I'm not sure there are ancients who are as explicit as Hume -- so I'm saying he's making an advance in ethical thinking in pointing out how is/ought frequently get conflated as if they have the same import. — Moliere
The important thing to note that I think might be misunderstood is that this doesn't mean we can't be moral beings -- one interpretation of Hume's ethical theory is that morality is real, and justified by the passions. — Moliere
Hume's clarification is an advance in thinking because it was a point of confusion which could hide arguments prior to him. — Moliere
He is for me the most important and impressive "modern" moral philosopher because he framed the problems with enormous originality and insight, raising questions that have been impossible to ignore ever since — J
As for the continuity question, I see nothing in Kant's ethics -- apart from the Christian aspects -- that Socrates would not have both understood and been eager to debate. — J
I wish I knew what "modern thinking" consisted of, that supposedly made it either so unique or so pernicious. — J
Aristotle often sounds to me as if he believes he's achieved complete wisdom in all matters — J
The problem with "time-tested wisdom," of course, is that we are still in time — J
I also think, as I wrote somewhere recently, that the "loss of fundamental truths" picture is meant to go hand in hand with a picture of actual moral decline, such that Western society is now supposed to be much worse, ethically, than it used to be. — J
This idea of philosophers being "uniquely correct" is a fantasy. — J
I'm saying he's making an advance in ethical thinking in pointing out how is/ought frequently get conflated as if they have the same import.
For the second, could you perhaps say briefly how analogous predication would apply here, in the case of what looks like two usages of "good"? It's quite possible I don't yet understand how that would work.
This supposed conflation IS NOT a conflation at all. It is trivial to understand this IF the base model of reality is correct. That is there is ... passion (desire), reason (fear), AND ... BEING (anger). Being is the IS and each emotion contains a third of ought. That is to say ought is NOT merely desire. It is most associated with desire ONLY because we experience and communicate naturally AS IF time were unidirectional. Desire is the pull of perfection upon us, upon being, coming from the past accessible via only memory (and memory includes the current state of being from which the past may also be researched). But that limited association is WRONG.I'm saying he's making an advance in ethical thinking in pointing out how is/ought frequently get conflated as if they have the same import. — Count Timothy von Icarus
That presupposition is a dangerous immorality. There are facts about what is good. It is very hard to state them because our state is not perfection and we are trying to speak on perfection.I'd say it's question begging sophistry (in precisely the way Plato frames sophistry). To make the distinction is to have already presupposed that there are not facts about what is good. — Count Timothy von Icarus
If I follow your tack here, you are suggesting that the assertion that 'there are NOT facts about what is good' was THE position that was already common by Hume's time. That means to me that the foolish and immoral confusion of subjective morality had become tempting to reason (fear) at least by Hume's time. In truth, immorality is (being) always tempting in exactly the three ways, cowardice(fear), self-indulgence(desire), and laziness(anger). If I am misunderstanding you, please let me know.Now, thanks to the theological issues I mentioned earlier in this thread, such a position was already common by Hume's time. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, well, historically 'faith' has been an exercise in rampant idealism/desire and rampant fear. Left out often enough is wisdom itself. You can certainly understand why philosophy would represent a clear and present danger to religious pundits (being in essence). Clearly stating or trying to clearly state wisdom removes power from the pundits who prefer an impenetrable mystery behind which to hide (their immorality). The denigration of anger, of being, of WHAT IS, is typical of most aims at so called ideals. The tacit presumption is that there is something BASE about WHAT IS. As such, the immoral implication is that some form of desire (idealism) can get us to the right place, AWAY from this being thing. Likewise, the other large camp favors fear (pragmatism) and their cowardice presumes that near impossible seeming aspirations should be shunned, limiting what is possible to what is currently understood, rather than the infinity of truth that ACTUALLY IS, amid free will.It went along with fideism and a sort of anti-rationalism and general backlash against the involvement of philosophy in faith (and so in questions of value), all a century before Hume. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Your meaning here is unclear as the sentence structure is confusing. This is especially true for a reader that includes reason within morality, like me. So, I am forced to pick the idea apart in parts.Hume argues to this position by setting up a false dichotomy. Either passions (and we should suppose the appetites) are involved in morality or reason, but not both. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Both passion and WHAT? Reason I suppose is the other side. Correct me if I am wrong. But the trouble in the math and the model is the missing third part, anger and BEING. The correct model is a trichotomy, not a dichotomy. And that tripartite system collapses into monism quite nicely, with love, the entire system, being the monad. Again, it cannot be reiterated enough that truth, God, ALL, etc are just synonyms for love. Consciousness is just another synonym.Yet I certainly don't think he ever gives a proper explanation of why it can't be both (univocity is a culprit here of course). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Although I have read much of each of these, I confess that I take reading for what they invoke in me as ... ENOUGH ... and that I shy away from saying I understood the other. My assertions then are only a confident stand on current belief. I offer that other takes on this are just more delusion. We only ever have our current stand to assert. Even if we take the supposed position of another philosopher to stand on that is our current state, performing an AS IF with no certainty of being right.For most of the history of philosophy, the answer was always both (granted, Hume seems somewhat unaware of much past philosophy, and his successor Nietzsche seems to get his entire view of it from a particularly bad reading of the Phaedo and not much else from Plato). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Although I have had this very thought concerning reason, it is only tempting, a sure sign of immoral desire. So, this slavery thing, sort-of IN GENERAL has been shown to be immoral, yes? Do we believe that? If so, then enslaving fear seems immoral and I would assert that it is. Yes, I realize I am working with my model, and not maybe others' meanings.It's sophistry because it turns philosophy into power relations and dominance. Hume admits as much. "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (T 2.3. 3.4)." — Count Timothy von Icarus
It only seems like some points of view are invalid. They are part of all only so that they may suffer examination and amid being, change by reason of unhappiness/suffering as a consequence of not BEING at/with/for perfection (THE GOOD).This is Socrates fighting with Thacymachus, Protagoras, and that one guy who suggests that "justice" is "whatever we currently prefer" in the Republic (his name escapes me because he has just one line and everyone ignores him, since, were he right, even the sophists would lose, since there is no need for their services when being wrong is impossible). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Plato, again, for the win.The only difference is that now the struggle is internalized. This certainly goes along with Hume (and Nietzsche's) view of the self as a "bundle of sensations" (or "congress of souls"). Yet, Plato's reply is that this is simply what the soul is like when it is sick, morbid. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This explanation is VASTLY insufficient. The relative value of any ought is many-fold. That is to say each virtue has to weigh in on that choice. And EVERY virtue SHOULD weigh in on EVERY choice. leave even one out and you fail in that degree.Just from the point of view of the philosophy of language it seems pretty far-fetched. Imagine someone yelling:
"Your hair is on fire."
"You are going to be late for work."
"You're hurting her."
"Keep doing that and you'll break the car."
"You forgot to carry the remainder in that calculation."
"You are lying."
"You didn't do what I asked you to."
"That's illegal."
"You're going to hurt yourself doing that."
"There is a typoo in this sentence."
...or any other such statements. There are all fact claims. They are all normally fact claims people make in order to spur some sort of action, and this is precisely because the facts (generally) imply oughts. "Your hair is on fire," implies "put the fire on your head out." And such an ought is justifiable by the appetites (desire to avoid pain), passions (desire to avoid the opinions of others related to be disfigured or seen to be stupid), and reason (the desire to fullfil rationally held goals, which burning alive is rarely conducive to). — Count Timothy von Icarus
I disagree. To invoke a lack of desire, to point it out, is an attempt, which could indeed be wrong, to express the fact that what IS currently is only a state and not perfect. There is then a tacit implication of a perfect state, a non-moving goalpost, to which one may aspire. Laying out this challenge is always wise unless the assertion is that perfection is already present and represented by this state of being.At least on the classical view, the division is incoherent. There are facts about what are good or bad for us. To say "x is better than what I have/am, but why ought I seek it?" is incoherent. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Acting in 'good faith' is a sword of Damocles proposition. This is again why Deontological morality is valid and Utilitarianism is a dangerous and immoral lie. If one acts with the strength of one's convictions TOWARDS or INTENDING the GOOD, that is generally good. This is the general OUGHT. It implies a destination. I name that destination perfection, and suggest it is best to consider that an objective state.What is "truly good" is truly good precisely because it is desirable, choice-worthy, what "ought to be chosen" (of course, things can merely appear choice-worthy, just as they can merely appear true). Why should we choose the most truly choice-worthy? We might as well ask why we should prefer truth to falsity, or beauty to ugliness or why 1 is greater than 0. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This is INCORRECT reasoning.J - For the second, could you perhaps say briefly how analogous predication would apply here, in the case of what looks like two usages of "good"? It's quite possible I don't yet understand how that would work.
Short answer: just as the measure of a "good car" differs from the measure of a "good nurse" (the same things do not make them good) the measure of a "good act" or "good event" will differ from that of a "good human being" (and in this case the former are not even things, not discrete unities at all, which is precisely why focusing on them leads to things like analyzing an unending chain of consequences). — Count Timothy von Icarus
If the GOOD is properly understood, then it will be the same GOOD in every way at the same time to everything in the universe, unchanging and omnipresent.I can share a long (but still cursory) explanation when I get to my PC, but the basic idea is that "good" is said many ways. The "good" of a "good car," a "good student," and a/the "good life" are not the same thing. Yet a good car certainly relates to human well-being, as any — Count Timothy von Icarus
Agreed that at least an understanding is required, which is what measurement implies. Measure infinity! That challenge seems hard, yet we dabble in the concept.More specifically, to make these sorts of comparisons/predications requires a measure. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Indeed and this immoral act of separation is useful only amid the DENIAL of a final whole (objective). We cannot be objective. We can only TRY to be objective. Writing it that way EVERY TIME is required to be honestly trying. Be careful with assertions regarding subjectivity. "You are going to hurt yourself doing that." (ha ha)This is in Book 10 and 14 of the Metaphysics I think (and Thomas' commentaries are always helpful). Easiest way to see what a measure is it to see that to speak of a "half meter" or "quarter note" requires some whole by which the reference to multitude is intelligible. Likewise, for "three ducks" to be intelligible one must have a whole duck as the unit measure. — Count Timothy von Icarus
If it is a fundamental truth that anything is a part of everything and that there is no real live between them, then anything IS everything at some level of awareness. Unity was always true. This is the source of compassion and that is a result of the force of anger. This relationship seems counterintuitive, but it is not finally.For anything to be any thing is must have some measure of unity. — Count Timothy von Icarus
And these observations offer a staggering assertion. All fear, all separation, is delusional. This is a tautology, if the observer is wise enough. The difficulty of wisdom is thus again shown. How do we leverage this wisdom in our choices to generally increase the GOOD?We cannot even tell what the dimensive quantities related to some abstract body are unless that body is somehow set off from "everything else" (i.e., one cannot measure a white triangle on a white background—there are a lot of interesting parallels to information theory in St. Thomas). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Ah yes, the delusion of self-determination, reinforcing the delusional identity of the self. The self-made man is another hilarious immoral non-sequitur. We could go on and on. But the unity principle is that "you are me and I am you" The unity principle is that 'you are ALL and cannot be made to un-belong". You are a white triangle on a white background. And you may 'for the moment' consider the triangle or the background, but there is always finally only the whole.I think I already explained Plato's thing about how the "rule of reason" makes us more unified and self-determining (self-determining because we are oriented beyond what already are and have, beyond current beliefs and desires). — Count Timothy von Icarus
That which contains the seed of life is itself alive, obviously.Next, consider that organisms are proper beings because they have a nature, because they are the source of their own production and movement (not absolutely of course, they are not subsistent). Some non-living systems are self-organizing to some degree (and stars, hurricanes, etc. have "life cycles").The scientific literature on complexity and dissipative, self-organizing systems is decent at picking up on Aristotle here, but largely ignores later Patristic, Islamic, and medieval extensions. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This is an immoral lack of awareness. Clearly, that which contains the seed of life, is itself alive.Yet non-living things lack the same unity because they don't have aims (goal-directedness, teleonomy) unifying their parts (human institutions do). — Count Timothy von Icarus
You show the contradiction and continue as if that is ok. Is that reasonable?The goodness for organisms is tightly related to their unity. In general, it is not good for an organism to lose its unity and die. "Ok, but sometimes they do this on purpose, bees sting and stinging kills them." — Count Timothy von Icarus
Your self-contradiction without synthesis is STUNNING to behold.Exactly! Because what ultimately drives an organism is its goals. Brutes can't ask what is "truly good" but they can pursue ends that lie beyond them. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Agreed. Why is this not included though in the realization of all parts being the whole (for you, seemingly)?And note, bees sacrifice themselves because they are oriented towards the whole, just as Boethius and Socrates do. This is because goodness always relates to the whole (because of this tight relationship with unity). — Count Timothy von Icarus
This is a delusional nod back to separation and identity, itself a delusion. The only GOOD identity is ALL. You are separate from ALL only by immoral choice. The act of being and even dying is your participation in the effort to overcome all of your delusions and admit to being all in the first place by re-becoming it. What part of all will you deny is you, is to be properly included in the final all?So to return to how goodness is said in many ways, goodness is said as respect to a measure. The measure of a "good house" is a house fulfilling it ends (artifacts are a little tricky though since they lack intrinsic aims and essences; people want different things in a house). The measure of the "good duck" is the paradigmatic flourishing duck (no need to posit independent forms existing apart from particulars here BTW). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Renaming something DOES NOT change it in truth. Sophistry is still the 'art of wisdom' and that is despite the colloquial accepted definition, possibly a GOOD thing and not charlatanry.Because equivocity is so rampant in our day, essentially the norm, let's not use "good person." Let's use "excellent person." The excellent person has perfected all the human excellences, the virtues. "It is good for you to be excellent." Or "it is excellent for you to be good." In either case the measure for "you," as a human, is human excellence, flourishing. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Reason is UNLIKELY to aim at perfection. It limits us via cowardice, its typical sin. If you are a proponent of reason OVER desire or anger, you ARE being cowardly as a guarantee. If you instead DO NOT ENSLAVE reason to passion (desire), and yet admit its grounding in BEING (anger, a current state), you can begin to realize and accept the profoundly equal forces of fear, anger, and desire; the ONLY three forces that are love when combined in all permutations. This love is God and truth and ALL. They are again, synonymous terms.But because reason is transcedent, we can aim at "the best thing possible," which is to be like God. God wants nothing, lacks nothing, and fears nothing. Yet God is not indifferent to creatures, for a few reasons but the most obvious is that the "best" lack no good, and love is one of these. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Nothing is missing if it is perfection.God can also just be the rational limit case of perfection, having the best life conceivable. We might miss much in this deflation, but it still works. — Count Timothy von Icarus
And these realizations are meaningless because no such world exists. This one is alive in every way. All parts of it start with and cannot escape free will. They are all possessed of aims linking to all aims, towards the ultimate aim, perfection. It is only our lack of perfection that in every way suggests otherwise, encourages delusions like identity and 'alive'.We want to be the best person and live the best life possible. At the same time, goodness always relates to the whole, to unity. No doubt, we can usefully predicate "good" of events, but this goodness is parasitic on things. There is no good or bad in a godless world without any organisms (anything directed by aims). You can't have goodness without wholes with aims. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This is fairly nonsensical.The predication vis-á-vis some good event has to be analagous because nothing can be "good for an event." The event is good or bad for some thing, according to its measure. - Moliere — Count Timothy von Icarus
The obvious answer is yes. That is to say, all (or both in this limited case).In the 19th century there were many competing theories of heat and electromagnetism. There was phlogiston, caloric, aether, etc. Are we best of returning to the specific, isolated theories, or looking at how what is good in each can be unified? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Progress that is not moral is delusional (not really progress).You might say "but the natural sciences are different, they make progress." And I would agree. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, the delusions of specifics pretend to allow progress, and can, if and only if that progress is LATER related to other progress which readdress ALL. 'Filling out the space' of immorality seems to be required to accept morality (as objective).It's easier to make progress when one studies less general principles. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, naming the study of the highest skill within reality is a GOOD idea, but naming it will not change it, because it is objective (truth).Yet they don't always make progress. Recall the Nazi's "Aryan physics" or Stalin's "communist genetics." The natural sciences can backslide into bad ideas and blind allies. It is easier for philosophy to do so. — Count Timothy von Icarus
As for the continuity question, I see nothing in Kant's ethics -- apart from the Christian aspects -- that Socrates would not have both understood and been eager to debate — J
I'm just troubled by this idea of incommensurability and decline, which seems too strong. — J
To the first, yes, I think an interlocutor of Socrates (let's call him Kantias) could have posed theories about the moral value of motivation, and whether in order for an act to be virtuous, it would have to be something that anyone would do in the same circumstances. — J
I do want to affirm something you don't come right out and say, but that I think is implied in your questions. Creativity is socially constrained; it has a history and a context; and to ask "Would X have understood A?" is not the same as asking "Could X have created A?" In one of my fields, music, we often kick around stuff like "What would Bach make of Stravinsky?" Well, given enough time and examples to acclimate himself to Modernism, Bach might well have loved Igor. But there is absolutely zero chance he could have written Rite of Spring in 1725. So I read you here as pointing out, rightly, that we mustn't engage in some sort of "leveling of history" and imagine that Socrates, Aquinas, and Kant all spoke essentially the same creative language. They did not. — J
We live in a society carved up into myriad communities united by their own systems of intelligibility. The fact that we are all able to share the roads together and communicate in public spaces on the basis of general and superficially shared understandings masks the extent to which our worlds only partially link up. When we fail to see this we force the ethical into the position of subjective will. The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure. — Joshs
intelligibility is socially constrained — Joshs
I’m not trying to suggest that a single monolithic episteme underlies all forms of cultural creativity in a given era for a given community, but I am saying that these systems are interlocked, such that it makes sense to talk about Romantic painting, literature, music philosophy and science and mean more than just that these domains all belong to the same chronological period. — Joshs
More importantly, when we move from one era to the next a certain discontinuity and incommensurability is involved — Joshs
An entire metaphysics of ethics is dependent on flattening and ignoring these discontinuities in intelligibility. — Joshs
But if matters of fact depend for their understanding on systems of intelligibility which are contingently culture-bound, why should notions of the ethical good be any different? — Joshs
Why shouldn’t Socrates be able to understand Kant, the thinking goes, given a sufficiently thorough period of study? Why shouldn’t the Qanon -touting Trump voter sitting next to you be able to absorb the raw facts when conferences directly with them? — Joshs
According to this dualism of ethical value and matters of fact, the ethical disagreement between a neoliberal and a progressive socialist is based on considerations entirely different from those having to do with matters of fact. — Joshs
This flattening of discontinuities in intelligibility between eras, and between individuals, provides justification for the idea that there is such a thing a a universally shared notion of the ethical good that comprises not just the desire to be moral, but a shared conceptual content that is as transparent as matters of fact. — Joshs
The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure. — Joshs
I’m not trying to suggest that a single monolithic episteme underlies all forms of cultural creativity in a given era for a given community, but I am saying that these systems are interlocked, such that it makes sense to talk about Romantic painting, literature, music philosophy and science and mean more than just that these domains all belong to the same chronological period.
— Joshs
Yes, with a heavy emphasis on your warning about simplistic "single monolithic episteme" talk. The interlocking is complicated, and the parallels are stronger or weaker from era to era. Also, the role of science here is, to my mind, by far the most problematic. "Romantic" science? I'd need to hear more about what that might be. We all remember the Sokal hoax . . . — J
I think this is indeed the conclusion we'd be forced to draw, and I think it's the wrong one. So I'd want to go back to look more closely at the fact/system/intelligibility relationship. How much of this is cultural? Do all matters of fact really depend on such radically contingent systems? Is there no value in the distinction between the natural sciences and human sciences?
I think that Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Habermas have a lot to teach us here. — J
. The implication is that "the desire to be moral" can exist without some particular "conceptual content" -- that the desire can be present from era to era, but with a differing notion of the ethical good. Are you sure that's possible? What is this common denominator of desire? I'm not saying that there is no such common denominator, of course; I'm arguing, in the opposite direction, that in addition to such a common desire there is also ethical conceptual content that is translatable from era to era and individual to individual — J
The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure.
— Joshs
To me, this describes the process of "othering," in which opponents or adversaries are assumed to be in disagreement with us due to certain traits they possess, rather than because there is genuine, potentially resolvable disagreement. Oddly, I see this as erasing the similarities between their world and ours, not the difference. But I think we may be getting at the same idea — J
It doesn't follow./.../ The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure.
— Joshs
I find this particularly interesting. Does it follow from this frame that no one is ever knowingly dishonest or has evil intent and that the matter can always be understood as arising from incommensurate perspectives? — Tom Storm
Sure, and I understand (roughly) how Ethics is taught. But this literally foregoes any meaningful answer to the question, and returns to circularity. I'm not particularly intending to further some philosophical position but to address why I think the question itself is a bit moot. "X is good" requires my bolded to be sorted through. "You should do X" requires the previous sentence to be adequately addressed. So, I think this is prima facie a pretty unhelpful way to think about what to do in life.
Ignoring that "good" and "right" can come apart readily, I can't see how this conceptualisation is anything more than paternalism, rather than learning how to think and assess claims — AmadeusD
Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making. — Joshs
I had to look up "virtue signaling." Could you explain how it connects to meta-ethics? I'm not seeing it. — J
In social science research, social-desirability bias is a type of response bias that is the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others.[1] It can take the form of over-reporting "good behavior" or under-reporting "bad", or undesirable behavior. The tendency poses a serious problem with conducting research with self-reports. This bias interferes with the interpretation of average tendencies as well as individual differences.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-desirability_bias
Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making. — Joshs
Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making.
— Joshs
Sorry, this is opaque to me. — J
Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making.
— Joshs
Sorry, this is opaque to me. Could you expand? And, no offense, but in your own words if possible? I'm less interested in what other philosophers have said about this than I am in what you think. — J
Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making.
— Joshs
How do you explain that religions/spiritualities that focus heavily on love and compassion also "balance" this out with extreme violence, such as Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism (the Secondary Bodhisattva vows, where a person basically vows to kill, rape, and pillage in the name of compassion -- for the killed, raped, and pillaged person!!) — baker
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