What that characterizes the religious life do you think is missing in the secular life? — Janus

That's a brilliant question. I offer three answers.

1. Both saints and sinners would have the same choice - heaven for comfort and hell for company. (But, of course, neither would, in practice, make the inappropriate choice.) A secularist would not be present after death, so would never miss the opportunity.

2. If you consider the duck-rabbit as a duck, what is missing from the interpretation of the figure as a rabbit. Everything? or Nothing? Both answers are correct.

3. More seriously, consider Berkeley's account:-

As in reading other books a wise man will choose to fix his thoughts on the sense and apply it to use, rather than lay them out in grammatical remarks on the language; so, in perusing the volume of nature, it seems beneath the dignity of the mind to affect an exactness in reducing each particular phenomenon to general rules, or showing how it follows from them. We should propose to ourselves nobler views, namely, to recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect of the beauty, order. extent, and variety of natural things: hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they were designed for, God's glory, and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures. — "Berkeley,

The possibility that the religious can choose is indeed missing in the secular view. But a secularist will never miss it. Note the Berkeley manages, in spite of the fact that both world views comprise the same facts, to offer reasons why his view is preferable. Sadly, his world view prevents him from recognizing that the secularist will never miss what he sees.

WIttgenstein has a discussion that is relevant to this:-

The attitude towards the more general and the more special in logic is connected with the usage of the word "kind" which is liable to cause confusion. We talk of kinds of numbers, kinds of propositions, kinds of proofs; and, also, of kinds of apples, kinds of paper, etc. In one sense what defines the kind are properties, like sweetness, hardness, etc. In the other the different kinds are different grammatical structures. A treatise on pomology may be called incomplete if there exist kinds of apples which it doesn't mention. Here we have a standard of completeness in nature. Supposing on the other hand there was a game resembling that of chess but simpler, no pawns being used in it. Should we call this game incomplete? Or should we call a game more complete than chess if it in some way contained chess but added new elements? The contempt for what seems the less general case in logic springs from the idea that it is incomplete. It is in fact confusing to talk of cardinal arithmetic as something special as opposed to something more general. Cardinal arithmetic bears no mark of incompleteness; nor does an arithmetic which is cardinal and finite. (There are no subtle distinctions between logical forms as there are between the tastes of different kinds of apples.) — Wittgenstein, Blue Book, p. 19

Mostly I think it would be great if we could discuss religious topics without anti-religious evangelization constantly occurring. But that's the way it seems to go on the internet: the atheists require that every religious discussion must be reduced to a discussion (or assertion) about whether God exists. — Leontiskos

I do agree. One can only go over the same argument so often. Reducing religions to a single proposition distorts them and makes them almost pointless.

For me it often just comes down to worldviews. People can draw different inferences from the same evidence and arrive at opposite conclusions about the existence of God. Debate about the matter isn’t always helpful and often ends with disparaging the other person’s view. — Tom Storm

It isn't just a matter of world-view, but of ways of life. I mean by that, that it's not just an intellectual matter, but a matter of how to live one's life, day by day.

The other point of strong objection, I think, is that Rawls (and to an extent Habermas) believes this pluralistic situation is inevitable and irreconcilable at this moment on some moral issues. — J

Does tolerating different views necessarily mean reconciling them? Surely, if they could be reconciled, tolerating them would not be necessary. (One only tolerates views and actions that one disapproves of. It would be odd to say that one was tolerating a view or action that one approved of.)

1. You ought to be able to specify the grounds of toleration -- and we believe they're inconsistent and objectionable.
2. "Reasonable pluralism" is in the eye of the beholder.
3. What is it about "free institutions" that you think makes this outcome inevitable? — J

I'm afraid I must be missing something here. These don't look like objections to liberalism to me.
1. Surely, a liberal approach to toleration would be to tolerate unless there are grounds to do otherwise. If the grounds for tolerating something have to be spelled out, the default position will be not to tolerate. It's the different between whatever is not forbidden is permitted (liberal) and whatever is not permitted is forbidden (restrictive).
2. "Reasonable" does not mean the same as "subjective". To be sure, "reasonable" suggests a certain amount of flexibility and room for different opinions. But if the members of our society are the ones to determine how much pluralism is reasonable, what rational grounds for complaint might there be?
3. I don't see what institutions are considered to be free here and what status the others might have.

Not grossly, though we both know there are important nuances left out. And funnily enough, I associate the position that "government imposes on individual freedoms" with certain strands of conservatism, not liberalism. — J

I may be confusing liberalism proper with the neo-liberalism of the seventies, which, in my book, is a very peculiar variant of liberalism.

Mill was against the institution of slavery as practiced, on liberal grounds. However, in "Considerations on Representative Government," he calls for compulsion over “uncivilized” peoples in order that they might lead productive economic lives, even if they must be “for a while compelled to it,” including through the institution of “personal slavery.” This is very similar to Locke's justification of slavery as "freedom from indolence," many of the American Founder's justification of slavery as "temporary but necessary," and liberal justifications of colonialism up through the 20th century. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I realize that you made this point a while ago, but in this context, I need to comment. I do not seriously doubt that the attitude of Mill and Locke here includes an element of racism. But I think that the issue is a real one. We do not plunge infants into all the choices and responsibilities of adult life, but keep them in a special status until we think they have learnt enough for their choices to be meaningul - and we do not give them a choice in the matter.

Now, I wouldn't want to be caught suggesting that aboriginal people who have not had contact or experience of Western society are in any way like children. But, it seems to me, that the fact remains that they need to understand the society they are grappling with before their choices in that context can be regarded as meaningful. It seems to me that Mill (and Locke) at least recognized that problem and the responsibility of the new arrivals in managing their relationship, even though their solution was far from sufficiently respectful.

I daresay there are strands of liberal thought that downplay the role of societal formation, and imagine a citizen as being in a position to make some ideal free choices. All I can say is, Rawls and Habermas (if you count him as a liberal theorist) are painstakingly aware of the trade-offs here. — J

I have read some of both, but not enough, nor recently enough to venture a comment. But I'm happy to accept that some liberals, at least have also taken this seriously. I remember a good deal in Rawls about his veil of ignorance. I can accept that, to some extent at least, people can empathize with the situation of someone living in very different circumstances. That's not nothing. Whether it can balance the years of training for life in the circumstances I was "thrown" into is another question.
Actually, I'm inclined to think that liberalism may be the best way of coping with the fact that we have to work out how to proceed from where we are, with all our different perspectives, as opposed to drawing up something from scratch. Even the Founding Fathers of the USA didn't try to do that; they tried to build on what was already known and thought, but build better.

In particular, the influence of a sort of Humean anthropology, which is extremely dominant in economics (and thus has huge influence on liberal governance) leads to a view where passions and appetites "just are." Reason exists to help us satisfy them. It's just a tool. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's a dilemma here, isn't there? On the one hand, reason as truth-directed can't help us when trying to reason about values - except perhaps in keeping us self-consistent. On the other hand, we can't pretend for long that value statements are all completely arbitrary - questions of taste, about which there can be no disputing. I take courage from the fact that we do argue about values and sometimes, at least, arrive at some sort of agreement or compromise. BTW, Hume's "Of the standard of taste" presents a more qualified, and more sensible, version of his views.

Such an anthropology cuts the legs out from under any coherent second-order volitions, the desire to have or not have different desires. But classically, virtue involved desiring the right things. We are virtuous when we enjoy doing what is right. We flourish more when we have desires conducive to human flourishing rather than self-destructive desires. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, I agree that we can evaluate our desires in various ways. Whether that process is best described through the machinery of second order volitions is another question.

Liberalism is only necessarily prudent if man has no telos or if his telos is unknowable, otherwise it represents unwarranted skepticism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wouldn't venture to positively claim that humans have no telos or that any telos they do have is knowable. But there is much disagreement about what the telos of human beings is. So perhaps liberalism is prudent, after all.
Perhaps, though, we should have a couple of cautions based on what has happened in the last 30 years or so. First, acknowledge that tolerance has limits and it is foolish to tolerate enemies who will not return the favour. Second, recognize that liberalism, however tolerant, will appear intolerant to certain ideologies which do not seem to understand the practical wisdom of compromise. Third, there is nothing that guarantees that liberal values will be adopted by anyone who has not yet done so, and nothing to prevent people who have adopted them deciding to abandon them. Fourth, never forget that, even though negotiations and compromise are much to be preferred, they require co-operation from the other side, which may not be forthcoming; a plan B is often helpful. Neglecting those precautions seems to me to sum up the myopia of liberalism in recent decades.

The question, rather, was why a desire for individual freedom, in and of itself, should be suspect. ..... I was asking why talking about "freedom" as the freedom for an individual to flourish seemed wrong-headed to Count T. — J

I don't know about wrong-headed. But I do think there are difficulties about understanding it, especially as the liberal view seems to suggest that social intervention in the actions of individual is, in principle, a Bad Thing.

The problem with this is that it seems to believe that we individuals spring into life fully formed, ready to make choices. But that is not the case. We are born, we grow up and learn what we need to know about our environment, including our society; only then are we capable of exercising the freedoms that our situation affords us.

Roughly, my view starts from understanding an individual as a member of society, which not only defines the freedoms and restrictions that individuals live with, but educates and trains them to do so. What counts as flourishing depends on the options enabled by the environment and the society in which one lives.

Liberalism has got one thing right - the point (telos?) of society is the welfare (flourishing) of the individuals who are its members. But the idea that the social context in which we live is some sort or imposition on us is a misunderstanding.

I realize that's grossly over-simplified, but starting from the premiss that society and government are impositions on us is a mistake. The society in which we live is the condition of the possibility of flourishing (or not) and of our being free (or not).

So what is it about "freedom" that seems so wrong-headed to you? — J

For my part, I find the slogan "freedom" annoying in this context because of it's extreme myopia. It is all too easy in the context of a society to notice the restrictions on what one may do and so to wish for freedom. But freedom from social (and hence governmental) constraints means the loss of all the freedoms that are the result of social and governmental constraints.
To begin with the trivial, a universal rule that we should drive on the left (or right) side of the road restricts us all, but also gives us freedom from the dangers of negotiating traffic in the absence of such a rule. The laws restricting our freedom to break contracts give us the freedom to make contracts, and the restrictions on what one may do with other people's property give us the freedom to own our own property (and do what we like with it). The restriction on my ability to enforce my desires on other people means that I don't have to be continually battling with other people who wish to enforce their desires on me. And so on.

When faced with criticisms of liberalism, it seems to me that most apologists seem unable to try to justify liberalism outside its own terms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I was very puzzled by this remark. It seems to me that any comprehensive, or would-be comprehensive, theory of this kind will be unable to justify itself except on its own terms. I must be missing something. A counter-example would help.

Often, champions of liberalism (I speak here of political theorists and popular authors) utterly fail at seeing even the haziest outlines of the apparent unfreedom critics see in liberalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is exactly right. On the other hand, I have noticed that people who hold different theories often seem to have a similar difficulty in seeing the problems that liberals see in their theories. Finding the common ground on which disagreement can be articulated and dissected is very hard.

But the biggest issue with liberalism was neatly identified by Popper (I think in "The Open Society"). Liberals can tolerate anything, except intolerance.

This begins to explain the power of mercy, I think. An impartial, unmerciful judge would treat all of us justly -- and what a terrible fate that would be! — J

If the punishment prescribed for various crimes is disproportionate, then it is unjust punishment. Mercy doesn't come in to it.

Here's another way to think about it: Justice = being given what you deserve. Injustice = being given less than you deserve. Mercy = being given more than you deserve. — J

Very neat. But you are over-simplifying. Injustice sometimes means being given less than you deserve (e.g. damages) But sometimes it means being given more than you deserve (e.g. punishment).

Disagree with each other over what? The definition of a word? — goremand

Perhaps "definition" is the wrong word here. I just meant that people disagree about what a good life for human beings is. But those disagreements are taking place in a context where some things are agreed, or not contested. For example, there would need to be broad agreement on which creatures are human beings.

Faith involves an unspoken, invisible promise, one that is not made by ourselves, but by the other, e.g. god, science, philosophy, tradition, institutions, other people etc. — Pussycat

There's a good case for saying that if such promises are entirely one-sided, they are flawed. God does propose a covenant with Israel. But it is a pretty much one-sided deal - take it or else! On the other hand, friendship is not a partnership contract - voided when it's terms are violated. It's more complicated than that.

Faith is not always a good. If your faith is strong enough for you to fly a Boeing into a building, or to fire rockets indiscriminately into a city, then something has gone astray. — Banno

I wouldn't disagree. Faith and loyalty can be misplaced and lead one astray. I've always liked Aristotle's interpretation of virtue as a balance between extremes.
Maybe I'm just naive, but I've never quite understood what such actions are intended to achieve. They are good at attracting attention and causing chaos. But they certainly don't seem to be particularly successful at winning wars.

A person who believed this would have to be committed to saying there is no suffering in hell, which is a statement I don't believe I've ever heard. And I mean "hell" as in fire and brimstone, people wailing in pain etc. Imagine looking at that and saying "no suffering detected". — goremand

You are quite right. But it seems to me, nonetheless, that there are important differences between the suffering of those who are in hell because they have sinned and the suffering of those like Job, who have done nothing wrong. It is the latter's suffering that cries out for a justification, or at least an explanation. Don't you think?

Yes -- the reconciliation of justice with mercy. I may be wrong, but I get a flavor of this in some versions of Buddhism as well. The bodhisattva deserves to be released from the wheel of dharma -- that would be just. But they choose to show mercy on unenlightened beings by returning to help them. — J

That's very good of them. What puzzles me is that mercy is so often represented as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card that is handed out more or less at random to those who don't deserve it. How is this a good thing? Surely, it can only work if the suffering of unenlightened beings is undeserved. But if that's the case, their suffering is not just.

I take this to be saying that humanity has a single agreed-upon definition of goodness, and that misery is bad according to that definition. I think that is obviously false. For example, there are people who think that it is good for sinners to suffer. They think this not because they are irrational, but because they have a different idea of goodness than you do. — goremand

I don't think that there is a single agreed-upon definition of a good life for human beings. But there is sufficient agreement for us to understand that those who have different definitions disagree with each other, which requires a background of agreement.

although we can't be sure the God of theologians even exists, we would be wise to bet on the "house" to win. — Gnomon

I've always wondered what God would make of someone who only obeyed the commandments as an insurance policy. Wouldn't that be a species of pretending to accept them?

I take philosophy to be primarily about how best to live. — Janus

Well, yes. But then philosophy is in direct competition with religion - or, maybe, religion is a species of philosophy for those who don't grasp the point, or importance, of reason.
What people don't seem to face up to that even asking that question presupposes a complex conceptual structure which needs to be in place to enable potential answers to be articulated and evaluated.
I also have serious difficulty that our problem is in any way articulated as a list of options on a menu, from which we choose. Who writes the menu? Perhaps we live as we must and the only question is how far we can mitigate the down-sides that turn up in every item on on the menu.

But it’s a very deep question. — Wayfarer

It is sad how often it is the deep questions that get postponed. This one is so deep that I have no idea how to approach it.

Are you suggesting that it is (only?) through religion, and not through philosophy that we can come to terms with suffering? — Janus

It depends what you call philosophy and what you call religion. Boethius (and many others in his time) certainly thought that philosophy could provide consolation. How would you classify his attempt? Ancient philosophers seem mostly to have been confident that philosophy can help us to cope with suffering. But since the scientific revolution, that project seems to have been more or less abandoned and so left to religion (where humanism would count as a religion).

I do want to high-light the difference between two projects, but I don't want to over-simiplify it.
Consoling someone in distress is not the same project as someone analysing the causes of that distress, even though the two projects play into each other.

This is not something I have thought through, but something I am working out.

Karma is really a kind of watershed between Eastern and Semitic religions. ..... It is only ever beneficial as what Kant would have described as a ‘regulative principle’, something to guide one’s own actions. — Wayfarer

It is indeed a watershed. I don't rule out the possibility that there may be more interesting interpretations availble that might make more sense to a Western person like myself. But I don't feel competent to discuss them. The regulative principle idea does seem to have possibilities.

I will say that the narrow conception of moral responsibility at work in much Western moral discourse seems to me just as much of a myth as the (naive) doctrine of karma. On the other hand, there are many Biblical quotations about the sins of the father being visited on the children.

I think that faith is linked to some promise. — Pussycat

I'm not sure that we can identify a clear distinction between faith and trust on this basis.

But I do think that there is an important difference between trusting or having faith in something or someone based on an evaluation of them - which we will and should change if the evidence changes and being faithful to them because we have promised to do so. In the latter case, we are expected to stick to the promise even if circumstances change. A faithful friend remains a friend even when one does something wrong, but one trusts a car only as long as it works for me. But this is not a hard and fast distinction. If my friend defrauds me of my pension, it is hard to remain a friend, and one may continue to trust a car even when it has ceased to be reliable.

The relevance of this is that adopting a religion may involve accepting certain beliefs, but it also involves adopting a way of life, promising to abide by the relevant laws and customs. Those promises commit one to more than just assenting to propositions, whether on the basis of evidence or not. If philosophy can only discern truth and falsity, it may be constitutionally difficult for it to recognize what a religion is about.

Choices made a long time ago. Also known as karma. — Wayfarer

Sure, Isn't the concept of karma precisely intended to reconcile the apparently random distribution of good and evil into the mora/ethical order? It may succeed psychologically, but does it stand up philosophically?

I guess it's a matter of this quartet: Random, Causality, Logic, Math. You don't exist before you start to exist. You can only decide when you are there, but then it's too late. — Quk

That seems to me one of the points that Kierkegaard is exploiting here. It is completely inappropriate to review our situation in life as if it were a holiday that we booked and which is not meeting our expectations. If we don't like where we are in life, it's no good trying to complain to the Manager.

At first I thought you were saying that "suffering is bad" is a priori true. Then I thought you were saying "suffering is bad" is a universally held belief. Now it seems you saying "most people think suffering is bad" which is a trivial and irrelevant claim. — goremand

This discussion seems to me to have suffered from an ambiguity about whether suffering can be justified or not. Some suffering may have a justification (a beneficial effect), in which case, it might be classified as not suffering, but something else. "Suffering" would then be only "unjustified suffering" and that, it seems to me, can only not be understood as a Bad Thing by someone who doesn't understand what suffering is. To put the point another way, suffering is a Bad Thing unless it is justified.

The three-in-one Christian god-head is still popular among the masses, but waning with the intelligentsia, — Gnomon

I may have the wrong end of the stick, but I have the impression that the difference between the God of the masses and the the God of the philosophers goes all the way back to Xenophanes in the earliest years of philosophy in Ancient Greece.

Right, given that we already find ourselves thrown into a world of potential suffering, then actually encountering suffering may be considered to be the only way to learn to come to terms with it. Of course they also presume reward in the afterlife for the pious. — Janus

Perhaps the problem here turns on the difference between recognizing suffering and coming to terms with it. Philosophy emphasizes recognizing it; religion is primarily concerned with coming to terms with it.

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

Your post reminds me of this quotation from Kierkegaard. Did you have it in mind when you wrote it? (I don't have a proper reference, but found it included in Kierkegaard - AZ Quotes)
Kierekegaard is criticizing the argument, not because it is invalid or unsound, but because it is inappropriate. We are thrown into the ongoing world. Approaching it from our beginning in this way displays the arrogance of a new-comer turning up in a community and criticizing it without taking the time or effort to understand it. Or, at least, something along those lines. I don't think this is a slam-dunk, conclusive answer, but might at least us to be a bit more suspicious of the idea that the traditional problem of evil is a slam-dunk argument against anything that a believer can recognize.

Christianity, as a universal religion, must speak to all people and cannot be elitist. It must present its insights through parables and imagery accessible to the widest possible audience. — Wayfarer

This is one possibility - that Christianity, like other religions, cannot be understood as philosophy, but as a different kind of enterprise, directed at persuading us to adopt a way of life, and a culture, rather than a collection of doctrines. Its project and its methods are not those of philosophy. Perhaps the philosophical problem of evil is perfectly correct, so far as it goes. But then it misses the point of the religious practice, creating a God quite different from the God of philosophy.

I'm not making claims about humanity but about most people.All I can think if you really believe many people think it is good to be miserable is that you live your life with eyes closed. — Janus

You are right, of course. But people do sometimes suggest that being miserable can have good consequences. "What does not kill us makes us stronger".
The paradox here is that Christianity, like other religions, needs to make us feel that we are miserable wretches, in order to create the opportunity for God's intervention to save us from our misery. Evil is not an optional extra here, but an essential part of the project.

I'm afraid that I have some pressing business to take care of. I won't be able to give this the attention it needs for a week or so. So I have to bow out. It's been a good discussion and I'm sorry to have to disappear.

I'm afraid that I have some pressing business to take care of. I won't be able to give this the attention it needs for a week or so. So I have to bow out. It's been a good discussion and I'm sorry to have to disappear.

Enjoying red wine isn't an ethical question. This truly strikes me a bizarre objection. — AmadeusD

Perhaps I just wrote it badly. It wasn't intended as an objection, exactly. The question was genuine - how does emotivism distinguish between emotions that are reactions to judgements of taste and emotions that are reactions to judgements of ethical value? It is true, though, that the answer was not obvious to me, and I might have had objections to any answer offered.

The entire point of ethics is that it delineates actions which effect other people from actions which don't, either do much of anyhing, or have any tangible externalities. — AmadeusD

Yes, that's the standard account. There's a lot to it. The trouble is that the border country between actions that affect other people and those that don't is hotly contested.

After writing this post, I found this -

If ethics is the study of the human good, human flourishing, or "living a good life," there will be many such facts that are relevant. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I sense that this is not quite the same question as the question what rules are required for us to live well together. Should I distinguish between ethics and morality? If not, how to these two questions fit together?

Anyhow, I would just ask: are the empiricists' premises inviolable? They certainty aren't justified by empiricism themselves. Second, is the burden of proof shifting fair? — Count Timothy von Icarus

This was most enlightening. But I think you are being a bit demanding when you comlain that empiricists conduct their critique on some other basis that empiricism. What other basis could they have used? On the other hand, you are justified in pointing out the weakness of the traditional empirical doctrines. These seemed to have survived much better than I thought they would twenty years ago.
Burden of proof arguments don't seem to be very productive. Obviously each side prefers the burden of proof to be on the other and there's no judge to make a ruling. It is better to try to work out what the two sides agree on and frame the debate from there.

Yet if beauty, truth, and goodness are "illusory" they certainly aren't illusory in the way a stick appears bent in water, and it seems fair turn around and demand an account of how such an "illusion" occurs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. People very often misunderstand what an illusion is, mistaking illusions for hallucinations or dreams.

These are all "empirical reports" in the broadest sense, in that they deal with sensuous experience. And they're clearly relevant to conceptions of beauty and nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Quite so. But surely, these days, we are all acutely aware that how we experience things is heavily structured and conditioned by our approach, in the fullest sense. I suggesting that our conceptions of beauty and nature will affect how we experience things as beautiful or not, as our conception of nature affects how we experience that.

Schindler rejects the notion that beauty is just in the eye of the beholder, that is has no connection to objective reality.

I wonder if it is possible that beauty is in the eye (and brain) of the beholder and connected to objective reality?

In response to this, Schindler proposes his creative retrieval of the transcendentals.

.. and this is where I begin to part company with you. What little I understand about the concept of the transcendentals does not enthuse me. I've not yet understood how it helps me to understand Beauty, Goodness and Truth. I have an obstinate conviction that if they exist at all, they exist in the everyday world that I actually live in.

Whereas, as I hope was clear, my question was a genuine one: It's very important that we understand how values like beauty and moral goodness are recognized -- and very difficult to give a good account of this. — J

When you say "are recognized", I conclude that we need to let go of the philosophy for a while and watch what actually goes on, allowing the phenomena, in some sense of the word, to show us how beauty and moral goodness are recognized. (Unless you think that we all already know...) The account (in whatever form seems appropriate) should then follow without too much difficulty.

What is this faculty (sc. the intellect), and how does it do what it does? Just giving it a name doesn't help. — J

Oh, I do agree that slapping a label on the multifarious business of coming to understand these things does not help.

So, going back to your question -

Exactly how does Coleridge know that the waterfall is sublime rather than pretty? — J

Considering specific incidents looks like a much more productive approach than discussing the transcendentals, so this is a good question. I'm sure one could conjure up an answer from what he says elsewhere about why the waterfall is sublime. It would function as an ostenstive definition.

To disagree with "This is pretty" if those words simply described the lady's feelings, would be absurd: if she had said "I feel sick" Coleridge would hardly have replied "No; I feel quite well." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a most helpful remark. It shows something of what taking part in the practice/language game requires.

So we are not talking about a relationship between two objects, we are talking about a relationship between an object (the sign), and what the sign means (what is signified). — Metaphysician Undercover

OK. Then I want to say that when we know what the sign means, what we know is how to use it. That means not only understanding the conceptual structure that gives is meaning, but what it requires us to do (and not to do).

Many of the objections to my account of that case involve the idea/claim that S cannot believe that a broken clock is working. Yet, my account lends itself very well to experiment in which S will admit to believing exactly that after becoming aware of it. — creativesoul

Well, the idea that S cannot believe that a broken clock is working is a play on the intentionality of belief. "Broken clock" is an inappropriate description to use to articulate what S believes.

If we treat Smith’s belief as a justified false belief (because at the point of justification, the actual truthmaker is not in view), JTC interprets this as a prime example of epistemic fragility. The justification is disconnected from the actual truth conditions — DasGegenmittel

But surely, if Smith's belief is a justified false belief, it is not going to count as knowledge. So what is fragile is not Smith's knowledge, but his belief. That's not a problem.

To say, “S cannot believe that a broken clock is working,” misrepresents the belief. “Broken clock” is an external diagnosis, not necessarily part of S’s belief content. — DasGegenmittel

I think it is important to say more about this. My view is a trifle unorthodox. It comes down to what description works for different characters in the story. Smith is thinking ot the clock, as a (working) clock. Who wouldn't? But we readers who are in the know, are thinking of it as a broken clock. Of course we are - the author of the story has told us so and authors are never wrong about what is happening in their own stories. Smith obviously cannot possibly be describing (thinking of) the clock as broken and it makes nonsense of the story to attribute such a belief to them. In order to understand the story, we have to be capable of grasping the difference and its significance. There is, so far as I can see, there is no way round that.

It follows that the context of belief is not fully intentional. I've never seen such a concept elsewhere in philosophy, but the facts are clear. In some circumstances, we must respect the believer's description of their own belief. In others, we need to understand (and use) another description - the truth (as we see it, of course).

Right. Or, in the opposite direction, aggressive cancer treatments might not be in your best interest (as you conceive it) but be medically helpful. — J

That's a good example. Medically assisted suicide is an even better one. It is (normally regarded as) medically unhelpful (even in contradiction with) standard medical ethics. nevertheless, it may be in one's best interests, IMO.

Further to our exchange about music, you may or may not have encountered the classic piece in traditional philosophy for this - Hume - Standard of Taste. It puts his analysis into a different context from the usual subjectivist interpretation. On the other hand, it is based on a naive empiricism that doesn't attend to the extent to which social and cultural context affects these questions.

We cannot use the terms "healthy" or "good" univocally, yet neither does that mean that each use of "good" is entirely equivocal. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for this reply. I must apologize that I don't have time to do it justice right now. But this is true. In fact, I would say that in order to ensure clarity of use, "good" should always be thought of in its context - especially the context of the noun to which the adjective is attached.

But since the truth of "2+2=4" is something not changing, then it cannot be something in the world so it ends up being nothing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, what you say is not wrong, of course. But I would have put it differently. That I prefer to say that "2+2=4" is a statement in what grammarians call the timeless present just shows that I'm uncomfortable with metaphysics. So let that pass. When I said it signified nothing, I was taking advantage of an ambiguity in the meaning of "signified". The traditional structure of signifier and signified articulates the two terms as inherently relational - two objects in a relationship. I don't think it necessarily is. For example, does a road sign saying "Road closed" stand in any necessary relation to anything that you would want to call an object, in the sense that the sign itself is an object. I don't think so. But the sign has a clear meaning, nonetheless.

We can say that there is something called "meaning", — Metaphysician Undercover

We can say that, but we do well to pause for a moment and work out the meaning of what we just said. If we post the meaning (significance) of a term as an object and think things through, we may realize that no object could possibly do the things that we require meaning to do. So we have to park that idea and think more carefully about what we actually mean by meaning.

The issue with this particular thread is that it grants too much to start with in granting that Gettier cases are examples of true belief. Issues with change/flux are irrelevant with respect to that. — creativesoul

Yes. I don't usually think of the Gettier cases as all alike. Most of the later ones avoid the (rather obvious) mistakes that the actual Gettier cases make. But it is not unfair to say that they turn on a proposition (belief) which is ambigous and is interpreted (applied) differently in two different contexts - the subject's belief/knowledge and the context of what we might call objectivity.
Most people make a further mistake when they accept his conventional and orthodox view that a proper definition will always return a final answer with the information available at any given time (in a any given context). When this turns out not to be true, this is regarded as a fatal flaw in the definition. But it is not. Somtimes we make mistakes because of our inevitable limitations. When we do, the world does not fall apart, we just withdraw our claim adopt the correct view and carry on. There's no need to fuss about it.

Good afternoon! :smile:

If a change in physical constituency demands different identity, then it would be impossible to name things fast enough. — creativesoul

That's likely true. As it is, we can name a process, such as a river, and it persists for long enough for our purposes - over generations. Mind you, I don't even accept the physical components are the same thing as the ship. This is demonstrated by the fact that the collection of all the pieces of Theseus' ship in Hobbes' problem need to be assembled before they constitute a ship. I expect you know all about that.

My wording was chosen deliberately and corresponds precisely to the intended meaning. Had I meant to say “identical,” “equivalent,” or intended another specific distinction, I would have expressed it explicitly. — DasGegenmittel

Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way. I was telling you that that I had a different view.

The objective measure, insofar as we can achieve one, lies in having the most information and processing it adequately. This is what we often see in Gettier cases: the observer knows more than the individual making the assertion.
Moreover, there might be concurrent JTBs (Justified True Beliefs) that cannot be reliably judged—this is what the Rashomon effect illustrates. — DasGegenmittel

You are right about the Gettier cases, though I suggest they need more than that. They need an ambiguous proposition that can seem to justify two cases at the same time. But they are not difficult to sort out when we discover what is going on. The problem here is the insistence that we be always able to tell, once and for all, and at any given time, which propositions are true and well-established and which are not. Sometimes it takes time for the truth to be discovered. Sometimes we have to withdraw claims that we thought were true. That isn't a crisis, it's normal business.
Don't forget that when it is possible that a given proposition is not true, it is also possible that it is true and that we can usually tell which possibility is actual, even if it takes some time to do so.

"2+2=4" actually signifies, represents, or corresponds with nothing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but representing and corresponding are not the only ways to mean something. If we can calculate and apply our equations to the world, we know what they mean even if the signify nothing.

Hobbes intensifies the thought experiment by suggesting that the original, removed parts are reassembled into a second ship – resulting in two ships, each of which could claim to be the original. — DasGegenmittel

Yes. Hobbes' variant is interesting and very ingenious. But I would argue that neither ship has a good claim to "be" the original. I would say that the ship in the original puzzle is a reconstruction of the old ship and the ship in Hobbes ship is a replica. The original puzzle is a sorites puzzle, based on the vague border between maintenance and renewal. Our common sense has not developed in a context in which these puzzles were a problem and is not well adapted to deal with them. We just need to make up our minds about how to apply them. Once we are agreed, there will be no problem.

Couple of things: Within a given practice or style, there are indeed objective measures of whether a piece of music is aesthetically better. But no doubt you mean aesthetic comparisons in which the stylistic "rules" differ. — J

I didn't write what I said accurately enough. I was thinking only of judgements within an established practice, not of comparisons between styles.

Electronic devices can tell you whether a note is in tune. They can't tell you whether some degree of out-of-tuneness is desirable or not, aesthetically. So yes, a tuner can overrule a subjective judgment like "that passage was played in tune," but not a subjective aesthetic judgment. That requires some stylistic agreement about tuning in a particular genre. — J

I agree with that. Just to cover some other possible comments, disagreements within a style are not impossible, indeed, they are likely common place, but they require agreements in the background. This is was distinguishes aesthetics and ethics from questions of taste. About those, it has been know for at least two thousand years, there is no disputing. (Normally). This is why I think that to classify these judgements as subjective just because they don't conform to the paradigms of objectivity just confuses them with questions of taste.

BTW -- if you ever heard a piece of music, in any genre, played constantly and strictly in tune, you'd hate it! Robot music. — J

I'm pretty sure I have, although it can be hard to be sure. The same is true for a robotic beat. Yet that can be used for effect, as well. People are work so hard to keep the beat and keep the tuning and yet we find that we relish those tiny irregularities that give life to the music.

Out of tune notes can be detected by electronic devices. We all think some music is better (aesthetically) than other music, but it remains that there is no objective measure. — Janus

The catch is in "objective". We all think we know what it means. Can we say that electronic devices provide a bridge between the objective and the subjective in this case? Or do they supersede the subjective opinions? Who's to say?

So, again there is no absolute measure. We can identify someone's state off mind, but there is always the possibility of convincing fakery. Same for identifying enlightenment. Also, it's not clear exactly what the purported enlightened state consists in. — Janus

This time the catch is in "absolute". It looks as iif you are looking for a measure that cannot be "faked", or perhaps a measure that cannot be wrong. The only measure that cannot be wrong is one that is true by definition. But since anyone can make a definition, could that not be considered at best arbitrary and very likely subjective.

So, I would say there is no way of definitively identifying whether someone is enlightened or even what enlightenment is. That's not so different from identifying whether something really is the word of god as far as I can tell. — Janus

My problem here is "definitively". But there's a deeper problem, that being unenlightended and incompetent, I don't see any basis for over-ruling the practices of those who are enlightened and competent.

I remember reading a quote from a famous poet. I can't remember who it was, but he was addressing a question from one of his students: 'How can I tell whether my poetry is any good?". The answer was, "If you need to know that then being a poet is not for you". — Janus

That's a good start to a philosophical discussion about the question. Whether that was the poet's intention is unanswerable without more information.

My intuition tells me there must be (sc. moral facts). It is not an easy thing to have both of these things floating around. — AmadeusD

But don't we at least know that if there are moral facts, they must be a different kind/category/language game from factual/scientific facts? That would be a possible basis for making progress with this.

First, that stomping babies is bad for them is not a scientific fact; it's probably a medical one. Science is to some degree at least supposed to be as value neutral as possible,

Yes. But that value neautrality has moral implications. So it might well lead people to think that describing animals that are screaming in pain as "vocalizing" is more objective because morally neutral. But being morally neutral about that fact has moral implications, because it implies indifference.

I would need to be convinced that a study of the human good cannot involve empirical facts. You seem to be taking "there are no facts about (ethical) values" as a starting point." But that seems just be assuming the very thing in question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. It does seem to be a fact that human beings evaluate (attribute values to) certain objective facts. But they do select which facts to attribute moral values to, and so distinguish within the domain in ways that are not defined within the domain.

While I'm not certain in how you intend the term "aporia" in this context — javra

I would include insoluble contradiction (normally) as one kind of aporia. I would also include a simple case of ignorance (of the facts in a particular debate). So I understand it as "not knowing how to go on".

If it is the case that both Gettier examples are cases of JFB, then the Gettier problem dissolves completely. Barn facades, sheets blowing in the wind, and broken clocks all suffer much the same fate. They dissolve when S's belief is more accurately put and then reexamined. — creativesoul

I would agree that they are cases of false belief, but a rather specialized kind, because they depend on the ambiguity of a proposition. That why I prefer not to count the clock as a Gettier problem. I do so, because those kinds of case turn on an assumption which is generally reasonable, but which is false in the particular circumstances of each case. (Harman-Vogel paradox). They are much less spectacular than Getter cases, but much more difficult. (Rusell didn't find the clock case difficult - with his usual decisiveness, he is clear that S does not know the time.)
Thanks for asking. I am as settled as one can expect in this unsettled world. But, as they say, one mustn't grumble - even though that is one of the most popular pastimes in the world.

The two different ways correspond with two distinct aspects of the world. If it was simply a matter of two different ways of describing the same thing, we'd choose the best for the purpose at hand. But the two different ways correspond with two different aspects, that which stays the same as time passes, and that which does not stay the same as time passes. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, I see - aspects. That makes a difference. I think of Wittgenstein on "seeing as.." and the puzzle pictures. I can buy that - with some qualifications in this particular case. (See below)

The important thing here in the context of this discussion is that my belief is not based on any specifical evidence or reasoning. — T Clark

I agree. The philosophers paint a particular picture of knowledge to suit their project(s). They think of people discovering things - the origins of knowledge in an ideal world.

I think most of what we know is not specifically justified. — T Clark

Quite so.

Incidentally, this is also where the Ship of Theseus paradox becomes relevant—something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same. In that sense, this is not just a side topic, but a foundational philosophical theme. — DasGegenmittel

You are right that it is an important philosophical theme. I don't think that you describe Theseus' ship correctly. Theseus' ship is not something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same, because that implies that the ship does not stay the same. Theseus' ship really changes and remains the same. It remains Theseus' ship throughout - until it is dismantled or sold - neither of which are the kinds of change envisaged in the example. We pay attention to the change or the stasis as suits our project at the time. You are adopting what you probebly call a strict sense of "same". But it applies to almost nothing in that sense. Most things change in some respects while remaining the same in other respects. They are a "mixture".

That's apparent. But seems to me that someone's preference for chocolate over vanilla is different to their thinking it wrong to kick pups. Part of that is that folk do not generally try to force their preference for chocolate on to others. Ethics inherently involves other folk. — Banno

It's certainly true that judgements of moral value are different from tastes. Part, at least, of the difference is that we don't censure people who disagree with our tastes in the way that we censure those who disagree with us about moral values - and, yes, sometimes we enforce our values on others. But I've been wondering for a while now what happened to tolerance? It's all very well to discuss what "we" (humanity in general, people in Western Democracies, "right-thinking" people) agree on. But disagreements about moral are very common. Surely, sometimes, it is perfectly reasonable to accept differences of opinion? How do we distinguish those cases from simple questions of taste?

The dedicated emotivist is only committing to rejecting an objective claim to wrongness. — AmadeusD

So how do you distinguish between moral values and questions of taste? We happily accept that some people prefer red to white wine and vice versa, but we don't allow the same liberty to puppy-kickers. The objectivist will have an explanation. Does an emotivist even recognize the question?

If someone else believes something, and they call that belief 'knowledge', you're going to judge that statement by the same criteria as your own so-called "knowledge", which is to say, you're going to judge the justifications for it being true. You don't have access to the T, you can only access the J. — flannel jesus

Well, at worst, you're going to get two evaluations of the same justification or of two different justifcations. Two evaluations of the same by the same person is not very convincing. ("Marking your own homework")
A justification that can't get us to truth or at least towards the truth is no justification at all.
But sometimes, there is no gap - as in conclusive justification.
I include in "justification" here includes questions about the skills and competences of the knower, not to mention their good faith.

perhaps so affirming that "real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths" is of itself a gross misattribution of what of what Plato, an Ancient Skeptic, in fact described. Here granting that epistemic truths - prone to the possibility of being wrong as they all ultimately are - nevertheless do occur in the world. — javra

That's putting it a bit strong. But the Theaetetus is indeed striking in that it does seem to include truths about the world we live in as not mere illusions. It is also striking that the dialogue is aporetic; people don't often recognize that.

Perhaps this is the somewhat positive conclusion Plato reaches in the Theaetetus, suggesting that absolute knowledge requires a metaphysical framework that even the best and truest logoi can only approximate. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-theaetetus/#Con

That paragraph is a brave attempt to extract something positive from the aporia and the suggestions are quite plausible. But I don't find them in the text and it's really not necessary to find a positive conclusion in an aporetic dialogue. Socrates was, in a sense, quite happy to end with aporia.

The act of faith here is not believing in specific rules, but belief in the relevant institution's (IFAB here) authority to will rules in and out of being, and for their intercessors, ritually outfitted with uniform, cards and whistle, to arbitrate them.
Similarly, faith is not in a rule that stomping babies is bad, but in the belief that underpins that rule, be it God/Gods, religions institutions, or the sanctity of human life. — hypericin

Games come about as a result of constitutive rules.
See John Searle’s work on speech acts, where he differentiates between constitutive rules that create the possibility of a certain activity, like "checkmate ends the game of chess", and regulative rules that manage existing activities, such as traffic laws. Constitutive rules create the game as such—without them, the game wouldn’t exist. — Banno

I found these quite thought-provoking.
I'm inclined to think that faith in institutions or people is trusting that they are doing the right or appropriate institutions thing. That implies a criterion for rightness or appropriateness. One doesn't have faith in rules (whether they are constitutive or regulative rules), unless there is a criterion for assessing whether they are right or appropriate.
I think that faith that a proposition/statement is correct or true is different from that. One doesn't trust or mistrust a proposition, but one can believe it or not on grounds or not; either way faith that it is true implies that there is a criterion of truth or correctness.

I mean, what does J mean? Obviously justified, but justified in what? Justified in thinking the belief is true. — flannel jesus

Yes, but there's a wrinkle. Obviously, if the justification in question is conclusive, then it follows that the belief is true. But what if the justification is not conclusive? It follows that you may be justified in believing, but wrong. Are you then justified in believing or not? For me, you are still justified in believing, but the T clause means that I can't be said to know. Without this clause, knowledge simply becomes equivalent to belief. I don't think any philosopher would buy that. (Gettier says you can be, and that's the basis for his paradoxes.)

Maybe knowledge should be SJB, sufficiently justified belief. — flannel jesus

But does sufficiently justified mean that the belief cannot possibly be false? Anything less than that leaves you open to thinking that you know, when you merely believe.

So what work is T doing in JTB, since the only access to truth you just laid out is a matter of justification, and not truth itself? — flannel jesus

You are right to think that the T clause is not doing any work if you are asking yourself whether you know that p, given that you believe it. But if you believe it, then you have already decided that the belief is true, and justified, so yhe T clause is indeed redundant.
But when you are asking whether someone knows that p, it is a different ball game. You might endorse S's justification, but that's not automatic; you might disagree with them. You have to decide for yourself, and when you say that they know that p, you commit to asserting that p is true. When you say that they believe that p, you are witholding that commitment. (If you say that someone thinks that p, you are (normally) asserting that p is false, or that S's justification is invalid or unsound.)
Granted that there are problems about the J clause, I can't see that SJB any of the problems about the J clause, but just collapses knowledge into believe. Your point that a T clause is always in practice applied by individuals in the light of their own judgements is a general comment on the concept of truth, and so has no special force in this context.

Therefore we cannot ever adequately describe active change, or becoming, in terms of states-of-being. — Metaphysician Undercover

You seem to leave open the possibility that we might adequately describe change in some other way. It occurs to me that we do already describe change in terms of processes.

The solution to this problem is dualism. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think that's a solution - especially as I'm not clear what the problem is. We have two different ways of describing the world. End of story.

We could all be dreaming - so what? Without an indication that's happening, and plenty that it's not, why question? — AmadeusD

Yes. "We might all be dreaming" implies "We might all not be dreaming" or even "We might all be awake". If the weight of all the evidence is in favour of the latter, it is not rational to believe the former. To put the point another way, to acknowledge a possibility imples recognizing the ability to distinguish what is possible from what is the case.

A student looks at a broken clock and says, “The bus will come in three minutes,” because the clock coincidentally shows the right time. The bus does come — but not because the reasoning was valid. — DasGegenmittel

Well, if the clock was working, it would still not come because the student correctly predicted it's arrival. What this case does show is that there are almost always many unspoken and unthought-of assumptions in any reasoning. In this case, suppose that the clock was working. The student's assumption was valid. Is that any more or less a bit of luck? Do we say that the student didn't know?

“The sun will rise tomorrow” is contingent, dependent on temporal and physical conditions. In contrast, real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths. — DasGegenmittel

So are you endorsing Plato's definition of knowledge?

The proposition “2 + 2 = 4” is true in all places and at all times. — DasGegenmittel

I've never understood the concept of a proposition. But I don't see how "2+2=4" could be either true or false in a world in which it didn't exist, couldn't be formulated*. We are able to do that, and we apply it retrospectively.

This unpredictability introduces a layer of epistemic risk that undermines absolute claims. — DasGegenmittel

If you mean by this the situation in your shattered bottle example, I don't see any epistemic risk at all. At 12:00, I knew that the bottle on the table. At 12:02, the bottle wasn't on the table and I had heard it fall. I knew that it was no longer on the table.
However, at 12:00 I was probably assuming that it would be there when I returned. Given that I didn't know about the forthcoming crash, did I know it would be there when I return? That does need thinking about. This a variety of Russell's clock and of the Harman-Vogel paradoxes, and probably relates to Aristotle's point that judgements about the future are contingent (which you mentioned on page 1 pf this thread).

A massive volcanic eruption could darken the sky globally. The sun might rise, physically — but it would not be perceived. In this case, the meaning of “sunrise” itself becomes unstable. — DasGegenmittel

That doesn't impact what we know about the sun in current circumstances. BTW, Hume's response was to say that we will continue to rely on the past, whatever the sceptic says. After all, there is - there can be - no more rational alternative. So it is not irrational to do so.

Conclusion: Although our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is highly reasonable, it fails to meet the strict criteria of knowledge due to its reliance on induction, vulnerability to coincidence, temporal contingency, and the unpredictability of the world. What we have is not certainty — but a well-grounded expectation that remains, in the end, fallible. — DasGegenmittel

So perhaps it is not appropriate to apply your strict criteria for knowledge.

From the standpoint of Justified True Crisis (JTC), the expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow qualifies not as infallible knowledge of a future fact, but as conceptual knowledge: the justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, while remaining open to epistemic revision. Within this framework, knowledge is not about asserting timeless metaphysical truths, but about maintaining orientation through conceptual structures that are coherent, context-sensitive, and situationally valid. — DasGegenmittel

If "the sun will rise tomorrow" is a justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, it is knowledge of a fact. To be sure, it holds under current conditions, but that just means that it is true here and now. Things may change, and we will revise our opinions as required in the new circumstances and it is not inconceivable that such things may happen. But those are just possibilities. That it is true now will not change.

JTC acknowledges the limits of what is known, and treats conceptual knowledge as both actionable and self-limiting — true not in spite of its limits, but because it defines them. — DasGegenmittel

I can see that this is different from a platonic view of knowledge. But I don't see any radical difference from "our" concept of knowledge. It certainly reflects our practice better than the platonic view. Are you sure that you are not criticizing a straw concept of knowledge?

The point remains that the enlightenment of the guru must be taken on faith, whereas a note's being out of tune can be rigorously determined. Perhaps the aesthetic quality of a piece of music or performance would be a better analogy. — Janus

Perhaps so. Yet rigorously identifying an out-of-tune note still depends on someone knowing how to do it. And identifying the aesthetic quality of music is learnt and requires practice.

As I see it to be enlightened is not to know any extraordinary propositional thing about anything but rather to be in an altered state...of equanimity for example. — Janus

That's my impression as well. So I would have thought that identifying Enlightened people was a special case of identifying someone state of mind (mood) - anxiety, joy, etc. That's not like identifying the Word of God. And you need to learn how to do that from someone else who knows. It's a social/cultural tradition.

But then it remains questionable that those in such states know how to guide others to personal transformation. As an analogy, aesthetic judgement and creative vision cannot be taught. — Janus

They cannot be taught like a mathematical calculation, which is a matter of drills and habits. But they are certainly learned and the reports of practitioners is that some people can help that process. It's a different kind of teaching for a different kind of skill. Perhaps we should not say that they are taught, but acquired through practice and that more experienced or expert practitioners can foster that process.

Ultimately the idea of God as authority must come down to considering some humans to be authorities, if not infallible, in their interpretations. We see the Catholic notion of the infallibility of the pope for example. I can't see how the same would not apply to the Eastern idea of spiritual enlightenment. — Janus

That's correct. Though I don't know enough to pronounce on Eastern ideas, interesting though they are. I got the impression that the idea was that a guru (who is himselt Enlightened) is able to discern whether someone else is Enlightened. I think of it as something like the idea that a trained musician is better able to detect when a note is out of tune than a member of the public.

I don't think I've ever considered the idea of a "moral force" before. It's an interesting concept, but after reflecting on it, I don't see how it provides the religious with a stronger moral foundation than the non-religious. — praxis

There's something odd about the idea of a moral force, if that means something that forces one to obey it. The whole point of morality is that one must obey the rules of one's own free will. But it might be more like the meaning of a moral rule.
The idea that religious people are more moral than irreligious people has been endorsed by some religious people for a long time. It is obviously very convenient for believers who wish to demonize people who disagree with them. But I don't think there is any decisive empirical evidence that it is true.

Anyway, regardless of what the Bible says, is it a hinge belief or not? — Hanover

I'm not very clear about hinge propositions, though I know they are quite popular these days. Wittgenstein doesn't give us much to go on. But my understanding is that we can choose what propositions we make the hinges of our debates. Presuppoisitionalist theologians, apparently, arbitrarily decide to mke the truth of the Bible a hinge of their reflextions and debates. That seems rather extreme, especially as it is open to anyone who disagrees with them to make a different choice. I guess they are not much interested in missionary work.

Do we need "Moral Jedi" to do the interpretation? — Banno

We've already got them. They come in two flavours, religious and secular. The former are called priests. The latter are called ethicists.

The prohibition against eating from the tree of knowledge is indeed puzzling. I think though, that we can zoom out, and say that the eden story presents us with a conception of reality where reality really is wonderful and it's here for mankind to enjoy and to flourish, yet there are certain rules that one must follow for it to endure. — BitconnectCarlos

That's a very attractive view. I wouldn't deny that sometimes people make their own hell, in one way or another, but I can't accept that everyone who is having a bad time has brought it on themselves. In addition, I would want empirical evidence that following the ten commandments (or any other set of rules) always or even mostly has good results.

Song of solomon, which is love poetry, uses much edenic imagery, so perhaps through love we re-enter Eden in a way. — BitconnectCarlos

That's a possible view, though I would have to treat it as a metaphor. But can we live our whole lives in that way?

There's a lot to unpack here. — BitconnectCarlos

Everything gets more complicated when you look at it closely. I wouldn't know how to unpack this.
I suppose the idea that God only realized that moral laws were necessary when people began to behave badly is ridiculous.
The rule in Eden is puzzling. Is there really supposed to be some moral lesson to be drawn from that story - presumably about some knowledge being forbidden? After all, it is hard to believe that knowledge of good and evil is a Bad Thing. It is the foundation of morality. Or is that knowledge the part of the punishment inflicted on us as a result of the transgression by Adam and Eve?

That's what taxes are all about, right? One's giving of one's own profits for the common good, this at least within genuine democracies. Here, I tend to agree with Mr. Franklin when he said: — javra

That's true. But unless you realize that you are included in the common good, you will mistake your taxea for some kind of charity or protection money. But if one has some money, it is the result of the social structures that you live by. So your taxes give you the opportunity to make money. (And money itself is the result of the social structures you live by.)

Following the commandments generally does yield good results. — BitconnectCarlos

But does God command them because they yield good results or do they only yield good results because God comannded them? Or, perhaps, are they a set of criteria for assessing what a good life is?

I wasn't thinking of taxes. I had in mind the idea that the "moral" thing to do is to maximize the pleasure/utility of the masses and to give no special regard for e.g. one's own family. It is to demand the impossible - complete impartiality towards the entire world. To regard even one's own son or daughter as simply another moral unit no different from a stranger. — BitconnectCarlos

That is a real problem, sadly neglected in conventional philosophy. I don't know how to resolve it, but I am sure that a moral/legal system that does not acknowledge and deal with it is trying to ignore fundamental aspects of human nature.

Does that make our agreement subjective? Is our agreement relative? Or is this talk of subjective/objective relative/(...absolute?) just fluff? — Banno

I wouldn't say it is fluff, exactly. But I do suspect that it is a false dilemma that prevents us from paying attention to what actually matters, which is the interaction between the two.

I would be surprised if many of you haven’t heard of the placebo effect; simply believing, and having faith, in the helpful and good nature of a desired outcome, that may manifest from one's actions, can affect and improve your health and healing, the outcome; and likewise, so does faith help all other conceivable preferences, goals, and desires. — loveofsophia

Yes, the placebo effect is real. Believe it or not, it works even if the doctor expresses some uncertainty about whether the placebo will work or not; which is good, because it means that you don't have to deceive patients in order to administer it. There's a theory that what really does the work is the sympathetic attention.

But over-confidence can wreck your attempts just as much as under-confidence. Telling the difference is hard.

The status of murder on this view, is not an inherent property of the act but a reflection of how people feel about the act. — Tom Storm

Provided one accepts that morality is about how people feel, that's perfectly true. That means that the concept of murder has two components - a description of the act and the evaluation of it. It is wrongful intentional killing. "Boo-word" does not capture the description, though "boo-stealing" does.

I don't think morality can be derived from any logical arguments. In fact, logic is as likely to be the ally of evil as much as good. — frank

That shouldn't be surprising. Logic is about truth and falsity. Morality is about good and bad. Yet moral principles can be consistent or inconsistent with each other. But that doesn't mean they can't both be true at the same time; it means that one cannot conform to both at the same time. Compare "Bring me a red flower" and "Bring me a blue flower".

Personally, the notion of being adequately compensated/"rewarded" after one's family dies seems absurd to me so I always took it as perhaps some reward in the next life. — BitconnectCarlos

That's very generous of you. For me, the promise of a reward in the next life is not an incentive. But I rather think that Job, as a believer, might well have been incentivised by such a promise - or perhaps by the expectation of such a reward, even if it was not promised. I've noticed that the OT frequently mentions the rewards that one who keeps God's commandments can expect (and the punishments that are frequently dished out). It's old-fashined stick and carrot persuasion.

That makes sense. It is not fundamentalism, The question it seems to leave me with though is: 'What use is an authority if you don't know what they want you to do?" — Janus

The answer is, of course, that such an authority is not much use. Do you think that applies to God? I fear it does. The ancient Greeks understood that oracles were unreliable, in the sense that the interpretation of them was not always easy. Curiously, they don't seem to have regarded that as a problem - it was just how things were.

In other words, as already mentioned, expressions of emotions aren’t truth-bearing. These statements fail where they must function as propositions to maintain meaning and inferential coherence. (This was pointed out in the Frege-Geach Problem.) These kinds of statements (“Stealing is wrong” akin to “Boo to stealing,”) cannot account for the logical role moral statements play in our ethical reasoning. Emotional statements lack what’s needed for validity. Emotional statements, again, lack a truth value. — Sam26

Expressions of emotions aren't truth-bearing. But the terms for emotions are not just expressions. They contain a description as well. Anger at a late train is about the proposition that the train is late; if it turns out that the train is not late, the emotion does not necessarily disappear, but it become inappropriate and quite likely to disappear when the truth is revealed. And so on. On my view, moral statements normally include an expression of disapproval and an imperative to do or not do the action they are are about. Three distinct components, each which can be assessed in its own appropriate way. Expressions can be appropriate or inappropriate; commands can be obeyed or not; descriptions, of course, can be true or not.
Emotions are more complex than descriptions, and moral statement are more complex than emotions.

Hence non-cognitivism rather then emotivism, and the implication that one must think about the situation and not only about one's emotional response. One doesn't just feel, one thinks about consequences, and hence about what one wants to be the case. Setting this out as just (no more than...) an emotional response does not do it justice. — Banno

We could perhaps say that moral statements are logically more complex than emotions.

Yes, changing a nappy might be disgusting, but if you care about the child, that feeling of care outweighs the disgust. The "ought" in that case is just another emotional response. One that wins out over revulsion. — Tom Storm

You could describe it like that. But the reason that the feeling of care outweighs the disgust is that changing the nappy is more important than one's disgust. One doesn't just throw the disgust and the care into a set of scales and see which wins.

Looking at these issues in terms of intent and action and consequences gives us a much more viable framework than "emotion". It moves from doing what you want to doing what you should, and hence away from mere egoism. — Banno

Yes, there is a logic to morality. It's just not the logic of truth and falsity - though it does depend on it. The facts of the case make a different and those are to be established in the way that is appropriate to facts.

How we understand the doing -- the action -- is tied to the thoughts and feelings of the doer. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes. That's true. Thinking and feeling and doing are all part of what the action is. So is the on-looker's reaction.

Would you not say that one must first have faith that the authority is absolute before one could presume to serve it? — Janus

Yes. I had in mind the possibility, for example, of someone believing that God is the final authority, but suitably cautious about thinking that they know the mind of God when it comes to what to do.

That seems about right.

Your description of screams and reactions illustrates the observable consequences of the act, but it is our emotional reaction to these consequences—our feelings of horror and disapproval—that ultimately drives our moral judgment. In other words, while the physical harm is objective, the construction of this act as immoral is not derived from the harm itself but from the shared emotional attitudes that society cultivates in response to such violence. And humans (within time and place), seem to share fears, horrors, anxieties. — Tom Storm

I would argue that as soon as you describe the physical consequences of the act as harmful, you have made a moral judgement - or at least a value judgment. Harm is deleterious, by definition.
I suppose you would say that fears, horrors etc. are shared, you would say that they are not objective, but inter-subjective. But that sharing is one of the features of objectivity, so that seems like a cop-out,

But we can also say that the world of the happy man A is quite different from the happy man B. — Tom Storm

I suppose we can. But the point that happiness and sadness are attitudes that shape our judgements stands.

I am suggesting that emotion shapes our identify and may be the foundational platform over which our identity (choices, decisions, preferences) is constructed. — Tom Storm

I don't think that emotion is one thing. It is a collection of different reactions to the world we live in. It seems very odd to deny that the world we live is not the foundation of your choices, etc.

Maybe, but I’m not sure. For me, emotional reactions are likely to be preconcpetual, prelinguistic experiences to which we apply post-hoc rationalizations. "I am angry because..." what follows is the post-hoc part. I've often held that human preferences are primarily directed by affective states, with rational deliberation serving as a post-hoc justification rather than the initial determinant of choice. — Tom Storm

I have a somewhat different idea of emotions. Emotional reactions are reactions to something, some state of affairs, fact, whatever. That's what I call the object of the emotion - what it is about. So, for me, emotional reactions are the emotions. (You seem to be positing that the emotion is something orther than the reactions). If I react to the scoring of a goal with joy or disappointment, the goal is neither post-hoc nor a rationalization.
I disintinguish betweem emotions and moods. Anxiety and depression sometimes have emotions - some specific thing that I am anxious or depressed about. But sometimes they do not, and then they influence how I respond to specific objects or events. They affect how we interpret everything. As Wittgenstine said "The world of the happy man is quite different from the world of a sad man".

I'm not sure what your points mean in relation to emotivism. Can you clarify this? — Tom Storm

Looking at it again, I'm not sure that it really makes sense. It was just an off-the-cuff thing.

Ok, but then my point still stands. One can't derive any consequent from "boo stealing!". At the very least a moral statement worthy of the name needs to apply to more than just oneself. — Banno

Isn't there a complication about this, that the emotions have two functions, one is to express how we feel
(*Boo!", "Hurrah!") and the other to describe what it provoking the feeling - the object of the emotion. One could compare the concept of stealing which describes an action, but also expresses an evaluation of it.

Yes. It's about how we want things to be. It's not that emotivism is wrong so much as that it doesn't properly recognise the difference between what I want and what we want. — Banno

Yes. And if it is about how we want things to be, then it is about our values.

No, it really is not. "one ought not kick puppies" means "I think one ought not kick puppies". Nothing more. It means the speaker believes it to be true, referring to nothing further. — AmadeusD

For example, know why Moses never entered the promised land? The Jews questioned whether it was safe because their scouts saw Nephilim there and it pissed God off that they would question the soundness of his directive to enter. — Hanover

I didn't know that. I shall add it to my list of justifications of God's action in the OT, together with his reason for forbidding Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge, for the Flood, for punishing Job. No doubt there are others. The God of the OT is a rather different creature from the God of the NT.

which I think clearly shows that what I had in mind were dogmatic ideologies, whether atheistic or theistic. It is the belief in absolute authority whether human or divine and the imposition of dogma on others which is the problem. — Janus

Yes. Perhaps more cautiously, it is the confidence that one knows what the absolute authority is telling us that is the danger.

On the contrary, such an ad hoc approach to social engineering is quite rational, as Popper argued in The Poverty of Historicism. By not adhering to a fixed constitution, the British system allows for more responsive, piecemeal reforms rather than trying to impose a grand, all-encompassing plan. — Banno

Good point. I should have thought of it.

So I more than greatly doubt your claim that these two criteria distinguish tyrants from sovereigns in practice - if that is indeed what you intended to say. — javra

I would agree with you. There's a tendency to use "tyrant" and "sovereign" as boo/hoorah words. I was reporting what people have said. I did not intend to endorse it.

It's just that if someone is told not to kick the pup, and they ask "Why not?", they are missing something important, which is not found in "Becasue bullying is wrong" but seen in what they think it OK to do. — Banno

I take your point. But I think it is a bit more complicated than you seem to think. I agree that it is probably true that most people do refrain from kicking puppies without being explicitly taught not to. On the whole, it seems that people do manage to understand what the rules are without explicit instruction, from observing what goes on around them.

However, there used to be a practice, I'm told, of some children, of picking the wings off flies and then watching their futile buzzing with amusement. Suppose we came across such a case. They are deficient in their understanding. Or, small children often treat their siblings or companion animals in ways that are cruel, not because they are wicked, but because they don't understand what they are doing. So we need to teach them. That might be authoritarian - "don't do that, or else" - or it might be persuasive - and that's where the arguments/justifications come in.

But stealing may be permissible in certain circumstances or not harmful and even do good. How do you make the journey from such a statement (which seems to reflect context, preference and emotion) into truth? — Tom Storm

I'm not sure about preference and emotion, but truth is certainly context-dependent.

Bedrock for me refers to hinges that are more fixed than other hinges. Hinges are layered, some more fixed than others, but the riverbed works well too. — Sam26

It's not unusual for Wittgenstein to express a point in several different ways. I'm never sure that's because he is drawing our attention to subtleties or because he wants to avoid getting trapped into a fixed form dogma. So I don't have a problem with what you say.

“Absolute“ is pretty ill defined, and probably a nonsense word. — Banno

I agree. I expressed my point badly.

The consequence of denying the higher power is to be a complex wolf or chicken though. That worldview is lesser i'd submit. — Hanover

By what criterion? What's wrong with being a complex wolf or chicken? Why do you have to create a hierarchy here?

The statement "stealing is illegal" is true, verifiable by looking the law up to see see what it says. — Hanover

Yes. That and the prospect of enforcement are the difference between law and morality. Yet I agree that they blur into each other - as in "you ought to obey the law" as a moral, not just a prudential, rule.

if the statement 'stealing is wrong' amounts to no more than the emotivist's "boo stealing!" This can't be truth-apt. — Tom Storm

Emotions are not simply "expressions" like "ouch!" or "boo". They include a cognitive element, which is identified when we say "I am angry because..." or "I am afraid of..." "boo stealing" includes the belief that the addressee has taken possession of something that does not belong to them. Yet if I were to characterize your anger as true, I would be understood as saying, not that your anger is justified, but that it is real, not pretended. When the belief driving an emotion is false, we talk of the emotion as irrational or inappropriate. So emotions are indeed not themselves true or false, but have are validated or not by a claim that is true or false.

I don't like emotions or descriptions as an understanding of moral rules. Yet they include - are related to both. So a compatibilist answer is required. Perhaps something ike this. Moral rules encode our expectations and requirements of people's behaviour. There are facts of the matter whether certain rules do encode our expectations and requirements. But we do not respond to people following or violating those rules in the same way as we respond to "plain" - morally neutral - facts of the matter.