Sure. Thinking of oneself as, "I am defective" -- what's not to be happy about??!I have known many people who, once they have a diagnosis and are in treatment, they claim to not only be the happiest they have ever been, but feel a sense of coherent identity for the first time in their lives. Being diagnosed can also be like a form of empowerment; being known and finally understood. — Tom Storm
Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Kant, William James, Moore, Hume, Mill, etc, all subscribed to a correspondence account of truth — Cartesian trigger-puppets
Now I don't reject this lightly, since it is the view of Wittgenstein, at least in the Tractatus; and I place great trust in his thinking — Banno
——6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world
everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no
value exists--and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any
value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what
happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is
accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since
if it did it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world.
6.42 So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing that is higher.
6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is
transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.) — TLP
Adorno’s moral philosophy is... concerned with the effects of ‘enlightenment’ upon both the prospects of individuals leading a ‘morally good life’ and philosophers’ ability to identify what such a life may consist of. Adorno argues that the instrumentalization of reason has fundamentally undermined both. He argues that social life in modern societies no longer coheres around a set of widely espoused moral truths and that modern societies lack a moral basis. What has replaced morality as the integrating ‘cement’ of social life are instrumental reasoning and the exposure of everyone to the capitalist market. According to Adorno, modern, capitalist societies are fundamentally nihilistic in character; opportunities for leading a morally good life and even philosophically identifying and defending the requisite conditions of a morally good life have been abandoned to instrumental reasoning and capitalism. Within a nihilistic world, moral beliefs and moral reasoning are held to have no ultimately rational authority: moral claims are conceived of as, at best, inherently subjective statements, expressing not an objective property of the world, but the individual’s own prejudices. Morality is presented as thereby lacking any objective, public basis. The espousal of specific moral beliefs is thus understood as an instrument for the assertion of one’s own, partial interests: morality has been subsumed by instrumental reasoning.
According to Adorno, modern, capitalist societies are fundamentally nihilistic in character; opportunities for leading a morally good life and even philosophically identifying and defending the requisite conditions of a morally good life have been abandoned to instrumental reasoning and capitalism. Within a nihilistic world, moral beliefs and moral reasoning are held to have no ultimately rational authority: moral claims are conceived of as, at best, inherently subjective statements, expressing not an objective property of the world, but the individual’s own prejudices.
twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos.
Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognising it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object. — Kant, 1801. The Jasche Logic, in Lectures on Logic
I was going to suggest that Wittgenstein's passage above is distinctly Platonist in character; that 'the idea of the Good' is an example of the kind of transcendent ground to which I think the passage alludes. — Wayfarer
Well, first, I'd be wary of 'objectivity' in this context. Objectivity is part of what 'the transcendent' is transcendent in respect to. — Wayfarer
Objectivity is part of what 'the transcendent' is transcendent in respect to. — Wayfarer
Objectivity is indispensable for many subjects but it has no ultimate ground (which I think is an implication of 20th c physics). — Wayfarer
I classify myself as a moral subjectivist.
— Cartesian trigger-puppets
Do you? Why? I don't understand the need to categorise and name - doing philosophy as if it were entomology. It's as if one reached a conclusion and only then looked for the arguments... — Banno
I'll read the substantive part of your post and try to formulate a response. But are you looking for such a critique? — Banno
If no ethical statements are true, then not only is it not true that murder isn't wrong but also: murder isn't wrong. — Cuthbert
By definition, nothing lies outside the world.6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. — TLP
Begging the question.In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no
value exists--and if it did exist, it would have no value.
Ditto. Also 'value that does have value' is meaningless.If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what
happens and is the case.
No, most of it is at least partly deterministic.For all that happens and is the case is accidental.
No, for the reason just given.What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
And again, there is nothing outside the world.It must lie outside the world.
'Hitler was a bad man' is a proposition of ethics.6.42 So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.
'Higher' is meaningless.Propositions can express nothing that is higher.
See the above proposition about Hitler.6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
No, aesthetics is about beauty, which does not come into ethics.(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)
All I can say with any degree of confidence is that morality may not be truth-apt, the fact that they're expressed in propositional form may just be a linguistic accident or perhaps is done out of necessity. — TheMadFool
'Hitler was a bad man' is not a command, divine or otherwise.What pops into my head are commands like "shut the door!", "put down the gun!", etc. Commands, according to a book on logic that I read some suns ago, aren't propositions and so, can't be true or false. Divine Command Theory? — TheMadFool
So, perhaps it is similar to the case when we state, “Onions taste awful,” that the syntax is configured in such a way to be making a general statement when in actuality, we are making a particular subjective statement.
— Cartesian trigger-puppets
Language affords one many options for expression, including sentences like "I find onions awful", "I don't like onions" and "I think onions taste awful".
So why is it that some people say “Onions taste awful,” and others say "I think onions taste awful"?
Is this the result of a conscious choice?
Do people less or more mindlessly repeat the types of sentences they've learned in primary education? — baker
Or perhaps it is a realistic truth and our ideas and beliefs are simply streams of synaptic electrochemical nerve signals lighting up the the apparatus of the brain. We just get to interpret them phenomenologically instead of sociologically.
But then how do we explain the differences between people? E.g. some like onions and some don't: does this mean that there is something physiologically or otherwise wrong with one of the groups? — baker
Even if our belief that morality is objective was caused by our or our ancestors' belief that objective moral truths came from God, that does not prove that there are no objective moral truths. We're doing philosophy here, not anthropology or sociology.But I do think that as our language evolved it was heavily influenced by the absolute and objective sense of moral values (and to a lesser extent an egoistic sense of aesthetic values) imposed by religious authority and thus retains a theocentric syntactic structure of the vast majority of time that our language's has undergone it's development. It is reflective of a time when divine command was the objective truth and fact of moral value. — Cartesian trigger-puppets
'Hitler was a bad man' is a true proposition. (He killed 6 million Jews, remember? This is not about a linguistic accident.) The challenge is to explain how it can be true. A good place to start would be to work out what property is referred to by the word 'bad' — Herg
Language affords one many options for expression, including sentences like "I find onions awful", "I don't like onions" and "I think onions taste awful".
So why is it that some people say “Onions taste awful,” and others say "I think onions taste awful"?
Is this the result of a conscious choice?
Do people less or more mindlessly repeat the types of sentences they've learned in primary education? — baker
If there are moral facts, how can we know them?
— Cartesian trigger-puppets
Psychologically and socially, there is potentially a lot at stake in terms of morality. I think that sometimes (often?) it is because of these high stakes that moral statements become artificially elevated to the level of facts. — baker
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