If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

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Eduk
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

Post by Eduk »

Oh, I think it will make sense to almost everyone else.
I think most people believe that intentions are vitally important to morality. Certainly they act as though they do.
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GE Morton
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

Post by GE Morton »

Eduk wrote: November 13th, 2018, 3:27 pm
Oh, I think it will make sense to almost everyone else.
I think most people believe that intentions are vitally important to morality. Certainly they act as though they do.
Intentions are revealed through behavior, as are all other inferred mental states (all except our own are inferred). I have no idea how we might infer a "sense of morality" other than by observing the agent's behavior. Nor do I have any idea why we should care about someone's mental state as long as he is behaving morally.
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

Post by GE Morton »

Fooloso4 wrote: November 12th, 2018, 10:34 pm GE Morton:
You need to quantify that. I didn't say, "People are indifferent to the plight of others." I suggested that some people are, and that people differ as to whom they are willing to help, and for what purposes and in what circumstances. And that for that reason those differing propensities and feelings cannot be the basis of a moral code.
A moral code cannot be the basis of morality either if people had no interest in doing good.
That's true, in a sense. Everyone wants to "do good," and if they didn't, then there would be no need for and no interest in moral rules. But since what counts as "doing good" varies from person to person, some rules are needed which do not depend upon any of those idiosyncratic conceptions.

In a football game, for the team in possession of the ball, "doing good" consists in scoring a touchdown. For the team on defense, "doing good" consists in preventing that touchdown and gaining possession of the ball. But both teams understand the need for rules of the game --- rules which favor neither team or objective.

Your next comment indicates, however, that you have a particular content in mind when you speak of "doing good," rather than construing it to mean whatever the agent deems to be good.
It helps in these discussions to preserve the distinction between good/bad and right/wrong. Right/wrong denote the morality of an act, good/bad the desirability of its objective.
Not all ethical theories make the distinction along these lines. For those who ascribe to some form of virtue ethics what is fundamental is not what is right according to some set of rules and principles, but what promotes human flourishing and well-being.

The moral question is whether the act promotes the good or minimizes the bad of those involved if no option is good.
Yes --- but what promotes any agent's flourishing and well-being depends upon his desires, interests, and goals. What is good or bad is for him to decide, not for you or me. A set of rules which permits all agents to pursue the good as they define it is "right;" an act by an agent which violates those rules is "wrong." The rules, like those of football, do not favor any particular agent or interest, or presume to stipulate what promotes any agent's flourishing.

That is a matter of opinion stated as if it were a matter of fact.
Well, I think most people understand "reasoned" to mean based on logic and evidence, not emotions and prejudices.

It is just this legalistic approach that G. E. M. Anscombe criticizes in her defense of virtue ethics.
You may be misinterpreting Anscombe. But that is another thread.
In an earlier post you said:
But they will conclude that breaking that rule is bad because they can grasp the consequences if it were disregarded universally. I.e., "I must do unto others as I would have them do unto me. Because if I don't, then neither will they, and that would be bad for me."
The direct consequence of your violating that rule is that others will act as you do, breaking that rule, and that would be bad for you.
No, that is an indirect consequence (but this is a quibble).
It is not the specific consequences of the action, such as the pain and suffering caused by pulling out someone’s nails that is bad according to you, but that others will break that rule too and someone might pull out your nails. Or perhaps it is not the consequences of breaking that rule but the consequences of breaking any moral rule that will be bad for you. In any case, it is your consideration of the consequences for you of breaking the code that keeps you from breaking it.

But if you could break the rules without anyone finding out, then you have not "authorized" anyone else to break the rules, and so, according to you there would be nothing bad about pulling out someone's nails.
It would certainly be bad for the person whose nails were pulled, and it would be morally wrong because it violated a rule prohibiting inflicting loss or injury on other moral agents. And I do authorize others to do likewise, whether they learn of my transgression or not, since I will be unable to object to similar behavior by others without hypocrisy. A principle permitting that act, if universalized, would be bad for everyone.
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

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GE Morton
No, because "bachelors are male" is true by definition. That is not the case with "pain is bad."
Yes it is. The badness is part if its definition. That IS the point. IF it is not then the term 'bad' becomes reduced to a contingent idea, as with a good knife being a sharp one. This kind of thing is not stand alone, is entirely context dependent; but what is the final good that all these are in utility for? It is value, some good feeling, some pleasure,and so on. Otherwise, it would be absurd to call anything good at all, if, that is, it were utility only for utility, and this good fro some utility. This is simply NOT the way the world is. Pleasure, e.g., is inherently good, and it needs no context, no end beyond itself to validate this. Delicious things are delicious and therefore inherently good in the absolute sense: good that is indefeasable. Now, this is certainly NOT to say that the terms, the language used to interpret this experience possesses the power to apprehend things "in themselves" (and this is in the Kantian sense, notwithstanding objections that such ideas are nonsense). There is something sui generis and noncategorial that is present before us called value.
For some people, perhaps. I just resisted it. "Everything has a cause" is what Kant called a "synthetic a priori truth." It is accepted intuitively as true because the urge to seek causes for perceived phenomena is wired into our brains, as are the foundations for the concepts of space and time. Explanation of any phenomena presumes cause and effect, and so the principle must be assumed to be true if we are to explain anything. If it does not hold universally --- and it likely does not --- then there will be phenomena forever inexplicable.
Interesting thing to say, but not very convincing. The saying you resisted causality seems disingenuous. Brain wiring? Well, the same can be said of definitional truths. But, what is a brain if not an image produced by a brain? This goes nowhere. I cannot tell you what ethical badness is absolutely, I can only tell you it is an absolute, this being the only wheel that rolls for uttering this intuition. i also think there is "something" absolute about being here, I just cannot "say" it. At best I can borrow language: Being is "disclosed" to me, if incompletely.
There is no "proof" that pain is bad. That it is bad is pseudo-property you assign to it, not a property of the pain that you perceive. All you perceive is the pain. Pain can take several properties --- there are sharp pains, throbbing pains, excruciating pains, etc. But whether it is good or bad is a property assigned to it by you. And there are "good" pains, such as those experienced by athletes after a strenuous workout.
This is just a denial. Ethical badness'proof is in the pudding, as i have said. I do wonder why this is not clear, given that I have tried to "point" to the this, what, non natural quality. It is not visible, like green or blue. If you were to describe something green as green, you know of course your description is not the intuition before you; descriptions are utilities, instruments for pragmatically dealing woith the world. This presence of what is not encompassed by the term is utterly transcendental. Husserl takes one close to this thing itself. One has to see that value, terrible suffering, e.g., is extraordinary as a revealed presence in a phenomenological reduction. No brains, no empirical science to second guess the absolute nature fo what stands before the inquiring consciousness.
Well, of course pain is different from other sensations. All sensations differ from one another; else we could not distinguish among them. Perhaps you might consider another sensation --- the taste, say, of cilantro. If you like cilantro, do you think you perceive a second property, goodness, when you taste it? Or just the flavor of that herb, triggered by the chemicals it contains? Some people don't like cilantro. How has the "goodness" property escaped their notice?
So you think tasting cilantro and having it shoved down a bronchial cavity with a baseball bat are distinguished only by alternative descriptive accounts?? I see. I have had this conversation before, and I do understand that this is the logical consequence of failing to understand the gravitas of ethics. You might want to read Emanuel Levinas. Talk about properties and the like show you are versed in philosophical jargon, but being in the world is not your forte.
Yes, it would be qualitatively distinct --- it would be agonizing, terrifying, and fatal, and would certainly be deemed bad by most people subjected to it. But the Salem magistrates who ordered the burning of witches deemed it good.
And they were therefore right?? Most people?? Look, I think I am beginning to understand. I have to get back to the planet earth now, but I wish you well, though I do hope you don't have any political ambitions.
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

Post by Fooloso4 »

GE Morton:
In a football game, for the team in possession of the ball, "doing good" consists in scoring a touchdown. For the team on defense, "doing good" consists in preventing that touchdown and gaining possession of the ball. But both teams understand the need for rules of the game --- rules which favor neither team or objective.
There are rules for playing chess but no rules for determining what the best move is in every situation. You may rely on moral rules but there are no rules that can tell you what is good to do in every situation. Or, in your preferred terminology, no rules that can cover what is right in every situation.
Your next comment indicates, however, that you have a particular content in mind when you speak of "doing good," rather than construing it to mean whatever the agent deems to be good.
It is not a matter of a particular content but of what promotes flourishing and well-being. There is not a set of rules or formula for determining this. Determining what will promote flourishing and well-being is a matter of practical reasoning or phronesis and is decided on a case by case basis.
A set of rules which permits all agents to pursue the good as they define it is "right;" an act by an agent which violates those rules is "wrong."
Permitting all agents to pursue the good as they define it cannot be right if what they pursue breaks the set of rules you claim it is wrong for them not to follow.
Well, I think most people understand "reasoned" to mean based on logic and evidence, not emotions and prejudices.
Some people think that mathematics is the proper model of reason. Some people think that reason is transcendent, objective, universal, presuppositionless, and absolute. Others reject this conception of reason. It is not an abandonment of logic and evidence, it just that they do not think that reason yields infallible, necessary, and unchanging truths in all matters. They are anti-foundationalists - what is determined to be reasonable is based on other things that are held to be reasonable without any fixed, certain, necessary ground upon which reason rests and builds.
You may be misinterpreting Anscombe. But that is another thread.
If you are going to suggest that I have misinterpreted her then provide some evidence. See her “Modern Moral Philosophy”. She is clear in her rejection of what she calls “legalistic” moral theories and terms such as ‘moral right', ‘moral obligation’, and ‘moral duty’ in favor of ‘good’ and ‘just’ and ‘virtue’. She stresses the importance of an adequate philosophy of psychology.
And I do authorize others to do likewise, whether they learn of my transgression or not, since I will be unable to object to similar behavior by others without hypocrisy.
I think what you are getting at is something like a consequentialist version of the Kantian maxim:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
For Kant the test was logical consistency but for you it is the judgment that having others do this to you would be bad. The obvious problem is that the evaluation - it is bad, is not determined by the maxim itself. What you judge to be bad is not a universal judgment.
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

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Hereandnow wrote: November 13th, 2018, 9:37 pm
GE Morton
No, because "bachelors are male" is true by definition. That is not the case with "pain is bad."
Yes it is. The badness is part if its definition.
Well, you must have written your own dictionary. "Badness," nor any other moral property, is not given in any of the dictionaries I consulted. Here are a couple:

a. An unpleasant feeling occurring as a result of injury or disease, usually localized in some part of the body: felt pains in his chest.
b. Bodily suffering characterized by such feelings: drugs to treat pain.

https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=pain

1 Physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/pain
IF it is not then the term 'bad' becomes reduced to a contingent idea, as with a good knife being a sharp one.
Yes, it is contingent. And also subjective and relative to agents.
This kind of thing is not stand alone, is entirely context dependent; but what is the final good that all these are in utility for? It is value, some good feeling, some pleasure,and so on.
Yes. All things sought, and deemed "good" by someone, yield or promise some pleasant feeling, some satisfaction, to that person. But that "goodness" is not a property of the thing sought; it merely denotes those things that induce that feeling in him, which vary from person to person. That something makes you feel good or bad does not make goodness or badness a property of the thing. They are properties of your response to it. You call those things "good" which you desire to acquire or retain; you call those things "bad" which you desire to avoid or be rid of. I.e., whether a thing is "good" or "bad" depends entirely upon your desires with regard to it.
Pleasure, e.g., is inherently good, and it needs no context, no end beyond itself to validate this.
Really? Is the pleasure experienced by the rapist, the pedophile, the sadist "nherently good"?
Delicious things are delicious and therefore inherently good in the absolute sense: good that is indefeasable.
Surely you'll admit that what is deemed "delicious" is subjective. Some people like cilantro; others find it obnoxious. Is it "inherently" both delicious and obnoxious?
Now, this is certainly NOT to say that the terms, the language used to interpret this experience possesses the power to apprehend things "in themselves" (and this is in the Kantian sense, notwithstanding objections that such ideas are nonsense). There is something sui generis and noncategorial that is present before us called value.
Ah. And which value shall we conclude is possessed by, say, the Bible --- the value asserted by the Pentacostal preacher, or that assigned by Bertrand Russell?
I cannot tell you what ethical badness is absolutely, I can only tell you it is an absolute, this being the only wheel that rolls for uttering this intuition.
I'd suggest you examine that intuition, because it is not rationally defensible (an endemic problem with intuitions).
There is no "proof" that pain is bad. That it is bad is pseudo-property you assign to it, not a property of the pain that you perceive. All you perceive is the pain. Pain can take several properties --- there are sharp pains, throbbing pains, excruciating pains, etc. But whether it is good or bad is a property assigned to it by you. And there are "good" pains, such as those experienced by athletes after a strenuous workout.
Husserl takes one close to this thing itself. One has to see that value, terrible suffering, e.g., is extraordinary as a revealed presence in a phenomenological reduction. No brains, no empirical science to second guess the absolute nature fo what stands before the inquiring consciousness.
What stands before the inquiring consciousness are a whole slew of rickety constructs, internalized dogmas, rose-colored glasses, and bizzare delusions.
So you think tasting cilantro and having it shoved down a bronchial cavity with a baseball bat are distinguished only by alternative descriptive accounts?
I assume you're asking whether pain and the taste of cilantro are distinguished only by descriptive accounts. No; they are distinguished by the differing sensory experiences they elicit. (And also by the different neural circuits they activate). Those experiences permit us to distinguish hot from cold, pain from pleasure, blue from green, lemons from oranges, food from feces.
Yes, it would be qualitatively distinct --- it would be agonizing, terrifying, and fatal, and would certainly be deemed bad by most people subjected to it. But the Salem magistrates who ordered the burning of witches deemed it good.
And they were therefore right?
It was good for them. But the moral question is, Was it morally right? No. But rendering that judgment rationally requires a moral theory.
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

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A centrally important point is that there are different kinds of goodness/badness, one being ethical/moral and the other ones being non-ethical/non-moral.

See Georg von Wright's The Varieties of Goodness: https://www.giffordlectures.org/books/v ... s-goodness!



"The ways of being good form a large clutter, and there are a variety of ways of dividing them up. One intuitively attractive way is to divide them into sub—classes as follows. (My way of dividing the territory comes, with modifications, from von Wright (1963).)

Some things are good for use in doing a thing. For example, a certain hammer might be good for use in hammering in nails, a certain fountain pen might be good for use in writing, a certain knife might be good for use in carving. Being good for use in hammering in nails, being good for use in writing, being good for use in carving are ways of being good: the sub-class of the ways of being good that they fall into may be called the useful.

Some people are good at doing this or that: thus Alice might be good at hanging wallpaper, Bert might be good at singing. Carol might be good at playing chess. Being good at hanging wallpaper, being good at singing, being good at playing chess are ways of being good; this sub-class may be called the skillful.

Some things are good to look at or listen to and so on. A certain sunset might be good to look at. A certain wine might taste good. A certain novel might be good to read. Being good to look at, being good-tasting, being good to read are ways of being good; this sub-class may be called the enjoyable.

Some things are good for something. Drinking lemonade might be good for Smith, who has a cold. An increase in funding for public education might be good for children and thereby for the country as a whole. Weekly vacuuming might be good for the living-room carpet. Being good for Smith, being good for children, being good for the living-room carpet are ways of being good; this sub-class may be called the beneficial.

Finally, some things are morally good in one or another way. A certain act or kind ofact or person might be morally good, or, more particularly, just or generous or brave or tactful or considerate and so on. This sub-class of the ways of being good may be called the morally good.

In sum, here are five subclasses of the class of ways of being good: the useful, skillful, enjoyable, beneficial, and morally good. Two points are worth drawing attention to before we move on.

In the first place, the sub-classes interconnect. Thus Bert is good in a way if he is good at singing (skillful); but Bert is good at singing only if his singing is good to listen to (enjoyable). A certain fountain pen is good in a way if it is good for use in writing (useful); but it is good for use in writing only if the product of writing with it looks good (enjoyable).

Second, some people have been overly fascinated by the fact that a thing can be good for one person and not for another, as, for example, drinking lemonade might be good for Smith, who has a cold, but not good for Jones, who has an ulcer. I say “overly fascinated" since they have concluded from the existence of such cases that goodness is relative. Now there may be reason to regard goodness as in one or another way relative to something…. But it pays to stress that goodness is not everywhere relative in the way in which the beneficial is relative. The beneficial is of course, and by definition, relative in the following way: a thing that is good for something is good for something. But the beneficial does not exhaust the ways of being good. Suppose we tell a person that Carol is good at playing chess, or that such and such a wine tastes good, and our hearer asks "For whom?" This question has no answer, nor does it need one."


(Thomson, Judith Jarvis. "Moral Objectivity." In: Gilbert Harman and Judith Jarvis Thomson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity, 65-154. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. pp. 131-2)
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

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GE Morton wrote: November 14th, 2018, 3:58 pmWell, you must have written your own dictionary. "Badness," nor any other moral property, is not given in any of the dictionaries I consulted. Here are a couple: a. An unpleasant feeling…
What von Wright calls "the hedonic good" is the pleasurable or the enjoyable. Pain is hedonically bad in the sense of being unpleasant; and it is emotionally bad in the sense that it feels bad to be in pain. However, there's the paradox of masochism: It feels good for a masochist to (voluntarily) experience certain forms of pain. He enjoys the pain he feels.
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

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GE Morton
Well, you must have written your own dictionary. "Badness," nor any other moral property, is not given in any of the dictionaries I consulted. Here are a couple:
It's not that dictionaries are wrong, but that they are incomplete, and drastically so when trying to understand things at the level of basic questions. I also see no reference to Kant's transcendental synthesis of the imagination when I look up 'memory' either; no does 'ego' provide any reference to Sartre's concept of nothingness. A little silly to think it would.
Yes, it is contingent. And also subjective and relative to agents
Of course, it is used in contexts that are indeterminate, but that is not the point at all.
Yes. All things sought, and deemed "good" by someone, yield or promise some pleasant feeling, some satisfaction, to that person. But that "goodness" is not a property of the thing sought; it merely denotes those things that induce that feeling in him, which vary from person to person. That something makes you feel good or bad does not make goodness or badness a property of the thing.They are properties of your response to it. You call those things "good" which you desire to acquire or retain; you call those things "bad" which you desire to avoid or be rid of. I.e., whether a thing is "good" or "bad" depends entirely upon your desires with regard to it.
Well, there is nothing that is not given to anyone that is not "deemed by" a person. All of what we know (and are) we receive through judgment. But the reason why i bring up Husserl again and again is that I trying to dismiss the miscellany of possible contexts that give pain, joy and the rest their appearance of relativity: the pain does not lose its essence just because is fits in some context of competing utility in which it loses out to alternatives. Is it in the thing as well as in the judgment, the deeming? My view is that the two cannot be easily separated and it is only in analysis that things "come apart". This makes the all knowledge claims instances of abstraction. As the scientist gathers information through her microscope, the "reality" of the event is the full stream of consciousness, ir you will.
Really? Is the pleasure experienced by the rapist, the pedophile, the sadist "nherently good"?
I would think this obvious. Contexts, moral ones, make all the difference: If they two had planned that rape as an exercise in thrill seeking, I see no basis for objection. But they didn't, and the one was horrified, injured, tramatized: these make the rape wrong. Of course, you could argue that consensual rape is not really rape at all, but that would miss the point, which is that circumstances make all the difference and it is here that rape the relativity is "made"; sexual gratification qua gratification is not only good, but granted that it is perceived genuinely as such it is absolutely good.
urely you'll admit that what is deemed "delicious" is subjective. Some people like cilantro; others find it obnoxious. Is it "inherently" both delicious and obnoxious?
such is the moral ambiguity of our world: the cilantro is delicious, if is so registered to be, but this judgment is mixed with circumstances: it was stolen, it was poisoned and one will die a horrible death later, it was cooked in a brew of human flesh; I mean, it is easy to imagine how context can challenge judgment, but none of this undoes the delicious experience as such.
Ah. And which value shall we conclude is possessed by, say, the Bible --- the value asserted by the Pentacostal preacher, or that assigned by Bertrand Russell?
My opinion hardly matters, nor does my opinion matter regarding whether the Chinese stock market needs more government control. Clearly, interpretations and evaluations of events in world are complicated, and what to do is indeterminate. Shall we apply Mill's untilitarian standard? Or inquire as to whether a proposed maxim can be made a universal rule? But none this changes the absoluteness of this valuative event in which I am having a tooth extracted without anesthetic (and even if I like this sort of thing, then my enjoyment would duly acknowledged).
What stands before the inquiring consciousness are a whole slew of rickety constructs, internalized dogmas, rose-colored glasses, and bizzare delusions.
True. But apodictic apprehensions still abide.
I assume you're asking whether pain and the taste of cilantro are distinguished only by descriptive accounts. No; they are distinguished by the differing sensory experiences they elicit. (And also by the different neural circuits they activate). Those experiences permit us to distinguish hot from cold, pain from pleasure, blue from green, lemons from oranges, food from feces.
What else would a descriptive account be if not things like, this porridge is hot, this grass is green, and so on? I am saying that in events that possess a value dimension, and this is quite frankly everything (think of the pragmatist Dewey), there is this or that descriptive account: the pen is empty, the cup is ont he table, and so on; but there is ALSO this other that is registered, if implicitly, that is not observable in the "sensory" way, (the word 'sensory' is given double inverted commas because on examination, the consideration of sensory APART from value is a pure abstraction, and the discussion here allows for this, as in all like cases, only to explain things). It is not, on the one hand, "visible" to sight, smell and the rest, but it is, on the other hand, the most obvious and salient feature there is: caring and its counterpart, value.
It was good for them. But the moral question is, Was it morally right? No. But rendering that judgment rationally requires a moral theory.
It requires a moral utility, that is, a moral theory. In this world are defeasible goods and bads due to the moral complexities in which they are embedded. But as per above, this is not the point here.
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

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Consul
What von Wright calls "the hedonic good" is the pleasurable or the enjoyable. Pain is hedonically bad in the sense of being unpleasant; and it is emotionally bad in the sense that it feels bad to be in pain. However, there's the paradox of masochism: It feels good for a masochist to (voluntarily) experience certain forms of pain. He enjoys the pain he feels.
Nothing could more clear than this, that there are different classifications of value, but what value is this beyond mere classification? Look, a new species of butterfly! Great, but so what.
The question that should haunt the soul, to use a metaphor, is what IS this dimension of value in our human "Being here"? Our explanatory accounts run out, inevitably, but this doesn't change the conditions we are trying to explain. It remains: why are we born to suffer and die? The most powerful question there is; it is the very existential foundation of religion.
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

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Consul:
In sum, here are five subclasses of the class of ways of being good: the useful, skillful, enjoyable, beneficial, and morally good.
I would add the metaphysical good - Plato’s generative good:
... not only being known is present in the things known as a consequence of the good, but also existence and being are
in them besides as a result of it, although the good isn't being but is still beyond being, exceeding it in dignity and power. (Republic 509b)
Socrates says that this is his opinion (509c). It is not something he claims to know. So why should we pay any attention to it? Because it provides an image of the whole that inspires, informs, and guides our understanding of the ways of being good. The examined life is about being able to discern the good in what we do. It has no end beyond being and doing what is good. But this should not be taken is the moralistic sense of following rules and obligations. It is what Aristotle calls the final cause, the end toward which a thing moves in the fullness of its actualization, its self-becoming, its strength and power, its virtue or arete. (Nietzsche’s will to power has much in common with this, but he rejects the notion of the completion of a timeless, fixed, and unchanging human nature.)

Historically the good was transformed into or subsumed under God, but whereas God provided commandments, the good does not. It is up to us to determine what is and is not good, that is, to philosophize. Some moral theorists attempt to substitute the dictates of reason for the commandments of God, holding us under obligation to follow principles and rules they claim have been objectively and universally determined for us. But we are not motivated by rules and do not aim at following them as an end in itself, but to the extent that we do follow them we do so for some good.
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

Post by GE Morton »

Fooloso4 wrote: November 14th, 2018, 10:28 am
There are rules for playing chess but no rules for determining what the best move is in every situation. You may rely on moral rules but there are no rules that can tell you what is good to do in every situation. Or, in your preferred terminology, no rules that can cover what is right in every situation.
Of course. The rules just set forth constraints on the choice. What will be the best move depends on the details of the situation.
It is not a matter of a particular content but of what promotes flourishing and well-being. There is not a set of rules or formula for determining this. Determining what will promote flourishing and well-being is a matter of practical reasoning or phronesis and is decided on a case by case basis.
I agree, provided you apply the affected agents' criteria for what promotes well-being, not your own.
Permitting all agents to pursue the good as they define it cannot be right if what they pursue breaks the set of rules you claim it is wrong for them not to follow.
That is correct. If a good or goal entails violation of a moral rule (it cannot be pursued without violating a rule) then it is malum in se and may not be pursued. All other goods and goals are morally neutral; only the means chosen to pursue them is morally right or wrong.
Some people think that mathematics is the proper model of reason. Some people think that reason is transcendent, objective, universal, presuppositionless, and absolute.
Well, I would not apply any of those adjectives. It is simply a method of inquiry which requires that propositions purporting to convey knowledge be cognitive --- that they have truth values which can be determined empirically, i.e., their truth conditions are public and can be confirmed by any observer suitably situated, or derived logically from such propositions.
They are anti-foundationalists - what is determined to be reasonable is based on other things that are held to be reasonable without any fixed, certain, necessary ground upon which reason rests and builds.
Whatever is "held" to be reasonable will be so held on some grounds, whether the holder can articulate them (or is willing to admit them) or not. So the question may always be asked whether those grounds are sound and defensible or not.
You may be misinterpreting Anscombe. But that is another thread.
If you are going to suggest that I have misinterpreted her then provide some evidence. See her “Modern Moral Philosophy”. She is clear in her rejection of what she calls “legalistic” moral theories and terms such as ‘moral right', ‘moral obligation’, and ‘moral duty’ in favor of ‘good’ and ‘just’ and ‘virtue’. She stresses the importance of an adequate philosophy of psychology.
See Sec. 5 of: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anscombe/
And I do authorize others to do likewise, whether they learn of my transgression or not, since I will be unable to object to similar behavior by others without hypocrisy.
I think what you are getting at is something like a consequentialist version of the Kantian maxim:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
For Kant the test was logical consistency but for you it is the judgment that having others do this to you would be bad. The obvious problem is that the evaluation - it is bad, is not determined by the maxim itself. What you judge to be bad is not a universal judgment.
All moral theories are ultimately consequentialist, including Kant's. The reason one cannot will that some maxims become universal laws is that the agent realizes the consequences would be bad for him, i.e., would prevent him from maximizing his own welfare --- which it is assumed all agents strive to do.
GE Morton
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

Post by GE Morton »

Hereandnow wrote: November 15th, 2018, 11:46 am
It's not that dictionaries are wrong, but that they are incomplete, and drastically so when trying to understand things at the level of basic questions. I also see no reference to Kant's transcendental synthesis of the imagination when I look up 'memory' either; no does 'ego' provide any reference to Sartre's concept of nothingness. A little silly to think it would.
Dictionaries give definitions of words. Kant's explanation and justifications for transcendental arguments do not purport to define "memory." You claimed that "badness" was part of the definition of the word "pain." It isn't, any more than "delicious" is part of the definition of "cilantro."
Well, there is nothing that is not given to anyone that is not "deemed by" a person. All of what we know (and are) we receive through judgment. But the reason why i bring up Husserl again and again is that I trying to dismiss the miscellany of possible contexts that give pain, joy and the rest their appearance of relativity: the pain does not lose its essence just because is fits in some context of competing utility in which it loses out to alternatives.
Well, not being a Platonist, I have no idea what "essences" are, or how one would go about establishing that the "essence" of X is Y. As far as I can see, when someone claims that Y is the "essence" of X he is merely claiming that Y is the aspect of X most important to him, and may indeed be an aspect apparent only to him, or even invented by him, and apparent to no one else.
Is it in the thing as well as in the judgment, the deeming?
An alleged property of a thing is "in" the thing (or, more precisely, can be sensibly claimed to be "in" the thing) only if it is apprehensible to all suitably situated observers of that thing.
My view is that the two cannot be easily separated and it is only in analysis that things "come apart". This makes the all knowledge claims instances of abstraction.
Oh, surely not. "This brick weighs 3.5kg" is quite concrete and readily confirmable by all observers.
such is the moral ambiguity of our world: the cilantro is delicious, if is so registered to be, but this judgment is mixed with circumstances: it was stolen, it was poisoned and one will die a horrible death later, it was cooked in a brew of human flesh; I mean, it is easy to imagine how context can challenge judgment, but none of this undoes the delicious experience as such.
Well, I don't deny that eating cilantro will elicit a pleasant experience in some people. But your claim was that deliciousness was an inherent property of the herb. And you've not answered whether it is also inherently obnoxious --- since it elicits an unpleasant experience in other people.
But none this changes the absoluteness of this valuative event in which I am having a tooth extracted without anesthetic (and even if I like this sort of thing, then my enjoyment would duly acknowledged).
Are you saying that if you enjoyed that pain, it would still be "inherently" bad?
I am saying that in events that possess a value dimension . . .
Yes, I gathered that. My counterclaim is that the only value dimension they have is the one you (or some other valuer) assigns to it, which will differ from valuer to valuer, as is obvious from the plethora of values assigned by different agents to almost anything you can name.
Eduk
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Favorite Philosopher: Socrates

Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

Post by Eduk »

Pain is distressing, suffering, unpleasant physical sensation. According to Google definitions.
Suffering is
"experience or be subjected to (something bad or unpleasant)."
So yeah bad is part of the normative definition. Saddo masochism requires pain for sexual arrousal. It is still pain. It is just that humans aren't simple.
Unknown means unknown.
Fooloso4
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Re: If there is no God, murder isn't wrong?

Post by Fooloso4 »

GE Morton:
Of course. The rules just set forth constraints on the choice. What will be the best move depends on the details of the situation.
Exactly, and that is why a rule based morality is inadequate.
I agree, provided you apply the affected agents' criteria for what promotes well-being, not your own.
And that is why the values and beliefs of the individual matter and must be taken into consideration.
If a good or goal entails violation of a moral rule (it cannot be pursued without violating a rule) then it is malum in se …
Moral rules or norms change over time.
It is simply a method of inquiry which requires that propositions purporting to convey knowledge be cognitive …
Morality remains forever in the realm of opinion. This does not mean that all opinions should be regarded as equal, but that we strive to determine what is best without ever having knowledge of what is best.
Whatever is "held" to be reasonable will be so held on some grounds, whether the holder can articulate them (or is willing to admit them) or not. So the question may always be asked whether those grounds are sound and defensible or not.
I agree with Wittgenstein:
But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting. (OC 110)

Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end; - but the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game. (OC 204)

If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, not yet false. (OC 205)
GE:
What do you see there that leads you to think I have misinterpreted her?
All moral theories are ultimately consequentialist, including Kant's. The reason one cannot will that some maxims become universal laws is that the agent realizes the consequences would be bad for him, i.e., would prevent him from maximizing his own welfare --- which it is assumed all agents strive to do.
Actions have consequences, but that does not mean that Kant is consequentialist. His method is a priori and categorical. If it is wrong to lie then it is wrong no matter the consequences. It is a matter of logical consistency. Can there be a universal law requiring us to lie? What would it mean to lie if everyone always lied? The term would lose its meaning because it would not stand as the opposite of truth telling, which would not exist.
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