Ok. So if some properties are measured, some meaning follows necessarily from those measurements, but the meaning itself is not a measurement. If that is true, then how can we tell whether the meaning belongs to the measurement or to the EMR? Just like if we measure the sides of a four-sided geometric figure and the measurements provide the same units means the figure is a square, does “square” reside in the figure or the equal measures?

I couldn’t help myself. First thing I thought was, time-like and space-like morality? Whaaaa???

Sorry. I’m all better now.

So would a realist say some EMR has the property of 450nm, along with the property of 630THz, and the property “blue”?

Just seeing how people think. No pressure, no biggie.

What is color?

So you’re a realist. I’m sorry, does it hurt? They got remedies for that these days, ya know. (Grin)

So what kind of realist are you? Scientific realist? Metaphysical realist?

Describe the world in your own words.

Nahhh... the easy stuff is done; morality is subjective, mentally located, if that is how one thinks of it. Philosophy, never one to leave well enough alone, still wants to ask, how is it that it is (However it is thought) and why should it be that way.

Otherwise, we talk about what we accept without sufficient explanation as to why we accept it the way we do.

Absolutely. I can dig it.

Still, as written, it is all hypothetical. What needs to be done now is turn that into a theory. Nobody’s gonna give a crap about a theory without sustainable grounds for it. In natural science, sustainable grounds are the natural laws; it follows that a possible moral science should have moral laws.

A law is that of which the negation is impossible or self-contradictory. What, with respect to morality, is indisputable such that it could be a law, or the basis for a law?

The binary approach in question here, is the subjective/objective dichotomy, which is not required for *obtaining* individual morality. It is required to *demonstrate* the morality already obtained.

I understand subjective to mean in me, objective to be outside me. If that’s a misunderstanding, or inappropriate, somebody outta tell me.

They don’t. They can’t. That which does, is anthropological whatevers.

No judgement whatsoever, whether puppies, tea cups, hot stoves, love and marriage, Ford or Chevy, or moral predicates, is non-mental. The will, the freedom it may or may not have, the imperative whether hypothetical or categorical, assertorial or pragmatic, the volition whatever it may be and the relation to its value whatever its form.......are all necessarily obtained in a mental location.

Whatever action derived from moral judgement is certainly non-mental, but that action is not itself moral. It is merely a physical representation of the willful volition that spawns it.

For the obtaining of morality it could well be one place and another, as long as they are of the same kind, which of course they must be. But that’s not a subjective/objective dichotomy, the demonstration post-obtain, is.

I'm saying the whole binary approach is wrongheaded and prevents a full view of where and how morality obtains. — Baden

You wrote this while I was writing. This I agree with: where and how morality obtains has no need of the binary approach, other than serve as the reason the moral investigate should begin.

That doesn't mean the subject/object distinction is useless in every field but it's much more useful for scientific enquiry than philosophic / moral enquiry. — Baden

Why not turn philosophic/moral inquiry into a science?

Not trying to speak for Banno, but absolutely agree with him it fails. — Baden

(“It” being the subjective/objective dichotomy)

For the subject to function as moral agent, it is necessarily a socially constituted entity, in some sense both 'objective' and 'subjective'. — Baden

If that is true, how does the subjective/objective dichotomy fail, when subsequently described as consisting of both parts?

Even human reason itself, when reduced as far as possible, retains the thinking subject and the object of his thought. As long as humans are in the conversation, it is impossible for the subject/object dichotomy to fail. It is every bit as impossible for the subjective/objective dichotomy to fail as soon as the internal subject/object is transferred to the external world, and becomes an object of perception or understanding by any other similar subject.

The internal subject/object dichotomy is moral philosophy; the external subjective/objective dichotomy is practical anthropology. The only real, important consideration should be.....how are the two related, what is it that relates them. And because the fundamental ground is the human himself, the what and the how absolutely must be reducible to him in a singular form.

Kant is notoriously hard to grasp, so right off the top, I shouldn’t present myself as an expert by any means.

That being said, I haven’t found anything on the removal of perception from “observables” that leaves behind anything but space and time, which do not fit the explanation for noumena.

And the mind does indeed give appearance to that which is far beyond it. Such is called transcendental illusion and is PRECISELY why the critique was written in the first place, to direct reason to its proper domain. Kant states definitively the illusion cannot be removed because of the nature of the mind itself, only exposed and controlled.

Explore to your metaphysical content.

We was all just wondering if you’d been......rehabilitated.

,,,,from missing the point that practicing morality presupposes its inception. We aren’t going to do anything (the practice) that counts (the good) until we know (the presupposition) what counts.

What if the legislating authority and the obeying subject are the same? It would appear that obedience in such case could hardly be irrational.

Maybe one of the forms will be a true or false quiz.....

......even if “good” is undefinable, and even if “goodness” is not derivable from naturalistic conditions, can “good” still be an innately sensible quality?

Me ‘n’ the rest of the boys on the Group W bench acknowledge your superior logicianness

“.....In whatsoever mode, or by whatsoever means, our knowledge may relate to objects, it is at least quite clear that the only manner in which it immediately relates to them is by means of an intuition. To this as the indispensable groundwork, all thought points. But an intuition can take place only in so far as the object is given to us. This, again, is only possible, to man at least, on condition that the object affect the mind in a certain manner. The capacity for receiving representations (receptivity) through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is called sensibility. By means of sensibility, therefore, objects are given to us, and it alone furnishes us with intuitions; by the understanding they are thought, and from it arise conceptions. But a thought must directly, or indirectly, by means of certain signs, relate ultimately to intuitions; consequently, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected by the said object, is sensation. That sort of intuition which relates to an object by means of sensation is called an empirical intuition. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called phenomenon....”

Follow the bouncing ball, so to speak. What is herein called “object” is matter external to us. If it is external it is empirical, hence these objects without qualifiers are empirical objects. The definition of “phenomenon” is given, and it is itself an object but carries the qualifier “undetermined object of empirical intuition”, to distinguish it from an empirical object of the senses. An empirical object and a phenomenon are related, because the phenomena we call intuitions will eventually represent the empirical object of sense as soon as the “undetermined” part goes away, or, as soon as understanding cognizes what it is, but they are not synonymous, insofar as they are not interchangeable.

A lot of times Kant will put something in print, then paranthesize something right after, as if one is meant to equate to the other. This is not the case, for he means the one relates to the other directly, as in “....(the raindrops of course are not such, for they are, as phenomena, empirical objects)...”. Here he means rain drops are empirical objects in the world.....obviously....but they are phenomena to the faculty of representation.

And here: “...Although all these principles, and the representation of the object with which this science occupies itself, are generated in the mind entirely a priori, they would nevertheless have no significance if we were not always able to exhibit their significance in and by means of phenomena (empirical objects)....” This is working backwards, that is, instead of external sense of objects then inwards to understanding, working from a priori understanding through intuition to outward objects of sense. The science is mathematics, and he’s talking about figures, lines and points and such, the principles for which lie a priori in the mind but are worthless and unprovable until we draw the figures, or do the math, etc., at which time the phenomena become empirical objects of sense.

On space and time:
They are not transcendental properties, and it is shown they are not properties of any kind. Instead they are pure intuitions a priori, thus not derived from experience. The means for arriving at the conceptions of space and time is the transcendental exposition, which is the ground for the truth of synthetic a priori propositions with respect to natural phenomena, and therefore our knowledge of them. For these to be the ground of something like that, they must be unconditioned, and are shown to be those unconditioned intuitions upon which the possibility of experience itself rests.

But wait!!! There’s more, so much more.......always more.

I call your superior model and raise you a superior theory.

I know, because I’ve tasted my thumb. In the interest of science, I assure you. Which doesn’t tell me jack about the moon, I agree.

Certainly everyone has an equal claim, but that which satisfies the claim does not necessarily satisfy the being of equal. It would seem that the more narrow the conception of being equal, as life and welfare, the more exact the principle which validates it. Everyone may broadly deem himself worthy of e.g., a nice car merely because he feels he’s earned it by doing his job, but to deem himself worthy of life, he cannot revert to the judgement that he has done his job well. Does anyone honestly think Lady Jane wants Tom to slow the train for no reason better than she’s got an altogether respectable multi-generational heritage?

Life and well-being may be part of the function of being human, but what it is to be human is not contained in its function.
—————-

Elaboration = arete = virtue.

“....Empirical principles are wholly incapable of serving as a foundation for moral laws. For the universality with which these should hold for all rational beings without distinction, the unconditional practical necessity which is thereby imposed on them, is lost when their foundation is taken from the particular constitution of human nature, or the accidental circumstances in which it is placed. The principle of private happiness, however, is the most objectionable, not merely because it is false, and experience contradicts the supposition that prosperity is always proportioned to good conduct, nor yet merely because it contributes nothing to the establishment of morality-since it is quite a different thing to make a prosperous man and a good man, but because the springs it provides for morality are such as rather undermine it and destroy its sublimity, since they put the motives to virtue and to vice in the same class and only teach us to make a better calculation, the specific difference between virtue and vice being entirely extinguished....”

Yeah, but if you are aware of Aristotle well enough to come up with eudaemonia, I shall assume you are just as aware there is something antecedent to it, and necessary for it. Or at least qualifies its meaning.

And I would also ask if you think ethics, the general domain from which eudaemonia arises, re: “living well” or some such, is the same as morality? If so, I submit that the participants in the train hypothetical and all such manufactured moral dilemmas have precious little to do with the general conception of “living well”.

On logically minded Platonists understanding reason as being prescriptive...agreed.
On people in general ordinarily understanding reason as being prescriptive.....not so much.

I don’t think people ordinarily understand reason, the noun, at all, prescriptive or otherwise, even while using reason, the verb, continuously their entire conscious lives, We see this, as you say, in rational arguments appealing to emotions and ethical intuitions, which are more often specious or illusory at best, and therefore are more often detrimental to sound rationality itself, for emotions seldom conform to rules. Hence, the supervenience of the coolness of logic by the passion of rhetoric.

On the other hand.......there’s always an other hand......throwing accusations of logical fallacies, as a Platonist is apt to do, at a co-conversant doesn’t really help the one not recognizing the prescriptive nature of reason. Pretty hard to inflict a truth on a mind that has regressed to emotion as its fundamental ground.

By naturalistically inclined philosophers, do you mean empiricists? If so, then I concur with the naturalist’s distinction between rationality and preference being purely a matter of convention, or, perhaps, repetitive habit, re: Joe has always done this so he will likely do this again under similar circumstance. Or what's worse, Joe has always thought Bob a dope because of that time in 3rd grade, so Bob is going to be a dope for the rest of his miserable life.

The was no specific reference to Kant in the OP, but now that the reference has been made with respect to Kant and the transcendent/transcendental distinction.....

......he is talking about transcendent principles, those in opposition, not to transcendental principles, but rather immanent principles. The latter are confined to possible experience, the former do not recognize such boundaries, hence allow reason to overstep them and permit understanding to operate where it has no proper restraint. Technically speaking, it is elsewhere proved the categories of the pure understanding apply only to empirical conditions, but transcendent principles “....deludes us with the chimera of an extension of the sphere of the pure understanding...”


“.....transcendental or supersensible sphere, where experience affords us neither instruction nor guidance....” [A12/B25]
“.....mode of our knowledge of objects in so far as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori". [A295/B352]
“.......transcendental propositions can never be given through construction of concepts, but only in accordance with concepts that are a priori". [A720/B748]
.....the transcendental is a way of thinking, all having to do with a priori cognition in general, hence is used by Kant in many senses: to a type of deduction, to a type of exposition, to types of idealism and realism, to "content", to a way of employing the faculties of the mind, to the unity of apperception, to different types of proofs, to a type of reflection, to a special unknown "transcendental object = x", to a type of truth, to a type of knowledge, to a type of reflection, to a type of illusion, to subjects (selves), to certain ideas, to a sort of negation, to principles, to a kind of theology, to a type of hypothesis, and at the top of the heap.....a type of philosophy itself.
.....there is no such thing as “transcendental to human consciousness”, and empirical objects do not have transcendental properties.

Page 24 has calls for evidence, but not for whether this puppy crap is wrong or not. The call is for the morality grounding the judgement that this puppy crap is wrong.

...........like using a Band-Aid to remedy a heart attack: the answers to moral questions are never going to be found in the near-infinite complex of worldly examples.

OK. You’re just saying there is a condition where there are possible objects yet unthought. If that’s right, then I can say, sure, there’s millions of things I haven’t thought yet. And right now, this minute, every damn one of them is immersed in a hypothetical scenario. Still, again, if that’s right, I can’t call any of those things a rock, for to formally name an object presupposes its conception.

Finger/moon.....funny. I know for a fact my finger isn’t green cheese.

That works....interpret the meaning of it. You said you could conceive an unconceivable object. I’ve been wondering ever since how I would do that. It might be so simple I just looked right over the top of it....dunno.

I certainly don’t mind talking necessary dualisms, but this conceiving business has got to get fixed first, know what I mean, Vern?

Is there another way to say “I can conceive an unconceived object”?

Kantian idealism isn’t the idealism of Berkeley or Descartes, but it is a necessary dualism which retains a strictly mental, re: subjectivist idealism, parameter, annexed directly with an empirical realism. Which was the foundation of my comments on the experiment. I’m sure you’re aware of all that.

Guy across the street threw the snow from his driveway into the street because he didn’t want the road treatment chemicals on his lawn. He told the cops he thought the plow would take it away. Although true, the plow would take the snow away, and true, road chemicals don’t belong on lawns, still the unreasonableness of the behavior itself remains.

Understanding doesn’t necessarily alleviate illusory reason, just exposes it for what it is.

Unless you meant something else, maybe?

They're not the same sense of good — Andrew M

Quite right. I should think a determination made on the basis of good with an expected return is an empirical good.
(you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Or, it is good to pay the parking tickets in order to stay out of court. Lady Jane: it’s very good indeed to slow that f’ing train down so’s not to scatter pieces of me over 6 counties, dammit!!!!!)

A good which determines an action because such action is good in itself, is a principle good.
(I’ll scratch your back because it itches; I’ll pay my tickets because I was too cheap to use a meter; Lady Jane: do whatcha gotta do Tom. I know I’m toast. Somebody......please.......shoot Boris for me)

Which begs the question.....is there a principle “good”?

One of us has grossly misinterpreted the Critique.

Hey. Good to have your comment, thanks.

That both Lady Jane and Tom want to avoid bad circumstances is the very root of the entire moral issue. There is only one outcome, therefore one of them is going to be on the short end of the stick. Whomsoever is on the short end is going to say my claim of immoral action is true, *because* the other guy believes it to be false. Tom would believe as Lady Jane believes, that not slowing down would be immoral, iff he had no sufficient reason to believe something else was of greater moral import and thus made a counter-action necessary.

This is of course, an idealized moral dilemma, as most are. The last car in the train could have blown a wheel bearing, jumped the tracks, ended up sideways, and Tom, seeing that, slows down hoping the sideways car will stop him from descending the grade. Or a big tree falls, or a tremor looses a boulder.

Yeah, you’re right about ol’ Boris.....hanging out in the bushes, waiting for one calamity or the other. He doesn’t know he was nothing but an afterthought, an add-on of mine, an embellishment because my imagination overstepped itself. My Andy Rooney influence, I guess.
————————-

On the context of others and their perspectives with respect to “the good”.......under those conditions, how do we distinguish an act of morality from an act of mere civility? Even if they are both predicated on some sense of “good”, can it be the same sense of good for both?

Evidence of misunderstanding.......Yeah, I’ll go with that.

What can I say. When I talk about my morality, I speak from knowledge. I KNOW the condition of my moral nature. And even if I can’t say what a moral judgement will prescribe for my actions, I can still say with absolute certainty my volitions upon which the judgement is based, shall be consistent with a fundamental truth I hold no matter the circumstance. And even if I should act counter to my inner truths, in no other way is even possible to know I have judged immorally, then to know what it is I should have done instead.

One either is moral or he is not, which is to say one is morally worthy or he is not. There is no maybe, no partially, moral. Because “is” is a certainty it must have for its ground a law, which in its turn must have for its ground a principle, the negation of which is impossible If the lawfulness is to be maintained. One cannot “think” the law, nor can he “believe” the law, for law itself carries with it necessity and universality.

The rest is metaphysical gravy. Bring your own salt.

(Chuckles to self)
Ehhhhh......Mr. Potatohead. That’s just me being really confused. It’s your experiment, so the onus is on me to grasp the intent of it, what’s supposed to be demonstrated by it. After I give my understanding the best I can, if you don’t come back with “THAT’S what I’m talking about, Willis!!!!” Then I got nothing.

I hate it when I got nothing.

Cool. If god is no less real the Johnson’s stone, then we’ll at least get to see what he looks like, the reality of a stone being common to everybody.

Cooler. The end of organized differential religions. “Praise be to stone” has no more import than “Amen to stone” when all there is to work with is a reality no less so than stone.

“The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” tacitly presupposes a third party observer outside the parameters of the thought experiment constructed from moving trains and stationary platforms. So it is possible to view your experiment from both inside as participant and outside as mere observer. It seems to me, therefore, to say one perspective is irrelevant defeats the experiment.

But I will admit to stamping your experiment with my thought, so we have, like, one of those toys where the head goes on upside down and a foot faces backwards....Mr. Potatohead on acid.

Not that moral utterances are really beliefs about something else (something external to the individual in question) anyway, and they're not true or false. — Terrapin Station

Agreed.

but re the above, (logically problematic) contradictions — Terrapin Station

I’m the above. The directly above anyway. Would you re-write the part about logically problematic and relate it to something specific in the above you’re talking about?

Remember....I’m a reductionist. Your parameters are all humans have disappeared. I am human so I’ve disappeared. If I’ve disappeared, even if I exist someplace else, I really can’t say anything with certainty about where I disappeared from. It makes sense to think of things a certain way, that rocks still exist and meanings maintain, but consistency is not the same as certainty.

The problem with the argument, taken from a myriad of manufactured moral dilemmas:

When person A says "X is immoral" they are stating their belief. When person B says "X is moral" they are stating theirs. The two contradict one another.

So what?

That's never been a problem. It's a problem if one claims that "X is immoral" is both true(relative to person A's belief) and false(relative to person B's). — creativesoul

If I am the one who claims, and I claim it is immoral for the Engineer Tom (person B) to maintain the Empire Cascade’s speed (behavior X) approaching Lady Jane (person A) tied to the tracks up ahead, while Boris waits in the bushes for Dudley to rush to the rescue. Poor ol’ Lady Jane certainly believes it truly immoral that Tom refuses to slow down. But Tom, on the other hand, with a train full of passengers trailing behind and a 7% grade he absolutely must ascend or he will roll backwards and wind up in the river, truly believes it sucks to be Lady Jane for sure, but he isn’t about to scatter 14 cars and 67.5 people over 1/2 mile of river bed for her, so he truly believes my claim is false, that is, it is not immoral to maintain speed.

It is clear my claim for X being immoral is true relative to one ground of belief and false relative to another.
——————

Behaviors, all and sundry X’s, are not moral or immoral; the agent is, in determining what such X’s will be. Behavior is an effect of one agent whose morality is the cause, and an affect on another whose morality is impressed. The possible difference in value arises strictly from the subjectivity of each.

The only possible contradiction will arise when I derive congruent moral *and* immoral judgements simultaneously, which is quite impossible. But never from making a claim of morality *or* immorality with respect to observation of a determination I did not myself make.

When one says “X is immoral” he is not stating his belief. He is stating a conclusion from the fact he must know what is moral given necessarily from his own constitution, which makes explicit he must know the negation of it as well.

Leave off the adverb qualifying dependent. Thoughts and belief don’t “exist”; they are merely names given to participants in a strictly human mental procedure. Being subjective is dependent upon thought/belief.

End of the day.

I’m not going to do that. I trust you are smart enough, and I know I am, to conform to established meanings in terminology so oft-used.

That being said, I’m pretty sure our interpretations of “moral” is way too far apart to warrant a sophisticated dialogue. Not to mention, I might be even more of a subjective relativist than S (sorry, S), so there wouldn’t be much new going on anyway.