I have looked through the first chapter and I have a question. Firstly, for context - and this is not meant as a criticism - I think that the term “objectively moral” or “objectively morally right” is literal nonsense. That said, while I am sympathetic to the notion that moral judgments should be about acts and not intents, there is a problem. While, as you say, we may not know what is morally right even if we suspect that something is, take for example homicide laws, which I will stipulate are influenced by morality. There is premeditated murder, murder that is more a crime of passion (murder 2) and even (by one name) involuntary manslaughter. All are homicides.
There are actually two problems here - one is common to all moral theory at some level of analysis - and that is determining just what the act is.
Legally, we have done that, however imperfectly. But to do that, we need to include intent. And that is the other problem within your discussion so far as i understand it. While all of the aforementioned acts are homicides, some homicides are legal and most people accept this as just. It’s a tough thing to claim that self-defense homicide is immoral. So how do we parse up this general type of act called homicide and how do we view these more specific acts morally?
Are you going to object to the notion that intentions matter? I realize that you are not putting forth a theory that must be voted on by the populace. But how then to decide?
You may recall Russell’s discussion of moral theory - about the level of specificity required. he made a good case, but so far as i know, few have taken it seriously.
Another question - you seem to say that will is free or not free. I am fairly Nietzschean on this issue, which makes the question, for me, superfluous at best and unintelligible at worst, but later, you say that there are limits even to a free will. So do i take you correctly that this freedom may lie along a spectrum?
I do agree that ought implies can. But would you propose that individuals are either moral agents or not - or - does this agency also lie along a spectrum - a legal example would be juveniles in some cases being tried as adults, but not in others, or that juveniles face different penalties than adults. Again, assuming a moral component to law.
Faust: First, do you mind if I reference you as you have brought up some points that others have as well? If so, how would you like to be referenced?
Laws involving intent are completely compatible with my theory, as the passing of a law is also an act that we can analyze the potential consequences of. If we have reason to believe that laws that treat different intentions differently, such as the difference between murder and manslaughter, will have good consequences, then passing those laws is a good idea and we should do it.
How to decide if my theory is right if not public vote? Through rational philosophical analysis.
I don’t believe I said that there are limits on free will so much as the kind of freedom, which I defined as the ability to understand and make choices, which is morally relevant is limited to only freedom over that which belongs to the persons in question. In any event, I am not sure what free will lying on a spectrum would mean. Maybe it could be unintelligible in the case of some kind of robot that has free will but a few pre-programmed commands for certain circumstances? But I would need to think more on that.
I wouldn’t say agency lies on a spectrum, but I would say that rationality, which is a component of personhood/moral agency, does lie along a spectrum. I have a whole chapter about children and non-human animals and what we should do in borderline cases where it isn’t clear whether something is a person or not. I could post it here if you’d like to read it?
Everyone else: I wrote a reply post previously but it doesn’t appear to be showing up at the moment. I will have a look at what happened to it before I rewrite it.
Essentially, yes … you are not really talking about morality. Human being have evolved to have many needs and desires which are contradictory and in conflict. Morality is an attempt to balance and prioritize these desires within one individual and among many individuals in a society. For example, the desire for justice is in conflict with the desire to gain by way of injustice. The desire for freedom is in conflict with the desire for stability, predictability and order.
So desires both create the need for morality and the contents of morality. Why are these so many desires? Because the world is complex. At different times, it is useful to have one desire fulfilled rather than another. It is analogous to physical attributes of an animal - in some situations it is an advantage to be strong, at others to be fast or flexible or small …
But one cannot be all these things and therefore an animal has a balance of attributes which ensure its survival in a particular environment.
Balancing human desires, by way of morality, improves the chances of survival.
Sure, you can reference me. There must a standard way to reference posts on the internet. You can use that.
No, my point revolves more around this: that I am not able to even convince myself that my position is anything other than a particular subjective/subjunctive fabrication/contraption rooted existentially in the actual life that I have lived.
Which, pertaining to abortion, for example, I encompass here:
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was deemed a sin.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.
In other words, that “talk” of objective morality is not the same thing as being able to demonstrate that morality does in fact exists objectively/essentially/universally/ideally/naturally etc., “out in the world” of actual conflicting behaviors derived from conflicting value judgments.
My own moral compass is entangled in this:
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
Which many here mock. And it may well be entirely unreasonable. I just have not been convinced of that yet. It still seems perfectly reasonable to me when confronted “down on the ground” with actual conflicting goods that precipitate conflicting behaviors.
Though, sure, if, within any particular community a political consensus is embraced such that everyone agrees that behavior X is prescribed and behavior Y is proscribed, that encompasses [for all practical purposes] a fully functional morality.
But [in my view] that is not the same thing as establishing [rationally, logically, philosophically, scientifically etc.] that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to think like this.
That seems entirely beyond the reach of mere mortals in a Godless universe.
I’m not mocking you when I state that in order to cross the street, you must cross the street !
I’m not mocking you when I say that you are so fearful that you decided at some point in your life to define yourself as “good” (conflicting GOODS!) for everyone because you are terrified … And if everyone agrees that you’re good, you have nothing to worry about!
I see a problem in a moral compass which separates the subjective from the objective absolute, because that separation, infers a moral distortion, the greater degree is. The spectrum is a good analogy, because the way the colors are interphase, creating broader
or narrower margins. Total absolute saturation create the black/white distortion, of having no color at all, whereas in both cases there is, at least by the effects
of reflection and an absorption.
These effects are consistent with no absolute determinations of either a reflective surface, or an
absorbing one, for it is a process of mutual interplay
of both.
Such is the effect of an objective-subjective
distinction, the Dasein is a conceptual absolute,
which has been logically permiated by a retro process of filling in the should have been with could have beens, if they were not pre-maturely excluded in the first place.
Phyllo: Yes there is a standard way. I was just asking if you would like to be referenced as “Phyllo” or by your real name. If the latter, message me with your name.
Iambigious: I agree that talk of objective morality is not the same thing as being able to demonstrate that it exists. I haven’t even tried to demonstrate that it exists here, and have instead left that to the meta-ethicists and discussed what it could be, if indeed it does exist. Though I will say that a) I wouldn’t assume that everyone is obligated to believe in objective moral truth, rather that objective morality places obligations upon them regardless of whether they believe it exists. And b) I don’t agree that determining whether objective morality exists or not is beyond the reach of mortals, and I don’t think that God could help if he existed.
jerkey: I am not sure what you mean by the separation of subjective and objective in morality implying (I assume you meant implying as it would be weird if a conceptual separation had the power of inference) a moral distortion. Could you explain why this is so? It seems to me a bit like saying "separating the subjective from the objective in mathematics implies a mathematical distortion. Would it be fair to say that you would agree that this second statement would be a silly one to make?
Of course the latter in math would be improper, since a separation in the sense of the above would be non-sensible. However this too can be argued, but it is not within scope here.
I see no problem in finding not only resemblances in the Wittgensteiniansense,but equivalence as well. The latter referring to the logic of identity-inclusion in math, the former to the logic relating to exclusion and subsequent efforts to fill those in by trying to find the stasis or equilibrium sought by the former.
Someone said, I think it was Nietzche, but I am not positive, that the haste to fill in excluded material suffers from a subtle change of meaning along the downward logical quest.
Mathematics does not yet suffer this kind of abbetation, but there were some who pointed to a functional derivations collapse at a certain value.(Hofstatter).
In any there is nothing wrong, in looking at normative, with an intention of psychological equilibrium, which a quantified qualifier could equivocate more then simply on basis of similarity.
I think the identification of conflated goods can be looked at in this way, but with an intentionality tied to it.
Reversely, if this normative equilibrium is sustained or in existential terms bracketed, no further regression of analysis must sever this supposed unity.
If not, then the functional collapse occurs in line with Quine’s critique of Russell’s reduction ad absurdum of sense-data.
I know I brought in a lot of supporting tie ins into tour quiery, but there is o way to credibly answer your comments.
The philosophical regression ends with the Kantian Categorical Impetative, and it is for that reason alone that Russell was justified to holding to a neo-Kantian position.
I think only the future will spell out the necessity of holding-on to the limits of permitted regression…
Woah, that’s a bold assertion. Personhood is fairly fundamental in having rights ascribed to one. Some people have mental disabilities that make understanding some or all things impossible. Does that make them not persons? Or just lesser persons?
The law recognises pleas of insanity where people are incapable of knowing and/or choosing the right action in certain cases - are they not persons?
Do we have a greater duty of moral care to someone who knowingly and calculatingly takes hostages to escape police capture, than to a schizophrenic undergoing a psychotic break?
Is a 38-week foetus a person? Or a new-born baby, for that matter?
I think this leads to a begged question: the fundamental moral value is the ability to be moral. It seems self-referential and tells us little about what the freedom should do, besides promote more freedom - specifically in terms of knowledge and understanding. Why that’s a good thing in and of itself is left open.
For example, there is often a trade-off between freedom and security - we allow governments to keep some information secret in order to protect our interests against hostile extranationals. Certain types of pornography are banned. Is this always morally bad? Is a heavily-censored state in which everyone is fed and happy worse than a completely open democracy in which crime is rife and poverty high?
Danny, you can reference me any way you’d like. My name is Faust, but you can call me Dave.
You have missed my point, doubtless because I was not clear in making it. My question wasn’t about passing laws, but about more judgments that do not include any reckoning about intentions. Only Humean is both asking you basically the same questions and a better philosopher than I am so i will leave to to him. So far, your thesis looks mighty Kantian. Intent doesn’t matter and you can arrange categories of acts as you wish. Those are the two most “difficult” parts of Kant’s moral theory.
It doesn’t seem to concern you very much. It always concerns me to see a living Kantian.
Yet one might speculate that a philosopher who has encompassed morality objectively in one or another deontological assessment of human interaction – in his head, in a book, in a lecture, in a post – would feel compelled to actually test the argument by situating the premises and the conclusion “out in the world” of conflicted behaviors derived precisely from conflagrations in which both sides agree that there exist a “kingdom of ends” but argue fiercely that only their own moral/political agenda qualifies.
My aim though is precisely to make that crucial distinction between that which one believes or claims to know is true “in his head” and that which he can in fact demonstrate that all other rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to believe or to know as true in turn.
So, pertaining to an issue like abortion, what obligations might objective morality place on those who argue that the unborn baby has a “natural right” to live, while others argue that a pregnant woman has the “political right” to kill it?
Of course that revolves around my own contention that the fundamental question facing all of us [philosophers or not] is this one: How ought one to live in a world of conflicting goods?
Or might the answer to this question – for all practical purposes – be beyond the reach of philosophers?
I agree. The fact that there are those like me who contend that objective morality does seem beyond the reach of philosophy [or science] does not make it so. But, in turn, it would seem to be the obligation of those who contend that it is within reach of philosophers [or scientists] to demonstrate this out in the world of actual conflicting behaviors…and not just scholastically [tautologically] in a “world of words”.
As for God, it is invariably assumed that He is omniscient. And would that not be a prerequisite for grasping the nature of human interaction objectively? In creating us [and in being “all-knowing”] He would seem to be a requisite here.
After all, isn’t that why folks like Plato, Descartes and Kant root all of this talk of “moral obligation” in God?
Why doesn’t it concern You? Or rather, why shouldn’t it? Exactly because to get to the referentiality you have an intensional categorical need to prevent the regression described in Greek philosophy. Your wings will melt and You will fall, irrespective of using that intention.
In other words You will try to prevent the fall, whether you are aware of your will to survive, or not
Kant refers to Icarus in his First Critique, in the sense of attaining consciousness, not necessarily in terms of God’s Omniscence, but in a reasonable structural analysis, in line more with Aristoteles’ De Anima.
With respect to the interaction between Kant, God, the “Kingdom of Ends” and morality, Christine Korsgaard encompassed this relationship in her book Creating the Kingdom of Ends.
So, here we are, mere mortals cast out of the Garden…out of Paradise and forced to make our way through the days groping as best we can to understand what it means to “do good” and, in turn, incessantly bumping into all of these “phenomenological” obstacles that impede our progress. How are we to know Right from Wrong and, once having taken our leap, how are we to intertwine our choices with others in a “natural world” that brings us one calamity [man-made and otherwise] after the next? And why should we “do good” anyway when all paths lead to oblivion? It certainly does seem, as Kant suggests, it would be best to give up the task “as impossible”, right?
Watch, then, how Kant resolves this:
But Kant has, as noted, already deconstructed this metaphysical font so we can’t fall back on the guy with the big white beard. Instead, we need a neo-metaphysical construct to take his place.
But what is this really? Isn’t it whatever Kant’s “rational mind” deduces it to be. It is, for all intents and purposes, merely human psychology at its most self-deceptive. We want to live in a world that is Good; and we want always to be able to Do Good in it. Yet we know that, out in the phenomonal world, this is often very, very, difficult to actualize. Not only because the incessantly slippery and sliding circumstantial contexts are bursting at the seams with complex and convoluted contingencies, ambiguites and, uncertainies…but also because we need some sort of “extra-phenomonological” incentive to Do Good when, in so doing, we get dumped on by reality over and over and over again.
But isn’t this really just Christianity in another guise? It matters not how cleverly the Kantians manipulate the abstract words in the abstract meta-ethical concepts, it’s the same thing. Therefore, in my view, they are only deluding themselves when they suggest this a priori mental construction is establishing something really different.
This is less philosophical speculation, in my view, than a human all too human psychological reaction to imagining a world without God. If God does not exist, in other words, we have to invent Him. A priori, as it were.
Yes it is his practical reason which comes to the conclusion of a rational albeit will ful construction of God. But even if , God is an a construction, it is still a-priori, in the sene which a-posteriors could not be claimed. Another way to put it is, that it is a pre-determined human trait to act accordingly with schematized human categories, or backwards as Nietzche could be argued against, that it also is human ,ph so human to will the imperative of moral categories. I go along Schopenhauer reversely, along will as representation of reverse moral argument.
Wow, heaps of exciting feedback since last I logged on. Thanks everyone.
Only_Humean: I have actually written an entire chapter on the topic of the moral status of children, the mentally impaired and non-human animals. Also I would like to reference some of the points you have made so if you would like to be referenced under your real name, please message me. Essentially my answer to your question is the vast majority of those with mental disabilities are persons just like anybody else, as the bar for personhood is not set at exactly the mental capacities of a healthy human adult. In the example of the schizophrenic, I would say they are a person suffering from a disease which may indeed be violating their freedom and they have proportionally diminished responsibility and we ought to help them recover from this disease much as we ought to help someone recover from any other disease that violates their freedom. However, yes I am required to bite the bullet and say that some humans with the most severe mental disabilities, such as anencephaly, are not persons. All of this is discussed in much more detail in my chapter on this topic. I can post it here if you’d like to have a read?
There is not a trade off between freedom, properly understood, and security, or at least there shouldn’t be. Rather, there is a trade off between freedom over some things and others. Freedom is violated not only by other people restricting your actions, but also by starving to death or getting blown up by a bomb. Certain types of pornography should be banned, if they require the violation of someone’s freedom to make; so anything involving murder, rape or child porn (which is obviously a kind of rape, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway), but yes it is morally wrong to restrict the content people can watch or create because you think it is, for example, distasteful or profane.
I realize I have only answered some of your questions, but in my defense you used a lot of possible examples. Hopefully this reply gives the spirit of my reply to all of them, but if you want to ask any again to get the specifics of my reply, I shall answer them then.
Faust: I find it somewhat ironic that two common comments about my thesis are that I am just a Kantian and that I am just a utilitarian. I will be sure to reference you as one who has said the former when discussing why I am not a Kantian.
Iambigious: No I don’t think that question is beyond the reach of philosophers. We ought first try to determine the point at which the fetus becomes close enough to a person as to require protecting. Doing this in reality is difficult but, once we properly define personhood and what constitutes “close enough” to it, it is not impossible. Then we can say that before this point, abortion for any reason is permissible, and after this point abortion involves the killing of something morally relevant, and so should only be done in extreme cases, such as when not doing so will mean the death of the mother.
My concern is what actually is true, not necessarily with what can be demonstrated.
Yes, if God is omniscient, then he would presumably know moral truths and could tell us them. What I mean is that whether or not God exists has no bearing on whether those moral truths exist or not.
Also: There seems to be a large discussion of Kant here, which I won’t weigh in on.
Yes, I agree. But how exactly would we go about determining which frame of mind here [going all the way back to the pre-Socratics] reflects the optimal premises, the optimal conclusion? And how would that analysis [argument] be shown to be applicable to actual human interactions that come to clash as a result of conflicted value judgments?
And out in a particular world historically and culturally. And in a particular context viewed from conflicting points of view with respect to interactions that revolve not around the world of either/or, but around the world of is/ought?
Here some of us then get bogged down in trying to determine what “real” philosophy is. What does it mean here to be a “serious” philosopher?
So, you believe that philosophers can in fact determine this? And how would that be different from a biologist determining this?
My own frame of mind here revolves around the assumption that any number of folks noting any number of conflicting places to draw the line – at conception, when the heart beats, when the fetus is viable outside the womb, at birth etc. – can claim certain things to be “facts”. To be “true”.
Then what?
And again: how would the arguments of the scientist and the philosopher [and the theologian?] be properly distinguished here?
My concern then is in noting the part that revolves around conflicting goods. It is true that the unborn will be destroyed if aborted. But it is also true that, in a world where men cannot become pregnant, forcing women to give birth puts them at a distinct disadvantage politically pertaining to their education and their employment opportunities. Not to mention possible harm to either their physical or their mental health.
If God does not exist, then would it not come down to the arguments of mere mortals? And, given that mere mortals are far from being omniscient, how could it be determined which argument reflects the most rational, the most epistemologically sound, the most ideal or the most natural etc., way to think and to feel and to behave here?
Yes, I agree that this frame of mind may well exist. But my point is that here it exists only “in the heads” of those who approach questions like this by way of constructing a “world of words” in which any particular argument becomes but one more tautological “intellectual contraption” in that the “analysis” is said to be true because it is predicated almost entirely on the definition and the meaning given to the worlds used to construct it.
Instead, my own assumption here is that moral and political “objectivists” come to embrace this frame of mind as – [b]psychologically[/b] – the embodiment of this:
[b]1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] a worldview, a philosophy of life.
2] Over time, you become convinced that this perspective expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.
3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way; they may even begin to actively seek out folks similarly inclined to view the world in a particular way.
4] Some begin to share this philosophy with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet denizens; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others…it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.
5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their Truth with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.
6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity…on their very Self.
7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original philosophical quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with philosophy at all. And certainly less and less to do with “logic”.
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Iambigious: I’m sorry for the confusion surrounding the word “we”. I didn’t mean to imply that it should be philosophers determining what point personhood is achieved. Rather, once philosophers have provided appropriate criteria for personhood, the determining of when fetuses meet those criteria could be done by biologists and doctors. Yes lots of people draw the line at different places, but often those places are patently not relevant to personhood. Having a beating heart obviously does not qualify something as a person, as hearts don’t have any capacity for rationality, consciousness or, presumably, free will.
Except that is only a problem if there are all these different goods that can conflict. If however we stick to the moral value I am proposing, then there isn’t an issue.
Yes that probably happens in some cases. But assuming that it is the case for all people seems a bizarre assumption to make and one that either conflicts with the available evidence or is entirely unfalsifable.
A discussion of Kant may or may be considered in the context of the present forum, but that is immaterial
to it’s significance. The whole idea of a presupposed God as the basis upon which the morally good has developed, as through the Critique of Practical Reason, is totally different then the traditional understanding of the God, as the omniscient guarantor of the morally Good.
The point is in the synthesis of both ways f understanding God. The problem with philosophy lies in the omitting or the destructuralism of the hystory of thought, forgetting that thought is what has enabled mankind to realize God, whether in his image or the other way.
