the brussel sprouts...really?
Sorry; I see no case to answer.
If you have made a case for something or against something, I can't follow what it is. I sincerely do not believe that your taste in wine, or concern for your lawn-chair is the basis of an ethical system.
In ancient times we could begin with Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. And since these three were greatly influenced by Plato, we could designate him as having a secondary role. In more modern times we might consider philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and even Marx.
Quoting AmadeusD
Sorry Amadeus, I have no idea what your talking about. All you have done is made incorrect assertions. First you said that my supposition is erroneous, so I corrected you on that. It is not erroneous, but debatable, as suppositions often are. Now you are simply asserting that my position makes not sense.
Well, of course my position makes no sense to you. You dismiss my supposition as erroneous, without bothering to debate it. So be it, continue to live in your narrow-minded world.
They all may well have influenced people, even long after they were dead, but in their lifetime, they changed not one dot or iota of public policy or prevailing morality or general standards of behaviour.
I would think that the case, so all good.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You accepted my position immediately after rejecting it. You also agreed it was debatable If it was erroneous. And you're just asserting it both isn't, and that I dismissed your position. You are flat-the-heck-out wrong.
I don't know how to deal with people who are dishonest, and then push that on others. The fact that you felt the need to attempt to insult my intellect is just icing on that cake. You just ignored my question. You didn't do what was asked. And now you seem to think that's on me. Could you perhaps explain how any of this makes anything close to sense?
Quoting Astrophel
It is literally, figuratively and metaphorically in your mind. It is not in your c-Fibres. It is not in your ankle bone. It is not anywhere outside of your body. It exists solely in your mind.
If you reject this, I don't know what to say. That's an empirical claim, not a philosophical one. You could then make the Philosophical move of saying "I am a strict physicalist" and we could move forward.
Quoting Astrophel
You all require miracles and pretend you don't. I have actually been very clear about this. The fact that no one is mentioning it supports my claim about their positions.
Quoting Astrophel
I've done it multiple times (including specifically in that post, where i mentioned it). That you're not engaging with it isn't up to me *shrug*.
I think you are wrong, and these people did effect changes within their lifetimes. However that little disagreement is irrelevant because the condition of "in their lifetime" has been arbitrarily added by you anyway
Quoting AmadeusD
I explained to you why your question was ridiculous and unanswerable because it was based on the false premise. You asked me to point to a good, when goods are not the type of things which can be pointed to. You, yourself, even affirmed that the premise of your question was false, later in your post when you, stated that a good doesn't come into contact with anything but a human mind. Therefore it was already clear to you that you were asking me a question which assumed a falsity, and your question was nothing but trickery.
And if you are thinking that because goods come into contact with human minds, they must come into contact with a human mind, to be a good, then this is faulty logic. That would imply that goods are only created through contact with human minds.
Quoting Captain Homicide
I think that any time you state a general rule such as "you shouldn't want to be the kind of person that does... (X)", this statement represents a moral judgement. Anything represented by (X) here is judged as bad in some way. Therefore it is a moral judgement, because to judge a type of activity as bad, is a moral judgement.
If, on the other hand, you were to state "I would not want to be the kind of person that does...(X)", in full respect that others may want to be the kind of person that does... (X), and there is no problem with that, then you simply state a matter of personal preference. It is when you say "you shouldn't want to...", imposing your personal preference upon others, that you turn the statement into a moral statement.
Not arbitrarily, but to fill in an oversight. I had neglected to point out earlier that people make national policy and religious doctrine while they are alive.
You eventually returned with a list of men who wrote books, that may later have influenced the thinking of men who made policy and revolution. None of the resulting policies and actions, AFAIK, yielded the outcome envisioned by the writers.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Buthow is what I require is miracles? This is the question. And what about the idea that ethics is analytically bound to value? This was the major thesis! But you never mention it. Look, I wrote quite a bit that you had nothing to say about. I think you should at least say something like, here is where you go wrong. Here is a brief exchange:
[i]Showing that these are part of the essence of ethics, I mean, it is analytically true the ethics IS what ethics is about.
Astrophel
YOU: Sure. But it gives us no reason to care, other than our own discomfort.
And such things are not invented.
Astrophel
YOU: They are. You're giving me states of affairs. Morality is not states of affairs.[/i]
But if it is not grounded in a state of affairs, it is nothing! You just said that the pain of a toothache (I think it was) is invented! I mean, it is impossible to hold such a monumentally absurd idea. There you are, stricken with plague, you fingers black with gangrene, vomiting endlessly, writhing in a a dark corner begging for death! And you reasoning steps in, "well, not to bother so much. It is after all, all in your head." Do you realize the patent stupidity of such a position?; not that you, dear Amadeus, are stupid. Nothing personal. But the "position" is wildly off the charts ridiculous!
And the argument that shows without a speck of doubt that IF, in a given ethical situation, this value dimension is withdrawn, THEN the ethicality vanishes!. THIS remains untouched in your thinking so far. You have to deal with this. The essence of something is that such that the thing is no longer what it is if this were to be removed.
SAYING you are a physicalist says nothing. Anyone can do this. Deals with nothing the argument raises. I am a flat-earther--- So there.
I mean, look at this argument. Air tight!
Those are simply examples, the wine and the chairs. This was clear, I thought. The lounge chair, an example of how the term 'survival' is of no help in explaining ethics. It is a term with no ethical dimension to it. Things survive, don't survive. Qua survival, it matters not. This is the point. Clear, I think.
Taste, or some appetitive indulgence, taste being one of many. This, too, I thought clear. When one seeks an understanding of the nature of ethics, one must look to things like this in order to understand how it is even possible for, say, the ethical issue of taking another's wine (who values it for its taste and other qualities--it's just an example, and not about my love of wine. You see this, right? Nothing to do with my personal distaste for brussel sprouts, either. These illustrate a point) has any meaning at all.
I am frankly a bit at a loss, here. The reasoning seems without argument. A person loves wine, cares about this bottle, and this creates the material basis for the defeasible moral prohibition against stealing it. Of course, it is only a prime facie obligation not to steal it, and I am guessing you know what this means; it is not absolute, but subject to being defeated by a conflicting obligation (perhaps the wine is stolen to protect the other owner from her alcoholism, or the like. You get the idea).
All I am saying is that the concrete ground for there to be an ethical situation at all, for it to even be possible, regarding this example regarding the wine, is for there to be caring and valuing in place. No valuing, no ethics. Something so transparently obvious I hardly see the need for clarification. So all analytic eyes turn to this actuality, this love of something, adoration of something, interest, repugnance, revulsion, and so on. And terms like this take us directly to episodic affairs: the actual experiences of the revulsion, and the rest. This ties ethical obligation to actuality, and the strongest way possible: analytically! How? NO value; therefore, NO ethics!
Now, I don't think it is possible that, as you say, you "can't follow what it is." There simply is no ambiguity.
Unless, of course, you see an ambiguity. I would like to hear this. It would philosophically interesting.
They were two irrelevancies among many. Ethics isn't about your preference or what you happen to value at any given moment. It's about interpersonal transactions conducted in such manner as to promote the cohesion of a social unit.
Quoting Astrophel
It doesn't need an 'ethical dimension' - whatever an ethical dimension is - because the will to survive is the root cause of the need for social systems, moral codes, ethical and legal frameworks.
All other desires, lusts, adorations etc. can only follow if the basic requirements of survival have been met. And they can not be met by solitary humans; therefore humans need a family and community in order to thrive and they can't thrive unless their survival is assured.
Whether you value something or not is irrelevant to the prohibition against stealing. It's just as unethical to steal a cow from a rancher who's lost count of his stock as from a farmer with only one cow. (It's less immoral, but equally illegal; the ethical issue is the theft, not the cow or whether anyone loves her.) The point of the prohibition is that if people take stuff without the owner's permission, it causes strife within the community.
Even so with every other breach of ethics. If a supplier of meat uses a dishonest scale, that impoverishes members of the community. If a soldier skives off for an assignation while on guard duty, he puts his comerades in danger. If a carrier of disease breaks quarantine, he endangers everyone he meets. If a man seduces his colleague's daughter, that causes conflict in the workplace.
It's not about how you feel about your things - it's about the welfare of the polity.
Quoting Astrophel
Possibly. But the basic valuing is not of the material possession, but of the survival of individuals, which are dependent on the survival of the social unit. The secondary value is adding to the welfare of the community, and thus promoting the welfare of each member. Under secondary-value ethics, we could include assisting the elderly, protecting the very young, cutting down noxious weeds, setting a good example for children, and ordinary everyday courtesy.
This is why a certain level of corruption - which is simply, an abandonment of ethical behaviours and standards by a large enough percent of a population - can lead to the utter collapse of the nation. Abandonment of common courtesy, respect and regard for one's fellow citizens is a less notable component of corruption. Primary and secondary values.
The emotional ones come far down the priority scale, and fall entirely outside the purview of ethics.
Yes, but you see, this begs the question: what is this social cohesion all about, essentially? We are a cohesion that has its ethical cement, if you will, in this feature of our existence referred to by the general term 'value'. So, philosophy wants to inquire as to the nature of value. It may be that pain and bliss as such and the like have no analysis (as I hold), that they are irreducible (Wittgenstein, notably). But then, this has to be acknowledged, and if this is true, it has strong implications for metaethical theory.
Quoting Vera Mont
MY feelings?? I thought this clear. These are just examples. And when you say "Whether you value something or not is irrelevant to the prohibition against stealing" you stand in contradiction, for one cannot even conceive of a moral prohibition without conceiving value."
To see this, you have to have an interest that goes to a more basic level of inquiry. Philosophy deals with the most basic sense, so if questions are begged, here is where analysis begins. I mean, if I say NO value, NO ethics, this is serious. It's like saying no language, no speaking; or, no logic, no reasoning. It is not a historical proposition determined by what people have done in organizing themselves (unless you are Heidegger and hold that language is innately historical. But this is a different matter), or a cultural anthropological statement that notes how the species creates institutions of survival. All of the things you mention are true! But the philosophical question remains: In all of the ethical dealings with "strife" and the rest, what is the underlying basis that makes this discussion even possible? Like asking in all the talking and language use we deploy in living our everyday lives, what is it that provides the structure for things to be at all intelligible? So, Kant steps of (in the heels of Aristotle and others) and does an analysis of pure reason. You don't have to agree with him, but at least see the point: To talk requires structure. To structure, no talking. Because in our talk is evidenced a non arbitrary disclosure.
You could turn to Kant and give, say, an evolutionary account or language, or reduce language use to basic biology or physics (Quine thought ALL things re reducible to physics), and, had he known of such things, would say no problem! He is not talking about these alternative fields of inquiry. He is talking about the phenomenological analysis of judgment.
Same here, only it is value, not reason. All you say is not wrong at all. It is simply not philosophy.
Not "to structure" in the above; rather "NO structure." No structure, No talking (talking understood as having the logical form familiar language use has. Dogs and cats don't "talk" in this.....or do they?).
For the - what? Fifth? - time: it's about SURVIVAL. I'm reasonably sure you'll let your bottle of wine and deck furniture be taken rather than your life.
Quoting Astrophel
So, let Philosophy inquire to its tiny heart's content, it won't find anything deeper than survival as a basis of basic values. Once you're dead, you stop asking questions.
Quoting Astrophel
By the 'one' who can't conceive, I have to assume you mean yourself. The value of things is tertiary. The value of civic responsibility is secondary; the value of social cohesion is primary. The value of keeping peace in the community - whether through the protection of property or of institutions or of traffic laws or of civil deneanour - is far more important than how anybody feels about their stuff.
Quoting Astrophel
That's as may be. I'm not the one who ate all those textbooks. But it's enough for a derail that's nowhere close to answering the OP.
Quoting Astrophel
The internet.
But I think it's had more than a fair run.
Unfortunately, thee question was based on your premise to show why your position was absurd. I noted this. The reason the question is absurd (it is, I have agreed twice with that position) is because of your claimed position. It's really hard to not just sort of chuckle and leave this here. I am not really that interested in relitigating that. I am happy to leave this as a disagreement we're not yet ready (as a pair) to nut-out.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
They clearly are. Not by contact with human minds. That is incoherent. 'Good's are literally an invention of human minds. You have not presented anything that remotely borders a reasonable argument otherwise. You have asserted that these Goods live somewhere else. Yet, there is no suggestion as to where. Just sort of poetic dancing talking about functional aims of particular aspects of the world.
They are states of affairs and give us nothing toward an ought, unless you take up the free miracle i offered: That 'The Good' consists in achieving certain, necessarily arbitrary, aims, which are valued by the S carrying them out. There is nothing more to this, on the information you and I have put across. Nothing you've put forward indicates, even sparsely or weakly, any other source. So, that's where I am.
Quoting Astrophel
This isn't an objection. It's just a possible outcome of the discussion. One which I think holds.
Getting from a state of affairs to a claim about what action ought follow from that isn't something you've established here. You've merely asserted there's a grounding in states of affairs, and then popped off to shop around your ethical values without establishing any move from one to the other. I have merely rejected that you've done the above. Which you have not. You have indicated that your view of ethics is not in line with your own reasoning.
Quoting Astrophel
I did not do so. This is a rather extreme misinterpretation I find it hard to understand. I have put forward the empirical fact that the pain exists in your mind, and no where else. You don't deny this, but still for maintain the positions which it precludes.
Pain has a causal relationship with your physical body. Nothing in this suggests the 'toothache' is invented, other than the language... More below, in some sense..
Quoting Astrophel
Hmm.. I don't think my position and reasoning says any such thing. The pain, in your scenario exists in the person's head. That is a fact, not an inference or a 'position' that I hold uniquely somehow. It is a basic, clear reading of the facts of how pain works (again, unless you are a strict physicalist and claim that pain IS the firing of c-fibres in response to overstimulation - So your final two lines of this post are likely because you haven't grasped what I'm saying clearly). Further, I can't ascertain what your case would show. That someone is insensitive? Sure. Feeling pain sucks. Doesn't mean it exists anywhere but the mind. Mental anguish is the same. Where does that live?
Quoting Astrophel
This doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. What i can glean from this is that you have not adequately read much of what I've said, I don't think. I have tried above to clarify what I see are two points of serious misunderstanding:
1. Pain is a mental phenomenon - this doesn't seem debatable, whether caused physically or not; and
2. I am not suggesting injuries exist in the mind. These are two separate things you seem to be conflating.
Regarding the apparent loss of ethics, on my view, I have dealt with this multiple times. There is no ethicality unless a Subject arbitrarily decides to invoke their values as a motivator for action. And that is a totally fine thing to do, given we have nothing to say it isn't.
In that case, there are clear ways to act in in-line with one's values. But that initial move from 'is' to 'ought' is entirely arbitrary. There is nothing outside the mind of the person thats what should be done, without that mind understanding and agreeing to some aim.
They communicate, and there is a structure to their language, just as there is to ours. The language of dogs consists of sounds, body stance, gestures of head, paws and tail, facial expressions, ear and hair erection. They are quite capable of reprimanding one another for rule breaking, status offenses and breaches of etiquette - and of responding appropriately to such a reprimand.
But for the fifth time, survival is question begging. To survive as such has no ethical meaning. One survives FOR or motivated BY, but never in itself. In itself survival serves NO purpose at the level of basic questions.
Quoting Vera Mont
Well, if the issue is about doubting the point of asking philosophical questions, then you have other issues entirely. Odd you would be in a "philosophy" club, though.
Quoting Vera Mont
So be it, if by important you mean simply attending to pragmatic challenges in society and the like. Philosophy is more about understanding the questions that underlie such things, so that before one steps into action she has understood the full depth of the issue. One has to have a curious nature for basic questions.
Something being important entirely depends on the context of the discussion.
Quoting Vera Mont
I think you question the value of philosophy, which is understandable given that anglo american analytic thinking has turned serious foundational ideas into nihilistic dead ends. But consider that, as a practical function of critical thinking at the basic level, philosophy serves to disabuse society of it's misguided religious absurdities.
Asking questions about the nature of ethics, tha t is, metaethics, is to ask about the metaphysics of value, and this is important because as long as popular religions rule the minds of people, the more inclined people are to be held in the sway of dogmatic thinking in ethics, and this leads to policy making that is not grounded in well reasoned thought. Foundational issues like this go to the basic rationality of the things you rightly take to be important. Religion deals with the basic indeterminacy of our existence, and the ethical indeterminacy especially, that is, people really don't have a grasp of why we are all born to suffer and die. This is an ETHICAL problem in the metaphysics of our existence. Sound thinking here can make the difference between a holy war and policies of equality and acceptance.
Many animals live in status systems. The top chicken gets to peck at the choice kernel first, on down to the lowest chicken who is lucky not to get pecked to death. The top cow goes through the barn door first; a challenger might try to go through the door first, in which case, the top cow and challenger right get stuck in the doorway.
Many animals also communicate with scent. They may not "design" the scent, but they take the initiative in marking territory. Tall male dogs try to piss higher up on the tree than everybody else, the better to establish 'place'. Please don't leap to any semblance you may see in human male behavior.
It all amounts to a reasonably decent arrangement.
BTW, I'm not finding this thread very interesting.
Very important to see that these are not MY personal ethical values. Anything I bring up is just to serve as an illustration.
True, I have asserted there is a grounding for ethical state of affairs, but you entirely lose me after this. Popping off? It suggests an arbitrary move. But i have done exactly the opposite. I am saying ethics is NOT arbitrary, and that it DOES have a foundation in actuality. This is the philosophical discovery of value-in-the-world.
I think this is alien thinking to you, because most popular thinking these says looks to scientific methods of discovery to determine justified belief in philosophical issues. You seem to have fallen prey. This is not an empirical argument. It is an analytical argument. Usually analytic matter turn on logical agreement. Here, there is a priority discovered in the world's existence. Rather momentous really. But you first have to pry yourself lose from interfering thinking from other quarters. One has to think purely analytically, as if the matter were of an entirely logical nature. Think of ethics, any situation will do. Ask what it IS for something to be ethical. And ask this looking for necessary and sufficient conditions for ethicality. See, it is conceptual. Value is inherent to ethics. So we look at value, and ask what this is. This moves to episodic actualities.
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay, more below. But just to be clear, are you saying the mind is distinct from the body? I find this rather hard to understand from a self professed physicalist. When I said you said pain is something we invented, I was referring to where you said it was only in the mind. It didn't occur to me that you might think the mind not a being a bodily entity. This does confuse. Look here:
[i]Me: The pain in my sprained ankle IS in the world. Where else?
You: It is literally, figuratively and metaphorically in your mind. It is not in your c-Fibres. It is not in your ankle bone. It is not anywhere outside of your body. It exists solely in your mind.[/i]
Not even my c fibers?? Hmmmm. "Where" again is pain? Pain is only one "place": in the world.
Quoting AmadeusD
When I observe the dreadful pain, or bliss, and say it is in the world, I mean it is there. The world is all there is. I can see how a "strict physicalist" might try to push this out of existence, but you say you are not one of these. Now I don't really know where you stand ontologically. But the premise I would ask you to accept is simple: If it is there, then it is in the world. Even imagined things have a status of being in the world AS imagined things. Only this spear in my kidney (the agony, that is) is not imagined. Just the opposite: it is the least imagined thing one can conceive.
Insensitively has nothing to do with it. It can, however, play an important role in the mind of a policy maker in government where laws are made. Some would be fine reintroducing the Roman gladiatorial back into our entertainment. But nothing can mitigate pain. It is not an attitude about something that sucks. It is the Real foundation for ethical possiblity. This is where the argument lies. Value and ethics are like modus ponens and its conclusion: therefore, Q. This IS the point.
But....THIS is incidental to the issue. I mean, seriously?
:up: :up:
Fine.
Quoting Astrophel
The "issue" is tucked up safe in bed. Good night.
Why are you telling me this? I'm the one who has been attempting to explain that human ethical values evolved along with us, from the social systems of our ancestors, all the way back to insects; that they originate from the need to keep an orderly state of affairs going.
Quoting BC
Too late! About 70 years too late.
That's a fair comment - I think what I'm getting at though, is that these examples do not survive without being someone's personal view of the act/event/whatever. They cannot exist, free of the Subject's judgement.
You're right that I may be unfairly ascribing them - take those as examples, also, if you can. Quoting Astrophel
Yep. Not sure what's being missed here, but for clarity (as this may meean me ignoring much of your response in light of this):
- I understand this is what you are putting forward;
- I also understand you are attempting to defend the thesis above;
- I am of the view that you have entirely failed to do so, and that your entire position boils down to an arbitrary move. I figured I had been very clear about this, so it's possible I will need to continue pointing out where i Believe you are either ignoring me, or perhaps misunderstand if the above is how you're reading, currently.
Onward...
Quoting Astrophel
Wrong. It's not alien. It's incoherent.
Quoting Astrophel
No. There isn't. ANd so far, you've don't nothing to defend this. All you've done is told me that I don't get it. I get it. It's wrong (is my position). It is a really common attempt to ensure one is making good decisions, based on some framework that isn't arbitrary. But, it is, at base. THe maths works. THe basis is false.
Quoting Astrophel
This, is also incoherent. You are presupposing that there is some objectivity about ethics to be found. There isn't, you've not provided anything that indicates there is other than the assertion. So, i'm left with not much to say.
Quoting Astrophel
Err, no. That's an empirical fact. If you are taking this to be the case, either you're a hard-line physicalist or you're making things up to suit your position, me thinks. I did provide an out for the former. THe latter, not so much.
Quoting Astrophel
No. Not in any way, and you have literally not even bothered to discuss my point. You have just reasserted some Nietzschean/Wittgensteinian misleading statements. It's poetics not philosophy so say pain is "in the world". Your mind is in the world, sure. If you want to ignore that part, have hte cake and Eat it.
Quoting Astrophel
Yeah, but you're wrong. So, what are you trying to do here except just in other words restate your position with no argument? "in the world" is absolutely meaningless in these passages, as they are. It may be something you grasp in your mind, but you've not said anything that fills the empty vessel that phrase provides me.
Quoting Astrophel
This is hte exact opposite, and it is now clear that you're not engaging with the Physicalist position I'm mentioning, and that you've misread what I've actually said.
Your position could be supported in strict Physicalist terms. C-fibres firing would constitute pain on that account. You could then claim the pain exist in the world. But, if you're not taking that line, the move isn't open. My understanding of your position here is that you do not know what you're discussing very well, as these things are directly conflicting in your passages.
Quoting Astrophel
This is a mere side-step of the clear distinction. It doesn't need answering, as the possible disagreement in this passage has been covered at least twice in this exchange: The mind is in the world. The Pain is in the mind. Claiming that your house is in (insert country) and nothing more doesn't help anyone locate it.
Quoting Astrophel
The spear, the injury are not imagined. I have pointed that out.
The pain, resultant from a causal relationship with those things, is. It is in your mind. It doesn't exist elsewhere.
Quoting Astrophel
Then you're flat-out wrong and I need not engage further. This is against the empirical understanding of what Pain is and how it operates.
It also seems you've jettisonned most of your position now, instead giving me the basis for ethics as:
Physical pain. Alrighty. I reject that. And we're good :)
Quoting Vera Mont
I don't see how whether the ideas are adopted when the person is alive or dead is relevant to what we were talking about. You said: "Do these big-picture individuals attempt to communicate their vision? Of course they do. Do they make social policy, determine legal, ethical and moral codes?
No, never."
Clearly, whether the social policy is enacted before or after the person is dead, is irrelevant to the question of whether these people are the ones who "make" the policies.
Quoting AmadeusD
Let me remind you, that it was your words, you, who said the good comes in contact with human minds. You said: "It literally doesn't come into contact with anything but human minds."
I am having great difficulty trying to understand what you are saying. Now you are saying that what you said earlier is incoherent. What are you trying to say?
Quoting AmadeusD
The issue is not whether goods are an invention of human minds, it is a question of whether these things, which you insist are created by human minds can transcend those minds.
Suppose for example, we name a concept "X", and we define X as a thing which transcends human minds. Clearly X must transcend human minds or else it is self-contradicting and incoherent, therefore not a concept. Since it is a very real possibility, and not contradictory at all, to propose such a concept, one which transcends human minds, then there is no logical basis for the rejection of such a proposition, the concept "X" which transcends human minds. Therefore regardless of whether the concept X is created by a human mind, it cannot be rejected on any principles of logic, and it must necessarily, by definition, transcend human minds.
It is very clear that what you are asserting is illogical. You claim that the supposed fact that human minds create goods, implies that goods cannot transcend human minds. This would mean that only a human mind could create a good. So here's another way that your position may be refuted. Your mind is not my mind. My mind creates its own goods, and your mind creates its own goods. My goods may transcend your mind, and your goods may transcend my mind. Unless you can prove that only a human mind could create a good, then we must allow that there could be goods which transcend all human minds, perhaps created by a mind which is not human. And clearly we have evidence of such goods. Birds build nests, and other animals make homes for themselves, so all these creatures produce their own goods, with their own minds, and these goods transcend all human minds.
This sentence does not make grammatical sense. From what I gather, you're trying to say I painted myself into a corner.
No. As noted, these are your positions I am illustrating the illogic of. I cannot stress enough how backwards you are reading these exchanges.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is pretty clear evidence for the above. You're ascribing my description of your own position to my own position. No thank you, good sir.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is not the case. It is a concept. A false concept. Things don't just cease to exist because they are contradictory. People hold contradictory concepts in mind all the time. These is very, very confused.
I also note the use of 'must' here relates only to achieving coherence. Nothing else is aimed at. Not an ethical claim.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is probably hte worst use of 'logic' to defend the indefensible I have seen since joining TPF, outside of Corvus. Nothing you've described is apt for your claim.
It seems you may be baiting and switching in part through this exchange too. Your use of 'goods' seems to flit between 'products' and 'the good'. This is not something I can engage with sensibly.
"the Good" is apt here, where "Goods" are not apt. They are just objects. If you are trying to say they are the same thing, I reject and simply move on with my life.
It's possible I wont reply if similar comments come back. If so, take care mate - I'm sure we'll have more productive exchanges elsewhere on TPF!
Yes, it is absolutely relevant. Once dead, the visionary has no control or ownership of his idea. Anybody can 'interpret' it, subsection it, misapply it, misdirect it any way they want. Paul ran with an idea Jesus had and made a complete hash of it. Lenin did similarly with Marx. And poor old Rousseau did not fare any better at the hands of Robespierre. The ones who enact are not the visionaries and not usually benevolent and the 'influence' is not reflected very well in the actuality that ensues.
Not sure whether this name is allowed here, but Terence McKenna has made much this same point - that originators have no control of their ideas, in a general sense.
Not much could be done about Marxism once it got going. The chances are that Marx would have been shouted down and eventually turned out for trying to correct the Communist project of the early 20th Century. Tbf, I would do that to him anyway.
Well if you think I have entirely failed to do so, then I assume you have spoken clearly against this apriori argument of value and ethics stated several times. This is the first premise of the argument. You haven't done this. Just tell me how it is that ethics and value are not as I have argued? You haven't touched this.
Quoting AmadeusD
Well, you don't seem to getting something obvious, and very often those who have taken classes in anthropology or biology come out thinking they know something about philosophy, because they have opinions and textbooks. But philosophy deals with the analysis of the presuppositions that are found in familiar knowledge claims, not so much in those familiar knowledge claims themselves.
Philosophy is not incoherent, but if you read it, something like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, then I suspect it will sound alien to you. If you have actually read this, then you can borrow from the Kant's method of discovery to apply it here, for the same insight applies regard method. Take the ethical case, any will do. Ask yourself, what is in this case that were it to be removed from the case, the case would lose it meaning as ethical. This is value-in-being. This you have not even begun to do, despite all of your protestations to the contrary. And it is the essential feature! I don't get it. I hate to labor the point, but just don't be shy about it. Tell where this goes wrong if you want to send me packing.
Quoting AmadeusD
This is a case in point. I think you think you have argued the point. But there is more to it than "No. There isn't." Apriority, what is this? Generally we associate this with the inviolability of logically structured propositions. Analytic propositions are apriori, but then vacuous in terms of content. But what if there is a palpable feature of the actual world that that demonstrates the apodicticity of apriority, that is universal and necessary? (And putting aside the argument that even logic is not air tight, so to speak. After all, logic is constructed IN language, and language cannot be shown to be apriori. That is a longer story).
This is the fascinating thing about ethics. For there is G E Moore's "non natural" property that is an amazing part of this world. I invite you to read about this in his Principia Ethica. Easy to find on the internet. The issue is the notorious "good" of ethics. I can't remember if I talked about this already, but you have been so busy arguing against the obvious, I haven't had the chance.
But you have to get to first base, first. All you have to do is say something like, Okay, if an ethical problem is divested of the value that is in play, as when I borrow a valued tool like an ax, keeping in mind that if the ax in question has value to the borrower and the owner, then the ethics of the case simply vanishes. You SEE this, don't you?? You should simply say yes, and be done with it. You protest too much, methinks.
Quoting AmadeusD
IT is not incoherent. The hard part hasn't even begun. By necessary and sufficient I am simply defining ethics. Not... what are you talking about? What are the necessary and sufficient condition for a circle? For a pizza? I am telling you about the procedure of discovering what it means for something to be ethical. All you have to do is say, well, this is not a necessary condition.... or a sufficient condition for such and such reasons. IS value a necessary condition or not, in defining ethics?? Just spill it.
Quoting AmadeusD
I am just listening to you tell me what you think. By all means, disabuse me on what you hold to be the case. Sounds like you are somewhere in the vicinity of being a physicalist.
Quoting AmadeusD
Your point about what the world is? Just say it. I'm listening.
Quoting AmadeusD
So "in the world" is the issue. What is in the world? In order address a question like this, it might be best to say what is not in the world, since most of what we can think of is unproblematically in the world, like dogs and cats and people and fence posts. But there is an problem that instantly arises: to speak of something not in the world is going to be an event IN the world. Speaking is IN the world. I don't think this is to be doubted. But one can speak OF things not in the world, can't one? The speaking in the world, the spoken of not in the world, like a unicorn. But the trouble with imagined things like this is that they comprise parts of real things, and so even though there are no unicorns, there are horses and horns. But why are these unproblematic? Because they are experienced in observation. BUt then, if this is a standard for being in the world, being observed, do we not observe an emotion? A pain? Not in the same way as we observe a fence post.
A pain is "there" but has limited predicative possibilities. But does this dismiss it from the world? This is where you come in, I think. I don't think it can be argued that a pain isn't "there" at all. That is impossible. But it can be argued that a pain is not a physical object. But you would have show why only physical objects are allow to be both there AND in the world, while pain is not. Keeping in mind that if you are a physicalist, pain is at least given the status of being reducible to physicality. Though if you do this, you deprive the pain of its overt observable feature of being what it is. Nerve cells, c fibers, or however you would like to characterize a brain event, are not pain.
Pain is often called a phenomenon, or an epiphenomenon by physicalists. But here is the rub: how is it that dogs and cats and the rest are not themselves phenomena? After all, the only thing a person can experience is a phenomenon. One cannot step outside of phenomena, for to do so would require a position outside of experience. This is never possible. Sorry, but this is Wittgenstein's idea.
So "being in the world" I think, even if the matter comes down to understanding pain as a phenomenon along with all things, has some limited exposition here. Phenomena are in the world because they are there at all! And "being there" is sufficient.
Quoting AmadeusD
Well, I haven't talked about anything except the argument about value and ethics. I haven't given you a single clue beyond affirming that pain is an inherent part of ethical statements that involve pain. If you want MY ontology just ask. See the preceding paragraphs. I read phenomenology. this is Kant through Derrida and beyond. What is real is phenomena. I only bring up physicality because you did, and I was surmising what you might think. Me? I am miles from this kind of naive thinking. C-fibres are themselves phenomenologically reducible to phenomena.
Quoting AmadeusD
So you're saying that saying something is somewhere, like a house, doesn't locate the house? Confusing, at best.
Quoting AmadeusD
You are missing the point. It is not that pain cannot be medically of otherwise mitigated. Are you kidding? One cannot mitigate the pain qua pain by contextualizing pain. Let's say you have a choice between to terrible alternatives. Consider simple contingent conditions of a knife being a good one, sharp, balanced, etc. But use this knife for Macbeth, and the sharpness becomes bad. What if the real knife were used by accident? Then one could say the duller the knife the better. But the sharp knife being used could be mitigated if it were in fact dull. The point is that contingent values like Good sharp knives and Good comfortable couches, are not like the ethical Good. this Greek arete, standing for excellence is not suitable for ethics in this sense. Why? Because with pain, and dreadful pain makes the case more vividly, there is no mitigating the, well, the "badness" of the pain. A twisted arm behind the back cannot be undone not matter what the context. It cannot be undone, that is, when weighed in any circumstance, it remains what it is. This makes pain like logic, apodictic.
You know, this is jumping to the chase. You first have to get beyond simply admitting the analytic union of value and ethics.
I wonder what modern televangelists would do with Jesus.
If we classify it as such, it would no longer fit OP's criterion of "not want to be a person who does it". We don't do diseases.
Quoting fdrake
Under many normative ethics, self-harm is considered immoral. You may bring up the example of touching a hot pan, which involves ignorance surrounding a topic, but OP includes the verb "want", which implies that the subject is conscious of the context he is in.
Quoting fdrake
That seems to be dodging the implication that willingly being alcoholic is deemed as immoral by many as it involves self-harm by saying it is just "silly", doesn't it?
One thing I know for sure, for most religions, alcoholism is immoral.
It's an odd disease then, where how you act both gives you it and keeps it going. It strikes me as something like football. You don't do football, but you are a football player. Which isn't quite being an instance of football...
Regardless, the original post's sense of immoral applies to person types and persons.
Quoting Captain Homicide
In fact the question is about that dynamic. If immorality only applies to acts, then we can end the discussion. The question remains open if you can consider a type of person immoral.
Quoting Lionino
Good catch. I think it was sticking a hand in the fire? I had in mind a kid touching a hot thing intentionally. Foolish, I think, not immoral.
my italics
I took this to mean, acts that do not come under a moral code, but are nevertheless considered shameful; things that, if they are witnessed by other people, would diminish our social standing and/or self-esteem. Like throwing a tantrum in a public place or throwing food at the television screen.
Another example of how you make faulty assertions. It seems like you have a tendency to claim that you are sure about things, when your professed certainty really has no foundation, or support of any kind.
Quoting Vera Mont
I don't see how this significantly differs from when the person is alive. The difference is that when the person is alive one might attempt to interfere and correct the interpreter. But in most cases, they do not bother unless the interpretation is seriously offensive.
Quoting Vera Mont
All those mentioned, Paul, Lenin, and Robespierre, are visionaries in their own right. I don't see how the fact that one visionary makes use of the ideas of another, and may be argued to misinterpret the other, alters the fact that the visionaries are the ones who enact the policies. It just relegates the original to secondary, as i said about Plato. But since the supposed "original" visionary derives ideas from a previous source. the infinite regress you are setting up is just a distraction from the reality of the situation. That reality is, the truth of the matter which you refuse to respect, and that is that visionaries really do enact policies, and where they derive their ideas from is not relevant to this truth. The very thing which you assert that visionaries never do, "make social policy, determine legal, ethical and moral codes", is actually impossible to do, if one is not a visionary. The non-visionaries are simple followers.
Only in that the visionary was not in charge of making policy during his lifetime and is not in charge of making policy after he's dead. I.e. never.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Certainly, but I cannot call them benevolent.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Mussolini qualifies on one count, anyway. So that's all right, just so somebody has a vision of some kind and the power to impose it on others. Sorry I can't respect them all equally.
As noted, yes i have, and you have ignored it (it seems!).
You are asking to me prove the negation of your position. No thank you, Good sir. You fail to provide support your position, I reject it. It ends there. If we keep discussing, cool. But it is not an objection to the exchange that I've not accepted your position.
Quoting Astrophel
I reject your unsupported position. Nothing more.
If it were obvious, I'd think you could convince me. I tend to accept obviousness as obvious, by it's nature. You haven't tried, it seems, to provide anything in that capacity so far. Which is fine, if that's not what you're trying to do. I may be misunderstanding your intent - but based on your arguments, these remarks stand, i think.
Quoting Astrophel
Human judgement. That my version of the the answer, to any case. Fwiw, I have read Kant. You don't seem to be groking the situation we're in here. I understand your position and reject it.
Quoting Astrophel
This is your assertion, which is fine. But you're acting as if you have ringfenced the claim against objection. You have not done so. It is simply your position. Perhaps one shared with many others, but that doesn't ringfence it.
My assumption is that you do not notice when you make subjective judgments, and take them to be somehow pursuant to. If you're suggesting that 'being' has some inherently value, i may need to walk away.
Quoting Astrophel
You have tacitly accepted my position. I have, in fact, said that this is hte case multiple times. I am now 100% convinced you are not reading, or understanding. This is not a mistake that could be made otherwise, I don't think. The bolded claim requires acceptance of my position. It is those subjects judgment in which the value consists, and therefore the Ethical 'content' of the event. We're good. As noted previously. There are not values free-floating in the World-at-large independent of human judgment.
Quoting Astrophel
It is. Which is going to be harsh for you, if you think this isn't the hard part. Heh. I kid.
Quoting Astrophel
All I can say to this is that I don't think you're understanding much of anything I'm saying if this is the conclusion you've drawn. It is definitely wrong, at any rate.
Quoting Astrophel
Yes, indeed - and you're wrong, on my view. I have been over this, in discreet detail, a few times (above, three times). You can go back and find that if you wish. I'm not sure why you aren't just saying "Ok, fine, you disagree and that's okay" which it is. We are allowed to do so. That's one of the best parts of Philosophy, imo.
Quoting Astrophel
This is an incoherent question. I am rebutting your point about 'what the world is'. I have canvassed two options. One is my position, and one is yours. I'll do a low-effort bit of highlighting:
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
I wont be elaborating, if you can't grok the above. While i am sympathetic if that's the case, I do not have the time. Pain doesn't exist outside the mind(on my view). Whether hte mind is 'in the world' or not, is irrelevant. You are ignoring a clear distinction in order to use poetics instead of clear reason. I shall not. Though, if you're, in fact, an idealist, please say so. That brings the discussion to a new place.
Quoting Astrophel
*ahem* I brought this fact up. I have repeated this fact. It supports my position, directly. You are either being dishonest or this has gone so far off the rails we need to start again. Yeesh. You're arguing for a physicalist position by ..what..rejecting physcalism? Bizarre. I assume that's not what your intent is, but that is what's being conveyed to me in fairly clear terms.
Quoting Astrophel
To me, this is explains so much. If you follow Witty, we have not much to discuss. I don't rate him at all. In terms of deducing your positions - I did predict this. Quoting AmadeusD ;) No need to be sorry. He's a moron (hehehe, I kid).
Quoting Astrophel
This is the above in action, as an exemplar. These phrases have no meaning, as they are. None of this presents any objections. Though, I take your point here - it would probably have been better to note that, sure, pain is 'in the world' in a sense, but it is located far more specifically than that - It isn't present in the vast, vast, vast majority of the world (well, an instance of pain - and, pain, the abstract concept, obviously doesn't exist 'in the world'. Nothing of that kind does). Oh. It turns out that I infact, did do that, as re-quoted from my own comments above :)
Quoting Astrophel
They do not 'comprise' these things. Im unsure how you're formulating that statement. It doesn't make sense. The opposite is true - the concept of a Unicorn is comprised of Horses and Horns. I don't really take that to be the case, but that's another discussion. There are examples where that's the case, to some degree, but you can't imagine parts of a real thing, which don't actually exist. If something is real, it's parts are necessarily real. If a Unicorn existed, it is partially because Horses and Horns already exist. A Donkey can fit this description somewhat aptly.
Quoting Astrophel
As noted above, I take this point but its just floating above the discussion and not actually engaging what is being discussed on my view. If you can point to pain outside the mind, go ahead. If you can't, my position remains and is untouched by this (accepted) reality. But, this is plainly not true of ideas. Which is why, if you're an idealist, this is a different discussion.
Quoting Astrophel
Ah. You are, on my account, not talking any sense in this passage. I would recommend perhaps reviewing your comments as you go through respond to my comments. They are directly related to your utterances, whcih you seem to deny throughout this quasi-review.
As this appears to be an (incredibly) inaccurate overview of what you've said in this exchange, I feel the need to step away. I really appreciate the time and effort you've put in - it's been a fun exchange. But at this stage, it would definitely be diminishing returns for both of us. And that's fine.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Seem to arguing for the sake of it here. All i put forth was some good faith indication that I expect we are able to have productive discussions. If your response above is not facetious... Wth dude lol. But in terms of hte exchange, this is just more non-engagement.
Let me rephrase .. I hope we can have productive discussions elsewhere on TPF!
You seem to be arguing for no real reason.
The point though, is that another visionary just takes up the idea, and actually takes charge of enacting policy.
Quoting Vera Mont
That's just your subjective opinion.
Quoting Vera Mont
I know you can't. You make the blanket generalization of assuming that those who have visions, but do not move toward bringing their visions to policy are "good", and those visionaries who move toward enacting the policies are evil. So be it, you've expressed your opinion.
Quoting AmadeusD
From how you've shown yourself in this thread I don't see that as likely. You need to actually address the things which another has said, and show your reasons for disagreement, instead of repeatedly asserting that the other's position is erroneous, absurd, etc., if you really want a productive discussion.
Given that this is precisely antithetical to the exchange (which we can go back and read) I will assume that you're wrong, which gives me hope for my intention to do so :)
Yes, that is a point, howbeit unrelated to the comment I made. Another visionary takes an idea, or part of an idea, and incorporates it into his own agenda to enact a policy that bears little or no resemblance to the one the big-picture guy had in mind. That doesn't ever put the originator of a big picture vision into a position of directing his society, which is pretty much all I said.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I didn't say 'do not move toward; I said they lacked the power.
Nope, didn't say that, either. I didn't say all visionaries are good, only that the good ones are not in charge.
Not 'move toward'; seize the power to do so, and yes, many of those are bad.
That's not what I wrote, but it often is the case in real life.
No. If you don't want to be the kind of person that does X, then by definition you deem X immoral. The reason people in our culture resist this fact is because we have a taboo against moral claims, a "dictatorship of relativism." The taboo is common on this forum as well.
I would say that is correct. The OP is concerned with that which involves volition, i.e. things that people do. Alcoholism qua disease/illness does not involve volition, and you spell this out explicitly in your A2. Only alcohol qua volitional/culpable malady fits within the context of the OP.
For instance, one could be born an alcoholic, but this form of alcoholism would be irrelevant to the OP, for it is not something that one does. Thus not all alcoholism is volitional, but the non-volitional forms of alcoholism are irrelevant to the OP. The non-volitional form of alcoholism you specified would be much like Down syndrome, and this would also be irrelevant to the OP even though it be deemed undesirable.
Its a question I've been concerned with for a while about the current climate of media induced desensitization to worldly suffering and our perceived moral opinion on it. Should one, if able or possible through whatever means, force themselves to be more emotional about a particular issue or any such intuitive moral issue that arises? Given that we desire to be moral. . . to be moral may require us to entertain a proper emotional reaction to a given event. . . so perhaps it follows that if we do not have such a reaction its almost tantamount to declaring it as having less moral weight.
If that is the case, how would one obviously react introspectively to themselves if every issue they were met with in their greater awareness was met by their apathy or indifference? Perhaps they would not or should not see themselves as moral as they desire to see themselves as and therefore their self-worth would be found lacking as they lack moral footing. Its not the best ego boost to realize, "I'm not a rather morally respectable Human being."
Respectable by whose lights? ;)
Not everything in human physiology or psychology is divided on strictly moral grounds. Some things are just embarrassing, or show weakness, or present one in an unfavourable light. Overeating is not immoral and we who indulge in too much good food don't regard ourselves as sinners, but still don't like to be regarded as fat. Concern for one's health is not immoral, but people don't like to identify as hypochondriacs. There is nothing immoral about lax personal hygiene, but nobody likes to be called Pigpen.
We tend to use the word "moral" to identify that which surpasses an arbitrary degree of harm. Because personal hygiene usually only effects a negligible level of harm, it is not deemed moral. Yet if bad personal hygiene surpassed a certain threshold, such as when it would cause others to become physically sick, it would then be deemed "immoral." There is no qualitative difference between minor and major degrees of bad personal hygiene, and therefore there is no precise philosophical distinction between the two. No sound moral philosophy makes arbitrary distinctions. Or in other words: the uncritical, every day use of this term is not robust or ultimately coherent, and this is why moral philosophy has never defined the genus of the moral in terms of the casual speech of contemporary culture.
Would it? I've not seen it mentioned in any code. How do we determine whether others are becoming sick as a direct consequence of one person's state of cleanliness? Is he making then sick deliberately, or is it simply that he lacks access to hygiene facilities? What if his mental condition is unequal to the required judgment?
Quoting Leontiskos
And this is an arbitrary distinction, which is why cleanliness may be next to godliness, but filthiness is not next to satanism.
I doubt it. Hands are not a major vector in the transmission of Covid; airborne particles are. (Don't assume it's over!) The refusal to wear a mask in public when one did not know whether one was a carrier would certainly count as immoral. This is not a question of personal hygiene; this is a question of following or refusing to follow medically advised guidelines in an epidemic. It's situational and specific. As a general rule, hand-washing doesn't figure in moral codes.
The answer lies on whether one sees morality in the act itself or in the person/intention. If the former, alcoholism is immoral as it involves self-harm, besides being a waste of money and whatnot. If the latter, alcoholism is only immoral if the person is already made aware of the consequences of his action.
As by my first answer, the answer to the OP is surely "no" if one is an utilitarian or perhaps even a deontologist.
In responding to @fdrakes claim I pointed to volition. Acts, intentions, and habits are all moral insofar as they are volitional. There is no exclusive dichotomy between the morality of acts, intentions, and habits.
What this means is that, in assessing alcoholism, it doesnt matter a great deal whether alcoholism is viewed in terms of acts, intentions, or habits. What matters is whether it is volitional, and for this reason @fdrakes A2 is central. He is viewing it as non-volitional, and for this reason your rejoinder stands.
TB, leprosy, polio - whatever. The moral issue is not personal hygiene but public safety. Getting drunk is not immoral; driving while drunk is. Having unprotected sex with a consenting adult is not immoral; having unprotected sex when you have a STD is.
Your position is strange, to say the least. Again, I would suggest giving these issues a bit more thought than you have.
Nope. Not the acts. The moral judgment.
Stay in your house, alone, be as dirty as you like and nobody condemns you.
Break quarantine, greet people, it doesn't matter how clean your hands are, you're a carrier.
The moral judgment judges an act, and therefore your evasion fails. By being unable to specify the acts, you are automatically unable to specify the moral judgments of those acts. As it turns out, personal hygiene and germs are closely related.
These acts?
Quoting Vera Mont
They look specific to me.
Quoting Leontiskos
Certainly. And it's not immoral to become ill due to lack of personal hygiene. It is immoral to make other people ill by having contact with them when one is carrying disease germs.
It's not immoral to be mistaken or to reject information - even scientific information; it's immoral to broadcast disinformation and persuade others to disregard sound advice. It's not immoral to believe vaccines are a means of spying on the citizenry; it is immoral to persuade others to refuse inoculation. It's not immoral to believe that climate change is hoax perpetuated by China, but it is immoral to block mitigation initiatives that will save other people.
I can't make the distinction between risking harm to self and causing harm to others any clearer.
I think it does matter, because that is the central distinction between consequentialism and non-consequentialist ethics. For the virtue ethicist, alcoholism, or any sort of self-harm would generally not be deemed as immoral if the subject did not know of the facts surrounding alcoholism.
The consequentialist will say that it is immoral for an ignorant child to touch the hot stove.
At the end, this is a matter of semantics as to what situations the word "moral" applies to or not, but it remains that it is not desirable to put our hands on a hot stove. Therefore, OP's question boils down to "what normative ethical theory do you subscribe to?".
It seems to me that the virtue ethicist and the consequentialist will agree that if volition is involved, then what is occurring may be immoral (and this will relate to "knowledge of the facts surrounding alcoholism"). Some consequentialists may hold that volition is not necessary for an act to be immoral (and that the child's ignorance does not excuse), but many other consequentialists would disagree. In fact both virtue ethicists and consequentialists are able to distinguish between culpable evil and inculpable evil (e.g. knowingly harming and unknowingly harming).
I would say that the key to this thread is to think about what is necessarily non-moral. There are many things that are non-moral in certain circumstances, but nevertheless are not necessarily non-moral. Alcoholism is one such thing, and @fdrake erroneously presented it as necessarily non-moral. Further, I think all moral theories are capable of coming to the conclusion that alcoholism is not necessarily non-moral, consequentialism included.
Jesus Christ. No.
There are simply things I find unbecoming, and not immoral. Aesthetic disagreement is not moral. I don't want to wear bright Orange pants, or be the kind of person who would do so. Doesn't mean anyone who does is even on my bad side.
I'm not really sure I'm making of all this (despite noting its probably in Jest).
If 'society' is the light, then its merely mob rule. Morality isn't owned by anyone. It's a free-floating ideal which alters person-to-person and is used internally to guide one's behaviour. Social 'morality' is just "Oh, most of us agree so here's a policy. Nice".
Exactly. In the heirarchies of decision making, moral vs immoral (like legal vs illegal) are rarely used in Real Life. Most decisions are preferences ie like vs dislike, among moral (and legal) choices. Thus most of the things we choose not to do aren't because of their morality nor legality (since they're both moral and legal), they're just not to our taste.
A Catholic Hangover me thinks, for Leontiskos.
I don't think the virtue ethicist will agree that it is a vice to do something you did not know had negative consequences, as humans we are always learning after all. In fact, that is another issue with consequentialism. Most people would not say a child touching a stove is immoral, it did not want to harm itself obviously. That a moral theory does not get along with moral human intuition and with human semantic intuition (what linguistic subjects the predicate "is immoral" can apply to) is an indication that such moral theory is flawed or at least redefining what "moral" really means.
Quoting Leontiskos
How so?
Quoting Leontiskos
The triple negative took me a while. Yes, I suppose that for every mainstream ethical theory there would be cases where alcoholism is immoral. Some ethical theories would say that alcoholism is necessarily immoral. But others will say that alcoholism is not always immoral, I argue that virtue ethics is one of those. The issue is that the OP is not clear:
Quoting Lionino
If we agree that the OP's premise includes awareness of the consequences of an action, for pretty much any ethical theory including virtue ethics , there would be no difference between things that are immoral and things you shouldn't want to be the kind of person that does them. Because the "shouldn't want" basically collapses to "is wrong", which is "is immoral" in others words. The "should" verb brings morality into the second part of the question anyway.
It would be another story if the OP said "between things that arent immoral and things you don't want to be the kind of person that does them". Then it would become an aesthetic issue, which is why Amadeus is nagging you here:
Quoting AmadeusD
Do you mean moralising in general? If so, I agree. Quoting substantivalism
I believe this will always be hte case with moralising. It's paradigmatic.
If one does not know it has negative consequences (and they cannot be expected to know) then they do not have volition vis-a-vis the harm in question. Ignorance excuses because of a lack of volition.
Quoting Lionino
As indicated above, I don't think our colloquial notion of "moral" is entirely coherent, given the way that it relies on arbitrary degrees (). If this is right then "moral" in the colloquial sense falls far short of philosophical rigor. ...But the genealogy of this colloquial term is a much larger topic. See, for example, my post <here>.
Quoting Lionino
For example, by stipulating that morality is a species of decision making, and therefore the child who ignorantly places their hand on a hot stove has not made a decision with respect to moral categories, such as harm. If someone does not know that their act involves moral consequences, then they cannot be said to be making a moral decision.
Quoting Lionino
Yes, I have been agreeing with you on this, although it would seem that you made a rather crucial typo in saying "aren't immoral" instead of "are immoral."
Quoting Lionino
I don't follow the sentence you here rewrote. The OP is saying, "If I see some X and say, 'One should not want to be the kind of person that does X,' then does it automatically follow that X is immoral?"
I actually have Amadeus on ignore, for after extended exchanges with him I came to the conclusion that he is one of the dumbest posters on the forum. He was recently seen using AI to try to support Corvus' claim that denying the antecedent is not a fallacy. Of course he is a youth, so there is still hope. But let me wade through his trolling and look at what he said...
So I don't think there is any hard line between "aesthetic judgment" and moral judgment (what is being considered is actually aesthetic judgment of behavior). An infraction against norms of decorum is one of those things that our culture does not call "moral" because it does not rise to the arbitrary threshold set for "moral" acts. In the same way, we hold that minor slights are not immoral, such as inconveniencing another by hogging the telephone for longer than we should. One simply won't find this arbitrary use of "moral" prior to the modern period. But again, this is a larger topic.
(To be clear, historically we have always distinguished exceptionally bad acts from acts that are not exceptionally bad. This happens via law, for it is universally recognized that not all undesirable acts should be legislated against. But prior to the modern period we did not speak as if such distinctions were qualitative.)
I don't know where you get this meaning of volition, as it really is just the French word for the noun "will", and for me the word does not imply anything about awareness or ignorance, only about intention; but, in this meaning, yes, it is true that the virtue ethicist and the consequentialist will agree that it is immoral.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not a typo but I copy pasted straight from the OP's title when I shouldn't. You are right. I fixed it.
Quoting Leontiskos
That is true when it comes to degrees. The point you make about telephone hogging for example. A philosophically rigorous theory has to make away with this arbitrary line. My point was more that consequentialism falls out of the common usage of "immoral" because it does not take intention into consideration, only act, making it seem like it is describing harmfulness rather than good and evil. This aspect of the common usage of the word seems, unlike the arbitrary line, acceptable.
If I understood it correctly, some consequentialists would be able to overcome that by putting their ground on decision-making, but it does not seem to be the case of utilitarianism, for example.
Quoting Leontiskos
:up:
Primarily from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Our discussion prompted me to publish my recent thread, "The Breadth of the Moral Sphere." Here is a relevant quote from one of my responses in that thread:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Lionino
:up:
Quoting Lionino
Okay, I'm glad we agree. Persuasion on this website tends to be either effortless or impossible. :smile:
Quoting Lionino
There is an interesting debate about the topic of whether a consequentialist can ever be subjectively wrong or immoral when they act, and I think it relates to this question of intention. I think the consequentialist would say that morality is like mathematics, and that although mathematics is all about objective computations it is nevertheless true that one can hold to incorrect mathematical opinions, and even do so culpably. I'm not sure if this is the same thing you are speaking to? For more information see the link I gave here:
Quoting Leontiskos