For government, see “The Science of Right”, 1790, trans: A. Hastie, Berlin
For individual situations, see “Fundamental Principles for the Metaphysics of Morals”, 1785, trans: Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Cambridge

My ownership of my life is absolute. — tim wood

Not only the ownership, or possession of it, but included is the principle of its preservation. If we have a truth the negation of which is impossible, we have a law. If we have a law, we have the ground of a moral philosophy. Because the law is a priori, it is neither relative nor objective. It is, instead, a good place to start.

It seems to me, when Hume said....

“Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions”

.....he should have realized his own words suggest morals are antecedent to passions. And when combined with......

“a passion must be accompany’d with some false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable; and even then ’tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment”

.....suggests an undefined chronology between an unreasonable passion and the false judgement that goes with it. Is the passion unreasonable because of the false judgement or is there a false judgement because the passion is unreasonable?

And another thing. Hume says what reason is good for, re: science and logic and other relational categories, where it has power and authority, “as it’s proper province is the world of ideas“, but “as the will always places us in that of realities” and “a passion is an original existence”, we are to suppose it is these disparities which prohibit reason from factoring into moral decisions.

If Hume had only recognized the duality of reason itself, the pure and the practical, Kant would have had nothing with which to set the world on fire. Or, more probably, he would have had to find something else with which to set the world on fire.

Good.

Although I’ve been burned by commenting to people to whom I’ve erroneously attributed philosophical maturity, I feel I’m on solid ground here. I’m almost positive you’ll never criticize me for failure to approve a thing, when all I had intended was to disapprove some other thing unrelated to it.

I think our passions (what we desire), impacts our thoughts,...... — Rank Amateur

How would a rational system so hopelessly circular ever get us anywhere?
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on more then a handful of moral choices, nearly every human conscience on the planet would evaluate it the same. — Rank Amateur

If this is the case, and given the choice of deciding whether or not, e.g., is courage worthy of honor, which would seem to suffice for part of a handful of thoroughly objective considerations, it would have to be shown the choice is a moral choice, and, that conscience is responsible for its evaluation. Cases in which the considerations are reversed, yet still fulfil the criterion of objective consideration, re: is arbitrarily taking a human life good, it should be asked whether the choice is predicated on actually taking one, which is indeed a very moral choice, or witnessing the taking of one, which is merely an observation resulting in criticizing a choice without any knowledge whatsoever of its moral circumstance.

Obviously, there are agreements common to humanity in general. But morality is not found in agreements, that being no more than cultural suitability, sustainability, or simply allegiance, but rather, morality is always found in disagreements, and moral philosophy has to do with the reduction to the explanations for them. Its awful hard to say one is acting morally when in fact he acting as is expected of him, in which case his particular humanity (it is not honorable to prosecute a young Muslim American for learning to speak Farsi) couldn’t be distinguished from his general complicity (if you’re America you will speak English, dammit!!!)

If (iff) one thinks morality a fundamental, that is to say, a singular, constituent, human condition, it follows necessarily that objective morality is at best a categorical error and at worst self-contradictory.

it depends on a pretty thorough explication of "passion" though. — tim wood

Good point, and in keeping with

any difficulty in comprehending, understanding, or applying that thought must be attributed to the reader — tim wood

....it may do well to understand just what a passion, Hume style, really is:
“As all the perceptions of the mind may be divided into impressions and ideas, so the impressions admit of another division into original and secondary. (...) Original impressions or impressions of sensation are such as without any antecedent perception arise in the soul, from the constitution of the body, from the animal spirits, or from the application of objects to the external organs. Secondary, or reflective impressions are such as proceed from some of these original ones, either immediately or by the interposition of its idea. Of the first kind are all the impressions of the senses, and all bodily pains and pleasures: Of the second are the passions, and other emotions resembling them.”

While Hume relates passions to emotions, as we would do, he does not relate emotions to feelings as we would do. Hume calls them all perceptions of the mind, but modern thinkers do not attribute perception to anything but the senses. Kant removes emotions, or feelings in general, in his moral theory in order to get rid of passions and make room for practical reason alone, because (he says) no feeling allow us to arrive at a cognition, which any moral judgement must do.

It is completely clear that Hume's is a theory built on certain presuppositions and a model. That is, given the model, then if this, then that. — tim wood

All the good ones do that, to be sure, and we shouldn’t chastise them for wishing the integrity of their respective philosophies be maintained. Both Hume and Kant reminded the reader to stay within the theory in order to get the most out of it, and if the reader was sufficiently qualified to rebuke it....have at it.

Both even when so far as to say the only way to rebuke either theory was to change the definitions or rearrange the system itself. Egos at work, both of ‘em.

We can try. We ought try. — creativesoul

Sure, but only to the extent of patience, re: when barking at the moon and Wiki have equal dialectical authority, I find myself with nothing to say.
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If one gets that wrong, then they've gotten all sorts of other things wrong as a result. — creativesoul

Quite so. As we can see here........

“Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and affections, it follows, that they cannot be deriv’d from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have already prov’d, can never have any such influence. Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.”

......passions presuppose morals, by Dave’s own words (THN, 3.1.1., 1739), and furthermore serve as causality for actions, so it is reasonable to suppose an underlying stratum with respect to the myriad styles of passion themselves. By relegating reason to an inactive participant in mental operations outside logic and scientific truths, and pissin’ all over the very idea of a priori knowledge, all he had left to work with was the various and sundry sentiments as an inherent objective reality in humans. Which is really a shame, because he did acknowledge that on which Kant built his entire tripartite critique, the distinction between speculative and practical metaphysics.

So close he was.....
“Tis impossible to tell what changes and improvements we might make in these sciences were we thoroughly acquainted with the extent and force of human understanding, and cou’d explain the nature of the ideas we employ, and of the operations we perform in our reasonings.” (THN, intro)
.......but missed by a Scottish country mile he did.

But we can’t blame anybody for operating under the cultural influences of his day, just as we all do, and his day was governed almost entirely by the amazing advances in science and technology, seen in the birth pangs of the British Industrial Revolution. On the other hand, all he had to work against was the foolishness of pure subjective idealism of the clergy. So...empiricism ruled the philosophical roost because everything having to do with anything had an empirical foundation.

Hume is credited in some pertinent literature for initiating a formal moral relativism. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those who followed would seize on the following, yet drop out completely the very notion of the sentiment in general and particular forms of passion specifically, as the ground of morals. Becoming colloquially seen as a version of “Hume’s Guillotine” (not the is-ought kind) because it in effect chopped off his own philosophy: if a passion is accompanied by a false judgement, and if it isn’t passion that causes a false judgement, then that which does, absolutely must be the only thing left in what Hume calls “the disquisitions of all philosophy”........reason.

“....Where a passion is neither founded on false suppositions, nor chuses means insufficient for the end, the understanding can neither justify nor condemn it. ’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. ’Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. ’Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. A trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment. (...) In short, a passion must be accompany’d with some false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable; and even then ’tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment....” (THN 2.2.3.3 . 1740)

I understand modern moral philosophy frowns on that which came to be when there wasn’t such a thing even as a telephone, and barely an indoor toilet, where now some wannabe with letters after his name manufactures a solution for which he then needs to create a problem. (Sigh)

I'm after what grounds all morality in order to compare it with conventional moral discourse. — creativesoul

Unless you bring it with you, other than my brief and scattered remarks, and perhaps not even then, you won’t find what you’re after here. People are too bound up in projecting outward to demonstrate, rather than retreating inward to discover, those grounds.

Philosophy well done. Put it out there, avail it to proper critique.

The general theme of your series of comments seems to focus on the pre-rational or early rational chronology of moral agency. If such chronology is more reactive to outside influence from which experiences are attained, yet moral philosophy in and of itself is predicated on active determinations, which presupposes fully developed rational capacity with its set of experiences already attained, then it is reasonable to suppose the former is merely forms of consequential inclination, rather than a true system of morality, which is just as reasonably supposed to incorporate a form of antecedent obligation that a psychologically incomplete rationality cannot abide.
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That which is subject to individual particulars is little to nothing more than an unhelpful distraction during moral discourse. That which is true of everyone lends itself to being a rock-solid dependable foundation. — creativesoul

Absolutely. Now all that’s required is a logically and experientially verifiable reduction to that which serves as a rock-solid dependable foundation which is true of everyone. I shall submit, there are but two.

Morality. (The human constituency) All humans follow one (the human activity) — creativesoul

, is one. May we agree reason is the other? Reason the human constituency first, reason the human natural activity second.

Next?

At conception, there is no thought/belief and yet at the end of some people's lives the sheer complexity of thought/belief that they have/hold and/or use is downright daunting. — creativesoul

Because “...at the end...” is one terminus, I think it fair to say “at conception...” is the other, rather than conception as a position in the thought process, the assignment of meaning to something. If so, would it be reasonable to suggest your whole idea of thought/belief is what I would call experience? Experience does fit well in the context, you must agree, re: at conception the initial state of being there is no experience and at the end of being there is immeasurable experience. And experience is certainly accrued.
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to draw a distinction between empirical thought and pure reason is to show that one misunderstands how all thought/belief works. — creativesoul

I guess I must count myself amongst those ones; I understand empirical thought to mean cognizing of empirical things or condition of empirical things, the ground of which is always perception and of which there is always a conception from which experience is possible. Pure reason, on the other hand, is cognizing of possible things or possible conditions of possible things, the ground of which is imagination and of which no conception nor experience is at all possible. Herein is the negation of thought/belief being synonomous with experience, for while it seems reasonable to have experience with thought belief, it is equally reasonable to have thought/belief with no ensuing experience. Unless one considers even the internal rational process itself is an experience, which I myself do not.

So I admit to misunderstanding how your characterization of thought/belief works.
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All thought/belief - from the most rudimentary, simple, and/or basic ones through the most complex - consist of common basic elemental constituents, — creativesoul

I understand the basic premise here. Thought is a series of procedural steps, have an unconsciously time abiding duration, beginning with perception, ending with experience. In between are the faculties of intuition, sensibility, understanding, judgement, cognition. Pure reason begins with an idea/notion, skips the phenomenal faculties, picks up again with understanding, ends at cognition. However, this system has no degrees of complexity, it is all done the same way. I suppose it’s because mine is a regulatory system at it core, which means we are encouraged to remain logically consistent in order to prevent contradicting ourselves.
(Writing this shows me writing about thinking. But I had to think it first, which is not shown, so in effect, I am thinking about writing about thinking. But if I didn’t write it, I still would have thought it, which is....just thinking. Thinking about thinking is just thinking.)

There can be no pure reason without simple thought. — creativesoul

What is your idea of simple thought?

As I said, I don’t hold with moral propositions per se, but rather with propositions expressing moral implications, and of a particular construction. So, with respect to your examples, I wouldn’t consider them moral expressions because, while, i.e., “slavery is bad” may be considered a subjective principle, it doesn’t have an action, or, if you wish, an imperative, associated with it.

Apodeitic means clearly established, indisputable. A priori means absent immediate experience, but possibly derivable from mediate experience. Given the latter form, an apodeitic, a priori moral expression might be, my suicide is contradictory to the purpose of Nature, therefore never permit the possibility of my own suicide.

If you’re looking for an expression suitable apodeitically to all humanity, I’m not so sure, simply from the nature of reason itself. Whatever one’s reason can think, another’s reason can re-think. One would have to reduce the substance so far as to become almost meaningless. If it be given reason is common to all human interests, then an objectively valid moral expression might be, all inter-personal connections aim towards community based on reason, therefore always reason in favor of an action as if it were universal law.

Relativism cannot stand up to that, but then......neither can humanity.

No, I didn’t distinguish argument, imperative, or proposition as such, from each other, anyway. These certainly can be distinguished, depending on the philosophical/ethical domain one works from.

What you’re describing, I think, is relativism writ large, one’s anthropological or psychological view opposed to another’s, but moral relativism isn’t so large. Besides, there’s so many damn -ism’s and sub-ism’s and sub-sub-ism’s in relativism, it’s like those guys can’t figure it out wtf their talking about.

is there any moral proposition that is impervious to reason in the sense that reason cannot determine which view of the proposition is right/better/correct? — tim wood

Not to correct, but to suggest........

......there are not moral propositions; there are propositions that determine, or are the expression of, morality. The moral quality of an expression is explicit in its compliance. All propositions are subject/predicate constructions, so if a proposition uses a principle of will for the subject and uses a logically relevant action conforming to the principle for the predicate, there is a moral determination contained in it, it is an expression of morality, and as a matter of mere convention, is inaptly called a moral proposition. It can now be said no proposition having moral implications is impervious to reason, because reason is absolutely necessary in its construction.

The subjective relativitism arises in the choice of the principle as the subject of the proposition, and by necessity of law, the action in the predicate. Morality arises in the compliance between the latter to the former, re: favorable treatment is always in my best interest (the principle), therefore I ought to treat others in their best interest (the action), whereby compliance is met and I am authorized to call myself a moral agent proper. Similarly, the strong are naturally more apt to thrive (the principle), therefore, to thrive, even if I am not strong, I ought to prey on the weaker (the action), whereby compliance is met and I am authorized to call myself moral proper.

Nothing whatsoever to do with feelings, and such sentimental emotivist tomfoolery, nosiree, bob!!

If the rest is word salad then “some way things are” is good enough.

Simplest: conditions themselves are merely states of affairs;
Technical Point: conditions themselves are non-entities;
Technically Finer point: condition in itself cannot be intuited:
Technically Finest point: understanding cannot assign a concept to condition itself.

Morality isn't anything other than what's it's good for. — Janus

Exactly. Morality never was a “thing”, but always the condition of a thing, and, therefore, what morality is good for, is defining itself as a condition of the human thing, from its pragmatic, albeit a priori, ground of relating that self-defined condition to a corresponding practical welfare.

Which has been the bane of the modern relativisitic paradigm, as opposed to......dare I say.......Enlightenment moral subjectivism, the judgements of which arises from entirely different conditions. If there is no favored disposition, in effect there is no morality at all. But we know this is false because there are harmonious communities, which presupposes a common favored morality. One must conclude some elucidations of modern relativism are incoherent, or, the tenets grounding pre-modern relativism are correct.

A disinterested person can certainly observe, but if he doesn’t care about the observation, he would have no reason to judge it. The equality of the respective moralities would then be, equally insignificant. But he could still have an opinion.

No, I think there are truth statements we can make about slavery. It’s true there was a time when slavery was prevalent, it’s true slavery is not now so prevalent. It is true slavery was deemed a necessary aspect of business, it is true slavery was a necessary aspect of war and it is true slavery was a necessary aspect of colonization. But those are obviously not moral truth statements.

No, I don’t assign truth values, or correctness, to cultural norms. I bitch a lot about the one I happen to be in, but that also is not a moral judgement on it.

And does that mean that it is objectively true, that the prevalent cultural norms, whatever they are, are by definition right? — Rank Amateur

I don’t agree with defining by right-ness, either. It is objectively true, that the prevalent cultural norms, whatever they are......are just that.

Have you ever thought about benefit, as a criterion for moral decisions, and morality in general?

Do you think perhaps your adamancy over the wrongness of slavery is because you’ve never had the first hand experience of knowing differently? If you cannot judge from the persective of the culture that condones it, what makes you say with authority that it is wrong? I agree slavery is wrong, but if I grew up a plantation owner’s son in Mississippi in 1845, I would hardly think that. Or a Greek captain of a warship in the Aegean, in pursuit of those pesky Trojans.

Nice catch; it is indeed a tautology. And tautologies are the simplest versions of logical truth. If there is truth required in morality, a binding of it, so to speak, it should be as simple as possible in order to offset the ambiguity and indefiniteness of cultural anthropology or empirical psychology, which has no bearing on the origins of moral philosophy at all, but merely denotes practical examples of it.

The tautological reduction is useful to support the choice of #4, and that’s all it was supposed to do.

#4.

The morality or immorality of any situation is a product of individual judgement, and all individual moral judgements are equally valid, iff confined to each of those same individual perspectives.

I do find much agreement as well. Do you agree? — creativesoul

I agree with several of your responses to others, sometimes in total, sometimes in part. I’m not sure the position you’re arguing from differs remarkably, if just because I’m not sure what it is. It seems we are close enough in the basics, at least in the understanding of shared meaning and the disastrous appeal to rhetorical heuristics of the so-called language philosophers of the early 20th century, to say the differences aren’t that far apart.

Yes, my comments, if not an outright interrogative, began and usually do begin, with either assertion/claim/statement, as you say. That’s merely to set a reference, a starting point, and support for it, from which a co-conversant will supplement or reduce as the situation warrants.
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All belief is thought, but not all thought is belief. The only difference between the two, it seems to me, are during times of contemplation, particularly when one is temporarily suspending one's judgment — creativesoul

I broke off your comment, quoting only the part which shows how the difference may arise. It is easy to see how idle contemplation does not necessarily have an object, which validates the suspension of judgement. Understanding can still do its job, but without the requirement for validating its correctness, and without a particular cognition as an end, there is nothing to judge.
(Look at a wall. What shade of green is that, really? Lighter than this, seems like, deeper than that, sorta like a pear but not really. I had a t-shirt almost that color once)

On the other hand, as soon as an object is incorporated in the sequence of reasoning, as in contemplation of a specific subject matter, either a priori from reason or a priori from experience, it is accompanied by a judgement, because in such case a cognition is the ends, that is to say, there is something to cognize about the subject matter.
(Look at a wall. I’m painting it green, but I don’t want my wall to look like a maple leaf or a mantis or a pear. I want....whichever shade is judged is then cognized. Wife hates it........start over)
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the method arrives at the inability to draw a distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. — creativesoul

All metaphysical methods are concerned with reason, but it is reason from which all metaphysics obtains. Obviously, circular reasoning in intrinsic to this kind of system; it is inescapable, the natural functionality of being human and possessing a singular intellectual form. Epistemological idealism in general and various forms of transcendental idealism in particular, seek to expose the circularity, but never seeks to eliminate it, because it can’t. So, yes, there is an intrinsic inability to draw a distinction between thought and thinking about thought. Whether or not it is correct to call them the same thing as a means to overcome the inability to distinguish them, doesn’t detract from the overall method, even if it is somewhat unsatisfactory. It’s like, reduce this far, if you reduce any further you’re in jeopardy of contradicting yourself, or falsifying the entire method, not just part of it.

It remains a valid premise, nonetheless, that separating thought from belief is not self-defeating, and is in fact a logical rational enterprise. What can’t be separated, and what is susceptible to inability, is the determining of exactly what the “I” that has thoughts and has beliefs, actually is. THAT is the end of the line, that of which reason has nothing to say at all, with any logical consistency.

Your turn.

we need to allow for such things as relative truth and subjective truth. — Rank Amateur

Either that, or condense it into subjective relative truth. That way, truth meets its logical criterion of a sound conclusion but with different premises. I mean, in effect, we’re doing that very thing right here. We agree the leaders of the Crusades understood their sojourns to save Jerusalem were moral.....but we wouldn’t do it in a million years. We might notwithstanding all that, disagree on how the Crusaders came by their moral justifications from which their actions developed.

You know, truth, per se, really doesn’t have much to do with a philosophical moral system. I use logical truth to signify how it is possible to arrive at non-contradictory subject/predicate propositions, which are required for explaining why one morally acts the way he does under the auspices of a particular moral theory. Truth explains how the theory works, but doesn’t enter into the moral actions themselves.

What do you think morality actually is? What can you reduce it to?

“....For the metaphysic of morals has to examine the idea and the principles of a possible pure will, and not the acts and conditions of human volition generally, which for the most part are drawn from psychology. It is true that moral laws (...) are spoken of in the general moral philosophy. But this is no objection, for in this respect also the authors of that science** remain true to their idea of it; they do not distinguish the motives which are prescribed as such by reason alone altogether a priori, and which are properly moral, from the empirical motives which the understanding raises to general conceptions merely by comparison of experiences; but, without noticing the difference of their sources, and looking on them all as homogeneous, they consider only their greater or less amount. It is in this way they frame their notion of obligation, which, though anything but moral, is all that can be attained in a philosophy**** which passes no judgement at all on the origin of all possible practical concepts, whether they are a priori, or only a posteriori....”
(**psychologists, anthropologists, moral sentimentalists in general, re: Hume, THN, 1738)
(****psychology was still an informal philosophical doctrine at the time of this writing)

I wanna play!!!!

Yes, I hold 2 + 2 = 4 is absolutely true. As a matter of reason. No, not as a matter of opinion, psychology, and whether others hold with it is up to them.

Now what?

True, there is no truth value in opinion. Nevertheless, maybe it’s no more a problem than disconnecting moral dilemma from aesthetics. Choice of ice cream may be a practical preference grounded in opinion, and hardly compares to taking a life, whereas morality is a fundamental condition of being human, so shouldn’t be grounded by something so arbitrary as practical preference. Easier to see if one considers the differences in the consequences of choice of aesthetics as opposed to the consequences of choice of poor moral imperatives.

You’re struggling with it because you can’t see how arbitrarily taking a life could possibly be good, or that even assigning a truth value to a moral proposition which says taking a life could possibly be good. The best way to get over that struggle is to become the object of some other moral agent believing it is true that taking a life is good. Being that object doesn’t help you understand how someone could believe it, but you certainly will be forced to know they do.

I don’t struggle with it because I have determined it couldn’t possibly be good in fact and the proposition that contains it is morally bankrupt. It is my own morality with which I concern myself, and from there, I don’t care how someone can come to believe something I find abhorrent. You, on the other hand, are on your own. This is subjective relativism writ large and how it works is entirely metaphysical. How it originates in the beginning, and how it manifests in the end, is something else indeed, for these are both empirically conditioned. Morality itself is in the middle.

“......Subjective and truth seem by their nature seem at opposition....”
They seem so, but can be reconciled a priori by means of pure reason. It is these reconciliations from which distinct forms of morality arise, and makes objective morality as a doctrine, impossible.

Notice also, the things we agree on are not the root of the moral debate, but rather it is the things we disagree on. If the former is significantly greater than the latter, we have an ethical community. Where the latter does come to the fore, we have administrative justice to handle the disagreement. Morality, again, in the middle, describes how the differences obtain.

what I am saying is there is a truth about murder being good or bad, right or wrong. — Rank Amateur

Agreed. The statement has a truth value. There is a truth *about* any empirical concept which doesn’t concern the concept itself, but simply the origin of it.
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We can disagree what the truth is, but it is important if both parties believe there is a truth. — Rank Amateur

Agreed. The disagreement presupposes something enabling it, and also indicates the presence of, not just parties, but, morally inclined parties. Otherwise, there would be no need for a truth value at all.
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If we don't believe there actually is a truth, it is just preference. — Rank Amateur

Not so agreed. The non-assignment of a truth value does not validate a preference. If I say I don’t hold with x being true or not true, doesn’t imply I prefer one over the other. I could just be logically indifferent, or, in some typically empirical cases, unknowledgable. Still, a moral agent will not be indifferent, even if the logical possibility exists.
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Then we can see if we think that truth is different than opinion. — Rank Amateur

We can, and it is. A logical truth, which is what we’re actually working with here because we are considering a relative truth vale of a simple proposition and not a objective reality, is predicated on both necessity and universality, regardless of the contents of the proposition being examined. Anything necessary and universal cannot be mere opinion, because opinions have no subjective validity, being possibly nothing more than a notion or an idea. And universal herein meaning given for any possible condition pertaining to rational humans. It may well be opinion, but even then only in the context of a dialectic, which decides good/bad, right/wrong with respect to the empirical concept contained in the predicate of the proposition, but that’s not what’s being asked. To a human moral agent, it is not opinion as to whether or not there is a good/bad, right/wrong value contained in the proposition itself.

And because we remain in the purely logical, hence a priori domain, we are still being subjective. It also explains why you were given an comment (it is true murder is good/bad, right/wrong) that didn’t properly refer to the antecedent (there is a truth about murder being good/bad, right/wrong).

Best paragraph I’ve had to work with in days, so......thanks for that.

Because, from my point of view, morality is inherent in man — Brett

And so far no one has been able to say what morality is, — Brett

(Raising hand from back of the room)
Hellloooo!!! see page 17. I said, “Morality, one of two fundamental human conditions, the other being reason....”

Somebody did say what morality is, and happens to coincide nicely with your “inherent in man”. Problem is, everybody wants to jump from “inherent in man” as a “fundamental condition” out into the objective world of circumstance, without doing the work of grasping what happens in between.

I also said, pg 5 fercrissakes.......“In a discussion with a moral or subjective relativist, always first determine what exactly is relative to what.”, but people would rather dismiss the obvious than exploit it, so we end up with 20 pages of, as @Janus so aptly put it, “....litany of irrelevancies and category errors....”.

Everybody wants to be right; nobody wants to be laughed at, so nobody does real honest-to-farginggawd-philosophy, because doing so is never right and is often laughable. But some questions cannot be addressed any other way, and all answers are wrong if the questions are irrelevant.

Carry on, and good luck.
(Puts hand down and continues with idle doodling)

I personally prefer the Enlightenment era Continental Idealism, particularly the Kantian variety, even if I wouldn’t bet the family farm on it. But it doesn’t matter which speculative system one chooses, if he chooses at all, which ever way the brain works is how it works, and because there’s no peer-reviewed positive evidence of the fundamental aspects of brain mechanisms, we are free to be as purely logical as we please.
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We are not our thought/belief. Are you really attempting to deny that we think about our own thought/belief? — creativesoul

I don’t know what you mean by “thought/belief”. For me, a belief is a thought but a thought is not necessarily a belief, and if thinking is always and absolutely prevalent, believing is redundant. There is no epistemological or cognitive distinction between “I think.......” and “I believe.......”, and in a sufficient metaphysical reduction, the “I believe......” disappears anyway.

Still, I see you use that connectivity just about everywhere on here, so it must mean something to you. And no, I would hardly attempt to deny that we think about our own thinking, but I would submit Everydayman doesn't even recognize the mechanics of his own thinking, hence doesn’t acknowledge that there are any.

We humans are equipped with only one cognitive system, whatever its description. When we examine that system, it appears we are thinking about our own thinking, which is technically true, but in actuality, we are just thinking. Instead of some arbitrary object to think about, we’ve chosen ourselves as the object. We think about ourselves in exactly the same way we think about everything else.

Still, such thinking, this cognitive introspection, must remain speculative, for we have nothing in experience sufficient to falsify or sustain whatever theory we choose to describe it. But we know from experience a priori logic is sufficient for empirical truth, re: mathematics, so if we can construct a theory based on logical syllogisms or simply stand-alone subject/predicate propositional logic with respect to our thinking, even if it is not susceptible to empirical proof, it is susceptible to internal consistency and necessity, which are the criteria for logical truth.

Such theory will be inherently complex if its conditions are irreducible, or if the hypotheticals require invention of its terminology. And like any theory, replaceable with a better, more satisfactory, or even simpler, theory. As soon as one comes along.............

Anyway, bottom line: meaning resides in reason and reason resides in mankind. To say meaning resides in the object of its conveyance is a reduction too far.

Yes, of course. Space as the condition for the experience of external objects, is a representation of an intuition a priori. But in the manner of determining a concept of space, the representation takes on the aspect of a principle a priori, from which geometry in particular is possible.

Judgements involving strict universality and necessity can be considered a priori, as in all synthetic propositions of logic. Judgements involving inductive criteria can never be universal, hence are not strictly a priori, as in judgements having to do with empirical propositions.

as a presupposition for experience and also as independent of experience. — Stirner73

“....Knowledge a priori is either pure or impure. Pure knowledge a priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up. For example, the proposition, "Every change has a cause," is a proposition a priori, but impure, because change is a conception which can only be derived from experience....”

Whether a priori considerations are pure or impure will depend on the context within which it is found.

It (morality) is a collective justification determined by social pressures. — Noah Te Stroete

Even if it is, a collective presupposes individuals belonging to it. If morality applies to the collective, what applies to the individual.
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Why should people care about morality if they do not feel the pain of morally wrong behavior? — Noah Te Stroete

People should care about morality only insofar as they care about the conditions which make it possible to even have those feelings to begin with. If feelings come after the behavior, then feelings cannot be causality for them.
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But maybe I misunderstand. — Noah Te Stroete

Feelings are part of our natural human composition; principles we dream up on our own. They do not contradict themselves on that account.
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illustrating how morality works, — Noah Te Stroete

You must be tired. The only way to illustrate is with examples. Theorizing, hypothesizing, or just claiming, how morality works doesn’t require examples, although examples can make the theory or claims clearer after its exposition. One can illustrate moral behavior, but moral behavior says nothing about how the behavior becomes morally authorized.

Point/counterpoint. Nothing more, nothing less. No right/wrong, good/bad intended.

Philosophy well done. As in all philosophy, subject to critique.

Brace yourself.

The topic is dead, so I don’t mind bringing this up now.

For the longest time, it escaped me where I had previously found something relating to what you said about Kant saying something positive about noumena. it’s not in CPR; it’s in CpR, pure practical reason, and has to do with the ability to construct a non-contradictory notion of freedom.

“....By this also I can understand why the most considerable objections which I have as yet met with against the Critique turn about these two points, namely, on the one side, the objective reality of the categories as applied to noumena, which is in the theoretical department of knowledge denied, in the practical affirmed; and on the other side, the paradoxical demand to regard oneself qua subject of freedom as a noumenon, and at the same time from the point of view of physical nature as a phenomenon in one's own empirical consciousness; for as long as one has formed no definite notions of morality and freedom, one could not conjecture on the one side what was intended to be the noumenon, the basis of the alleged phenomenon, and on the other side it seemed doubtful whether it was at all possible to form any notion of it, seeing that we had previously assigned all the notions of the pure understanding in its theoretical use exclusively to phenomena. Nothing but a detailed criticism of the practical reason can remove all this misapprehension and set in a clear light the consistency which constitutes its greatest merit....”

Removing misapprehension being, of course, a quite loaded assertion. Apparently, the conception of freedom permits noumena as an idea, and having no need of anything further from that idea. Odd though, that the derivation of the possibility of freedom from the predicates of natural cause and effect given in CPR doesn’t even mention noumena at all.

Oh well........maybe it’s what you meant, maybe not. Either way, I found what I was looking for.

Yeah, I guess I would agree my sense of morality has.....er, evolved.....since the 60’s. The “ought” becomes clearer when “fun” becomes “stupid”.

My sole remaining vice. And the only one of all, I’d recommend, it’s only requisites being sufficient funds and proximity to a bathroom.

MORE COFFEE!!!!!!!!