So I'm attached to an image of myself as a good person and furthermore that image is attached to guilt whenever what I do does not match that image within this particular ethical framework where guilt is attached to principle or character. — Moliere

Yes, that. Not merely the image of being a good person - because both image and good are fickle words, subject to change and interpretation and POV. If I have set a standard of behaviour for myself regarding other living things and the environment, my responsibilities or promises, whenever I fail to meet that standard, I'm disappointed in myself. If my sub-standard behaviour hurt another feeling entity, I feel guilt.
Specifically for that transgression - causing distress to some person or animal who didn't deserve it - and for no other, not for breaking a rule or failing in an assigned obligation.

This is pretty much Kripkenstein. — frank

Well, no. It's pieces from p.207 and §258 of Philosophical Investigations. It's not Kripke. It's pretty much straight Wittgenstein. All I did was change "sensation" to "intrinsic nature".

The point is the obvious one that if we take as the only criteria for what is right, what seems right to each of us, then we have stoped talking about what is right and changed the topic to what we want.

That does not address, let alone solve, the problem of what is right.

Notice the difference between "Think for yourself" and "Follow your intrinsic nature". "Thinking for yourself" allows for consideration of others. "Follow your intrinsic nature" drops consideration from the agenda.

The notion that we have a "deepest essence" is deeply problematic, especially after "existence precedes essence".

The Op doesn't address what we ought to do.

I should add that of course there is some truth in the OP. Much of morality is about coercive control. And why shouldn't you do what you want? A question that should be taken seriously.

Appealing to a mythical "intrinsic nature" denies that we each exist only in a community. To a large extent it's an appeal to the American Myth of Rugged Individualism, the very same myth that denies its citizens a decent health care and social security system and brings us Trump and other sociopathic billionaires.

And for all that, the question of what to do remains.

Well, no. It's pieces from p.207 and §258 of Philosophical Investigations. It's not Kripke. It's pretty much straight Wittgenstein. All I did was change "sensation" to "intrinsic nature". — Banno

All Kripke did was change it from sensation to historic rule following. He didn't do any violence to Wittgenstein. He just pointed out the consequences.. the dastardly consequences.

Notice the difference between "Think for yourself" and "Follow your intrinsic nature". "Thinking for yourself" allows for consideration of others. "Follow your intrinsic nature" drops consideration from the agenda. — Banno

This indicates that you have little faith in humans. You believe they're basically bad and need to be threatened with fire and brimstone in order to be good. But you realize that brimstone is mythical, so you just hate your on kind and leave it at that.

I've long believed that it's better to be the fool that you are rather than pretend to be wise. Being the real fool will lead you into lessons from which you can learn real wisdom. Pretending to be wise will only shield you from those lessons and leave you foolish in the end. My perspective is sort of optimistic. It allows the human spirit to soar, even though I know that in the end, it's all for nothing.

The notion that we have a "deepest essence" is deeply problematic, especially after "existence precedes essence". — Banno

Following your heart is the best way to discover the freedom to reinvent the world. I think you're getting tangled up in word games and missing that. I think you'd probably agree with TClark if you understood what he's saying.

And why shouldn't you do what you want? — Banno

That depends entirely on what you want.

An interesting discussion. Although there is a lot of overlap and similarity, Buddhism and Taoism take different approaches to many issues, including this one. One of the things I like about the writing of Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu is the easygoing, down-home understanding of the world and people. This is me speaking as someone who has a very limited experience with Buddhism.

:roll:


Given a choice of extremes, must we always choose the one or the other? No, we can reject both, accepting the complexity of our situation.

That depends entirely on what you want. — Vera Mont

Well, not entirely. Sometimes it also depends on what others want.

I think you'd probably agree with TClark if you understood what he's saying. — frank

I think both Banno and I smirked in exactly the same way when we read this.

:smirk:

I don't think you are wrong. But I do think what you have said is incomplete.

As is what I have said.

Edit: Do you also read Master Kong?

Guilt can be elicited through these stories due to our cultural rituals surrounding acts being blameworthy or priaseworthy, but the story that comes from the guilt isn't the guilt. Our culture invokes guilt in particular circumstances as a means for teaching people to be good (or obedient, or whatever) and the stories arise from that basic manipulation. The particular circumstances of ones own guilt is the narrative, but guilt is an emotional response from an attachment of some kind (the attachment could be as simple as "See clouds:Feel guilt:Explain guilt" -- it needn't make rational sense for the guilt to be there. — Moliere

I’m not inclined to separate guilt as physiological arousal
or somatic sensation from guilt as cognitive assessment. I think the former are meaningless without understanding their basis in the latter. If guilt , or emotion in general is irrational, then rationality itself is irrational. I believe the basis of affect is the assessments that come from our attempts at sensemaking, the extent to which we are able to experience events as intelligible, recognizable, coherent with our aims. Emotion is the barometer that indicates whether we are falling into hole of confusion or confidently assimilating events. Whether a culture invokes guilt or not, an individual will not experience guilt unless they perceive their actions to violate their standards for themselves, regardless of whether this conforms to society’s expectations and norms. Guilt is a crisis of identity that is triggered whenever we discover that our actions dont conform to what we consider our values to be. Guilt is an emotion reflecting the growing pains of personal transformation. To make any significant change in one’s outlook is to risk feelings of guilt.

Well, not entirely. Sometimes it also depends on what others want. — Banno

Of course. Each one of the others is also a 'you'.
Some of the other people may be powerful and influential, in which case, their wants trump yours. I wasn't thinking of a dictatorial situation, because if you live in one of those, you are very much aware of what you are allowed to want.

In a community or larger society, there is prevailing belief system, principles on which the laws, rules, regulations and mores are based, to which all members are required to adhere. Even if they individually disagree with some aspects of the system, they have either overtly or tacitly agreed to abide by its rules. They all know that infractions will be met with disapprobation, ranging from a scowl to lethal injection.

So, if what you want is against a law, you probably shouldn't do it because you can anticipate formal retribution of some kind. If what you want is against a moral precept, whether you should do it or not depends on how much you need the community's support. If what you want conflicts with the desires of a neighbour, you should weigh the foreseeable consequences against the immediate satisfaction. if what you want offends someone's sensibilities, you should consider how much you care about that person's opinion of you. If what you want is a matter of indifference to your fellow citizens, go ahead; there are no obstacles to consider.

So, if what you want is against a law, you probably shouldn't do it because you can anticipate formal retribution of some kind. If what you want is against a moral precept, whether you should do it or not depends on how much you need the community's support. If what you want conflicts with the desires of a neighbour, you should weigh the foreseeable consequences against the immediate satisfaction. If what you want is a matter of indifference to most of your fellow citizens, go ahead and do it. — Vera Mont

An even more effective e approach is to anticipate how your actions are likely to be misunderstood by others so that you can ‘fly under the radar’ and get what you want without causing others to be threatened by what they don’t understand.

Assuming what you want is harmless and nobody would mind, if only they understood it, yes. It's an effective strategy as long as what you want is to live 'under the radar'.
As for other infractions, if it has no observable results, you can get away with some actions that are not approved. People do that every day, everywhere. They show up late for work and pretend to have been in the bathroom, take office supplies home, cheat on their taxes, steal flowers from cemeteries, park in the handicapped space, speed on the highway, kill rich elderly relatives - all kinds of sneaky things that might have unpleasant consequences if they're caught.

Appealing to a mythical "intrinsic nature" denies that we each exist only in a community. — Banno

And more broadly, direct appeals to conscience and the like tend to go hand in hand with a refusal to justify ones beliefs and/or actions. The opacity of such an approach is contrary to community, but it is even more broadly contrary to the idea that moral claims are supposed to have a measure of intelligibility and cogency.

I’m not inclined to separate guilt as physiological arousal
or somatic sensation from guilt as cognitive assessment. I think the former are meaningless without understanding their basis in the latter. If guilt , or emotion in general is irrational, then rationality itself is irrational. — Joshs

I'm not opposed to that conclusion.

I think that the somatic response is meaningless, though it's also always connected to some cognitive judgment that brings it meaning.

We try to make sense of these feelings, but ultimately it's our culture around us which helps us to make sense of them -- it's the village we're a part of where sense is made, and it's pre-made for us -- there's already a long history of guilt established and judged of when one ought to feel guilty and when one ought not to feel guilty.

I believe the basis of affect is the assessments that come from our attempts at sensemaking, the extent to which we are able to experience events as intelligible, recognizable, coherent with our aims. Emotion is the barometer that indicates whether we are falling into hole of confusion or confidently assimilating events. Whether a culture invokes guilt or not, an individual will not experience guilt unless they perceive their actions to violate their standards for themselves, regardless of whether this conforms to society’s expectations and norms. Guilt is a crisis of identity that is triggered whenever we discover that our actions dont conform to what we consider our values to be. Guilt is an emotion reflecting the growing pains of personal transformation. To make any significant change in one’s outlook is to risk feelings of guilt.

I suppose that doesn't make sense of trigger-events, to me.

There is a rational guilt, we could say -- a guilt with a story attached and what that means for myself in relation to others (or God) -- but any emotion, guilt or otherwise, can be elicited by any trigger. We aren't rational by default, but grow into those roles through our communal stories of what a rational individual does.

I don’t think praise can exist without disappointment, which is of course different from blame. We blame when we try our best to understand the motives of another in such a way that we can see those motives as morally justified. — Joshs

I would simplify this a bit. I would say that the opposite of disappointment is the exceeding of expectations, and these two rise or fall together as possibilities. If someone disappoints me then they have fallen short of my expectations, and if someone "surprises" me then they have exceeded my expectations.

I think the contrary of praise is blame, not disappointment. To praise is to affirm and congratulate someone for doing a good job, whereas to blame is to call someone out for doing a bad job. The genus of both is an appraisal of causal activity, where in the first case the person is a good and effective cause, whereas in the second case the person is a bad and ineffective cause (or skillful and unskillful, as the Buddhists would say). These two also rise or fall together as possibilities.

When I hear someone say that we need to get rid of blame (and anger et al.), it seems to me that they don't usually recognize that to rid the world of blame would also be to rid the world of praise, for both are premised on the idea that human beings are responsible for that which they cause. Or simpler, that human beings can cause things, and they can do so in better and worse ways.

As an example, if a soccer game comes down to penalty kicks then the person who scores will be praised and the person who misses the net altogether will be blamed, and it is not really possible to praise the first without blaming the second. Both acts flow out of the same anthropological realities. If I can do well, then I can do poorly. And if my activity can be good or bad, then it can also be appraised as good or bad, and this appraisal can be communicated to me.

All I can tell you is that I’ve never met an immoral, evil, blameworthy or unjust person. It is not that I’ve never felt anger and the initial impulse to blame, but when I undergo the process of trying to make intelligible their motives I am always able to arrive at an explanation that allows me to avoid blame and the need for forgiveness. Furthermore, there is a fundamental philosophical basis for what I assert is the case that it is always possible to arrive at such a non-blameful explanation that can withstand the most robust tests in the real world. Having said that, I’m aware that my view is a fringe one. I only know of one other theorist who has come up with a similar perspective. I’m also aware that my view will be seen as dangerously naive. — Joshs

I find your position to be very popular, albeit not at an academic level. Where I grew up your position is baked into the culture in a way that creates many, many unexpected problems. My cousin and I used to joke that it was a wonder that the people in our town even kept score at all when playing games such as volleyball, because the logical conclusion of this philosophy would be a ban on score-keeping altogether. I think this has become more common elsewhere via the psychological/therapeutic culture.

And why shouldn't you do what you want? A question that should be taken seriously. — Banno

Indeed. I think that's our first morality. We do what we want to do, more often than not.

Sometime down the line we may want to care for others, though. Or at least want more than one thing and have to make a choice.

Generally I think there are moral sentiments we're attached to, and so (attempt to) enact.

But what those moral sentiments are for an individual -- I'm hesitant to say much. It'd be more beneficial for me to know what an individual believes than what I believe. If we're thinking ethically then already I think that's the viewpoint we've adopted, in some sense. Suddenly there's more to the world than me and my wants, and even though I do not want something it may still be important to me.

And that's when ethics becomes an interesting endeavor: Suddenly I have deliberations and choices not just about what I want, but also others' desires (including different moral sentiments)

Sorry. I missed your comment the first time around.

While I agree one ought to follow his own conscience, his conscience needs to be developed, and studying moral philosophy is helpful in that regard. Emerson, for instance, was once a preacher, and it is doubtful he would have come to his later conclusions had he not put in the study of those doctrines. One needs to know a doctrine before he can become unsatisfied by it. — NOS4A2

I'm not sure about this. Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu specifically identify the behavior of young babies as good examples of action in accordance with inborn nature.

In Emerson’s example we discover that no one can be controlled by a normative claim, moral, ethical, or otherwise. The only coercive rules are the legal ones, enforced as they are by the threat of force, violence, and kidnapping. — NOS4A2

I think you're right about what Emerson proposes, but I'm sure he recognized that human behavior can be controlled by "normative claims," e.g. guilt, shame, community disapproval.

We aren't rational by default, but grow into those roles through our communal stories of what a rational individual does. — Moliere

Sense-making is more fundamental than abstract logic or formal rationality, which are just secondary derivatives of it. We dont grow into sense-making, and dont have to be taught by a culture how to do it. We begin as sense-makers, construing events along dimensions of similarity and difference with respect to previous experience, creating channels of interpretation in order to recognize meaningful patterns out of the flux of changing events. Our culture provides us sources of validational evidence but doesn’t dictate the rightness or wrongness of our construals of the world, since no two persons will construe things the same way.

Sometime down the line we may want to care for others, though. Or at least want more than one thing and have to make a choice. — Moliere

That would be about age two. The toddler wants to stay up and eat candy. His mother tells him it's time to go to bed. The toddler wants his mother to keep caring for him. What she wants is suddenly an issue. He'll hold out for what he wants, as long as there is a chance she will let him. But if she's adamant, he has to make a choice between short- and long-term desires.

By age three, it actually matters whether his mother takes care of him because she wants to or just because she has to. It begins to matter what she wants. He can "be good for Mommy" if he tries. By six, he often offers to do something he doesn't really want to, just to please her. (Remember, she's already done 5000 things she didn't really want to, just to please him. He's figuring that out. Now, we have a loving relationship between two individuals - a whole new dynamic of balancing wants.)

So help me out here. Bob wants to rape and feels it very much a part of his intrinsic nature and he doesn't want to be judged for it. He asks me why it is immoral to rape. What do I tell him?

Am I immoral when I condemn him? Why?

As I understand it, because Bob is an incel, and they're just poor, socially awkward, misunderstood boys who have been traumatized by rejection from women. You have to understand his needs.

Sarcasm?

I'm just trying to understand how to pragmatucally apply the Taoist morality presented in the OP.

I'm just trying to understand how to pragmatucally apply the Taoist morality presented in the OP. — Hanover

Sorry. I have no idea. I have no concept of a society in which we're not supposed to judge one another's behaviour.

When I hear someone say that we need to get rid of blame (and anger et al.), it seems to me that they don't usually recognize that to rid the world of blame would also be to rid the world of praise, for both are premised on the idea that human beings are responsible for that which they cause. Or simpler, that human beings can cause things, and they can do so in better and worse ways.

As an example, if a soccer game comes down to penalty kicks then the person who scores will be praised and the person who misses the net altogether will be blamed, and it is not really possible to praise the first without blaming the second. Both acts flow out of the same anthropological realities. If I can do well, then I can do poorly. And if my activity can be good or bad, then it can also be appraised as good or bad, and this appraisal can be communicated to me — Leontiskos

Human beings are responsible. But that just means that they do the best they can given the limitations of their framework of understanding at any given point in time. Because their efforts change this background system of appraisals, their future isnt determined by those limitations in a causal manner proceeding linearly from past to present to future. Our past is reconfigured by how we can change our future in the present. But this doesn’t authorize the superstitious belief in the magic of ‘willpower’ , as though some mysterious , divinely inspired force wells up in us to inspire us to do the right thing, or to push us beyond what we thought was humanly possible (how miraculous!) in order to score that goal. The ideology of blame tells us that this strange power is what separates the men from the boys, the heroes from the cowards , the good from the evil.
This completely misses the fact that it is impossible to perform such feats of will as long as there isn’t an adequate cogntive structure in place to make sense of the circumstances we find ourselves in. Our ability to deal with each other without violence and brutality evolves over the course of human history in direct parallel with the evolution of cognitive structure. In a word, the smarter we get, the more peaceful we are capable of being, and the closer we get to a post-blame form of thinking.

I find your position to be very popular, albeit not at an academic level. Where I grew up your position is baked into the culture in a way that creates many, many unexpected problems. My cousin and I used to joke that it was a wonder that the people in our town even kept score at all when playing games such as volleyball, because the logical conclusion of this philosophy would be a ban on score-keeping altogether. I think this has become more common elsewhere via the psychological/therapeutic culture — Leontiskos

I recently wrote a paper on the history of blame in philosophy and psychology . I couldn't find a single example of a post-blame thinking in pre-modern, modern. or postmodern Western philosophy, nor in non-Western traditions. Reductive determinism doesn’t count, because as I argued in an earlier post, they just shift the locus of blame from a free willing person to material causes. This is not at all what I mean by post-blame. No philosophical or psychological approach makes the claim to have entirely eliminated the need for anger and blame. On the contrary, a certain conception of blameful anger is at the very heart of both modern and postmodern philosophical foundations. As a careful analysis will show, this is true even for those philosophical and psychological arguments that pop up from time to time extolling the virtues of moving beyond blame and anger.

I’d like you to give me some examples of what you consider to be post-blame approaches, and I’ll demonstrate the ways in which they sneak blame in through the back door.

By age three, it actually matters whether his mother takes care of him because she loves him, or just because she has to. It begins to matter what she wants. He can "be good for Mommy" if he tries. By six, he often offers to do something he doesn't really want to, just to please her. (Remember, she's already done 5000 things she didn't really want to, just to please him. He's figuring that out. Now, we have a loving relationship between two individuals - a whole new dynamic of balancing wants — Vera Mont

Why do you think the younger child is not able to figure out what the older child does concerning the balancing of wants? Is it as simple as selfish needs being primary, or is the dichotomy between ‘self’ and ‘other’ too simplistic a way of treating the nature of motivation?

Human beings are responsible. But that just means that they do the best they can given the limitations of their framework of understanding at any given point in time. — Joshs

If everyone is doing the best they can at each moment of their life then no one is responsible for anything, and therefore it is entirely backwards to say that humans are responsible because they are always doing the best they can.

Our past is reconfigured by how we can change our future in the present. — Joshs

Can we change our future in ways that are better or worse? If so, then praise and blame and responsibility all come right back.

This completely misses the fact that it is impossible to perform such feats of will as long as there isn’t an adequate cogntive structure in place to make sense of the circumstances we find ourselves in. — Joshs

I don't think anyone misses that fact. I think this is a strawman.

Our ability to deal with each other without violence and brutality evolves over the course of human history in direct parallel with the evolution of cognitive structure. — Joshs

History notwithstanding?

I recently wrote a paper on the history of blame in philosophy and psychology . I couldn't find a single example of a post-blame thinking in pre-modern, modern. or postmodern Western philosophy, nor in non-Western traditions. Reductive determinism doesn’t count, because as I argued in an earlier post, they just shift their blame from a free willing person to material causes. This is not at all what I mean by post-blame. No philosophical or psychological approach makes the claim to have entirely eliminated the need for anger and blame. On the contrary, a certain conception of blameful anger is at the very heart of both modern and postmodern philosophical foundations. As a careful analysis will show, this is true even for those philosophical and psychological arguments that pop up from time to time extolling the virtues of moving beyond blame and anger. — Joshs

You also won't find the idea that 2+2=5 in pre-modern, modern, or postmodern philosophy. I think the reality of blame is as obvious as this mathematical fact, and that this is why you haven't found many people denying it.

But you literally captured the post-blame conception in popular culture, i.e., "Leave him alone, he's doing his best!"

I’d like you to give me some examples of what you consider to be post-blame approaches, and I’ll demonstrate the ways in which they sneak blame in through the back door. — Joshs

Hey, you're turning the tables on me - that's my job! Nah, I don't think these popular conceptions are coherent. I think you yourself will end up sneaking blame in through the back door as well, unless you yield to (psychological) determinism. I think proponents, including yourself, underestimate the unimaginable cost of a blameless society.

There is a legitimate way in which the analytic philosophers tend to neglect the bigger picture, but it is simultaneously true that the continental folks tend to struggle with logic. When the continental folks promote a blameless society I think a logical mishap is occurring.

And that's when ethics becomes an interesting endeavor: Suddenly I have deliberations and choices not just about what I want, but also others' desires (including different moral sentiments — Moliere

What’s the difference between ‘I’ and ‘other’? Is the ‘I’ a single thing or a community unto itself? Perhaps the difference between self and other is an arbitrary distinction we fabricated , and it’s really a matter of degree? In other worlds, the notion of selfishness is incoherent, because it isn’t a unitary ego we are protecting, but the ability to coordinate the myriad bits within the community of self that makes up our psyche so that an overall coherence of meaning emerges. the sense of a unified self is an achievement of a community , not a given. Whether we do things for ‘ourselves’ or for ‘others’ , the same motive applies, the need to maintain integration and consistency of meaning. None of us can become altruistic, generous, selfless, sharing unless we can find a way to integrate the alien other into ourselves. This isnt a moral achievement , but an intellectual one.

If you are saying that what I call personal morality vs social control and what you call natural vs. artificial morality are similar concepts, then I agree. — T Clark

No, I wasn't saying that, though your statement seems fair, I just meant that "morality" has contradictory characteristics due to the differing meanings of the word in various contexts. Though they aren't real contradictions, only appearing due to ambiguity as to which "morality" is being referred to.

On the contrary, I am saying I think what people call "morality" is nothing more than social control. — T Clark

I'm not sure what you mean by "nothing more than social control". It reads as being very cynical, though you acknowledge the necessity for it, do you deny its potential beauty and desirability? I think those feelings you refer to as your "personal morality" are often parents to this morality as social control. To me, it's inevitable that this will happen, because of the inevitability of politics. For example, if one loves animals, how can they not act in their defence when others try to harm them? Only a specific set of morals can flourish without turning to social control, entirely inward-facing ones. Is there any separation between thoughts & feelings that guide our own behaviour and those that motivate us to influence others?

Though I've yet to hear a description of "personal morality" that would allow me to identify it by myself, one possible "personal morality" is our biological morality. A psychologically in-built morality, made up of our able to perceive fairness, experience empathy and possessing aversions to incest etc. Different forms of this are observable in other pack mammals such as dogs and lions. Here, biological morality facilitates the coercive kind, allowing each member of the group to play their role in enforcing social rules. While I don't believe all forms of morality are derived from biological morality nor does it possess any hegemony over the others, it's an example of a case where the personal and coercive are really one in the same.

One could argue that for a form of social control to qualify as "social" or "coercive" morality, it must originate from a personal morality. Also, note that even though morality is inherently self-serving (serving the group), arguments sourcing from "personal" morality are nonetheless never out of place. Though that doesn't mean they'll be persuasive.

In summary, morality's coercive elements are the natural consequence of personal morality/motivations and politics, which are both inevitable and inevitably intertwined. Though coercive morality would surely exist without personal morality, it's inconceivable to me that personal morality could avoid resulting in the coercive kind. Though there are those who may advocate for keeping personal morality a private affair, and may practice what they preach, the inevitability of politics and the power of the majority mean that this mentality will never rule over a large group. I think we can always expect personal morality to bloom into the coercive kind in any group setting, do you agree?