Moral-realism vs Moral-antirealism
Hi world! I wrote this quasi-survey on metaethics for my mandatory undergraduate writing class. As a result, many concepts are overly simplified, and the essay lacks strong logical rigor, since its intended for readers without a solid background in philosophy. Unfortunately, the essay doesnt delve deeply into intuitionism or non-cognitivism, as my professor didnt want to read a 20+ page paperand I also had to study for my finals. In any case, Id appreciate any information or elaboration on these two stances. General feedback is also very welcome!
The Road to Error Theory
In this essay, we will embark on a journey in search of the nature of ethics. To be precise, our focus will not be on normative ethics, which addresses questions such as What is good?, What ought one to do?, or Which actions are praiseworthy? Rather, we will turn our attention to metaethics, which adopts a broader philosophical perspective and seeks to uncover the fundamental nature and meaning of morality itself. The aspects of ethics we are concerned with here include its metaphysical status, epistemological validity, as well as its psychological and semantic dimensions.
More specifically, I aim to establish the position of Error Theory as the least refutable view in metaethics. I use the phrase least refutable to indicate: 1) the insufficiency of my own knowledge and 2) the ambiguous nature of ethics as a field itself.
Error theory is identified as a form of moral-antirealism, which refutes that moral statements report objective truths. However, to formally define this position, it is necessary to clarify some key terminologies.
Terminologies and Definitions:
First, metaethics can be broadly divided into two camps: moral realism and moral anti-realism. Moral realists maintain that moral statements are objectively true or falsethat is, at least some moral claims report objective moral facts. Moral anti-realists, on the other hand, reject this thesis.
Second, we must distinguish moral absolutism from moral relativism. Moral absolutism is the view that a single, universal set of moral principles applies to all individuals and cultures, without exception. Moral relativism, by contrast, holds that different moral principles apply to different individuals or groups, depending on cultural, historical, or situational contexts. It is important to note that moral realism is not equivalent to moral absolutism, nor is moral anti-realism equivalent to moral relativism. For instance, one could be a moral realist and a relativist by holding that different objective moral truths apply to different cultural or social contexts. In such a case, a person would be both a relativist and a realist.
Thirdly, we should consider the distinction between moral cognitivism and non-cognitivism. Moral cognitivism holds that moral beliefs are truth-apt propositionsthat is, it is possible for them to obtain a truth or false value, just like all other beliefs. On the other hand, non-cognitivism hold that moral beliefs fundamentally reflect mental states such as emotions, desires or instincts, which are not truth-apt (e.g. it does not make sense to say being angry is true or false).
The table below should help conceptualizing these distinctions:
Moral Realism Moral claims report objective facts
Moral Anti-realism Moral claims do not report objective facts
Moral Absolutism The same set of moral statements must be applied to all groups of individuals.
Moral Relativism Different moral statements are applied to different groups of individuals.
Moral Cognitivism Moral statements are truth-apt (can be true or false).
Moral Non-Cognitivism Moral statements are not truth-apt.
Now we are in a good position to formally define error theory. Error theory is a form of cognitivist moral anti-realism. That is, it holds that moral beliefs are truth-apt and therefore does not oppose the view that it is at least possible for moral beliefs to be true. However, moral statements are not actually true in the world we live in. An analogous illustration of this position is the case of unicorns: we assert that it is possible for them to exist, since no logical contradiction follows from that, but we also believe that they do not actually exist. Similarly, error theorists merely assert that moral statements fail to report any objective factnot that they cannot possibly do so.
While it was mentioned earlier that moral relativism does not necessarily entail moral anti-realism, it is generally the case that the latterincluding error theoristsuse the former as part of their argument. So depending on whether an error theorist adopts relativistic arguments, error theory could be interpreted as either a form of moral relativism or moral absolutism.
Methodology:
Moral realism often appears to be the more intuitive position. The very existence of ethics as a field of meaningful philosophical inquiryrather than being unanimously reduced to mere non-objective instinctsuggests that people find moral questions worthy of analysis and reflection. Moreover, the structures of our society are largely grounded implicitly in moral principles; legislations and political ideologies, for instance, often appeal to some form of moral authority. This reliance implies that people are naturally committed to moral realism, for laws would lose much of their normative power if morality were seen as entirely non-objective. As David Brink puts it: We begin as (tacit) cognitivists and realists about ethics. Moral Realism should be our metaethical starting point, and we should give it up only if it does involve unacceptable metaphysical and epistemological commitments (1989: 2324). Hence, in this essay, we shall likewise begin with the assumption of moral realism, and proceed to explore the explanatory limitations it faces. More specifically, by considering these limitations of moral realism, we shall see that the road to error theory is actually not as obscure as one would expect it to be. It would turn out that error theory is the direct conclusion of these limitations.
This, then, indicates that the arguments for error theory mainly take the form of reductio ad absurdumthat is, they assume the truth of the opposing view in order to reveal the absurd consequences that would follow from that assumption. One might criticize error theory on the grounds that it consists primarily, if not entirely, of destructive arguments. However, the absence of constructive arguments does not undermine the validity of the position under consideration. Firstly, the burden of proof in this contention lies primarilyat least prima facieson the shoulder of the realists, for they are the party that seek to establish the existence of certain factsnamely moral facts. Consider the following analogy: which party has the burden of proof: Party A, who supports the existence of unicorns, or Party B, who denies this claim?
This brings us to the second reason as to why error theory remains valid despite being built on destructive arguments: the fact that moral realism and anti-realism are mutually exclusive. An assertion about an objective fact is either true or falsethat is, a fact either exist or do not exist, and there exists no middle ground. In this light, anti-realism can be understood as the negation of realism. Thus, the point is more clearly demonstrated by the logical representation: either x or not xin which case, the successful refutation of one necessarily entails the acceptance of the other.
Here is a list of refutations to moral realism (=arguments for error theory) that will be presented: 1) Moores Open Question Argument, 2) Humes Is-Ought Problem, and 3) Markies Argument from Queerness.
Moores Open Question ArgumentThe Failure of Trying to Define Moral Statements:
The father of Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, begins his foundational work An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation with the following statement: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever, and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government. (1789: 1) Observe how readily Bentham equates goodness with the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, justifying this definition by appealing to nature.
However, this definition of goodness is open to contention. For surely utility cannot be the measure of all things. Consider Judith Jarvis Thomsons Organ Donor Trolley Problem: David is a great transplant surgeon. Five of his patients need new parts. One needs a heart, the others need, respectively, liver, stomach, spleen, and spinal cord. But all are of the same, relatively rare, blood-type. By chance, David learns of a healthy specimen with that very blood-type. David can take the healthy specimen's parts, killing him, and install them in his patients, saving them. Or he can refrain from taking the healthy specimen's parts, letting his patients die. (Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem: 206)
Killing one innocent person to save five seems intuitively wrong, even if one generally adopts utilitarian stance. However, does that mean utilitarianism is wrong? This is beyond the scope of our journey. But the case of utilitarianism serves as an example of the struggles of moral realism: No matter how we define goodness, there always exist some open questions that cannot be explained by the very definition of goodness (In general, this is true for all moral terms; goodness here serves as a prime example, and will continue be the representative example in this section). We shall see that this observation presents a huge challenge not only for utilitarianism, but all positions that aim to define goodness in terms of things other than goodness itself.
G. E. Moore fundamentally rejects moral naturalism, the view that moral statements can be explored or confirmed scientifically and empirically. In his view, naturalists commit what he famously calls the naturalistic fallacythe mistake of trying to define the simple, unanalyzable property of goodness in terms of some natural property, such as pleasure, desire-satisfaction, or evolutionary fitness. Unknown to Moore himself, his argument in fact challenges not only moral naturalism, but all metaethical positions that aim to define moral terms in a non-analytical way (definition in terms of ideas other than the term being defined).
To clarify this point, Moore draws a distinction between simple and complex ideas, arguing that goodness falls into the category of the former. A simple idea is one that cannot be further reduced into constituent parts; it is an atomic element of our conceptual framework. In contrast, a complex idea is composed of multiple simple ideas and can be analyzed or broken down into them.
Therefore, by asserting that goodness is a simple, irreducible quality, Moore rejects any complex definition of morality, including Utilitarianism.
Moores argument takes the following form:
Let goodness be equivalent to some complex idea X (e.g. the pursuit of the desire as desired by all humans)
Then goodness = X, just as saying a triangle is a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles
This means that asking whether goodness is really X should yield no meaningful and substantial answer, just as asking whether a triangle is a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles
However, it seems that asking whether goodness is really X do yield meaningful and substantial answer (consider the case of Utilitarianism and Organ Donor Trolley Problem)
Therefore, goodness cannot be equivalent to some complex idea X
In this way, Moore refutes any attempt to define goodness in terms of anything other than itself. He concludes: Good is a simple notion, just as yellow is a simple notion We know what yellow means, and can recognize it wherever it is seen, but we cannot actually define it. Similarly, we know what good means, but we cannot define it (Principia Ethica, §10). Therefore, any moral realist position that aims to define moral concepts in a synthetic or a posterior way render themselves susceptible to Moores Open Question Argument.
Humes Is-ought Problem:
Humes is-ought problem presents an epistemological challenge to moral naturalism. According to David Hume, no statement expressing what one ought to do can be logically derived from statements describing what is the case, unless an ought-statement is already assumed. In other words, the fact that X is Y does not entail that X ought to be Y. There exists an inferential gap between descriptive and normative claims, which cannot be bridged without introducing a normative premise previously already. For example, even if we observethrough scientific methodsthat humans tend to pursue happiness and avoid pain, it does not follow that humans ought to act this way. Thus, no set of purely nonmoral premises can, by itself, entail a moral conclusion. As a result, even if the moral realists manage to overcome Moores Open Question Argument, they still face the epistemological challenge posed by the is-ought gap. That is, even if we successfully define what moral terms mean, we still need to explain how we can justify the logical leap of moral knowledge.
The only viable way for moral realists to address both Moores and Humes challenges is to assume that moral facts are known a priorithat is, propositions that can be known independently of experience, through reason alone (or, as Descartes puts it, through the natural light of reason). Moral intuitionists, a subset of realists who adopt this view, aim to construct a coherent moral system grounded in fundamental moral axioms that are taken to be self-evident, placing particular emphasis on formalism. However, identifying such moral axioms is an arduousif not impossibletask, given the inherent diversity and ambiguity of moral discourse. The following argument in favor of error theory will focus on these two features of morality.
Mackies Argument from Queerness:
J. L. Mackie first introduced the term error theory in his 1977 book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. He writes: If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else (p. 38, 1977). This is the famous Argument from Queerness, which poses two central challenges to moral realism: one metaphysical, concerning the nature of moral entities, and one epistemological, concerning how we could possibly know them.
The metaphysical challenge highlights a particularly peculiar feature of moral facts: they appear to involve an intrinsically necessary connection between a situation and a corresponding action. Moral statements do not merely describe the world; they seem to command us to act in specific ways under particular conditions. Yet such a prescriptive relationship is absent from other types of beliefs. As Mackie puts it, moral facts possess qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe (Mackie 1977: 38). Therefore, if one accepts that moral statements report objective truths, one is also committing to the existence of a kind of objective ethical prescriptivity. But this is, by its very nature, metaphysically queer. For naturally, it raises the question: what is the ontological origin of such prescription? Is it God, a Platonic Form, or some intrinsic metaphysical link between situations and actions themselves? And if such entities or relations do exist, in what form do they exist?
Closely tied to this metaphysical queerness is the epistemological question: if such objective ethical prescriptivity exists, how do we come to know it? As discussed earlier, attempts to define moral statements empiricallyby appealing to scientific or naturalistic termsrender themselves susceptible to both Moores Open Question Argument and Humes Is-Ought Problem. On the other hand, treating moral knowledge as a priori truths would assume some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else (Mackie 1977: 38). This too appears epistemologically suspect.
Additionally, while moral relativism, as aforementioned, is not tantamount to moral anti-realism, it does serve as a strong argument for the latter. In a cross-cultural study, Richard Shweder found that moral concerns differ significantly across cultures. For example, in one Indian town, moral thinking was shaped by ideas of karma, suffering, and personal responsibility, where suffering is often seen as the just consequence of past actions. In contrast, American moral frameworks tend to view suffering as random or meaningless, often divorced from any notion of moral causality (Shweder, 1997). Considering this, if one maintains the existence of objective ethical prescriptivity, then two troubling possibilities emerge:1) Different objective moral values are prescribed to different groups of people; or 2) a single set of universal moral truths exists, but only some groups are epistemically equipped to access them. Either option implies an intrinsic difference between human groups, whether in their ontological status or epistemological capacities. However, within the framework of modern scientific understanding of the human species, such possibilities appear queer.
Conclusion:
Approaching ethics from my own perspective, I find the field deeply problematic. Unlike other branches of philosophy, a systematic and formal treatment of ethics seems impossible. Recall how the brief debate pertaining to utilitarianism was presented. Utilitarians assert a statement, and the opposition brings up a case that would render the utilitarian position counterintuitive. However, the fact that a proposition is counterintuitive does not mean it is illogical. If, in a branch of knowledge, being intuitive is more significant than being logical, then such a branch is substantially flawed, especially if it seeks to describe objective facts. Quantum physics is unimaginably more counterintuitive than Newtonian physics; this does not affect the formers dominance over the latter. Similarly, in the field of mathematics, Gabriels Horn, which states that a shape (formed by rotating y = 1/x, for all x?1, around the x-axis) could have infinite area yet finite volume, is not rendered invalid due to its counterintuitive nature.
Yet, note how in ethical discussions, the validity of an argument or position is largely grounded in emotions and intuitions. Often, a position is refuted simply because it just does not feel right. The presence of such emotional attachment thus further obfuscates any attempt to clarify the field. Furthermore, notice also that in discussing ethics, the types of arguments often take the form of examples, analogies, or metaphors. The frequent use of scare quotes in this section (e.g., feels right) serves as direct evidence. It is as if we cannot talk about moral truths directly, but only through taking a detour.
This observation is not only unique to meit is the main motivation behind any moral non-cognitivist theory. As mentioned in the beginning, non-cognitivism holds that moral beliefs fundamentally reflect mental states such as emotions, desires, or instincts, and therefore are not to be treated as propositions. In light of the struggles in ethics identified in the previous paragraph, it is not hard to see the advantage and the explanatory power of non-cognitivism. However, the reason error theorya cognitivist stanceis favored over non-cognitivism in this essay is because, while non-cognitivism effectively addresses some key issues, it introduces new problems of its own. Establishing a robust non-cognitivist stance requires not only destructive arguments, but also constructive onessomething current accounts fail to deliver satisfactorily. Thus, while non-cognitivism may be tempting, one must resist intellectual overreach and recall Socrates remark: ?? ???? ??? ????? ???? (One thing I know, that I know nothing).
Reference:
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Bentham, J. (1823). An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation (New ed. rev.). Universidad De Antioquia. http://bibliotecadigital.udea.edu.co/bitstream/10495/2175/1/Introduction%20to%20de%20principles%20of%20morals%20and%20legislation%20%28vol.%20I%29.pdf
Brink, D. O. (1989). Moral realism and the foundations of ethics. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511624612
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Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The big three of morality (autonomy, community, divinity) and the big three explanations of suffering. In A. M. Brandt & P. Rozin (Eds.), Morality and health (pp. 119169). Taylor & Francis/Routledge.
Stratton-Lake, P. (2020). Intuitionism in ethics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/intuitionism-ethics/
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van Roojen, M. (2024). Moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/moral-cognitivism/
The Road to Error Theory
In this essay, we will embark on a journey in search of the nature of ethics. To be precise, our focus will not be on normative ethics, which addresses questions such as What is good?, What ought one to do?, or Which actions are praiseworthy? Rather, we will turn our attention to metaethics, which adopts a broader philosophical perspective and seeks to uncover the fundamental nature and meaning of morality itself. The aspects of ethics we are concerned with here include its metaphysical status, epistemological validity, as well as its psychological and semantic dimensions.
More specifically, I aim to establish the position of Error Theory as the least refutable view in metaethics. I use the phrase least refutable to indicate: 1) the insufficiency of my own knowledge and 2) the ambiguous nature of ethics as a field itself.
Error theory is identified as a form of moral-antirealism, which refutes that moral statements report objective truths. However, to formally define this position, it is necessary to clarify some key terminologies.
Terminologies and Definitions:
First, metaethics can be broadly divided into two camps: moral realism and moral anti-realism. Moral realists maintain that moral statements are objectively true or falsethat is, at least some moral claims report objective moral facts. Moral anti-realists, on the other hand, reject this thesis.
Second, we must distinguish moral absolutism from moral relativism. Moral absolutism is the view that a single, universal set of moral principles applies to all individuals and cultures, without exception. Moral relativism, by contrast, holds that different moral principles apply to different individuals or groups, depending on cultural, historical, or situational contexts. It is important to note that moral realism is not equivalent to moral absolutism, nor is moral anti-realism equivalent to moral relativism. For instance, one could be a moral realist and a relativist by holding that different objective moral truths apply to different cultural or social contexts. In such a case, a person would be both a relativist and a realist.
Thirdly, we should consider the distinction between moral cognitivism and non-cognitivism. Moral cognitivism holds that moral beliefs are truth-apt propositionsthat is, it is possible for them to obtain a truth or false value, just like all other beliefs. On the other hand, non-cognitivism hold that moral beliefs fundamentally reflect mental states such as emotions, desires or instincts, which are not truth-apt (e.g. it does not make sense to say being angry is true or false).
The table below should help conceptualizing these distinctions:
Moral Realism Moral claims report objective facts
Moral Anti-realism Moral claims do not report objective facts
Moral Absolutism The same set of moral statements must be applied to all groups of individuals.
Moral Relativism Different moral statements are applied to different groups of individuals.
Moral Cognitivism Moral statements are truth-apt (can be true or false).
Moral Non-Cognitivism Moral statements are not truth-apt.
Now we are in a good position to formally define error theory. Error theory is a form of cognitivist moral anti-realism. That is, it holds that moral beliefs are truth-apt and therefore does not oppose the view that it is at least possible for moral beliefs to be true. However, moral statements are not actually true in the world we live in. An analogous illustration of this position is the case of unicorns: we assert that it is possible for them to exist, since no logical contradiction follows from that, but we also believe that they do not actually exist. Similarly, error theorists merely assert that moral statements fail to report any objective factnot that they cannot possibly do so.
While it was mentioned earlier that moral relativism does not necessarily entail moral anti-realism, it is generally the case that the latterincluding error theoristsuse the former as part of their argument. So depending on whether an error theorist adopts relativistic arguments, error theory could be interpreted as either a form of moral relativism or moral absolutism.
Methodology:
Moral realism often appears to be the more intuitive position. The very existence of ethics as a field of meaningful philosophical inquiryrather than being unanimously reduced to mere non-objective instinctsuggests that people find moral questions worthy of analysis and reflection. Moreover, the structures of our society are largely grounded implicitly in moral principles; legislations and political ideologies, for instance, often appeal to some form of moral authority. This reliance implies that people are naturally committed to moral realism, for laws would lose much of their normative power if morality were seen as entirely non-objective. As David Brink puts it: We begin as (tacit) cognitivists and realists about ethics. Moral Realism should be our metaethical starting point, and we should give it up only if it does involve unacceptable metaphysical and epistemological commitments (1989: 2324). Hence, in this essay, we shall likewise begin with the assumption of moral realism, and proceed to explore the explanatory limitations it faces. More specifically, by considering these limitations of moral realism, we shall see that the road to error theory is actually not as obscure as one would expect it to be. It would turn out that error theory is the direct conclusion of these limitations.
This, then, indicates that the arguments for error theory mainly take the form of reductio ad absurdumthat is, they assume the truth of the opposing view in order to reveal the absurd consequences that would follow from that assumption. One might criticize error theory on the grounds that it consists primarily, if not entirely, of destructive arguments. However, the absence of constructive arguments does not undermine the validity of the position under consideration. Firstly, the burden of proof in this contention lies primarilyat least prima facieson the shoulder of the realists, for they are the party that seek to establish the existence of certain factsnamely moral facts. Consider the following analogy: which party has the burden of proof: Party A, who supports the existence of unicorns, or Party B, who denies this claim?
This brings us to the second reason as to why error theory remains valid despite being built on destructive arguments: the fact that moral realism and anti-realism are mutually exclusive. An assertion about an objective fact is either true or falsethat is, a fact either exist or do not exist, and there exists no middle ground. In this light, anti-realism can be understood as the negation of realism. Thus, the point is more clearly demonstrated by the logical representation: either x or not xin which case, the successful refutation of one necessarily entails the acceptance of the other.
Here is a list of refutations to moral realism (=arguments for error theory) that will be presented: 1) Moores Open Question Argument, 2) Humes Is-Ought Problem, and 3) Markies Argument from Queerness.
Moores Open Question ArgumentThe Failure of Trying to Define Moral Statements:
The father of Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, begins his foundational work An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation with the following statement: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever, and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government. (1789: 1) Observe how readily Bentham equates goodness with the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, justifying this definition by appealing to nature.
However, this definition of goodness is open to contention. For surely utility cannot be the measure of all things. Consider Judith Jarvis Thomsons Organ Donor Trolley Problem: David is a great transplant surgeon. Five of his patients need new parts. One needs a heart, the others need, respectively, liver, stomach, spleen, and spinal cord. But all are of the same, relatively rare, blood-type. By chance, David learns of a healthy specimen with that very blood-type. David can take the healthy specimen's parts, killing him, and install them in his patients, saving them. Or he can refrain from taking the healthy specimen's parts, letting his patients die. (Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem: 206)
Killing one innocent person to save five seems intuitively wrong, even if one generally adopts utilitarian stance. However, does that mean utilitarianism is wrong? This is beyond the scope of our journey. But the case of utilitarianism serves as an example of the struggles of moral realism: No matter how we define goodness, there always exist some open questions that cannot be explained by the very definition of goodness (In general, this is true for all moral terms; goodness here serves as a prime example, and will continue be the representative example in this section). We shall see that this observation presents a huge challenge not only for utilitarianism, but all positions that aim to define goodness in terms of things other than goodness itself.
G. E. Moore fundamentally rejects moral naturalism, the view that moral statements can be explored or confirmed scientifically and empirically. In his view, naturalists commit what he famously calls the naturalistic fallacythe mistake of trying to define the simple, unanalyzable property of goodness in terms of some natural property, such as pleasure, desire-satisfaction, or evolutionary fitness. Unknown to Moore himself, his argument in fact challenges not only moral naturalism, but all metaethical positions that aim to define moral terms in a non-analytical way (definition in terms of ideas other than the term being defined).
To clarify this point, Moore draws a distinction between simple and complex ideas, arguing that goodness falls into the category of the former. A simple idea is one that cannot be further reduced into constituent parts; it is an atomic element of our conceptual framework. In contrast, a complex idea is composed of multiple simple ideas and can be analyzed or broken down into them.
Therefore, by asserting that goodness is a simple, irreducible quality, Moore rejects any complex definition of morality, including Utilitarianism.
Moores argument takes the following form:
Let goodness be equivalent to some complex idea X (e.g. the pursuit of the desire as desired by all humans)
Then goodness = X, just as saying a triangle is a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles
This means that asking whether goodness is really X should yield no meaningful and substantial answer, just as asking whether a triangle is a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles
However, it seems that asking whether goodness is really X do yield meaningful and substantial answer (consider the case of Utilitarianism and Organ Donor Trolley Problem)
Therefore, goodness cannot be equivalent to some complex idea X
In this way, Moore refutes any attempt to define goodness in terms of anything other than itself. He concludes: Good is a simple notion, just as yellow is a simple notion We know what yellow means, and can recognize it wherever it is seen, but we cannot actually define it. Similarly, we know what good means, but we cannot define it (Principia Ethica, §10). Therefore, any moral realist position that aims to define moral concepts in a synthetic or a posterior way render themselves susceptible to Moores Open Question Argument.
Humes Is-ought Problem:
Humes is-ought problem presents an epistemological challenge to moral naturalism. According to David Hume, no statement expressing what one ought to do can be logically derived from statements describing what is the case, unless an ought-statement is already assumed. In other words, the fact that X is Y does not entail that X ought to be Y. There exists an inferential gap between descriptive and normative claims, which cannot be bridged without introducing a normative premise previously already. For example, even if we observethrough scientific methodsthat humans tend to pursue happiness and avoid pain, it does not follow that humans ought to act this way. Thus, no set of purely nonmoral premises can, by itself, entail a moral conclusion. As a result, even if the moral realists manage to overcome Moores Open Question Argument, they still face the epistemological challenge posed by the is-ought gap. That is, even if we successfully define what moral terms mean, we still need to explain how we can justify the logical leap of moral knowledge.
The only viable way for moral realists to address both Moores and Humes challenges is to assume that moral facts are known a priorithat is, propositions that can be known independently of experience, through reason alone (or, as Descartes puts it, through the natural light of reason). Moral intuitionists, a subset of realists who adopt this view, aim to construct a coherent moral system grounded in fundamental moral axioms that are taken to be self-evident, placing particular emphasis on formalism. However, identifying such moral axioms is an arduousif not impossibletask, given the inherent diversity and ambiguity of moral discourse. The following argument in favor of error theory will focus on these two features of morality.
Mackies Argument from Queerness:
J. L. Mackie first introduced the term error theory in his 1977 book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. He writes: If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else (p. 38, 1977). This is the famous Argument from Queerness, which poses two central challenges to moral realism: one metaphysical, concerning the nature of moral entities, and one epistemological, concerning how we could possibly know them.
The metaphysical challenge highlights a particularly peculiar feature of moral facts: they appear to involve an intrinsically necessary connection between a situation and a corresponding action. Moral statements do not merely describe the world; they seem to command us to act in specific ways under particular conditions. Yet such a prescriptive relationship is absent from other types of beliefs. As Mackie puts it, moral facts possess qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe (Mackie 1977: 38). Therefore, if one accepts that moral statements report objective truths, one is also committing to the existence of a kind of objective ethical prescriptivity. But this is, by its very nature, metaphysically queer. For naturally, it raises the question: what is the ontological origin of such prescription? Is it God, a Platonic Form, or some intrinsic metaphysical link between situations and actions themselves? And if such entities or relations do exist, in what form do they exist?
Closely tied to this metaphysical queerness is the epistemological question: if such objective ethical prescriptivity exists, how do we come to know it? As discussed earlier, attempts to define moral statements empiricallyby appealing to scientific or naturalistic termsrender themselves susceptible to both Moores Open Question Argument and Humes Is-Ought Problem. On the other hand, treating moral knowledge as a priori truths would assume some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else (Mackie 1977: 38). This too appears epistemologically suspect.
Additionally, while moral relativism, as aforementioned, is not tantamount to moral anti-realism, it does serve as a strong argument for the latter. In a cross-cultural study, Richard Shweder found that moral concerns differ significantly across cultures. For example, in one Indian town, moral thinking was shaped by ideas of karma, suffering, and personal responsibility, where suffering is often seen as the just consequence of past actions. In contrast, American moral frameworks tend to view suffering as random or meaningless, often divorced from any notion of moral causality (Shweder, 1997). Considering this, if one maintains the existence of objective ethical prescriptivity, then two troubling possibilities emerge:1) Different objective moral values are prescribed to different groups of people; or 2) a single set of universal moral truths exists, but only some groups are epistemically equipped to access them. Either option implies an intrinsic difference between human groups, whether in their ontological status or epistemological capacities. However, within the framework of modern scientific understanding of the human species, such possibilities appear queer.
Conclusion:
Approaching ethics from my own perspective, I find the field deeply problematic. Unlike other branches of philosophy, a systematic and formal treatment of ethics seems impossible. Recall how the brief debate pertaining to utilitarianism was presented. Utilitarians assert a statement, and the opposition brings up a case that would render the utilitarian position counterintuitive. However, the fact that a proposition is counterintuitive does not mean it is illogical. If, in a branch of knowledge, being intuitive is more significant than being logical, then such a branch is substantially flawed, especially if it seeks to describe objective facts. Quantum physics is unimaginably more counterintuitive than Newtonian physics; this does not affect the formers dominance over the latter. Similarly, in the field of mathematics, Gabriels Horn, which states that a shape (formed by rotating y = 1/x, for all x?1, around the x-axis) could have infinite area yet finite volume, is not rendered invalid due to its counterintuitive nature.
Yet, note how in ethical discussions, the validity of an argument or position is largely grounded in emotions and intuitions. Often, a position is refuted simply because it just does not feel right. The presence of such emotional attachment thus further obfuscates any attempt to clarify the field. Furthermore, notice also that in discussing ethics, the types of arguments often take the form of examples, analogies, or metaphors. The frequent use of scare quotes in this section (e.g., feels right) serves as direct evidence. It is as if we cannot talk about moral truths directly, but only through taking a detour.
This observation is not only unique to meit is the main motivation behind any moral non-cognitivist theory. As mentioned in the beginning, non-cognitivism holds that moral beliefs fundamentally reflect mental states such as emotions, desires, or instincts, and therefore are not to be treated as propositions. In light of the struggles in ethics identified in the previous paragraph, it is not hard to see the advantage and the explanatory power of non-cognitivism. However, the reason error theorya cognitivist stanceis favored over non-cognitivism in this essay is because, while non-cognitivism effectively addresses some key issues, it introduces new problems of its own. Establishing a robust non-cognitivist stance requires not only destructive arguments, but also constructive onessomething current accounts fail to deliver satisfactorily. Thus, while non-cognitivism may be tempting, one must resist intellectual overreach and recall Socrates remark: ?? ???? ??? ????? ???? (One thing I know, that I know nothing).
Reference:
Bagnoli, C. (2024). Constructivism in metaethics. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2024 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2024/entries/constructivism-metaethics/
Bentham, J. (1823). An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation (New ed. rev.). Universidad De Antioquia. http://bibliotecadigital.udea.edu.co/bitstream/10495/2175/1/Introduction%20to%20de%20principles%20of%20morals%20and%20legislation%20%28vol.%20I%29.pdf
Brink, D. O. (1989). Moral realism and the foundations of ethics. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511624612
DePaul, M., & Hicks, A. (2021). A priorism in moral epistemology. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2021 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/moral-epistemology-a-priori/
Feldman, F., & Mackie, J. L. (1979). Ethics: Inventing right and wrong. The Philosophical Review, 88(1), 134. https://doi.org/10.2307/2184791
Hume, D. (1994). An enquiry concerning the principles of morals (pp. 23156). University of Notre Dame Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvpj759p.5
Joyce, R. (2022). Moral anti-realism. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/moral-anti-realism/
McGilvary, E. B., & Moore, G. E. (1904). Principia ethica. The Philosophical Review, 13(3), 351. https://doi.org/10.2307/2176289
Sayre-McCord, G. (2023a). Metaethics. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/metaethics/
Sayre-McCord, G. (2023b). Moral realism. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2023 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/moral-realism/
Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The big three of morality (autonomy, community, divinity) and the big three explanations of suffering. In A. M. Brandt & P. Rozin (Eds.), Morality and health (pp. 119169). Taylor & Francis/Routledge.
Stratton-Lake, P. (2020). Intuitionism in ethics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/intuitionism-ethics/
Thomson, J. J. (1976). Killing, letting die, and the trolley problem. The Monist, 59(2), 204217. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27902416
van Roojen, M. (2024). Moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/moral-cognitivism/
Comments (65)
This seems true, and the basis of most moral debates.
Quoting Showmee
I think this is going to ruffle feathers. Plenty here who are very sharp, well-read thinkers will balk at this, despite it being obvious from s 3p perspective. It almost always boils down to "Here's a proposition. If you disagree, i cannot understand your moral position". This is well captured by most non-cognitive theories. Very uncomfrotable for those deeply tied to their emotional reactions.
Quoting Showmee
IN fairness, even in light of your observations (which i largely can get on with) this is the only available way to talk about morality - testing intuitions. Principles wont/don't do despite kicking and screaming cognitivists. The 'principle' boils down to the above in every case I've ever seen. Carlo Alvaro has a paper about the 'incoherence of moral relativism'. It may be the worst paper i've ever read and I cannot understand how it was published - and this, largely, because of the two elements I've outlined here being ignored.
Quoting Showmee
I think you're overdoing it. If the above observations (yours or mine) are right, then this is a non-interesting point to make. non-cognitivism doesn't require destructive arguments, other than comparatively. The arguments themselves are constructive, and obviously account for things like moral disagreement better than cognitivism. I also think this leapfrogs the problem. If there are to be moral 'facts' there must be a way to ascertain them. There isn't. So even if cognitivism about morality were, somehow, from a 'nowhere' view, correct, we couldn't actually argue for it as best I can tell.
I agree we shouldn't overreach, but we are more than welcome to reject clearly untenable positions. All i think taking a non-cognitive approach to morality does is dispel the need to explore failing theories.
But I do think we should all only have tentative moral positions, because of the above (which is not meant to be prescriptive, I just can't think of a better phrasing).
Answer me this: what is the nature of the "meta" in metaethics?
Morality/ethics doesn't strike me as a particularly exciting area. For now I see all our ideas of right and wrong as contingent; historical, cultural, and emotional in origin. So I suppose Im a relativist, and I think most of our moral positions are grounded in sentiment not a transcendent source.
But we can cobble together a kind of quasi-objective morality if we agree on a shared subjective aim, say, the minimisation of suffering. Once that aim is chosen, we can evaluate actions against it. But the foundation remains chosen, not discovered.
Beyond that, Im not especially concerned. Morality is, to me, a conversation that a society has with itself. We can trace where that evolving conversation has led, on questions like womens rights, LGBTQ+ equality, the status of slavery, or capital punishment. These are negotiated over time, producing cultural consensus, always knowing that complete agreement is unlikely, if not impossible. And we can also go backwards - as we have seen.
The standard comeback always seems to be: "If you're a relativist, then you can't be against murdering babies." But in reality, most relativists arent murdering babies. That argument is a bit of a strawman. Yes, historically and across cultures, infanticide has at times been accepted. But as a social species, we determine right and wrong through the practices we choose to support or reject. Personally, Im good with being against baby murder. Moral relativism isn't the same thing as moral indifference, it means recognising that our judgments are grounded in human values not objective absolutes. A relativist can condemn baby killing from within multiple moral frameworks, each based upon different ethical commitments. The search for the one absolute foundational "this is wrong" seems futile.
Meta is a prefix derived from the ancient Greek word ????, which literally means after. In philosophical and broader academic contexts, however, it typically signifies an approach to a subject that emphasizes on reflection, transcendence, or taking a broader and often more abstract perspective. I mean you can understand it by taking a look at how it is used in the following examples: metanalysis, metaphysics, metalogic etc.
So in this case specifically, ethics is the field concerning the normative nature of ethical propositions, whereas metaethics sort of "takes a step back" and asks more fundamental and essential questions pertaining to the ontology and epistemology of ethics.
Now, if Ive learned one thing from philosophy, its to restrain myself from making belief-changing judgments before thoroughly exploring all the available information. While I, too, intuitively feel that moral propositions are artificially constructed and mind-dependent, it's still an interesting question to ask whether it might be the case that these principles possess the same degree of self-evidence and absolute certainty as logical or mathematical statements.
I mean, is it really possible to imagine a world where people kill whenever they feel like itand genuinely regard this as morally acceptable? Or is the concept of justice truly contingent, when it just feels inherently wrong for one of two equally qualified candidates to be chosen solely because she is a good friend of the selector?
Quoting AmadeusD
I think there are actually plenty of problems that challenge the soundness of non-cognitivism. One of the most well-known objections is the FregeGeach problem. If moral statements like "stealing is wrong" are indeed senseless or not truth-apt propositions, then how is it that we can still use them in semantically appropriate contexts where they serve as components of valid logical inferences? For instance, it makes perfect semantic sense to say:
Stealing is wrong,
and Johnny is stealing,
So Johnny is doing something wrong.
We know that for a conclusion to be valid, its premises must also be truth. But if we assume that "stealing is wrong" is not even a truth-apt statement, why does the conclusion still seem logically valid in the above argument? On the other hand, if we treat moral propositions as mere expressions of emotion, it wouldnt make for a valid argument to say something like:
Boo to stealing!
Johnny is stealing,
So Johnny is doing something wrong.
Here is a nice quote from the book Ethical Intutionism to further elaborate the problem:
This is just word use. It's not an argument for cognitivism. It just shows us that its logically possible that an objective ethic could exist. Practically, though, there is no reason to think this, on my view. I have never seen an argument that even starts the car. They all stop at "sentences make sense, and we can have sentences that proclaim moral fact". That's simply not an argument for the state of affairs in the claim.
Quoting Showmee
This isn't worth answering, in this context. It makes sense because words are designed to fit together, where they have coherence. It's also coherent to say
unicorns exist
Dan is a Unicorn
Therefore, Dan exists.
But that's totally confused as should be obvious. This is also true in your example, given that "is wrong" means nothing as a bare assertion, on my view.
Quoting Showmee
No. But it would make entire sense to say
Boo! Johnny is stealing (notice there must be a speaker here - this isn't a bare argument of logic anymore)
Johnny is stealing.
Therefore i think Johnny is doing something wrong.
This is actually, on my view, the 'correct' way to make moral claims, given our lack of any reason to think there's something objective about that final statement. We just don't have a logical framework to ascertain any moral facts. Given that "fact", it seems fruitless to pretend we still have them.
But notice that claim isn't moral anymore. The non-cognitivist has not made any claim they cannot empirically support, which has no moral weight ("I believe this Unicorn is not Johnny" would be the same). I enjoy Heumer, but this is probably his least interesting area.
No, it doesn't, unless he's reading the same meaning into both uses of 'right'. In which case, non-cognitivism goes through. This just as inane as any other argument of the kind, unfortunately.
Sure.
Quoting Showmee
Well, those feelings, as you put it, dont come out of nowhere. We are a social species who are raised to believe in the common good and right and wrong. So, we are primed for morality from the very start of life. Its hardly surprising that we have built ethical scaffolding all around us. But youll note, over a century ago a woman with a job, for instance, was considered deviant and wrong. This was a feeling also. Today (unless youre in some unsophisticated or uber religious part of the world), the idea of women with jobs is not seen as a moral problem. Humans make decisions based on frameworks and values and these are intrenched in our culture and language.
The premise of gender equality is that all humans must be treated equally. From there, it is easy to construct the argument for feminism:
All humans must be treated equally.
Women are humans.
Therefore, women ought to be treated equally.
The problem with ancient or traditional moral systems is that our ancestors did not recognize the second premise as true. In essence, they regarded women as sub-human. As a character played by Jack Nicholson once quipped, when asked how he writes women: I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.
I lay all this out to highlight that the first premise is more fundamentalan invariant moral principle that transcends both historical periods and cultural boundaries. It is precisely these kinds of foundational moral statements that I find most compelling.
Quoting Showmee
So yes, one can imagine a society where women are treated as inferior and everyone believes this to be just (such societies have indeed existed). But to reject the fundamental proposition that all humans must be treated equallywhile simultaneously acknowledging that minorities are fully humanseems less conceivable.
I would say that is good enough. When it comes to the normative "nature" of ethics, where does your thesis take us? You step back from normative entanglements, and this is a reductive step, meaning analysis is released from the normativity that issues from ideas and principles laid out everyday ethical issues, for these are suspended so as to get to more basic thinking, that is, thinking that is presupposed by those normal familiar matters of normativity. "Meta" is disclosed, as you say, as a stepping back from the familiar, and I am saying this moves is toward what is presupposed by the familiar, so to discover this, one has ask, what is presupposed in ethics? What IS it that is IN ethical normativity such that were it to be removed, ethicality itself would be removed?
This is the question that takes one to metaethics. Looking toward the constitutive essence of something, what makes it what it IS, turns one away from the incidental (much in the way Kant turned away from instantiations of logic in ordinary language, to discover what made logic in ordinary affairs what it IS), or the "accidental" as they used to say, and move toward the essential, and this takes all analyses into metaphysics: What is in an ethical matter that, were it removed, the ethicality would vanish? Value. Value is the essence of ethics and aesthetics (see Wittgenstein, late in the Tractatus. He was right about this). No value, no ethics.
So what is value?
I would say that a value is a prescriptive idea that makes its possessor believe everyone else ought to approve of and adopt it.
I see where you are coming from.
I dont treat any of the premises as fundamental theyre all contingent. For example, if I caught someone invading my home, I might respond with force, possibly even lethally, depending on the circumstances.
I think a common flaw here would be assuming that treating all people equally is anything more than a demonstration of a particular framework of values, one that happens to be embedded in contemporary Western culture. But its part of a broader conversation, and that discussion is about who gets to count as a citizen with rights. Yes, cis women. But what about trans women? Some people dont even recognise them as such.
And such advocacy of extended citizenship and solidarity, to use Rortys term, sits within a framework of cultural and linguistic practices. It is not something found outside of us as humans. We make agreements about values and develop practices, and these become embedded and sometimes appear to be immutable, but they are not.
But saying it's prescription and approval still begs the question, meaning it has presuppositional underpinnings, meaning you haven't yet reached the 'meta' of metaethics: What IS it that is the ground for prescription or approval? The thing that were it to be removed from the equation, ethicality itself would be removed. One can prescribe how to build a toaster, but this is not an ethical context, and so prescription cannot be the essence of ethics. One can approve of a sofa, but this will be based on descriptive contingencies of good and bad sofas. Certainly, ethical matters DO involve implicit prescription and approval/disapproval, as with the typical frustrations: should I return your ax to you if you demand it full of murderous intent? If you metaethically ground this on approval and prescription, you are bound to the general features of these, found in ethical and non ethical cases alike, and thereby ignore what gives the matter its very ethicality.
The question here is not about valueS. It is about value as such.
Moral principles that are universal?? Universal, meaning inviolable, apodictic as modus ponens. What could you possible have in mind? Remember, language itself is not this. This is why once post modern culture gets a hold of anything, it is open to ruin in the "play" of contingency. Gods become mere grist for the mill of irony, metaphor, exaggeration. Ask the masters of these, Monty Python, what it is they could never mock, deride, insult, deflate, and they will tell there is nothing that cannot be undone, for, I am saying, to speak AT ALL is to place what is spoken in the vast potentialities of possibilities of language and culture. This is, essentially, why Wittgenstein would not speak of ethics. Once philosophers get a hold of it, it falls into the analytic whim of possibilities, for philosophy is in its nature annihilative (see Simon Critchley's Little, Less, Nothing). And this is because language possesses it own annihilative possibilities. You leave a concept like 'truth' to be construed in terms of what propositions are and can do, and you are simply asking to be refuted.
But then, place an episodically suffering child at the feet of John Cleese, and he will respond with the greatest urgency! No questions, no irony, no judgment. What does this tell you about the "meta" of metaethics?
I think treating all people equally is, as you say, only contingently viable, as one can imagine all sorts of ways to make strong cases for not doing so. You know, it depends! It is impossible to conceive of moral entanglements to iron out in logical perfection. Even logic doesn't iron out like this (this sentence is false. And ask, while logic seems it cannot be gainsaid, how about the language that is used as the medium of its expression? Is this not historical and contingent?).
You and Rorty are right, but I think not entirely. Rorty also argues for solidarity. See what Simon Critchley says about Rorty in "Deconstruction and Pragmatism - is Derrida a Private Ironist or a Public Libera!?": "A liberal ironist, someone who is committed to social justice and appalled by cruelty, but who recognizes that there is no metaphysical foundation to her concern for justice." Thus, Rorty is going to argue that being kind to one another does not need religion to back it up, for it is built into, and inevitable in, a pragmatic social evolvement.
But I say Rorty misses the point, and the point is genuine metaethics that is both foundation of ethics, and is transcendental: ethics as such transcends reduction to what can be said about ethics. Rorty's failing lies in his commitment to propositional truth, that is, truth is what sentences have, not the world. But this truth is derivative OF the world, and thus, the world has to be understood inits ethical dimension, not in the finitude of language.
Indeed. And I have to say, contradictions and endless regress dont often worry me much.
Quoting Astrophel
Yes, Ive found Rorty, in as much as I can follow his thinking, compelling on this point. But probably because intuitively I have come to similar conclusion. While he may have his limitations, as a non-philosopher, I leave that to the academics and theory geeks to sort out.
Quoting Astrophel
Not sure I follow your wording. Are you saying that Rorty is too caught up in language to see that ethics comes from a deeper, more fundamental source, something beyond what we can put into words? Or something like that? Could you restate it more simply? I think weve tried to explore this notion of the transcendenal before, but we might be too far apart to get anywhere with it. As a non-philosopher, I take some responsibility for that. I am assuming you take the transcendental to mean something similar to Husserl's notion of the conditions of consciousness that make morality and meaning possible?
Quoting Tom Storm
Restate it more simply? It's not really an argument. It is something that is there, and has always been there, but is ignored. Two questions; no three, though one is essentially the same as another: What is the essence of the good and the bad? And, what makes the world knowable, which is the same as the question, what IS the world? You will find John Mackie, whose Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong is all over the OP, has no serious appreciation for questions like this, because analytic philosophy doesn't talk about ethics, epistemology and ontology at the basic level, the level that belong exclusively to philosophy. Anglo-American philosophy students are left with an education in philosophy that does not touch the most essentially philosophical questions in existence.
The good and the bad: what IS this? How are knowledge claims about the world actually about the world? What IS the world? If you are looking for some clarity about this notion of the transcendent, you will find these questions to be the source of it all.
I wasnt saying you made an argument. Your writing was just opaque to me, so I was trying to get you to express it more clearly, particulary for those who don't necessarily share your background.
Quoting Astrophel
Id say the world is not 'knowable'. We can live. do and make things, but when it comes to 'knowable,' I'm not sure what that even means. I don't think our human truths map onto some eternal reality.
Quoting Astrophel
That's frequently observed by the Continentals, but my background is 1) not in philosophy, and 2) neither Anglo nor American. And I get that philosophy is vast and there are differing approaches that are like oil and water to each other.
Quoting Astrophel
Well, as I wrote earlier, for me, theyre not so much about the world itself; theyre about our relationship with experience, and its contingent; connected to consciousness, language, and culture. But feel free to say more about this. Are you more interested in exploring these questions further, or would you prefer to leave it?
I'm not a phenomenologist, but for Husserl, for instance (and this is a reductive account) I understand the term transcendental refers to the conditions within consciousness that make moral experience and meaning possible. However, it seems later phenomenologists, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty somewhat were at odds with Husserls notion of the transcendental, arguing instead that meaning and ethics arise from our embodied, situated existence in the world rather than from a detached, pure consciousness model.
Is this where you are suggesting we look?
One difficulty that jumped out to me is that, despite ending with the quote from Socrates, Greek ethics is not addressed. Neither is traditional Christian ethics, nor are the ethical philosophies of Islamic thinkers or any points further East. Instead, the analysis is of modern Anglo-empiricist thought, going as far back as Hume.
Hence, any judgement about realism is only going to apply to narrow stretch or thought. More importantly, it's a stretch of thought that shares epistemic and ethical presuppositions that are challenged in other traditions. Of course, ethics is very broad, do this might not be as big of an issue depending on the audience.
For instance, we might find it pretty strange that no one noticed Hume's Guillotine across millennia of thought, until we realize that the Guillotine itself requires certain assumptions to work (assumptions that arguably beg the question re anti-realism). Given any robust notion of final causality, that status of the Guillotine is far less clear, but of course Hume himself is dealing with an extremely deflated notion of causation to begin with, because that's the tradition he inherited. Yet it's a tradition based on presuppositions we might be liable to doubt today.
Just for an quick example, the idea that ethics is about some sort of sui generis "moral good," a sheer "thou shalt" of duty (without reference to desire and what is "truly desirable" or "best for us") is product of Reformation theology (beginning with late medieval volanturism and nominalism). It's alien to earlier Western ethics and to a great deal of contemporary ethics that doesn't follow the analytic tradition.
So, anti-realism here would tend to mean a blanket denial of value tout court. There is no good or bad, period. But this seems difficult to maintain.
From another post:
Here is the rest of the post: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/971888
Of course, someone from the modern Anglo-empiricist tradition might try to claim that ethics is properly only about a sui generis "moral good." Fair enough. But then they have to justify this distinction and explain what makes the "moral good" unique and discreet. Yet this tends to be extremely difficult to impossible (as your post helps to indicate ). Indeed, the reason the anti-realist in the modern tradition has such a strong case is precisely because this notion of a unique "moral good."
Just consider what it would mean to deny values if we weren't separating off a sort of discrete "moral value." If practical reasoning (about good and bad) is not distinct from moral reasoning (about good and evil) and we deny practical reason, then we are denying that truth can ever be truly "better" than falsity, that good faith argument is better than bad faith argument, that invalid argument and obfuscation of this is ever worse than clear, valid argument, etc. Having taken away all values, argument, the search for truth, etc. seems to boil down to "whatever gets me whatever it happens to be that I currently desire."
It also seems that this would make us infallible as to what is truly best for us, as "truly best," or "better" just mean "I currently prefer." Hence, things would change their practical value as we changed our minds about what we prefer. For instance, extra tequilas shot for us late at night would be good when we were feeling no pain and desired them, and then the self-same event would become "bad" when we woke up hung over in the morning. Arguably, this destroys reason as a whole, not just practical, but theoretical and aesthetic as well.
Also as I've written before re virtue ethics:
It's worth noting here that forms of virtue ethics predominate not just in the West (Pagan and Christian), but also in the East (Islam, India, China, etc.) despite getting short shrift in many analytic treatments.
Now that's just bringing in another perspective, one I happen to be partial to. If you're interested, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue is one classical case for this sort of idea that is fairly recent and engages with the tradition you mentioned. Something to note here is that these theorists tend to agree with the case for error theory and various anti-realisms, but claim that the starting presuppositions that result in these conclusions are wrong. They also tend to point out that the open endedness identified by Moore holds for theoretical and aesthetic reason as well, and follows points made by Plato and those following him re the transcendence, and thus "defenselessness" of reason.
Well, consider that:
- It is bad for human beings to be lit on fire; and
- It is bad for a bear to have its leg mangled in a bear trap
...are both statements about value, facts about what is bad for something, and yet neither is prescriptive. The prescriptive could be seen as derivative of such facts, since clearly we will prefer the better to the worse and want to achieve better ends and avoid worse ones.
All that said, I found it a pretty decent read. I have more to ask and discuss but for the mean time I have a couple of reading suggestions.
1) Bernard Williams, 'Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy'
2) Ian McGilchrist, 'The Matter With Things' - something I have just started reading.
Note: I am also reading Shelly Kegan's 'Answering Moral Skepticism' and paying particular attention to his views against non-cognitivism.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think it is unfair to claim that these cases are facts that can be discovered through empirical sciences. While they strike us as merely descriptive propositions, there are implicit value prescriptions in the presumption of each case. For example, let us take the case that 'it is bad for the fox to have its leg mangled in a trap.' The truly descriptive proposition is 'having its leg mangled in a trap decreases the fox's probability of survival.' To say that this is 'bad' for the fox presumes that survival is something worth pursuing. The same presumption about the value of survival is present in the case of 'it is bad for people to be kidnapped, tortured and enslaved,' because these conditions increase the likelihood of death. So if one is to claim these as facts, then one must first accept certain presumed values, such as that survival is worth pursuing. Therefore, to merely use the words "good" or "bad" is to presume that they are meaningful terms and that they refer to some definition. Even in philosophical discussions, when we say an argument is "bad", what we really want to say is that this argument does not meet the criteria of logical coherence, which is already something we think worth pursuing (I will expand a bit on this later).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think you can just assume that there are things that are choice-worthy, and by observing that empirical sciences can be used as a tool to direct us towards these "things," conclude that empirical sciences discover moral facts. I'm not saying that these choice-worthy things are purely subjective. Take survival, for instance: it is something deemed worth pursuing by all humans, if not all animals. But just because we have the intuition and desire to survive does not mean "one must pursue survival" is a fact.
So I think the reasoning:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
is not valid on the ground that P1 is not true (at least without first examining the implicit value prescription i.e. avoid pain is good), and thus cannot be used to construct a valid argument.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I see no problem with saying that the entirety of philosophy is based on the assumption that truth is worth pursuing (if I had to). The fact that the pursuit of truth is a subjective desire has no bearing on the validity of a persons arguments. Ultimately, pursuing truth could just be simply an activity people choose to engage in, regardless of its deeper meaning. I take the same view with respect to morality: if morality is something inherent to human nature, then I will practice it (which I do, just fyi). But that does not automatically make morality a fact, and to claim that it is already presupposes that truth is worth pursuing. Therefore, I believe one can practice morality without regarding it as objective truth, just as one can practice philosophy without viewing it as objectively superior.
Quoting Astrophel
Could you elaborate on the "basic level" you are referring to, I am really curious about it.
Quoting Astrophel
I think this is a misunderstanding. From previous conversations with Tom, I used the word "universal" not to mean necessary in a logical sense, but to indicate that it is objective, namely something that is shared by all humans.
Quoting Showmee
Quoting Astrophel
Im not sure if youre adopting the stance of the early Wittgenstein, but one thing I dont understand is whether hes smuggling in a kind of metaphysical realism about subjects that transcend language and logic. When he says ethics is nonsensicalwhich, by his picture theory, means it cannot be represented within the space of possible states of affairswhat is he really trying to show? Do they exist or not exist or cannot be known?
This is highly variable and context-dependent, though. That's why it's clear 'facts' aren't in the area to me. All of these types of statements are obviously no invariant, or universal. Then or now.
I see this has been gone over, though. Just want to add that something being admittedly "bad" is not a good reason to not do it as far as justifications go.
A bit much, below. Got carried away.
That's the rub, isn't it. Someone like Simon Critchley has read everything and yet talks like a nihilist in league with Rorty, who would say he is not a nihilist at all. He thinks nihilism is born out of a lot of ancient thinking that has reached its end, along with philosophy itself. But then take someone like John Caputo, who has also read everything and he comes out swinging for a metaphysical religious affirmatio, and he takes Derrida as a closet metaphysician. I think one emerges from all this thinking with a bent towards what one already IS coming into it. I, for one, learned analytic thinking long before I had every read Heidegger of Husserl, and it left me entirely disillusioned. Gettier problems? Really? This is what epistemologists think about, and not the foundational relationship that is the ground for knowing? Quine? Ryle? Brilliant thinkers, and reading them inspires admiration, but they do not affirm metaphysics as even "existing" and one is left with arguments without meaning, or arguments whose meaning has no meaning, and they would applaud this (Wittgensteinian) characterization because they are all philosophical nihilists, and they are this way because, I argue, analytic philosophy is inherently negative, and they cannot see the apriority of existence as such, the necessity that our existence IS which is not derivative, not discursively achieved even though "discovered" in language. What IS our existence? It sounds at once vague and outside of reasonable thought, but this is because existence is taken as an abstraction, just as a term like being of reality: Just empty concepts, a nothing, which is not a category and so categorical errors cannot be said of it because it stands against no other concepts: a radical existential indeterminacy; but this kind of thinking is completely misled by a fundamental "categorical" error itself, that arises simply out of a failure to observe what lies befor one's waking analytic eyes-- two things: first, this indeterminacy IS our existence, and it is where philosophy meets the pavement, so to speak. it is where philosophy belongs in the affirmative effort to bring to light the world as it IS. The world is most emphatically NOT an argument in its ground, but is entirely alien to everydayness, into which we are "thrown". You mentioned Husserl's infamous epoche. This is the method of discovery that is at the heart of phenomenological thought, yet see how it is derided by analytic thinkers, mostly because these are smart people who are relatively affectively and intuitively vacuous, and, like Dennett, treat philosophy as if it were an empirical science. Second, it is never nothing, but is saturated with meaning, that is, value. Value permeates existence.
So having said this, consider that all of this thinking will eventually come to a single insight: that propositi0onal truth has no intrinsic value, and yet to seek at all is value driven, meaning one is excited, fascinated, longing for, seeking, needing, desiring, wondering, about the nature of happiness and horror, and THIS is what is the first impulse that drives philosophy; yet truth is defined in terms of propositional truth, which meets excitement, wonder and this whole affective dimension of our existence that is poised for consummation (you know, the desideratum and the ideatum, the ground of religion) with a concept of what this is all about that is sterile and existentially deflated. As far as I am concerned, analytic philosophers are just a bunch of pathological post Kantians, who have entirely lost the sense of what it is to be human (yes, of course, there are exceptions), thinking the Truth lies in a truth table, an argument, and well drawn up theses. At heart, logicians. Might as well be mathematicians.
So if you've read this far, then I guess I should answer your question, Where does one look? See Heidegger's Time. Look closely at this thinking (which has a history, of course, beginning with Augustine's Confessions" bk 11). You say you are not a philosopher, well neither am I. I first picked Being and Time when I was 57. See Division 2, Section 64 or so, and onward. Fascinating to read, but the point I would make is that for Heidegger, one's existence IS Time: the coming to be of the "having been" in a dynamic present which is (should be) our freedom that is essentially forward looking (for the sake of) A liner and sequential concept of time he calls "vulgar" and he can't be anything but right about this analysis, for no one modality of time can be conceived apart from the others. Try it, and you'll see that Time really is a UNITY, and its modalities are only ontically conceivable, meaning in general affairs time is divided, but go deeper and divisions self destruct. So what does this have to do with transcendence? What is it that literally constitutes one's existence? It is the "having been" of one's life, and the more distended the present moment, that is, the more the past of an occurrent present sits as an established foundation for interpretative possibilities, the more entrenched in ontic (everyday) time one is, the more "solidly" one exists (I am arguing about Heidegger's position), according to Heidegger, and you can see how this finitizes what a person IS: It makes our existence essentially historical, but here Heidegger is a bit like Kant, isn't he?: on the onehand, if you are committed to an analysis of human existence that ignores non-historical possibilities, you delimit our essence to language and culture (the very thing Kierkegaard calls inherited sin), while structural descriptions belong to ontology, a narrowly appreciated body of ideas; but on the other hand, if you see that Heidegger's finitude possesses these threshold features, as those found with Time, that insist that there is a dimension to our existence that is entirely "other" than this historical finitude (the past), then you open a door for metaphysicians like me (needless to say, my thinking is derivative: Michel Henry, Jean Luc Marion, Jean Luc Nancy, Emanuel Levinas--all, here and there, a tough read, indeed).
But now remove Heidegger and the rest, and just conceive the existence you are in. You do Husserl's epoche (this epoche is a METHOD, not just and idea. It needs to be practiced, like a Buddhist practices meditation, not merely argued), and all you know about the world is suspended. Everything, save the purity of presence itself (the Buddhist's ideal: nirvana). To do this, you need to erase Heidegger's self, and all of those historical "having beens" of your world are marginalized, and you no longer have an identity at all. This is, for me, where transcendence begins: to perceive the world that has been rigorously liberated from Heidegger's "the they" (the finite totality of what can possibly be meaningful for a person and her languge and culture) altogether, yet not leaving it at all, for without the they, agency itself is lost. Sounds paradoxical, but it isn't.
Quoting Astrophel
Yes, I think that's fair. Philosophy reflects one's disposition.
Quoting Astrophel
Im reminded of theologian and philosopher David Bentley Hart who writes that when consciousness is freed from ego, distraction, and fragmentation, it encounters reality as inherently good and radiant. Bliss isnt something added to existence, it is woven into its nature. Hart often stresses that the fact anything exists rather than nothing presents us with a kind of metaphysical astonishment, something so basic we usually miss the strangeness of it. Are you sympathetic to this, or is it straying too far into a specific religious mystical tradition?
Quoting Astrophel
I take it this is at the heart of your thinking - this and the notion that whatever is transcendent is found in the immediate experince of being - that which seeks, wonders, hopes, dreams, desires...
Quoting Astrophel
This could also be said to be heading toward mysticism and non-dualism, with the notion that the self (understood misleadingly as a product of culture, language, and upbringing) can be stripped of conceptual overlays and ego to realize true freedom. Or at least a new starting point. What is the next step, I wonder?
What do you think your understanding says about morality?
Ask, what is the Good? Its essence: that without which it would cease being the Good? Without the Good or the Bad, ethics stops being what it is, and I would say this is critical, not so much if you are Mill or Bentham or Kant who talk about right actions and how to find them, but for you putting together an ontology of ethics. This ontology is presupposed by philosophers, but sorely neglected. The question, says Dietrich von Hildebrand, is about importance itself. And see Max Scheler 's Formalism in Ethics and Non Formal Ethics and Value where he criticizes Kant's complete absence of qualitative content. He says ethics "could have only empirical and inductive validity" with Kant because he ties value to use and purpose, and ignores the central question: What IS the Good that is presupposed in a good chair or a good plan for the future? Good knives are sharp, but for Macbeth, a sharp knife could be dangerous to a player on the stage, so what IS a good knife given that so many different contexts exist that could redefine what good is? It is no one thing, that's what, and so Kant rejects qualities because they are variable. But Scheler wants to tell us valueS vary, but value as such is like logic, and by abstracting from the incidentals of normal affairs to discover its essence, one sees structure in logic, but with value the difference is momentous: value as such is IN the palpable world's feels and manifest qualities, and is not the mere "form" of things. Value is IN the world (notwithstanding Wittgenstein's Tractatus), and its "importance" defines our existence AS metaphysically important.
So what is value as such? Put a lighted match to your finger a second or so. Now you know. But this is not propositional knowledge, meaning its identity is not bound up with other language, but issues forth fromthe world. Ask what a bank teller is, and one's answer will go on eternally, for what a bank teller IS refers to other words, and their accounts, and these refer/defer to others yet. This is what beingS are "made of". Literally made of language, for ask what anything IS, and it will be language that responds. (This is a theme of post modern thinkers like Blanchot and Beckett and Levinas and Derrida, et al). But ask what is bad about your injured finger, and conversation really has no place. One could talk about it, of course, the intensity, position, cause, and so on, but this does not speak at all as to what pain IS. If something is there, but cannot be spoken, both! then you have encountered metaphysics. This si why analytic philosophers will not discuss metaethics properly: they will not concede to a metaphysical metaethics. This is Mackie's brilliant error in his error theory: metaethics IS the apodictic ground of all ethical issues; it is just that its discovery and essence is noncognitive. He treats ethics in that book only as something that philosophers can talk about, and his opposition consists of thinking of ethics the way one would answer the question about the essence of a bank teller (above).
Of course, epistemology and ontology are equally enigmatic. And what is ethics if not a knowledge claim? And what is ethics if not what it IS? Metaphysics is not some impossible beyond. It is the impossible beyond that subsumes finitude. There are no divisions.
First, those examples don't rely on the goodness of survival per se. Presumably, even people who want to die don't want to be tortured and to undergo gratuitous suffering (leaving aside that people also don't generally want to die unless there is some other evil they consider worse than death, which they hope to avoid through death, or some good they hope to attain through their death, e.g. self-sacrifice.) We don't have to "assume" suffering is bad. Experiencing it is enough. But I also don't see how you get around simply assuming it isn't bad. Why preference one assumption over the other?
It seems pretty obvious that being maimed and extreme suffering is, at least ceteris paribus, bad for animals. I can think of few things more obvious, and aside from being "common sense," it's also something confirmed by medicine, veterinary science, zoology, psychology, etc. And it's certainly something known empirically, i.e., through the senses. One experiences suffering, and learns to recognize suffering in others (men and beasts), and, ceteris paribus, it is bad to suffer, no?
I am not sure if you avoid begging the question here in assuming that it is "unfair" to call these facts. Prima facie, they appear to be facts. That is, it seems like one of your initial premises in calling these "unfair" is: "there are no facts about values, so even facts that seem obvious, such as 'it is bad for school children to have lead dumped in their lunches,' (i.e. things virtually every competent adult recognizes and acts as if they were true) are not *really* facts [I]because[/I] they involve value judgements. Indeed, you make this question begging explicit below:
First, this wouldn't make it invalid, but rather unsound.
But this isn't really so much a counter argument against the obviousness of the factual status of at least some value claims, so much as it is simply assuming axiomatically that these examples could not constitute facts because they are value claims (because there are not facts about values), or that they must face some arbitrarily high standard of evidence to be justified, which would of course be assuming the very thing in question. That is: "anti-realism re values is true because anti-realism re values is true."
Prima facie, "gratuitous suffering is bad for us" seems as obvious as, "water is wet," and your response is akin to: "you cannot just assume that water is wet." But we're not assuming, we've experienced water and suffering. We're talking about things where almost everyone says it is so, and essentially everyone acts as if it is so. The burden of proof then, should go in the opposite direction, just as it would for the person who denies that the external world or other people exist. In which case, what is the positive case for: "even ceteris paribus, it isn't true that being burnt alive is bad for men, dogs, etc. Rather, everyone (including the dogs, who try to avoid burning) has simply been deceived by an illusion?"
Yet just consider this: knowing what every competent adult, or even healthy children (even toddlers), know about man, allows them to know that absolutely no one is going to want you to slam their hand in a door repeatedly until all their bones are broken. That seems to be a rather obvious connection between what man is and what he thinks is good for him. And then we might consider the question: "do we really think man is so wholly ignorant about what is good for him that even these very obvious judgements are actually illusory?"
Lastly, you might consider that being committed to such a rejection of values means rejecting a great deal of medicine, psychology, economics, etc. as not actually dealing with facts. Indeed, even the more theoretical sciences are still firmly grounded in value judgements, because they rest on standards of "good" evidence, "good" faith, and a preference for truth over falsity.
Is your claim that nothing is more or less choiceworthy or that it is impossible for us to ever know what is more or less choiceworthy? Doesn't that strike you as an extremely radical claim? No one ever knows what is better or worse for them (because nothing is really better or worse for them?)? Medicine can never inform us as to what is truly better or worse for us? Focusing on "survival" is a red herring. The point is merely that man can discover things about what is choiceworthy.
If man cannot discover what is choiceworthy, what exactly is the point of philosophy? Surely it could not possibly help us to live better were this true, as we could never discover what is to be preferred.
So even if you have good arguments here, it cannot possibly be "better" for me to agree with you here, right? One should only agree with you if they just so happen to prefer to agree with you. Otherwise, there is no reason to prefer truth over falsity. It's an arbitrary preference.
If that's the case, then validity is only tangentially relevant. A "good argument" is just whatever argument gets you what you currently want. It might be valid, it might not be. There are actually no facts about what is better or worse, so we should just pursue whatever feels best.
Are there facts about what we will prefer to have chosen in the future though? It seems there are. Do these facts seem to tie to human nature, medicine, the sciences, etc? They certainly seem to. Hence, the denial of facts about what is better or worse actually seems to be itself arbitrary. It can be a fact that smoking will give me lung disease, and that I will greatly dislike having chosen to smoke, and a fact that, ceteris paribus, lung disease makes people claim to be unhappy, and yet there will be no fact of the matter as to whether this choice was truly better or worse for me? That's an odd proposition, and I'm not sure how it is maintained without simply assuming that there aren't *real* facts about values.
This is, to say the least, problematic, and also prima facie hard to believe.
You might also consider that the anti-realists' game can be successfully duplicated with truth as easily as goodness. "Prove, without any appeal to truth, and without assuming truth exists, that anything is really true." It will prove extremely difficult. Yet that's hardly an argument against truth. It could just as well be taken as a reductio in favor of it, because its denial leads to absurdity (and continual backdoor moves to bring it back in disguise).
Religion as such is just the metaphysics of affectivity, value, ethics, aesthetics, the good, the bad. What it is that makes importance important, the residuum of a long reduction that cancels language impositions on interpretations of existence. Good metaphysics, what is there, not language but in the world, and because it is there apodictically, of certainty (putting aside the way language philosophers and logicians can undermine certainty. They are right! And if it were a matter of anything else, I'm afraid it would thrown to contingency and relativism. For a look at how value is NOT like this, see Max Scheler's refutation of Kant in his Formalism in Ethics and Nonformalism in Value and Ethics): the knife wound that penetrates the liver causes pain that is inherently ethical: the pain as such should not exist, and this is not a contingent "should not" as if it were about contextually grounded do's and don't's of driving or child care. It has no context; all it has to be is itself, and this has its evidential ground in the reduction: remove all that would claim to say what the prime facie ethical injunction against shoving daggers into kidneys IS, and what remains is a nonlinguistic (non cognitive) pure phenomenon. Here one has discovered the metaphysics of metaethics. As well as the metaphysical ground for religion itself, for religion IS metaethics at the rock bottom level of analysis.
Quoting Tom Storm
Let's say it is not straying, but is yielding. But yielding to what? An intuition, the res ingrata among analytic philosophers because it suggests non propositional knowledge, and so has no formal justification that can be made public and argued about. Just as the soul is absent from conversation, as it should be, simply because of its connotative density, like love: try to talk about the metaphysics of love, and you are instantly surrounded. I read a bit of Hart to know what you are talking about, and I do agree the way you put it, meaning I len toward approval. And if discovery is a matter of revelation, that is, acknowledging the "inherently good and radiant" IN the preacknowledged world, then those who do not see this are left out, and this is the problem, for cognitive mentalities dominate philosophy, not affective ones, and to make the way through to affirmation, one has to make an "objective" argument, one that doesn't draw upon what some have only, but is rather universal, as universal as modus ponens. This requires philosophical disillusionment, which is why I stand with difficult reads like Michel Henry, because there already exists a body of thought that massively disillusions, phenomenology. Still, I cannot understand why the likes of Critchley and Rorty remain metaphysical nihilists, while someone like Hart, profoundly well read, makes the Kierkegaardian "movement" of affirmation. I guess the distance between us is too great.
But I do find Hart affirming what I affirm. He is a mystic (keeping in mind that Russell once called Wittgenstein a mystic)....with an argument!
Quoting Tom Storm
Cognition as such has NO value. What puzzles me entirely is the failure to see simple things, like: We are thrown into a world, a culture, language, existence, and we are tortured, not to put too fine a point on it. Some are thrown into Perilaus' Brazen Bull, others choke on their prime rib, far few died quietly in their sleep, historically, at any rate. To understand this, one has to identify with suffering, not merely wave it off in ironic dismissiveness, and suffering has be brought before Husserl's epoche to divest it of intruding discussions that mask its essence, that is, acknowledging suffering in contexts that undo its pure meaning, which is why I invite inquirers to stick their hand in boiling water and the like. Read Mackie's great book (really well done, helpful for seeing what is both right and wrong about analytic thinking), Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, which is ALL about this grand distraction away from the actuality of the world. Anyway, there you are, about to be burned alive at the stake: NOW you know, and are about to know with a magnitude of certainty that makes logic seen ridiculous. the gravitas of the human condition. It lies here, not in some idiot thesis about the nonobjectivity of ethics. Just how nonobjective IS the Malum of being burned alive? Interesting question. On the other side, the bliss of Hart and Buddhists and Hindus: is this so far fetched? Listen to Ravel's Mother Goose Suite, number 2: Petit Poucet. Absolutely sublime, otherworldly. Or his Le Tombeau de Couperin, Menuet ("à la mémoire de Jean Dreyfus"). This is an intimation of immortality, to borrow Wordsworth's words. Philosophers argue only. They do not yield enough to listen, understand, because this is mostly not publishable.
Quoting Tom Storm
What is next is Michel Henry's Essence of Manifestation. It is unfortunate that this thought is buried in Fichte, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, but it rests on a foundational premise that ALL existence that has ever been received, every iota, is received in consciousness, and the two cannot be parted no matter what. And consciousness is NOT a mirror. It is an event, impossible to see "outside" this event. As I see it, the next step is understanding that one's individual consciousness is not a localized event only, though. Take Kant's noumena: infinite, but Kant was wrong to think this metaphysical True Reality could stand apart from anything. Phenomena ARE noumena, and noumena are phenomena. This is where this goes. The world is metaphysics, AS WELL AS physics. This cup on the table is something else entirely, and this something else is there in one's midst, waiting to be acknowledged.
Many things seem certain ways, but when you press, they aren't that way.
This, for instance, entirely begs the question of what 'bad' is, and how to put things in that box. It presumes plenty of things. This might be taken as some kind of entire scepticism, but it's really not - there are no facts about good and bad. Just intersubjective agreements. And these regularly butt into each other. There is also the fact that most people have a 'bad for me' and a different 'bad for you' set of beliefs. The murder, if tortured, isn't undergoing something 'bad' even though it is 'bad' for them.
This should be fairly clear now, that 'obviousness' isn't a good way to run this particular issue's arguments. Unless we want to invoke either relativity, or emotivism (both seems reasonable to me). But i take it those making this argument are wanting to escape them.
This may be part of the reason I was never much fascinated by philosophy. Arguments don't excite me much, and the experience of living teaches us enough, if we pay attention.
Quoting Astrophel
I think it's dispositional. As much as I find Hart fascinating and intelligent, I find his beliefs to be cloying and unsatisfying. The notion of the metaphysical God of classical theism doesn't engage me. When it comes to beliefs, like the people we love, we cant help what were attracted to.
Quoting Astrophel
Are you suggesting idealism?
Quoting Astrophel
Our inner experience is the ground of reality. On this point, from what little Ive gleaned, I see no reason to disagree. Its easy to argue that modern life reduces everything to consumerism, surface values, and the grey managerial-technocratic lens through which most Western governments operate. But Im curious: what practical steps might this way of thinking actually lead to? Life is more than sitting in a room reading and pondering ineffables. What does one do?
Odd things you say, I think. Are their facts about logical principles? Is it a fact the sun shines today, when it does?
Not having read all said here, how is it that pain as such is not bad? Just asking how you get by on this. Note that even in the variations of the way pain is acknowledged, the matter is not about how agreements differ, but of the pain as it IS in privately experienced, as only pain can be. This question is logically PRIOR to anything that can occur in Intersubjective agreement, for such agreement begs the question, agreement about what? Then the matter has to be made public for others to agree, and agreement simply means there is shared content, but it being shared begs the same question, what is shared? and agreement rests with whether or not one's descriptive account aligns with others, for if it does not, others can disagree: disagree that, say, cigars are disgusting. And so there is variable accounts to cigars being disgusting or not, undermining any attempt universalize the status of cigars taste, but note, what does one do with MY disgust for cigars? Is it therefore tossed into indetermiancy? Because there is nothing at all indeterminate about my getting nauseous; but then. what makes being nausea bad? Perhaps another enjoys it. Could be. But this says nothing about my experience. We don't agree on how nausea stands vis a vis desirability, but so what? My end stands unrefuted, because the bad is as clear as day, more clear than the principle of the excluded middle or De Morgan's theorem. It locality doesn't enter into it, nor does agreement.
Agreed. In principle the possibility of there being an underlying objective morality is neither here nor there as we would likely never come to realise it fully. If you really think about it if you reduce all moral dilemmas into formulaic structures then you are not doing anything moral, merely you are calculating the 'good' in any given action.
Quoting Showmee
I am not really sure we can really think about ethics in terms of a kind of Knowledge. Certainly, knowledge can alter our ethical stance in this or that situation but at the end of the day the choice remains a burden on us not on some formula we use to avoid responsibility for the actions we take.
This is primarily where I see the meaning of Ethics being rooted in conscious authorship, in claiming responsibility for actions, rather than absconding from such by relying only on a logical map. That said, what makes this harder to appreciate is just how logical knowledge can influence how we shape our decisions.
Note: Newtonian Mechanics works perfectly well when applied to certain scenarios. It is not a defunct method of calculating.
Quoting Showmee
Well, not really. This is like saying neither Newton nor Einstein explained what gravity is fundamentally. It seems to me that infinite reductionism is not particularly handy when it comes to broadening our understanding of the human condition. This is something Ian McGilchrist articulates well in his work.
[quote=Count Timothy von Icarus;1000392]But I also dont see how you get around simply assuming it isnt bad. Why preference one assumption over the other?
It seems pretty obvious that being maimed and extreme suffering is, at least ceteris paribus, bad for animals.[/quote]
I think that when suffering occurs, our direct conscious experience is pain, which is immediately followed by a strong desire to avoid that pain. Or perhaps we could give ethics its own category of mental state. But if one identifies such desire (or ethical mental state) with the term bad, then the syllogism you previously provided would take the following form:
P1. I want to avoid the effects of burning (i.e., burning is not choice-worthy).
P2. If I throw myself into the fire, I shall burn.
C. Therefore, I dont want to throw myself into the fire.
But by defining bad in this way, one is essentially equating moral terms with desires or emotions. That leads to non-cognitivisma position that comes with many of its own issues.
Tracing this back to the source of the problem: you suggest there are some moral facts that can be empirically discovered, such as x is bad. I think its now a good time to ask what we mean by a fact. Perhaps this is the real point of contentionmaybe we dont share the same understanding of the term. For me, a fact is an aspect of the world, and statements that reflect facts must be descriptive in nature. The key word here is descriptivethat is, concerned with how the world is. So if we are to give morality the status of facthood, then a clear metaphysical and epistemological account must be provided.
To be clear, I dont want to reduce all facts to physicalismthat seems a bit reckless. After all, the ontology of conscious states seems different from that of biochemical processes. But when you mention medicine, veterinary science, zoology, psychology, etc., these are all disciplines that deal with the physical aspects of the world. These empirical sciences do not lose their predictive powertheir dealing-with-facthoodif one rejects ethics or value as you mentioned.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Even if I deny that taking vitamin B is good for me is a moral fact, vitamin B doesnt stop helping to form red blood cells. Note how the latter part about vitamin B is solely descriptive. This points back to the original question posed by my essay: how do we define morality and moral terms, and what properties do they have (i.e. real or unreal)? This is the most fundamental questionone that must be addressed before we can meaningfully interpret, evaluate, or debate any moral propositions.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is interesting. I think my starting point for anything is logic, and I assume that nothing exists until it is proven. Are you taking a phenomenological stance, beginning instead with consciousness?
For me, "water is wet" is a perception of mind (what Locke calls a secondary quality). While the existence of such mental state may be a factual statement (i.e. "the feeling that water is wet exists as an idea in my mind"), the content is not necessarily so (i.e. "wetness is a real property of water"). Perhaps similarly in ethics, when we proclaim "x is bad", badness is not an inherent aspect of the world. But all these, again, follow from my understanding of the term "fact," maybe it helps to put out your view on this.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think the distinction between two dualisms must be made clear here: objectivity vs. subjectivity, and mind-dependent vs. mind-independent. Things can be mind-dependent without being subjective. Instincts, for example, are mind-dependent, but they are also shared among all humans. So the preference for truth over falsity is not merely an arbitrary choice, but an objective tendency rooted in our shared cognitive nature. It may be arbitrary in a metaphysical sensethere is no necessity that the universe values truthbut this is not the case in a social or cultural sense, where the preference for truth is stable, widespread, and normatively reinforced.
Just think how and why the following two statements differ:
i) Regular exercise is good for me
ii) Regular exercise helps prevent various diseases, aids in maintaining body weight, and increases serotonin levels in the brain.
To say that both sentences are true means to make the following conclusion:
C: preventing various diseases, aiding in maintaining body weight, and increasing serotonin levels in the brain are good for me
But why is this the case? Does that mean "preventing various diseases...increasing serotonin levels" is the very definition of "goodness"? If not, don't we need to keep substituting "preventing various diseases...increasing serotonin levels" with other terms until hopefully an eventual fundamental definition can be found.
This is why I don't want to right away treat these "obvious" cases as facts or true right away. I think they deserve further and prior investigationi.e. subtitling termsuntil we have a clear definition (e.g. maximum happiness is good). Then we may proceed to examine morality more carefully.
It is partially because I didn't had the time to thoroughly go over non-cognitivism and intuitionism. But you can see "the road to error theory" as a stream of reductio ad absurdum. Here is the roadmap:
i) we establishing realism vs anti-realism as a binary system
ii) by rejecting realism, we are left with anti-realism
iii) anti-realism includes 2 views: noncognitivism and error theory
iv) noncognitivism not well supported, so it is diched
v) So the final conclusion on ethics is any anti-realism that is not non-cognitive
vi) The only such view is error theory in this context
vii) Therefore error theory is the least refutable position (not THE position).
I guess you may disagree with iv)?
Let's start here. I don't see how you're getting that. If some emotions are sensations are, ceteris paribus, bad, how does it follow that anything that is bad must only involve those emotions and sensations?
What's the actual argument that this follows.
P1. Pain is bad.
P2. ???
C: All value reduces to pain and sentiment.
Sure, and many are. I think Aristotle is a fine place to start, but you could look at Boethius, Dante, or even much Eastern thought for good examples. There is a very robust metaphysics of goodness in the Aristotlian, Neoplatonic, Christian, and Islamic traditions. Millbank's Social Theory and Theology is pretty good on how the tradition you are advocating itself emerged from a very particular theological position, as well as the need for liberalism to privatize most questions of value (this was originally justified as pragmatic bracketing, but was later absolutized into a metaphysical denial of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty).
But I think the tendency in Anglo-empiricist thought towards simply begging the question is floating about here too. You say "descriptive" as if saying something is descriptive somehow suggests that it doesn't relate to value. That is only true if one has already accepted that there aren't truths/facts about value. Saying facts are about "how the world is," and then expecting this to somehow make the case for anti-realism only works if you already assume anti-realism is true. Otherwise, there are simply facts about what is good or bad for different creatures (which, prima facie, seems to have strong support). In what way is stomping on an infant, or a any baby mammal, obviously not bad for it? That seems to be a hard case to make.
If someone broke into your house, stole all you owned, and tortured you, would you accept: "there is no possible way to prove that anything I did was bad for you," as a response? Sure, you can appeal to such acts as violating norms or laws. But why have norms and laws if nothing is good or bad for anyone?
Yes.
Quoting Astrophel
Pain 'as such' is simply a sensation. There is no moral valence without human deliberative judgement going on. PLenty of examples, but one I gave elsewhere was the pain I put my body through each morning to achieve a better body. I enjoy this (mostly).
Quoting Astrophel
I agree. But we all agree about pain without a moral claim. When moral claims come in, we start having to 'make points'.
Quoting Astrophel
Perhaps. But it is not about good or bad. It is quite hard to see that you've tried to tie them together here, even, beyond hte initial (lets call it incredulous) question.
Quoting Astrophel
Descriptions (though, it may be more 'accurate' to say 'sense of sensation' which is awkward, but hopefully makes the point hehe). Then we intersubjectively agree that our descriptions match. That is what we then label pain. Again, no moral claim to be made (though, i understand most will want to make one here if asked).
Quoting Astrophel
And that is all that constitutes 'pain' to a human. Otherwise, we wouldn't know what to call it when we feel pain. Again, 'obviousness' is a truly terrible line to take here.
Quoting Astrophel
This is just patently false, and supported by nothing that you've said. I'm unsure what to do with that... You have an emotional reaction to cigars. That's up to you. That doesn't make it 'bad'. I can think it's bad that you don't like cigars, if I were disposed to. I don't, though. It would have been more interesting to bring forth the question whether you think your disgust is bad or not. But in every one of these cases, it is just your personal thoughts involved and nothing more. There is no fact other than about your reaction or disposition depending on how you approach it - and these are empirical, post-hoc considerations. They tell us nothing.
Are you sure it's the pain you're enjoying, and not the feeling that the pain is doing you good?
Wouldn't you enjoy your workout more if there was no pain? Because if so, one might argue that the workout is good but the pain is bad, and the workout would be even better without the pain.
No, it wouldn't be better. I would have no reason to expect a positive outcome, as to my goals.
It is the pain i enjoy. I am also an old-school self-harmer. I enjoyed the pain.
Your first reference at the end is a link to the stanford article about meta-ethical constructivism, but you don't actually talk about it in the essay as far as I can tell.
You could categorise constructivism in the same bracket as error theory, i.e. anti-realist but cognitivist, but it does come at the whole issue from another direction.
Error theory would say moral statements are meant to be truth-apt (cognitivism), but can't be objectively true because they cannot be found in the world (anti-realism), coming to the somewhat unsatisfying conclusion that all moral claims are false.
Constructivism kindof bypasses the whole issue by allowing moral claims to be true eventhough they aren't "objectively" true... because they are conventionally true. For a constructivist "killing is wrong" means "it is true that in this community of people it is agreed upon that killing is wrong". It isn't objectively true, but it isn't just a matter of individual subjective opinion either...
As someone partial to constructivism, this whole exercise of categorising ethical theories in categories of realism/anti-realism, cognitivism/non-cognitivism and relativism/absolutism seems fundamentally misguided, and it is probably one of the reasons why the whole field seems so problematic.
So while our current understanding of morality seems absent of naturalistic causes presently it need not be so in the future.
As for branches of Emotivism we see no denial of morality only a reframing of what is actually going on. It explains the subjective nature of 'good' and 'bad' and it is reasonable that communities will come to common understandings of what is good on an evolutionary trajectory too.
Pain without a moral claim: change this to pain without a moral dimension or possibility, and now you have a contradiction. Claims can be made or not, and they are often complicated, but what it is for something to BE pain at all, that is, IN the analytic unpacking of the term, carries in it the moral possibility, and since it is impossible to conceive of pain without agency, any pain at all is a moral actuality, putting aside the ambiguity of what pain IS in entanglements and involvements, for pain, it has to be kept in mind, as a concept is an abstraction from actuality.
Quoting AmadeusD
That does cut to the chase. You see, we are not talking about different things, but the same things. I bring up an assault on the kidney with a spear, and we are not descriptively at odds, that is, I say it hurts and you say I'm sure it does, and we share a common understanding of what this all about. And when I say that there is a prime facie injunction prohibiting committing such a thing, you likely will still agree that there is, and for good reason. And further, when language like saying, "the pain in question is awful, dreadful, can't imagine," comes into play, you will not disagree, I don't think. And even if I say it is a moral outrage that this was done out of purely cruel intent, I am guessing you will agree as well, seeing that this kind of talk is in the everyday language of our culture, and has nothing to do with the ontology of pain as a philosophical issue; we talk like this all the time.
Where we come to a disagreement is when analysis moves to the existential core of that which all the fuss is being made about: the "badness" of the pain. An awkward term, but so what. You take issue with pain as bad as such, for surely you are not objecting to calling pain bad, because this is so common, too often to mention. No, it is the "as such" that seems to be at issue. It would be the claim that, when someone is in the throes of agony, and you ask, How bad is it? she screams bloody murder in your face for asking such a silly question. You are saying, with Mackie, that yes, you understand all of this, but in a very special analytic of pain, a philosophical analytic, the term "bad" has no place at all, for it carries with it a moral dimension that cannot be evidentially grounded in actual conditions like screaming agony ( I am assuming you are willing to allow there to be screaming agony). But what is evidentially absent from the agony, which is so profoundly manifest? This IS the question. If you think it is a fact that the sun is shining when it truly is, and it shining is not just an intersubjective agreement, but an actuality; but you think being in agony is not bad when it truly is agony, then this calls for an inquiry as to what separates the two. I think you want to regard the agony just what you would regard the sun shining: a simple fact with no additional moral essence, for, if I understand you right, you think there are no such things as moral essences, and when we use this term, it is simply classificatory for things that are intersubjectively "taken as" good and bad. Facts are facts, and moral affairs are really just facts, called moral affairs in preanalytical contexts
But are moral events no more than mere factual events like the sun shining? Is it that to be in agony has no distinguishing features not found in facts like dinner being ready or moon light being reflected sun light or this cup being larger than a thimble? I think here you would have to say they are equal in what they ARE. I mean, obviously it is things like agony that make something moral what it is, and this is different from distances and comparative sizes, but the "distinguishing features" I have in mind have to do with how facts are what they ARE, and moral facts being what they are. When you isolate the agony from "straight factuality," or, say, reduce factuality of an agonizing affair down to where the agony itself presents itself, to see if there is a residuum of something not merely factual, I do believe you are bound to agree that there is, and to ignore this is like ignoring the broad side of a barn.
This is to me quite clear. Call them moral facts, if you like: Moral facts are qualitatively distinct from "mere" facts.
Simple, really: facts have no value dimension. What is this value dimension? The good and the bad.
Quoting AmadeusD
But most want to make judgments in what Mackie calls a first order moral view. The issue here is a second order moral view: the ontology of morals. We may intersubjectively agree that, yes, there is agony, and we have a good idea what it is. But what happened to the second order analysis? The "essence" of agony?
Sense of sensation? Well, in one classificatory designation, this is true, for this amazing Hagan Dasz certainly is a sensation, just as a tickle or an itch. But calling something a sensation binds it to a deflationary account, one that deals with non value issues. This makes for an error in category for this discussion.
Quoting AmadeusD
Just to be clear, you did say agreement is all that constitutes pain?; "otherwise, we wouldn't know what to call it when we feel pain."?? Only true if the language conditions of agreement constituted the essence of agony (our current example). So, are you saying screaming agony in its essence is entirely exhaustible in the analysis of what is SAID about it?
Quoting AmadeusD
It stands unrefuted because it stands unrefutable, and this is because the essence of ethics is not a proposition.
OTOH, Heidegger's Being and Time must be read. Just saying. It is frankly profound and opens the door to all later Heidegger, and post Heideggerian/neo Husserlian responses. Not just arguments.
Quoting Tom Storm
Not that I am going to go out and read all of his works, but I suspect the ground of his thinking goes much deeper this classical theism. Someone like Karl Rahner, a Heideggerian Jesuit priest (weird as it sounds), takes ALL of the beliefs, rituals, hymns, sacraments, and so on, to be cognitively empty: "...so always let our statements also fall into that inconceivability of God that remains silent." This goes for Christ the redeemer and son of God, the trinity, original sin, and so on. None of these are "true" but stand in "analogous" relation to the radically Other of divinity. Now, this kind of thinking exceeds something Heidegger would allow, for any analogy one can imagine for H is conceived out of the totality of ontic-historical possibilities, that is, familiar language and culture wrought out of historical settings, and cannot be conceived beyond this (though, his gelassenheit in A Conversation on a Country Path makes reference to Eckhart, and Eckhart's great virtue lies in the absence, mostly, of Biblical references. His was a mystical exegesis). Anyway, I would have to read him further.
Reading Husserl's Ideas after Heidegger made AMNY things clear that were frustratingly confused about the world. The world was not the world anymore.
Quoting Tom Storm
Not really. The world is disclosed IN "idea" but clearly clouds and cups and cell phones are not ideas. They ARE, and they're there. The term "idea" muddles the issue for me, notwithstanding Husserl.
Are there things that are not possessed by our comprehension? Of course; but one would have to leave disclosure to encounter them, and since this would be leaving comprehension as well, then there is nothing to talk about. You can see why Rorty thought Heidegger so important: talk about other things only makes sense in sense making contexts. But, and this is most extraordinary to my thinking, What do we do with Being as such, thta strange, alien experience of not being at home, a "nothing" that doesn't "show" itself, but only apprears as an uncanniness of all things. I say, this is the self's projection of its existence on to things encountered. This cup I am familiar with in all the usual ways, but ask me if it is real, and you are asking a very different kind of question, for how does one discover its reality, given that "all the usual ways" say nothing about this? Heidegger makes his pivotal move on the verb 'to be' (see the youtube interview with William Richardson), but he retains the need to include the otherworldliness of our existence. I side with Husserl on this, but it is a very long story.
Quoting Tom Storm
My take is, it depends on the ineffables you are pondering, and, when is pondering not pondering, but "listening". What IS divinity? This means putting time itself aside, sequential time such that one sees cups and hills and fence posts, and there is no past to make into a future in the process of one's existing? How is it possible to acknowledge what is not language if language is presupposed in acknowledging? But this matter really is not an argument in the usual sense. Phenomenology begins with description of the phenomenological "world" that is presupposed by ordinary existence, and the former is not the familiar world, and so one has to make the move to phenomenological discovery, but what this IS depends on the individual. Some find this the philosophical medium of religious affirmation, while others like Heidegger, see it as an analysis of the finitude of our being (though Heidegger said he never really left the church).
I think very highly of Emily Dickinson, her life, attitude, and her daring threshold poetry. When asked why she was such a recluse, she said for her, just being here is enough. I know exactly what she meant. No greater adventure.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but this seems a perfect "non-sense" paragraph. It says nothing to me at all. What I can respond to is the bolded. There are plenty of scenarios without this, like random bodily malfunction or pain from sources unknown. The facts are that there is pain. That's all. The person can then react how they react and that has a moral dimension to it, i suppose (though, realistically, if the person isn't affecting anyone else there's an argument that's till not a moral dimension).
Does much pain have a moral aspect? Yep. But its not in the pain. Other than these comments, I do not think the above says much that can be talked about. The point I made, and i still make, is that pain is a sensation which we can all agree is "x" when described adequately. It involves (or need not involve) any claim to good bad, moral immoral or anything of the kind. Causing pain would fall into your bucket, at any time.
Quoting Astrophel
You seem to have now moved into the causing pain discussion. Unfair play, but I agree with your points. They say nothing for the above, though.
Quoting Astrophel
That is precisely what I am saying. Some kind of pain can be bad. "Pain" is just a thing that can obtain. It isn't moral. It is just is. I cannot see that you're addressing this beyond trying to curtail the discussion into human reactions to pain - but even there, you're on shaky ground as plenty of pain is not considered bad.
Quoting Astrophel
You are very, very much not talking about the right things here. Pain isn't agential. It has no moral valence (take this, just for now). "she" being in pain is bad, because I dislike seeing people in pain (usually). The pain itself is the cause of her behaviour which is bad, to me (awkward wording, but yeah). The pain, itself, is bad to her in this instance. There will have been plenty of pains she did not consider bad in her past. You cannot design scenarios which are emotionally bad and claim we are talking about 'pain'. We are not. We are talking about human reactions to pain, as above noted. If you feel these cannot be extricated, so be it. I do, and I cannot see why not.
Quoting Astrophel
This is not the question. You're talking about agony - a human emotion - not pain, a physical sensation presumably felt by all sufficiently ccomplex conscious entities.
Quoting Astrophel
As above, exactly not what is being said. Please take heed.
Quoting Astrophel
This is precisely what labeling things good and bad is. It isn't referring to any higher order reasoning, it doesn't draw on some objective measure, it simply tells me what you think. You've done quite a bit of it here, without giving me anything more than exactly that.
Quoting Astrophel
This seems totally senseless. Facts are facts. "moral affairs" doesn't really mean anything. Morality is literally the dispositions of humans about facts (including what to do about them). You haven't presented anything to the contrary.
Quoting Astrophel
They don't even obtain, so no (on my view. They aren't even distinct from nonsense.
Quoting Astrophel
Again, you are not talking about pain. You are talking about agony. They are without doubt different things which come apart. I cannot understand most of what you're saying because of this confusion.
Quoting Astrophel
The irony is quite strong here, and I am having an extremely hard time not quipping becuase of how intensely obviously, from line one, the reverse of this was. You have made the category error, and consistently interchanged "agony" for "pain". Agony is pain with a negative moral valence. You have baked in a winning argument, but about somehting I am not talking.
Quoting Astrophel
Nope. I said agreement leads to us labeling pain. The agreement is about a description, which we can all recognize. It does not constitute anything but the narrative under the word 'pain' which (as clearly noted, and is not really in question) does not require any moral evaluation at all (beside, perhaps, mentioning that sometimes pain causes suffering, and sometimes it does not where suffering is clear a moral term). This, again, seems a total misunderstanding of what's going on both in this discussion and with "pain" in general. The reason I've used to the term "constitutes pain to a human" is because the word "pain" must be constituted by something, and its construction involves only that agreement aforementioned. I should have scare-quoted the word 'pain' there, but hopefully you now understand what you've missed: We wouldn't know how to use the word 'pain' or what to apply it to unless we had that agreement underling it. To be brutally clear: The use of the word pain, and what pain is are clearly different things which require different treatments in discussion. You have picked up two separate points and run them together - reasonable, as I was imprecise, but please understand it is not what was being said.
Quoting Astrophel
To some degree, but that's far less interesting and nuanced that what I'm getting at. Various descriptions of pain (not our reactions to it, but it - stinging, dull, major, minor, niggling and them comparisons with other sensations (too hot, v just hot enough)) can be amalgamated to represent a category of sensation which includes much variation, but generally speaking (with grey areas) distinguishes it from other sensations. Is it the case that these sensations have a tendency to cause certain reactions in us? Yep. And those reactions are moral. The pain (inarguably, now) is not the same and (almost inarguably) is not liable to those same considerations without adding the reactions.
Quoting Astrophel
If this is your position, I cannot understand why you're here doing this, or the vast majority of what you've said in this reply. It is, as best I can tell, patently, obviously and demonstrably (as I feel I have done) wrong. "the bad" is nothing more than something you think everyone else agrees on, apparently. They don't and there is no criteria for "the bad". Even if there were, "pain" would not be liable to it's confines. So, yeah. I shall leave htis here given that response.
Quoting Astrophel
Nice. I wish more people felt similarly - we wouldn't have a world ruined by tourism. A crass interpretation of her words but there it is...
Quoting Astrophel
I'm sure of that. Hart is an insatiable reader (which seems to match his seemingly insatiable intake of food). What is he missing, I wonder?
Quoting Astrophel
Yes, you're not the only person to suggest this. I doubt I'd be able to get a useful reading of Heidegger, even if I could endure the dense and technical language. I simply don't have the passion or ability to pursue such literature.
Quoting Astrophel
The finitude of human life occurred to me when I was a child, and a sense of its evanescence has never really left me.
Not wanting to start anything crass, but on the subject of moral clarity, what do you make of Heidegger's interest in Nazism - did his philosophy not assist him is seeing this clearly?
Thanks again.
When we pursue truth, we typically mean aspects of the world that exist independently of the mind. By independent, I mean it is possible for their truthfulness to be perceivable from a third-person perspective apart from human consciousness. Of course, it seems implausible to access anything that is absolutely independent, but generally, the more mind-independent something is, the more true it seems to be. Yet values, prima facie, appear to be completely mind-dependentespecially ethics, whose existence seems to rely heavily on the presence of agency and consciousness.
Now, I dont think adopting a descriptive definition of fact necessarily entails moral antirealism. One could, for instance, ground normative beliefs in naturalistic explanations, such as evolutionary ethics. Alternatively, one might appeal to a Platonic Form of the Good, treating ethics as an objectively existing idea. Perhaps even if-theism (if I may call it that) could offer a foundation for ethics.
These are all forms of moral realism that could, in principle, be successfulif adequately defended. However, each faces significant challenges: naturalism confronts Moores Open Question Argument, Platonism must account for its obscure metaphysics and epistemology, and I havent yet explored moral intuitionism in depth, so I cant speak to it with confidence. But perhaps that is your positionor at least one you sympathize with.
So, when you say that stomping on a baby is bad, do you mean that this is so obviously and intuitively true that it makes no sense to further analyze the sentence? And with what level of certainty are you proclaiming it, that of logic or physics?
This definition requires certain metaphysical assumptions. It's worth noting that the classical definition of truth is something like: "the adequacy of the intellect to being," which doesn't suggest anything about "mind independence." Quite the opposite. So, to return to my original comment, it seems like the assumptions of Anglo-empiricist philosophy, which is a pretty small silo, are just being assumed as absolute here.
I said it was bad for the baby. But look, most people would say they know at least something about what is good or bad for them. Are they all completely wrong, delusional? If man can be this fundamentally delusional, how can you be sure you and the one tradition you're raising up has it right? For one, it seems to me that you cannot possibly know that it is good for you to prefer this tradition. It surely cannot be "better" than Eastern thought, Aristotleianism, etc., since nothing is truly better or worse. So, what exactly is the point of arguing over which illusion is "better?"
And yes, I think "things can be better or worse for us," is as obvious as, "things can be true or false," and that denying it is absurd. Again, show me how you show that there is truth, without assuming truth. I don't think you can. Does that mean truth doesn't exist? I am not sure if that's a fair demand, and it seems to be the same sort of maneuver being used on goodness here.
Or consider the extreme eliminativist when they say: "prove to me that anyone is conscious, instead of their bodies simply producing behavioral outputs, all while keeping to [I]my[/I] standards of 'empiricism.'" I think it's obvious that, if the extreme eliminativist/behavioralist is granted their epistemic presuppositions, it will prove quite impossible to "prove anyone or anything is conscious." But surely that doesn't mean they have just proved we don't exist, it simply proves that their starting point results in absurdity. Yet value is an intrinsic part of consciousness, and so I think a denial of value is not unlike this case. It one's starting points lead to absurdities like: "I am not conscious," or "nothing is ever better or worse for me," they are bad starting points.
There is also a parallel to radical skepticism here, where, despite many people pronouncing that "nothing is better or worse," absolutely none of them act like they actually believe this is truejust as radical skeptics don't actually act like they cannot know that walking off a precipice would lead to their falling. Both still take the road to where they want to go. The skeptic doesn't randomly select a road, "because I cannot know where any lead," and the skeptic re values doesn't randomly select a road on the assumption that ending up in one place cannot be better or worse than any other. People are incapable of living with the courage of their convictions vis-á-vis these ideas.
This is also wholly consistent with the idea that the senses 'inform' the intellect in this regard, such that one cannot simply choose "one's own" truth or values. Indeed, if we could choose such things, if, as Milton's Satan puts it, the "mind can make a Heaven of Hell or a Hell of Heaven," or as Hamlet says "nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so," then the obvious solution to cancer, AIDS, war, hunger, etc. would just be to choose to think of them as great goods. Problem solved.
Isnt gravity defined as a force of attraction between masses in Newtonian physics, and the curvature of space-time in general relativity? Why is it not defined?
Naturalism and emotivism also have their own problems.
Against naturalism:
Quoting Showmee
Against emotivism:
Quoting Showmee
Additionally, another problem with ethical naturalism is its non-deterministic nature. In any natural science, the laws or theories established are deterministic. The effects of gravity, for example, will always be measured regardless of the number of trials. However, not everyone adheres to ethics, and theres always a significant number of people doing immoral things. The predictive power of any ethical theory is not satisfactory. I guess you could say ethics is not measured in terms of behaviors but rather by a sense of approval. But a measurement of approval is far from empirical.
I think you are misunderstanding my point here. I am saying that Gravity is a placeholder for a phenomenon observed. As you noted there are two distinct ways of expressing how Gravity appears to us through two entirely different perspectives (Newton and Einstein).
What I am doing is equating this to the phenomenon of Ethics. There are differing view points that align in some way with what is observed (be this in language for ethics or phsyically for gravity).
Error Theory can then be taken to state that Gravity does not exist. All we know of are some perspectives that provide an illusion of Gravity being a thing, but really it is nothing.
Non-cognitivism does not have to necessarily dismiss the existence of Ethics it can simply reframe it, take an alternative perspective. If such a perspective functions better than the previous iterations of how we look at the phenomenon of ethics (as objective, subjective, mislabelled, etc.,.) then we are exploring and discovering more about the phenomenon at hand.
The basis upon which Error Theory rests comes under its own scrutiny. To look upon the logical basis of Error Theory as not-being-a-thing, meaning framed in idealised abstractions, show just as much the item under consideration to be in error as it does error theory itself. A metaphysical rug has been pulled out from beneath us and then its existence has been denied.
Well, not really. I was not arguing for naturalism anyway. Nothing is completely deterministic. The logical premises you use are abstractions-of and do not exist (hence what I say above). Logic only works within very specific bounds, and life easily overflows these bounds at every point of the rim of reality we know of.
It "seems" nonsense, but is it? You think like this because you don't understand ethics. Take the idea that it is impossible to conceive pain without agency. Think it through. Ask what it would be for searing pain to be without agency, so absent of perception, awareness; a bit like asking what lunar moon light would be without sun light: the former IS the latter, so they are conceptually bound (notwithstanding Quine's Two Dogmas, if you've read it), and so the matter is analytic. Pain IS a constitutive feature of a consciousness that experiences it, when it is experienced. So then, if there is pain, there is agency. What makes pain inherently moral? Well, this is what pain IS, that is, moral affairs are literally "made of" pain, in the broad sense.
It is not conceivable for there to be pain, and there being no moral issue. Note that this claim has no interest the way pain varies in the objects of its affections or the way pain and pleasure become entangled and ambiguous. These incidentals are suspended, just as Kant suspended all but logic to talk about pure reason. (Of course, he was deeply in the woods regarding ethics.) Such entanglements brings analysis to a hopeless mess, which is responsible for, partly, for philosophical talk to be lost in the contingencies of ethics, which is preanalytic (prephenomenological) and this confuses as to the "essence" of ethics, and so philosophy finds itself locked into the absurd thesis that there "really" are no "ethics" to ethics, borrowing from early Wittgensteins' no value to value (keeping in mind that as he wrote this he likely had a copy of Tolstoy's Gospels in Brief in his pocket. Russell called him a mystic, yet he, like Heidegger, was bound to a philosophy of finitude), and this the ground of your thinking. This thinking is mistaken: value is not "observed" in the usual way; it is apriori, yet existential! The good and the bad are indeed metaphysical ideas, but this is because the world is metaphysical; and metaphysics' centuries of imaginative theology must be suspended to see this.
You see, it is not true that, as you say, there is nothing to talk about. And calling pain a sensation is simply deflationary, and patently absurd. Certainly, all pains are sensations, but sensations often belong to non value contexts, as in references to sensory motor skills, or Kant's sensory intuitions, or in any a number of technical references, and it belongs to casual talk that has not made the transition into an analytical setting. Philosphy brings out what is undisclosed in such settings as it asks themost basic questions, like metaethical questions.
Quoting AmadeusD
But this is the rub of it all: You want to reduce the world to what "just is" and yet you dismiss what IS in doing so in an ad hoc attempt to bring the world to heel in a reduction to mundane clarity. What IS it that you are dismissing? The metaphysics of metaethics, for one.
That dagger in my kidney is NOT my reaction to pain. Such an odd locution.
And the discussion here has nothing to do with the way complex human affairs confuse analytic concepts, like the good and the bad. There IS NO "the good" or "the bad" defended here. This point is critical. No one here arguing as if there were some platonic form called the good. It is not arguing that there isn't such a thing either, for this I leave to "bad metaphysics" somethign Wittgenstein rightly wanted philosophy its busy hands off of. Mine is simply a very straight forward position: in the analysis, and I keep strong examples in play because they are the most telling, of any ethical matter at all (and I use ethics and morality interchangeably. I simply don't care about this in a metaethical discussion, and distinctions are about just this "busyness" referred to) one MUST find value, not to put too find a point on it. No value, no ethics. Ethics is analytically bound to value, and value is the good and the bad of things. This can be understood congingently, as with good chairs, good knives--referring other language to explain what these are; or metaethically, which deals with the ontology of ethics: what it IS qua being value. Comprehension remains finite, but discovery indeterminate--but authentic, and not dismissive merely. What I call good metaphysics lies with disclosure of what is there, yet indeterminate. This IS the world.
Quoting AmadeusD
Think of pain not as as a variable concept that accords with how people differ in their entanglements. It is an analytic concept, derived from apriori inquiry into the nature of pain. Analogous to Kant's reason as such: There is no such thing as pure reason that can be comprehended; it is rather an analytic concept only, meaning Kant can't tell you what things are in their essence, but he can give analysis of what is witnessed. The good is an analytic concept only; its meaning lies in there being IN the analysis of ethical matters, judgments, events, concretia, a transcendental element, witnessed but not understood in its ground (if there is one).
Disliking seeing people in pain goes to compassion and empathy. This is not on the table. Reactions to pain begs the question: what is pain at all?
Quoting AmadeusD
Agony is a human...what?" sorry, you took me aback. Are you saying that having my teeth drilled without novocain is an emotional experience? A seismic error in category.
Quoting AmadeusD
No. See the above. The good and the bad are not labels. Your misapprehensions rise out of invented issues, conceived by those who think too much about their own thinking, i.e., analytic philosophers. Higher order of reasoning, objective measures: these are terms discursively generated out of what you think the foundational analysis of ethics is. But you have a default critical mentality, likely conceived out of too much a nihilative thinking. Keep in mind that philosophy is mostly nihilative, in that it takes a thesis and tears it to shreds. This will get you published, NOT an analytic toward affirmation. All theses leads to aporia (see Derrida on this. Language is inherently self annihilating. But metaethics takes inquiry out of thetic delimitations because ethics is bound to value in an existential analytic, and value lies outside of language, is non cognitive.
Quoting AmadeusD
Don't get lost in the ambiguity of a term. Facts--what is a fact? One doesn't want to posit something that is not a fact, or rather, justified in the positing. Facts depend on justification, unless you are in metaphysical la la land: no justification, no fact; so much for "facts are facts". Justifications are facts. Jutification is generally an objective matter, public, for all to see and think about, even if controversial, but when analysis gets technical, the public nature of justification is narrowed, and facts are narrowed. What is a moral fact? One can use this term like this in different contexts, but these are all preanalytic (preontological). What is a moral fact in the meta analysis? We do what scientists do: observe. Here is my friend wanting his ax back with rage and horrible intent, so it is HIS, and I should return it, yet clearly no good will come of it. Two conflicting obligations. A fact. Now we ask, like a scientist would ask, what IS it when the "parts" of this episode are laid bare? Like a geologist looking for quartz and felspar and mica, we look at what constitutes this matter, what makes it what it is. Essences for scientists are empirical and quantitative essences, and the analysis lies whatis always already there in the existing paradigms, but ethics is different: what is IN axes and murderous intent that gives pause to action? It is the harm that could be done. What IS harm? Here one stops in one's tracks: one has discovered something in the analytic that is IN the harm. It is not contingent harm, as in "this proposal could harm public image," for the harm of that could be done is not about other language that cold explain it. The harm is irreducible harm: the ax, breaking of bones, and so on, causes great suffering (agony, ofo you like), and the analytic of this lies in the term value (being an analytic term, and discovery being both true and right, yet indeterminate). You have discovered the essence of the whole affair. Were no suffering to be at stake, there would be no ethical dilemma. It would simply vanish. The "science" of this conclusion is unmistakable.
Now I have presented something "to the contrary" as you put it.
Quoting AmadeusD
So you think agony is interchangeable with pain. Look to usage. Note all contexts in which you find the term agony and its "moral valance" and replace this term adjectivally qualified 'pain'. Nothing changes, for screaming agony is not screaming horrible pain.
You are inventing an issue. There is none. Half baked, I think is the expression.
Quoting AmadeusD
"The use of the word pain, and what pain is are clearly different things." Puzzling, given what you've said. So what is pain, then? A sensation, you say. But see the above.
Quoting AmadeusD
Reactions are moral, and I see no reason to object with this. But here, this is a meta analysis of ethics, and reactions vary, but the pain does not, though it is indeterminate as are all things (the sun is an indeterminacy if you follow the ontological question down the rabbit hole long enough). You want to reduce morality to a "reaction" to pain, but reactions, the commendations, condemnations, approvals and disapprovals, the thumbs up or down, and the rest found in analytic thinking, are just ignoring foundational presence that makes morality what it is: pain. See the above: compare normal facts with moral "facts" and ask honetsly if there is no residua in the reductive comparison. Yours is a reductionist position, a deflationary position, following something irresponsibly said by Wittgenstein long ago.
Quoting AmadeusD
Patience. All is not said in a post. There is behind this much unsaid because you haven't read enough about it. I know you thinking pretty well, and it rather typifies the attempts to put clarity before actuality, thereby missing altogether what it means to be in a world, which is "really" what philosophy is about.
See above:" ....agony ISN"T interechangeable" it should read.
That's an interesting point. I wonder how far that sort of thing could be expanded, since there are similar moves made against truth and beauty.
Historically, the original Empiricists were skeptics. The idea was to work one's way towards skepticism as a way to achieve dispassion. Hume was aware of this tradition, but it's less clear that later thinkers in the modern tradition were. Ultimately though, it's unsurprising that the tradition tended towards skeptical conclusions re value, aesthetics, the authority of reason, knowledge, meaning, reference, etc., since that's what the original intent was.
The empiricist arguments that are used to radically redefine truth and knowledge, i.e., truth as coherence with whatever we just so happen to already accept as "true," or truth as merely the use of the term "true" in the context of games and systems, etc. (which are arguably equivocating on these terms and simply denying truth and knowledge) don't strike me as all that different from those that deny value in their general approach.
I suppose my rejoinder would be that, on the face of it, if an epistemology results in us rejecting all our most obvious beliefs (e.g. anti-realism re truth and value, eliminativism re consciousness, etc.), that's a good indication that the epistemology is defective. At the very least, if an argument leads to apparent absurdity, the first step is to check if it is valid, and then one checks of the premises hold up. But often, the idea is instead to build something like Kripke's "skeptical solutions," where instead we "learn to live," with the absurdities.
There are many reasons for this. The culture where this philosophy is strongest prizes idiosyncrasy, the counterintuitive, and novel, particular within academia. It's also politically expedient to privatize values in some contexts, or to render them illusory. But I think there is also a sort of conflation, intentional or not, between "empiricism" (in its more austere forms) and "the scientific method."
Given some commonly accepted starting points, I think it's quite possible to give a good argument for rejecting the reality of practically anything, making it a mere error. And we see this in philosophy, with eliminativism re causation, reference, meaning, languages, goodness, the knowing subject, consciousness, truth, metaphysics as a whole, the targets of scientific theories, discrete objects , biological species, sex, or even "reality" itself. Often, the alternative is "pragmatism" based on what is "useful," but then I find myself asking "useful for who?" and "truly useful, or only apparently so?" The latter question seems to be rendered unanswerable in some cases, depending on what is being denied.
I would hope that all philosophical positions are held with a healthy degree of scepticism rather than dogma. The whole point of philosophy, in particular, is to play with the questions rather than adhere to some universal maxim as far as I can see. That said, we all undoubtedly fall into one pit of obsession at one point or another and the ability to scramable out of such positions may require more scepticism than some people are happy to play with?
I see it all as lens and perspectives. The better an individual understanding across as many fields of interest as possible the less idealised they become, and the more open to looking at avenues others dismiss out of hand.
There is the old story of a Man coming home due to a mechanic not fixing his car properly and finding his wife cheating on him, then proceeding to commit murder. The reason for the murder can be viewed as being due to the mechanic, the cheating wife, the heart stopping, etc., with the overall point being NONE are incorrect yet NONE alone are the whole story.
Agreed. But, against the ancient skeptics (or at least most of them), I don't think it's a useful goal in itself. That is, apatheia and ataraxia, even if they are worthy goals (and I think they are only intermediate goals, rather than final ends), can be achieved better through other methods. In part, this is because it seems difficult to impossible to avoid becoming skeptical of that sort of all-encompassing skepticism.
It's a tricky business. Some, but of course not all, pronouncements of skepticismor of the need for or feasibility of, "bracketing"have their own sort of (often hidden) epistemic presumption (i.e. lack of humility) grounding them. "Value" is often relevant here. For example, supposing that we must bracket out all questions of value, of "the good life," how we "become good people," or "what is good for man," (i.e., that we must remain skeptical on these questions), while still being able to do political theory (i.e., that we can still make prescriptions for how society ought to be run) itself requires some implicit gnostic claims about the human good, value, etc. to make sense, and also gnostic claims about what others are capable of knowing. But these tend to get obscured by the appeal to skepticism. Yet obviously, we don't want to be making pronouncements about how society should be run from sheer ignorance (at least, I would think not).
Quoting AmadeusD
Please don't be embarrassed. I know you don't like to read things that take inquiry down to the very ground from which they come, and this leaves out altogether the "meta" of metaethics. It also takes the meta out of ontology and epistemology, and this makes the analytic tradition pretty much washed up, and this is simply because our existence, at the level of basic assumptions, IS indeterminate, and for philosophy simply to move along as if this were not the case makes it a vacuous enterprise.
Quoting AmadeusD
This is case in point: What if I asked you to "show" why it is that the "principle" of causality is, in its very nature, apodictic? This cup cannot move itself off the desk, and there is no stronger logical insistence imaginable, yet you are asked to give an exposition on why this is so, that capture in discursivity that which is makes it what it is. Of course, the request is nonsense, but why? Because prior to any account, what stands before inquiry is the essential givenness of the world, and this is where the problematic begins, for to "say" what this is, what is being explained has to be a language construct itself, but one "intuits" causality. One can of course, question the language that conceives causality, but not the unbreakable intuition.
Which brings me to reason your thinking cannot, or refuses to, grasp the same kind of simplcity in the logical bond between pain as such and ethics. Consider: it is literally impossible to reduce ethicality itself to what is itself not ethical in nature. The various ways we express regard for ethical matters, the yay or nay, the condemnation or approval, and so forth, entirely lack that which is play that makes the matter what it is, which is the pain itself. As I said: remove this value dimension of an ethical matter, a dimension that is revealed only in the content, and ethicality vanishes JUST LIKE THAT! And this is an analog to causality: remove the intuition of the apodicticity of the causal and causality vanishes. Even if one were to follow Leibniz's theory of a preestablished harmony, then it would be God investing causality with its coercive essence.
So the point is, when it comes of the basic assumptions of ethics, one encounters what will not be explained, and this is bad news for those who want nothing to do with metaphysics, because this yielding (gelassenheit) to the world IS the first order of philosophy: like a scientist, one has to observe first! Without this, philosophy becomes a self indulgent triviality.
Quoting AmadeusD
But then, not caring is not an argument, or really, anything at all. But it is a fascinating insight you're missing. Value (the general term for, well, the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to, as well as their affective counterparts) MUST have agency, and given that value is the essence of ethics (no value NO ethics--this has to be taken seriously if you want to understand metaethics. It is not about the judgments we make or the cultural institutions that inform them and the "relativity" this produces. It is about what makes for the very ethicality of ethics, its essence. This is where meta-questions go), agency is the essence of ethics. WE bring ethics into the world.
I can't even imagine a philosophical curiosity dismissing this. Of course, as with all things, one has to read into an understanding.
Quoting AmadeusD
But Amadeus, this is not an argument. Do better. This is a child's response.
Quoting AmadeusD
When I say it is deflationary, I am referring to the straw person argument that reclassifies something AS something else which is more tractable and agreeable to a particular view, thereby bypassing something problematic in the analysis. To me this is akin to what the church did to Copernicus and Galileo, nullifying evidence due to a perceived threat, and classifying this science as heretical, thus removing what is undesirable. Take the prima facie ethical injunction not to torture my neighbor and the "fact" of the pain it would cause as justification (OTOH, if my neighbor simply adores being tortured, this renders the injunction problematic. So what?---referring to your comments about "varying degrees"). Here, I am saying that when you refer to a pain as a sensation, this is an attempt to bring, say, terrible suffering to heel in a reduction by association with other ordinary sensations, as with "sensing" a smell or a sound, which, so characterized, has no ethical meaning at all.
That's enough on that!? Really? You DO sound like the church.
And look, if you say pain is in the mind, then how does this affect to ontology of pain? It IS in the mind, but then, you have no issue with affirming the weather, and that rain IS my front yard. What does locality have to do with it? Lava IS in a volcano, yet there is no issue on your part that this locality strikes out the existence of its features.
And of course, we all suffer and delight differently, with different intensities about different things. But this has no bearing here in this "meta" ethical discussion any more than how well, and to what degree, a person thinks affects what logic IS.
Quoting AmadeusD
I do read them. I think mostly you tell me how angry you are. You don't reason things through. You say what things are, like pains being sensations, but you don't really respond to objections, and you don't refer to ideas and you don't play them through.
Wait...your post disappeared. Errrrr, curious.