My understanding of morals
When moral philosophy comes up on the forum I often avoid the discussion. My understanding of morals doesnt really fit in with those generally discussed here. @Ourora Aureis recently started a discussion - Morality must be fundamentally concerned with experience, not principle - that I think addressed some of the issues Id like to discuss, although Im not sure I understood some of what he posted.
Personal morality
For me, personal morality includes the principle that guides me in my personal behavior and its very simple - to the extent possible, my actions will be in accordance with the guidance of my intrinsic nature, my heart if you will.
From Emerson's "Self-Reliance."
Or this from Ziporyn's translation of Chapter 17 of the Chuang Tzu, one of the founding documents of Taoism.
What Chuang Tzu calls Te and Ziporyn translates as intrinsic virtuosity is a reflection of our deepest essence. Unlike Kants categorical imperative, it is not based on reason. I guess this sounds a bit like Nietzsches ubermensch. Although I havent looked into his philosophy deeply, I dont think it is. Taoism is a profoundly humble philosophy. It doesnt suggest a celebration of the will but rather a surrender of it.
Moral principles
As far as I can see, all formal moral philosophies, and certainly any philosophy that specifies how other people should behave, is not moral at all, or even really a philosophy. Its a program of social control - coercive rules a society establishes to manage disruptive or inconvenient behavior
Personal morality
For me, personal morality includes the principle that guides me in my personal behavior and its very simple - to the extent possible, my actions will be in accordance with the guidance of my intrinsic nature, my heart if you will.
From Emerson's "Self-Reliance."
Emerson - Self-Reliance:No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.
Or this from Ziporyn's translation of Chapter 17 of the Chuang Tzu, one of the founding documents of Taoism.
Chuang Tzu:So the conduct of a Great Man harms no one, but he places no special value on humankindness and beneficence. His actions are not motivated by profit, but he does not despise those who slavishly subordinate themselves to it. He does not fight over wealth, but he places no special value on yielding and refusing it. He doesnt depend on others, but he places no special value on self-sufficiency, nor does he despise the greedy and corrupt. If his own conduct is unconventional, he places no special value on eccentricity and uniqueness, and if his own action follows the crowds, he does not despise it as obsequious flattery. All the honors and stipends in the world are not enough to goad him to action, and all its punishments and condemnations are not enough to cause him shame, for he knows that right and wrong cannot be definitively divided, and that no border can be fixed between great and small.
What Chuang Tzu calls Te and Ziporyn translates as intrinsic virtuosity is a reflection of our deepest essence. Unlike Kants categorical imperative, it is not based on reason. I guess this sounds a bit like Nietzsches ubermensch. Although I havent looked into his philosophy deeply, I dont think it is. Taoism is a profoundly humble philosophy. It doesnt suggest a celebration of the will but rather a surrender of it.
Moral principles
As far as I can see, all formal moral philosophies, and certainly any philosophy that specifies how other people should behave, is not moral at all, or even really a philosophy. Its a program of social control - coercive rules a society establishes to manage disruptive or inconvenient behavior
Comments (311)
In a modern, diverse, dysfunctional society, those conflicts between personal and social standards arise several times a day. Mostly in minor matters, where the individual can either get away with an infraction or compromise his own principles.
Either choice, multiplied by millions of people in millions of instances, can bring down a civilization.
Quoting T Clark
What does one surrender the will to but another will? The will to nirvana, to nothingness, to surrender is still a willing. To stop willing is to cease to experience difference and becoming, since desire is just another word for difference.
Hrm!
I'd separate those rather than saying they are the same. (EDIT: meaning here "desire" and "difference")
Stopping-willing is like pulling a tree out of oneself imagined as ground. but difference and differance remain. the will to nirvana, i agree, is still a willing: it's another tree in the ground.
Poetically speaking: the ground remains after the tree is pulled out
Quoting Vera Mont
Many may argue that it is moral structures that prevent civilizations from unraveling. Perhaps T Clarks point is that the reliance on moral principles may keep cultures from becoming more civilized, by fostering reliance on the violence of authoritarianism, punishment and social repression.
I was trying to say something stronger than that. "Formal systems of morality," what I called social control, are not really morality at all. They rules for the functioning of society. Rules against sinning, however that is defined, are no different than rules against parking derelict cars in your driveway or playing loud music at 2 am.
I'm not talking about nirvana or nothingness. Application of will is not the only way to act in the world. Looking at my own behavior, I can see that much of what I do I do without any kind of self-consciousness or intention. Taoism has a term, "wu wei." It means, roughly, acting without acting. Acting from our deepest nature. If you don't like that, you can just say conscience, although that's not exactly the same thing.
It has always struck me that what we call morality grows out of our deepest human nature. We are social animals. We like each other... usually. We want to be around each other. We want to protect and take care of those we are close with - our family, friends, community.
Although I think what you say is true, it's not exactly the point I was trying to make. I wasn't even arguing against what I called "social control." I think that's necessary in all but the smallest human groups and certainly kinder, gentler controls are better than coercion. Although that may be necessary, it's not morality. Rules against homosexuality are no more about morality than rules against reckless driving.
I think what Emerson readily expresses, "Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this", Chuang Tzu was aware of. That all of the "things" ultimately constructing our morals, are just "things" arising from the evolution of difference. They are neither pre-existent nor absolute, but the contrary, constructed and projected to move our stories and project signifiers; things made-up and believed.
As for following your heart, if there's an iota of thought, let alone reasoning, harsh as it seems to say (for one, because it seems impossible to avoid), I think you are not following the Way that Chuang tzu presumably did. That Way would be to follow your organic feelings or drives (we, in the human world of make and believe only construct feelings and drives as being ravenous and aggressive; in nature, eons of evolutionhave ensured that they work appropriately).
As for the constructions and projections, I think Chuang would suggest, go along for the ride without any prejudice. Do that, and to the world, you might seem dimwitted and indifferent, even reckless in your lack of concern. But in your heart, you are always doing as your body naturally responds, so you are always doing right. While in the projected world, there is no right besides what has been constructed and projected from time to time.
I would say (especially since the OP brings up Taoism) that this "will" so-called, is just that, a thing so called.
But more to your point, what if you are surrendering the will--the incessant desires to make and believe unified in the made and believed subject, "I"--to no will, but rather to the organic aware-ing of the organic body in nature?
The "heart" as the OP suggests. Since we are forced to construct and project, I'll put such a morality into brief and simplistic words (but by doing so, I have already misrepresented). When hungry I eat, enough to be satisfied. When tired, I rest. When with my group (for the now global village, everyone) I bond and cooperate; I mate and guide young ones. All of these, always insofar as to satisfy the organic needs of my body and my group (today, humanity in totality), neither more nor less.
Applied to our inescapable world of make and believe, how does such a surrendering of the will to nature apply as a morality? We cannot drop out. History has made us something other than nature, and we cannot avoid it. But at least in the face of moral questions, act in accordance with our nature. When does it serve the body to rape or molest, murder, be taken away by constructions of emotions like greed and jealousy?
Acting in accordance with the Tao, the Heart, or Heaven, for that matter, I think means acting in accordance with our often displaced nature. We need to surrender "I" and my will to my true nature.
I completely agree. I think our Natures have been slandered by wrongful claims that it is tge seat of our (implicitly, uncontrollable) appetites.
Quoting T Clark
Quoting T Clark
The second quote is a more accurate description of what morality is, and holds in the majority of the contexts in which the term is used. Morality is "rules for the group, imposed by the group, for the benefit of the group". Let's explore this through an example, if I want to live in a clean society, simply practising what I preach will not suffice, I need a majority of peoples within my society to follow suit. To convince others to be clean, to dissuade others from littering or destroying/defacing property and to apply pressure to my local council to pay for cleaning and repairs. All my attempts to persuade, intimidate, coerce, compel, incentivise or punish to this end are part of morality. My local area may look unkindly at those who act dirty the area, demonising these acts and those who commit them to discourage the behaviour. Attempts to justify acts or conditions that run counter to these goals may be pounced on and criticised. This should all be familiar to you as the kinds of things that happen around all moral issues. This group aspect of morality is, to me, the defining feature.
The first quote doesn't clearly delineate morality from any other personal motivation, not even greed or jealousy, which also come from our "intrinsic nature". There are many personal motivations which from the heart that are "good" but may conflict with morality, such as loyalty and love, which may lead to actions that "betray the group". For example, a father protecting his son from receiving justice out of love, even though he knows his son to be in the wrong. Morality in this case, the "right" thing to do, would be to think about the principles and rules that must apply to the whole group.
The objectivity of morality is upheld by the power of the majority, which is what @Ourora Aureis fails to address when he compares moral opinions to preferences. To violate moral rules doesn't carry the same weight as disliking popular music or fashion, they are enforced across the entirety of society. The equality of the positions in philosophy is irrelevant. A moral position that is only believed by a small minority is nothing like a moral position believed by the majority and enforced by social and political frameworks through society.
Quoting T Clark
Those aren't mutually exclusive, most laws that exist for the functioning of society will have a moral element to them. In all moral issues it's the ultimate goal of each side to enforce themselves on a legal or political level.
Moral principles are part of the roots of each civilisation. From Orthodox or Christian moral values to Taoism. All of them have some pillars that guide people on how to behave properly in society. You understand them as 'coercive rules' but I personally believe it goes deeper than that. Moral principles are part of our culture.
I believe one example of my argument is the 'sacred' standard of respect for family members. In general, children owe respect to their parents, and vice versa. When this essential moral principle is broken, members of this community experience despair, existentialism, and even nihilism, among other things, because one of these moral (Christian) principles (or 'codes', if you prefer) is no longer present.
They are embedded in us. It is difficult to imagine a community that could survive without those. Dostoevsky discusses this dilemma and sorrow in the majority of his books. But we've previously discussed this excellent author in our email correspondence, Clarky. :smile:
I agree. That is a good point. Law enforcement is one of each state's primary tools for upholding a moral code of conduct. It reminds me of when the Spanish government declared same-sex marriage legal in 2005. A section of Catholic groups opposed this because they believed it was unethical. Nonetheless, the Congress chose to enact legislation to protect the freedom of same-sex couples to marry since it was morally from a civil standpoint. Two opposing moral viewpoints were confronted. Fortunately, the law passed over the religion.
We are born with value imbedded into our experiences. From the beauty of a desolate environment in rain to the misery of a sharp electric pain in ones spine, these experiences we live through do not require any justification to estimate their moral value, but that value exists via our very perception of them.
Moral philosophers make the mistake of attempting to intellectualise the concept of value, when in reality they merely create rationalisations which justify their own value judgements of certain experiences. In such a way, these intellectual creations exist purely to coerce others into joining their judgements, using the common psychological need of humans to have the approval of others.
A reaction to this would be ethical egoism, the ethical framework I follow. It declares that we ought to act according to our values, not the value judgements of others. In this way it seems similar to the idea of personal morality you hold. I think the most important part of using it as a framework is its declaration that morality concerns an individuals action and nothing else. Social contempt is nothing more than the natural inclination towards disgust. The Emerson quote works quite well with this framework.
However, these social forces fail when someone who does not care for such judgements of others comes along. Nietzsche might refer to the idealised version of this type of person as the Ubermensch, someone who creates their own values. It is abnormal psychology which creates this person. However, this seems very different to the idea of value presented in the 2nd quote, which seems to suggests an uncaring attitude towards "great" and "small", which seems to just be a description of the average human who has little ambition.
I don't think ethical discussion is negative, in fact I think poetic "wisdom" will always be an unsavoury replacement if we do not choose to delve deep into idea to understand them analytically. Just because value judgements cannot be objectively determined, does not mean we cannot find knowledge within such ethical frameworks acknowledging this truth.
I think it is more or less about feeling your around how other apply value to certain judgements in certain contexts compared to others. It is then about unpicking the rational claims laid out or, often enough, revealing that there are none whatsoever.
Of course, this is further complicated when those espousing certain moral themes are so entrenched in them (or opposed to moral views) that they are effectively no longer doing anything I would call 'philosophical'. We can still attempt to point this out and find out where they took the wrong path and/or whether there is simply a misunderstanding in the concepts laid out.
The terminology in this area is just as obtuse (if not more so) as every other field of philosophical inspection.
To say that man is a social animal expresses this conflict - between the individual animal and the community. I identify myself as this I am a social animal and thereby fall into paradox such that any claim to social virtue is the expression of animal individuality. "I am that fool who prides himself on his humility." Or else I am the worse fool who thinks he is already the god-king.
And so we fall into self-improvement, social improvement, and global improvement, as though through our internal conflict we can outthink that nature from which we spring. Yet one does not really have to go all the way to China; in our own Christian tradition, the individual conscience also reigns supreme. If you follow that internal voice, you cannot go wrong. (But on the other hand, you might well get crucified.)
Well that's not fair.
True. Fair would be that once you have fallen there is no redemption. Without guilt, there can be no virtue.
This remains glaringly and disgusting ignorant. Not toward you, not at all, I promise. But at the neglected possibility (which those ensnared no longer consider reality). Which in my opinion constraints and attempts to defile you. Of course, perhaps I'm wrong altogether and am just being silly. So let's return to simple base logic, 1 and 1, yes and no.
I assume, properly I assure you, your definition of "fallen" is "to have failed". This I'm sure, in a true balanced and fair inquisition of words, creates possibility of an immoral environment. Say, one falls because of carelessness. This is not a quality to be reviled. Automatically. Perhaps someone convinced, due to one's natural trust and other nature, a certain element of interaction was in fact "just fine" (be this a particular plank on a bridge or an entire layer of interaction with reality).
So, bear in mind we have not even reached your second or third, and perhaps even forth claim, (the second claim being redemption and third being guilt and virtue which you have neatly presented as bundled together, as, intrinsically locked or relatable).
Let's unpack that, shall we. Redemption or "restoration to a prior state.". Surely we agree on this definition. So, from who's assertion? Yours or others? This a key question here, for it wholly determines where truth lays, from the observer or the observed. Completely shifts the dynamic as to what one truly speaks and, one would assume, expects a reply to.
So, here we are. Barely getting to your second claim. What was that actually? Yes, guilt. Which you invoked (not to say created, as such is a common mindset, likely justified based on common occurrence, yet still removed from absoluteness for reasons evidenced by your need to frame or base your reply on such).
Guilt. A feeling of conviction. That one is guilty of either one or two things: action or inaction. Can we agree on that? Yes, surely we can. For this is already predefined. So now we move on to another concept: Justifiably. A simple ideological usher to the possibility one's "guilt" (an incestual blood cousin of shame, I might add) is in fact wholly unjustified. Falsely, bearing in mind there is simply truth and non-truth. Perhaps one feels "guilty" they committed an action or inaction that led to death of an innocent loved one. Of course, my argument is, perhaps one's perception is simply that: a perception. Maybe someone, an outside actor, created the event of circumstance that led to such an action or inaction. Do you get what I mean? So, say, one failed to listen to one's now-deceased father in saying "this person is no good, he is absent of morals, and if you do not treat him as such, a thing a non-equal forever beneath thee, tragedy and hardship will occur, to the degree I am unable to prevent". And the daughter happened to end up partying with said male who in turn ended up becoming drunk and unable to respond to the, let's say, urgent communiques of her father, and thus said father perished before being able to conclude or legally define the details of his will that would have enabled her to secure wealth and riches, leaving such to be at the mercy of the state. For example. And as such she ends up as a homeless drug addict. As one example. The question remains, who truly "fell", that is to say, neglected one's responsibility.
In short, the claim, your question is not an open-ended one, is demonstrably false. And remains a valid point of contention.
Ought I be guilty?
I have my traditions I come from which would say I am guilty.
They would say I am guilty because of this or that.
So I would be fallen, and thereby virtuous?
Definitionally so.
What can be concluded from Emerson and Thelema is that there's no distinction between a right life and one lived without worry. Thus successful rationalisation is the core moral principle. Forgetting the distinction between who you are and the lies you may make yourself believe.
Simply hope you are a good liar. And have others join in.
(When I were a lad this stuff were taught in school; kids these days don't understand the language and tradition properly in the first place, and then get all superior and dogmatic in their ignorance, mistaking it for virtuous rationality and freedom from superstition.)
Particularly in relationships, I've had the opportunity to be on both sides: the asshole and the wronged party. I know what the crime feels like from both sides. That's helpful for understanding the golden rule.
What makes this "guidance of my intrinsic nature" moral? Suppose you are an antisocial psychopath: is acting "in accordance" with psychopathy also moral?
Laws, legistlation & jurisprudence correspond to "social control". I think learning techniques of self-control (from e.g. exercises, stories, exemplars, dilemmas, conflicts, etc) which are independent of not enforceable by "social controls" is what primarily concerns moral philosophy.
Does this also mean that to specify "how other people should" reason, "is not" logic?
Anyway, by "moral" do you mean (something like) 'cultivates flourishing'?
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "really a philosophy" in contrast to "really" not "a philosophy".
Many may argue. I can only report what I see. Where a group has consensus in its needs, self-image and values, the moral structure doesn't have to be enforced; it's taught to the young by example and taken for granted.
As for civilizations (I don't want to quibble over the definition) they are generally authoritarian and require a legal edifice to uphold the tenets of their religious doctrine - the less equitable those rules, the more force is exerted to keep the civilization from unravelling. Whether they do or not doesn't depend on the stated principles, but on the degree to which the upper echelons corrupt those principles.
Quoting T Clark
This is certainly true of modern civilizations. However, there are different kinds of society - or there were; very few of the older kind are left. In primitive tribal societies, there could very well be a handful of severe taboos alongside a great many conventions of social behaviour.
Quoting T Clark
That's a legal system, not a moral one. I doubt there are any societies left today in which the general population shares a belief system in which sins are perceived the same way by everyone, and the laws are made to prevent and/or rectify sins. Moral and legal are confused, sometimes deliberately.
It's easy to impose rules if the populace shares the rulers' belief. What rulers do to encourage the 'correct' belief is launch propaganda campaigns - public brainwashing programs are nothing new, were not invented by Orwell - so that the majority support the prevailing system. But there is always resistance, holdouts, rebels, and, over time, increasing numbers who simply are not able to obey all the rules imposed upon them. So the rulership has to expend more and more of its resources on enforcement, until a third of the adults run afoul of law enforcement at some time.
I consider that an unraveling.
Quoting T Clark
Willing, wanting, choosing, desiring dont have to be thought of as volunteristic, as choosing in advance what we will. I would argue that we find ourselves choosing; we are compelled by the contextual circumstances we are thrown into to want and desire in specific directions prior to any reflection or consciousness. Self-conscious reflection occurs as a later and derivative mode of willing. This is the difference between unreflective mindful coping and abstract conceptual rationality. The latter is a derivative of the former, which is the fundamental way we engage with the world. Heidegger wrote:
As far as the notion of deepest nature, I would say that any desire or choice focals and gathers together a background of intricately connected thoughts and feelings that comprises our remembered history. It expresses and carries forward this whole intricate mesh of meanings. Willing is intentional in the sense that it arises as a relevant elaboration of our deeply integrated goals and expectations, despite the fact that we find ourselves choosing and willing before conscious reflection. This is what Francisco Varela calls ethical know-how.
You might enjoy this:
Quoting Vera Mont
My favorite psychologist, George Kelly, made a distinction from. between aspects of social organization, the situation of sharing common ways or values, and understating each others motives.
Kelly says:
What most think of as a moral structure is only needed to the extent that people fail to see eye to eye on the interpretation of each others motives. It doesnt matter how closely individuals try to keep in lockstep with the larger societys expressed values. They can never take for granted that they will avoid the need to morally blame and punish others if those values dont include a means of understanding why other deviate from the normative expectations.
This is a hard gap to cross as there are effectively no moral values we can hold outside of social framework. Perhaps all morals are, are instantiated social necessities that communicate shared values systems. Outside of society morals are naught. Of course we are always partially attached through social means because it is nature to be social.
Control? I thought the police department was responsible for 'controlling' us, and that the laws served as a guide to how we should behave. Even the jurisdiction and courts ought to control the 'controller' (police officers, militaries, politicians, jail officers, etc.).
I think it's probably the case that most of us just act and rarely think about morality. (But we might think about the law.) Morality is for academics and for conversations and for post-hoc justifications.
I think the intrinsic nature of many people leads them to harm others. They don't necessarily do this out of deliberate evil, it's the by-product of how they see the world.
Can you think of any moral discussion you've heard or participated in that was useful and if it was why was this?
Quoting Joshs
But isn't there a great deal of pleasure and exhilaration derived from such judging and punishing? You might as well try to stop people from having sex.
To understand all is to forgive all? I doubt it.
And I take exception to 'lockstep' applied to willing participation in a community, or adherence to a culture. All cultures have some leeway for individual variation - the more militaristic and authoritarian ones, less than the liberal, egalitarian ones, but always some.
Humans have never lacked the ability to understand one another's motives or tolerate one another's peculiarities. It's political leaders who attribute all opposition to enemies of the state, accuse dissenters of being unpatriotic. (Letting the terrists win) It's religious leaders who usually attribute 'wrong thinking' or sinful intent to those who do not conform to their strictures. (floods are caused by same sex marriage)
Individually and in communal groups, we're quite capable of listening to one another's point of view. We're quite aware of the differences in temperament, taste and modes of thought. We're quite capable of figuring out what's fair - and even how to reconcile after one person offends against another.
What goes wrong - horribly wrong, for the scapegoated individuals - in civilizations is that the requirements of the elite are counter to the requirements of the people. So an artificial version of the 'larger society's values' is imprinted on the citizens, through appeals to the need for approval (especially in childhood; this makes us receptive later on) faith, loyalty, fear, anger, conformity, material advantage, insecurity, prejudice and blame-casting.
Of course, propaganda is never uniformly successful; some always oppose the regime. They must be divided off from the herd, labelled as harmful to the rest, vilified, dehumanized. That's how people are divested of their ability to discern one another's motives.
Agreed. This is from the Tao Te Ching, along with the Chuang Tzu the other foundational document of Taoism - Gia-Fu Feng's translation of Verse 2.
Quoting Tao Te Ching
Quoting ENOAH
There is truth in what you say, but Chuang Tzu is very easygoing when it comes to any kind of imperative. I can imagine him responding to your comment with a shrug and "Hey, just do the best you can."
Quoting ENOAH
I agree with this.
I like the way you've put this. Have you read Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu?
I agree with this.
Quoting Judaka
Yes, good point. I was thinking about that after I posted the OP. The idea of acting in accordance with our intrinsic virtuosity can apply to everything we do - from treating people with kindness to deciding what to have for lunch. It has struck me that the proper question for philosophy is not "what is truth," but rather "what do I do now." For me, that is the question Chuang Tzu is trying to answer.
Quoting Judaka
I don't disagree, but I am trying to make a stronger statement - what we call "moral" isn't about good and bad, right and wrong, it's about greasing the social skids.
Ages ago. But the essence lingers. Like shit on a stick. :joke:
I don't necessarily disagree but... This is what Chuang Tzu has to say. This from Ziporyn's translation of Chapter 8.
Quoting javi2541997
I'll let Lao Tzu respond. This is from Stephen Mitchell's version of Verse 18 of the Tao Te Ching.
Quoting Lao Tzu
I agree, although I don't want to get into an argument about exactly where our intrinsic virtuosity comes from. Well, maybe I do, but I didn't include that in my OP.
Quoting Ourora Aureis
I agree.
Quoting Ourora Aureis
Perhaps calling it "abnormal psychology" is going to far, but I am in sympathy with this comment.
Quoting Ourora Aureis
I'm not sure about this. You say "the average human who has little ambition." Perhaps Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu would say "sage." Maybe that's going too far.
I think the approach I have been describing is not rational at all. It's not irrational, it's non-rational. In a sense, that's the point.
Quoting I like sushi
The point I'm trying to make is stronger than that. I think Chuang Tzu and Emerson endorse not applying moral themes at all, entrenched or not.
Quoting I like sushi
Agreed.
I think you've said it very well.
Another quote from "Self-Reliance," one of my favorites.
Quoting Emerson - Self-Reliance
I'm glad you brought up the golden rule. I've spent some time thinking about how it fits into my formulation. I'm not sure of the answer.
When society attempts to impose upon us "You must do X, because X is good.", we may require some reply as to why we disagree. In these cases, we cannot refer to the Tao, because it is too esoteric for that. One requires earthly, conclusive arguments.
The two seem to serve different purposes, and personally that's how I've always treated them. Moral philosophy is perhaps more of a tool or a brain exercise. For wisdom I would rather defer to the likes of Lao Tzu or Plato.
Good point. Even if my actions according to Chuang Tzu's descriptions might be considered benign, they are not really moral, i.e. they don't deal with right and wrong. They apply as much to deciding whether to wash the dishes or clean the floor first as they do to robbing a bank.
As for antisocial psychopathy, I'll point you to the Emerson quote I just used in my previous response to fdrake.
As I see it, there is no fundamental difference between a legal system and a moral one.
I think you and I are getting wrapped up in a difference in our understanding of what "will" means. Or maybe not. What you call "compulsion by contextual circumstances" I would call acting in accordance with our intrinsic virtuosities, our nature. I would not call that "will" at all. I think it's more than a linguistic difference.
I think what I mean by "will" is what Heidegger calls being ahead of myself. Not sure about that. It is possible to act without getting ahead of oneself.
I guess my dissatisfaction with this is the motive behind this attempt to undermine the idea of morality at all.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think this is the standard response to the kind of approach to morals I am describing, and I admit it's a good one. I respond by quoting from "Self-Reliance" again as I did in an earlier post.
I left my response to this out. Generally, no. I don't usually find moral discussions useful or satisfying. Again, that's what lead me to starting this discussion.
Quoting Tom Storm
Speaking of sex, one could raise the question of the motivation behind sadism and masochism. Where does the pleasure from causing others or oneself pain come from? Looking at self-harm, normally pain gets in the way of achieving goals. In itself, pain is the loss of personhood, a kind of confusion. But acts of self-harm like cutting involve using pain as a means to an end which is self-affirming. But what about pleasure from harming others? The more we relate to an other as being like ourselves , the more we care about them , the more likely we are to treat their pain as our pain. The pleasure from the desire to judge and punish is bound up with our feelings toward those who we do not relate to, or used to but not anymore, those we are alienated from. In such cases punishment protects us from their alienating influence. It reinforces our sense that we are on the right track, and perhaps reduces our urge to try those things we are punishing the other for, the very things
we have been tempted by but didnt have the nerve to go through with.
I am more inclined towards meta ethics. Emotivism is a useful term for part of how I see things - hence placing Moral Views effectively outside of direct philosophical scope.
Quoting T Clark
I can go with that.
Guilty as parenthetically charged ;)
Virtuous rationality and freedom from superstition -- is this an innocent mistake? Or a guilty self-lie?
****
At the least I don't like superiority, dogmatism, and especially so when they are paired with ignorance.
But I also dislike guilt, generally speaking. I think it's not so much a feeling of moral knowledge but a conditioned response which is used to control people.
Now, deciding to not be controlled, by this thesis, does not make one virtuous. But neither is the guilty state virtuous.
I suppose I doubt those philosophers who claim to have "moral knowledge", and so -- by your notions -- no one is virtuous at all because we are all ignorant.
I agree, Lao Tzu is no help in preparing a rational response to a moral disagreement. Taoist principles are more guides to personal behavior. As I've proposed earlier in this thread, I see imposition of moral views as more a case of social control than of right versus wrong.
Quoting Tzeentch
I think I agree with this. I guess I question the value of the "brain exercise" you describe, but I guess that's a matter of taste.
I don't disagree with this, although I have made what I think is a fundamental distinction between a society of many and a "society" of one.
Quoting tim wood
As the basis of this argument I am rejecting Kant's understanding that morality is based on reason and is universal. For me, it is non-rational and personal.
I think you and I are on similar paths. This thread is an effort to wade through the jargon.
Quoting I like sushi
Is my position meta ethical? Is this discussion "outside of direct philosophical scope?"
I had to look up "emotivism." I seems close to what I am talking about in my posts on this thread.
Quoting Vera Mont
To understand all is not to need to forgive in the first place. Forgiveness requires a prior assessment of moral blame and culpability. As far as your assertion that humans have never lacked the ability to understand one another's motives or tolerate one another's peculiarities, the question is where and to what extent you see that understanding and tolerance as breaking down. I am admittedly on the fringe on this issue. I happen to believe that every time one become angry and feels the need to admonish another , or to forgive them, one is failing to understand things from the others vantage. Our culture and justice system revolve around anger and blame. Even those of us who believe there are profound flaws in our legal system would defend the need to point out malevolent intent and irrational thinking in themselves and others.
Legal systems are based on the prevailing moral principles. In theocracies and monarchies, the transition from commandment to law is swift and pretty much literal. In more diverse forms of social organization, or those predicated on philosophical principles (like communism) or stated values (like personal liberty) something is lost, but much more gained in the translation. Not every moral tenet is written into law - or it was, but later struck down - and not every law is concerned with the avoidance of sin (which is any act against the wishes of a deity or one's own core being. Indeed, the vast majority of laws, bi-laws, rules and regulations are enacted in the service of property, commerce, defence, public safety, transportation and the orderly conduct of daily life among a multitude.
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting unenlightened
Perhaps this is all true according to one or another Protestant development of Augustine, but I would want to distinguish that tradition from the "Christian tradition" per se.
I would distinguish it as being the meaning of the Fall as told in the Old Testament, and therefore strictly speaking, pre-Christian. But I am no scholar of Judeo-Christian history.
You raise an issue that's important to me, but which I haven't discussed in this thread. Beyond everything that's been written here, I don't think a system that "revolves around anger and blame" is the most effective way of addressing social conflicts.
I've been saying that both law and any other form of persuasion or coercion are the same in that they are instruments of social control and have little to do with good and bad or right and wrong. That is just packaging, gift wrapping.
If I understand why he felt impelled to shoot me, I won't be upset about three weeks in intensive care and six months' physiotherapy? Maybe offer him the other leg? Big challenge! Could be why I'm not a Christian.
Quoting Joshs
It begins t about 3000 population in a single settlement. How fast and to what degree depends on the rate of population growth, environmental circumstances and quality of leadership.
Quoting Joshs
That's because our culture - to the extent you and I share one - is predicated on an imperfect fusion of liberty and equality, Protestantism and capitalism. Liberty and equality appear in the slogan, not in the practice. Christianity is represented only by the prohibitive sin laws and taxation. Christianity is punitive; individual liberty imposes individual responsibility; capitalism regulates the orderly conduct of business in all areas of human interaction.
The farther practice diverges from stated ideal the more opinions about what the stated ideal means also diverge. If you then add leadership or subtle influence by agents inimical to the ideal, the small failures to understand one another is exacerbated by lack of opportunity to speak to one another; misunderstanding is exploited, enlarged, poisones and eventually grows into a chasm of enmity.
The modern mind seems to always be saying, "Well, yeah, but that's not morality, that's [insert inclination-based term here]." This is a Kantian move, and the problem is that the person who makes this argument seldom has any idea of what they mean by morality.
Classically individual morality and social morality are two sides of the same coin, not entirely separate and opposable. This is presumably as true for the Chinese philosophers you are citing as it is for Aristotle. I would submit that those Chinese philosophers did not make the strong distinction that you are making between individual morality and social custom or law. For someone like Confucius this opposition would be a non-starter.
And if your intrinsic nature is a serial killer? The problem with this definition is morals gets changed from, "What should be" to "What I want to do."
An intelligent solitary individual can theoretically make up his or her own code of behaviour... but why bother? They can just prefer one food or place or temperature to another, find some prey easier to kill, like the appearance of some plants and animals and do as they please within their capabilities. That's a hypothetical intelligent being, because intelligent beings are social. And social beings have to make allowance for the presence, the needs and the activities of others of their kind - just because some degree of conformity is demanded for acceptance by the group, which provides safety, companionship and shared effort to secure the necessities of life.
"Be good for Mummy!" Here it starts; the helpless dependent child is told to be what they are not.
I resist social control from the identity of the individual; I exert it from the identity of social being, and I feel guilt from an awareness of the contradiction. One cannot demand of the community that it transcend the human condition. One cannot go back to innocence, so the only resolution to the human condition is personal: transcendent miracle, or sartori. Until then, I remain, frog/horse,
unenlightened.
I would argue that all morality is social morality. Morality is sought and found among two or more persons.
Following ones heart or not only becomes a moral question where the actions taken, the following steps, interact with or against other people.
I suppose my hope is that we could do it without all those stories and such. They have been passed down, but what is their worth?
Or, at least, to open up that kind of discussion. Moral certainty is the death of ethical thinking.
Tell me more...
Because, if they are allowed to be what they are - egocentric predators - until puberty, they will be ostracized by their peers, imprisoned or killed by law enforcement agents. You can't have a society of toddlers in adult bodies - that's a purposeless mob.
So the mother appeals to the social aspect of the child - that part of his personality which craves affection, validation and approval. Later in life, he will be good for his playmates and gain acceptance; be good for the teachers and avoid punishment, learn, grow up successfully in his world and be good for an employer so that he earns a living, be good for a female counterpart and win a mate, be good for his community and be accorded respect.
It's not such a bad bargain.
"Guilt" becomes a category I can assign to others, and by that classification justify my cruelty towards others -- in the name of the good.
There is no thinking here, no conversation, no reflection, no philosophy. Ethical thinking, I suppose I mean, is more open than all that.
I, at least, prefer to hear more and listen -- and by doing so I am continually exposed to other ways of thinking about ethics.
If I were certain then I'd have been defending the Book of Morman for a long time now.
Quoting Vera Mont
It's not. Mothers, and grandmothers, are wonderful to us all.
I'm resistant to Freudian notions because I think they're false, in a plain and simple way.
But to finally act requires judgment, an end to discussion. Isn't that what it's all about?
Quoting T Clark
Maybe you and I should start a movement.
When you or @Joshs talk about guilt in this way it is much the same as claiming that a tool such as a knife is inherently evil, and imputing bad motives to everyone who uses knives. The problem is that predications of guilt and use of knives are not inherently evil acts. For example, if you get rid of knives then you also get rid of a great deal of nutritious cooking, and if you get rid of guilt and blame then you also get rid of innocence, praise, and merit. Like a knife, the idea of guilt can be used for good or evil. There is no reason to believe that it is inherently evil. Someone may have had bad experiences with knives and those bad experiences may lead them to conclude that knives are inherently evil, but this is a problem of bias rather than a rationally sound conclusion.
(The accuser's level of certitude will not affect what I have said here)
You follow your nature. Your nature changes when you learn how much pain others are in and how much they're just like you. It's the nature of a child vs the nature of the seasoned, right?
Quoting Leontiskos
I would rather compare the knife to our ability to place constructions on events as a tool for cutting reality at its joints. If we are too pre-emptive in how we set up our discriminations, then the intentions of others can appear as a peculiar, disordered chaos, which, measured against the relative coherence of our original assessment of their relation to us makes them appear to us now as irrational, preposterous, stubborn, lazy, malevolent, at the mercy of mysterious impulses, failing to live up to our expectations of them. Our blamefulness judfent, then, is an attempt to salvage predictive value from the only ordered construction available to us to make sense of an aspect of the other person's thinking. Despite this construction having proved unreliable, attempting to get the wayward other to conform to the original expectations (knock some sense back into them, get them to admit their guilt) is the elaborative choice we must make when the alternative is dealing with a person whose behavior in a sphere of social life that is of vital concern to us we can no longer make sense of at all.
Yes, but, you rightly pointed out that morality is the second quote--coercive rules. How I read the OP is they're wittingly moving away from that to follow their heart; implicitly, to make room for "good" which may not be considered conventionally moral.
I also think many are wrong or partly wrong - not false, exactly. But that's another topic for another day.
Do you think praise can exist without blame?
(Note that the example of being "too pre-emptive" is an example of misused blame, or on your account, its antecedent.)
I don't think I've been unclear about what I mean by "morality."
Quoting Leontiskos
This is not correct. Taoism developed in response to and contradiction of Confucius's rigid formal moral principles. The quotes I have provided from Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu, the two founding sources of Taoism, are representative of the body of their work.
You've said that "my actions will be in accordance with the guidance of my intrinsic nature, my heart if you will," and the ambiguity comes with the terms "intrinsic nature" or "heart." Insofar as those central terms remain opaque, so too does your morality.
Quoting T Clark
Okay, but does Chinese philosophy in general say that the "intrinsic nature" of one person will tend to align with the "intrinsic nature" of another person, and with the order of the societal whole? Your angle here still seems much more individualistic than the Chinese philosophy that I am familiar with.
Several others on this thread have made similar comments. I've responded with this quote from "Self-Reliance."
Quoting T Clark
I don't see the point you're making with this reference except that Emerson seems to "morally" excuse e.g. antisocial psychopathy ... almost as Heideggerian / Sartrean (romantic) "authenticity".
In general I think your description of the socialization process is a good one. For me that raises the question of when the principles of self-governance I've described are applied. The person who has gone through this process is more or less out of touch with what I have called their intrinsic virtuosities. As I understand it, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu were writing for that person to show an alternative way of living, a way out of the bind caused by social expectations.
But what does acting require judgment of? Not necessarily right and wrong, good and bad, or moral and immoral. We just need to figure out how to address the conflict in question. Assigning blame does not make that kind of action more effective.
I'd like to think that behaving in accordance with the golden rule will arise automatically when we all live in accordance with our inner natures. I'm not sure that's true. I'm not even sure that behaving in accordance with the golden rule will arise automatically when I live in accordance with my inner nature.
I think it starts around age 10. Children who have previously expressed self-centered demands for autonomy now begin to question the validity of their parents' stand on moral issues. ("But you told me to say you're not home. That was lie!") These moments are good opportunities to discuss the difference between their society's stated values and its values in practice, ethics and etiquette, conformity and rebellion, infractions and compromises - all the difficult issues that makes parents so uncomfortable and children glaze over with boredom. By 18 or 19, bright young people will have worked out an ethical system for themselves, its rationale and and why it differs in some respects from the current norm.
Quoting T Clark
Not necessarily. Yes, if they were indoctrinated in a strict religious dogma. It's a very hard struggle for them. But children who have been gradually given more autonomy, and opportunities to exercise good judgment, sportsmanship, altruism, deferred gratification, disciplined pursuit of goals, etc. can make the transition to reliable self-governance without too many ructions. (I don't include fighting off the controlling, protective impulse of parents - that's always a bit rocky.) Quoting T Clark
So have other philosophers, sages, shamans and prophets. It's good to pay attention. But ultimately, only you know your own core values; only you can form your own convictions.
Opaque to you, perhaps, but not to me.
Quoting Leontiskos
Speaking for myself and not for Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, or anyone else, I think my intrinsic nature has a lot in common with other people's. Again, we're social animals; we like each other; we want to be around each other. But there is no requirement that this be so. And I've tried to make it clear that Taoism rejects consideration of "the order of the societal whole" as a proper guide to behavior.
Guilt serves a function. Sometimes it triggers functionally, sometimes it misfires.
But ultimately, it is, like a knife. And in that context, you are correct, it has no inherent value beyond function.
This, I submit, applies not just to all tools of morality-ethics, but to all words, thoughts, ideas. They have neither inherent value, nor is there necessarily inherent value in what they purport to represent; nor, and especiallythis, do they import value upon their users.
There is only used functionally, thus settled upon (believed) or dysfunctionally, thus modified or abandoned.
And all of these, temporarily, cyclically, perpetually, and autonomously (as in not under the direction of any central agent including any so called Subject).
Hence there is no (absolute) right or wrong in our concepts etc., and the OP is correct, a body should follow its "heart." [Albeit, alas, that final imperative, too, is empty and fleeting].
What's that, then?
Yes, our actions are what it's all about.
But I somehow want to prioritize "listening" as an action. Or togetherness. I'd say that our being-with is prior to our Dasein, tho Dasein is more accessible -- tho terribly close and thereby needing exposition -- something something Levinas lol. (or Sartre)
And Levinas provides a good text to reflect upon: we are all an infinity and our everyday interactions are the face-to-face, at least after ethical puberty. (meaning, it's easy to sling statements together and even live by them, but becoming a truly ethical person requires hearing others and changing yourself even though it feels like you ought not to)
The pendulum swings between two poles: understanding and judgment (I got this from cabbalism, ha!) If I fall deeply toward understanding, then I eventually lose the ability to judge. I see it all. I understand why the Nazis did that, and how Stalin never meant to become what he was, and so on. I see all the biology and culture and twists of fate that produce the villain. I can't punish, because the only difference between him and me is that fate was kinder in my case.
On the deep end of judgement, I've closed the door to any further understanding. I know all I need to know to condemn. And I'm righteous. I stood up for the cause. And I have no mercy.
We partake of both sides. Understanding tempers judgment. There are those who have hearts of stone. For whatever reason, all they can do is condemn everyone and everything. Then there are those who can only welcome understanding and they become bumps on logs. I think maybe that these two kinds of characters balance one another. If you're all judgment, that's what you bring to society: the will to act. If you're all understanding, that's what you bring to your world: mercy.
This image came to me one time, it was a dragon that flies blindly, destroying. Mercy is a dove that has the power to put a mirror in front of the dragon so it can see itself. The two are eternally bound.
That's ok. :smile:
Judgment is necessary. But is punishment? Is it even useful? Might it not be enough to stop the destructive person, and if you can't rehabilitate him, kill him - quickly, efficiently, painlessly if at all possible. For less egregious offenses than devastating countrysides and exterminating populations, there might be other, less drastic remedies: rehabilitation should at least be attempted.
Then, there are destructive behaviours that go unpunished, because no law, no judgment can touch the perpetrators.
The temptation to say "I see it like this", pointing to the same thing for "it" and "this". Always get rid of the idea of the private intrinsic nature in this way: assume that it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you.
Let us imagine the following case. I want to write about my intrinsic nature. To this end I associate my intrinsic nature with the sign "S" I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated.But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition.How? Can I point to my intrinsic nature? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on my intrinsic nature and so, as it were, point to it inwardly.But what is this ceremony for? For that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign.Well, that is done precisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connexion between the sign and the sensation.But "I impress it on myself" can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connexion right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'right'.
(Paraphrasing Investigations).
---
Quoting Philosophim
Quoting T Clark
Strictly speaking this is only true beyond a certain point in juvenile development. We require nurturing. I do find a lot of eastern mysticism has a habit of being interpreted as things happening in a Void of sorts.
btw how does Chuang Tzu differ from Lao Tzu? I've only read the latter extensively.
Sorry, I overlooked this response previously.
I don't see how it is an excuse when I don't recognize the legitimacy of your moral judgment against me. Or, looking at it a different way, nothing I have written immunizes me from having to face the consequences of my actions, no matter what their motivation.
I think I would say it starts much later than that, perhaps in middle age, long after they have "worked out an ethical system for themselves" and have become dissatisfied. In reality, it could probably start any time, but for many of us, age provides us with freedom for contemplation.
Quoting Vera Mont
In my understanding, and I think Chuang Tzu's and Lao Tzu's, any socially influenced "reliable self-governance," no matter how benign, will result in us losing sight of our intrinsic virtuosities. Whenever we act to gain a benefit - love, approval, success - or avoid a negative consequence - guilt, shame, punishment - we lose our way.
Quoting Vera Mont
I read other philosophers not in order to be shown what to think, but rather to get their help becoming aware of and putting into words things I am already capable of seeing. I use Chuang Tzu's, Lao Tzu's, and Emerson's words because they describe, maybe better than I can, things I can see are true.
When I first read that, I thought it said "cannibalism."
As for Nazi's and Communists, I would ask what course makes for the most effective response to their behaviors? Understanding is clearly required.
As for judgment, if I call my enemy "evil," "monster," "inhuman," what value does that provide? As far as I can see, and I see it everywhere in the world, all it does is distract from the most effective response.
A good question.
I have not stated or implied any "moral judgment against" you or anyone in the current discussion. I've only taken issue with your concepts and conception of moral philosophy for being uselessly vague and arbitrary.
It's hard to say if I agree with that. The texts I've read are all aimed at mature adults.
Quoting I like sushi
I'm not sure what you mean.
Quoting I like sushi
I've been reading and rereading Lao Tzu for a long time, but only recently got around to Chuang Tzu. It was really eye-opening. It really helped clarify my understanding of what Lao Tzu wrote. I felt right at home. Strong recommendation if you're interested.
People say that only what are called the "inner chapters," the first seven chapters, are authentic, but I found the rest of them very helpful too.
I think you've misunderstood my point. I know you weren't judging me for the positions I was describing. When I wrote:
Quoting T Clark
I was talking about how you might judge my behavior in a situation where you thought I was doing wrong.
The quote didn't answer my question. The problem is you're likely a good person already, so have no qualms with believing in yourself. I'm talking about people who aren't good people. Good on you if you haven't encountered many, but their nature is nothing you ever want to bump into.
I think it does, although you might not like the answer.
Quoting Philosophim
You seem to be assuming I am not self-aware enough to recognize my own motivations. I'm certainly not perfect - I'm still subject to fear, shame, anxiety, pride - but on questions of how I treat others, I think I see clearly. You can doubt that, but that sort of ends the discussion.
Quoting Philosophim
I have been explicit that I am describing my personal philosophy. If a bad person takes up Chuang Tzu as justification, we'll have to ask them about it.
To me "intrinsic virtuosities." is problematic, if not suspect. How do you tell intrinsic from extrinsic? How does your heart sort out the sentiments you've learned and internalized from the ones you extrapolated from all the stuff you've experienced, learned and internalized? How do you trace the origin of all your ideas, ideals, convictions and beliefs? How do you decide which is a virtuosity, which is a conceit and which is a delusion?
I have some recollection of how I came by my present convictions, and they differ very little from the ones I held at age 15, 20, 30 and 45. Really, the only difference is my ability to articulate and advocate for them.
To be blunt, why should I worry about your problems with and suspicions about my ideas. I'm not asking you to endorse them or change your own understanding of morality.
Quoting Vera Mont
First off, I haven't discussed the source of intrinsic virtuosities. I don't say that they are all inborn and are unaffected by things I have experienced. I usually fall back on general statements about humans as social animals who like each other and want to be around each other.
As for how I recognize my own intrinsic virtuosity - self-awareness. Before I became interested in Taoism I was very self-aware of my own motivations. That's not the same as saying I wasn't also subject to social convention, e.g. fear, pride, shame, etc. Recognition is much easier than overcoming. As I said to another poster earlier in this thread, if you doubt that explanation, there really isn't much else for us to discuss. I've always said that everything Lao Tzu wrote can be boiled down to one declaration - pay attention.
We can leave that for a another day. Too much of a tangent.
Quoting T Clark
I will have to give it go. Someone I know mentioned it a few years back in a very positive light - I actually bought the book for them when they asked me to buy them 'something interesting'. I have only read snippet of it a long time ago.
Many inauthentic texts are useful. The Hermetica is one I found to be an intriguing read. Even though it has been shown to be a 'fake' of sorts it still has some interesting lines of thought in it.
Quoting T Clark
Banno is right. What you are proposing is not normative in any way, and therefore it has nothing to do with morality. "Do whatever feels right to you," offers no real measure for others or for oneself to understand better or worse courses of action. How could this be called morality?
When they say it's inauthentic, they just mean they don't think it was written by Chuang Tzu himself. Even so, it was roughly contemporaneous and I find it completely consistent with what Lao Tzu wrote. Again - strongly recommended.
My ideas on motivations for my behavior have nothing to do with anyone else. As I've tried to make clear, and which you seem to have ignored, I have not claimed any amnesty from facing the consequences of my own actions. As for my own understanding, I don't need to satisfy you. Or Banno.
You sort of do, given that this is a philosophy forum and all:
Quoting TPF Site Guidelines
Quoting T Clark
Because this is a philosophy forum, not your private diary. You wrote a whole thread on your ideas, and a philosophy forum is by definition a place where people engage the ideas you present.
No, I have some obligation to respond to your arguments civilly. Which I have done. That's it. I'm not responsible for convincing you, although I have tried at least to explain my ideas to you clearly.
Quoting Leontiskos
And I have engaged with all my respondents, including you, as thoroughly as I could. I've tried to be clear and respectful of others ideas. You just happen to disagree with what I've written. That often happens in philosophy discussions.
I think you and I have reached the end of our discussion.
Quoting T Clark
Morality definitely isn't inherently about what's "good and bad" and it's heavily tied to pragmatic factors necessitated thanks to the logic of morality needing to conclude that rules benefit the group. This can serve an important function in keeping groups united and coordinated. as an example, I can compare a children's football club to a semi-professional club.
For the children's football club, as it's less serious, parents mightn't want the coach to be too harsh on the players and they may expect every player to get a good amount of playing time. In the semi-professional club, everyone wants to win and is willing to submit to much harsher coaching and discipline, to let possession/play time be determined by merit and etc. If a player is slacking off, his teammates could get upset with him because it's a betrayal of the team's motivations and expectations. If one wants to be part of a serious football club, then they need everyone involved to be on board with that, or it doesn't happen. Morality exists in situations where we require others to act in a specific way in order to get what we want.
Another reason why morality isn't just "right and wrong" is that morality is rules for the group, for the benefit of the group, but only your group. Morality can facilitate cruelty and tyranny in this way.
Still, to disavow this process is kind of like refusing to vote in a democracy. Voting still happens, the process continues as normal, all that was achieved was the forfeiting of the opportunity to have a say. There'll never be enough people refusing to vote that'll make a difference either, politics is inevitable.
It seems to me that you're advocating for the superiority of this "intrinsic" morality as a replacement for the "coercive" morality, and I can't agree with that. I do want to live under a set of group conditions that I see as the best for everyone and I'm willing to do "evil" to get it. A good example of this would be cheating. Cheating hurts the enjoyment of everyone playing the game, I dislike it and so I'll help support and enforce many countermeasures against cheaters. I couldn't care less about the cheater's reasons or what they have to say about it. First I'll try to persuade, then if that doesn't work then I'll make ultimatums, threats and whatever else I can do. I'm also likely to get upset with people who sit by and say nothing, or worse, oppose me, thereby defending the cheating offender.
It's important to recognise that for many such acts, even 1% of the group is more than sufficient to be disruptive and adversely affect the rest. While it can seem almost like bullying for the majority to push these outliners back into line, it is in fact necessary to do. To "live and let live" and only be guided by your own moral principles is unacceptable. There are times where one must stand up for the conditions that benefit the group.
This is pretty much Kripkenstein. You just need to apply the principle to historic rule following.
For Emerson, it wasn't a wishy washy situation. Around 3-5% of America's white population were abolitionists, and Emerson was in that tiny minority. He was surrounded by people who were afraid that a racially diverse society would crumble. His advice, which has been passed down for generations was; think for yourself.
I once had a dream where a mafia hitman followed me to North Dakota to kill me. There was a moment in the dream where I knew someone was going to die, either him or me, and I knew beyond any doubt: it's was going to be him. It's not that judgment has to prove itself somehow in terms of value. Sometimes it's just there.
And you're right, it was cannibalism :grimace:
You absolutely shouldn't give a proverbial. Thank you for being blunt.
It had nothing to do with like or dislike. It was the same answer you gave before wrapped in a quote. I don't see how it added anything to your point, or answered mine.
Quoting T Clark
No, I don't doubt that. Many people believe they are good people, better than average, and have faith in their own judgements. A philosophical examination should find a stance that is rationally consistent.
You're on a philosophy forum, not a religion, meditation, or self-help forum. Its not about what makes us feel good, its about coming up with rational arguments. Your assertion of a personal opinion does not pass as a rational argument. Your morality has a severe flaw if anyone but yourself practices it. And you miss the fact that despite you thinking you see clearly, you make mistakes. If living by your nature is also making mistakes, and you make the mistake of getting drunk, driving, and killing someone, are you living a moral life?
Quoting T Clark
That's just an opinion. That's more of a slang or general use of the word, but not a standard of logical reasoning. I have no objection to you deciding to live your life by an opinion, but if you're going to claim its a philosophy that has anymore to it then a personal desire in how you want to live, its not going to pass muster.
And if your nature includes being self-determining to some extent? That would seem to entail that Emerson must choose who he is a child of.
Of course, if the Good is truly "better" it would seem that one only ever chooses to become a "son of the Devil" due to either a defect in self-determination or ignorance. The person who knows the better will choose it if they can. But then the question seems to become: "what is more in one's nature, to be self-determining our to be determined?"
Then there is the possibility of willful ignorance or incontinence, as opposed to the "free will that wills itself." There seems to be a middle ground between perfected freedom, which always chooses the better, and utter lack of freedom, where the partially self-determining person can will their own turn away from freedom.
Yes, that's what I meant by "greasing the skids."
Quoting Judaka
I have no problem with that, but I think many people here would disagree with you when you claim issues that don't involve right and wrong, good and bad, are moral. In the OP, I argued that what most call morality I call just another case of social control. I think that's similar to what you're saying.
Quoting Judaka
Again, the prescription for personal morality I've described is just that - personal, i.e. guidance for how I should behave toward others. It wasn't meant apply to how groups go about enforcing rules for human interaction. Call those rules "moral" or not, I see them as just another form of social control.
Quoting Judaka
Here, I'll stretch your metaphor to the breaking point - if I don't recognize the legitimacy of democracy, why would I participate voluntarily?
Quoting Judaka
When I say "social control" I don't mean it as necessarily a bad thing. I recognize the necessity for society to organize itself, I just don't think it's accurate to call that "morality.'
Good point. I hadn't thought of abolition as part of the context of Emerson's philosophy.
Yes, I saw this movie. No, wait. That was South Dakota. You have more interesting dreams than I do.
Quoting frank
In order to effectively stop the hit man, I have to judge the situation and decide how to act. I don't have to judge whether or not what he is doing is evil. It's not relevant.
One would expect that before you kill someone, you would think about whether it's the right thing to do. In my dream, I didn't hesitate.
This is my theory: considerations of good and evil are mostly post hoc assessments of spontaneous action. In other words, everybody is like you. We all just act without a huge amount of thought and then guilt invades later when we realize that we didn't channel our angst in the best way, or maybe things went awesomely and we take credit for an outcome that was 99% accidental. Through experiences like that, action remains mostly spontaneous, but that lingering guilt or pride makes us pause and assess the options.
You asked:
Quoting Philosophim
Emerson and I respond - "So be it." I think that answers your question. You may not find that satisfactory, but I think it's at least clear.
Quoting Philosophim
Ha! I like that.
Quoting Philosophim
I've made a rational argument that non-rational considerations have to be taken into account when dealing with philosophical, and human, issues. That is not a radical position to take. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu were roughly contemporaneous with Plato and Aristotle. Taoism has been around for more than 2,000 years. If it's your position that it's principles are not legitimately philosophical, that's a bigger question than we can answer here.
Quoting Philosophim
How is what you've written not also an opinion? We've both supported our views with more or less rational argument. They both go back to a question of values. Is it your position that our values - what we consider important, what we like and dislike, what we think is good and bad - is all and only based on rational considerations? If so, I think that's beyond the scope of this discussion.
On the contrary, you haven't even attempted to respond to the argument that Banno gave. Setting out your ideas and then refusing to address counterarguments is not philosophical engagement.
Do I think humans are "self-determining." I'll have to think about that and we'll have to define what we mean by it. As for this discussion, nothing I have written and nothing I can remember from reading Chuang Tzu or Lao Tzu takes any position on the question.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That doesn't strike me as true at all.
This makes sense to me, with this addition - considerations of good and evil may be post hoc, but they are likely to effect my judgment when another situation comes up in the future.
In Emersons example we discover that no one can be controlled by a normative claim, moral, ethical, or otherwise. The only coercive rules are the legal ones, enforced as they are by the threat of force, violence, and kidnapping.
Of course, no disagreement. You've taken an non-rational position into account, but it has been found lacking in the larger claim of morality. Considering not rational positions is fine and a good thing. But considering something does not mean concluding it is correct. I see no indication that your position is tenable as anything apart from someone who wants to justify living as they see fit without any further consideration of how this plays out if everyone followed the same ideal.
Quoting T Clark
If this is your final answer, then you did answer my question. You do not believe in morality then, you believe nothing should dictate your actions besides yourself. You are unconcerned with contradictions when other people are involved, and I doubt that in practice, you would live in such a way if such conflicts arose.
T Clark, I like you and think you're generally a well spoken and decent person. But this is weak. When you introduce your ideas on these boards, it is not a place to assert and not address the details of your argument. That's just proselytizing. I feel you can be better than that, and maybe you're unaware of what you're doing, so I'm bringing it to your attention. I get you may feel defensive over this accusation, please don't. Think about it for some time first.
Quoting T Clark
No, I have not seen a rational argument. I have seen rationalizing, or presentation of weak support for what one wants while dismissing things which would challenge it. A quote from someone expressing a similar opinion as yourself is not a rational argument.
Quoting T Clark
No, it is a question of what morals are vs what we value. If you claim what you value is what is moral, then you have much more to explore and answer as to why this rationally is. If you're going to claim, "It just is," then this isn't a rational conversation, just a statement of opinion. This would be the same as me asking someone, "If God is real and good, why does evil happen?" and they replied, "It just does, its good because God allowed it."
As for the direct question of, "Are our values based on rational considerations?" this is hardly a debate. Personal values do not have to be based on rational decisions. But this is not morality. You have to assert that what we personally desire and value is morality, when the default is that they are very separate things. It is your assertion that they are the same that you have not proved that is the problem.
Quoting T Clark
Morality is a dysfunctional word with too many very similar, overlapping but separate meanings. For example, I think it's truth that morality is both natural and artificial/manmade, however, I think the "morality" that is natural and the "morality" that is manmade are distinct and different things. One referring to our biology and one roughly referring to our culture. It's very difficult to delineate the "natural" from the "artificial", and I wouldn't even be willing to try. "Personal morality" and this coerce/social morality we've described could be distinct from each other, but overlap greatly and I've no way to unravel that mess. Philosophers such as posters here want to resolve such contradictions and try to provide solutions, but only end up overstepping their authority in a meaningless way. If someone says "morality is X and not Y", what is determinative of the correct answer? Is it common use? The rules of language? Or something else?
Quoting T Clark
"Moral" sounds prescriptive or evaluative, I'd say this "social control" is part of morality, and that morality & social control are not mutually exclusive. Their mutual exclusivity seems to be the core of your argument, but what's the argument for it?
Quoting T Clark
You can forfeit your position as a participant, but the rules of the democracy are enforced by law and coercive factors will bend you or break you until you comply. By refusing to participate you sacrifice the power to influence outcomes while still experiencing the full weight of said outcomes. There are reasons to refuse to participate, but it's not pragmatic.
Right. That's what I said.
Found lacking by you and some others. Some other others have been more sympathetic. Also, as I wrote in the OP:
Quoting T Clark
Quoting Philosophim
By contradictions I assume you mean conflict or potential conflict. There is nothing in my description of my personal morality, so-called, that prevents me from taking the needs and interests of other people into account.
Quoting Philosophim
Thank you for your smug condescension.
Quoting Philosophim
Based on the contents of this thread, it seems you are wrong.
You've started to be insulting. Perhaps we should end it here.
I agree. That's one of the reasons I started this discussion.
Quoting Judaka
If you are saying that what I call personal morality vs social control and what you call natural vs. artificial morality are similar concepts, then I agree.
Quoting Judaka
No, I don't think they're mutually exclusive. On the contrary, I am saying I think what people call "morality" is nothing more than social control.
Quoting Judaka
If I didn't think democratic government is legitimate that doesn't mean I wouldn't still recognize I am subject to the consequences of not following the rules and I would behave based on that understanding.
Yes. I didn't read carefully enough.
I'm not talking to them, but about our conversation.
Quoting T Clark
It was not meant to be condescending, but pointing out as a fellow human being something I think you were not aware of. Feel free to disagree, but it was not meant to talk down to you.
Quoting T Clark
Nor is there anything that compels or inclines you to take the needs and interests of others in account. Which again, is not any moral principle at all besides, "I do what I want". And if other people take your moral principle and interact with you, steal from you, beat you up, then say, "Its just my nature, I'm being moral," you have no rational answer besides to accept their claim. I'm not saying you couldn't come up with a more reasonable answer, but you didn't even bother to.
Quoting T Clark
I am not discussing with the thread, I am discussing with you.
Quoting T Clark
I asked you not to get defensive and just think about what I was saying. That's hardly an intent to insult, especially after I've complimented you a few times in this thread. If you don't want to engage anymore, that is your call.
Yes, Mummy only says "be good for Mummy" when she has assigned 'badness'. In fact you have it backwards; one is told to be good, and thereby learns to assign guilt to oneself. Because if one was good, one would not need to be told. Children are helpless and dependent on people who assign them to be ...
Quoting Vera Mont
So they have to internalise that identity and fight against themselves to placate those upon whom their life depends.
I dont want to speak for TClark, but the way inner nature, or Buddha nature, is understood within a variety of contemporary philosophical perspectives is via the concept of no-self, a cognitive system with no homuncular I driving it. As Varela explains "...lots of simple agents having simple properties may be brought together, even in a haphazard way, to give rise to what appears to an observer as a purposeful and integrated whole".
The ethical significance of the realization of no-self is that when there are no more boundaries between myself and the other when I am the other and the other is me there can be no animosity, hatred, or anxiety between us. This is the crux of St. Augustine's famous saying: Ama, et fac quod vis (Love, and do what you will). Love understood in terms of the Christian selfless love (agape), analogous to Buddhist compassion (karuna) is the cohesive force of interbeing, the (groundless) ground of genuine peace and co-existence. (Sebastian Voros)
The question is whether T Clark sides with Buddhists like Menscius, who asserts that the Good is tied up with natural kinds of innate dispositions, or with a no-self notion of inner virtue.
Shaun Gallagher writes:
I'm not so sure. Guilt need not be so narratively driven -- it can be triggered by any number of events and memories, and need not make any kind of sense. I can feel my guilt is unjustified, because I know that the person guilt-tripping me is eliciting a response -- I still feel the guilt, but that doesn't mean I'm really sorry or think of myself as not-good or needing-to-be-good.
Quoting Leontiskos
I dont think praise can exist without disappointment, which is of course different from blame. We blame when we try our best to understand the motives of another in such a way that we can see those motives as morally justified. In an ideal scenario, it is only after we exhaust all possible generous ascriptions of their acts that we throw up our hands and reluctantly blame them. I am very sympathetic to the enormous difficulty of making sense of the often mysterious behavior of others. All I can tell you is that Ive never met an immoral, evil, blameworthy or unjust person. It is not that Ive never felt anger and the initial impulse to blame, but when I undergo the process of trying to make intelligible their motives I am always able to arrive at an explanation that allows me to avoid blame and the need for forgiveness. Furthermore, there is a fundamental philosophical basis for what I assert is the case that it is always possible to arrive at such a non-blameful explanation that can withstand the most robust tests in the real world. Having said that, Im aware that my view is a fringe one. I only know of one other theorist who has come up with a similar perspective. Im also aware that my view will be seen as dangerously naive.
It was his answer to the old problem of evil, right?
Quoting Moliere
My favorite psychologist, George Kelly, defined guilt as the perception of one's apparent dislodgment from one's core role structure. Whatever one does in the light of their understanding of others' outlooks may be regarded as their role. In guilt, our falling away from another we care for could be spoken of as an alienation of oneself from oneself. When we feel we have failed another, we mourn our mysterious dislocation from a competence or value which we associated ourselves with. One feels as if having fallen below the standards [one has] erected for himself
It follows from this that any thinking of guilt as a `should have, could have' blamefulness deals in a notion of dislocation and distance, of a mysterious discrepancy within intended meaning, separating who we were from who we are in its teasing gnawing abyss.
[/quote]
The level of awareness espoused in this thread is that of the eight-year-old decrying "you're not the boss of me!".
Sure. But when you grow up you might choose to act with some consideration for others.
As a non-philosopher, I think it is important to explore this line of thinking - given the rather dreadful consequences of a blame culture we have observed over the centuries.
You say you have never met an immoral, evil or blameworthy person.
I largely agree with this. But my temptation to pass judgement remains strong within me. I have met many people who are extremely dangerous and who don't share my understanding of the world, and this difference in their axioms or their experience is often taken as a form of culpability. Most people follow strong codes and reasoning. I remember the critic Clive James talking about Rupert Murdoch some years ago. Everyone was hoeing into Murdoch as an 'unprincipled scoundrel' - James responded with a quip - 'I think Murdoch is a man of principles, I just think they are the wrong principles.' The question always seems to come back to what do we do with this word 'wrong'?
I think I'm tempted by a notion that how we feel can be given a name -- and so separated at least conceptually -- but that feeling can be attached to anything. (been trying to think through a philosophy of emotion recently, and it's fairly rough); in a sense who we are just is these attachments. Without attachment there'd be no reason to do anything at all, and when our attachments change so do we.
Guilt can be elicited through these stories due to our cultural rituals surrounding acts being blameworthy or priaseworthy, but the story that comes from the guilt isn't the guilt. Our culture invokes guilt in particular circumstances as a means for teaching people to be good (or obedient, or whatever) and the stories arise from that basic manipulation. The particular circumstances of ones own guilt is the narrative, but guilt is an emotional response from an attachment of some kind (the attachment could be as simple as "See clouds:Feel guilt:Explain guilt" -- it needn't make rational sense for the guilt to be there.)
Now, a lot of us happen to have mothers, and parents have an enormous amount of power over children, so it's little wonder that parents influence how children grow (for better or worse), and furthermore that since we're a sexual species it ought not be surprising that children are sexual, too. I give that much to Freud.
And here:
Quoting Joshs
I think this is a good story, too. Though it's not the guilt, per se, since guilt can be attached to anything at all -- though these are the common sorts of stories which people feel are right about guilt (and I'm not sure any of them are wrong, exactly, though perhaps overgeneralized)
So I'm attached to an image of myself as a good person and furthermore that image is attached to guilt whenever what I do does not match that image within this particular ethical framework where guilt is attached to principle or character.
But guilt could also be attached in other ways, naturally. "Guilt" seems almost like a basic emotion in the same way I'd be tempted to call "red" a basic color -- it's a feeling on the tapestry of consciousness, but it can be configured in so many ways.
Yup. Just as those others have to adjust to them. That's how societies work - or, failing that, stop working.
Yes, that. Not merely the image of being a good person - because both image and good are fickle words, subject to change and interpretation and POV. If I have set a standard of behaviour for myself regarding other living things and the environment, my responsibilities or promises, whenever I fail to meet that standard, I'm disappointed in myself. If my sub-standard behaviour hurt another feeling entity, I feel guilt.
Specifically for that transgression - causing distress to some person or animal who didn't deserve it - and for no other, not for breaking a rule or failing in an assigned obligation.
Well, no. It's pieces from p.207 and §258 of Philosophical Investigations. It's not Kripke. It's pretty much straight Wittgenstein. All I did was change "sensation" to "intrinsic nature".
The point is the obvious one that if we take as the only criteria for what is right, what seems right to each of us, then we have stoped talking about what is right and changed the topic to what we want.
That does not address, let alone solve, the problem of what is right.
Notice the difference between "Think for yourself" and "Follow your intrinsic nature". "Thinking for yourself" allows for consideration of others. "Follow your intrinsic nature" drops consideration from the agenda.
The notion that we have a "deepest essence" is deeply problematic, especially after "existence precedes essence".
The Op doesn't address what we ought to do.
Appealing to a mythical "intrinsic nature" denies that we each exist only in a community. To a large extent it's an appeal to the American Myth of Rugged Individualism, the very same myth that denies its citizens a decent health care and social security system and brings us Trump and other sociopathic billionaires.
And for all that, the question of what to do remains.
All Kripke did was change it from sensation to historic rule following. He didn't do any violence to Wittgenstein. He just pointed out the consequences.. the dastardly consequences.
Quoting Banno
This indicates that you have little faith in humans. You believe they're basically bad and need to be threatened with fire and brimstone in order to be good. But you realize that brimstone is mythical, so you just hate your on kind and leave it at that.
I've long believed that it's better to be the fool that you are rather than pretend to be wise. Being the real fool will lead you into lessons from which you can learn real wisdom. Pretending to be wise will only shield you from those lessons and leave you foolish in the end. My perspective is sort of optimistic. It allows the human spirit to soar, even though I know that in the end, it's all for nothing.
Quoting Banno
Following your heart is the best way to discover the freedom to reinvent the world. I think you're getting tangled up in word games and missing that. I think you'd probably agree with TClark if you understood what he's saying.
That depends entirely on what you want.
Given a choice of extremes, must we always choose the one or the other? No, we can reject both, accepting the complexity of our situation.
Well, not entirely. Sometimes it also depends on what others want.
I think both Banno and I smirked in exactly the same way when we read this.
I don't think you are wrong. But I do think what you have said is incomplete.
As is what I have said.
Edit: Do you also read Master Kong?
Im not inclined to separate guilt as physiological arousal
or somatic sensation from guilt as cognitive assessment. I think the former are meaningless without understanding their basis in the latter. If guilt , or emotion in general is irrational, then rationality itself is irrational. I believe the basis of affect is the assessments that come from our attempts at sensemaking, the extent to which we are able to experience events as intelligible, recognizable, coherent with our aims. Emotion is the barometer that indicates whether we are falling into hole of confusion or confidently assimilating events. Whether a culture invokes guilt or not, an individual will not experience guilt unless they perceive their actions to violate their standards for themselves, regardless of whether this conforms to societys expectations and norms. Guilt is a crisis of identity that is triggered whenever we discover that our actions dont conform to what we consider our values to be. Guilt is an emotion reflecting the growing pains of personal transformation. To make any significant change in ones outlook is to risk feelings of guilt.
Of course. Each one of the others is also a 'you'.
Some of the other people may be powerful and influential, in which case, their wants trump yours. I wasn't thinking of a dictatorial situation, because if you live in one of those, you are very much aware of what you are allowed to want.
In a community or larger society, there is prevailing belief system, principles on which the laws, rules, regulations and mores are based, to which all members are required to adhere. Even if they individually disagree with some aspects of the system, they have either overtly or tacitly agreed to abide by its rules. They all know that infractions will be met with disapprobation, ranging from a scowl to lethal injection.
So, if what you want is against a law, you probably shouldn't do it because you can anticipate formal retribution of some kind. If what you want is against a moral precept, whether you should do it or not depends on how much you need the community's support. If what you want conflicts with the desires of a neighbour, you should weigh the foreseeable consequences against the immediate satisfaction. if what you want offends someone's sensibilities, you should consider how much you care about that person's opinion of you. If what you want is a matter of indifference to your fellow citizens, go ahead; there are no obstacles to consider.
Quoting Vera Mont
An even more effective e approach is to anticipate how your actions are likely to be misunderstood by others so that you can fly under the radar and get what you want without causing others to be threatened by what they dont understand.
Assuming what you want is harmless and nobody would mind, if only they understood it, yes. It's an effective strategy as long as what you want is to live 'under the radar'.
As for other infractions, if it has no observable results, you can get away with some actions that are not approved. People do that every day, everywhere. They show up late for work and pretend to have been in the bathroom, take office supplies home, cheat on their taxes, steal flowers from cemeteries, park in the handicapped space, speed on the highway, kill rich elderly relatives - all kinds of sneaky things that might have unpleasant consequences if they're caught.
And more broadly, direct appeals to conscience and the like tend to go hand in hand with a refusal to justify ones beliefs and/or actions. The opacity of such an approach is contrary to community, but it is even more broadly contrary to the idea that moral claims are supposed to have a measure of intelligibility and cogency.
I'm not opposed to that conclusion.
I think that the somatic response is meaningless, though it's also always connected to some cognitive judgment that brings it meaning.
We try to make sense of these feelings, but ultimately it's our culture around us which helps us to make sense of them -- it's the village we're a part of where sense is made, and it's pre-made for us -- there's already a long history of guilt established and judged of when one ought to feel guilty and when one ought not to feel guilty.
I suppose that doesn't make sense of trigger-events, to me.
There is a rational guilt, we could say -- a guilt with a story attached and what that means for myself in relation to others (or God) -- but any emotion, guilt or otherwise, can be elicited by any trigger. We aren't rational by default, but grow into those roles through our communal stories of what a rational individual does.
I would simplify this a bit. I would say that the opposite of disappointment is the exceeding of expectations, and these two rise or fall together as possibilities. If someone disappoints me then they have fallen short of my expectations, and if someone "surprises" me then they have exceeded my expectations.
I think the contrary of praise is blame, not disappointment. To praise is to affirm and congratulate someone for doing a good job, whereas to blame is to call someone out for doing a bad job. The genus of both is an appraisal of causal activity, where in the first case the person is a good and effective cause, whereas in the second case the person is a bad and ineffective cause (or skillful and unskillful, as the Buddhists would say). These two also rise or fall together as possibilities.
When I hear someone say that we need to get rid of blame (and anger et al.), it seems to me that they don't usually recognize that to rid the world of blame would also be to rid the world of praise, for both are premised on the idea that human beings are responsible for that which they cause. Or simpler, that human beings can cause things, and they can do so in better and worse ways.
As an example, if a soccer game comes down to penalty kicks then the person who scores will be praised and the person who misses the net altogether will be blamed, and it is not really possible to praise the first without blaming the second. Both acts flow out of the same anthropological realities. If I can do well, then I can do poorly. And if my activity can be good or bad, then it can also be appraised as good or bad, and this appraisal can be communicated to me.
Quoting Joshs
I find your position to be very popular, albeit not at an academic level. Where I grew up your position is baked into the culture in a way that creates many, many unexpected problems. My cousin and I used to joke that it was a wonder that the people in our town even kept score at all when playing games such as volleyball, because the logical conclusion of this philosophy would be a ban on score-keeping altogether. I think this has become more common elsewhere via the psychological/therapeutic culture.
Indeed. I think that's our first morality. We do what we want to do, more often than not.
Sometime down the line we may want to care for others, though. Or at least want more than one thing and have to make a choice.
Generally I think there are moral sentiments we're attached to, and so (attempt to) enact.
But what those moral sentiments are for an individual -- I'm hesitant to say much. It'd be more beneficial for me to know what an individual believes than what I believe. If we're thinking ethically then already I think that's the viewpoint we've adopted, in some sense. Suddenly there's more to the world than me and my wants, and even though I do not want something it may still be important to me.
And that's when ethics becomes an interesting endeavor: Suddenly I have deliberations and choices not just about what I want, but also others' desires (including different moral sentiments)
Quoting NOS4A2
I'm not sure about this. Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu specifically identify the behavior of young babies as good examples of action in accordance with inborn nature.
Quoting NOS4A2
I think you're right about what Emerson proposes, but I'm sure he recognized that human behavior can be controlled by "normative claims," e.g. guilt, shame, community disapproval.
Quoting Moliere
Sense-making is more fundamental than abstract logic or formal rationality, which are just secondary derivatives of it. We dont grow into sense-making, and dont have to be taught by a culture how to do it. We begin as sense-makers, construing events along dimensions of similarity and difference with respect to previous experience, creating channels of interpretation in order to recognize meaningful patterns out of the flux of changing events. Our culture provides us sources of validational evidence but doesnt dictate the rightness or wrongness of our construals of the world, since no two persons will construe things the same way.
That would be about age two. The toddler wants to stay up and eat candy. His mother tells him it's time to go to bed. The toddler wants his mother to keep caring for him. What she wants is suddenly an issue. He'll hold out for what he wants, as long as there is a chance she will let him. But if she's adamant, he has to make a choice between short- and long-term desires.
By age three, it actually matters whether his mother takes care of him because she wants to or just because she has to. It begins to matter what she wants. He can "be good for Mommy" if he tries. By six, he often offers to do something he doesn't really want to, just to please her. (Remember, she's already done 5000 things she didn't really want to, just to please him. He's figuring that out. Now, we have a loving relationship between two individuals - a whole new dynamic of balancing wants.)
Am I immoral when I condemn him? Why?
As I understand it, because Bob is an incel, and they're just poor, socially awkward, misunderstood boys who have been traumatized by rejection from women. You have to understand his needs.
I'm just trying to understand how to pragmatucally apply the Taoist morality presented in the OP.
Sorry. I have no idea. I have no concept of a society in which we're not supposed to judge one another's behaviour.
Quoting Leontiskos
Human beings are responsible. But that just means that they do the best they can given the limitations of their framework of understanding at any given point in time. Because their efforts change this background system of appraisals, their future isnt determined by those limitations in a causal manner proceeding linearly from past to present to future. Our past is reconfigured by how we can change our future in the present. But this doesnt authorize the superstitious belief in the magic of willpower , as though some mysterious , divinely inspired force wells up in us to inspire us to do the right thing, or to push us beyond what we thought was humanly possible (how miraculous!) in order to score that goal. The ideology of blame tells us that this strange power is what separates the men from the boys, the heroes from the cowards , the good from the evil.
This completely misses the fact that it is impossible to perform such feats of will as long as there isnt an adequate cogntive structure in place to make sense of the circumstances we find ourselves in. Our ability to deal with each other without violence and brutality evolves over the course of human history in direct parallel with the evolution of cognitive structure. In a word, the smarter we get, the more peaceful we are capable of being, and the closer we get to a post-blame form of thinking.
Quoting Leontiskos
I recently wrote a paper on the history of blame in philosophy and psychology . I couldn't find a single example of a post-blame thinking in pre-modern, modern. or postmodern Western philosophy, nor in non-Western traditions. Reductive determinism doesnt count, because as I argued in an earlier post, they just shift the locus of blame from a free willing person to material causes. This is not at all what I mean by post-blame. No philosophical or psychological approach makes the claim to have entirely eliminated the need for anger and blame. On the contrary, a certain conception of blameful anger is at the very heart of both modern and postmodern philosophical foundations. As a careful analysis will show, this is true even for those philosophical and psychological arguments that pop up from time to time extolling the virtues of moving beyond blame and anger.
Id like you to give me some examples of what you consider to be post-blame approaches, and Ill demonstrate the ways in which they sneak blame in through the back door.
Quoting Vera Mont
Why do you think the younger child is not able to figure out what the older child does concerning the balancing of wants? Is it as simple as selfish needs being primary, or is the dichotomy between self and other too simplistic a way of treating the nature of motivation?
If everyone is doing the best they can at each moment of their life then no one is responsible for anything, and therefore it is entirely backwards to say that humans are responsible because they are always doing the best they can.
Quoting Joshs
Can we change our future in ways that are better or worse? If so, then praise and blame and responsibility all come right back.
Quoting Joshs
I don't think anyone misses that fact. I think this is a strawman.
Quoting Joshs
History notwithstanding?
Quoting Joshs
You also won't find the idea that 2+2=5 in pre-modern, modern, or postmodern philosophy. I think the reality of blame is as obvious as this mathematical fact, and that this is why you haven't found many people denying it.
But you literally captured the post-blame conception in popular culture, i.e., "Leave him alone, he's doing his best!"
Quoting Joshs
Hey, you're turning the tables on me - that's my job! Nah, I don't think these popular conceptions are coherent. I think you yourself will end up sneaking blame in through the back door as well, unless you yield to (psychological) determinism. I think proponents, including yourself, underestimate the unimaginable cost of a blameless society.
There is a legitimate way in which the analytic philosophers tend to neglect the bigger picture, but it is simultaneously true that the continental folks tend to struggle with logic. When the continental folks promote a blameless society I think a logical mishap is occurring.
Quoting Moliere
Whats the difference between I and other? Is the I a single thing or a community unto itself? Perhaps the difference between self and other is an arbitrary distinction we fabricated , and its really a matter of degree? In other worlds, the notion of selfishness is incoherent, because it isnt a unitary ego we are protecting, but the ability to coordinate the myriad bits within the community of self that makes up our psyche so that an overall coherence of meaning emerges. the sense of a unified self is an achievement of a community , not a given. Whether we do things for ourselves or for others , the same motive applies, the need to maintain integration and consistency of meaning. None of us can become altruistic, generous, selfless, sharing unless we can find a way to integrate the alien other into ourselves. This isnt a moral achievement , but an intellectual one.
Quoting T Clark
No, I wasn't saying that, though your statement seems fair, I just meant that "morality" has contradictory characteristics due to the differing meanings of the word in various contexts. Though they aren't real contradictions, only appearing due to ambiguity as to which "morality" is being referred to.
Quoting T Clark
I'm not sure what you mean by "nothing more than social control". It reads as being very cynical, though you acknowledge the necessity for it, do you deny its potential beauty and desirability? I think those feelings you refer to as your "personal morality" are often parents to this morality as social control. To me, it's inevitable that this will happen, because of the inevitability of politics. For example, if one loves animals, how can they not act in their defence when others try to harm them? Only a specific set of morals can flourish without turning to social control, entirely inward-facing ones. Is there any separation between thoughts & feelings that guide our own behaviour and those that motivate us to influence others?
Though I've yet to hear a description of "personal morality" that would allow me to identify it by myself, one possible "personal morality" is our biological morality. A psychologically in-built morality, made up of our able to perceive fairness, experience empathy and possessing aversions to incest etc. Different forms of this are observable in other pack mammals such as dogs and lions. Here, biological morality facilitates the coercive kind, allowing each member of the group to play their role in enforcing social rules. While I don't believe all forms of morality are derived from biological morality nor does it possess any hegemony over the others, it's an example of a case where the personal and coercive are really one in the same.
One could argue that for a form of social control to qualify as "social" or "coercive" morality, it must originate from a personal morality. Also, note that even though morality is inherently self-serving (serving the group), arguments sourcing from "personal" morality are nonetheless never out of place. Though that doesn't mean they'll be persuasive.
In summary, morality's coercive elements are the natural consequence of personal morality/motivations and politics, which are both inevitable and inevitably intertwined. Though coercive morality would surely exist without personal morality, it's inconceivable to me that personal morality could avoid resulting in the coercive kind. Though there are those who may advocate for keeping personal morality a private affair, and may practice what they preach, the inevitability of politics and the power of the majority mean that this mentality will never rule over a large group. I think we can always expect personal morality to bloom into the coercive kind in any group setting, do you agree?
What do you want to tell the person who I say is doing their best? Try harder? Whats the difference between the person you praise and the one you blame other than the difference in the result youre looking for? Are you judging their motives based on your disappointment? How can you tell the difference between the one who is doing their best and the one who isnt? Or are you arguing that no one is ever doing their best? If I say that a decision always represents the best one can do given the circumstances, I am not saying that the decision is nothing but the effect of a cause , Im saying that the decision is formed by the circumstances but always transcends it. Any choice must be defined by a background, or else it isnt a choice at all, but is only the freedom of utter meaningless chaos.
To say that someone could have done better is to miss that what they did choose already leapt beyond the conditions that formed their background. Can anyone know in the instant of that choice what its consequences will be? Because the choice is utterly new, so are the consequences, and only the unfolding of events will tell whether it will be validated or invalidated. A choice is an experiment, the venturing of a bet that one hopes will pay off. Are you to judge its success based on what new consequences it puts into effect for them, or on the basis of an old standard? In either case, who are you to judge what must be their own decision, based on their vantage, and how can you judge the necessity or wisdom of the decision based on its originally unforeseen outcome rather than how things seemed to the person at the time they chose? Isnt this 20/20 hindsight?
I say not that no one is doing their best, but rather that not everyone is always doing their best. Again:
Quoting Leontiskos
Also from my last, in an edit:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Joshs
It is the difference between the role they play in causing a good or bad effect, such as scoring on the penalty kick or missing the net. And the difference between the person I blame and the person I do not blame for a bad effect consists in their causal role in producing the effect. Not everyone who produces a bad effect is to blame.
The problem here is that you're oversimplifying the vast complexity of moral philosophy, and ignoring all sorts of subtle distinctions.
Quoting Joshs
By my knowledge of their capacity as a cause. Ergo: I am best situated to praise or blame myself given my uniquely informed knowledge about myself, and I blame myself precisely when I fail in relation to my capacity and my ability.
Quoting Joshs
To say that not everyone is doing their best does not mean that no one is ever doing their best. This is basic logic.
Quoting Joshs
To say that someone has acted as a cause of an effect does not mean that there are no circumstances to their act.
Quoting Joshs
Do you have an argument for why you think that no one could ever do better? Because when you say that everyone is doing their best this is entailed.
Quoting Joshs
Everyone foresees and anticipates certain consequences of their actions. That is why they act in the first place.
Quoting Joshs
Within the consideration of consequences, an act is judged not primarily on the basis of the consequences that come about, but primarily on the basis of both the consequences that are intended and the consequences that could reasonably be expected to occur.
I don't understand, unless you are describing the internal conflict?
The intrinsic nature of a human is to be a social animal. Bob's experience has taught him that there is only one form of sociality which is hierarchy based dominance/submission relations imposed by coercion and violence. He does not understand voluntary cooperation and believes it to be a variant form of manipulation.
It is probably going to be impossible to explain all this to Bob in ten minutes, and you will have to deal with him in the only way he can understand, with physical restraint. Once he is not in a position to dominate and control, then you can perhaps start to model a cooperative and respectful relationship to him. I believe this is called in legal circles "reform". It may not work, because old habits die hard.
That's pretty much as I would have it as well. How people in general should behave is reducible to mere administrative codes of conduct, and THAT is reducible to a member-specific personal moral disposition.
The consequences related to codes of right action, is very different than the consequences related to ones own code of proper action.
Yes, I agree. If there were only one sentient being in the universe, it would go around gobbling at will. There would be no other to impede it. If there are more than one, it is possible that the stronger eats the weaker. Still no morality. Morality happens when two sentient creatures of roughly equal power encounter each other, and they have to come to terms. Morality is the terms that they come to, perhaps. It's is about controlling the behaviour of the other, so they are less of a threat, or so they work for you. Morality is always about others, what you want them to do and what they want you to do.
It might be contrasted with virtue ethics perhaps, where the concern is to be virtuous, and the focus is on oneself and not others, perhaps.
I don't think you can do much until he actually rapes somebody. Then you have to call the cops.
Or, to use a less-moralized emotion than guilt, if a song triggers anxiety, I am the anxiety now, the memory of anxiety past, and the present knowledge that this anxiety isn't related to anything but the song which happened to be playing during a traumatic event. The attachment is to a very powerful memory which, in turn, triggers the psychosomatic associations of a panic attack.
No one thinks someone who undergoes a panic attack is culpable, exactly, for that panic attack, which is why I'm bringing it up as an analogy to the lines of thinking on guilt that I'm attempting here. I'm suggesting that guilt trips are similar to panic attacks, and that these sorts of events suggest that emotions need not be attached to some rational basis. These emotions can be Pavlovian, where the bell is rung and so one feels guilt (and so a guilt-tripper moves in to ask for something to relieve the guilt)
Of course they can be sensible. When I feel guilty because I've done something I believe to be wrong then I go about and attempt to rectify it, and have no problem with such feelings -- they make perfect sense. But this is a different sort of guilt than what I mean -- it's a sensible guilt based in relationships with others, whereas I'm thinking our emotional lives, while they can develop into these communal and loving relationships, also can develop into irrational brambles and strange, senseless shapes.
The ages were picked arbitrarily: obviously, there is some variation in the rate at which children develop. There is also variation in the innate temperament of children: some are observant and patient; some are impetuous and headstrong; some are more selfish, some more generous.
'Self', 'outside self' and 'other' are recognized very early, in the first weeks of infancy, as the baby experiences privation. Whereas, before birth, all of its needs were automatically met without it ever feeling a want, now, food and warmth and comfort come from outside.... and sometimes the baby has to express its need for them. It has to learn to communicate. That's awareness of another sentient, responsive being.
For a long time - which is to say a baby's entire lifetime, its whole experience of the world - all of the wants are broadcast outward and the response comes from out there, from one or more caregivers, whose only function , as far as the baby knows, is to fulfill its own wants. Nothing is asked of the baby. Where would it get the idea that the others also have wants? Yet, even so, most babies - eight, nine months old - come up spontaneously with the idea of giving to another, sharing their food or offering their toys. I suppose it's a mirror response to being given things and offered things. And there is gratification in the positive response, the praise and petting when others are pleased with its behaviour.
It doesn't take a great leap of reason for a child to understand that other people are like themselves - separate individuals: the realization grows gradually, with varied experience and interaction. So, when they have acquired enough language to understand verbal requests, commands, warnings and admonitions, they are able to formulate an appropriate response.
I agree with that too.
Quoting Judaka
I'm not a cynical person, although I am annoyed by philosophical muddy-headedness. I've tried to make it clear that I recognize the necessity for social controls in general and many specifically, including your example of protection of animals. I also recognize that different types of social control are less coercive and more benign than others. On the other hand, I think formal systems of moral philosophy generally give special status to social rules that don't deserve it. "Don't do that because it's wrong" generally just means "Don't do that."
Quoting Judaka
What Chuang Tzu calls "intrinsic morality" has a lot in common with what you call "a psychologically in-built morality," i.e. conscience, although there's more to it than that. And I think that's the problem with what he, Emerson, and I have written. Most people don't recognize, as you note can't identify, this seemingly amorphous agent.
Quoting Judaka
Clearly, from the responses in this thread, that's true.
Quoting Judaka
This I don't agree with, although I think it's just a difference of language.
I agree with this. I've been surprised at how many respondents have been sympathetic to this way of seeing things, although many others have been strongly in disagreement.
This is a bit more cynical than the way I see it. As I say over and over, humans are social animals. We like each other, want to be around each other, want to take care of those we are close to.
Because the only moral rule is, "Don't tell others what to do."
That's where I get stuck a lot. Recently I've been thinking about this distinction by blending Sartre with Levinas -- Sartre has the "I", and Levinas has "the Other" figured into their philosophy, as a whole, but there are bits here or there in each philosophy that I sort of shy away from, and this sort of "synthesis" between them is a way of attempting to "fill in" the "gaps" (from my perspective, of course -- not for everyone) in each philosophy with each philosophy.
So the "I" is myriad: The cogito of "I think, therefore I am" doesn't follow because "I think" isn't the same "I" as in "I am": thinking is being-for-itself ,but the I-am is being-in-itself.
The Other, though, is exteriority (like Levinas' -- so "outside of experience" rather than "internal/external) -- the face-to-face relation is our recognition of the alien outside of ourselves as more important than our elemental attachments. (The non-self "I", ipseity, is that which is attached to: though of course ipseity is never alone unto itself and is also only known through attachment)
Both a single thing and a community! :D
Communally we recognize ourselves as responsible agents, as "I's" who are responsible or culpable for various things.
But if the community didn't care for such an "I", then the I would change.
We have bank-accounts and property rights to our bodies which give us a sense of individuality because the legal framework is set up to give individuals power over themselves.
In a lot of ways "Individuality" is a communal dance of respect for others', and Robinson Crusoe is no "I" except in relation to his past.
I think so! Though for good reason, probably too. It's arbitrary, but with a point: understanding myself as a person who needs this or that, and another as a person or needs that or this, and that these things are equally valuable requires me to develop this sense of self and other -- else I'd just continue on in my own projects, absorbed in a world away from everyone.
Bingo!
Or, at least, it only becomes coherent upon a social dance that we're participating within where selfishness is seen as something to be avoided such that (this that or the other -- some communities prefer asking for forgiveness with various rituals, and some are fine with no more than an acknowledgement)
Exactly! At least, this is the sort of thing I'm going for.
The moral achievement is in the doing.
Intellectually speaking we can see that the Other is always radically alterior, and as such my own elemental projections of what the psyche is aren't always going to apply. The intellectual achievement is in coming to be able to distinguish between self and other (collectively?) and realizing that Alterity, Otherness, is not the same as badness -- it's discomforting, but a mature, moral sense of self emerges from recognition of this alterity and giving it moral weight in our deliberations.
I don't know about all this.
A life lived to please one's mother sounds alright enough, but does that strike anyone as ethical? Isn't ethical maturity reached by coming to see your parents' as equally human, weak, and pathetic as yourself? And loving them anyways, in spite of the flaws you know all too well?
***
Levinas' philosophy, if we read between the lines, indicates this occurs after having children: Now you are the parent and you care about the son in a manner that isn't the same as your elemental projects.
But I suspect that people can come to care about others' without having their own children. Growing up is this process of taking on cares outside of the self, no?
-- "Guilt" becoming a tool, like a knife, to shave away parts of another in the name of the good has it backwards to my mind.
Rather, I have to grab the knife to cut away from myself when I see the need.
Now, in a particularly drastic situation, perhaps, this ideal can't be followed. But it is better that way because using a knife to cut the soul without having any idea how any of it works may or may not help someone after all.
Quoting Leontiskos
If we are always doing the best we can, this means no one is responsible for immorality. But one is responsible for rethinking ones premises when things go badly, and one is responsible for audaciously envisioning new vistas of thought even when things are going well. Being responsible means we are never the victims of circumstances. The reason I say we are not responsible for immorality is because I believe that equating moral harm with intention conflates the positive, productive nature of choice, desire, want, preference, decision, agency, response, intention with the negative nature of the sufferings, harms and deprivations that we are used to associating with the immoral.
Let me elaborate. I believe there is a positive and a negative freedom that characterizes human experience. Positive freedom is the freedom to produce new options of understanding and of action, it is the freedom of new insight, of finding new connections, relations, unities, patterns where previously these were not seen. Positive freedom always moves in the direction of greater intimacy of relation with ourselves and others. We never just desire things. Desire is always directed toward as far reaching an anticipation of events to come as we can manage. Furthermore, because our psychic system is functionally unified at a superordinate level , even the most trivial day to day choices are authorized and guided by our most super ordinate concerns , which always have to do with our core sense of our relations with others, where we see ourselves fitting into larger webs of social dynamics. So even the most trivial choices are aimed at deepening the intimacy of our anticipatory understandings within the social groups that matter to us. Emotions are not separate from these aims. Rather, emotions are the barometers that inform us of how well or badly our efforts are working out. Emotions are not physiological reinforcers, randomly assigning reward to certain actions and punishment to others. Pain and pleasure dont motivate us in this extrinsic , reflexively causal way. What motivates us, what produces pleasure or pain, is the success or failure of our efforts to make sense of the world.
This is where negative freedom comes in. Negative emotions like guilt, anger, anxiety and despair alert us to the fact that such anticipatory efforts have failed, and we are about to be plunged into the fog and confusion of anxiety, anger and guilt. Negative freedom is the freedom of the flow of events as we perceive them to violate our expectations, to disappoint us, to leave us groping for firm footing. Negative freedom is not much of a freedom at all, because it is only the freedom to experience unproductive chaos. When we find ourselves plunged into this kind of freedom, we cant go forward or backwards.
It seems to me that you see two kinds of positive freedom, the freedom to do what is morally good and the freedom not to do so. And that these two kinds of positive freedom appear simultaneously in the same decision. For instance, we desire to torture someone. In this instance , my intention is at the same time the cause of my own pleasure and my awareness that I desire to be the cause of the other persons pain. I think you would consider this a paradigm example of not doing the best I can. You may also be able to see that from my vantage, desire is never primarily about hording as many pleasurable morsels as I possibly can within a fortress-like self and having to learn to share my things with others. Rather , it is expansive and world-oriented. This doesnt mean we are naturally selfless and altruistic rather than selfish. Both ways of thinking utterly miss the point , which is that there is no hedonic self. It is not selfishness but self-consistency that motivates us.
We want to greedily assimilate the world into ourselves in terms of anticipating events within an ordered system, as we expand ever outward into that world. The choice of doing for self versus doing for others only comes up when others put up barriers to our ability to integrate them consistently within our self-understanding.
The suffering other can only be acknowledged if they can first be identified and made sense of as a suffering other. What matters to us, what we care about, whose suffering we empathize with, is dependent in the first place on what is intelligible to us from our vantage. We can only intend to recognize and welcome the Other who saves us from chaos; we intend to reject the Other who offers the oppression of incommensurability. Freedom from incoherence implies a sense of liberation, freedom from the order of intelligibility and intimacy a sense of subjection. We always have intended to welcome, sacrifice ourselves for the intelligible Other, and always disliked, `chose against' the incommensurate Other. What is repressive to us is what we cannot establish harmonious relation with.
In sum, I would argue that one of the two forms of positive freedom you formulate , the freedom to desire the others suffering , or to not care about their suffering, is adding a freedom which is really an enslavement , the freedom to be confused, to decide with blinders on. It seems to me that what you have done is to borrow from negative freedom, the bad things that happen despite our best intent, and attach it to intention itself ( I WANTED to be callous, insensitive, cruel, immoral). This reduces the real positive freedom of desire, intention and choice by compromising its creative, expansive novelty. Because for you there is always the threat that the intent itself is corrupted, positive freedom is partially unfree, and this is just as much the case when we are doing our best as when we supposedly are not. It is only because the criterion of doing our best is tethered to norms that restrict positive freedom to imagine new realities that the idea of corruption of intent makes any sense.
Quoting Moliere
Philosopher and cognitive scientist Shaun Gallagher has recently written some interesting things on reconciling self and other in human and animal ethics.
Gallagher links justice with the enactivist concepts of relational autonomy and affordance.
I don't think incurring guilt necessarily involves bad motives. Using a knife to injure another person and using guilt to injure another person are both bad, but it does not follow from the fact that such injury is possible that every time a knife or guilt is utilized this is what is occurring. If knives and guilt could only be used to injure other people, then we should get rid of both. But that's not the only thing they are used for.
For example, a surgeon can use a knife to cut away a malignant tumor, and guilt can be used in much the same way. Now some who are beholden to a strict form of autonomy might say that we should only ever perform moral operations on ourselves, but I would say that there are strong similarities between the moral order and the physical order. Just as there are physical surgeons, so too are there moral surgeons, and there are tumors which cannot be self-excised. For an example of a moral surgeon, see Nathan in 2 Samuel 12.
Quoting Leontiskos
I understand the concept; but even a surgeon asks permission before excising a tumor, right? Autonomy is an important part of any medical approach to ethics: especially judging when someone is no longer autonomous or in need of intervention.
For my part I tend to think we're pretty ignorant of one another, so it's best to leave such tools to the professionals. (EDIT: Or, really all I mean here, is that they are dangerous and not cues to knowledge -- they are tools that can be used to shape the soul, but the soul can be shaped as well as it can be mis-shaped, too, and if we're ignorant then which is to happen? )
We are naturally social and rape violates the nature of humans to be social? And I suspect that each human is equal under this scenario, meaning we can't treat women or minorities as lesser, so this imposes the rule of egalitarianism.
This sounds like a vague notion of morality that we just sort of twist around until it meets modern liberal progressive morality.
But, should we tinker with this some more, I think we end up with the golden rule.
Can you tell me not to tell others what to do? That seems immoral.
No, it doesn't!!! I wasn't talking about a life lived to please one's mother. I was talking about a single decision to defer to her want over one's own. Maybe tomorrow, another such decision - to do what one is asked without coercion; maybe in the next several years, one or two every day; maybe even volunteering to help in the garden, wear the new shoes to an aunt's wedding, do one's homework, be polite to the fat lady who pinches one's cheeks. Probably, between ages 13 and 18, hardly any at all (that's most boys; most girls are more compliant or sneakier). Later on, it depends on how close the relationship is. Some children become estranged from their parents; some remain dependent; some stay in close touch; some come only when they want something... Relationships between parents and children are variable.
Quoting Moliere
Ethical maturity isn't necessarily predicated on the child-parent relationship. Many people never reach it at all: though they part from their parents, they follow gurus, heroes and idols and never make decisions of their own or ask why the rules are what they are.
Loving people is not an ethical decision; it's an emotional fact. What you do for parents at any given moment, in any given situation, those may be ethical decisions at any age. Calling every Tuesday to see if they're all right. Listening to your father's jokes the seventeenth time. Praising the fruitcake you never really liked. Spending Christmas with them instead of going to Bermuda. Driving the old lady to her bridge game when it's really not convenient. Taking a weekend to install a wheelchair ramp. If you love people, most of these decisions are not ethical - you just do things to make them safe and happy, because their safety and happiness matters to you.
Quoting Moliere
Of course. You start caring about your siblings, pets and playmates quite early. By the time they're ready for pre-school, children should be emotionally mature enough and socialized enough to compromise between their own wants and the wants of other people, as well to know right from wrong in terms of social mores.
Right.
But so far all I've been given here the relationship to mothers as a kind of point of departure for thinking ethically, at least conceptually -- and it seems we agree that, yes, we grow beyond our parents and see them as human, rather than superhuman, and at least in a loving relationship we come to love them in spite of the flaws: which seems to me to indicate that the mothers are not all the Others, but that there is a community that is much wider than the family unit.
Basically, as important as they are, it's not the whole picture -- and furthermore, it seems to me that what we were as children isn't as important to what we are now, though you can see some similar traits that live on over time if you know someone long enough.
Quoting Vera Mont
Aren't the two linked? Ethics and emotion? (coincidentally, or not, that was the impetus to a lot of this thinking: that question of ethics and emotion)
How is that not, thereby, itself a moral precept?
The pretence of stepping outside moral discourse in order to discuss moral discourse is exposed.
Primary caregiver - not necessarily the mother, but usually - in the first two years makes the deepest impression on a child's perception of the world and its own place in the world, yes. Just because she's walking on virgin sand, with no other footprints.
Quoting Moliere
Didn't I mention siblings, playmates, pets and pre-school? There may be other people in the community who become significant, but in the first four years, the child's life is pretty much surrounded by family.
Later comes school, teams, scouts, church or whatever. And reading - although that's not usually significant until age 12 or so, but stories can also make an impression, as they often carry a moral message.
Quoting Moliere
On the contrary. It's crucial. Often decisive. That's why churches start indoctrinating very young children in Sunday school, why Olympic athletes and world-class musicians begin training discipline at age 6-9.
Quoting Moliere
Linked, yes, but very often as antagonists wrestling.
Quoting Banno
It has the word 'ought' in it; that's a dead giveaway.
We are influenced by what we grow up around.
Sure.
So, what ought we to do? Whatever our mother told us?
Also, this part always seems weird to me. If I'm antagonistically related to this or that ethical principle and am both at once then I'd prefer to either let go of the emotion or the ethical principle or rectify it in some manner. Why bother holding onto an ethic which is antagonistic towards feelings?
Well, the feelings would have to be bad in some way. Fair enough, sometimes they are bad.
Are they always bad, or can we ever feel good when thinking about ethics?
We are influenced by the adults who guide us through youth, by our peers, by the media which present us with a sense of our culture, by our academic and religious education, by our own aspirations and what's required to attain them, by role models and heroes, and in adulthood, by a spouse, if we're lucky enough to get one who engages our intellect.
The more clever among us are also greatly influenced by books, especially in the formative first two decades, but later, too. As I mentioned, that begins with fairy tales in early childhood and progresses to adult literature. Why, some young people even read philosophy! I myself was impressed with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in my late teens. (I got over it.)
In some cases, that's not a bad idea. What we ought to do is whatever we believe to be right at the time of decision. On most of those occasions, we'll chicken out or compromise or fudge, because the principled action is too dangerous, difficult, expensive, uncomfortable, unpleasant or inconvenient.
If we live up to our highest expectations once in ten tries, we're doing pretty well.
Quoting Moliere
You know from experience that the antagonism is not the usual state of affairs. Most of the time, your heart tells you the same thing your head knows is right.
We have a great many emotions. Some of them are antisocial, and therefore urge us to commit acts we know to be wrong. Also, there are some rules of social behaviour that are inconsistent and self-contradictory. (Because everybody has a lot of different feelings about a lot of different things and they can't always be categorized neatly.) Sometimes you have to pick your way through a dark labyrinth of desires, impulses, injunctions, principles, sentiments and conscience.
You may be very angry at someone, but you know you should not kill them. That's the extreme example, where ethics generally triumphs over emotion, and we're all a little safer because of that.
So follow our heart?
When it's not being stupid, destructive or spiteful.
We'll need a better reductio of following our heart as a rule than cases like murder, rape, and all the rest I think, in that case: most heart-followers are good on those, are able to articulate exceptions, and even being in conflict with oneself it sounds to me: Do we need anything more complicated than that to think through ethics, or does that about cover it?
The devil in the details I see here will be "OK, but when are we stupid, destruct, or spiteful? To what do I oppose this when that's the case? My heart?" -- and maybe that's not so bad after all, because we see that while we might want to kill someone, we also want our freedom and so we choose our freedom: there may be the brief flash of anger to do violence, but our attachments to other things are the desires that we can act upon to choose something else.
Makes sense to me, what's wrong with it?
Only you know your own emotions.
It's never going to boil down to one simple rule. It's all very well for the ubermensch to do whatever he wants and assume it will always be morally right, but the rest of us are all the time having to conduct these messy negotiations between how we feel and what we think, what we believe and what the law says, what's good for us and what's good for someone we care about, what we've accepted and begun to doubt, what's ideal and what's practical, what we want and what we ought, what we aspire to and what we're capable of.
You just work your way through it, case by case, day by day.
Then you die.
Yes?
I suppose that, in the end, I'd still allow more principles than you do, though I think principles are the sorts of things one commits themselves to. I value moral autonomy.
But I am very interested in the role of emotions in ethical thinking, and also clarifying differences between different ways of thinking ethically (or even further specifying when it is we are thinking ethically)
Well there was that little bit about principles, convictions and knowing what's right. But no philosophy - just observations and experience.
So, what do you do if you suspect your child of having committed a crime?
If I just know what is right and make observations and experience then where does asking questions for advice come in? Why deliberate about what is right if I just know what is right?
Seems a bit much to me. I like to know why other people do things. Sometimes they have a point.
In my tradition? Pray.
:D
Philosophically -- no answer. These are ways of reflecting on choices, not answers to choices.
I meant that I am speaking from observation and experience, not according to what some guy wrote in 400BC or 1642AD. It's okay to quote philosophers - I just choose not to. This a matter of personal taste.
You don't 'just know'. You learn, reflect, consider, weigh one doctrine against another, advice against your own inclination, loyalties against self-interest, negotiate with others, the environment, the culture and yourself. At any point in your life, you hold some beliefs and convictions about what's right. you act on them. Later, you may question those beliefs and adjust those convictions according to new things you learn.
Quoting Moliere
So, ask them. Every time you get a coherent answer, you learn something about motivation. Every time you get an incoherent answer, you learn something about human nature. Every time you get a punch in the nose, you learn when not to ask questions.
Quoting Moliere
Bingo!
Quoting Banno
Peter Simpson uses this question as a jumping-off point for his essay, "On Doing Wrong, Modern-Style." He encountered the doctrine very often in his college students, and I think it has become even more common in the two intervening decades:
Quoting Peter L. P. Simpson, On Doing Wrong, Modern-Style, in Vices, Virtues, and Consequences, pp. 60-1
No, not necessarily. Medical procedures often do not require consent when the person in question is not capable of consent. In questions of moral admonition consent is tangential and not especially important. This is in part because one will not consent to the punishment that will be forced on them if they continue to act poorly (e.g. imprisonment, fines, etc.).
Quoting Moliere
Oh? Well who do you consider a professional? I think it's clear that many people are ignorant of themselves, and that especially close friends and family will see more clearly than they do their own actions. This is as it has always been, and it is why socialization is so important. Those who do wrong are very often ignorant of their wrongdoing, whether culpably or not. It has always been considered a mercy to make them aware of it - to help them avoid what will only become a bigger problem for them and for others.
But then how to avoid being put into all of this in the first place.
Doesn't that show how consent is important? We only operate when the person is not capable of consent, and so we should have some basis of judging for when that's the case?
Do you imagine that I want to punish people who will not consent to the punishment? :D
Well, I don't really. I'm one of those "Reform, to the extent possible" sorts, although there are all sorts of thorny questions along the way.
Quoting Leontiskos
For making hard-and-fast rules? No one :D
Hence the emphasis on autonomy.
I do value autonomy a great deal, and I think we all ought to. I base this on our general ignorance (... though in general I'd point to psychologists and priests and family: people who a person is close to and builds a trusting relationship with -- but it would ultimately be up to them who they choose to trust: philosophically speaking it wouldn't be I, that's for certain)
I agree that the community can see you better than you can see yourself, though that doesn't mean that your close friends and family won't have biases either. Sometimes a lack of closeness could clear the eyes, and sometimes the distance obscures certain details. I don't think we really get to not socialize -- everyone who can think of themself as a distinct person in a community who makes choices is socialized to some degree, right?
But I don't think the community can take on the role of doctor, exactly, no.
For some it's priests. For some it's a guru. For some it's a text. For some a feeling. For some an MD.
But given my belief about our general ignorance about how to go about helping people, philosophically at least, I put autonomy as a pretty high priority.
It shows a way in which consent is important and it shows a way in which consent isn't important.
Quoting Moliere
If someone fully consents to a punishment then they are not being punished. What you say here makes me think that you do not understand punishment. And of course the general view being represented here does lead to the eradication of punishment, which leads to yet another societal impossibility, and to my mind counts as another reductio.
Quoting Moliere
To reform someone against their will is simply one form of punishment. C. S. Lewis argues persuasively that it is the worst form of punishment, and is deeply contrary to human dignity (link).
Quoting Moliere
Then I have to wonder if you were being honest when you proposed that it is, "best to leave such [coercive] tools to the professionals." This is because when I asked you who these professionals are you said, "No one."
Quoting Moliere
Again, the "ignorance" card doesn't play. Insofar as an intellect-based case is made for autonomy, that case is based on knowledge, not ignorance. It is based on the idea that I have more knowledge about what is best for me than anyone else does. And that is precisely what I challenged in my last post. For example, libertarians and those who champion autonomy have a great deal of trouble understanding how to parent children, and how it is that children should be answerable to adults.
Quoting Moliere
I agree, but many in this thread are saying that they should not be socialized. Socialization involves moral admonition, after all.
Quoting Moliere
Perhaps the more obvious case of those who wield moral tools are legislators and policemen. T Clark seems to think that the serial killer might be acting rightly, according to his "intrinsic nature." The legislators and the police don't think he is acting rightly, and they will throw him in prison because of it.
---
- I figured you might be lurking. :razz:
Unfortunately I am not going to be able to respond to all of that. I found some of it accurate and some of it inaccurate, but these psychological theories of yours are icing on the cake, and we must first build the cake:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Joshs
I want you to think about why it is that someone who is doing their best is not responsible for immorality and for bad effects that might result. A central question here is whether "everyone is doing their best" is supposed to be a contingent and synthetic truth, or a necessary and analytic truth. On my lights it only makes sense as a contingent truth, because the question of whether someone is "doing their best" relies on an investigation into how they are doing what they are doing. In everyday language when someone says, "Johnny is doing his best out there," the presupposition is that it is possible that Johnny might not be doing his best. In doing his best he is doing something that he need not be doing.
On this account, "Johnny is doing his best," is a bit like, "The Corvette is going 100 mph." The claim about the Corvette is not a necessary truth, and therefore in order to verify its truth condition we must examine the speed of the car via the speedometer or a radar gun or something of the sort. Only once our examination is complete are we justified in confirming or denying the claim about the Corvette.
Quoting Joshs
Nah, this is very far from Aristotle's or Aquinas' view. I'm not sure where your ideas here are coming from. For Aquinas we always aim at what we perceive to be good, and therefore no one ever aims at immorality qua immorality.
Also, for Aristotle and Aquinas what we all ultimately aim for is happiness, and in my opinion many of the errors of your post consist in reducing that happiness aim to something smaller, such as, "deepening the intimacy of our anticipatory understandings within the social groups that matter to us." Someone can seek happiness in social intimacy, and as social animals that will contribute to our happiness, but it is a mistake to confuse social intimacy with happiness or our aim.
No, that's not what i said. Chickens are social, and their society generally consists of a dominant cock who kills or chases off other males, and a harem of hens that he pretty much rapes on a daily basis. The hens in turn have a pecking order of dominance and submission. Societies, even human societies are not necessarily "nice". Hence I distinguish social relations based on power and violence from those based on cooperation.
This is not to say that cooperation can survive without any coercion to defend it against exploitation. The subjugation of women, slavery, warfare, and rape, are all social arrangements possible to humans. To resist them we have religion, morals, government, justice systems etc.
Seems to me that the default is "requires consent" and so we have to justify why it is we are ignoring consent in some circumstance.
Quoting Leontiskos
No one when it comes to hard in fast rules. I clarified the kinds of persons I'd point to in a circumstance parenthetically, but I value autonomy in that process of selecting who the professional is.
Quoting Leontiskos
"Against their will" would have to incur a pretty strong justification for me, given my respect for autonomy. But serial killing is pretty extreme. We've been dealing in some extreme examples where the question is when to use coercion.
While I understand the need to do so, I don't think we can get away with saying "And this is why we're good"
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm admitting in this question that I don't see the appeal of punishment, yes.
What's the appeal?
Quoting Leontiskos
Hrrmm, I think it's just a disagreement about what is entailed by socialization -- is it a process of moral admonition, or a process of learning to think for yourself, or a process of collective deliberation, or a process . . . I think what's being said is that there are some forms of socialization which are not preferred; these other ways over here are preferrable, to the extent we can pursue them. Or, rather, a kind of ideal for living together.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't see legislators or policemen as moral tools.
Where we see eye-to-eye is with respect to the importance of community.
But hierarchy and coercion are generally things I don't think of as ethical, but rather expedient: they are political, not moral tools. They are useful to this or that end, but that doesn't mean they're good, per se. They are the decisions we've made so far, most of which were an inheritance to begin with.
The serial killer might be acting rightly to his intrinsic nature. But that's also a pretty extreme case for thinking ethically -- it's not on my radar as a thing I have to consider very often. I tend to believe that ethical thinking occurs between persons who respect one another, at least, so these are just difficult circumstances rather than cases against some approach.
When I think of my intrinsic nature, I just think of the sorts of things which bring harmony to my life, which is different for different people, and is still a worthwhile ethical topic in a world where serial killers exist.
Philosophically I don't think there is such a thing, really, as an intrinsic nature. For myself I'm coming at it more from the existential side. The "intrinsic nature" is created along the way, and changed with circumstances.
The beauty in ethical thinking, then, is in being able to deliberate. (Hence the value of many philosophies)
Quoting Leontiskos
It does, because, generally speaking, we are ignorant -- it's only in relationship with others' that I have any sort of knowledge of them, and such relationships reveal that there's much more under heaven and earth than what in my mind.
But to be in relationship we have to have some basis of trust. Family can point out flaws because we have a relationship of trust and shared values and a long history with one another.
That is -- in order to have rules and moral admonition, first we must have trust and reciprocal respect. (Or, at least, insofar that we don't, I can tell you I don't see the appeal)
Do they? Or do they just have different answers?
That is, it would be wrong for me to tell you not to murder (which, by the way is a completely stupid ethic, but be that as it may), but it would not be wrong for me to tell you that it would be wrong to be critical of others because we've asserted (for whatever reason) that being critical of others is of the highest order of wrongness. It is what we hinge this ethical system upon that we've identified in this thread.
But, upon further analysis, we learn quickly that is not the case that the highest order of goodness is being uncritical of others because there's this other undercurrent within this conversation about autonomy that states the highest order of morality is to protect autonomy and (for some reason) being critical of others attacks directly the concept of autonomy. Criticism therefore is subservient to autonomy, and (I would assume) that if certain sorts of criticism could be shown to promote autonomy, then those sorts of criticism ought be promoted. Such would be the case if lack of criticism is a lower order order good then is the protection of autonomy.
But then we might want to go more meta on this and ask why autonomy is such a high order objective, and perhaps we would say that the free will is what really is worth protecting and it's not so much that I protect you as a decision maker but I protect your decision making component and I therefore cannot do anything that directly impedes your decision making. That might result in an agreement that we ought not criticize, but it might not. It would seem that since we're on the 8th page of this thread arguing back and forth, criticizing as we do, we actually think that critical feedback is a useful means to promote free will, which in turn protects our autonomy, which then defeats the suggestion we shouldn't be critical. Those sorts of things are likely to happen when we admit that the highest good isn't not being critical, but that not being critical is just a rule of thumb that often (but not always) works to promote those higher order goods.
And I'm not leaving things at saying that free will is the highest good because I think there's something higher than that, which is humanity, which is our unique ability as creatures to have the ability to act freely as we do. That is, we are people, and people are important per se and we cannot do anything that damages a person's right to be as he is. To state that an attack on a person's intellectual or moral decision detonates his individuality is a questionable claim, as it would seem that special element within the person is indestructible given the proper spirit. If that's the case, then it would follow we ought instill virtue into individuals so as to not make their spirit subject to dissolution at the simplest of criticisms. Character, through instilling virtue, then becomes the highest good, and all else then becomes subservient to that. Any claim though that virtue cannot be forged through criticism is contrary to facts. People do become better when challenged, like it or not.
In fact it is criticism and challenge that leads to greater resolve and character. I, for example, have been provided all sorts of benefits in my life, many beyond what others have, but I also was provided enough criticism and challange (and suffering actually) to have emerged with a much more valuable character.
That is to say, sometimes it is important to hear that one's thoughts and actions are stupid when they in fact are. Otherwise, you are just allowed to be born stupid, to live stupid, and then to die stupid. How that can be described as a life respected and cultivated is stupid of the highest order.
Is there some principle you follow even though it's contrary to what you feel in your heart? I certainly hope not. That's how gang members are made. They do what everyone else says is right as opposed to what they feel, and eventually they don't feel anything anymore. They're just numb to their own consciences.
In other words: telling people not to listen to their own hearts, but instead follow the crowd is beyond stupid. It's a recipe for social disaster.
As I've tried to make clear, when I talk about "personal morality" I'm talking about how I, myself, come to what might be called "moral" decisions. I wasn't saying I expected, or even wanted, others to do the same. That being said, I've never come across a moral principle I found convincing or satisfying except, perhaps, the golden rule.
Quoting Moliere
When everything is working correctly, so-called "moral" decisions present themselves to me as emotions, intuitions, understandings, insights, or intentions, not usually as rational arguments. Sometimes they skip those steps completely and go directly to actions. As I mentioned, that's what Taoists call "wu wei," acting without acting. Perhaps that's a bit misleading. In the world Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu came from, that's where all action, whether or not we call it moral, arises.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, I agree.
Quoting Hanover
Right. I would say that the criticizing of someone's decision or action is an important part of human and social life. The ability to make decisions uncoerced is important, but the opportunity to see the shortsightedness of one's decisions and to grow into someone who can receive criticism and then make better decisions is also important. I don't think we can just take the first and leave the second.
And I do agree that this comes down to virtue more than anything else, in which case it must be asked how we are to instill virtues so that people don't find autonomy absolutism so alluring. Bad ideas need to be addressed when they take root in a culture. In my estimation the vice of pusillanimity is at the heart of many of these autonomy-based ideas. There seems to be a lack of courage to face challenge or criticism. There may also be an intellectual component regarding the pure ideality of autonomy, but I think the vice is the bigger player. Another name that this sort of thing goes under is "moral subjectivism," where everyone's moral system is supposedly self-enclosed.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, as I said:
Quoting Leontiskos
So this is a great example of a positive ethic as opposed to a negative ethic. A positive ethic is one where you are supposedly obligated (or the best outcome is) to do something. A negative ethic would be one where you are obligated not to do something. So, a negative ethic might be not harming other people intentionally, for "no reason". A positive ethic might be something as you are proposing like "instilling character".
This has been my question in the other thread.. At what point can you impose a positive ethic if it violates a negative ethic? When is one justified over the other? My answer has been that you cannot generally justify a positive ethic over a negative ethic if there was no need for it.. In other words, if I am causing the source of harm for you (negative ethic), in order to make you go through a positive ethic (character building) this is wrong. However, if you are ALREADY in a situation whereby you need remediation (child-rearing), it may be said that if one is the caregiver, one can impose a positive ethic, as it is now perhaps necessary in order for the person to flourish in the future in some way. The harm has been done (one failed to prevent), so now one remediates.
The problem is that the "negative ethics" being espoused are not true ethics at all (and of course this all relates obliquely to your antinatalism). We have no negative right to not be criticized; we have no negative right to not receive moral admonition; we have no negative right not to be imprisoned and coerced when we commit serial murder; we have no negative right not to be caused suffering*, etc. This is "negative ethics" run amok, and it violates the sort of minimalism that has classically characterized negative rights.
* At least in the way that the antinatalist thinks of the causing of suffering, which includes everything from inconvenience to bringing about conditions which may lead to suffering.
For sure it would not be moral of me to neglect my children so that they suffer terribly but that then causes them to be self-sufficient and highly successful. The end would not justify the means. But I do think there is merit to not spoiling the child, to making them endure their struggles. There is real difference between adults who had upbringings where they were provided their every need and those that earned their way.
It's the person who has learned his lessons through experience that is most steadfast, and I'd argue most virtuous. The person who never faltered and never considered veering the course is a special breed, but his behavior might be best explained as obedient and compliant, doing as he does because he never contemplated otherwise. But the guy who refuses to be diverted from the virtuous path because he knows too well where it leads, whose behaviors are the result of a life not perfectly lived, is the person who has a more heroic way about him.
It's also the fear that the individual is fragile in some way, that you'll break them if you criticize them. Steel is forged by hammering it which strengthens it. It's an analogy of course, and I realize the same hammer that forges steel can fracture glass. And some people have glass souls I guess, but most don't, and they're deprived if they're never hammered.
Not sure how far the analogy goes, but it sounds cool.
The problem is that "heart" is not really defined by you. It sounds like just gut instinct. I would think my moral decisions are based upon instinct, reason, experience, bias and probably some other things. But we've all faced moral quandaries in our lives and we've had to sort through them, asking ourselves (and maybe others) what the best course is. Telling someone to just listen to their heart isn't enough. Sometimes you have an inkling your heart is telling you you're going the wrong direction and you want to be sure.
Let me split up this issue of doing ones best into what I see as its different aspects. Lets take as an example little Susie and her piano lessons. Susie has only had about 10 lessons so far. When she practices for her lesson, is she doing her best? I have argued that desire is always tied to anticipatory sense-making, to expanding possibilities of intelligibility, and that this is intrinsically reinforcing. There is therefore nothing from a motivational point of view that stands in the way of our going for broke in terms of pushing our creative imagination to its limits. And what are its limits? Well, no one expects Susie to perform a Chopin sonata after 10 lessons. Not just the range of possible innovations of individuals , but also of cultures is constrained and defined in relation to how we already understand our world. The lone genius is a myth. Brilliant thinkers arise out of milieus (Classical Greece, Renaissance Northern Italy, 19th century Germany).
Correct me if Im wrong, but wouldnt you argue that not doing ones best generally requires that the person who is the target of such an accusation be aware of the fact that they are not doing their best, that they deliberately desired and chose to underperform relative to what they knew they were capable of? Bringing this back to little Susie, dont we need to surmise that she simply didnt feel like putting all her effort into practicing? It wouldnt be a question of aiming a radar gun at her speed of playing, since this wouldnt tell us anything about her performance relative to her potential unless we compared the results over time and discovered that she was moving in the wrong direction. Even this wouldnt take us very far without asking her whether she thought she was losing interest in the piano, or alt least losing interest in exceeding her previous level of skill, for whatever reason.
As you can see, Ive moved the terrain of the issue of doing ones best away from that of a variability in performance given an unchanging ground of positive motivation (intrinsic reinforcement) to push the limits of ones ability and understanding, and toward connecting variation in performance directly to shifts in intent and motivation. Now things become complicated. Lets say the teacher calls Susie lazy. What does laziness mean? Does it mean that Susie has decided not to push her creative potential to its limit, and that my claim that such a directedness toward expansive knowing is not intrinsically motivating? Or does it mean that Susie continues to actively expand her curiosity and inventiveness, but not in the direction her teacher wants her to direct it? There are all kinds of reasons we hold back in performance situations. We may be entering a crisis of commitment, where we discover that our time is better spent elsewhere. Perhaps our daydreaming which gets in the way of a current task lead us to our true calling. The question , then, is whether laziness reflects a failure on the part of the accused or a failure on the part of the accuser to recognize that the lazy person is in fact doing their best, but not in a way that conforms to the accusers expectations. Perhaps your perception that the other is not doing their best indicates an inability to see past the normative expectations through which you judge their motives. You see what theyre not doing, but not what they are doing.
As my favorite psychologist, George Kelly wrote:
I too noticed this. Rationally, I tried to think why one says "in your heart" or, far that matter "in your mind", as some sort of required preface to ask a question. As if the asker or said question was simply unable to express their points without surpassing some sort of ingrained barrier.
Do you not see what I mean? I suppose, "in your heart" would reference, "your core", that is to say, an ideal world where all is well. I certainly enjoy speaking from the heart. But without acting from one's mind, such a reality will never be achieved. Or rather, last for very long..
But that is a very uncharitable understanding, don't you think? It fits nice if you want to try to defeat the argument, sure.
It's not that we have 'no negative right not to be criticized'. That's not necessarily part of the negative ethics. That is simply interaction. Rather, if I said to you, "Please leave me alone", and you stood there yelling in my face, chasing me down, harassing me, then that might qualify for a negative right not to be harassed. But simply criticizing someone doesn't meet that threshold. What qualifies as "right not to be... (fill in the blank)" can be up for interpretation. The point is, whatever negative ethic there is, you cannot use your understanding of what is a positive "right" to violate it. WHAT COUNTS as a negative ethic, is up for interpretation though.
It's a lucky person who has friends who will grab them back and talk sense into them when they're headed toward a bad place. But when you're helping your friend, you aren't telling them to deny what they already know. You're telling them to face it.
You're right, it's not just a matter of feelings. Still, when the potential rapist comes to you asking for advice, tell him that a man who commits rape has no love for himself. Tell him he already knows the answer. If it turns out you're wrong, and he really has no sense of right and wrong, it doesn't matter what you tell him. He's just going to have to end up in jail. By the way, a psychology professor who worked with child molesters in the prison system told his students that people like that almost never rehabilitate. There's just something wrong with them. God almighty could come down and zap it into stone, and they still wouldn't get it. Using them as examples for understanding morality in general is probably not the best plan.
Ok, but I am not arguing that one shouldn't provide ways to overcome obstacles or prepare children so.. Again at this point, child-rearing is remediation from the damage not prevented.
Quoting Hanover
Ok, not refuting this either. What I am refuting is the notion that if YOU have a positive ethic (people should do this), then that should not override other people's negative ethic (they have a right to not be interfered with unjustly). I have and am currently acknowledging things like "child-rearing" and certain "governmental actions" as different (remediation), than cases where it was unnecessary to begin with (you could have prevented it). And of course much of the dialogue will center around "unnecessary" and "prevent".
I don't PURPOSEFULLY put you in a situation SO THAT YOU CAN OVERCOME IT, if I don't get consent, etc.. So for example, if I wanted to force someone to join my project, simply because I liked it, that is not my right to force someone to join my project. If I couldn't ask, I shouldn't do this. If the project required unknown amounts of suffering, but certainly known that suffering will incur, that would be wrong that I forced someone into that project. Things like this.
Similarly, let's say you want to X society (project) to incur. In order to do this, you need to populate this society. This requires you create people (negative ethic of non-autonomy), and that these people will be harmed (negative ethic of non-harm). You cannot just create the people because you want to see X society, and you need a population to join this society. Once born, sure, if it requires that people need to be instilled with X, Y, Z values when young in order to survive, that is only because of a remediation was necessary (you needed to trade a greater harm for a lesser harm), and they are in your care.
What part of the golden rule is dissatisfying, do you think?
Asking since you said "perhaps"
For myself I at least like a commitment to honesty with self and others'. But it's merely a preference.
Quoting T Clark
When is everything working correctly?
I'm not opposed, it's just sometimes these states seem a little mythical to myself: they're idealizations which sound pleasant, but I can say I like the articulations and deliberations because I'm not always acting without acting -- sometimes I'm wondering "Hrm, so what now?"
Quoting Moliere
Nobody asked me, but I hate the Golden Rule. It perpetuates the very violences it is designed to pre-empt, by assuming that morality is a matter of motivation and intent rather than understanding.
:D
No worries -- I'm interested in hearing a proper go at refutations of the golden rule.
Quoting Joshs
I'm interested. Is there more?
I don't, and I think it's simply true.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Okay, then we agree on this.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I am among those who hold that a good end does not justify an evil means, but my point is that what counts as a negative ethic (right) is enormously important. That is where the crux of the question lies.
"Do unto others' as you would have them do unto you" is the version I'm thinking from.
One thing, all by itself, is that it doesn't really say much.
Quoting Moliere
The Golden Rule might deserve a thread of its own.
Oh yeah. The golden rule, like the 10 commandments, pre-supposes what it should be putting into question, that we harm , disrespect and oppress each other because we desire such outcomes, that is, that we find satisfaction in instigating or allowing them to happen. So we have to be reminded dont do that, its not nice, even if it feels nice. My critique is connected with what I wrote you in a previous post about the psyche being a community of selves, such that the idea of being self vs other-directed doesnt make much sense. We dont have to be told to be other-directed or empathetic. Our skin doesn't define the boundary of our intrinsic self. The boundary of the self that we care about , and whose enrichment motivates our actions, isnt physical or spatial , but functional. That is, we naturally embrace into the self all of the world that can be assimilated on enough dimensions of similarity. If we didnt have this filter, our world would be an indecipherable chaos, as would our self.
The golden rule, rather than appreciating our need to make our world recognizable before we can assimilate it ( and this applies especially to the values and thoughts of others unlike us), blames bad intent, as though we already understand others and still desire to disrespect them (because were evil or pathological or selfish.) So it perpetuates violence by generating its own violence through anger and blame. Those miscreants who ignore the golden rule deserve to be punished, or at least ostracized and condemned. Can you imagine a world where most people believed that? It would look exactly the same as the world we live in now, where everyone believes in the golden rule and everyone points fingers at each other, throws stones at each other, shuns each other.
In adult surgeries, sure, but apart from that not really. There are lots of things that require consent and lots of things that don't. For example, I honk my horn at someone on the road without getting their consent.
Quoting Moliere
But then you aren't talking about ceding professionals coercive tools at all, which is what we were discussing.
Quoting Moliere
Okay, but you still require a principle which explains why things change in the extreme case. Many of us have brought up the extreme case precisely because it disproves the OP. The extreme case disproves the claim that one can never transgress another's will.
Quoting Moliere
What do you think punishment is? That's where I would say we need to start if you think it makes sense to talk about consensual punishment.
Quoting Moliere
As far as I can see each one of those processes requires the sort of admonition and criticism that is being opposed in this thread, which leads me back to the original point that socialization involves moral admonition, criticism, etc.
Quoting Moliere
What I said is that the professionals who wield moral tools are more likely legislators and policemen than doctors.
Quoting Moliere
The question is whether they are bad per se; whether they are ethically permissible. To say that they are expedient doesn't answer that question.
Quoting Moliere
The idea that morality has to do with acting according to one's intrinsic nature is diametrically opposed to the idea that "ethical thinking occurs between persons who respect one another." This is what the serial killer example shows.
Quoting Moliere
Okay.
...I'm somewhat overloaded so I will probably need to start drawing myself out of some of these conversations. I suppose the main idea here is that extreme individualism which prizes autonomy and consent ends up being opposed to social living. The members of a society necessarily bump into one another and in doing so change one another's trajectory. A position which rejects this fact of life is simply unrealistic. It doesn't matter whether that position is premised on morality, or autonomy, or consent, or "Taoism," etc. A morality is an idea about how that bumping ought to operate. Ideas which claim that the bumping should not exist are unrealistic and pointless, and in fact they are not moralities. Like antinatalism, such an idea is more a metaphysical critique of reality than a morality.
(NB: The "bumping" necessarily involves the non-consensual ways that we effect one another. An example of an unrealistic idea would be one which tries to make every bump consensual. In reality even defining a 'bump' is probably impossible given the complexity of human and social agency.)
Do you think that though? I don't think slave holders in the 1700s or even Nazis had no love for themselves. I just think they had no empathy, which was rooted in their belief that their victims were not fully human. I don't know they could have been convinced otherwise, and I'm not convinced something was broken within them. They were persuaded by the societies that created them. I'm not suggesting they were therefore morally excused, but I don't think you can just write them off as being self-hating or broken.
I suppose it was society that was broken, but I'm pretty sure that's still the case. The part I like about all these philosophical discussions is that they ultimately don't matter. You can just go back to whatever and not have to worry about the implications.
See, this is why you make the big bucks, because you can express a shrug in two paragraphs.
On my account the answer to that question is contingent, and rides on how she has actually practiced. Hence my point about contingent vs. necessary truths.
You could just poll piano teachers or school teachers. 100% of them will tell you that it is false that each child is doing their best at each moment.
Quoting Joshs
No. That someone has not done their best only means that they have not done their best, not that they must have known it. Note too that an assessment that someone is not doing their best need not be an accusation. The person in question need not even be told. If you stop using words like "accusation" you will draw some of the emotion out of this debate, and we might actually come to a considered answer.
Quoting Joshs
Someone who is not doing their best is by definition not putting all of their effort into something. The reason we seldom do our best is because it is very difficult to put all of our effort into something.
Quoting Joshs
Here is what I have already said to that:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Joshs
You're making this a great deal more difficult than it is. Susie has had 100 piano lessons with Mrs. Scott. Has Susie tried her absolute best at each and every piano lesson? Of course not, and Mrs. Scott will attest to this. We can give explanations of why Susie did not do her best, and we could even use a great deal of mental gymnastics to claim that every single aspect of Susie's playing which seems to indicate she is not doing her best is merely a matter of circumstances outside of her control. But why fool ourselves in such a way? We all know that we and others do not constantly put 100% of our effort into things. I think this is beyond obvious.
The idea that there are no lazy pupils is simply false. There may be bad teachers, and some teachers may falsely claim that their pupil is lazy, but it remains the case that there are also lazy pupils. It should also be noted that our actions compound, and because of this our responsibility extends into the future. We are not only responsible for our acts; we are also responsible for our habits. When we perform a bad act it may have more to do with a habit than with our current level of effort, but it remains an open question whether we are responsible for the bad habit that produced the bad act.
The central question still looms: is your position a priori or a posteriori? Is the proposition you assert necessary or contingent?
Of course
Quoting Leontiskos
:up:
Quoting Leontiskos
Here is an extreme microcosm of what I mean about YOUR projects versus MY rights...
Let us say there is one bridge that connects one part of the park to the other. You cannot get to the parking lot unless you go through this bridge. However, on the bridge there is a group of people fishing off it into the river below, effectively blocking your entry. They are having a good time.. They are happy. They ignore your requests to move because they think they are going to catch one of the biggest fish they're ever going to catch. They have a project. But now THEIR project becomes YOUR problem/project. Your negative right is affected/effected by their positive ethic of happiness-promotion. In fact, even in utilitarian terms, there are more of them and they are gaining much more happiness from this than you might get for the whole rest of your day, even if you make it to your car.
In terms of changing people, though -- calling them to action, effecting guilt to persuade them to change themselves, excising spiritual tumors -- I'd say that's pretty much on par with adult surgery. At least if we're keeping the medical analogy between physical doctors and moral doctors.
Quoting Leontiskos
In the story you linked the professional was a Prophet of God. Which I think fits on par with Jesus, which is where I started :D . We could start there.
Since we haven't any of those available today:
In my parenthesis I mentioned texts. We have traditions we come from and can reflect upon and on and with and through, but there is also the whole breadth of philosophy to think through, too: ones we don't necessarily come from, even. Though that gets along with me thinking there isn't really one true philosophy.
I don't think any of us are professionals at anything more drastic, though. I don't really see the point in shaming someone on the street, for instance, for something I hold dear. If they didn't trust me or care about it, what would it do anyways? What would the point be? Even if we were professionals who could help someone, could we really do it here? Is that the sort of philosophy that ought to operate in a public discussion board?
I'm super-interested in these ideas as ideas, but I'm fairly doubtful that someone has really figured out how to be a doctor of the soul to the degree that we could just trust them to make a call on when it's ok to lobotomize someone to turn them from serial killer to saint, as a real example from the history of psychology. Sometimes I think doctors are a little overly confident in relation to how little we know. It probably helps them make decisions on the fly, but it doesn't mean I think it's thought through. I include all the doctors of the soul, there -- it's just human nature.
It's more because the doctor's of the soul are just as human as the patients that autonomy is so important -- be they psychologists, priests or family members. The best of intentions and hell and all that rot.
In terms of the board here, though:
I'm motivated to defend pluralism here because I'm interested in hearing how other people think through these problems for the same reason I'm interested in the plural philosophies -- they are beautiful ways of deliberating about what to do. But in the end our community here will only be able to help with things like reflection, consistency, understanding the ideas, and respecting one another's various viewpoints to the best of our capacity, too: so in a way these are the ethical considerations of what we can do here, which is all an ethics can be about between people, I think.
Though even it, I'd suggest, could be seen as a philosophy-for-this-board: perhaps there are philosophies that are better suited for other spaces. In fact, my pluralism would require it.
Quoting Leontiskos
Punishment is what you do to someone who breaks a rule.
Quoting Leontiskos
Why do you require a principle? Couldn't you just say "Yeah, that seems to break the rule, I'm not sure I know what to do with that but OK"
Quoting Leontiskos
I thought I answered it in the negative -- they are merely expedient, they are the things we do as a society now, though I don't see them as good.
Quoting Leontiskos
Only if we're asking for a universal morality, I'd say.
I like principles, but I do kind of poke fun at the idea of not lying so that the serial killer can know the truth since that is how we respect his humanity. I believe in exceptions that can't be specified in a philosophy.Quoting Leontiskos
No worries I understand. There's a lot of threads going through my mind just from this exchange, and it's been nice to have a spring board of sorts, just so you know. Cheers!
The Portuguese started the Atlantic slave trade. Before they set the plan in motion, they put the question of its morality to the Pope. He said, "Sure, go ahead." True story.
Quoting Leontiskos
Are you saying that Susie might not be consciously aware that she is not doing her best? Are you imputing some sort of unconscious psychodynamics here? I thought the morally responsible agent must be acting from free will? Are there two wills at play , a conscious one and an unconscious one, and if so , how can our choices be free if they are made beneath our awareness? I imagine this dialogue between you and little Susie:
You: I know you havent been doing your best lately with your
piano lessons, but dont take this as an accusation. I love you and I only want whats best for you.
Susie looks crestfallen and replies:
What do you mean? Ive never worked so hard at anything in my life. How can you say that?
You: You may think that, but I know better , and so does your teacher.
Susie: No she doesnt. She takes what I say at face value, because she knows Im a sincere person.
You:
It has nothing to do with sincerity. You have a little demon whispering in your ear not to try as hard as you can, but their voice is so soft, it only penetrates to a deep subliminal level of your psyche.
Susie: Then how can you hear the demon?
You: Um, I cant. I just know you , and what youre capable of.
Now Susie calls up her Kellian psychotherapist( Susie is very precocious.She also has a lawyer, so FYI) , who quotes Kelly directly on this point:
Now Susie has a confession to make.
Maybe youre right. I did try hard to embrace piano like I have my artwork, but my heart wasnt in it. I just didnt want to disappoint my teacher, and especially you, since I know it meant a lot to you that I become a pianist like my sister.
Quoting Leontiskos
I could give a glib answer and say that I believe that my position is necessary only because I have never encountered a situation that invalidated it for me. But that would be a kind of agnosticism , as though my mind could be changed by a counter experience. But my position is a priori, resting on the belief that the concept of immoral intent and motive, which includes not trying hard enough and laziness, is a confused notion.
I don't think I fully understand this. Maybe the language is a bit academic for me.
E.g., - what does this mean? Can you do it in a sentence?
Quoting Joshs
You're suggesting that the golden rule promotes misunderstanding and then blame. What would be preferable is to is seek to understand the world and other people's values/experiences within it rather than project ethical values (and expectations) upon them? Built into the golden rule is a foundational assumption that any perceived breach of it will be malicious. Therefore blame/punishment.
Maybe you should start a thread (if there isn't one) on how we pursue moral quesions using the kind of approach you prefer. I can't see how it would work except as theory, given how society currently functions. What would need to change for such ideas to gain traction in a substantive way?
I understand, and again, my point is that the rights you are invoking do not exist. For example, we have no right to not be caused suffering. Again, the crux of the question is what counts as a negative right.
First off, you didn't address my example. I take this that you don't have a good response?
Second off, it's about the prohibition of positive ethics at the behest of negative ethics. Thus, "I want this to happen, therefore I get to make you suffer" is the more-or-less what is being discussed. You subtly changed it from "no right to not be caused suffering" in the impersonal. I don't have the right to CAUSE you to suffer because I want something out of it, de facto, just like that, because I want it. There is a difference between that and "generally" being "caused" to suffer (by existence, by the environment, by your own mind, etc.).
It's not a point of disagreement. I already said that, "I am among those who hold that a good end does not justify an evil means." If you have a right to life and I need an organ transplant then I cannot kill you in order to obtain an organ, because the end does not justify the means. The real question has to do with what our negative rights are.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No one thinks you have that right. The question is whether your victim has a right that prevents you. You are incorrectly multiplying rights.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The antinatalist seems to think that the right of a preexistent person is being infringed when they are conceived. The right that is said to be infringed is the right to not be brought into a world which contains suffering (absent consent). My point is that the preexistent person has no such right, and therefore procreation does not infringe this right.
So you are not in disagreement, but yet you do disagree, because the example exemplifies my point, which again, you agree with.
But no, you then say you don't here...
Quoting Leontiskos
And I don't even know what you are getting at there, so you'd have to be very careful in clarifying that.
Quoting Leontiskos
OOOHH so instead of the argument at hand, it's moving the target to a different one (non-identity). Lame.
I never said that the reason the preexistent person has no such right is because they do not exist, although that is also a perfectly good objection. There is a cornucopia of problems with antinatalism. A piñata with candy for everyone who takes a whack. :wink:
...I've just realized why you utilize the strange term "negative ethics." It's ultimately because you want to have duties which are not correlated to any rights. Rights-based ethics is very difficult for antinatalism.
So again, let me do an archeological excavation of the conversation..
1) We were discussing whether a positive ethic should override a negative ethic.
1a) I gave a specific example of if a project promotes welfare or happiness, but it violates the negative ethic of not causing harm to another.
1b) You agreed with the point of this example (or so you said), that someone's positive project, even if it leads to their welfare, cannot be an excuse to cause harm to another.
2) I admitted that there is a difference between cases of "preventative" and "remediation". Preventative are cases where the harm could clearly be prevented, full stop. There was no need to cause someone else's suffering by your positive desire for a project.
2b) I also admitted that if someone is already put into a situation of harm, then remediative ethics comes into play. That is to say, ethics whereby now one must negotiate how to trade greater harms for a lesser harms.
3) You then said that "one doesn't have a right to no suffering".
3a) I responded that I didn't say they have a right to "no suffering", just that one doesn't have a right to cause suffering (if it can be prevented) because one wants to promote a positive project.
3b) You seemed to agree, but then shifted the focus to the non-identity problem
3c) You disagreed and said it's because "If they don't exist they have no rights".
So as far as I'm concerned, almost everything of what I said so far has been agreed to by you, except as applied to "preexistent persons". I still say this is the identity problem. The main focus of the debate has now shifted to whether ethical considerations can be taken for future people, which of course, I would simply start defending this position. I just want to acknowledge that we have gotten this far.
The argument you have been making has two parts: 1) If I am not allowed to do something then I am not allowed to do it even if it would be helpful or useful to me, 2) I am not allowed to cause suffering. Clearly you are arguing for antinatalism.
What I have said from the very start is that the problem with your argument is (2). (1) is trivial, but you keep arguing it even though no one has opposed you.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No I did not. The accurate quote is, "we have no negative right not to be caused suffering*" (). Strawmen aside, I was saying that we have no negative right not to be caused suffering [by other people]. Obviously we also have no right not to be caused suffering by nature.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No I did not, and in fact I already told you that I did not. You are persisting in an error that has already been clarified.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You failed to read what I wrote. Go back and try reading it again.
If we continue this we should move it into the antinatalism thread.
How does this work with billionaires sitting on their fortunes like Smaug and trying to tax them so you can provide for the common good? You're clearly causing at least some of them great harm, to hear them talk of it anyhow, and they are only going to benefit from the harmful tax in a rather indirect way.
Or military conscription? Harming older people through climate change legislation that will have no meaningful impact in their lifetimes?
Common good and collective action issues seem to be an issue.
As far as anti-natalism (I did start Ligotti's book, it's quite good), the principle of "you should never deprive someone of happiness or pleasure for no reason" would just cut the other way, no?
My first thought is that you could probably cleverly rework most positive statements into negative ones or vice versa.
No, that is misconstruing it again. "If I am not allowed to do something...". Well, of course what does that mean? Rather, you are not allowed to do something in regards to if or how it affects another person's negative ethics. If it does then, correct, it is not allowed.
Quoting Leontiskos
That is because you split it up from the whole thing which is that a positive ethic should not override a negative ethic. I also think it is not trivial as some people's ethics might say that causing some "unnecessary harm" is okay. And then I stipulated when I thought it was "okay" (remediation from harm already occurring).
Quoting Leontiskos
Again, it does lead to trivializing the argument unless you add in the "Negative right not to be caused suffering from your positive projects".
Quoting Leontiskos
Yet, you don't really have any counter-arguments. I especially was waiting so on the example I gave, and you said you did not agree there. So which is it?
Quoting Leontiskos
You have turned it into it by persistence on the non-identity issue. It can remain a non-AN argument nonetheless. Go back to my example for a very minor example of what I mean.
Actually, I like it a lot. It seems perfect. Problem is, it doesn't really fit into what I have been describing. I said this to @Frank in an earlier post:
Quoting T Clark
Quoting Moliere
What I describe is not easy for me. It takes self-awareness, which I'm pretty good at, but it also takes fortitude, which I often lack.
Quoting Moliere
I can't say I never ask "So what now," but often I don't need to. That's what I mean by "everything working correctly."
I've said this in other threads.. I don't think personal ethics translates to political actions. I think there is such things as ethics in politics, but that is not political actions per se, but personal matters in how one acts in political situations. This goes down to meta-ethics. I think ethics is at the individual level, and "society" itself is not a target for ethics proper, but political actions. There can be good or bad political actions, even just or unjust ones, but it wouldn't be ethics we are discussing even if it is a value system or axiology. The locus has to be the individual for it to be ethical. What is "war" to an individual? It is a category error. What is "taxes" to an individual? It is misapplied if whether to tax this or that group that amount as "ethics". Its inherently aggregated, and aggregation into a concept (like social welfare, greater society, etc.) is now beyond the realm of (personal) ethics and into the realm of social axiology (politics).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Same as above.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes it is.. You should never deprive someone of happiness or pleasure for no reason...This is precisely the ethic I am talking about. Happiness in this case, comes with much harm. No happiness (for someone who cannot be deprived) is no problem. No harm can be neutral if you want as well, but it's when harm occurs that the violation takes place. We just have to agree that causing harm (unnecessarily, not to remediate an already harmful situation) using the excuse of "promoting happiness" is unjust/wrong/misguided
This is an interesting way of putting it. I'll have to think about it.
Quoting Tom Storm
The self is just a way of integrating experiences on the basis of compatibility or similarity. It is a continually evolving point of view or perspective that only maintains its unity by changing in a self-consistent manner as it incorporates and organizes new experiences. So the issue isnt that of self vs other persons , but the limits of my ability to assimilate experiences that are too alien relative to my system of understanding. Sometime my own behavior appears alien to me , and i become unrecognizable to myself. By the same token. I can empathize so closely with those I love that they become part of my self.
Quoting Tom Storm
The beauty of this way of thinking is that it can make our life profoundly more satisfying regardless of whether a single person besides ourselves embraces it. Unlike something like Marxism, its value doesnt come from changing the world, but from changing our own interpretation of the intent and motives of others (and ourselves). Most of why we suffer from the actions of others comes not from their actions in themselves, but our inability to fathom why on earth they found it necessary to behave in ways that cause pain to those around them. We throw up our hands and resign ourselves to the idea that humans can be arbitrary, capricious, irrational, at the mercy of narrow instincts, drives, social influences. But this leaves us with profound stress and anger.
:up:
Yes, of course. Do you have a real argument against this or are you just going to appeal to the weird emotional stories you tell? Your theory is literally premised on fictional anecdotes you made up in your head.
The irony is that these stories are dripping with blame and reproach, attempting to guilt-trip me into buying into your irrational system. "How dare you tell poor little Susie that she wasn't doing her best! You monster!" I do think that guilt-tripping on the basis of fictional shame-porn is a problem. :roll: I would imagine you could do better, especially given the fact that your strange accusation-based strawman followed my distinction between an assessment and an accusation ("The person in question need not even be told").
Quoting Joshs
Perhaps you should try reading Aristotle on volition. I drove into town yesterday. Was I doing my best when I was driving? Of course not. Was I attempting to not-do my best? Of course not. Nor was I self-consciously aware that I was not doing my best. If I can drive well enough without doing my best then I will do that, because it requires enormously less effort. The habits that I have created around driving have to do with a balance between effort and conservation of energy, and that balance is not met by constantly expending the maximal amount of effort possible at each moment driving.
When someone regrets something and says, "I shouldn't have done that," they are very often acknowledging that they were not doing their best. Indeed, it is hard to see how we could regret any decision at all if we are constantly doing our best. Those who think that they are at fault for everything and those who think they are at fault for nothing both have deep psychological issues. The world you are proposing is one full of narcissists who believe they are not at fault for anything and are beyond criticism.
Quoting Joshs
Of course it is, and it is highly irrational to have an a priori belief that everyone is constantly doing their best at each moment of their life. It's as if you don't even understand what the clause, "doing their best," means. Or you don't understand that effort is not always maximal.
Quoting Leontiskos
But youll notice in the story you were right about Susie not trying her best. It was just that she knew what was going on with her and the reason for it. Im not blaming or reproaching you. But I will insist that
claiming someone is not doing their best is an accusation, regardless of how you sugarcoat it. All forms of blame (including concepts like narcissism and laziness) are based in hostility, and as such are accusations, even if they masquerade as affectively neutral rational judgements. Hostility has no choice but to remedy a violence against the moral with a corrective which itself must be violent, a battle against a bad will. I dont blame you for blaming, because I believe youre doing the best you can, given how things seem to you, and your blameful approach is the best way for you to make progress on your thinking. I dont mean your were determined by causes, I mean you have put a lot of work into thinking through issues of morality, and what you currently believe undoubtedly represents an achievement with respect to your younger self. I would say the same of the larger culture that embraces moral guilt and blame. They are moving in the right direction, so I encourage rather than blame them. My approach isnt right for them until theyre ready to embrace it, on their own terms.
Quoting Leontiskos
How did you know you werent doing your best? What kind of information should one look for to tell them where they stand with respect to their best? What aspect of a task seems effortful to us, and why? Does it depend strictly on the features of the task, independent of our own attitude toward it, or is the feeling that something requires too much effort a function of our interest in it? How many times do we say to someone, wow, that task looks very hard, it must have required quite an effort, and have them respond, Nah, I was enjoying myself so much it felt effortless?
Where we choose to focus our energy and attention, and our perception of the effort involved, is a in large part a function of what aspect of our situation we feel we can immerse ourselves most completely into. We choose to devote less effort in one direction in order to focus on another, more fulfilling one. From a skilled coping point of view, motivation cant be defined in quantitative terms. Cognitive scientists and philosophers of mindfulness who study skilled coping argue that one is at ones best not when one applies a plan and then accelerates ones way through its performance by increments of degree ( I am doing better and better, trying harder and harder, because I am going faster and faster). The measure of doing ones best from the vantage of skilled coping is about total attentiveness and immersion within the contextual changing demands of the task at hand, a going with the flow rather than trying to force the flow into a pre-designed trajectory and endpoint. Its about being responsive to the changing nature of the task rather than forcing our will on it.
Quoting Leontiskos
No, they are acknowledging that how things seemed to them at the time they made their choice, and how things seem them now , has changed. Often, new information comes to light that wasnt available at the time one decided, and one berates and blames oneself for not having known this information earlier. Guilt is about second-guessing oneself: I should have , could have. It is 20/20 hindsight. But they were doing their best when they acted in a way that they now regret, and they are doing their best in now reflecting on that original decision in light of the new information which shows that their former self to have made a mistake.
Quoting Leontiskos
I didnt say guilt isnt useful. I said that we can transcend the notion of guilt as self-blame and moral culpability. As long as human beings constantly transcend their circumstances, constantly unfold new outlooks and cultural identifications, they will continually re-assess their relationships with others, and this will lead to feelings of guilt. While guilt is most often associated with our sense that we have sinned, at its core , it alerts us to the fact that , as we grow and change, we find ourselves dislodged from previous ties and loyalties. For instance, one can feel guilty for unintentionally betraying close friendships with co-participants in a fundamentalist religious community once one no longer embraces the religions credo. The feeling of guilt forces a new decision; do we try and conform, fit ourselves back into the social role that we have become dislodged from, or forge ahead and find ways to mend those broken bonds of trust by creating a new social role for ourselves, and friendships based on new dimensions of mutual understanding?
The absurdly emotional tale that you told indicates otherwise.
Quoting Joshs
Id say youre about 300 miles off course. Underlying your thinking is the argument
The question of whether someone is doing their best is a matter of fact which must be determined on a case by case basis, a posteriori. It is not an a priori necessity, as you have made it.
The Corvette is going 100 mph. This is also a matter of fact that must be determined on a case by case basis. When a police officer uses his radar gun to determine how fast the Corvette is traveling, he is probing this matter of fact. The normative question arises second: how fast should the Corvette be traveling? With regard to this second question, the police officer will ticket the driver if the Corvette is traveling too fast (or too slow).
The Corvette is going 100 mph, is a statement about the speed of the car, and cars can travel at different speeds. Johnny is doing his best, is a statement about the effort that Johnny is applying to some activity, and humans can apply different levels of effort. Step 1 is assessing the level of effort, which is a matter of fact. This step is like using the radar gun to determine the cars speed. Contrary to your moralizing worldview, the assessment of effort is not yet a normative or moral matter. Step 2, the normative step, only arises when we want to judge how much effort Johnny should be applying to the activity. The answer to this question is not, Johnny should always be applying maximal effort. That is a stupid idea inherited from the Puritans, on a par with other stupid ideas like, If a job isnt done well then its not worth doing.
Again, when I am driving a car I am usually not trying my best. In ideal driving conditions it would be stupid to try my best, as this would be a needless waste of energy. In that case your moralizing would be perfectly backwards, and, He is trying his best, would be the accusation, as opposed to, He is not trying his best. It is not uncommon to ridicule someone in that manner, by noting that they are trying their best when they shouldnt be.
So if someone says to you, Joshs, you arent trying your best, and they mean it as a corrective, then you should 1) Ask yourself whether you are trying your best, 2) Ask yourself whether you should be trying your best. If the answer is no/yes, then you should thank them for correcting you, tell them you will try harder, and possibly ask their advice about how to improve. If the answer is not no/yes, then you should tell them why you disagree. Whatever you do, do not say, I am a human being, and human beings always try their best, therefore I am trying my best. They will probably just reply that they thought you were smarter than that.
The broader question you are after is the question of whether it is ever prudent or legitimate to make a normative judgment.* Your proximate rejoinder would be something like, Well, we should never presume to tell anyone that they should be applying a different level of effort than they are in fact applying. I think this is completely wrong, but it is not worth addressing here. I would point you to my thread, The Breadth of the Moral Sphere.
* A normative judgment about others, but perhaps also about ourselves.
Quoting Leontiskos
What devices akin to a radar gun measure effort? I assume you want to focus your attention on the brain and what is taking place inside of it , rather than on other parts of the body. A decrement in bodily effort can be due to many things, such as fatigue, injury, disease , aging. But were taking about mental effort, right? So do we use electrodes on the skull? An mri? The observations of a community? And dont we want to distinguish physiological causes of performance decrements in the brain (physical fatigue, illness, lack of food or drink, excessive hate or cold) from those having to do with intent and motivation? Dont we want to focus our attention where we believe a person uses physiological issues as an EXCUSE for not trying their hardest?
It seems to me that this mental effort, the decision to try or not to try as hard as one can , regardless of ones amount of sleep or nutritional status, is a matter of engaging in a game whose rules are familiar to one, and then choosing to dial down ones effort. So arent there two normative dimensions involved here, the criterion of success at the game, and the criterion of optimal vs suboptimal effort? For instance, lets say the game I opt into is driving my car to work as fast as I can, because Im running late. My goal is to shave off at least 10 minutes relative to my usual pace. It will be very clear to me whether I have succeeded in this normative goal. But whether I succeed or fail does not in itself say anything about how much effort I put into the game. Thats a different game, with its own norms. Although you have said we dont always know whether we were trying our best, at least some of the time we know it, and in those cases maybe the simplest way to measure our effort is to use a verbal scoring system: On a scale of one to ten, how hard were we trying?
Now , I have been claiming that we are always trying our best at something, so I reject the premise behind this scoring system. I would put it this way. We are always putting our effort into some game or other , but the criterion of success changes with changes in the game. When I am late for work, and I choose a game of speed, my criterion of success is different than when I am not playing the game of speed. There are times when I am in no rush, when I am in mood for a game of touring. The aim of this game is not to drive fast , or slow, but to drive in such a way that I am maximizing my engagement with the countryside around me. This can mean speeding up, slowing down, pulling over, changing route. Ill know how successful I was at my game of touring by how satisfying the trip was for me, not by how fast I was going.
Notice that it doesnt make sense to say that , while touring, I wasn't trying my best at making time. The concept of speed didnt come up for me because I wasnt thinking along those lines at all. My point is, as I mentioned in an earlier post, that in understanding the relation between effort and performance, it is necessary to identify not just what we are not doing, but what we are doing. There are a nearly infinite variety of games we can opt to play, and we switch among them all the time. When we naively assume another is continuing the play the game we believe they are playing, we may not notice this shift in games. So we only notice their failure to perform within the rules we assume they are abiding by, and we fail to notice that they are already involved with a different game. The are still doing their best, but their effort is applied in a completely different direction, with different criteria of success.
How do you define "doing your best"? I would define it as doing what the situation or task at hand requires so as to avoid negative outcomes. If you are paying adequate attention to the conditionsthe road. traffic signals, other drivers and so on, such as to avoid an accident, or getting booked, then I would count that as "doing your best".
You might say that if you failed to do your best then you might, for example, have an accident or be booked for speeding, but could that failure ever be counted as intentional? If you drive too fast, is it not on account of a failure of attention or an incorrect assessment of the likelihood of being booked or having an accident?
Surely you would not intentionally lose attention or make a botched assessment? If not then I think it could be fairly said that you were doing your best, and your best was just not good enough in the particular situation (which should not be surprising since you are not required to be perfect in order to be said to be doing your best).
If you could do better are you doing your best? Is someone who is doing an adequate job doing the best job? See:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Janus
In moral philosophy neglect is a failure involving intention or volition. "Attention" comes under our intention and volition, after all, and that is why it is not unjust to ticket speeders.
Okay.
Quoting Joshs
Except when we do things like sleep, but putting effort in and putting maximal effort in are two different things. I do not do my best when I drive in ideal conditions, but I do apply effort.
Quoting Joshs
Sure, I don't dispute any of this. It doesn't affect our topic. I don't expect you to have a very robust theory of the specification of human acts, but I think even bad theories arrive at the obvious conclusion that we don't always do our best.
Quoting Joshs
So what? Attempting to achieve success is not the same as applying maximal effort. I can beat my three year-old nephew in a wrestling match with one hand tied behind my back. This has nothing to do with whether I am trying my best. The reason we shouldn't always try our best is because some things are easy, and do not demand our best.
We could speak about acting in an optimal manner rather than applying maximal effort, and this indeed seems to be what you are interested in. Are human beings always acting in as optimal a way as they are able? This relates to the "broader question" I spoke to in my last post.
Quoting Joshs
We don't always misidentify another's "game," and even if we did, it remains true that we do not always apply maximal effort to the "games" we are self-consciously "playing." (I dislike speaking in Wittgenstenian metaphor. Our activities are not games.)
I grant that there is a somewhat interesting way in which the contemporary mind sees effort as flat and unchangeable. To see the fault in this one might consider the case of an extreme rock climber who climbs free (with no safety rope) and compare him with the fellow who is walking to the coffee shop before work. The rock climber is exerting more effort in an absolute sense than the man walking to the coffee shop, and he is likely exerting maximal effort. Now compare the free climber with an identical climber who has a safety harness, and there will be a different level of effort vis-a-vis the same activity, ceteris paribus.
The obvious conclusion once again arises unperturbed: human beings do not invariably do their best.
You're ignoring context. There is no reason to strive to do better in a task when the circumstances don't require it. How are you going to do better than attending as best you can in the moment to a degree sufficient to avoid speeding, attending as best you can in the moment such as to avoid colliding with other vehicles, pedestrians, trees, telegraph poles, safety fences and so on?
How often do you fail to do your best when you are driving? How often do you inadvertently speed, drive recklessly, have accidents and so on?
Quoting Leontiskos
In moral philosophy neglect is a failure of being able to care or a failure of understanding the situation. No one deliberately fails to care or attend to what they understand should be attended to, but no one is perfect and may be distracted or fail to understand what is required or simply not be capable of good judgement.
Ticketing speeders is not a matter of justice but a matter of deterrence. In Australia the resources are there to stop people from speeding. We have speed cameras at select locations, but we are always notified by signs as to where they are located. If they installed many more speed cameras and did not place signs to notify motorists as to the locations, they would soon stop motorists speeding due to the motorists unfailingly being fined when they did speed. But it seems the government doesn't really want to "stop speeding to save lives" as first priorityit seems first priority is revenue, a great deal of which they will lose if everyone stops speeding.
To anticipate an objection, you might say that those who exceed the speed limit are not doing their best, but I would counter that when they speed they must, rightly or wrongly, believe they are driving safely, which would mean it is a failure of judgement. Either that or they are insane or uncaring. People can only care as much, and judge as well as their capacities allow.
And there is no reason to strive to do our best when the circumstances don't require it. If we can do better then we are not doing our best, and we both know that on your definition of "best" we can do better. Therefore your definition fails.
Quoting Janus
In order to do a better job than what is sufficient or adequate you simply go beyond what is necessary. One can apply more or less effort to the act or rule of not-speeding.
Quoting Janus
No, that is ignorance.
Quoting Janus
We are punished for neglect similar to the way we are punished for direct intention, and therefore neglect involves volition. I would suggest that you work on a theory which incorporates these facts, and really any introduction to moral philosophy will help you with that.
You (and Joshs) could try to make an argument for ethics on determinism, and you could try to say that every time someone gets a speeding ticket it is not because they have neglected a (positive) duty but only because we want to deter or condition them. This is ultimately futile and logically incoherent, but you could try it. Nevertheless, I would not try such a thing before you understand the perennial understanding of justice, including what words like "negligence" actually mean. Better to understand the received and coherent approach before trying your hand at the newfangled determinism-morality.
No, how can you do better than paying attention, driving within the speed limit and so on, which I outlined? Explain to me how you could do better than that, what doing better than that would consist in in that context.
Quoting Leontiskos
You believe that it follows from the fact we are punished for neglect that volition must be involved? I don't see that, and in any case, you are changing the termsI spoke in terms of failure of attention (a failure which is not deliberate) and failure of understanding the situation (which obviously also would not be deliberate). You could try to explain to me just what you mean by volitionis volition always deliberate according to you, for example, and then lay out your argument as to why volition would be entailed on the grounds that we are punished for neglect?
Quoting Leontiskos
What is the perennial understanding of justice according to you? The meaning of words is determined by their common usage(s)what else could they be determined by?
You are equivocating on effort and outcome. Doing or trying one's best is a direct measure of effort, not a direct measure of outcome. Supposing two people drive under the speed limit, it does not follow that each of them are applying equal effort to obeying the law. It does not follow that each of them are doing/trying their best to obey the law. Some are more conscientious and effort-applying than others in this regard. Your false argument is,
Quoting Janus
I Googled a paper that might be helpful to you in this regard: "The Moral Neglect of Negligence." Again, an introduction to moral philosophy would probably be even better.
One may have to apply more effort because they are less talented. That has no bearing on the argument. If we all drive as best we can within the limits of our abilities both physical and intellectual, such as not to speed or have accidents, what could doing better than that look like? Surely not neurotically straining to be even more attentive than the actual situation requiresthat could actually be a negative, it could cause us to become stressed and lose attention.
Of course, sometimes when we are stressed out we are not at our best, and then we might inadvertently speed and or have an accident. But we are not always the same, and when I talk about doing our best i mean our best at any given moment in any given situation. I say that if we fail at that it is on account of not being capable of adequately caring, understanding or physically functioning. and it can still rightly be said that we are doing our best at those times not our best according to what we are, at optimum, capable of, but our best according to what we are in that moment capable of.
Quoting Leontiskos
When someone is apparently incapable of presenting their own arguments and condescendingly advises me to read a paper or educate myself I rapidly lose interest in further engagement with them.
I completely disagree.
First I have to state my belief that all values are equivalent, there is no difference between a moral or aesthetic value. From the dislike of murder to the love of orange juice, these concern the same type of preference known as a value.
As such, all actions are driven by values, you cannot be devoid of them by the very nature of your existence. Morals do not matter to collectives as collectives do not exist, only individuals exist, and only individuals act.
I am guessing it is not nonsense though just badly expressed. Maybe explaining how your view does or doesn't cross over into solipsism? That might help others to understand.
Im making no claim about the existence of other beings, but about perspective. I believe the universe exists outside of yourself, however you only have access to your interpretation of the universe, and your perspective. This idea is called indirect realism, has been confirmed in neuroscience in how the human brain operates, and so is currently the scientific concensus in regards to perception.
For example, platos forms would be an idea against this viewpoint, but generally those ideas are quite old and lack evidence.
Quoting Ourora Aureis
How so? Explain why people believe there is a difference. By all means site any papers relevant in the cognitive neurosciences I am fairly well versed in that particular area.
I say this more as a bookmark than anything else, for I do not want to enter into the topic here, but an example would be the man who is pulled over for speeding, and who attempts to make an excuse for himself, "I wasn't speeding on purpose!" "I wasn't trying to break the law!"
From the point of view of the law concerning negligence, they have committed a greater crime than if they had merely driven without incident, but this doesn't seem right from a moral standpoint. Call this moral luck (or unluck).
Another example is that someone might have a sudden and uncontrollable sneezing fit when driving and fail to see the pedestrian on the crossing and run them over and kill them. They will still be punished even though it was not their fault in any moral sense.
If you are coming to ethics with a collectivist mindset then you most likely have different issues you think ethics concerns. However, anything outside of individual action is quite meaningless to me. I don't care about some social harmony, that has nothing to do with the issues I think ethics should be concerned with, aka action and values.
In regards to the difference between moral and aesthetic values, there are people who define them different, I don't disagree. However, anyone can make a differentiation between any two ideas they like, but it doesn't make that differentiation substantive towards any end. Differentiation exists precisely to treat two concepts separately, however you need more than just different definitions to achieve this. Instead you have to apply an argument for how their difference is cause for the separate treatment. I don't know how you want me to explain that there is no difference, the burden is on you to suggest it. I cannot prove a negative.
If your distinction is purely semantic and leads to no difference in regards to ethics, then it doesn't exist to me and the conversation is pointless. You have to make an argument substantiating the difference (which is not just defining it, otherwise I'll just go "I disagree" and we're on equal ground in regards to rationality).
I'm not going to be providing any papers, you didn't ask me to prove any specific claim so anything I give you will seem random and you cant convince people by throwing random papers at them. If you want to gain an understanding, look into the predictive coding model in neuroscience (which seems to most plausible explanation to me) or provide a model which is backed by scientists which doesn't have indirect realism as its base to counter my belief. This is a discussion, not a lecture.
Also to be clearer, indirect realism doesn't necessary mean no mind-independent objects exist, but that we don't experience them directly. Aka, indirect realism isn't incompatible with moral or aesthetic realism. I don't know your position on whether morals are mind independent or not, but I thought I should make that clear.
I asked this: How are aesthetic and moral values the same? You made the claim. If you are not willing to argue your case then I am puzzled why you are here at all.
I was merely intrigued by what you meant. Sounds interesting.
Quoting Ourora Aureis
I am curious what backing there is to this belief.
I responded to your question in my 2nd and 3rd paragraph. Im not sure why you think I havent responded.
If you cannot explain your belief, no problem. I will move on swiftly. Time for me to go and drink someone else's orange juice.
Bye.
Thats a pretty big simplfication of my reasoning. I think fundamentally theres a flaw with your epistomology if you're trying to get me to prove a negative.
Alas, your free to leave at any time but I hope you'll think my ideas over. Goodbye.
So you think negligence pertains to the legal order but not to the moral order?
Depends on what is meant by 'negligence'. Failing to feed and look after those who depend on you, your children or animals, for example, I would not consider to be morally acceptable.
I don't think in terms of "moral order", but rather in terms of "moral compass". The morally important things are cared about, due to normal human feeling, by all who are not sociopathic, in my view. Morality is not "given from above" but issues from out of the depths of healthy human feeling and rationality.
Well here is the first sentence of the article I linked above:
You seem like someone who just hasn't thought or read about this topics much at all, to the extent that in order to discuss them on a philosophy forum you would need to do some homework first. I'm happy to talk after you do some homework. If you don't want to, that's your call.
:roll: Cut the bullshittrying to dismiss others by insinuation is not a substitute for cogent argument. You have no idea how much or how little I've thought or read about this. If you are incapable of sustaining an argument in your own words, be man enough to admit it.
Quoting Janus
Supposing someone has an unforeseeable seizure, would they be punished in this case?
Quoting Janus
I agree.
Quoting Janus
Fair enough.
So I have to apologize. The quality of your recent posts has not been problematic. I was thinking about the earlier ones and I was trying to respond to too many different threads. Sorry about that. :yikes:
Still, I do not see how I have conflated the legal with the moral (although I do think the legal order is within the moral order).