Is morality objective or subjective?

[Will Bouwman]

Yeah, you are impervious to constructive criticism.

It is a product of one of your character flaws that you think constructive criticism should be hurtful.

I'm thinking it's exactly the other way.

Re-working one's core beliefs is always a PITA and causes much distress/cognitive dissonance.

Which is why you (and other creatures of comfort) don't do it.

Ah, so you want to help me. Very well, Skepdick. What are these core beliefs I have that even your caring constructive criticism will cause me too much distress to change?

[Lorikeet]

The act precedes the words men give them.

And the thought precedes the act.
The word supersedes the thought and precedes the act.

I am going to kick you!

Thinking is an act.

All is an act.
Even abstractions are representations in the mid - neurological matrices.
A thought is a neural pulse moving through these neural matrices, triggering images, sensations, feelings, etc.

Even an atom is not a thing ....but a pattern moving in unison.

[Skepdick]

Ah, so you want to help me. Very well, Skepdick. What are these core beliefs I have that even your caring constructive criticism will cause me too much distress to change?

Who knows? Are there any you can change without any distress?

[Skepdick]

The act precedes the words men give them.

And the thought precedes the act.
The word supersedes the thought and precedes the act.

I am going to kick you!

Thinking is an act.

All is an act.
Even abstractions are representations in the mid - neurological matrices.
A thought is a neural pulse moving through these neural matrices, triggering images, sensations, feelings, etc.

Even an atom is not a thing ....but a pattern moving in unison.

Why do you keep saying this instead of acting it out?

[Lorikeet]

To communicate the mind must reduce action to a representation, to first transmit it to the brain where it is processed and then to transmit it, via semiotics, to another brain.

In fact, I am "acting it out".

Every part of it is an action.
Communicaiton is an action. Thinking is an action.
Communicating is an action.
Living is an action.
Existence is action.

[Skepdick]

To communicate the mind must reduce action to a representation, to first transmit it to the brain where it is processed and then to transmit it, via semiotics, to another brain.

In fact, I am "acting it out".

Every part of it is an action.
Communicaiton is an action. Thinking is an action.
Communicating is an action.
Living is an action.
Existence is action.

Why do you keep saying this instead of acting it out?

[Will Bouwman]

Ah, so you want to help me. Very well, Skepdick. What are these core beliefs I have that even your caring constructive criticism will cause me too much distress to change?

Who knows?

So you make a diagnosis without any symptoms.

Are there any you can change without any distress?

You could try my unshakeable belief that far from being a computer scientist, policeman, firearm trainer and clearly not a doctor, you are a gibbering, rage fuelled train wreck.

[Skepdick]

So you make a diagnosis without any symptoms.

It's precisely the lack of symptoms that leads to the diagnosis.

It seems to be one of your character flaws to think constructive criticism shouldn't cause even a modicum of distress to someone's feelings.

You could try my unshakeable belief that far from being a computer scientist, policeman, firearm trainer and clearly not a doctor, you are a gibbering, rage fuelled train wreck.

I doubt I can get you to reason yourself out of a belief you didn't reason yourself into.

But hey, if you are using the word "rage" you must feel some kind of thing about me....

I guess that's a modicum of distress.

[Will Bouwman]

[Skepdick]

That's odd.

[Immanuel Can]

From your reading, when do you imagine souls are created?

We are not told. But I see no justification in presupposing any pre-existent state of the soul, in Pantheist fashion or any other way.

[Harbal]

From your reading, when do you imagine souls are created?

We are not told. But I see no justification in presupposing any pre-existent state of the soul.

I see no justification for supposing any existent state of the soul.

A soul has never been seen, measured or detected in any way whatsoever, yet so many people are convinced there is such a thing, but with absolutely no justification.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm sorry -- I don't understand this claim. It might be right, in some sense, but it's too vague. Can you clear it up for me?

Morality, like free-will, is about the act.....

Kant didn't think so. He thought it was about the process of making the decision. Aristotle didn't think so: he thought it was about the habitual character of the actor. And that's the two major opponents of what you're seeming to plug for, which is utilitarianism of some kind.

Moral behaviour: loving behaviour, compassion, tolerance etc.

"Behaviour" is the act. But "loving" is an emotion or a motivation. "Compassion" is a feeling, but not an intellectual one. And "tolerance" is not a universal good: one can be guilty of "tolerating" evil. So again, this seems far from clear sailing as a case.

Then they aren't moral at all...merely pragmatic. And since they "evolve," why couldn't a moral imperative against abortion, or for war, or making prostitution and slavery "moral," also "evolve" out of them in the future? How do we know where this haphazard process of "moral evolution" is leading us, before we get there?

Even god is pragmatic.

How could that be so?

Moral evolution, like evolution itself, is guided by natural processes.

Then it isn't "moral." It's only a "natural process." Nobody calls earthquakes, floods and fires "moral." Likewise, "evolution" is supposed to be just a natural process...and you can be quite sure it has no opinions at all about how morality should go.

So...your theory is that a prohibition which almosts all ancient societies have, and is as near to universal as can be, is actually driven by the primitive native's awareness that it will produce birth defects? How would all these ancient societies even know about genetics?

What?
Do animals have to know about genetics to act in the manner that distinguishes them?

They're not moral. If they were, they'd have a moral code of some kind. They don't. All they have is instinct. We may foolishly project our own feelings onto them sometimes, but when a lion kills a gazelle, it's not because lions are immoral. It's just what lions do, and what they have to do.

Then why is war one of the most persistent facts of history? That theory would suggest it would be the first thing to "evolve out" of our moral beliefs. But clearly, not only did that not happen, but it isn't even happening today...at least, not in Ukraine, Israel, Iran...

Inter-group violence is destabilizing.
Violence towards other groups is not.
War is natural.

Well, then, does nothing make war immoral? If "nature" or "natural processes," as you said before, lead us to make war, then how can there be anything wrong with war at all -- whether on the international scale or within small groups?

Not only human go to war.
Other species do, as well.

Well, you may think that army ants or wasps do, but they really don't. We can't call what they do "war," because war is the deliberate organizing of means to occasion the destruction of a rival population, and only humans really do that. What army ants do is just instinct, again.

This is also part of natural selection.

You're speaking like a Social Darwinist, now: applying survival-of-the-fittest to human beings. There's nothing moral about that, obviously, either way.

If it's founded on no objective reality, then it IS arbitrary, by definition. But you also said that they are "not fabricated by men, nor socially engineered." So where do they come from, and why are we obligated to follow them?

Objective reality.
The flux of existence.

We have no moral duty to perpetuation "the flux of existence," and "objective reality" is quite able to take care of itself. So we can't derive any moral duty from either.

The world has no cares, no interests, not ends.

Then "morality" is not an element in it, beyond a delusion that one kind of creature, humans, happens to experience.

Aren't you saying that "evolution" is an "objective reality," and that morality is founded on some sort of evolutionary imperative? In that case, you have to be arguing that morality is founded on the objective reality of evolution, don't you?

Isn't that what I've done?

Oh, I see: you meant "on" and you wrote "no." That was confusing.

Evolutionary psychology goes a long way into explaining why humans and all life, acts as it does.

But it can't provide any justification for morality. Even if we take it for a fact that human cognition is "evolving" in some particular direction, we have no way of judging whether that direction is "moral" or not. It might be merely pragmatic. It might lead us to do something evil that was still "useful" to us in some way. It might actually be leading us to extinction, too. We'd never know where it was leading us. To know that, we'd need a meta-moral system, something above the particular "morality" we happened to be believing in, something objective that would enable us to assess whether our "moral" beliefs were genuinely moral at all, or amoral, or immoral, or even morally suicidal. And what would that meta-moral basis for that judgment be?

[Immanuel Can]

From your reading, when do you imagine souls are created?

We are not told. But I see no justification in presupposing any pre-existent state of the soul.

I see no justification for supposing any existent state of the soul.

Sure you do. You have one yourself. It's the locus of your intelligence and personality. And you have a fair bit of both.

[Harbal]

We are not told. But I see no justification in presupposing any pre-existent state of the soul.

I see no justification for supposing any existent state of the soul.

Sure you do. You have one yourself. It's the locus of your intelligence and personality. And you have a fair bit of both.

Thank you, but seriously, why is there any reason to think there is any more than just brain plus consciousness? Not that I actually know what consciousness really is.