That is the subject of the whole field of ethical philosophy. — Wayfarer

Not necessarily, because as I pointed out in my post, to some, that there is an ideal, or absolute purpose, is an incoherent idea. So for these individuals, the field of ethical philosophy deals with something other than determining this ideal, or absolute good, the field of ethical philosophy deals with determining relative goods.

The alternative is, we reach a stage where the transcendent is discovered or realised. — Wayfarer

Well, that's not going to be an empirical discovery, is it? And I've argued why it is not a rational discovery either.

For you the 'final cause' appears to be 'dissipation' - things exist only to dissipate energy, or return to a state of maximum entropy. From my perspective, that seems like nihilism. Perhaps you might explain where I'm misunderstanding this? — Wayfarer

Dissipation might be final cause. But dissipative structure is then its formal cause. To achieve dissipation, there must be negentropic organisation that gets you there.

Hence this is why the Cosmos has its laws and other kinds of structure. Regulation has to emerge to make dis-ordering even a concrete possibility.

So it is not exactly nihilism to say that social organisation is necessary as dissipative structure. We have to be organised because there's a job we are expected to do.

But ultimately it ends in nothing.

Well, I think there is a problem here, because "good" is qualitative, and we cannot measure any quality unless we know what it actually is that we are measuring. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's why I don't defend a notion of the "good". This thread shows that folk can't in fact define it except in terms of other more measurable things.

So, with respect to "entropy", how do you propose that we measure this if we do not know what it actually is? — Metaphysician Undercover

We know what it is instrumentally or operationally, like all good physicalist concepts.

What is matter, energy, time or space? In the end, we can only pop these terms into our equations as placemarkers for types of observations we know how to make.

And the reason why entropy (or information) has come to the fore is that it is our most universal way of measuring anything.

Entropy can be defined both in terms of material degrees of freedom and message uncertainty. The information theoretic approach has unified the physical and mental because there is just one unit that can measure reality quantumly either in terms of "what exists" or in terms of "what we can say".

Nowadays, we talk about matter, energy, time and space in fundamentally thermal terms. Hot = curved = dense = fast. Cold = flat = empty = slow. So cosmology is understood in terms of entropy and dissipative structure.

Likewise biology and neuroscience are becoming branches of thermodynamics. They now base themselves openly on dissipative principles.

So it is simply the case that our best model of reality is becoming so generic that it is losing all the particularity that might make it feel more intuitive. Complete abstraction might work, but it can't really be pictured.

I know you don't like that idea - you continue to believe that it is instead a symptom of explanations going wrong. However it is why scientists in the end are right to get exasperated and tell you to shut up and calculate. Abstraction that works is the best we get.

Of course, that is how the Platonic Good arose as a notion. It was an early attempt to cash in on the success of mathematical strength abstraction.

However - unlike entropy - it wasn't defined in terms of a real world measurement. That is why we have Darth proposing his system of wholly subjective and personal measurement.

The notion of the Good does feel right in some way, but folk can only offer hazy objective definitions in terms of flourishing or such like. We can see the Good has something to do with adaptive resilience and healthy growth - real world facts that we could measure using rulers and clocks. We could time how long a system persists when prodded or disturbed. We can measure how much bigger it is getting or how far its extends its relational reach.

So it is not impossible to define the Good in scientifically objective or measurable fashion. And indeed complexity theorists use entropic notions like free energy and mutual information to do just that when talking about societies or brains these days.

But ultimately it ends in nothing. — Wayfarer

The quantum vacuum is hardly nothing. It might be cold, flat and extremely featureless, but it is still a sizzle of quantum fluctuations spread out in a three dimensional vastness of cosmic proportions. It is an eternal something.

We can see the Good has something to do with adaptive resilience and healthy growth - real world facts that we could measure using rulers and clocks. — apokrisis

The problem is that unlike non-feeling/thinking things, humans (at the least) have subjective "what it's like" minds. The fact is, when we are born, we are subjected to harms and suffering. This is felt on an individual level despite the fact that we are shaped and shape alike our social group. In fact, the social group dynamic does nothing to mitigate individual feelings of pain and harmful phenomena. That is what your system ignores- the individual "what it's like" experience of actually feeling the pain or harm.

That's the naturalistic fallacy. Just because pleasure is what a machine creates as its value, doesn't mean that pleasure is transcendentally good. — apokrisis

You're the one accusing me of the naturalistic fallacy?

And I already explained how I am an anti-realist, so I don't think there is any transcendental value actually out there, just as I don't think there is any transcendental value to money.

We can always ask "so what?" to any normative claim. And we can do the same with pleasure, pain, and compassion. Yet I suspect that anyone who actually says "so what?" to these three things is being extremely disingenuous. You just can't get your arm cut off and shrug it off as a scratch. Our choices depend on an evaluation of the consequences - pleasure and pain. And so any sort of error theory can technically be right, but for all intensive purposes we end up acting as if morals actually do exist because we are forced to. Call it the persecution of ethics, perhaps. I like to just call it consistency - regardless of the objectivity of morals, we have moral beliefs and thus must act upon them in a consistent manner.

Just switch from talking about pleasure as qualia and start talking about it as a biological sign - a semiotic mechanism - and you will have arrived at my kind of pan-semiotic naturalism. — apokrisis

But this would require me to systematically ignore the important bits: feeling, downgrading it to some signal and nothing more. Whatever our beliefs in qualia are, you cannot deny that it at least seems as though there is qualia. The manifest image of qualia, something that isn't just plucked away as soon as we realize it is a sign or just a oozy chemical reaction in the brain, if that even makes sense. I continue to fail to see how the ontological status of pleasure and pain actually affects anything, since we already have a phenomenal experience of pleasure and pain that is as intimate as is possible.

No. We must focus on both by focusing on the mutuality of their relationship.

In systems theory, parts construct the whole and the whole shapes its (re)constructing parts. So the focus is on the primary dynamic that drives the self-organisation.

Sorry, but it is a fundmentally complex model of causality. And one has to focus on the irreduciably triadic nature of that holism. — apokrisis

Sorry, but I see no reason to place emphasis on an abstract object that cannot feel, unless it somehow benefits those who can feel. Doing otherwise reminds me of nationalism - you are proud of the country, not of the people that make up the country. But what does it matter if you support the country as an entity in itself, for itself? It's silly.

So there is no payback at all? — apokrisis

Why would there need to be? We have to find a balance between rational self-indulgence and ethical altruism. If the pain someone else feels would cause us more pain to eliminate, then we aren't committed to helping them. It's equality. The reciprocal relationship here is the distribution of values.

This sounds rather disengaged from life. But how do you define harm and manipulation? Are you going to recognise grades and distinctions? Or as usual, are you treating them as qualitative absolutes? — apokrisis

Being that I am a consequentialist (or a virtue ethicist cum utilitarian, I'm tinkering with that lately), doing vs allowing is just another one of those arbitrary constraints that works well in the legal sense but not in the moral sense, especially once we get rid of any idea of a Just World.

So I define harm as anything, whatever that may be, that results in feeling bad. A discomfort that cannot be redeemed.

And manipulation would be anything that goes against the interests of the person. It is libertarian in the moral sense - the good for one person cannot be equivocated as the good for another person, but only compared by what the consequences are to other people. We shouldn't just assume that what we feel is good is what others will feel is good, or that any bad we inflict on others will be redeemed somehow - that's where the Golden Rule falls short.

Consequentialism gets unrelenting flak for apparently asking too much of us - yet since when did self-interest have any role in equality? Equality recognizes the similarity between one person and another, and the prioritization of one person, such as ourselves, over another person is inherently unequal.

In any case, I'm a prioritarian and contingent-sufficientarian. We must prioritize the recognition of those who are worse-off within a certain degree: as soon as we get them to this level, then they are "on their own". As soon as we get everyone to this level, we then make another level, continuing refining the equality of experience between people.

If we are standing in a queue, and I am behind you with the need to get to the front, are you going to "harm" me by not stepping aside? Are you going to "manipulate" me by keeping your back firmly turned and ignoring my plight? — apokrisis

Well, let's say I give up my position and go behind you. Are you now obligated to give up your spot to me?

There are some pains and pleasures that are so innocuous and irrelevant that they don't warrant us to consider them. They are, from a consequentialist perspective, inconsequential. Things like paper cuts and bruises, the negative experiences that nevertheless do not manage to break a person's spirit, or their mood. The negative experiences that do break a person's spirit, I would call "terminal experiences", because they remind us of death or a threat to our very existence, and are usually quite painful.

However, in everyday life we often do give up our spots for those who really need it. A man with a broken finger really ought to give up his spot in line for another man suffering from a heart attack. There's priority in effect here.

But again we are back to your kind of unplaced and scaleless view of morality where there is none of the relativity that comes from relating. The "good" congeals into a mentalistic and immutable substance. It is not the kind of adaptive dynamical principle that lies at the heart of my naturalism. — apokrisis

Of course the good is going to be mentalistic and immutable - most of our phenomenal concepts are static. That's the whole goal of process philosophy, to show how our mental concepts of staticity cannot correlate to the rest of the world.

But that is beside the point. It's a red herring to claim that our own moral concepts don't even match reality when I have already said that there is nothing like our moral concepts in the objective world. It is an isolated phenomenon in an isolated environment of persons. To apply morality to the entire universe is to equivocate cosmic habit with morality, which is just plain wrong.

For example, you have to introduce the homuncular self that experience its experiences. Pleasure, pain and empathy now become qualia - substantial "mental" properties. And you even start appealing to "me" as a fellow homunculus doing the same thing.

It's a familar way of reducing reality - to matter and mind. But we all know that it doesn't work out in the end. Dualism is good for a while, but in the long-run, it is a philosophical blind alley. — apokrisis

It's a good thing we're not doing metaphysics, then. We're doing (meta-)ethics. It already presumes an un-removable manifest image of man, one of Selves, Qualia, and Free Will. I'm not sure how you get around the fact that pain, no matter what it actually is, hurts, and that pleasure feels good, and that it seems like we have Selves. Indeed the realization that we may not have a Self or any Qualia threatens nihilism, or a dissolution of all value whatsoever. And so any sort of metaphysics of ethics is going to have to work within these parameters unless they want to risk removing themselves from the ethical discourse entirely.

But this would require me to systematically ignore the important bits: feeling, downgrading it to some signal and nothing more. Whatever our beliefs in qualia are, you cannot deny that it at least seems as though there is qualia. The manifest image of qualia, something that isn't just plucked away as soon as we realize it is a sign or just a oozy chemical reaction in the brain, if that even makes sense. I continue to fail to see how the ontological status of pleasure and pain actually affects anything, since we already have a phenomenal experience of pleasure and pain that is as intimate as is possible. — darthbarracuda

Yes exactly.. I just brought this point up in my previous post.. he has a glaring oversight in the actual feeling of the individual. He is so caught up in the calculation that he cannot see how things are actually felt.

Life is inherently stressful for the individual. It contains undeniable harms and in unknown quantities. To what extent we need to exist in order to maintain our own existence and that of the group is beyond me. Somehow people feel compelled to say that the upkeep, maintenance of one's individual life and that of the group needs to be carried out. How this is without a circular argument, I do not know. Apo would say it is the group that just "wants" it because it helps survival, but that is still question begging, an thus not justification. Instrumentality is the burden of existence bearing down on us as time moves forward- forcing us to upkeep, maintain, entertain, seek goals with no end and thus leading to the stress of simply living and being that is entailed in this. The absurdity is the self-awareness of this. The flow is the feeling of being lost in an action and thus an almost opposite end of the phenomological spectrum as the absurdity of ennui. Flow is probably more natural in one sense as we are not as out of place.. But the self-reflecting brain can see the situation as a whole and lead back to instrumentality and the absurd. We know we exist to exist to exist.

The problem is that unlike non-feeling/thinking things, humans (at the least) have subjective "what it's like" minds. The fact is, when we are born, we are subjected to harms and suffering. This is felt on an individual level despite the fact that we are shaped and shape alike our social group. In fact, the social group dynamic does nothing to mitigate individual feelings of pain and harmful phenomena. That is what your system ignores- the individual "what it's like" experience of actually feeling the pain or harm. — schopenhauer1

You are ignoring the fact that an introspective level of awareness is based on the semiotic mechanism of grammatic speech. Self-consciousness is a socialised habit and not a genetic endowment.

And so all the problems of personal experience can only find their logic and their repair within that ontic framework - as positive psychology, for instance, realises.

Now we are biological selves too. That is part of the deal. And that is why we also try to solve our "mental problems" using drugs or other treatments aimed at our biological capacity to feel.

So I hardly deny anything, I take it all into account. And from there, the answers flow systematically.

Pain and suffering can be more biological or more social in origin. If you have a broken leg, take these pain-killers. If you have a broken heart, find a new partner.

You can't hope to fix anything if you don't have a clear view of how it works.

And if you are a pessimist or antinatalist, your problem is your relationship with society in general. You don't fit it, and it doesn't fit you. One of you is going to have to change. And in my systems view, in fact both sides have to be capable of mutual change as each side is the other's reflection.

It is just that the majority view, the wider social scale, is most naturally going to represent "the good" - at least historically, in terms of what has worked in the past that led up to the present.

New ideas can come along. They do all the time. And at an increasing rate because we live in a society that now encourages a degree of change that I would say is - ecologically - over-exuberant.

But a high degree of mutation does mean a lot of failed experiments. There are masses of social casualities - which is fine in social ecosystems like high tech start-ups where vast flows of capital underwrite youthful resilience. People can crash and immediately get up again. But socially, the other side of the coin is that we also wind up with a permanent underclass subsisting on minimal capital investment.

It is not that hard to understand our current culture in terms of natural imperatives, is it? And from there, start arguing for changes that would improve the general lot.

You are ignoring the fact that an introspective level of awareness is based on the semiotic mechanism of grammatic speech. Self-consciousness is a socialised habit and not a genetic endowment. — apokrisis

Two things- We can feel harm without language, and even if we need language to feel introspective harm, how is this even addressing my point in the fact that we FEEL HARM!!!

And so all the problems of personal experience can only find their logic and their repair within that ontic framework - as positive psychology, for instance, realises. — apokrisis

The fact that we NEED positive psychology means that we must somehow work to achieve it..more stress to lay on the individual..more burden. Whey we need someone to live so they can go through your "good habits and manners" regimen is not explained other than it is the next best thing once born.. which is at that point simply a band-aid not a remedy. Since there is no remedy, why even provide the burden? Because the group "wants" it? And why abide what the "group" wants?

Pain and suffering can be more biological or more social in origin. If you have a broken leg, take these pain-killers. If you have a broken heart, find a new partner. — apokrisis

At least we are now talking about things in the world of how it "feels" to the individual, whatever the origin (social dynamics..biology etc.).

And if you are a pessimist or antinatalist, your problem is your relationship with society in general. You don't fit it, and it doesn't fit you. One of you is going to have to change. And in my systems view, in fact both sides have to be capable of mutual change as each side is the other's reflection. — apokrisis

Eh, this does not matter for the individual antinatalist though. The system, just because it is involved in your development does not mean one must like it. It is not an inevitable pairing, simply a truism that society and the individual cannot be separated.. it does not NEED to be a mutual admiration society though (no pun intended).

It is just that the majority view, the wider social scale, is most naturally going to represent "the good" - at least historically, in terms of what has worked in the past that led up to the present. — apokrisis

I mean, if the good is heaping stress on ALL individuals and various amounts of pain for MANY in the "progression" to today's society, ok.. but that is really discounting all the pain to get here. So what worked also caused stress, burden, angst, and physical/psychological harm.

It is not that hard to understand our current culture in terms of natural imperatives, is it? And from there, start arguing for changes that would improve the general lot. — apokrisis

Though some socio-economic conditions can be changed, certain human conditions will never go away- instrumentality for one. Stress and contingent circumstances are other things that will probably remain. Since you do not recognize it (at least as a member on this forum.. not necessarily as you actually live your life and reflect).. I cannot much go further because you do not even acknowledge the phenomenon.

as I pointed out in my post, to some, that there is an ideal, or absolute purpose, is an incoherent idea. So for these individuals, the field of ethical philosophy deals with something other than determining this ideal, or absolute good, the field of ethical philosophy deals with determining relative goods. — Metaphysician Undercover

What is the difference between 'real' and 'absolute' here? If you're thirsty, a drink of water is a good, and examples of such utilitarian goods can be multiplied indefinitely. The issue with ethical theory is that it wants to find something that is good, independently of any particular need or want, good in its own right. 'Absolute' in that sense, is what is required.

The quantum vacuum is hardly nothing — Apokrisis

As David Albert said of Krauss' book on this idea 'The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.'

What it is, from a philosophical perspective, is the attenuated remnants left by the dissappearance of the material atom. (Unless it is endowed with the attribute of intelligence, but then what would it be?)

You're the one accusing me of the naturalistic fallacy?

And I already explained how I am an anti-realist, so I don't think there is any transcendental value actually out there, — darthbarracuda

Yep. As I say, you are appealing to trancendental values in talking about pleasure, pain and empathy in the dualistically disconnected fashion that you do.

But this would require me to systematically ignore the important bits: feeling, downgrading it to some signal and nothing more. — darthbarracuda

You forget that semiotics is about meaningful signs - there is interpretance built in. We form signs so we can respond with habits.

And then those sign relations are hierarchically open ended or recursive. Creating a robust layer of wise habits is what allows the further thing of intelligent variety.

We can ignore the suffering of going to the gym by focusing on the longer term benefit of getting fit. And after a while, the pain of the gym becomes a pleasure. We suffer when we can't go.

So as a model of feelings (and habits), semiotics is hardly downgrading feelings to signs. It is opening feelings - as just signs - to more sophisticated worlds of meaning. It is doing the very thing of allowing you to care about abstractions like "world hunger" or "specieism".

Doing otherwise reminds me of nationalism - you are proud of the country, not of the people that make up the country. — darthbarracuda

This is just you being wedded to concrete thinking like any good reductionist.

Can one be proud of a nation that can't produce individuals you would be proud of? It might be possible - where they make you stand around the flag every morning and sing some ancestral anthem - but we would hardly call it rational.

In any case, I'm a prioritarian and contingent-sufficientarian. — darthbarracuda

Jeez. How many -isms do you need to establish your moral identity?

Well, let's say I give up my position and go behind you. Are you now obligated to give up your spot to me? — darthbarracuda

So are you meaning to confirm my point that harm can only be mutually minimised and never in practice eliminated? Moral organisation consists of collectively targeting its minimisation.

In the real world us queuers make complex judgments. If someone's needs are visibly greater, we may indeed let them jump ahead, in hope that we live in a world where that behaviour is a norm, and in the belief that our example will indeed be paid forward. But also we resist queue-jumpers in the knowledge that it is quite natural for people to cheat to the extent they can get away with it. So game theory - a balancing of conflicting impulses by the third thing of an optimisation principle - gets applied in real life.

However, in everyday life we often do give up our spots for those who really need it. A man with a broken finger really ought to give up his spot in line for another man suffering from a heart attack. There's priority in effect here. — darthbarracuda

It is everyday life that matters. My complaint is that when you are challenged by exactly this kind of proximity principle, you start talking about finding yourself dying slowly in a motorway pile up or the existential horror of the Holocaust.

It's a good thing we're not doing metaphysics, then. We're doing (meta-)ethics. It already presumes an un-removable manifest image of man, one of Selves, Qualia, and Free Will. — darthbarracuda

So it is metaphysics. But your metaphysics makes different presumptions than mine.

The fact that we NEED positive psychology means that we must somehow work to achieve it..more stress to lay on the individual..more burden. Whey we need someone to live so they can go through your "good habits and manners" regimen is not explained other than it is the next best thing once born.. which is at that point simply a band-aid not a remedy. Since there is no remedy, why even provide the burden? Because the group "wants" it? And why abide what the "group" wants? — schopenhauer1

We are back into adolescent whinging then?

Life's too hard to even get out bed in the morning. Everyone is always bugging you about chores you need to do.

The system, just because it is involved in your development does not mean one must like it. It is not an inevitable pairing, simply a truism that society and the individual cannot be separated.. it does not NEED to be a mutual admiration society though (no pun intended). — schopenhauer1

The social system we have in fact requires your dissent. That is part of the pairing. There is no point giving people the power of choice if they never bloody exercise it.

But as usual, it is about balance. It would be a little crazy to remain in a position where you seem to find everything about your social circumstances a burden. If your dissent is that strong, do something more than whinge metaphysically.

We are back into adolescent whinging then? — apokrisis

And you with faux "big-pants" adult to admonish :-} for rhetorical points? Can perhaps the overlooking of actual human emotion for calculus of group-oriented goals be adolescent?

Life's too hard to even get out bed in the morning. Everyone is always bugging you about chores you need to do. — apokrisis

And your point? Even if it was as cliched as that, what is your response other than circular arguments? Of course I do not think the argument is or should be characterized in such a way, but that won't stop you from framing it in a way that makes fun without actually addressing the argument.

The social system we have in fact requires your dissent. That is part of the pairing. There is no point giving people the power of choice if they never bloody exercise it. — apokrisis

Ok.. so we agree there for once.

But as usual, it is about balance. It would be a little crazy to remain in a position where you seem to find everything about your social circumstances a burden. If your dissent is that strong, do something more than whinge metaphysically. — apokrisis

Nah, I do not think there is much to do except whine metaphysically, so that I do.

...the self-reflecting brain can see the situation as a whole and lead back to instrumentality and the absurd. We know we exist to exist to exist. — Schopenhauer1

What did your namesake say about that?

What did your namesake say about that? — Wayfarer

He said we are manifestations of Will and can diminish it by being a pure observer of forms in art/music, lessening our own egos with empathy with the suffering others, and diminishing our own craving with ascetic practice.

...they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.' — Wayfarer

That is certainly the problem for those who are seeking "the particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world".

But as a structuralist - one who sees reality as the product of formal constraints on free possibility - one would point to gauge symmetry for example as a rather absolute reason why we have particular particles as particular excitations of particular fields.

It is a mathematical impossibility for there not to be an electron or a quark with their particular spin characteristics if the possibility of spin cannot be eliminated from the world.

So Albert is talking about the lack of an absolute substantial base from which to build upwards. However the Peircean argument in particular sees "stuff" emerging due to top-down formal and final causation. In metaphysics currently, you would call it ontic structural realism.

That's why I don't defend a notion of the "good". This thread shows that folk can't in fact define it except in terms of other more measurable things. — apokrisis

Right, we cannot measure good, because we don't know exactly what it is, but that doesn't mean there is no such thing.

And the reason why entropy (or information) has come to the fore is that it is our most universal way of measuring anything. — apokrisis

If entropy is a way of measuring things, a tool of measurement, not a quality to be measured. How can you compare this to good, which is a quality to be measured.

However it is why scientists in the end are right to get exasperated and tell you to shut up and calculate. — apokrisis

No scientist has told me to shut up and calculate, though I've discussed these things with some. I'm a metaphysician, they are scientists, we each do what we do, and don't try to tell each other what to do. Still, we can have meaningful discourse.

The quantum vacuum is hardly nothing. It might be cold, flat and extremely featureless, but it is still a sizzle of quantum fluctuations spread out in a three dimensional vastness of cosmic proportions. — apokrisis

How do you know that the quantum vacuum is three dimensional?

What is the difference between 'real' and 'absolute' here? If you're thirsty, a drink of water is a good, and examples of such utilitarian goods can be multiplied indefinitely. The issue with ethical theory is that it wants to find something that is good, independently of any particular need or want, good in its own right. 'Absolute' in that sense, is what is required. — Wayfarer

I see a difference between relative and absolute, and both relative and absolute things are real. So, your example is of a relative good. The drink of water is good in relation to the thirsty person. We can determine whether any particular good is relative or not, by asking if it is deemed "good" for the purpose of something else, some further end. The drink of water is good, to relieve the thirst. Relieving thirst is good for keeping the person alive, etc..

When we reach the final end of this chain, that is the thing which is "good in its own right". For instance, Aristotle designated happiness as the thing which is desired for the sake of itself. This would be the absolute. But why must there be such an absolute? I see no logical necessity for this. We go through our lives doing this for the sake of that, and that for the sake of something else, until we die. Then even after we die, others are going through the same process, this for the sake of that, and that for the sake of something else. Where is the absolute good? Why would we even fool ourselves into believing that there is such a thing as an absolute good? If all the goods which we know of are relative, then why not apply inductive reason and say that all goods are relative?

Nah, I do not think there is much to do except whine metaphysically, so that I do. — schopenhauer1

It's your life. But you seem to expect me to take it seriously.

No scientist has told me to shut up and calculate, though I've discussed these things with some. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's actually a famous line. You know that, don't you?

How do you know that the quantum vacuum is three dimensional? — Metaphysician Undercover

We know that our vacuum is both quantum and three dimensional. And these facts may well be directly connected. That would be a hope for a Theory of Everything. And indeed, dissipative structure arguments are being used to explain why three dimensions are optimally balanced. But its still work in progress to say that is the connection.

I see a difference between relative and absolute, and both relative and absolute things are real. — Metaphysician Undercover

In my book, absolutes represent limits and so are by definition unreal in being where reality ceases to be the case. And that's why reality always needs two complementary limits to give it somewhere to actually be - the somewhere that is within complementary bounds.

Yep. As I say, you are appealing to trancendental values in talking about pleasure, pain and empathy in the dualistically disconnected fashion that you do. — apokrisis

What exactly do you take transcendental to mean, if not all-encompassing and universal throughout nature? That's exactly what I deny as an anti-realist! However, if you're talking about transcendental phenomenal experience, then absolutely I would say that pain, pleasure, and compassion are transcendental, pervading all our conscious and rational choices.

I'm saying there appear to be brute experiences, or transparent experiences. You're saying we can deconstruct them, and show their origins, and somehow this changes our perspective on things. It's akin to me saying there is the color green, and then you saying green is just blue and yellow mixed together, and there "is no green". There's green right there in front of your face! The origins of the color green doesn't matter in this case.

And then those sign relations are hierarchically open ended or recursive. Creating a robust layer of wise habits is what allows the further thing of intelligent variety.

We can ignore the suffering of going to the gym by focusing on the longer term benefit of getting fit. And after a while, the pain of the gym becomes a pleasure. We suffer when we can't go.

So as a model of feelings (and habits), semiotics is hardly downgrading feelings to signs. It is opening feelings - as just signs - to more sophisticated worlds of meaning. It is doing the very thing of allowing you to care about abstractions like "world hunger" or "specieism". — apokrisis

Once again you are arguing that what we have done (historicity) and what we are currently doing constitutes what we ought to do. Just because we murder animals doesn't mean we should murder animals. Just because we've made it this far doesn't mean we should continue.

Those who made it were the lucky ones, not necessarily the smart ones. And that's what life comes down to: the fetishization of genes, or gene-worship.

This is just you being wedded to concrete thinking like any good reductionist. — apokrisis

Huh? What does this mean?

So are you meaning to confirm my point that harm can only be mutually minimised and never in practice eliminated? Moral organisation consists of collectively targeting its minimisation. — apokrisis

Excellent, so we agree on at least one point. Harm is pervasive and impossible to get rid of. But this need not constrain our ability to think of what could be the case. Indeed I would personally argue that the state of the environment and our programming makes us morally disqualified in some sense. The world will never be "good", yet this does not stop us from acting ethically. There is too much imperfection, too much decay and insufficiency, to be even a candidate for a decent world. But this doesn't mean we can stoop to this level.

It is everyday life that matters. My complaint is that when you are challenged by exactly this kind of proximity principle, you start talking about finding yourself dying slowly in a motorway pile up or the existential horror of the Holocaust. — apokrisis

So what? What if you found yourself in the Holocaust? I'm sure you'd wish everyone else would adopt the principles I am advocating.

So it is metaphysics. But your metaphysics makes different presumptions than mine. — apokrisis

Well, yes, metaethics is a sort of metaphysics. But it is metaphysics in the service of ethics, not the other way around.

Pain and suffering can be more biological or more social in origin. If you have a broken leg, take these pain-killers. If you have a broken heart, find a new partner.

You can't hope to fix anything if you don't have a clear view of how it works. — apokrisis

Why does anything need fixing or repair to begin with? What is so important that requires us to suffer? What great cosmic transcendental goal are we all advancing towards that justifies our collective troubles?

Extinction, that's the end-goal. Quite inspiring, truly.

Ethics becomes not a system of progress and triumph but a recovery mechanism meant for janitorial service, cleaning up the mess. Almost all ethics is affirmative, and thus second-order, as it forgets its own structure. Consequentialists are forced to accept that murdering a person can be acceptable - and although I am a consequentialist myself, the fact that I have to accept that murdering someone might be necessary just goes to show how royally f*cked up our little armpit of the universe is. The fact that we have to compromise should make us take a step back and think about what is going on that forces us to compromise in the first place. A truly good world would not require compromise, or the choosing of a "lesser evil". A truly good world wouldn't have any necessary evils.

The virtue theory still seems the most attractive to me. It accepts the individualism of our moral quest, and balances it against what people think and what the polis, society as a whole, will benefit from. — mcdoodle

I've been tinkering with the idea that utilitarianism might be a kind of virtue ethics. I think it was Mill who said that compassion is the virtue for ethical living.

I can't be doing with rules, whether Kant's super-logical principle, or consequentialism/utilitarianism (as I've said before, we don't know the consequences till we've acted, so I think again we're smuggling in virtues/vices in disguise). — mcdoodle

But surely we can reasonably estimate what the consequences are going to be. Is this not how we live our daily lives? I press the letter B on my keyboard; I am reasonably confident that the representation of B will appear on my screen. I am reasonably sure I will not explode when I take a drink of water. I am reasonably sure that I will be able to pass this midterm. etc. Intentions don't change the reality of an outcome.

What exactly do you take transcendental to mean, if not all-encompassing and universal throughout nature? — darthbarracuda

Err, if it pervades nature, that makes it immanent. And immanence is opposed to transcendent, not transcendental, in this context.

Focus on causality. We are talking about the reasons things are the way they ought to be. We are talking about the origins of the shaping constraints, the lawful regularities.

To say that formal and final causes act from outside the realm of material and efficient cause - as Plato did, and as Western religions do - is to claim transcendent origins.

Immanence - as argued by Anaximander, Aristotle and other organicists - is about self-organising materiality. The formal and final causes of being arise within the world itself.

I'm saying there appear to be brute experiences, or transparent experiences. You're saying we can deconstruct them, and show their origins, and somehow this changes our perspective on things. It's akin to me saying there is the color green, and then you saying green is just blue and yellow mixed together, and there "is no green". There's green right there in front of your face! The origins of the color green doesn't matter in this case. — darthbarracuda

First, I would be more likely to talk about electromagnetic radiation and opponent channel processing if I were deconstructing qualia in terms of physicalism.

And then the phenomenological fact that green can be mixed from yellow and blue paint ought to tell you that your experience is not actually brute at this level even. It ought to raise the question of why you can't phenomenologically mix two paints to arrive at red, yellow and blue? Or why the rule for mixing light is different in that now it is yellow that is composite and green that is primary.

Woo. This phenomenological shape-shifting really ought to bother you. And it's right in front of your face - if you ever open your eyes and mind.

Once again you are arguing that what we have done (historicity) and what we are currently doing constitutes what we ought to do. Just because we murder animals doesn't mean we should murder animals. Just because we've made it this far doesn't mean we should continue. — darthbarracuda

I'm sure no matter how many of thousands of times I correct you, it won't make a difference.

The argument is that history proves a state of constraint right - as the best reflection of that history. But then constraints, by their very nature, are permissive and even positively enabling of degrees of freedom. Part of the deal is that they set the degree of disagreement or novelty it is useful to see. And even that is itself subject to the principle of evolvability.

With living systems, the constraints can include information about when to stick with the rules, when to break away and experiment. Animals under stress are designed to increase the mutation rates and so make possible greater than usual adaptive changes.

If you want to make an argument for veganism, no problems. Others are making an argument for paleolithic diets.

My argument already endorses a degree of experimentation of any kind. Let society suck it and see. If there is collective social merit in not eating animals, expect your wishes to come true eventually.

Harm is pervasive and impossible to get rid of. But this need not constrain our ability to think of what could be the case. — darthbarracuda

Sure, we can talk about fictional worlds. But fictional worlds would have fictional moralities. So there doesn't seem a lot of point in wasting too much time on what can't be changed.

Again, your antinatalism might lead you to argue for the wiping out of all life with an integrative nervous system - the minimal qualification for sentience. Leave reality to jellyfish, daffodils and bacteria. But as I have pointed out, you won't in practice beat life so easily. Antinatalism is always going to lose as it only takes a couple of sneaky breeders to slip your net.

So what? What if you found yourself in the Holocaust? I'm sure you'd wish everyone else would adopt the principles I am advocating. — darthbarracuda

One could always wish. But given that is not the way reality works, we need instead to focus on more practical responses to the threat of nasty demises.

Godwin's law not withstanding, aren't you at all troubled by the familiar debating point that Hitler was a vegetarian, Himmler wanted to ban hunting? The same pervasive Romanticism that justified their Nazi racism, justified their anti-specieism.

There was widespread support for animal welfare in Nazi Germany[1] among the country's leadership. Adolf Hitler and his top officials took a variety of measures to ensure animals were protected.[2] Many Nazi leaders, including Hitler and Hermann Göring, were supporters of animal rights and conservation. Several Nazis were environmentalists, and species protection and animal welfare were significant issues in the Nazi regime.[3]

Heinrich Himmler made an effort to ban the hunting of animals.[4] Göring was a professed animal lover and conservationist,[5] who, on instructions from Hitler, committed Germans who violated Nazi animal welfare laws to concentration camps. In his private diaries, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels described Hitler as a vegetarian whose hatred of the Jewish and Christian religions in large part stemmed from the ethical distinction these faiths drew between the value of humans and the value of other animals; Goebbels also mentions that Hitler planned to ban slaughterhouses in the German Reich following the conclusion of World War II.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_Nazi_Germany

Err, if it pervades nature, that makes it immanent. And immanence is opposed to transcendent, not transcendental, in this context.

Focus on causality. We are talking about the reasons things are the way they ought to be. We are talking about the origins of the shaping constraints, the lawful regularities.

To say that formal and final causes act from outside the realm of material and efficient cause - as Plato did, and as Western religions do - is to claim transcendent origins.

Immanence - as argued by Anaximander, Aristotle and other organicists - is about self-organising materiality. The formal and final causes of being arise within the world itself. — apokrisis

In any case I don't see how this is at all relevant to the discussion. You continue to assert that what I believe in is transcendent woo and I have consistently pointed out that I am limiting morality to minds, and thus it cannot be transcendent.

So if we're talking about value, then I am arguing that it is immanent in minds. That is all.

And then the phenomenological fact that green can be mixed from yellow and blue paint ought to tell you that your experience is not actually brute at this level even. It ought to raise the question of why you can't phenomenologically mix two paints to arrive at red, yellow and blue? Or why the rule for mixing light is different in that now it is yellow that is composite and green that is primary.

Woo. This phenomenological shape-shifting really ought to bother you. And it's right in front of your face - if you ever open your eyes and mind. — apokrisis

How could it "bother" me if qualia is not real? How can I do anything if "I" don't exist?

Illusions, coherent or not, are still transparent. You can't just deconstruct your own experiences and pretend that they aren't really there.

All of this is just a red herring. Or I guess you could say it's just a herring, because our qualitative experience of red isn't actually there...?

Sure, we can talk about fictional worlds. But fictional worlds would have fictional moralities. So there doesn't seem a lot of point in wasting too much time on what can't be changed. — apokrisis

So once again you are thrusting practical applied ethics into theoretical normative ethics. Stop doing that.

Again, your antinatalism might lead you to argue for the wiping out of all life with an integrative nervous system - the minimal qualification for sentience. Leave reality to jellyfish, daffodils and bacteria. But as I have pointed out, you won't in practice beat life so easily. Antinatalism is always going to lose as it only takes a couple of sneaky breeders to slip your net. — apokrisis

This changes nothing about the ideal. Since when did we have to content with what the universe offers us? Why do we have limit our own expectations?

One could always wish. But given that is not the way reality works, we need instead to focus on more practical responses to the threat of nasty demises. — apokrisis

Again, practical vs theoretical.

Indeed I don't believe AN or veganism or anything like that will take off. But this doesn't change the truth value of them. If I can convince a few people to go AN or vegan than I will have done some legitimate good. The rest of ethics is just applied and practical ethics meant to compromise for everyone else's shortcomings.

Godwin's law not withstanding, aren't you at all troubled by the familiar debating point that Hitler was a vegetarian, Himmler wanted to ban hunting? The same pervasive Romanticism that justified their Nazi racism, justified their anti-specieism. — apokrisis

ehh...no. People can hold morally correct views but for shitty, contradictory reasons. Aren't you troubled by blind pragmatism, the same reasoning that went into the running of Nazi concentration camps? What a load of rubbish, organizing reason like this, as if my reasoning can be identified as a certain "kind" of reason and is prone to such things like bigotry and genocide, whereas your superior "kind" of reason isn't. You haven't even identified what it was about Nazi policy that makes it similar to what reasoning I am using, you've just asserted this and claimed association without justification, leaving this association hanging in the air like a fart, tainting the legitimacy of anything I say, as if being a vegetarian is potentially causally linked to Nazism. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves - does that mean democracy is suspicious? Christianity is linked to the crusades - does that mean every Christian is a war-mongerer?

Clumping them together is fallacious, and I honestly don't understand why you even mentioned it without providing any justification.

The same reasoning that led the Nazis to racism led some of them to vegetarianism. The same reasoning that led altruists to vegetarianism led them to things like democracy (how about that, non-pragmatic thinking leads to solutions that actually work?! Who would've thought!!! - it's bullshit to claim that everything that worked, worked because of your special pragmatism). So your fallacy of association fails in virtue of its own fallaciousness and exclusion of alternatives.

Nietzsche would have fallen under this vague "romanticism" term, yet he was vehemently opposed to nationalism. And Peirce, your philosopher-Jesus, was a womanizer and eccentric douche, and Aristotle was the personal teacher of Alexander, who was basically the ancient world's Hitler (without the racism). Pragmatism must be inherently predisposed to douchebaggery... I can cherry pick too!

In any case it is highly suspicious that you are willing to clump together rational inquiry with irrational racism and bigotry and call it "romanticism", as opposed to your enlightened pragmatism. It's insulting to compare the reasoning that goes into these ethical claims to the same "reasoning" behind racism and bigotry. But you try to get away with it by splitting reason down the middle, an us vs them mentality, and conveniently failing to make a thread on your views and instead attacking everyone else's views while weaving and dodging and moving the goalposts in an almost troll-like manner. According to you, we're either an enlightened pragmatist, or a bottom dwelling scum sucker who's lost in transcendence and associated with racist bigots. Bullshit.

I have consistently pointed out that I am limiting morality to minds, and thus it cannot be transcendent.

So if we're talking about value, then I am arguing that it is immanent in minds. — darthbarracuda

Yep. You are employing a dualistic ontology and you don't see that as a problem.

So once again you are thrusting practical applied ethics into theoretical normative ethics. Stop doing that. — darthbarracuda

:-}

Nietzsche would have fallen under this vague "romanticism" term, yet he was vehemently opposed to nationalism. And Peirce, your philosophy-Jesus, was a womanizer and eccentric douche. I can cherry pick too! — darthbarracuda

Calling Peirce a womaniser is a bit strong. That charge says more about the uptight community within which he lived. And he was an eccentric douche to the degree that many of the mathematically brilliant can have an autistic streak that makes them somewhat unfit for the regular world.

But fire away. If you want to draw some kind of conclusion about the value of philosophical arguments based on the moral character of their originators, then amuse me.

But fire away. If you want to draw some kind of conclusion about the value of philosophical arguments based on the moral character of their originators, then amuse me. — apokrisis

I mean, you were the one who brought up the apparent relationship between vegetarianism and Nazism. A brilliant move, really.

Please explain to me what exactly is involved in the reasoning of vegetarians and Nazis that make them both "romantic" according to your book.

But surely we can reasonably estimate what the consequences are going to be. Is this not how we live our daily lives? I press the letter B on my keyboard; I am reasonably confident that the representation of B will appear on my screen. I am reasonably sure I will not explode when I take a drink of water. I am reasonably sure that I will be able to pass this midterm. etc. Intentions don't change the reality of an outcome. — darthbarracuda

I would say these are not ethical examples. If you take those standard thought experiments that Michael Sandel uses about saving one life versus saving many lives as trains pass underneath bridges - such examples do tend to assume that the consequences of each act are perfectly knowable, and in this sense I don't accept them.

Where an ethical question involves action between humans or between a human and other creatures, we are not pressing a B on the keyboard: we are taking a step without being at all sure how the other is going to respond. Conciliation and negotiation are the stuff of living.

But I'm not claiming this happens all the time. It's easy enough to know the consequences of paying people starvation wages and to institute more ethical wages. Even then, though, who knows how the world may respond? For example, other organisations who are less responsible and more cunningly secretive may price the ethical ones out of the market while using indentured workers. So a 'victory' for ethical investors can turn into defeat because of unintended consequences.

But then if you don't accept that our biology and sociology expresses natural principles, then that seems to leave you with only the options that either whatever we do (biologically and socially) is thus arbitrary - it lacks any rational support - or that this support must come from some other (transcendent) source.

So we are back to creating gods, Platonic goods, or whatever.

If you want to reject my naturalism, you have to be able to point to the alternative basis you would then embrace. Otherwise that rejection is simply in bad faith. — apokrisis

I think our social and political lives express culture, which has a history. There is no clear rationality in nature, on my reading. You are claiming 'natural principles' lead to 'rational support', but on my reading that's not a logical step, the premiss does not imply the conclusion. Humans have found in themselves - from the 'natural' - inferential powers and have deliberately, culturally fostered rationality (and other qualities, like compassion and warmongering). They might have developed one way, or another, but socially it turns out they have developed thus - where we have reached.

There's no need for gods here. It's just a different metaphysics. You and I see 'the world' differently

To me all your claims about what nature has in mind, which was the phrasing you used at the start of this thread, are about what you have in mind, which you ascribe to natural principle because of your belief-system, which is your own choice within a culturally, historically determined set of 'constraints', which was in turn originally set in motion by our 'natures'.