• S
    11.7k
    You said in your first post.

    Any supposed difference seems ultimately to amount to nothing other than a difference in feeling.
    — S

    This In Response to my claim that there was a difference between something being wrong and feeling wrong.

    That is why I have pointed out that the feeling wrong is usually connected to harmful events.
    Andrew4Handel

    I've just realised that your claim isn't even compatible with your stance of moral nihilism, if I've understood it correctly. If you're a moral nihilist in the sense of there being no right or wrong, then you can't even say that there's a wrong out there to compare with our moral feelings! You can't have your cake and eat it! What are you: a moral objectivist or a moral nihilist?

    But yes, we usually feel a certain way about certain events. I was talking about the exceptions, which you implicitly acknowledge: those cases where there's a mismatch, which you claim to be a difference between feeling that something is wrong and it being wrong, whereas in reality it's just a difference between one feeling and another feeling.

    And I did also respond as follows: "Well, yes, there's definitely a disconnection in those cases where the activities fail to provoke moralising - and there are plenty examples of that - but not otherwise, and I have not implied otherwise".

    If you want me to provide examples of the above, then just say so, but that shouldn't be necessary.

    Any moral intuition I have now is based on actual harm not on my emotional response to it.Andrew4Handel

    That's not possible. You either empathise with the victim of harm and conclude that it's wrong, or you just imitate how a moral agent would react. The latter is possible, but exceptional, and I don't believe that you're an exception. Are you a psychopath?

    I don't see how you can present a moral argument that relies on how you feel.Andrew4Handel

    Without that premise the argument would be unsound. Moral judgement necessarily has a foundation in moral feeling. You're trying to argue that an empty imitation is the real thing, but it isn't. If you scrap the essence of moral judgement, then it's no longer moral judgement.

    My moral nihilism does not result from my failure to emotionally respond to harm but the lack of evidence of moral authority and moral facts. Moral nihilism does not entail that you believe all behaviour is acceptable but rather that there are no moral facts.Andrew4Handel

    I don't believe that you have a failure to emotionally respond to harm or that you believe that all behaviour is acceptable. I believe that you're like me and most others, as that's most likely. That means that you're a moral agent who makes moral judgements, and moral judgements founded in moral feeling. Since moral objectivism is unwarranted, that leaves moral subjectivism as the best explanation, due to the lack of explanatory power you get with moral nihilism.

    The problem with my past outlook is that I tolerated harm to myself.Andrew4Handel

    If you admit that it had a problem that you no longer have, then, all else being equal, it follows that your current outlook is better. It's common sense that less problematic is better.

    I don't need to have developed morally to stop tolerating harm to myself.Andrew4Handel

    There's no absolute need. If that's what you mean, then we agree, but I consider that to be trivial. Otherwise, "don't need to" in order to... what? Obviously you needed to in order to resolve the problem you were having, yes?

    The reason I see that a lot of people do not leave things like religion is because they haven't experienced the harm. I am gay and grew up in a fundamentalist background so that was obviously going to be more harmful to me than to my heterosexual siblings.Andrew4Handel

    What you seem to be failing to realise is that experiencing the harm is not enough. You can experience the harm and yet feel indifferent to it. Obviously you need to experience the harm and react with negative moral emotions in order to judge it as morally wrong, and by that I really do mean moral judgement and not an empty imitation of moral judgement.

    I am certainly not a masochist so I cannot stay indefinitely in a harmful environment. In a very banal way non moralistic way I consider any non harmful environment better than a harmful environment.Andrew4Handel

    The thing is, if it truly is an amoral issue, then it's irrelevant here in the context of ethics, so you shouldn't even be bringing it up here. In this context, why should I care?

    The fact you haven't divulged your personal circumstances here does not make your position less emotive than mine it just makes it less grounded in facts. If my position seems more emotive than yours then based on your own position that lends it more credibility.Andrew4Handel

    No, because this relates to your confusion of meta-ethics and normative ethics. Again, I'm not making a normative claim about emotion, like saying that the more emotional, the better; or that one should be more emotional. I'm making a fundamental descriptive claim about moral judgements, namely that they have a necessary foundation in moral feeling. Meta-ethics is about what's the case, and appealing to emotion is a fallacy in that context, hence my effort to leave emotion out in that context. But in a normative context, sure, emotions are pretty important. We need moral feelings like repulsion, guilt, and righteousness to guide us, but they're only a guide, not a foolproof method. Your argument against this is very poor, because you only point to things like your own experience of having a change in moral feeling over time, which isn't sufficient grounds to either reject or seriously damage the theory. I can take that on board and my position would still be stronger than whatever supposed alternative you think you've got.
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