What could make morality objective?

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

popeye1945 wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 4:09 am Here are two of your assertions:

1 Everything is biological reaction to the energies of ultimate reality. False: if 'the energies of ultimate reality' are what 'biological reaction' reacts to, then it's false to say that 'everything' is biological reaction to those energies. Your rhetoric leads you astray.
Peter, Of course, there is cause and effect/reaction. If you are inferring something more you will have to clarify.

2 If, 'according to modern physics', 'ultimate reality...is a place of no things' - (which is not what 'modern physics' says) - then that is a factual assertion with a truth-value independent from opinion. Your argument is self-defeating.
[/quote]

Peter, I do hope you realize that my statements about ultimate reality are a speculation and could be nothing more, but I insist it is a perfectly reasonable assumption. When you speak of truth value statements, you must try to keep in mind that any truth value statements are is at least once remove from experience and that the individual is not actually receiving the experience, but a communication of assertion about an experience to be evaluated by another conscious biology.

Find below some sources which make the idea more palatable.

https://phys.org/news/2019-11-quantum-p ... oesnt.html

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... t-reality/ --this one just says they don't know.

file:///C:/Users/jboag/AppData/Local/Packages/microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_8wekyb3d8bbwe/LocalState/Files/S0/1/Attachments/The-Illusion-of-Reality---The-Scientific-Proof-That-Everything-is-Energy-and-Reality-Isnt-Real[1772].pdf

https://understand-ultimate-reality.com ... eality.htm
[/quote]
1 I'm pointing out the absurdity of your claim. If there are such things as the 'energies of ultimate reality', then your claim that EVERYTHING is BIOLOGICAL REACTION to those energies is patently false. Apart from anything else, those energies must have been around BEFORE life turned up.

2 I don't know where you got the expression 'truth value statement' - and I apologise if I wrote it - because it's incoherent.
popeye1945
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Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2021 2:12 am

Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by popeye1945 »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 9:12 am
popeye1945 wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 4:09 am Here are two of your assertions:

1 Everything is biological reaction to the energies of ultimate reality. False: if 'the energies of ultimate reality' are what 'biological reaction' reacts to, then it's false to say that 'everything' is biological reaction to those energies. Your rhetoric leads you astray.
Peter, Of course, there is cause and effect/reaction. If you are inferring something more you will have to clarify.

2 If, 'according to modern physics', 'ultimate reality...is a place of no things' - (which is not what 'modern physics' says) - then that is a factual assertion with a truth-value independent from opinion. Your argument is self-defeating.
Peter, I do hope you realize that my statements about ultimate reality are a speculation and could be nothing more, but I insist it is a perfectly reasonable assumption. When you speak of truth value statements, you must try to keep in mind that any truth value statements are is at least once remove from experience and that the individual is not actually receiving the experience, but a communication of assertion about an experience to be evaluated by another conscious biology.

Find below some sources which make the idea more palatable.

https://phys.org/news/2019-11-quantum-p ... oesnt.html

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... t-reality/ --this one just says they don't know.

file:///C:/Users/jboag/AppData/Local/Packages/microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_8wekyb3d8bbwe/LocalState/Files/S0/1/Attachments/The-Illusion-of-Reality---The-Scientific-Proof-That-Everything-is-Energy-and-Reality-Isnt-Real[1772].pdf

https://understand-ultimate-reality.com ... eality.htm
[/quote]
1 I'm pointing out the absurdity of your claim. If there are such things as the 'energies of ultimate reality', then your claim that EVERYTHING is BIOLOGICAL REACTION to those energies is patently false. Apart from anything else, those energies must have been around BEFORE life turned up.

2 I don't know where you got the expression 'truth value statement' - and I apologize if I wrote it - because it's incoherent.
[/quote]

Peter,
Of course the energies were there, they are in all probability what created life. I never said that life creates those energies but those energies affecting biology is what creates objects. If Einstein's equation is correct then matter and energies are just two different forms of energy. As Spinoza pointed out the body is the idea of the mind and it is through the alterations of the body that the subject comes to know the world. When Schopenhauer states that subject and object stand or fall together he means this about our apparent reality, take one away and the other ceases to be, the world being the fuel of the mind. I am just linking it back one step, in saying that the energies of ultimate reality experienced through biology creates said objects, apparent reality is the reactions of conscious biology to these energies. Hints of such things are in the fact that there is no sound to a tree falling in the forest if there is no ear to hear it. There are no colors with out the eyes to read those frequencies vibrations.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

popeye 1945

All forms of idealism - including Spinozan rationalism - depend on the supposed existence of the mind as a substance separate and different from the body. But, to my knowledge, there's no evidence whatsoever that such a substance exists, nor for how it could interact with the body, or matter. Mind is likely as mythical as other supernatural or non-physical things - as is the subject/object distinction based on it.
promethean75
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by promethean75 »

kinda off on the Spinz but point taken. No need to mince words. Here's a synopsis of Spinz's concept of 'mind'. Different enough from the Cartesian concept to be noted. But Spinz wuz your 'idealist' at the end of the day; 'the mind does not perish but something of it remains', etc.

2.1.1 Minds as bundles
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

promethean75 wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 5:34 pm kinda off on the Spinz but point taken. No need to mince words. Here's a synopsis of Spinz's concept of 'mind'. Different enough from the Cartesian concept to be noted. But Spinz wuz your 'idealist' at the end of the day; 'the mind does not perish but something of it remains', etc.

2.1.1 Minds as bundles
Pending evidence for the existence of anything non-physical, belief that it exists - and any theories based on its existence - are irrational. The end.
popeye1945
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by popeye1945 »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 12:51 pm popeye 1945

All forms of idealism - including Spinozan rationalism - depend on the supposed existence of the mind as a substance separate and different from the body. But, to my knowledge, there's no evidence whatsoever that such a substance exists, nor for how it could interact with the body, or matter. Mind is likely as mythical as other supernatural or non-physical things - as is the subject/object distinction based on it.
I don't believe from my understanding of Spinoza that he believed anything other than the mind is a function of the brain/body consciousness. Energy certainly is not supernatural though not sometimes an object, it most definitely exists. Ok, we have no common ground, live long and prosper!!
Iwannaplato
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Iwannaplato »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:00 pm
promethean75 wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 5:34 pm kinda off on the Spinz but point taken. No need to mince words. Here's a synopsis of Spinz's concept of 'mind'. Different enough from the Cartesian concept to be noted. But Spinz wuz your 'idealist' at the end of the day; 'the mind does not perish but something of it remains', etc.

2.1.1 Minds as bundles
Pending evidence for the existence of anything non-physical, belief that it exists - and any theories based on its existence - are irrational. The end.
My problem with this argument or assertion is that the category 'physical' has been expanding through time. Anything that becomes considered real - in scientific consensus, is considered physical. If we look at the word 'physicalism' (or 'materialism' when it is used in a similar sense) it seems to be making an ontological claim about substance. But I don't think this actually holds anymore. Currently 'things' like massless particles, fields, particles in superposition, for example, are all considered physical. I don't think this matches up with what the word originally meant. (and phenomena like 'being in superposition' are no longer posited as restricted to infinitesmal particles...)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... xperiment/
For your position to be meaningful there would need to be a process whereby evidence would come in for something and it could possibly be considered non-physical. I believe science should not be considered a physicalist methodology. It's really a verificationist methodology, but I think due to the history of conflict with the church, say, and other sets of beliefs, it has seemed necessary to take an ontological stand, whereas, in fact scientists in practice just try to find real phenomena and understand them.

If some early 20th century naturalist was told that right now millions of neutrinos are coursing through his body with contacting it, he or she might well think that science, should he or she believe the person speaking from the future is asserting that non-physical things have been discovered. And neutrinos are more physical that some other 'things' in the traditional sense of that word 'physical'.

So, to rule out a phenomenon because it seems or is asserted to be non-physical, it seems to me, is jumping the gun. To ask for evidence, especially if the other person expects you to believe them, is only logical and rational. As it would be if someone asserted X, that is physical, exists, if one is not aware of any evidence backing this up.

If we look at the history of science, up into the early 70s it was professionally dangerous to assert that animals were conscious experiencers with intentions, and other cognitive subjective qualities. The problem of other minds coupled with old prejudices made this taboo. And it is very hard to demonstrate the internal life of anyone including animals. Yet, animal trainers, pet owners, animists, indigenous people, pagans and many others worked with the rather rational assumption that animals did have internal lives, etc. Then there was a shift in the model.

I am NOT arguing that consciousness is non-physical. What I am saying here is that it is not irrational per se to believe in things one is not, at a certain point in time (which is always where we are) able to demonstrate to others or the scientific community.

Other examples are rogue waves and long-distance elephant communication - which could have been seen as attributing elephants with non-physical powers. Only changes in technology led to these phenomena being verified.

One can have rational reasons for believing something that cannot be demonstrated with scientific rigor to others.

To demand that others believe does get an onus.

The trick with morality is that I don't think we experience it in the way for example native Africans experienced the long-distance communication between elephants. Even ghosts are not experienced the way morals are experienced, if they are. Black boxing for a moment the existence of ghosts, if one sees and hears things, one is undergoing something empirical. One may or may not be misinterpreting a phenomenon, but one is experiencing something. I don't think the same thing can be said for morals.

I think a phenomenological investigation of what one experiences when one experiences morality would not be pleasing for moral realists.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Sep 10, 2022 6:54 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:00 pm
promethean75 wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 5:34 pm kinda off on the Spinz but point taken. No need to mince words. Here's a synopsis of Spinz's concept of 'mind'. Different enough from the Cartesian concept to be noted. But Spinz wuz your 'idealist' at the end of the day; 'the mind does not perish but something of it remains', etc.

2.1.1 Minds as bundles
Pending evidence for the existence of anything non-physical, belief that it exists - and any theories based on its existence - are irrational. The end.
My problem with this argument or assertion is that the category 'physical' has been expanding through time. Anything that becomes considered real - in scientific consensus, is considered physical. If we look at the word 'physicalism' (or 'materialism' when it is used in a similar sense) it seems to be making an ontological claim about substance. But I don't think this actually holds anymore. Currently 'things' like massless particles, fields, particles in superposition, for example, are all considered physical. I don't think this matches up with what the word originally meant. (and phenomena like 'being in superposition' are no longer posited as restricted to infinitesmal particles...)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... xperiment/
For your position to be meaningful there would need to be a process whereby evidence would come in for something and it could possibly be considered non-physical. I believe science should not be considered a physicalist methodology. It's really a verificationist methodology, but I think due to the history of conflict with the church, say, and other sets of beliefs, it has seemed necessary to take an ontological stand, whereas, in fact scientists in practice just try to find real phenomena and understand them.

If some early 20th century naturalist was told that right now millions of neutrinos are coursing through his body with contacting it, he or she might well think that science, should he or she believe the person speaking from the future is asserting that non-physical things have been discovered. And neutrinos are more physical that some other 'things' in the traditional sense of that word 'physical'.

So, to rule out a phenomenon because it seems or is asserted to be non-physical, it seems to me, is jumping the gun. To ask for evidence, especially if the other person expects you to believe them, is only logical and rational. As it would be if someone asserted X, that is physical, exists, if one is not aware of any evidence backing this up.

If we look at the history of science, up into the early 70s it was professionally dangerous to assert that animals were conscious experiencers with intentions, and other cognitive subjective qualities. The problem of other minds coupled with old prejudices made this taboo. And it is very hard to demonstrate the internal life of anyone including animals. Yet, animal trainers, pet owners, animists, indigenous people, pagans and many others worked with the rather rational assumption that animals did have internal lives, etc. Then there was a shift in the model.

I am NOT arguing that consciousness is non-physical. What I am saying here is that it is not irrational per se to believe in things one is not, at a certain point in time (which is always where we are) able to demonstrate to others or the scientific community.

Other examples are rogue waves and long-distance elephant communication - which could have been seen as attributing elephants with non-physical powers. Only changes in technology led to these phenomena being verified.

One can have rational reasons for believing something that cannot be demonstrated with scientific rigor to others.

To demand that others believe does get an onus.

The trick with morality is that I don't think we experience it in the way for example native Africans experienced the long-distance communication between elephants. Even ghosts are not experienced the way morals are experienced, if they are. Black boxing for a moment the existence of ghosts, if one sees and hears things, one is undergoing something empirical. One may or may not be misinterpreting a phenomenon, but one is experiencing something. I don't think the same thing can be said for morals.

I think a phenomenological investigation of what one experiences when one experiences morality would not be pleasing for moral realists.
Thanks. I'd like to pick out some of the things you say. And this was my assertion: 'Pending evidence for the existence of anything non-physical, belief that it exists - and any theories based on its existence - are irrational.'

1 'My problem with this argument or assertion is that the category 'physical' has been expanding through time.'

Agreed. And that's meant the gaps/spaces for the supposed non-physical have been closing.

2 'For your position to be meaningful there would need to be a process whereby evidence would come in for something and it could possibly be considered non-physical. I believe science should not be considered a physicalist methodology. It's really a verificationist methodology, but I think due to the history of conflict with the church, say, and other sets of beliefs, it has seemed necessary to take an ontological stand, whereas, in fact scientists in practice just try to find real phenomena and understand them.'

My condition is 'pending evidence'. And natural scientists do as you say - they try to find 'real phenomena' - which is physical evidence. So I think 'methodological naturalism' is the correct name for the scientific method - assuming at least a near-synonymy between naturalism, materialism and physicalism - which I know can be disputed. I don't understand what you think 'evidence...that could possibly be considered non-physical' could be. That we believe, or have believed, a phenomenon to be non-physical isn't evidence that it is non-physical - obviously.

3 'So, to rule out a phenomenon because it seems or is asserted to be non-physical, it seems to me, is jumping the gun. To ask for evidence, especially if the other person expects you to believe them, is only logical and rational. As it would be if someone asserted X, that is physical, exists, if one is not aware of any evidence backing this up.'

Again, there's no ruling out here. My point isn't that the non-physical can't exist. It's precisely the asking for evidence that makes the enquiry logical and rational.

4 'If we look at the history of science, up into the early 70s it was professionally dangerous to assert that animals were conscious experiencers with intentions, and other cognitive subjective qualities. The problem of other minds coupled with old prejudices made this taboo. And it is very hard to demonstrate the internal life of anyone including animals. Yet, animal trainers, pet owners, animists, indigenous people, pagans and many others worked with the rather rational assumption that animals did have internal lives, etc. Then there was a shift in the model.'

My point is that there's no evidence - so far, and to my knowledge - that the 'internal life' of anything is non-physical - that it has a non-physical cause or explanation.

5 'I am NOT arguing that consciousness is non-physical. What I am saying here is that it is not irrational per se to believe in things one is not, at a certain point in time (which is always where we are) able to demonstrate to others or the scientific community.'

Absolutely. Loads of scientific advance comes from pushing the boat out, hypothesising and exploring possibilities.

6 'One can have rational reasons for believing something that cannot be demonstrated with scientific rigor to others.'

Maybe here's the rub - and the condition 'cannot' seems critical to me. Can you give an example?
popeye1945
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by popeye1945 »

There is only energy, where does that leave us?
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

popeye1945 wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 7:32 am There is only energy, where does that leave us?
It leaves us with a physical thing, one form of which we call matter.
popeye1945
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by popeye1945 »

Peter Holmes wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 7:35 am
popeye1945 wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 7:32 am There is only energy, where does that leave us?
It leaves us with a physical thing, one form of which we call matter.
Peter,

So, even if undetected energy forms are objects/matter then why do we not perceive these energy forms.? The senses not only enable they also limit, and my contention has been that the energy form object is created through biological processes, termed commonly as perception. Indeed, I don't think anything comes into manifestation except through processes. How do you think energy becomes matter/energy/object by non-biological processes? Don't forget we do all our knowing subjectively and cannot know the world any other way. We cannot stand outside subjectivity to know a world independent of us.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

popeye1945 wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 8:08 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 7:35 am
popeye1945 wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 7:32 am There is only energy, where does that leave us?
It leaves us with a physical thing, one form of which we call matter.
Peter,

So, even if undetected energy forms are objects/matter then why do we not perceive these energy forms.? The senses not only enable they also limit, and my contention has been that the energy form object is created through biological processes, termed commonly as perception. Indeed, I don't think anything comes into manifestation except through processes. How do you think energy becomes matter/energy/object by non-biological processes? Don't forget we do all our knowing subjectively and cannot know the world any other way. We cannot stand outside subjectivity to know a world independent of us.
I think your argument is fundamentally flawed. The fact that we can perceive, know and describe reality only in a human way doesn't mean that we create or invent that reality - that what we call reality can't exist without us. And we can and do perceive energy through instruments; we observe its effects and produce predictive theories. It's not 'undetected'.
popeye1945
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by popeye1945 »

Peter Holmes wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 8:24 am
popeye1945 wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 8:08 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 7:35 am
It leaves us with a physical thing, one form of which we call matter.
Peter,

So, even if undetected energy forms are objects/matter then why do we not perceive these energy forms.? The senses not only enable they also limit, and my contention has been that the energy form object is created through biological processes, termed commonly as perception. Indeed, I don't think anything comes into manifestation except through processes. How do you think energy becomes matter/energy/object by non-biological processes? Don't forget we do all our knowing subjectively and cannot know the world any other way. We cannot stand outside subjectivity to know a world independent of us.
I think your argument is fundamentally flawed. The fact that we can perceive, know and describe reality only in a human way doesn't mean that we create or invent that reality - that what we call reality can't exist without us. And we can and do perceive energy through instruments; we observe its effects and produce predictive theories. It's not 'undetected'.
Peter, You would agree however that these energies not apparent to our biological perception are not then objects to us, they are part of ultimate reality a place of no things, but not part of our apparent reality --- yes?
Peter Holmes
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Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:53 pm

Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

popeye1945 wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 10:14 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 8:24 am
popeye1945 wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2022 8:08 am

Peter,

So, even if undetected energy forms are objects/matter then why do we not perceive these energy forms.? The senses not only enable they also limit, and my contention has been that the energy form object is created through biological processes, termed commonly as perception. Indeed, I don't think anything comes into manifestation except through processes. How do you think energy becomes matter/energy/object by non-biological processes? Don't forget we do all our knowing subjectively and cannot know the world any other way. We cannot stand outside subjectivity to know a world independent of us.
I think your argument is fundamentally flawed. The fact that we can perceive, know and describe reality only in a human way doesn't mean that we create or invent that reality - that what we call reality can't exist without us. And we can and do perceive energy through instruments; we observe its effects and produce predictive theories. It's not 'undetected'.
Peter, You would agree however that these energies not apparent to our biological perception are not then objects to us, they are part of ultimate reality a place of no things, but not part of our apparent reality --- yes?
No. I've no idea what your expressions 'biological perception' and 'ultimate reality' mean. And your pet expression - 'ultimate reality is a place of no things' - is hippy-woo gibberish - and certainly not what modern physics 'says'. And anyway, we can and do perceive what our instruments tell us about what we call reality.

I'm afraid I don't think we resonate at the same frequency. Just the way it is.
popeye1945
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by popeye1945 »

Peter,

Einstein's equation pretty much states that all is energy and matter seems to be present only in our apparent reality much energy out there seem to be unmanifested as matter -- it makes one wonder! You from what I can understand believe all is just as it looks. Quote: Imagination is more important than knowledge. Albert That is a close a door on wonder! In all your practicality, what do you make of quantum entanglement, does that open your door to wonder? Biological perception you don't know what it means-- good grief, why are we in dialogue at all.
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