The previous thread on Moore was obliquely about intuitionism. So is this one.

There's a piece of apocryphal about Wittgenstein visiting a Fellow, who's wife asked if he would like tea. The Fellow admonished her, saying not to ask but just to bring the tea; Wittgenstein agreed, "yes - act".

Then there is Tolstoy's Three Questions.

Morality gets in the way of doing the right thing.

If it uses its own text will it use, for example, the English alphabet, or some other set of marks?

The issue is that languages evolve organically via usage over many, many generations, and the idea that an individual could artificially create and evolve their own completely new and independent language from scratch is implausible to say the least.

Moral responsibility could of course be imputed to her by those that feel she is morally responsible. The point is that there can be no unequivocal universal rule that could be used to determine whether or not she is morally responsible, and hence there can be no fact of the matter, analogous to how there can be with empirical propositions.

And that means that moral responsibility is a subjective matter that cannot be strictly codified in a set of rules. There is no essence of moral responsibility, in other words: it, too is subject to "family resemblances". This may not be as tidy as you would like to have it, but nevertheless...

I'm not interested in defending or rearguing the private language argument here; there is plenty of stuff elsewhere for that. That's why I'm ignoring @S and @Terrapin Station... — Banno

But you're ignoring what I've said about morality, moral rules, correctness, and your own stuff about private rules.

Thanks for ignoring all of that and lumping me in with Terrapin, who clearly at one point was talking exclusively about Wittgenstein's private language argument in a number of comments.

For example, you've said stuff along the lines that private or individualistic morality doesn't count, and that there's no (objective) standard to go by. You've said that morality is about "we", not "I". You've said that stuff here, and you've said it elsewhere. This stuff you say is wrong, or at least unfounded or arbitrary, as I've argued.

Again I will point out that the conclusion in paragraph two does not follow directly from paragraph one.

Remember that the point at hand was that Morality has no bearing on a non-volitional action. It seems that it does.

I'm under no obligation to reply to every post here. I want to follow a particular line of thought, and it seems to me that your views are of no help to me. Hence...

New thread, taking this in yet another direction...

I'm under no obligation to reply to every post here. I want to follow a particular line of thought, and it seems to me that your views are of no help to me. Hence... — Banno

I realise that you're under no obligation to reply to every post here. But you shouldn't not reply to my posts for the wrong reason, and you gave the wrong reason in relation to me, so I objected.

I suspect that you only find my views of no help to you because you're stuck in your own ingrained views about morality, and you don't like that I'm challenging them. You don't want help of that kind? It's noticeable that you seem to have found those who agree with you more "helpful" here in this discussion.

Then there is Tolstoy's Three Questions. — Banno

I haven't read that. I'll check it out.

Let me know what you think.

The tea incident is related in Duty of Genius; the husband had exclaimed "Do not ask; give".

I take this to show meaning as use.

This is not too far form free will, either. If one follows a rule is one acting freely? — Banno

I explained this earlier, one may freely choose to follow a rule. The more relevant question would be whether one could act freely without following a rule. Could something which does not follow a rule be an act at all?

So go look at the Wiki argument on private language. I wrote much of it, anyway. — Banno

That's why we're best to avoid getting our information from Wikipedia, it's very unreliable.

It could be a unique alphabet, or non-alphabetic script (a la Chinese) if written. It wouldn't necessarily have to be written.

This is a neat rendering. The point of behaving ethically is not to say but to show.

But if that's so, how important are moral rules?

Can we Do without them? — Banno

I had to think about that one for a bit. And I'd say yes and no. Kind of in-between.

I mean, in a lot of ways we already Do without rules. As you noted a lot of ethical talk is post hoc -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if true that demonstrates that we aren't always acting from rules.

I think I'd want to develop the line of Wittgenstein that seems very reminiscent of Nietzsche -- that ethics and aesthetics are one.

Looking at aesthetics in a more literal fashion I think back to one of my art classes and we were taught the elements and principles of art. These are definitions for breaking down works of art into their components, in the case of elements, and then ways of building a work of art of judging a work of art when those components come together, in the case of principles. What's interesting about these rules, in comparison to the ethical rule-following we've been discussing, is that they are not of the form of if/then statements. Rather they are a collection of statements intended to get the student of art to think about art in a different way than "I like this picture" and "I do not like this picture" -- so that it isn't just whether or not you like vanilla ice cream or not, but rather so you can intelligibly say something about why you like or dislike something, or at least be able to begin to interpret a work of art.

Further, when you begin to study some of the masters you see that they actually break rules -- and its in the very breaking of the rules that their work shines. Of course they are masters, and not students, so their artistic intuition and ability is such that they can get away with that and still achieve something interesting. But this goes to show how though there are rules for students, the rules are more pedagogical than they are hard-line rules.


So, flipping back over to ethics and rules following -- it seems to me that we can learn to be good in a similar way that the student of art learns how to do art. Rules are in place as pedagogical tools for those who are unable to make judgments just yet, and need hand-holds pointed out to them. But rules are often meant to be broken, too, when we are masters of an art.

So in a way, if we have developed our ethical capacity we should grow beyond rules. But, at the same time, we could not achieve that ability without them. Further, though we can grow beyond rules aesthetically it's not like we don't think of them or have them in mind when we break them -- so its not a total absence.

Compare Nietzsche's view of the eternal recurrence -- a kind of rule that is not of if/then form, but is one of Nietzsche's responses to the death of God/traditional morality, a way of "saving" values from the death of their metaphysical underpinning.


Bringing this back around to Kant we can see how his articulation began this line of thinking because he did not provide rules. Freedom is the foundation of his ethics, as well as human value -- what he articulated were rules for making judgments about rules from a personal point of view.


EDIT: I think this goes some way to responding to your second post here: -- but let me know if you disagree.

Another general remark.

If you consider Wittgenstein's discussion of the meter stick in the PI, when it is used as a standard of measurement it neither (allegedly) makes sense to say 'The meter stick is not one meter long' nor 'The meter stick is one meter long'. If we are analogising the role moral rules or norms play in life, some care would be required to ensure that the formulation of moral rules as propositions renders them true or false.

Janus Again I will point out that the conclusion in paragraph two does not follow directly from paragraph one.

Remember that the point at hand was that Morality has no bearing on a non-volitional action. It seems that it does. — Banno

I don't see why that conclusion doesn't follow, whether "directly " or otherwise, and nor do I see why you think morality has any bearing on non-volitional actions.

I guess you are making reference to so called "moral luck", but in any case that seems to be a separate question and I'm not seeing it's relevance to the question of whether morality can be formulated as a strict set of rules or whether it is more a matter of subjective feeling, moral sense, intuition and conscience.

Could you elaborate and clarify?

You make some interesting points. The analogy of aesthetic principles with moral principles seems apt.

Learning such sets of pedagogical or propadeutic principles enables people to internalize more or less nuanced aesthetic and ethical contexts or paradigms within which subtle aesthetic and moral feelings may be encountered, developed and understood and intuitively principled judgements become more and more possible.

But no precise formulations in terms of sets of rules are possible and individual subjective variations are not only inevitable but desirable.

We would not want to become a society of 'good little robots'.

the rules are more pedagogical than they are hard-line rules. — Moliere

Indeed. I agree.

Actually that's an excellent post. I'm left nonplussed. You've brought together many of the bits that were floating around in this and other threads. I will think on it some more. Thanks.

This might be a trap... Kripke's approach is quite different. Once the length is fixed, it is fixed in all possible worlds. Ought we consider possible world ethics? Can something be good in one world but not in another? Are the things that are good in all possible worlds the things on which we ought base our ethics?

Volition has a role in everything we do. Identifying some event that involves a human being as not involving volition... I'm dubious. Should my friend have been driving slower, taking into account the unexpected? Should she have developed the personal strength to deal with the wasp bite with equanimity?

The point is that there can be no unequivocal universal rule that could be used to determine whether or not she is morally responsible, and hence there can be no fact of the matter, analogous to how there can be with empirical propositions. — Janus

And yet she was found negligent. It was found the the fact was she might have avoided the accident.

Perhaps we drop the "universal unequivocal" from what you suggested and move on. We use rules to assess moral situations, Yet the line of thought here is now heading away from rules as being appropriate.

And yet she was found negligent. It was found the the fact was she might have avoided the accident. — Banno

Yes, but that is a legal finding that, firstly, might not have obtained with another judge and jury. And so, secondly, it is not merely a question of moral responsibility, but a is also a sociological question as to whether, taking the whole issue of legal culpability into account with all its ramifications regarding the social effect a determination one way or the other in this particular case would be likely to have and so on, the defendant should be deemed to be guilty. That is to say there is always a pragmatic dimension at work in any determination of legal responsibility, as well as the usual moral and emotional (retributive) dimensions.

There’s a seperation between legal and moral, sure. But they are not independent, one hopes.

Morality gets in the way of doing the right thing. — Banno

I drove home thinking about Tolstoy's story. I pondered the Augustine quote: "Love and do what you please." I thought about thinking. I went around in circles about that for a bit. And then one of my favorite songs came on the radio and I turned up and sang along: the Ronette's Be My Baby. I felt joy.

The right time is now.
The right people are the ones in front of you.
The right thing to do is care about them.

:up:

Sweet, isn't it?

But of course we need to analyse it. First approximation: the only place one can act is now. One can have acted, in which case all one can do is make excuses; or one can be going to act, in which case one has intentions. But if the core of doing the right thing is doing, than it's now. And if it is now, it is about who we are with. And if it is about doing what is right it is about caring for them.

Now, a critical eye...

I think PWS is a red herring here. The relevant question to me seems to be if we take moral norms as part of the background, how can we ensure that they are necessarily true or false? It may be that we can evaluate using them, but without the necessity of assuming their truth.

I think PWS is a red herring here. The relevant question to me seems to be if we take moral norms as part of the background, how can we ensure that they are necessarily true or false? — fdrake

How you gonna do necessity without PWS? What is necessity if not being true in all possible worlds? Best semantics around, says I.

So, if we are going to talk about necessary goods, we need first to affirm that goods are true, and then sus out which goods are true in all possible worlds...

Now, a critical eye... — Banno

Why care about them rather than kick them? We can do that now, with them.

Dunno. If your world is sufficiently messy to have moral norms in the same category as 'paradigms' in Wittgenstein, then we can't ensure that they're truth apt (in all contexts). I'm sure there's a good account linking them, but I don't immediately see it.

Why care about them rather than kick them? We can do that now, with them. — Banno

Why do I say "There is a hand"?

Comes down to your assessment of people: are they fundamentally good, and evil is defiance of nature (as a Roman stoic would claim), or are we basically evil and must be guided toward good (as Christianity is prone to claim)?

How you gonna do necessity without PWS? What is necessity if not being true in all possible worlds? — Banno

If there's only one possible world . . .

Although we could still say that then we're talking about all possible worlds when we talk about the one.

Determinism amounts to there only being one possible world, by the way.