It sounds like the part of my model that still hasn’t gotten through to you is my differentiation between appetites and desires or intentions, which is analogous to the difference between sensation and perception or belief. — Pfhorrest

No, I get that bit.

these are not claims about any particulars of human psychology or neurology, these are just different concepts. — Pfhorrest

Yes they are, each of those processes takes place in a brain. Sensation>perception>belief, and appetite> desire>intention are directional, staged processes which have no medium other than neurons through which to act. So if we can find no neural equivalent (or if we find a neural equivalent which, once labelled as such, reveals additional step) then your picture cannot actually be the case. The alternative is to say that you can have a conceptual scheme regardless of the physical reality of it's subject - in which case any conceptual scheme would work. If I disagreed with you and said "no, it goes intention>desire>appetite", how would you argue against that without invoking empirical evidence for what actually happens?

For the sake of perhaps communicating where I think you're going wrong, however, let's take your model as our basis. Beliefs about reality go reality>sensations>perceptions>beliefs. Intentions (ways things ought to be) go reality>internal states>interoception (what you're calling appetites)>desires>intentions.

When we make assumptions about the objective truth of our beliefs about the world, we assume they are objective because we assume we share reality, the bit at the beginning of the chain. It's a reasonable assumption. Get enough people together and errors in the chains of any individual should revert to the mean and so give a good account of that which is shared (reality).

What you're trying to claim is the same thing is not the same thing at all. With your model of intention, each step is not caused by the previous one.

We can model descriptive data points because (and only because) we assume a cause. Our modelling process is exactly to speculate as the the cause of our sensations (and thereby predict the results of our response). Without cause the modelling makes no sense at all.

So with sensations of pain and hunger we might model how they were caused, even our desires we could model how they were caused, but none of this gets us anything prescriptive.

The assumed 'reality' is not...

...merely the whatever-it-is that lies in the direction that our ever-growing accumulation of sensations is headed. — Pfhorrest

It is the cause of our ever-growing accumulation of sensations.

We also have an ever growing accumulation of desires, hedonic sensations etc. We can model the cause of those too. But nowhere in that model would there be anything that we 'ought' to do.

by “appetites” I mean the “sensations” of pain, hunger, etc. These do not directly tell us (or constitute us thinking) that particular states of affairs ought to be the case — Pfhorrest

Appetites do not tell us that particular states of affairs ought to be the case indirectly either. They tell us only about the state of our endocrine system. We interpret that state as an attraction or a repulsion.

Moral blame is about the behaviour of others, so what matters is the point of inter-subjectivity. With both sense data and ineroception data the point of inter-subjectivity is the cause (reality), the assumed cause.

Intention requires inputs from outside of the chain you specify. It's not sufficient for us to have appetites derived from reality. First we must desire some valence of those appetites. An internal model which assumes some target valence to internal sense data may be either learned (such as feeling full after a meal) or hard-wired (such as osmoregulation). The target valence comes from a predictive model about the origin of sense data (ie something goes wrong if that valence is not maintained). What that something is could be biological or cultural.

Then these desires must be weighed with competing ones to produce intentions. The weighing most often takes place in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - ie it's what we might call a rational process, there's some actual calculation going on. But it also takes input from models of interocepted states - you'll make a different calculation in a different hormonal environment. So intention depends not only on desires (which are already somewhat culturally mediated), but on your varying endocrinologic states.

None of this is to say that beliefs about reality or not also influenced by these systems, but they (unlike intentions) have a short-term checking system to tie them back into the assumed source. If we think we see a tiger (because perhaps we're scared and so our judgement of shadows is skewed toward an explanation for that fear), we will, within seconds, focus on audiovisual input that could confirm such a belief. If, however, we have an intention to make the world some way in order to reduce/increase the valence of some appetite to it's desired level, we cannot check that. We could check if the intention does indeed reduce/increase the valence of the appetite. But we cannot check if the target valence is the 'right' valence (there's nothing to check it against), nor can we check if the weighing of competing targets is 'right' (again, there's nothing to check against. This is because the targets (as opposed to the causes) are not derived directly from an external source.

Essentially (in spite of my extremely long-winded explanation) your error is simply that you say "because we do X with Y we can do it with Z" without any supporting argument. Just because we can make falsificationist-type inferences about causes, does not automatically mean we can do the same with intentions. they are two different processes (as I've just explained). It's like saying that because putting petrol in a car makes it go, it must be that doing so to a horse is also OK because they're both forms of transport.

Someone doesn't just have reason to do something because they exist with a related objective. It would make as much sense, in terms of existence, for them to fail. They actions to success only make sense if their is an ought.

Otherwise, it makes as much sense for them to fail in respect to their objective as succeed — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is literally just a repeat of what you said before without any attempt to address the issues I raised with it. As I'm having great trouble making sense of your cryptic grammar, and you seem entirely unmoved by anything I have to say in response anyway, I think we'll leave it there.

You are confused. Of course I do - how could I not? Assuming, of course, that they are assessments of the same thing. — SophistiCat

So when you like one flavor of ice cream and someone else prefers a different flavor, you think that their opinion on ice cream is incorrect, rather than just not the same as yours?

No.

That's what I thought, and what I was talking about. When you're not making a moral assessment, but just an assessment about something like ice cream flavors, you don't judge others as wrong just because they disagree with you. It is exactly when the assessment is of the moral variety that disagreement means someone is wrong.

Yes they are, each of those processes takes place in a brain. Sensation>perception>belief, and appetite> desire>intention are directional, staged processes — Isaac

I'm not making any claim about directionality or staging, or any particulars of any process, and anyone doing so would not be doing philosophy anymore. I'm talking only about a way of categorizing aspects of our introspective experience. If anything, "perception" and "desire" seem (in my own introspection) to be the aspects that I'm chronologically first aware of: some state of affairs initially just seems/looks/feels/etc true to me (a perception), and some state of affairs initially just seems/looks/feels/etc good to me (a desire).

It's only when I examine those kinds of mental states reflexively that I can tease them apart from the raw experiences that seem to have provoked them ("Why does this seem true to me? Because I see [some sensations]"; "Why does this seem good to me? Because I feel [some appetites]" ). And of course it's only when I do that reflexive self-examination that I form reflexive opinions about those opinions, affirming or denying that I'm perceiving correctly (forming beliefs) or that I'm desiring correctly (forming intentions).

Exactly what is or isn't going on in the underlying mechanisms that give rise to experience and thought doesn't change anything at all about the ability to categorize kinds of experiences and thoughts in this way. There don't have to be perfectly symmetrical neural processes going on in the brain to make this kind of symmetric conceptualization useful, and I'd be surprised if a product of evolution like the human brain was that tidy. The usefulness of such a conceptualization only requires that people somehow or another have the experiences of perceiving and desiring, and the ability to analyze those experiences, and reflexively judge them.

We can model descriptive data points because (and only because) we assume a cause. Our modelling process is exactly to speculate as the the cause of our sensations (and thereby predict the results of our response). Without cause the modelling makes no sense at all. — Isaac

What I am proposing to model is precisely what states of affairs cause all of our appetites to be satisfied, in the very straightforward sense that eating food normally satisfies hunger, but also other any other 'yearning' feelings like hunger, as well as things like what alleviates various pains. Those are all what we might call "imperative experiences": they're base, physiological feelings that call for something to be done, though no particular something is directly specified by them, we fill that in.

The question of what is moral is the question of what ought we do. We all have those feelings that call for something or another to be done (our appetites), and our immediate, unreflective opinions about what that something or other should be (our desires), on the basis of just our own such feelings. But an objective answer is an unbiased answer. So an objective morality is one that takes into account all such feelings (all appetites). But -- and this is the really important part that saves the whole thing from your usual criticism -- we don't have to take into account everyone's opinions about their feelings (all desires).

Are you familiar with Principled Negotiation? The distinction I'm on about here is basically synonymous with that method's principle to "focus on interests, not positions".

But nowhere in that model would there be anything that we 'ought' to do. — Isaac

Maybe this is where the real point of contention lies. This sounds to me like someone claiming that empirical observation only tells us about the world as it appears to us, but nothing at all about how the world really is. In that case I'm left wondering what the heck they mean by "really is" other than "consistently appears to everybody", as distinguished from "only appears to some people sometimes".

Likewise, I'm left here wondering what the heck you could mean by "we morally ought to do" if not "would consistently please everybody", as distinguished from "would only please some people sometimes".

As I'm saying to SophistiCat above, the very concept of morality inherently implies objectivity (as in universality, lack of bias). A non-objective morality is just a non-morality, in the same way that a non-objective reality is just a non-reality: something that only subjectively looks true to some people sometimes but false to others or at other times is unreal, and something that only subjectively feels good to some people sometimes but bad to others or at other times is immoral. ("Looks" and "feels" here referring to sensations and appetites, not perceptions and desires).

But we cannot check if the target valence is the 'right' valence — Isaac

I'm not proposing we should. I'm only proposing that we model what states of affairs simultaneously match all such valences. (Understood here to mean appetites rather than desires, as elaborated above). The subjective way that interactions with the world are experienced by people is just part of the raw data by which to judge the world, it's not itself the subject of judgement.

Our sensations are equally subjective: we don't directly experience a frequency of light, we see a color, and different people see different colors in response to the same light (e.g. various kinds of colorblindness, and tetrachromats). All that can be taken as objective about a visual observation is that a certain kind of person experiences (particular patterns of) certain kinds of colors.

Likewise, all that can be taken as objective data points in my model of morality is that certain kinds of people have positive or negative hedonic experiences (satisfaction or dissatisfaction of appetites) in certain kinds of contexts. We're not judging them for the having of those experiences; we're judging the world for its evocation of those experiences. (And then later judging people for their role in the world being that way, but that's more analogous to judging people for the quality of their assessment of what is real than it is to judging what is real).

The human body is an instrument used in the observation of the world: what we're checking, both in the case of sensations and in the case of appetites, is how our bodies react to the world, which in both cases tells us something both about the world and about ourselves.

But an objective answer is an unbiased answer. So an objective morality is one that takes into account all such feelings (all appetites). — Pfhorrest

That would just be an inter-subjective morality. IE one that tries to make it so that as many people as possible get their "moral appetites" filled. It's a compromise. But when I hear "objective morality", "compromise" isn't the first word that comes to mind. An objective morality implies a right answer, regardless of what appetites you may have, not merely a social compromise that satisfies the most appetites. That right answer should not change based on the society, but your "objective morality" is purely defined by the majority appetite of the society it's in.

The way you use objective just seems really odd.

If I was tied to five other people it would really matter that we agreed on which direction to walk (I might get injured if we don't all agree), but none of us would consider the chosen direction to be objectively 'right', we might as easily have tossed a coin for it. — Isaac

I like this metaphor, not least for having a Beckettian vibe. It's interesting to think through the possible configurations of individuals and how they'd handle the situation. It seems clear enough to me that there's not always a right answer, and that the situation will play out according to the particular configuration of individuals.

That's what I thought, and what I was talking about. When you're not making a moral assessment, but just an assessment about something like ice cream flavors, you don't judge others as wrong just because they disagree with you. — Pfhorrest

Because they don't disagree with me. Look, this is a silly argument and it doesn't have much to do with the topic, as far as I can see.

Constructionist thought militates against the claims to ethical foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust. Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. — Gergen

Getting back to the topic, it's interesting to note that the constructionist, according to Gergen, is an objectivist despite herself, inasmuch as she grounds morality not in her subjective judgements of right and wrong, but in a social construct, because a subjective social construct would be an oxymoron. "Transcendental" or not, social norms exist out in the world for anyone to observe.

And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging to the wielding hand as to the opposition. — Gergen

And if morality was grounded in some other foundation, then what? The complaint would be the same, only replace "traditions" with whatever moral foundation Gergen thinks would be more satisfactory.

This is the problem with so-called objective morality: if moral responsibility rests on the moral foundation and that foundation is located outside the individual, then the individual doesn't bear any moral responsibility - she is just a passive receiver of norms, not a moral agent.

This is a classic naturalistic fallacy, an instance of is/ought confusion. The natural origin of morality is not the same as the grounding for moral claims. A constructivist may believe (rightly or wrongly) that normative beliefs come about as a result of social construction. But that is neither here nor there as far as what that same constructivist believes ought to be the case. — SophistiCat

What I’m talking about , what the whole
point of the OP is, is that how people ground their claims in terms of what ‘is’ has everything to
do with how violently and punitively they treat other who violate their standards of what ought to be . What a person assumes ‘is’ in terms of an ontology of nature , the physical or the human, is profoundly connected with how they formulate their ‘oughts’ and the level
of tolerance , the violent and punitive character of the enforcement of those oughts. No evolution of moral thinking can take place without a parallel evolution of one’s understanding of what ‘is’. You can’t devise standard of what should be the case for human behavior without knowing what is possible for human behavior. So how we think others ‘ought’ to act is profoundly tied up with our psychological understanding of such issues as the nature of the will, what it means for it to be free or not free ,how social or biological conditioning contributes to human intentions , whether intent can ever be evil. All of these considerations of the ‘is’ of human functioning will determine our sense of how likely it is that we can shape others behavior and what methods are necessary , appropriate or ‘moral’ in order to do so.

The Enlightenment ideal of human moral
perfect ability was a direct consequence of the Enlightenment scientific formulation of a rational universe. Every scientific revolution leads to new formulations of moral standards and new ‘oughts’. One can trace pc and cancel culture to post-Hegelian and Marxist- inspired models of what ‘is’.


Gergen’s version of social constructivism does away with the ‘fuel’ forviolent retribution and punishment , for righteous indignation , by removing the ability to believe that another’s choices were a deviation from a correct path. There is no ‘ought’ for Gergen for the same reason that there is no factual realism. They are social practices that have a temporary stability to them, a temporary ‘isness’ and there are always ways that emerge of reconstruing these practices.I suppose that is an ‘ought’,but an ‘ought’ with no moral force, because for Gergen the only true ought is continual reinvention of social practices with no final aim. So what Gergen believes ought to be the case, an attitude of openness to continual social reinvention , is inconceivable without a prior belief that what ‘is’ the case is radical
contingency of moral practice based on a Nietzchean notion of reality as self-overcoming.

Yeah, but that's exactly Sophsitcat's point: the "is" amounts to an objective account of who someone is with respect to normatively. We have described the "is" of an individual's value or ought, such that we have a grounded moral cliam. In this respect, we have a moral realism, just grounded on the signifcance of an individual's existence rather than a transcendent force or encompassing rational standard.

So it doesn't do away with moral fuel at all, it just shifts from concept or history, to the existence of a given individual. The ought becomes a feature of the contingent being-- "this is an existence which ought to be treated in this way"-- and grounds questions of how to treat them. (and versions of this are common amongst "PC" culture because it's frequently about respecting and valuing a given individual for who they are, for the fact they are an existence which is valuable).

That would just be an inter-subjective morality. — khaled

Objectivity as in universality is nothing more than the limit of increasing inter-subjectivity.

The way you use objective just seems really odd. — khaled

I like to distinguish between two senses of “objective”, one of which I support (and is what I usually mean when I talk about it) and the other of which I oppose because it’s a useless non-sense of the term that I would rather never be used. The former is the sense of “objective” as in universal, the opposite of relative. The latter is the sense of “objective” as in transcendent, the opposite of phenomenal. Both “relative” and “phenomenal” are senses of “subjective” in turn.

I am wholly on board with everything, reality and morality both, being “subjective” as in phenomenal, not transcendent: there is no sense to speak of about either of them that is not grounded entirely in our experience of the world, and if there somehow was more to either, whatever that would mean, we definitionally could not ever tell, because to tell we would have to have some experience of it.

But conversely I’m also adamant that we take both to be equally “objective” as in universal, not relative: never accepting that anything short of unlimited intersubjectivity be taken as sufficient in our answers, though because we are limited in our knowledge and power we will often be forced to make do for the time being with just the most intersubjectivity that we can manage.

That last part is where compromises come into play, but it is not the compromise that makes for the objectivity; we compromise only in lieu of being able to attain the fully objective good. If we had unlimited power, there would be no need for compromise: we could just create a scenario in which everyone’s appetites were satisfied, even if that meant giving everyone their own private world. We can’t do that yet, so we have do do the best we can instead, and how exactly to methodically approximate the objective good is a different subtopic within ethics. But there’s no sense getting on to that topic at all if we’re not even on the same page that there is some objective good that we’d be trying to approximate.

and the other of which I oppose because it’s a useless non-sense of the term that I would rather never be used. — Pfhorrest

The latter is the sense of “objective” as in transcendent, the opposite of phenomenal — Pfhorrest

Also the more common use. I also agree that it's a useless term because it never comes into play. What is "transcendentally true" doesn't matter, only what seems true, because we always deal in seemings. But that's why I use "inter-subjective" when I want to refer to the first use, to avoid any sort of confusion.

there is no sense to speak of about either of them that is not grounded entirely in our experience of the world, and if there somehow was more to either, whatever that would mean, we definitionally could not ever tell, because to tell we would have to have some experience of it. — Pfhorrest

:up:

But conversely I’m also adamant that we take both to be equally “objective” as in universal, not relative: never accepting that anything short of unlimited intersubjectivity be taken as sufficient in our answers, though because we are limited in our knowledge and power we will often be forced to make do for the time being with just the most intersubjectivity that we can manage. — Pfhorrest

To me it always seemed like the task of finding the most "inter-subjectively" fitting morality was a task for the social sciences, politics, and some neurology, not really the task of philosophy. I don't see the point in musing about it without data and research. If figuring out the best moral code was easy enough to be done by a couple of shmucks on the internet we wouldn't have fought wars over it.

But there’s no sense getting on to that topic at all if we’re not even on the same page that there is some objective good that we’d be trying to approximate. — Pfhorrest

I just don't like the word use. "Objective morality" is a term that has already been booked as the second use (I think thanks to the Abrahamic religions which make morality transcendental). Which is why if I hadn't read the rest of your comment I would have disagreed with the statement. But hey, you do you. Just telling you that it may come off as confusing.

I find many posters do this on the forum. Sort of "dress up" subjectivity as objectivity by having an unorthodox (and much weaker) definition of the latter. I'm not against it but you just never know which use they intend which is why I use "inter-subjective" only.

the "is" amounts to an objective account of who someone is with respect to normatively. — TheWillowOfDarkness

It’s only an objective account if the person formulating the account is an objectivist.

In this respect, we have a moral realism, just grounded on the signifcance of an individual's existence rather than a transcendent force or encompassing standard. — TheWillowOfDarkness

We have a moral realism if we , like Sophisticat, are a moral realist. If we are Gergen we are a moral relativist .

The ought becomes a feature of the contingent being-- "this is an existence which ought to be treated in this way"-- and grounds questions of how to treat them. (and versions of this are common amongst "PC" culture because it's frequently about respecting and valuing a given individual for who they are, for the fact they are an existence which is valuable). — TheWillowOfDarkness

What is common among PC culture is what Gergen is accusing it of , a blameful moralism based on a belief in a normative standard that is claimed to be superior or preferred to standards of other normative cultures. Homophobia is a pc term that implies that accepting homosexuals as part of normal culture is better than not doing so, because such acceptance is superior and can be justified in its superiority based on a higher or more universal grounding than that of contingent convention. The accusation of homophobia doesn’t justify itself merely on the basis of the fact that it just so happens in this particular era in this particular part of the world there is a normative community that prefers to treat homosexuals the same as heterosexuals. Homophobia implies that homosexuality is wrong. ‘Wrong’ implies that the standard of this particular community in this particular era happens to be a better standard in some objective sense than that of another community in another era. This is what give pc its polarizing force, the fact that those who do not buy into its standards believe that they will be ostracized and condemned as deplorable.

This is not Gergen’s position and that is why he rejects pc language.

Also the more common use. — khaled

I disagree, as I’ve seen the other used quite a lot too — but prevalence isn’t really important for our purposes here. It seems like with many terms the sense which makes most sense is used by proponents and a sense that makes less sense is used by opponents. Aside from “objectivism” and “subjectivism”, there are also different senses of “skepticism” and “fideism” commonly used by proponents and opponents of each. Likewise with “optimism” and “pessimism”, and probably lots of others too.

To me it always seemed like the task of finding the most "inter-subjectively" fitting morality was a task for the social sciences, politics, and some neurology, not really the task of philosophy. I don't see the point in musing about it without data and research. — khaled

I agree, which is why I think that ethics proper should not be a part of philosophy, only meta-ethics, like philosophy has meta-physics but not physics itself anymore.

The properly philosophical questions regarding morality are about how to go about the investigation of what is moral — what question are we even asking, why does it matter, what counts as evidence, etc — not about what specifically in particular is or isn’t a moral state of affairs, or a just action or intention, etc. Just like philosophy’s proper role with regard to investigating reality is answering those same kinds of questions about that investigation, and then letting physics (and the rest of the physical sciences) take over from there.

And I think the answers to both are the same: phenomenalism (meaning empiricism in one case and hedonism in the other), universalism (meaning realism in one case and altruism the other), and two other principles I call criticism and liberalism (that don’t have special names for each side of the is-ought divide).

On the one side that gets you broadly the scientific method; but actually using that method is not the place of philosophy, just defending its use over other alternatives. Likewise on the other side I think philosophy can give a method for doing an ethical analogue of the physical sciences; but actually using that method is beyond the domain of philosophy.

"Objective morality" is a term that has already been booked as the second use (I think thanks to the Abrahamic religions which make morality transcendental). — khaled

Utilitarians are usually considered moral objectivists, AFAIK, and they use basically the same criteria as I do for what is a good state of affairs, altruistic hedonism. (Though I disagree with them about the ends justifying the means; I only agree on what good ends are, and take just means to be a different subject — which is what I was just talking about, actually).

Sort of "dress up" subjectivity as objectivity — khaled

I’m wondering now if I was clear about the two different senses of “subjectivity” as well, and whether you’re distinguishing between them yourself. I find the two broad directions of philosophical error across the board to involve talking both senses of each term to be the same thing, and so thinking that in rejecting one sense of one term they have to reject the other too.

So you’ll get people who rightly reject relativism and “therefore” wrongly adopt transcendentalism (when all they needed was universalism, which you can have without transcendentalism); or people who, like I fear you might be doing, rightly reject transcendentalism and “therefore” wrongly adopt relativism (when all they needed was phenomenalism, which you can have without relativism).

people who, like I fear you might be doing, rightly reject transcendentalism and “therefore” wrongly adopt relativism (when all they needed was phenomenalism, which you can have without relativism). — Pfhorrest

I thought it would be clear that I use “objective” and “subjective” in the second, less useful sense. So to reject transcendentalism is to adopt relativism.

I am wholly on board with everything, reality and morality both, being “subjective” as in phenomenal, not transcendent — Pfhorrest

But conversely I’m also adamant that we take both to be equally “objective” as in universal, not relative: never accepting that anything short of unlimited intersubjectivity be taken as sufficient in our answers, though because we are limited in our knowledge and power we will often be forced to make do for the time being with just the most intersubjectivity that we can manage. — Pfhorrest

Not only do I disagree with the definition (when “inter-subjective” is available and gets rid of all confusion), I also disagree that the most inter-subjective morality is the correct one. You run into utility monster issues, where people with the strongest appetites get too much leeway.

Exactly what is or isn't going on in the underlying mechanisms that give rise to experience and thought doesn't change anything at all about the ability to categorize kinds of experiences and thoughts in this way. — Pfhorrest

That would be entirely fine if all you were doing was categorising, but that's not all you're doing. You go on to treat appetites, desires and intentions as a components in a causal chain. To do that you need more than just conceptual categorisation, you need evidence that these things are actually causally related in the way you suggest.

What I am proposing to model is precisely what states of affairs cause all of our appetites to be satisfied, — Pfhorrest

When? Since it is absolutely demonstrably true that the target valences of our apettites change both with time and with cultures, exactly what point in time would your model address? Now?...or now?....or now?

an objective morality is one that takes into account all such feelings (all appetites). — Pfhorrest

What about future generations? Do their appetites not get a look in?

Are you familiar with Principled Negotiation? The distinction I'm on about here is basically synonymous with that method's principle to "focus on interests, not positions". — Pfhorrest

I'm passing familiar, yes, but the situation you describe here would require us first to establish those interests, which is an empirical matter. The interests of human beings, in terms of ideal valence of certain appetites, is something which is the case about the world. Even if I were to accept your jump from the existence of this fact to the maxim that we 'ought' to seek to attain it (which I don't) then discovering it would be a matter of biology and neuroscience - since, as you've already admitted, introspection, and subsequent discussion, cannot provide a faithful account of either the appropriate target valence, nor the method by which it is best attained.

I'm left here wondering what the heck you could mean by "we morally ought to do" if not "would consistently please everybody", — Pfhorrest

What we 'morally ought to do' is an expression in our language - it's used for several purposes. One is to express a social convention which is considered more important than mere etiquette, another is often to push a set of behaviours which would benefit the person using it, another is simply to ostracise people who aren't conforming to social mores. "Would consistently please everyone" is certainly one way it's used, but not the most common by far. Again, who is 'everyone' in this? All future generations?

I'm not proposing we should. I'm only proposing that we model what states of affairs simultaneously match all such valences — Pfhorrest

You've misunderstood my use of the term 'valence' here. The target valence of interocepted sensations is the point at which the feedback systems in the endocrine network kick in to act to reduce then or increase them. It's different in different people for different sensations and it's highly susceptible to environmental factors, particularly in childhood. So why would we build a model of a target world based on the target valences we know for a fact have been generated by the world we happen to have been brought up in? All we're going to end up doing is replicating those conditions.

I like this metaphor, not least for having a Beckettian vibe. — Kenosha Kid

Cool, then I'll pretend that was what I was going for!

It's interesting to think through the possible configurations of individuals and how they'd handle the situation. It seems clear enough to me that there's not always a right answer, and that the situation will play out according to the particular configuration of individuals. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, I suppose it would. It's something that would be interesting to study (damn ethics committees, with their "you can't tie a load of people together and abandon them in the woods"...). I do think there'd always be a 'right' answer though, but that's perhaps because of the way I'm using 'right'. I'm using it more like in game theory, than in ethics. The 'right' play for everyone is the perfect move in the game.

I do think there'd always be a 'right' answer though, but that's perhaps because of the way I'm using 'right'. I'm using it more like in game theory, than in ethics. — Isaac

Yes, I meant more of an unambiguous moral rule.

Let's say two of the people are surgeons who need to get to theatre immediately to save the life of a different child. What is the "right" answer in this case?

This is the sort of ambiguity I (tried to) describe in my natural morality thread, in which I talk about how unfeasible it is to act on every opportunity for altruism, necessitating that we must choose arbitrarily when to act and when to hope that others will act, giving us the possibility of never acting, thus giving us the possibility of being in a society in which hardly anyone acts, which sounds a lot like ours to me.

In the above Beckett scenario, the two best scenarios are: save child A; save child B. If the group opts for surgeon A, child B dies; if they opt for surgeon B, child A dies. If either are possible then, generally, child A dying is permissible and child B dying is permissible, or, to put it another way, it is not twice as difficult to resign oneself to the death of two children as to one. "What's the point in going on?" person C might ask? "We'll not go on then," person D replies. "But we cannot not go on," person E retorts, noting that not acting is an action. "Fine, then we'll go on," person F sighs.

(Reference to some subtext that all six people are the same person here.)

Indeed. I think there's a deeper neurological basis for this. A lot of what happens in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex seems to be to act like a filter for actions (and onward signals), so it's not taking in data and then deciding what to do, it's more like what to do has already been decided and it's just trying to catch anything that doesn't make sense. So we end up, at a phenomenological level, experiencing this activity post hoc as arbitrary (which I suppose it is, to our conscious selves - who knows what models in the deeper brain came up with the unfiltered behaviour though, and by what heuristic).

What's interesting is why we ever do act altruistically when on each individual occasion we could, quite reasonably say "I'll do it next time". Personally, I think it has to do with bandwidth - the idea that there's a limit to the number of processes the brain can simultaneously engage in. I think each opportunity for (evolutionary/culturally appropriate) altruism is assessed as viable, goes through the early motions, but gets filtered out and eventually dissipated by the 'first-come-first-served' (or possibly loudest-first served) filter of our limited bandwidth.

(Reference to some subtext that all six people are the same person here.) — Kenosha Kid

Chaucer then...?

I thought it would be clear that I use “objective” and “subjective” in the second, less useful sense. So to reject transcendentalism is to adopt relativism. — khaled

That doesn't follow. There's a less useful sense of "objective" (transcendent) and a less useful sense of "subjective" (relative), but those aren't each other's negations.

The negation of transcendent is phenomenal, which is the more useful sense of "subjective". And the negation of relative is universal, which is the more useful sense of "objective".

It's only by conflating the more and less useful senses of each together that you get relative as the apparent negation of transcendent, but you seem to recognize the distinction between the more useful sense and the less useful sense.

The thrust of all of this is that universalism doesn't have to be transcendent, and phenomenalism doesn't have to be relativist. A universalist phenomenalism is possible.

Not only do I disagree with the definition (when “inter-subjective” is available and gets rid of all confusion), I also disagree that the most inter-subjective morality is the correct one. You run into utility monster issues, where people with the strongest appetites get too much leeway. — khaled

"Most inter-subjective" doesn't mean "utilitarian". As I said early I'm opposed to utilitarianism on the whole, I just agree with its definition of what makes for a good end; I disagree entirely with consequentialism as a just means. So utility monsters don't blow up the system I advocate.

That would be entirely fine if all you were doing was categorising, but that's not all you're doing. You go on to treat appetites, desires and intentions as a components in a causal chain. — Isaac

I do not. As I said in my last post, we can (and possibly can't help but) start with desires, and then analyze them into appetites, just like we start with perceptions and then analyze them into sensations. I do struggle to imagine what other causal arrangement there could possibly be, just given what is even meant by the concepts, but no particulars of that causal chain matter at all to my philosophy.

I'm explicitly avoiding relying on any a posteriori knowledge about the substrate that human minds run on. I'm dealing entirely with phenomenological concepts here. What exactly gives rise to the instantiation of those concepts in our phenomenal experience is besides the point, philosophically.

When? Since it is absolutely demonstrably true that the target valences of our apettites change both with time and with cultures, exactly what point in time would your model address? Now?...or now?....or now? — Isaac

What about future generations? Do their appetites not get a look in? — Isaac

All appetites at all times matter, just like all observations at all times matter to science.

I think you're probably thinking that I'm looking to establish some kind of absolutist, always-do-this-in-all-circumstances-at-all-times kinds of rules, when I'm not. Universalism is not absolutism.

For an example, different people at different times and in different contexts feel too warm or too cold, sometimes, for reasons I'm sure you could elaborate in more detail than I could. That's a kind of displeasure, an unsatisfied appetite, so my system would say we ought to aim to eliminate or at least minimize that happening -- people's environments being too warm or too cold for them.

But doing so doesn't require that we identify the single best temperature that everywhere should always be at all times. The optimal solution would probably involve allowing each person to independently adjust the temperature of their personal environment as they like.

But it's still universally good that some particular person's environment be whatever particular temperature makes them most comfortable at that particular time. And that's the case for every particular person at every particular time, and the complete picture of what is good would involve each of those particular people having their environment be the particular temperature at which they're more comfortable at each particular time.

When we don't have the power to achieve that, we'll have to make compromises, yes, but at this point we're just talking about whether there is even a universally good end to aim for, not how to pursue it and how to deal with obstacles to attaining it.

discovering it would be a matter of biology and neuroscience — Isaac

Discovering how to attain it would be, yes. Discovering that it is good is something that can be found just from people living their lives and noting what circumstances feel good and bad to them.

The big picture of my overall philosophy involves using science to discover how the world is, and an analogue of it based on hedonic rather than empirical experiences to discover how it ought to be, and then combining those two sets of findings to figure out how to change the former to the latter.

In addition to just "use empiricism!" ("and of course realism, who would ever doubt realism"), a scientific method also needs a philosophical account of how exactly to apply empiricism to justify our beliefs. Just anything that empirically looks true (to whom?) isn't automatically real just because of that. That's what epistemology is for.

Likewise, in addition to just "use hedonism!" ("altruistic hedonism specifically, hedonism isn't egotism"), the analogue of it needs also a philosophical account of how exactly to apply hedonism to justify our intentions. Just anything that hedonically feels good (to whom?) isn't automatically moral just because of that. That's what the other half of ethics, the deontological half, is about.

But if you're talking to someone who doesn't even accept empirical realism as an ontology, talking about how to apply it epistemically is pointless. And likewise, if I can't even get you on board with altrustic-hedonic ends, there's no point in talking about the just means to pursue them yet.

The big picture of my overall philosophy involves using science to discover how the world is, and an analogue of it based on hedonic rather than empirical experiences to discover how it ought to be, and then combining those two sets of findings to figure out how to change the former to the latter. — Pfhorrest

Might you not be better off establishing sustainability as a bridge between is and ought, and trusting to the moral sense playing out in political and economic systems, to prioritise factual information to that end? The hedonic; whether you mean Revealed Preference Theory in economics, or a more generic form of moral hedonism is not a responsible means of prioritising facts.

A universalist phenomenalism is possible. — Pfhorrest

If by this you mean "universal inter-subjective agreement is possible" sure, I don't think anyone is debating that.

"Most inter-subjective" doesn't mean "utilitarian". As I said early I'm opposed to utilitarianism on the whole, I just agree with its definition of what makes for a good end; I disagree entirely with consequentialism as a just means. So utility monsters don't blow up the system I advocate. — Pfhorrest

What is the system you advocate then? How do you deal with someone who has an extremely strong appetite for seeing people suffer?

Might you not be better off establishing sustainability as a bridge between is and ought — counterpunch

I’m not sure what you mean by that.

trusting to the moral sense playing out in political and economic systems, to prioritise factual information to that end? — counterpunch

That is a part of the deontological side of my ethics.

If by this you mean "universal inter-subjective agreement is possible" sure, I don't think anyone is debating that. — khaled

That’s not what I mean, no.

Look to the descriptive side of things for clarity here, because it’s the prescriptive side where all the confusion lies.

Descriptive universalism is the opposite of descriptive relativism: it means that what is true is true for everyone everywhere always, whether or not they agree that it is; in contrast to, say, it being true inside the Flat Earth Society headquarters that the whole earth is flat, and true outside those headquarters that the whole earth (including under the FES-HQ) is round.

Prescriptive universalism is like that, but about what is good, rather than what is true.

Descriptive phenomenalism, or empiricism, is the opposite of descriptive transcendentalism, which is more or less supernaturalism: it means that nothing is true or false for any reason or to any extent other than its accord or discord with empirical experience.

Prescriptive phenomenalism, or hedonism, is like that, but about what is good or bad, rather than what is true or false, and about hedonic experience, rather than empirical.

Universal phenomenalism about reality means that truth is all about concordance with empirical experiences, not just any one person’s but everyone’s everywhere always. But it doesn’t at all demand that everyone agree, in their perceptions or beliefs, about what is true in order for it to be true. It’s possible that everyone could fail, in different ways, to come up with a model of what concords with all empirical experiences, and that wouldn’t change that such a model, whatever it is, is the universal truth, even though nobody believes it.

Likewise, universal phenomenalism about morality means that goodness is all about concordance with hedonic experiences, not just any one person’s but everyone’s everywhere always. But it doesn’t at all demand that everyone agree, in their desires or intentions, about what is good in order for it to be good. It’s possible that everyone could fail, in different ways, to come up with a model of what concords with all hedonic experiences, and that wouldn’t change that such a model, whatever it is, is the universal good, even though nobody intends it.

What is the system you advocate then? — khaled

That’s a longer topic and I can link you to something on it but I don’t want to derail this thread even further right now.

How do you deal with someone who has an extremely strong appetite for seeing people suffer? — khaled

This question misunderstands what “appetites” even are. They are not for specific states of affairs. They are physiology feelings like pain and hunger. Someone who wants to see other people suffer can get bent as far as what he wants, but whatever emotional pain is probably behind that desire is something that deserves alleviation somehow or another, just not necessarily in the way he wants.

Might you not be better off establishing sustainability as a bridge between is and ought
— counterpunch

I’m not sure what you mean by that. — Pfhorrest

Malthus believed population would outstrip food supply and there would be mass starvation. His logic was sound, but he was proven wrong by the invention of the tractor. Initially, steam powered tractors developed land faster than population grew. Later we invented the internal combustion engine - and things really took off. So sustainability is a fact in that we have survived in large part due an application of technologies that support our way of life. It's sustainability as function; a factual arrangement of technologies and resources - that now runs up against the same problem again.

Sustainability is also a universal value - an ought in terms of which it is possible to prioritise the hypothetical 'list of facts' inherent to a scientific understanding of reality, as a basis for policy that would create a level regulatory playing field that ends the race to the bottom inherent to capitalist economics.

Some kind of hedonic consumer sovereignty cannot prioritise facts in a way that secures a sustainable future - in large part because the consumer cannot be expected to bear the cognitive burden of knowing how everything they consume is produced, even if the information were available - even if the consumer would prioritise the ethics of sustainability over price, they cannot be expected to handle the sheer volume of information necessary to make consumer decisions that secure a sustainable future.

The only way to secure sustainability is to regulate production to ensure the right technologies are applied, starting with energy technology, carbon capture and sequestration, desalination and irrigation, hydrogen fuel, recycling, fish farming - as a basis to promote continued capitalist growth, employment and prosperity.

"trusting to the moral sense playing out in political and economic systems, to prioritise factual information to that end?
— counterpunch"

That is a part of the deontological side of my ethics. — Pfhorrest

The only deontological ethic in my approach is sustainability. Otherwise, given a scientific understanding of reality, I regard morality as a sense, fostered in the human animal by evolution, made explicit for the purposes of political organisation when hunter gatherer tribes joined together to form societies and civilisations. Sustainability aside, morality is culturally relative. God save the Queen!

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve - or how the various concepts you've said you adhere to can possibly fit together into any sort of workable whole. Universal phenomenalism seems like a contradiction in terms, that refutes acceptance of a scientific epistemology, that again, grinds gears with deontological ethics, that again disputes any kind of moral hedonism.

What I'm trying to do is create an authoritative rationale for the application of technology on the basis of scientific merit, without undermining current systems of political and moral authority, in order to secure a sustainable and prosperous future - going forward from where we are, as who we are, without turning the world upside down. Help me!

I'm going to forgo any critique for a minute because we keep losing what you're claiming in all your analogies (which I don't find helpful) and I want to see if I can clarify it. alone (un-analogised!) My understanding so far is that...

1. There may possibly exist some state of affairs, dynamic rather than static, which would most equitably promote every human's (and all future human's) appetites toward their current target valences, at any given time.

2. This state of affairs my well not be the desire or the intention of any individual (or even all individuals) and so it's possible for everyone to be wrong about what they desire or intend - hence the 'objective' bit. Relativism, when it comes to what we desire or intend, is thus dismissed.

3. An intention which is more 'good', morally, is an intention to make the world match more closely this state of affairs.

Is that right?

What I’m talking about , what the whole
point of the OP is, is that how people ground their claims in terms of what ‘is’ has everything to
do with how violently and punitively they treat other who violate their standards of what ought to be . What a person assumes ‘is’ in terms of an ontology of nature , the physical or the human, is profoundly connected with how they formulate their ‘oughts’ and the level
of tolerance , the violent and punitive character of the enforcement of those oughts. — Joshs

Oughts provide motivation for action - for carrying out their imperatives. Either you have moral beliefs and thus have these motivations, or you are amoral - there is no other way. Tolerance towards moral transgressions, the will to punish transgressors, the methods of enforcement - these depend on temperament and politics, not on the nature of morality.

Gergen’s version of social constructivism does away with the ‘fuel’ forviolent retribution and punishment , for righteous indignation , by removing the ability to believe that another’s choices were a deviation from a correct path. There is no ‘ought’ for Gergen for the same reason that there is no factual realism. — Joshs

Right, the only way to remove fuel - not just for violent retribution, but for any moral action, good or bad - is to renounce moral beliefs altogether. But, except for a few psychopaths, no one is actually willing to do that, whatever theories they espouse in public.

We have a moral realism if we , like Sophisticat, are a moral realist. — Joshs

I am curious, if you are actually reading my responses, what in what I wrote made you think that I am a moral realist?

What is common among PC culture is what Gergen is accusing it of , a blameful moralism based on a belief in a normative standard that is claimed to be superior or preferred to standards of other normative cultures. — Joshs

This is confused. A belief, whatever its nature, origin and grounding, is always held to be superior to alternatives, however tentatively or transiently. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be a belief. (One can take a pluralistic stance on some issue, but then any isolated strand within that pluralistic web would not be an accurate representation of the whole.)

Someone who wants to see other people suffer can get fucked as far as what he WANTS, but whatever psychological pain is probably behind that desire is something that deserves alleviation somehow or another — Pfhorrest

Which is precisely what gives them too much leeway. If someone has a dying thirst for others’ suffering, then by your system we should take that into account and try to alleviate it. I see no way to do that that doesn’t harm others in some way.

But it doesn’t at all demand that everyone agree, in their desires or intentions, about what is good in order for it to be good. It’s possible that everyone could fail, in different ways, to come up with a model of what concords with all hedonic experiences, and that wouldn’t change that such a model, whatever it is, is the universal good, even though nobody intends it. — Pfhorrest

And the way to come to this model is to maximize appetite-satisfaction correct? I disagree with this. I think some appetites shouldn’t be considered at all. I don’t see why maximizing appetite-satisfaction should be the goal. It’s just arbitrary.

Some kind of hedonic consumer sovereignty cannot prioritise facts in a way that secures a sustainable future — counterpunch

Hedonism doesn't mean shortsightedness. We're going over this over in Darkneos' "Reason for Living" thread too. The reason why sustainability is good is because it prevents even greater future suffering. That's still a hedonistic consideration.

I do agree that sustainability is a very important thing to worry about, but we're talking here more about the criteria by which something could be judged as normatively important or not, rather than what specific things are most important.

Universal phenomenalism seems like a contradiction in terms, that refutes acceptance of a scientific epistemology — counterpunch

The scientific method hinges entirely on a kind of universal phenomenalism. Science rejects supernaturalism, and generally any transcendentalism, in favor of empiricism, a kind of phenomenalism. It also rejects the kind of truth-relativism that would say that different things can be true of the same thing at the same time to different people (see earlier example about the Flat Earth Society), in favor of a realism that says that anything that is true is true to everyone regardless of whether they believe it or not, a kind of universalism. That's not a contradiction, to say that nothing supernatural or non-empirical is real, and yet there is only one universal reality.

I advocate that same kind of approach to prescriptive as well as descriptive matters: to reject claims about morality that transcend hedonic experience (i.e. that have nothing to do with whether or not anyone suffers or flourishes), and to reject claims that the same thing at the same time can correctly be assessed as good by one person or group and correctly assessed as bad by another person or group (i.e. in such a disagreement at least one, possibly all, must be wrong).

that again, grinds gears with deontological ethics, that again disputes any kind of moral hedonism — counterpunch

Deontological ethics opposes consequentialism, as do I. But consequentialism is a position about the methods of morality, not about the objects of morality; it's about how to decide on what is a right or just action, not about how to decide on what is a good state of affairs. Consequentialism says that a right or just action is any one that promotes a good state of affairs, regardless of anything else: only the ends matter. Deontological ethics disagrees (as do I), and says that means matter as well; different kinds of it may or may not care about ends too, but I certainly do.

I think a full moral evaluation has to involve both means and ends: a fully moral action is one that achieves good ends by just means, and an action that only achieves good ends by unjust means, or that is just but fails to yield good ends, is as faulty as an argument that reaches a true conclusion by invalid inferences, or a valid argument that nevertheless fails to yield true conclusions. (In the last case, that can only be because false premises were accepted and remain uncorrected; in the analogous moral case, it would be because bad prior circumstances were accepted and remain uncorrected).

Neither of those has anything in it either for or against science. It's a separate matter entirely.

I'm going to forgo any critique for a minute because we keep losing what you're claiming in all your analogies (which I don't find helpful) and I want to see if I can clarify it. — Isaac

I appreciate that.

1. There may possibly exist some state of affairs, dynamic rather than static, which would most equitably promote every human's (and all future human's) appetites toward their current target valences, at any given time. — Isaac

Yes, although I don't think this bit (just that such a state of affairs is logically possible) is controversial? I think it's only saying that that is pretty much definitionally a good state of affairs that's at all controversial here -- that a wholly good state of affairs is necessarily and sufficiently one where everyone is pleased and not pained, enjoying rather than suffering, etc.

2. This state of affairs my well not be the desire or the intention of any individual (or even all individuals) and so it's possible for everyone to be wrong about what they desire or intend - hence the 'objective' bit. Relativism, when it comes to what we desire or intend, is thus dismissed. — Isaac

Yes.

3. An intention which is more 'good', morally, is an intention to make the world match more closely this state of affairs. — Isaac

Mostly yes, although see above in response to counterpunch about the importance of justification in there too. I know you said you don't find analogies helpful, but I can't think of a clearer way to explain:

Goodness is to intentions as truth is to beliefs, in that it's a necessary but not sufficient quality. We think it important for our beliefs to not be only true by chance, but to be justified as well, in a sense that means more than just the coincidence of the thing being believed and the thing being true. We aim to not only have beliefs, nor even true beliefs, but justified true beliefs.

Likewise, I think it's important for our intentions to be justified, in a sense that means more than just the coincidence of the thing being intended and the thing being good. We should aim to not only have intentions, not even good intentions, but justified good intentions.

Elaborating on the details of that is a long, separate topic, that hinges firstly on some common understanding of what a good state of affairs is, which is what we're working on here.

But yes, on my account, a state of affairs that more closely matches the kind of state of affairs described above is a "more good" (or "closer to good", or "less bad") state of affairs.

dying thirst for others’ suffering — khaled

...is not the kind of thing that fits the category of "appetite" as I mean it. Appetites in this sense cannot be for any particular state of affairs; that's not the kind of thing that is meant by the word. By the time you get to the "for", you've interpreted the appetite, and formed a desire.

What you're describing is a person who is suffering somehow (every unfulfilled appetite is a kind of suffering) and thinks that seeing other people suffer will alleviate his own suffering (satisfy his appetite): someone who has some appetite (his own suffering), and interprets that into a desire to see someone else suffer.

My moral system doesn't care at all that he thinks seeing others suffer will alleviate his own suffering, even if that's true. It does care to alleviate his suffering (satisfy his appetite), in some way. But it also cares to prevent the suffering of others (to satisfy their appetites), so the alleviation of his suffering can't be done in the way he wants to do it.

Think about the parable of the blind men and the elephant, which illustrates the distinction between sensation and perception/belief, which is analogous to the distinction between appetite and desire/intention. Each blind man touches a different part of the same thing, and on account of what he feels, thinks he knows what he has touched. One man thinks he has touched a tree. Another thinks he has touched a rope. The third things he has touched a snake.

All three of of them are wrong about what they think they have touched. But the truth -- that they have touched different parts of an elephant, its leg, its tail, and its trunk, respectively -- is consistent with the sensations that they all felt when they touched it. They were all wrong in their perceptions or beliefs, but the truth has to accord with all of their sensations. One of them being really really certain that the thing they all touched absolutely has to have been a snake and cannot possibly have been anything else doesn't change anything.

but we're talking here more about the criteria by which something could be judged as normatively important or not, — Pfhorrest

Ah, I see. For me, philosophy is a means to an end - and that end is the continued existence of the human species. It's like the old proverb: "Society grows great when old men plant trees in the shade of which they know they shall never sit." That's a normative justification of sustainability. A hedonistic justification might be the utter triviality of one's own existence if it's not part of an ongoing concern. A deontological justification might follow from the struggle of all previous generations. In terms of universalism - science and sustainability are an is and an ought everyone might be able to agree in common. But phenomenalism? Phenomenalism is essentially subjectivism.

"Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli."

Do you run back into rooms to see if everything is still there?

Science is objectivism. Science assumes an objective reality exists independently of our experience of it.