back to the beginning: morality

How so? Which part do you disagree with? “Killing”, “innocent” or “human being”?

The Ethics of Ambiguity
Charlotte Moore freely subjects de Beauvoir’s ethics to a discerning scrutiny.

First, the technical take on ethical subjectivism at wiki:

[b]Ethical subjectivism or moral non-objectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:

1] Ethical sentences express propositions.
2] Some such propositions are true.
3] The truth or falsity of such propositions is ineliminably dependent on the (actual or hypothetical) attitudes of people.

This makes ethical subjectivism a form of cognitivism (because ethical statements are the types of things that can be true or false). Ethical subjectivism stands in opposition to moral realism, which claims that moral propositions refer to objective facts, independent of human opinion; to error theory, which denies that any moral propositions are true in any sense; and to non-cognitivism, which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all.[/b]

Got that? Or, perhaps, might examining the meaning of this given a situation in which two or more individuals come into conflict over particular moral judgments given a particular context be helpful in making it all more perspicuous?

Of course my own moral philosophy is more, what, radical than hers? In a No God world [as I construe it] the “general criteria” that anyone proposes is going to be derived more from my assumptions regarding “I” as the embodiment of dasein in the is/ought world. Rather than through a philosophical assessment like the one above.

First the intellectual assessment:

And then the part where this is actually taken out into the world in regard to a context in which “goods” and “value judgments” do often come into conflict:

Here though I go back to the part where homosexuality itself is construed by some as either immoral or unnatural. Or both. And unless that can be resolved beyond merely acknowledging conflicting political prejudices, anything that we do to champion it or to impede it is going to be problematic.

Re the “Morality Is Objective” thread: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 2&t=197144

This is a classic “serious philosophy” exchange in which for page afrer page after page the discussion goes on and on and on with almost no mention of any actual moral conflicts pertaining to the world that we live and interact in. Descriptions of objective morality there. Or concrete reasons why there isn’t any.

Now, when this was once going to be a debate between ecmandu and pedro, I suggested abortion. And for all of the reason that I would.

That was rejected. But since then what has been put in its place?

True, I haven’t read every single post. So, if there was a discussion of a particular set of conflicting goods, I might have missed it. But, if not, if they ever do get around to, say, something that pops up in the news in which different sides have their own “one of us” objectivist moral narratives and political agendas, I’d appreciate someone bringing it to my attention.

The Ethics of Ambiguity
Charlotte Moore freely subjects de Beauvoir’s ethics to a discerning scrutiny.

Really, think about that. It is clearly true. And, in being true, it becomes abundantly obvious to all those who are not objectivists that this intersubjective meaning is communicated in countlessly evolving contexts over time historically and around the globe culturally. There are, in turn, countless individual experiences that any particular child might come to embody such that his or her own indoctrination can come to encompass any number of hopelessly conflicting spiritual, moral and political narratives. Yet any number of objectivists – and we’ve got our fair share of them here – still manage to be absolutely adamant that it is their very own prejudices that reflect the one true deontological assessment of the human condition.

Tell me that’s not a psychological condition.

Sure, if you embrace an ethics that leaves little or no room for ambiguity, how much care and consideration are you going to give for those who don’t swallow whole your own dogmas? How much ambiguity was there in the political ideologies that rent the human species throughout the 20th Century? You care only for your own when you are an objectivist. On the other hand, as we delve deeper into the 21st Century, philosophical examinations of ambiguity give way to more simple calculations: “show me the money” and “what’s in it for me”. Few great totalitarian juggernauts are still around, but the global economy sustained by and large by the great state capitalists juggernauts can be just as ominous for millions.

And then if the ambiguity you feel leads to a fractured and fragmented understanding of the world around you [and the people in it] all bets are off for where you land.

The Ethics of Ambiguity
Charlotte Moore freely subjects de Beauvoir’s ethics to a discerning scrutiny.

Yes, up in the far less ambiguous clouds of a philosophical exchange, this makes sense. And, perhaps, in any particular community that is small enough a consensus might be reached such that in regard to certain interactions, moral obligations and moral freedoms can be intertwined so as to sustain a minimal of dysfunction from day to day.

But, from my perspective, that’s not the same as establishing a moral agenda that is argued to be objective. And you can be almost certain that sooner or later contingency, chance and change will act to bring this consensus to the breaking point.

Then the part where reciprocity comes to revolve less around a moral consensus and more around the role that power plays in any human relationships. Someone always has more of it than others.

Is there anyone here who thinks they understand the points that are being made above? Because I am certainly at a loss to translate them into the life that I have lived when my own experiences with others resulted in moral and political conflicts.

Transcend myself? My freedom dependent on the freedom of others? Merely subjective?

Sure, I recognize that [given free will] in choosing my own behaviors there can be no real freedom if others are obligated to choose the same behaviors. But that still does not grapple with ambiguity as I understand it from the perspective of the “fractured and fragmented” persona “out in the world” with others.

Instead, it seems more in keeping with an objectivist frame of mind. You allow others to exercise their own freedom but the ambiguity is still contained in a moral narrative and a political agenda in which one is still convinced that their own choices are more “authentic” than others. The compromise instead revolves more around accepting “moderation, negotiation and compromise” re democracy and the rule of law. Rather than in a belief that the world isn’t still divided between “one of us” and “one of them”.

The Death of Morality
Moral Fictionalism
Richard Joyce on what happens when falsehoods are too useful to throw out.
In Philosophy Now magazine

Their own moral preferences. Cue dasein?

I do just that of course but I’m always willing to explore any alternate explanations with others. And, let’s face it, from Plato and Descartes to Kant, the “objective absolute necessary truth for their moral claims” was always rooted in one or another rendition of God. The ultimate transcending arbiter in touch with the ultimate understanding of the human condition itself. That and everything else.

Softer projects. Okay, sure, maybe. But: whatever that means.

In other words [and you know what’s coming], we’ll need a context. What moral truths in regard in what human practices seen from what point of view. A point of view that is not rooted subjectively in dasein out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially.

If someone here has one and is willing and able to encompass it in a “softer project” relating to a situation most here will be familiar with involving conflicting goods, note it for us.

To me, this connotes the distinction between a universal morality applicable to all contexts and a — softer? – context in which any objectivity pertains only to a particular context alone. The “you’re right from your side and I’m right from mine” frame of mind. Which to me suggest that the best of all possible worlds is one involving moderation, negotiation and compromise. Though this part…

“…the convolutions byzantine, the in-fighting bitter, the spilt ink copious, and the progress astoundingly unimpressive…”

…is likely to drive some up the wall.

The Death of Morality
Moral Fictionalism
Richard Joyce on what happens when falsehoods are too useful to throw out.

Here we have something that could not possibly be more obvious. And yet over the years I have come across any number of serious philosophers who do not seem willing to consider the implications of it in regard to their own moral and political values. Being indoctrinated for years to think only what others have taught you to think about right and wrong and good and bad isn’t going to play a significant role in the creation of your own existential self?

Wouldn’t the first thing that ethicists focus on is in differentiating what they have been brainwashed to believe is moral and immoral and what using the tools of philosophy we may or may not be able to actually establish as moral or immoral?

Unless of course this is all bundled up by nature into the only possible reality there could ever have possibly been. Whatever that means.

Well, that presupposes that he can actually demonstrate this to be true beyond the fact that he strung together premises that make it true “in his head”. We’re all in the same leaky boat here.

That’s what I keep suggesting to the fulminating fanatic objectivists here. But the only way to conduct such an investigation is to first acknowledge “the gap”.

You know the one. Instead, in that same leaky boat, most here won’t even examine the gaps that I explore in my signature threads in regard to identity, value judgments and political economy. Let alone the one that takes us back to all that can be known about existence itself,

The Death of Morality
Moral Fictionalism
Richard Joyce on what happens when falsehoods are too useful to throw out.

Now, given my past experience here at ILP, any number of members will read this, nod their head and agree it makes sense.

And then I suggest that we need an actual context/set of circumstances/situation in which to explore this existentially out in the world interacting with others in which conflicting judgments precipitate conflicting behaviors precipitating actual consequences. Consequences that can be dangerous or deadly.

Not whether “something” is right or wrong but whether this thing in particular is right and wrong. Whether ripped from the newspaper headlines or pertaining to our own personal experiences. What “sensible account” regarding what/whose collection of facts?

For example, the big story these days is the collapse of the government in Afghanistan. A government that American foreign policy has propped up for nearly two decades. Moral accounts justified here given assessments of all the conflicting accounts of “the facts”.

Yes, that’s always my point. It is one thing for “serious philosophers” to grapple with morality theoretically, technically, academically, scholastically…and another thing altogether to take their conclusions into a discussion of American foreign policy in Afghanistan.

I call them “moral nihilists”. What can clearly be the glum conclusion that in the absence of God or some other transcending font, mere mortals are able to rationalize any and all behaviors for any number of personal reasons that I root largely in dasein.

Then what?

The Death of Morality
Moral Fictionalism
Richard Joyce on what happens when falsehoods are too useful to throw out.

And, in my view, for good reason: No God, no transcending font able to provide the foundation for objective morality. Then it just comes down to those atheists who encompass No God in much the same manner in which the fundamentalist religionists encompass God. In other words, not as a leap of faith to No God given the profound mystery embedded in existence itself, but insisting that there is No God.

Which, again, is why my own focus is more on theodicy and on the manner in which Marxists note how God and religion can be used by the powers that be as an opiate to quell any political attacks against their own rule.

Okay, but what is all of this basically rooted in if not dasein? There are those things in the either/or world in which assessments and evaluations can fall back on things shown to be objectively true for all of us. Someone might not believe that this computer is the best computer, or that this direction is the right direction or that this idea is a good idea, but there either are or are not ways to demonstrate this. Same with commands. Some can be shown to be considerably more rational than others. It is only when the commands or words like “best” and “right” and “good” are said to be applicable to value judgments that everything begins to shift more in the direction of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.

That’s my own dilemma as a fractured and fragmented personality. I recognize the need for morality because one way or another there are always going to be “rules of behavior” in any human community. There have to be because wants and needs ever clash. When have they not? Derived from might makes right, right make might and/or democracy and the rule of law.

If I choose to interact with others that is all applicable to me as well. Only “I” am far more drawn and quartered when confronted with conflicting goods that most others are not. They are either convinced that something approximating right and wrong, good and evil does exist, or they are sociopaths, moral nihilists, narcissists concerned only with “what’s in it for me?”

The Death of Morality
Moral Fictionalism
Richard Joyce on what happens when falsehoods are too useful to throw out.

More to the point is it ever possible in a human community to do away with rules of behaviors? You can call this morality or something else but in any community that has ever existed wants and needs ever and always clashed. Wants more around ends, needs more around means. As though until philosophers came around and invented morality, it just never came up.

It was instead only a matter of whether those rules of behaviors – rewards and punishments – revolved more around might makes right, right makes might or a willingness to negotiate and compromise democratically around a system of enforceable laws.

This is the trickiest part for me. There are those behaviors like punching babies which I can’t imagine myself ever doing. So, isn’t this objectively immoral? Even though there are individuals who do punch babies, sexually molest babies, even kill babies, isn’t it still absolutely, universally wrong to do so? A part of me on a visceral level thinks yes. But it’s the part of me that pursues these things philosophically that concludes that in a No God world there is no argument able to demonstrate that necessarily it is immoral. Given a particular combination of genes and memes there are always going to be those able to rationalize it.

Besides, what of those who are appalled at the very thought of punching a baby but champion the right of pregnant women to kill their unborn babies? Rationalizations for that too.

Or twist it all into something like this:

So, what do I believe here? Well, whatever it is, it is deeply intertwined in motivation and intention embedded deep down in the existential trajectory of my own life. Much of which is beyond either my complete understanding of or control.

Life…death. It’s all the same in the world of Groots. :evilfun:

:banana-angel: :banana-blonde: :banana-dreads: :banana-explosion: :banana-fingers: :banana-gotpics: :banana-guitar: :banana-jumprope: :banana-linedance: :banana-ninja: :banana-rainbow: :banana-rock: :banana-wrench: :banana-stoner: :banana-tux: :banana-gotpics: :banana-fingers: :banana-angel: :banana-ninja: :banana-skier: :banana-guitar: :banana-linedance: :banana-blonde:

Some people might do well to familiarize themselves with basic philosophy, especially logic. They should learn the difference between necessity and contingency.

Moral behavior comes from our genes and upbringing. These behaviors have nothing to do with logical necessity. Most of us don’t punch babies because we are not moral monsters, and not because it is logically necessary that punching babies is wrong.

Some bloviators should also learn that “unborn babies” is a contradiction. The only babies that exist, are the babies that are born. That’s what “babies” means.

I generally agree. In regard to “basic philosophy and especially logic” what is or is not applicable in regard to discussing Mary’s abortion? On the other hand, what factors involved in performing an abortion as a doctor revolve around objective necessities? And what factors involved in reacting to the abortion as an ethicist revolve more instead around actual existential contingencies?

It is the objectivists among us who insist that only their own moral and political prejudices are not prejudices at all…but reflect the actual obligation of all rational men and women to agree with them. Whether they call this “being logical” you can take up with them.

Also, is it necessarily logical to call someone who punches babies a moral monster? Anymore than it is necessarily logical to call someone who aborts them moral monsters? In a No God world for example.

Bloviator. Isn’t this the epithet the fulminating fanatic William James O’Reilly Jr. loved to hurl at those who refused to be “one of us”?

And, no, any number of anti-abortion folks I came across over the years as a political activist, did not construe “unborn baby” to be a contradiction at all. Again, they may not have been “technically” correct, but they used it because they wanted to be sure that others understood that they were not talking about just a “clump of cells” but an actual human baby that had simply not actually been born yet.

This, of course, is an example of the logical fallacy of stacking the deck, a technique that iamatroll employs in all his answers to me and others. Once you have stacked the deck that a fetus is actually a baby, then you shift the grounds of the discussion from, “Oh, you intend to abort your fetus,” to “Oh! You intend to murder your baby!” Gasp! Followed by pearl-clutching, fake fainting and smelling salts.

Now, it’s perfectly OK by me if someone wishes to elasticize language to say that a fetus is an unborn baby. I expect many women think of their fetuses that way, whether they carry the pregnancy to term or not. The difficulty arises when the change in terminology is used tendentiously, which of course what the anti-choice busybodies do. That’s stacking the deck.

Stacking the deck is among the logically fallacious techniques that people employ when they know they have no good argument. It’s a form of propaganda. In the same way, iamatroll stacks the deck in all his discussions with others, simply ignoring their points, their arguments and their evidence so that he can circle back to his propaganda. Example:

HIM: How do you explain, under your regularity theory, how Mary can be morally responsible for having an abortion or not when hard determinism forces her to do whatever she does?

ME: But as I have explained one gazillion times, I do not think that hard determinism forces Mary or anyone else to do anything. That is the whole point of regularity theory! I REJECT the metaphysics of hard determinism. So Mary can be held morally responsible for all of her choices, because at any given time she could have done other that what in fact she did.

HIM: Yes, that’s all well and good, but how do you explain, under your regularity theory, how Mary can be morally responsible for having an abortion or not when hard determinism forces her to do whatever she does?

It should be perfectly obvious that debating with a deck stacker (to say nothing of a malignant troll) is a total waste of time. Nevertheless, I will from time to time allude to his propaganda in the hope of stimulating a discussion with others who are honest in their philosophical approaches.

I don’t know why you feel the need to write this.

If you thought that he used a fallacy, you could have just said that politely. Especially considering that he restrained himself in his post.

He’s a troll because when you can’t express your side, it’s obvious that you won’t win a debate. It’s checkmate from the very start.

If someone is making an effort to post appropriately, then respond in kind.

That’s what a debate is supposed to be about.

You may not have noticed that when he quotes me in his responses, he changes my user name from “pood” to “Moe” — you know, one of the Three Stooges. He does not deserve any politeness if he refuses to show politeness himself.

He didn’t do that in his last post