Who’s To Say?

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Philosophy Now
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Who’s To Say?

Post by Philosophy Now »

Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/156/Whos_To_Say
Leontiskos
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Re: Who’s To Say?

Post by Leontiskos »

The critique of cultural relativism is on point, but the Enlightenment anti-authority angle is rather oblivious to the last 300 years of history. "Sapere aude" was Kant's clarion call, but it became apparent very quickly that the masses shouldn't think for themselves because they think very poorly. Realizing this, the Enlightenment philosophers altered their tune, "Dare to listen to your own reason, but not yet. First let us teach you how to use your own reason so you don't drive us all over the cliff." This caveat is still a work in progress, to put it mildly. The recent political scene in the Anglo world also testifies to this rather fatal error of the Enlightenment approach.

As to authority, our culture is saturated with arguments from authority. They occur in science, education, medicine, and yes, morality. There really is no alternative in a culture which is so widely branched into disparate, specialized fields. Our moral authorities are primarily political figures and parties, but in some cases they are philosophers or religious figures, or sacred texts.
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Re: Who’s To Say?

Post by Age »

Philosophy Now wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:44 am Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/156/Whos_To_Say
The answer to this is very simple and easy.
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Re: Who’s To Say?

Post by Gary Childress »

It seems like a reasonably sensible essay from a rhetorical standpoint. It has its own problems as does almost everything that comes out of our mouths or keyboards, but such is life I suppose. I guess none of us can be an absolute authority on anything any more than we can live forever. If there is an absolute moral authority, maybe it's God (if there is a God).
Age
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Re: Who’s To Say?

Post by Age »

Gary Childress wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2023 1:24 pm It seems like a reasonably sensible essay from a rhetorical standpoint. It has its own problems as does almost everything that comes out of our mouths or keyboards, but such is life I suppose. I guess none of us can be an absolute authority on anything any more than we can live forever. If there is an absolute moral authority, maybe it's God (if there is a God).
See how SIMPLE and EASY it was to WORK OUT and FIND 'the answer'.

Now we just WAIT to see how long it takes for "others" to WORK OUT and UNCOVER who and what 'God' IS, EXACTLY.
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Re: Who’s To Say?

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deleted...wrong thread
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Re: Who’s To Say?

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Who’s To Say?
Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth
Socrates famously got himself into trouble by persistently questioning authority. He irritated his fellow citizens so much that he ended up on trial. Eventually he accepted his sentence of execution by drinking hemlock rather than evading the law by fleeing to an easy exile.
Something along the lines of, "ask not what your country can do for you...ask what you can do for your country"? Fascism?
While few philosophers are as courageous (or as rash?) as Socrates, we generally remain similarly suspicious of appeals to authority.
On the other hand, for the moral objectivists among us, suspicions revolve more around those who, after morality is carefully [sometimes even patiently] explained to them objectively, still refuse to accept it. They insist instead that their own moral convictions are the One True Path. And then those like me who suggest that, in the absence of God, there is no such authoritative path.
We worry that too many self-proclaimed authorities are purveyors of self-serving puffery and nonsense. We like to prod, probe and question received wisdom. We ask for reasons, evidence, and argument. Arguments should be weighed on their merits not their origins.
Still, among most philosophers, there is a general belief that if we think "situations" through long enough we can at least come reasonably close to the most objective value judgments there might be. After all, not all moral objectivists are of the "fulminating fanatic", "my way or the highway" sort. Just as all moral relativists are not of the "fractured and fragmented" sort.
Bad people can have good ideas, and good people can have bad ideas. In my experience, the authority-doubting question ‘Who’s to say?’ is especially popular among moral relativists.
Well, it depends on why they say it. If, for example, they point out that those deemed to be bad people are deemed to be good people by others...or that those who deem some ideas to be bad are confronted by others who deem them to be good...what then?

Who is to say?

And is there the moral equivalent of God here among philosophers and ethicists?
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Re: Who’s To Say?

Post by Eodnhoj7 »

Philosophy Now wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:44 am Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/156/Whos_To_Say
And does anyone have the authority to ask such questions?
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Re: Who’s To Say?

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Who’s To Say?
Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth
In some contexts, it makes sense to answer this question positively and suppose that there is someone with the authority to ‘say’, that is, to dictate the truth. For example, a Supreme Court might have the authority to say whether some law is constitutional.
On the other hand [as we all know] political prejudices underpin -- or undermine -- that authority time and again. Or Christians form the majority. And then the part where crony capitalism seeps in and, well, "money talks".
More prosaically, parents get to say that bedtime is at 8 o’clock. In these cases, a decision is made by an appropriate authority.
Prosaically indeed. More to the point [mine] parents have the authority to indoctrinate -- lovingly indoctrinate -- their children to believe in all manner of ofttimes conflicting value judgments in any particular community.
But philosophical questions are unlike this. We do not get to decide, for example, whether we have free will or whether God exists. In any case, there are no relevant authorities to whom we could delegate such decisions. I have wonderful philosophical colleagues, many of whom I suspect to be better-informed, smarter, and more virtuous than me. Sadly, I have no colleagues with the authority to decide whether for example the mind is identical to the brain.
Of course, over and again that's my point too. We can speculate philosophically about free will and God and morality, but it seems that it can never go beyond that. The particular "personal opinions" that we have "here and now". Religion and morality rooted existentially in dasein from my frame of mind and free will embedded in "the gap" between all that we think we know about it and all that would need to be known about it going back to a definitive understanding of existence itself. And in Rummy's Rule:

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

And that is clearly the case in regard to an ontological -- teleological? deontological? -- grasp of the human brain.
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Re: Who’s To Say?

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Who’s To Say?
Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth
Moral relativists often start from the factual observation that different cultures endorse different customs, different laws, and different moral rules. There are evident cultural differences with respect to issues such as slavery, capital punishment, same-sex relationships, and alcohol use.
And then those like Paul Stearns come along with their antidote: "the foundations of morality...do not change". As though when traveling to these diverse cultures and finding yourself compelled to accept behavioral prescriptions and proscriptions regarding these and many other moral conflicts, at least you can be comforted in the knowledge that they too accept that "rules of behavior" are necessary.
Someone familiar with these differences naturally starts to wonder who, if anyone, is right. And who’s to say? It would be unwise to assume a priori that we are right. Perhaps, then, nobody is right. Perhaps then we should be sceptical of the very idea of moral truth. Perhaps there is no sensible talk of right and wrong in matters of morality. Some prefer vanilla ice-cream. Others prefer raspberry ice-cream. The Spartans preferred selective infanticide. Us, not so much.
Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

Unless, of course there are moral objectivists here who can provide us with an indisputable -- demonstrable? -- argument that selective infanticide is in fact inherently and necessarily immoral.

While others here attempt to go even further and provide us with unequivocal evidence that the Spartans who did selectively kill babies are now burning for all eternity in Hell. Just as the women who have abortions or the doctors who perform them today are damned in turn?
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Re: Who’s To Say?

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Who’s To Say?
Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth
Relatively Speaking

Perhaps you believe that the Earth is round. Following an unfortunate tumble down a YouTube rabbit hole, I believe that the Earth is flat. As a simple matter of logic, it seems there are three possibilities: you have a false belief, I have a false belief, or we both have false beliefs (okay, okay, so strictly speaking, the Earth is an irregular ellipsoid). Similarly, in cases of a moral disagreement, it might seem that either I’m right, you’re right, or neither of us is right.
How can the difference not be crystal clear? How can the capacity of the scientific community to establish that the Earth is in fact an irregular ellipsoid not be rationally differentiated from the philosophical community's capacity to establish what, morally, an abortion is? For one thing the Earth is always what it is. Whereas the circumstances revolving around particular abortions can vary considerably. We all live on the Earth together. But in regard to abortions each of us embodies our own uniquely personal situation. Both men and women inhabit Earth together. But only women can get pregnant.
Relativists, however, appeal to cases that don’t follow this pattern. Let’s say that you believe there is a monster on the right, whereas I believe that the same monster is on the left. In this case, it is possible that we both have true beliefs. Perhaps we are facing each other, gazing into one another’s eyes, looking for courage and reassurance. Or perhaps the monster has moved while we’ve been speaking. In these cases it turns out that the sentence “The monster is on the left” is strictly speaking neither true nor false: it is incomplete until a frame of reference is specified – for example, “The monster is on my left, right now.”
Okay, let's shift from a specific monster to "monsters" as construed politically by liberals and conservatives. Again, is it possible for philosophers and ethicists and political scientists to pin down what and who the monsters are such that whichever direction we are facing or in however manner we see them we can know if in fact they are monsters? In regard to an issue like abortion. Are those who perform or who have abortions the moral "monsters" here? Or are those who force pregnant women to give birth the moral "monsters"? Is the rapist the moral "monster" or are the authorities who force a woman made pregnant by the rapist to give birth the moral "monsters" as well?

Or is my own perspective more realistic? That, politically, moral monsters are perceived by us as individuals depending on all of the individual variables in our life that predispose us out in a particular world understood in a particular manner to embrace one rather than another set of moral and political prejudices. Morality rooted in dasein more so than in science or philosophy.
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Re: Who’s To Say?

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Who’s To Say?
Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth
This is also the model relativists propose for moral truth: they say that ‘X is morally right’ is incomplete in the same sort of way as ‘X is on the left’ is. For instance, say that the Dothraki [in Game of Thrones] hold that slavery is morally permissible, and the Westerosi hold, to the apparent contrary, that slavery is morally impermissible. It looks like only one group (at most) can be right. But the relativist’s ingenious suggestion is that both Dothraki and Westerosi can be right relative to their respective cultures: slavery is morally permissible to the Dothraki and morally impermissible to the Westerosi.
Ingenious suggestion? For some of us, there is nothing ingenious about it at all. It simply reflects the assumptions that in a No God world any and all human behaviors can be rationalized. Why? Because once theological fonts are eliminated, there is no equivalent of Divine Commandments able to be provided from either the scientific or the philosophical communities.

In fact, is there a "science of slavery"?

Start here: https://www.google.com/search?source=hp ... gle+Search

As for philosophers:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/slavery/et ... n%2Dslaves.
On the one hand, this model of morality seems less judgy and more tolerant. On the other hand, it means that the moral status of slavery doesn’t directly depend on facts concerning, say, human wellbeing, equality, dignity and autonomy. Rather, the morality or otherwise of slavery depends on the attitudes of a relevant authority, that is, the prevailing cultural attitudes among the Dothraki and Westerosi.
There you go. Slavery as as manifestation of might makes right. Slavery as a manifestation of right makes might.

And then those today who argue that employing wage slaves is equally repugnant morally.
This is, to put it mildly, a surprising conclusion. The obvious worry is that prevailing cultural attitudes sometimes fail to withstand reflective scrutiny. Simply put, it seems like every culture (and individual) gets some things wrong morally.
Or, simply put, this frame of mind in and of itself in regard to slavery presumes that there actually is a way to get it morally right. And, sure, there may well be. Let's hear the deontological argument establishing this.

But even if one is found, tell it to the sociopaths. In a God world, if slavery is a Sin, there are consequences: Judgment Day for most. But in a No God world, there are consequences only if you get caught. And only in communities where particular behaviors result in actual punishments.
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Re: Who’s To Say?

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Who’s To Say?
Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth
There is an instructive comparison here with the theist’s idea that moral law requires a Law-Giver. According to ‘divine command theory’, an action is morally right if it’s in accordance with God’s commands.
Then this part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

Which particular God's commands? And it becomes all the more surreal because even in regard to the very same religious denomination there are multiply religious communities that presume different interpretations of God's will. Does God command that women not be shepherds to the flock or that they may be.

"Divisions between one group and another are defined by authority and doctrine; issues such as the nature of Jesus, the authority of apostolic succession, biblical hermeneutics, theology, ecclesiology, eschatology, and papal primacy may separate one denomination from another." wiki

Are Protestants closer to God's commandments than Catholics?

Is Jesus Christ closer to socialism than capitalism? Should the emphasis be placed on the poor inheriting the Earth or or on prosperity theology?
I’m on Socrates’ side, though, when he asks what reasons the gods have to command certain actions. This leads to the so-called ‘Euthyphro dilemma’, from Plato’s dialogue of that name: If there are independent reasons favouring an action as good, then we can appeal directly to those reasons, so why bring in God? On the contrary, without independent reasons for something being good, God’s commands would seem arbitrary.
Of course, that's what many of the secular Isms focus in on. The belief that in a No God world there are in fact ways for mere mortals to command each other...deontologically, ideologically, by way of biological imperatives. It's just that as with the theological schools, the secular schools abound as well in sprouting many differing and conflicting paths:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

And then my argument that many of us settle on one or another path not because we examined all of them and chose the most rational, but simply because the existential trajectory of our very lives nudged or compelled us to favor one over the others.
Of course, a theist such as St Augustine might appeal to God’s good character as itself the ultimate standard of goodness, and say that in this way goodness resides in or comes from God. So in this way the buck stops with our Creator. This makes sense within a religious framework. An appeal to cultural authority among secular moral relativists is, however, far more puzzling. Why think that the buck of moral justification stops with prevailing cultural norms? What could give cultures a God-like authority to determine moral truth?
Exactly: within a religious framework. Or within a particular cultural framework.

But which one? What with all of the different historical authorities that have already come and gone. And who knows how many more will pop up in the future. Also, if only the question of alien civilizations could be answered. Just how many more Gods might there be "out there" given the staggering vastness of the universe itself?
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Re: Who’s To Say?

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Who’s To Say?
Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth
The relativist’s question ‘Who’s to say?’ presupposes a cultural authority akin to divine command theory. Moreover, the logic of their argument implies a clear answer to our question – namely, prevailing cultural attitudes.
In that case, what's the difference for all practical purposes? God meet the prevailing cultural attitudes. A different authority. Except that with God it doesn't end on this side of the grave. If you embody a particular divine command theory "here and now" then "there and then" you attain immortality and salvation.

In other words, if things are going really well for you on this side, the part about there being no other side can be swept under the rug. You just don't think about it. Only, eventually, of course, you will have to. Then those prevailing cultural attitudes become entirely moot.

It's how millions live their lives, however. They'll deal with oblivion when the time comes. But, in the interim, there are lots and lots of Isms [and lifestyles] they can anchor their lives to in order to sustain a meaningful existence. Or, if not meaningful, then fulfilling and satisfying.
Despite this, many relativists are actively suspicious of the idea that there is any privileged position of authority with respect to moral truth.
Okay, but there are options here as well. You can become a hedonist, or an epicurean, or a libertine, or a nihilist, or a stoic, or a solipsist, or a sociopath. Or someone who detaches him or herself from social interactions completely. A recluse.

And then this part:
For example, they often echo the postmodernist Michel Foucault’s insight that claims to moral knowledge can be used as instruments to seize and maintain power. And they are clearly right about that. Indeed, there’s a long and dreadful history of the powerful imposing their way of life on the weak and vulnerable in the name of their moral truth. Conquerors often have moral gurus by their side, helping to smother dissent. They can be all too sincere; and full of passionate intensity to boot.
Here that can manifest itself more or less in a "might makes right" or a "right makes might" social, political and economic framework. The important factor being that aside from what is believed about morality in any given community, what really counts in the end is who has the actual political power to enforce one or another rendition of "the rules of behavior".

And here, one has the option to be more or less cynical.
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Re: Who’s To Say?

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Moral truth is pretty well established across cultures, mainly due to the true focus of all morality being our common biology and it's well-being and security. Religions just add another dimension for the purpose of control and judgment. The baseline is you do not kill your fellows, in that particular society at any rate, you don't steal from them, or mess with their Wifes, so a lot of it is societal control, or a social contract made sacred and unquestionable. So, you might say it's the individual that determines in a collective, what morality is going to be, in the case of religion, due to the wisdom and ignorance of our ancestors establishing morality written in holy stone. However, even religious mythology is concerned as it were not only the well-being of us as a common biology, but the future security of that well-being in a metaphorical life after death deemed literal. The creature for a day, has set up a process of survival and well-being to carry on through the generations.
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