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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henry quirk
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by henry quirk »

The below response is insulting.

Don't worry about it, VA.

Thanks for havin' my back... 👍
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henry quirk
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by henry quirk »

But it's not something one can just on a whim decide to do

Is that what I described? A turn-on-a-dime moment? A whimsical shift?
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Terrapin Station »

henry quirk wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 1:56 pm But it's not something one can just on a whim decide to do

Is that what I described? A turn-on-a-dime moment? A whimsical shift?
No, and that wasn't even a response to you. It was simply a comment about "one could even adopts Hitler's ideology." I'm pointing out that the way this stuff works isn't that one can adopt something on a whim, and I'm pointing that out just in case anyone might be thinking that.
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henry quirk
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by henry quirk »

Terrapin Station wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 1:59 pm
henry quirk wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 1:56 pm But it's not something one can just on a whim decide to do

Is that what I described? A turn-on-a-dime moment? A whimsical shift?
No, and that wasn't even a response to you. It was simply a comment about "one could even adopts Hitler's ideology." I'm pointing out that the way this stuff works isn't that one can adopt something on a whim, and I'm pointing that out just in case anyone might be thinking that.
My apologies then...my skin is a bit too thin today...gonna have to re-thicken it.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Terrapin Station wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:25 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 8:50 am What Henry implied in the above was when he was a moral subjectivist, anything goes, i.e. one could even adopts Hitler's ideology and that would be sound subjectively since there is no Generic and Universal moral standard to insist that is evil.
The problem with that is that it's not actually what humans are like, though.

We have moral dispositions due to our brain structure and function, and you can no more simply "adopt" an alternate moral disposition than you can simply adopt an alternate brain.

This doesn't imply that your moral dispositions can't change, that you can't reach different conclusions, etc., but it's also the case, of course (a fortiori because this is how you have moral dispositions in the first place), that your brain can change.

But it's not something one can just on a whim decide to do, and it's not something that you can simply control in any arbitrary way you'd like to control it.
All impulses are due to our brain and function.
The question is whether they and which are aligned with the inherent moral function.
A moral subjectivist will have bad alignment with the natural inherent moral function.

The point is, in principle and in practice one's personality can change.

There are many real cases where people changed at an instant or in a short time. Vested individuals and groups with good to evil ideologies are always striving to influence other people to their cause.
Surely you are familiar with brainwashing on a individual basis and on a massive scale.
Moral subjectivists who are acceptable with diversity will be very vulnerable to such brainwashing and influences.

Whereas a moral realist with fixed moral standard as a GUIDE will less likely to change his moral views especially when the moral standards are aligned with the naturally inherent moral drive.
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 6:44 am
Terrapin Station wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:25 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 8:50 am What Henry implied in the above was when he was a moral subjectivist, anything goes, i.e. one could even adopts Hitler's ideology and that would be sound subjectively since there is no Generic and Universal moral standard to insist that is evil.
The problem with that is that it's not actually what humans are like, though.

We have moral dispositions due to our brain structure and function, and you can no more simply "adopt" an alternate moral disposition than you can simply adopt an alternate brain.

This doesn't imply that your moral dispositions can't change, that you can't reach different conclusions, etc., but it's also the case, of course (a fortiori because this is how you have moral dispositions in the first place), that your brain can change.

But it's not something one can just on a whim decide to do, and it's not something that you can simply control in any arbitrary way you'd like to control it.
All impulses are due to our brain and function.
The question is whether they and which are aligned with the inherent moral function.
A moral subjectivist will have bad alignment with the natural inherent moral function.

The point is, in principle and in practice one's personality can change.

There are many real cases where people changed at an instant or in a short time. Vested individuals and groups with good to evil ideologies are always striving to influence other people to their cause.
Surely you are familiar with brainwashing on a individual basis and on a massive scale.
Moral subjectivists who are acceptable with diversity will be very vulnerable to such brainwashing and influences.

Whereas a moral realist with fixed moral standard as a GUIDE will less likely to change his moral views especially when the moral standards are aligned with the naturally inherent moral drive.
I'm struck by the similarity between your invented morality FSK, 'inherent moral function' or 'naturally inherent moral drive' and Kant's invented 'noumena' - or rather by your shared need to invent things in order to prop up your houses of cards.

Expose the props for the fictions they really are, and down comes the edifice.
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:43 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 10:29 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 10:15 am
It's possible to take the trashing and mockery of your argument personally. Or you can duke it out and defend your argument - which is what matters.

I've taken little but insult and abuse from you for a very long time. And if I've returned like for like sometimes, I apologise. But pointing out that a claim is false or an argument unsound isn't insulting or abusing the proponent.

Your claim that moral subjectivism is the denial of moral values and judgements is fatuous and insulting nonsense, betraying a staggering lack of understanding, and patently worthy of mockery.

But this vicarious tenderness to criticism and refutation of someone elses's argument is unconvincing. And Henry can and may well speak for himself anyway.
WHO ARE YOU to impose that 'ought-not_ness' on me?

Note I do not start a tit-for-tat until the opponent did so.

I do express arguments as shallow, narrow, dogmatic, where I give reasons based what is posted and I do not view that as an insult but rather with hope the other will do more research.
If I state 'stupid' that is qualified as 'stupid [literally lack intelligence] even then I don't do that except as a retaliation in a tit-for-tat.
If I did want to impose an 'oughtness' on anyone else, they remain, or should be, free to ignore me. But I don't - though I'll try harder to avoid giving the impression that I do. In return, instead of beginning every response by saying I'm stupid, shallow, ignorant, and so on, perhaps you could get straight to the point I'm making.

For example, do you think that everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe exists only if and because humans exist?

Try going straight to your answer and explanation. And try to be concise. Or do neither of those things. It's up to you, of course.
The way you phrased the question is not my point.

My point is,
everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe CANNOT exist independently of the human conditions.

The above is arrived by starting with what is really real empirically and philosophically at present plus being experienced directly.
Btw, have your read Russell's Problem of Philosophy?
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prob ... Philosophy

I'll borrow from Russell to explain my point.
  • https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prob ... /Chapter_1

    In daily life, we assume as certain many things which, on a closer scrutiny, are found to be so full of apparent contradictions that only a great amount of thought enables us to know what it is that we really may believe.

    In the search for certainty, it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and in some sense, no doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them [experience].
    But any statement as to what it is that our immediate experiences make us know is very likely to be wrong.

    Here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy -- the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality', between what things seem to be and what they are.
Russel used the example of a Table and demonstrate the uncertain reality of the properties [color, sound, shape, texture] of the table via sense-data
  • It is plain that if we are to know anything about the table, it must be by means of the sense-data -brown colour, oblong shape, smoothness, etc. -- which we associate with the table; but, for the reasons which have been given, we cannot say that the table is the sense-data, or even that the sense-data are directly properties of the table.
    Thus a problem arises as to the relation of the sense-data to the real table, supposing there is such a thing.

    It will be remembered that we asked two questions; namely,
    (1) Is there a real table at all?
    (2) If so, what sort of object can it be?


    Thus what we directly see and feel is merely 'appearance', which we believe to be a sign of some 'reality' behind.

    But if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all?
    And if so, have we any means of finding out what it [the object] is like?

    Such questions are bewildering, and it is difficult to know that even the strangest hypotheses may not be true.
    Thus our familiar table, which has roused but the slightest thoughts in us hitherto, has become a problem full of surprising possibilities.
    The one thing we know about it is that it is not what it seems.

    Among these surprising possibilities, doubt suggests that perhaps there is no table at all.
Throughout his book, Russell never proved there an an independent real table or rather there is a real independent external world, he concluded,
  • Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy;
    Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions
    since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true,
    but rather for the sake of the questions themselves ......
    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AR ... 2.djvu/253
The independent external world cannot be proven by argument,
  • Of course it is not by argument that we originally come by our belief in an independent external world.
    We find this belief ready in ourselves as soon as we begin to reflect: it is what may be called an instinctive belief.
    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AR ... 12.djvu/41
It is on this basis that there is no proven independent external world and that it cannot be proven, that I state,
everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe CANNOT exist independently of the human conditions.

The onus is on you if you insist,
to prove the real universe can exists independent of the human conditions.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:26 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:43 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 10:29 am
WHO ARE YOU to impose that 'ought-not_ness' on me?

Note I do not start a tit-for-tat until the opponent did so.

I do express arguments as shallow, narrow, dogmatic, where I give reasons based what is posted and I do not view that as an insult but rather with hope the other will do more research.
If I state 'stupid' that is qualified as 'stupid [literally lack intelligence] even then I don't do that except as a retaliation in a tit-for-tat.
If I did want to impose an 'oughtness' on anyone else, they remain, or should be, free to ignore me. But I don't - though I'll try harder to avoid giving the impression that I do. In return, instead of beginning every response by saying I'm stupid, shallow, ignorant, and so on, perhaps you could get straight to the point I'm making.

For example, do you think that everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe exists only if and because humans exist?

Try going straight to your answer and explanation. And try to be concise. Or do neither of those things. It's up to you, of course.
The way you phrased the question is not my point.

My point is,
everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe CANNOT exist independently of the human conditions.

The above is arrived by starting with what is really real empirically and philosophically at present plus being experienced directly.
Btw, have your read Russell's Problem of Philosophy?
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prob ... Philosophy

I'll borrow from Russell to explain my point.
  • https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prob ... /Chapter_1

    In daily life, we assume as certain many things which, on a closer scrutiny, are found to be so full of apparent contradictions that only a great amount of thought enables us to know what it is that we really may believe.

    In the search for certainty, it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and in some sense, no doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them [experience].
    But any statement as to what it is that our immediate experiences make us know is very likely to be wrong.

    Here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy -- the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality', between what things seem to be and what they are.
Russel used the example of a Table and demonstrate the uncertain reality of the properties [color, sound, shape, texture] of the table via sense-data
  • It is plain that if we are to know anything about the table, it must be by means of the sense-data -brown colour, oblong shape, smoothness, etc. -- which we associate with the table; but, for the reasons which have been given, we cannot say that the table is the sense-data, or even that the sense-data are directly properties of the table.
    Thus a problem arises as to the relation of the sense-data to the real table, supposing there is such a thing.

    It will be remembered that we asked two questions; namely,
    (1) Is there a real table at all?
    (2) If so, what sort of object can it be?


    Thus what we directly see and feel is merely 'appearance', which we believe to be a sign of some 'reality' behind.

    But if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all?
    And if so, have we any means of finding out what it [the object] is like?

    Such questions are bewildering, and it is difficult to know that even the strangest hypotheses may not be true.
    Thus our familiar table, which has roused but the slightest thoughts in us hitherto, has become a problem full of surprising possibilities.
    The one thing we know about it is that it is not what it seems.

    Among these surprising possibilities, doubt suggests that perhaps there is no table at all.
Throughout his book, Russell never proved there an an independent real table or rather there is a real independent external world, he concluded,
  • Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy;
    Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions
    since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true,
    but rather for the sake of the questions themselves ......
    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AR ... 2.djvu/253
The independent external world cannot be proven by argument,
  • Of course it is not by argument that we originally come by our belief in an independent external world.
    We find this belief ready in ourselves as soon as we begin to reflect: it is what may be called an instinctive belief.
    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AR ... 12.djvu/41
It is on this basis that there is no proven independent external world and that it cannot be proven, that I state,
everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe CANNOT exist independently of the human conditions.

The onus is on you if you insist,
to prove the real universe can exists independent of the human conditions.
1 With his stupid table, Russell recycled the stupidity of empiricist skepticism. And it seems not to have crossed his mind that there may be no answers to philosophical questions simply because the questions are stupid, fake questions.

2 Since you think that everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe exists only if and because humans exist, I care nothing for any of your ideas, and particularly for your claim that there are moral facts. Yours is an anthropocentric idealism that is laughable - and your insistence on empirical verification a joke.

3 If you are a model of their opposites, I acknowledge my arrogance, ignorance and blindness with pride.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:54 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:26 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:43 pm

If I did want to impose an 'oughtness' on anyone else, they remain, or should be, free to ignore me. But I don't - though I'll try harder to avoid giving the impression that I do. In return, instead of beginning every response by saying I'm stupid, shallow, ignorant, and so on, perhaps you could get straight to the point I'm making.

For example, do you think that everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe exists only if and because humans exist?

Try going straight to your answer and explanation. And try to be concise. Or do neither of those things. It's up to you, of course.
The way you phrased the question is not my point.

My point is,
everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe CANNOT exist independently of the human conditions.

The above is arrived by starting with what is really real empirically and philosophically at present plus being experienced directly.
Btw, have your read Russell's Problem of Philosophy?
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prob ... Philosophy

I'll borrow from Russell to explain my point.
  • https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prob ... /Chapter_1

    In daily life, we assume as certain many things which, on a closer scrutiny, are found to be so full of apparent contradictions that only a great amount of thought enables us to know what it is that we really may believe.

    In the search for certainty, it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and in some sense, no doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them [experience].
    But any statement as to what it is that our immediate experiences make us know is very likely to be wrong.

    Here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy -- the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality', between what things seem to be and what they are.
Russel used the example of a Table and demonstrate the uncertain reality of the properties [color, sound, shape, texture] of the table via sense-data
  • It is plain that if we are to know anything about the table, it must be by means of the sense-data -brown colour, oblong shape, smoothness, etc. -- which we associate with the table; but, for the reasons which have been given, we cannot say that the table is the sense-data, or even that the sense-data are directly properties of the table.
    Thus a problem arises as to the relation of the sense-data to the real table, supposing there is such a thing.

    It will be remembered that we asked two questions; namely,
    (1) Is there a real table at all?
    (2) If so, what sort of object can it be?


    Thus what we directly see and feel is merely 'appearance', which we believe to be a sign of some 'reality' behind.

    But if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all?
    And if so, have we any means of finding out what it [the object] is like?

    Such questions are bewildering, and it is difficult to know that even the strangest hypotheses may not be true.
    Thus our familiar table, which has roused but the slightest thoughts in us hitherto, has become a problem full of surprising possibilities.
    The one thing we know about it is that it is not what it seems.

    Among these surprising possibilities, doubt suggests that perhaps there is no table at all.
Throughout his book, Russell never proved there an an independent real table or rather there is a real independent external world, he concluded,
  • Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy;
    Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions
    since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true,
    but rather for the sake of the questions themselves ......
    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AR ... 2.djvu/253
The independent external world cannot be proven by argument,
  • Of course it is not by argument that we originally come by our belief in an independent external world.
    We find this belief ready in ourselves as soon as we begin to reflect: it is what may be called an instinctive belief.
    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AR ... 12.djvu/41
It is on this basis that there is no proven independent external world and that it cannot be proven, that I state,
everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe CANNOT exist independently of the human conditions.

The onus is on you if you insist,
to prove the real universe can exists independent of the human conditions.
1 With his stupid table, Russell recycled the stupidity of empiricist skepticism. And it seems not to have crossed his mind that there may be no answers to philosophical questions simply because the questions are stupid, fake questions.

2 Since you think that everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe exists only if and because humans exist, I care nothing for any of your ideas, and particularly for your claim that there are moral facts. Yours is an anthropocentric idealism that is laughable - and your insistence on empirical verification a joke.

3 If you are a model of their opposites, I acknowledge my arrogance, ignorance and blindness with pride.
Noises as usual but nothing of substance, but babblings from ignorance!
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:54 am 1 With his stupid table, Russell recycled the stupidity of empiricist skepticism. And it seems not to have crossed his mind that there may be no answers to philosophical questions simply because the questions are stupid, fake questions.
What? Like the question in the OP?

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:54 am 2 Since you think that everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe exists only if and because humans exist, I care nothing for any of your ideas, and particularly for your claim that there are moral facts. Yours is an anthropocentric idealism that is laughable - and your insistence on empirical verification a joke.

3 If you are a model of their opposites, I acknowledge my arrogance, ignorance and blindness with pride.
Usually, ignorance doesn't amount to immorality but your anti-ahthropocentrism is objectively immoral.

Whatever morality is, it includes the well-being of humans, or it's no morality at all. Your idea of "objectivity" eliminates humans from the picture.

The words of Democritus ring true over and over:

Intellect: By convention there is sweetness, by convention bitterness, by convention color, in reality only atoms and the void.
Senses: Foolish intellect! Do you seek to overthrow us, while it is from us that you take your evidence?
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Terrapin Station
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 6:44 am
There are many real cases where people changed at an instant or in a short time. Vested individuals and groups with good to evil ideologies are always striving to influence other people to their cause.
Surely you are familiar with brainwashing on a individual basis and on a massive scale.
This is the only part of your comment that has much to do with my comment. However, I don't buy the idea of "brainwashing."
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:29 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:54 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:26 am
The way you phrased the question is not my point.

My point is,
everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe CANNOT exist independently of the human conditions.

The above is arrived by starting with what is really real empirically and philosophically at present plus being experienced directly.
Btw, have your read Russell's Problem of Philosophy?
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prob ... Philosophy

I'll borrow from Russell to explain my point.
  • https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prob ... /Chapter_1

    In daily life, we assume as certain many things which, on a closer scrutiny, are found to be so full of apparent contradictions that only a great amount of thought enables us to know what it is that we really may believe.

    In the search for certainty, it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and in some sense, no doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them [experience].
    But any statement as to what it is that our immediate experiences make us know is very likely to be wrong.

    Here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy -- the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality', between what things seem to be and what they are.
Russel used the example of a Table and demonstrate the uncertain reality of the properties [color, sound, shape, texture] of the table via sense-data
  • It is plain that if we are to know anything about the table, it must be by means of the sense-data -brown colour, oblong shape, smoothness, etc. -- which we associate with the table; but, for the reasons which have been given, we cannot say that the table is the sense-data, or even that the sense-data are directly properties of the table.
    Thus a problem arises as to the relation of the sense-data to the real table, supposing there is such a thing.

    It will be remembered that we asked two questions; namely,
    (1) Is there a real table at all?
    (2) If so, what sort of object can it be?


    Thus what we directly see and feel is merely 'appearance', which we believe to be a sign of some 'reality' behind.

    But if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all?
    And if so, have we any means of finding out what it [the object] is like?

    Such questions are bewildering, and it is difficult to know that even the strangest hypotheses may not be true.
    Thus our familiar table, which has roused but the slightest thoughts in us hitherto, has become a problem full of surprising possibilities.
    The one thing we know about it is that it is not what it seems.

    Among these surprising possibilities, doubt suggests that perhaps there is no table at all.
Throughout his book, Russell never proved there an an independent real table or rather there is a real independent external world, he concluded,
  • Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy;
    Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions
    since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true,
    but rather for the sake of the questions themselves ......
    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AR ... 2.djvu/253
The independent external world cannot be proven by argument,
  • Of course it is not by argument that we originally come by our belief in an independent external world.
    We find this belief ready in ourselves as soon as we begin to reflect: it is what may be called an instinctive belief.
    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AR ... 12.djvu/41
It is on this basis that there is no proven independent external world and that it cannot be proven, that I state,
everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe CANNOT exist independently of the human conditions.

The onus is on you if you insist,
to prove the real universe can exists independent of the human conditions.
1 With his stupid table, Russell recycled the stupidity of empiricist skepticism. And it seems not to have crossed his mind that there may be no answers to philosophical questions simply because the questions are stupid, fake questions.

2 Since you think that everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe exists only if and because humans exist, I care nothing for any of your ideas, and particularly for your claim that there are moral facts. Yours is an anthropocentric idealism that is laughable - and your insistence on empirical verification a joke.

3 If you are a model of their opposites, I acknowledge my arrogance, ignorance and blindness with pride.
Noises as usual but nothing of substance, but babblings from ignorance!
Whatever.
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12242
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 10:41 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:29 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:54 am 1 With his stupid table, Russell recycled the stupidity of empiricist skepticism. And it seems not to have crossed his mind that there may be no answers to philosophical questions simply because the questions are stupid, fake questions.

2 Since you think that everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe exists only if and because humans exist, I care nothing for any of your ideas, and particularly for your claim that there are moral facts. Yours is an anthropocentric idealism that is laughable - and your insistence on empirical verification a joke.

3 If you are a model of their opposites, I acknowledge my arrogance, ignorance and blindness with pride.
Noises as usual but nothing of substance, but babblings from ignorance!
Whatever.
"With his stupid table" :shock: do you even know who was Bertrand Russell and also his philosophical works.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
    In the early 20th century, Russell led the British "revolt against idealism".[73]

    He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein.

    He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians.[70] With A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics, the quintessential work of classical logic. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy".[74]

    His work has had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science (see type theory and type system) and philosophy, especially the philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics.
With that sort of reputation, if you have any intellectual and philosophical integrity, you should at least provide valid counter arguments to Russell's view above rather than brand him as 'stupid'.
Condemning Russell as stupid in a way backfire on you to expose you are the one who is 'stupid' [lack intelligence].

I don't totally agree with Russell but I like some of his views on general philosophy.
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12242
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:04 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 6:44 am
Terrapin Station wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:25 pm
The problem with that is that it's not actually what humans are like, though.

We have moral dispositions due to our brain structure and function, and you can no more simply "adopt" an alternate moral disposition than you can simply adopt an alternate brain.

This doesn't imply that your moral dispositions can't change, that you can't reach different conclusions, etc., but it's also the case, of course (a fortiori because this is how you have moral dispositions in the first place), that your brain can change.

But it's not something one can just on a whim decide to do, and it's not something that you can simply control in any arbitrary way you'd like to control it.
All impulses are due to our brain and function.
The question is whether they and which are aligned with the inherent moral function.
A moral subjectivist will have bad alignment with the natural inherent moral function.

The point is, in principle and in practice one's personality can change.

There are many real cases where people changed at an instant or in a short time. Vested individuals and groups with good to evil ideologies are always striving to influence other people to their cause.
Surely you are familiar with brainwashing on a individual basis and on a massive scale.
Moral subjectivists who are acceptable with diversity will be very vulnerable to such brainwashing and influences.

Whereas a moral realist with fixed moral standard as a GUIDE will less likely to change his moral views especially when the moral standards are aligned with the naturally inherent moral drive.
I'm struck by the similarity between your invented morality FSK, 'inherent moral function' or 'naturally inherent moral drive' and Kant's invented 'noumena' - or rather by your shared need to invent things in order to prop up your houses of cards.

Expose the props for the fictions they really are, and down comes the edifice.
As I had always stated, your thinking is too shallow, narrow, dogmatic and lack philosophical intelligence.

Note innovation is a highly rated quality in philosophy but of course whatever proposed must be verifiable and justifiable empirically and philosophically within a credible FSK.

Kant did not invent the 'noumena'.
It is very common to introduce what is complementary to various terms of reality, e.g. employer-employee, contractor-contractee, and so on.

What is wrong with assigning a complementary thing to phenomena?
  • A phenomenon lit. 'thing appearing to view'; plural phenomena) - wki
A phenomenon is an appearance of a thing appearing to view.
Thus what underlies an appearance is "that-which-appeared" - the referent.
What is wrong with naming "that-which-appear" as the 'noumenon' or noumena [plural].
Kant did not invent anything new in that sense.

Point is Kant in >500 pages of arguments subsequently concluded the 'noumena' aka thing-in-itself [its ultimate is God] when reified as real is an illusion. If you are a non-theist you should find out how Kant proved God is an illusion.
It is very stupid [lack intelligence] of you merely to insist Kant is wrong without countering his argument.
Last edited by Veritas Aequitas on Sat Apr 10, 2021 6:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
Atla
Posts: 6607
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Atla »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:26 am It is on this basis that there is no proven independent external world and that it cannot be proven, that I state,
everything that was, is and will be the case in the universe CANNOT exist independently of the human conditions.
Non sequitur. We can't prove there is an external world, but we also can't disprove it.

Do you honestly don't realize that your claim is a non sequitur?
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