So there is no way to do something that we do everyday?
I think you mean something like, there is no right answer to “what is the right decision?”
Which is why I’ve been asking, so why are we bothering to do ethics?
How about observation, argument and inference? You need observation before there is some content to argue and infer about.
Seems to me non-objective morality is all argument and inference with no conclusion - nothing observable as a remainder after the argument concludes.
Another way of putting it is, non-objective morality is more about a system of judgment making, not married to any particular judgment (including goodness and badness, and therefore, not really ethics specific, but more subjective judgment generally).
Also seems odd to me, when starting a discussion, to not believe or not trust that there is a conclusion possible.
We don’t need to argue to do the best we can where there are no conclusions. We can just do it, and never argue it.
I’ll say it again, without objective truth and moral facts, why does anyone care what anyone else says, does or thinks is good or bad in a moral sense? It’s all just making plans to put on some project and see what works. It’s never “you did a good thing”; it’s just “you did something that looks like what you set out to do.”
- So we have the world, where things happen, to be judged.
- We have us (in the world), where qualitative judging happens (in the world).
- And we have another transcendental source of values (the alleged victim of murder).
So are you saying that a rule that says “rape is always evil” or “truth is better than illusion” can’t be found in 1 or 2? (If you even think the 1,2,3 breakout fits.)
You have mentioned that you’re Catholic haven’t you? I wouldn’t have thought it a complicated question.
The bit at the end of my sentence…
Did you miss that?
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If we are all on one side of a raging river and starving, and see across the river there is lots of food, just because we can’t cross the river to get it doesn’t mean the food doesn’t exist.
Who gets to possess this purported objective truth? That’s our problem.
But if we conclude it doesn’t exist, or our possession of it is impossible, it makes no sense to me to fabricate a “truth function” so we can pretend things like “he is a good/bad person”. That would be like pretending to eat will satisfy the hunger.
We need to swim. And trust.
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The Buddha recommends building a raft.
And he came back to tell us. @Tom_Storm there’s your instantiation sourced from the transcendent.
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I don’t see this. Who is the Buddha? Firstly, is the character in the stories an actual person or a series of myths? Then there’s the question of what this person may or may not have said. No writings by the person survive. The texts we have reflect a process of transmission, compilation and editing over generations. So I can’t say this even corresponds with reality, let alone anything transcendent.
I am going to assume where the issue is.
People usually, when I call it a difference, think that I mean a comparison, while I am pointing at one thing. By difference, I mean “what has to be there for there to be something rather than nothing undivided.”
I can try to explain it with “breaking the bone.”
Bone, unabused, I see as a set of differences holding — inside from outside, this density from that. Relation (holding together) of those is what bone is.
When bone breaks, the holding is gone. There is a gap, a new difference in its structure against its being. Rigidity is not there.
Why this matters morally? There is a being that can feel its own differences and has something real to lose in that holding. Part of what it requires to be is an unbroken bone.
Harm is a difference that removes what a being needs. Morality is in that definition — objective, the breaking of structure, not in reaction or opinion.
So what is morality? Morality is the set of constraints already in the structure both objective and subjective depend on. Structure as: the way being, difference and relation hold for anything to exist at all. One statement might cover it: do not remove what another being requires to continue.
Yes, I see. I take that harm is defined by what being requires to persist. A being has conditions, differences that must hold for it to continue and harm is whatever removes those conditions. The “don’t” follows from that.
Well, most people don’t care what anyoen else does or says as long as it doesn’t interfere with their lives. And that’s the point. Gods are irrelevant, as are good and evil. What matters is this interference - whether we suffer, since virtually no one wants to suffer. So we develop codes of conduct to minimise suffering and allow people better approaches for living together. Better meaning less suffering. It’s not rocket science. If you’re looking for a reason to behave in particular ways beyond this, we probably can’t identify any good ones.
And it’s not as if theists have access to objective morality either. Even within one religion, they can’t agree on even the basics because, in the end, all they have are interpretations and subjective notions of what they think their preferred account of God wants from them. This can take you from homophobic fundamentalism to LGBTI rainbow-flag congregations, and everything in between.
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I’d say the question is “What is the message?”, not so much how is it, or who presented it. The “actual person” and editing process doesn’t really matter. I’m pretty sure Buddha, if he was a person, would say that too.
When we bump into the truth, we either bump into the truth, or we don’t. Both happen.
But you are right. I’ve pointed to nothing, nothing easily measured by philosophical analysis, or conveyed by me.
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FWIW, I like to take Buddha as a great philosopher, who is maybe like a blend of Mach and Schopenhauer. Throw in some Epictetus. But I guess he was more motivated to install a system, so in that sense an applied philosopher, a doctor for confused and burning souls.
The book Buddhist Logic ( a classic ) follows the philosophical side of Buddhism. Great stuff.
If anyone is interested, I did a version of The Fire Sermon.
The point being, Christianity, Buddhism, Vedanta and in some ways Platonism are all philosophies of deliverance or liberation. But in a secular culture there’s no conceptual space for that.
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Towards an end.
I can’t completely agree with you on this point. In a secular culture, there are “too many” options. I am serious about this “too many.” I think it’s feasible that a tradition loses some of its rhetorical power when it is set against so many other traditions.
Still, individuals have on average more liberty and leisure to pursue their own deliverance. No one cares if I go Buddhist. Which is part of the problem mentioned above. It doesn’t signify. Others can’t hold me to it. They don’t see me as I see myself. They don’t have time for that. It’s not an initiation ritual that the entire tribe recognizes. It’s just “like that’s your thing dude.”
Which I have learned to live with and even affirm, but I can feel the wind that blows against every tradition in a pluralistic society.
Our world is lonelier. We are atomized and lost in a maze of possibilities. The dynamic economy tends to put distance between parents and children. People have less children. Negative birth rate. City life, affluence, sophistication. It is this that predicts low birth rate ? Is this not strange ? The world is too fast, too vast, too vividly out of control.
We don’t have a circle, a reliable forgivable and knowable Wheel, but rather a Fire on the way to who knows where. Of course people want “objective morality.” A “Law” to damp the flames.
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Perhaps, but that’s no virtue. The same could be said for advertising or propaganda.
From your link
Often-cited parable that occurs in the Discourse on the Parable of the Water Snake (Alagaddūpama Sutta) in the Majjhima Nikāya of the Pāli Canon. The parable relates to a traveller who fords a stream by paddling across using a coracle or raft, and the Buddha asks whether it would be appropriate or not for the man to carry the raft with him once he had crossed. The parable is often thought to mean that the body of Buddhist teachings and moral precepts have only provisional utility as a means to gaining enlightenment (bodhi) and can thereafter be discarded. A more careful reading of the passage shows, however, that its meaning is not that the teachings themselves are to abandoned en bloc but simply that certain teachings may on occasion be misunderstood or abused.
Interesting that Wittgenstein had his own disposable ladder. Both the raft and ladder metaphors are great.
It’s not the words themselves that are important but what we might be able do with them.
The last passage in the quote takes us back to the OP. Who decides that a teaching is “misunderstood” ? We each cross the river alone. We have no choice but to live this decision ourselves.
This is an interesting take. I always saw virtue ethics as concerning what makes a particular person moral. The question of whether a particular act is obligatory seems to always remain.
Yes, having courage might make you do something which you ought to do, such as X. But that doesn’t entail that we ought to do X because it requires courage.
There is something fundamentally wanting with virtue ethics which a rules-based approach appears to address. But you suggest that the latter is an overreach. How does one then progress the conversation forward from, “Why do you think this particular killing was wrong?”
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First of all, I would like to admit that what I value most in people is the ability to examine their own underlying assumptions. Well, the time has come for me to do the same.
In your message, you introduce a new concept into our discussion: “Value.”
Where I come from, philosophy students study a subject called axiology, which deals precisely with this topic—the study of values. I do not know whether the study of “Axiology” is good or bad, contrary to tradition, necessary, or useful..
But in my view, the concept of “value” represents a very important distinction—a very mature one, I would say. Look at it this way: when we speak of morality, we are—roughly speaking—asking what is good and what is bad. By introducing the concept of “value,” we ask instead: “What is important to us?” or “What do we desire?” One of the central questions of axiology is precisely whether value depends on our desires or whether certain things can be valuable regardless of whether we desire them. Thus, the concept itself compels us to view the good and the bad through the prism of importance—either to ourselves (the subjectivist view) or in an absolute sense (the objectivist view)—and from there, we draw conclusions about what is good or bad.
But here’s the catch: when it comes to values, people have also split into camps—some speak of objective values that apply to everyone, while others argue that values are subjective…
Nevertheless, I believe the concept of “value” does more good than harm, as it gently reminds us of the desires and aspirations of an individual or a group, while also acknowledging that something can be considered important regardless of those desires. It prompts us to look beyond the concepts of good and evil to find specific grounds for significance—grounds that cannot be reduced to the mere fact of existence.
Last time I wrote to you, I wanted to present a thought experiment. Let’s imagine a scenario where a virus has wiped out all women on Earth, leaving only ten behind, while the male population remains intact. Although this is a hypothetical scenario, notice that something objective has changed in this imagined world. There is a concrete premise: we are left with a mere ten women. What would happen? Anything could occur: wars might break out, mass migration or mass suicide could ensue, or the remaining women might even be deified. Let’s not speculate on the specifics, as that isn’t the point here (though it would make an excellent premise for a movie or TV series).
The key takeaway from this thought experiment is that an objective reality has shifted. A genuine threat to humanity as a species has emerged. Values have changed; the definitions of good and bad have shifted. For instance, in today’s world—given modern standards of equality—killing a woman is equivalent to killing a man (all else being equal). Yet, in the world I described, killing one of those ten remaining women carries entirely different weight and value. It is a completely different objective reality.
My aim with this example was to express a measure of agreement with your thesis (though I am not fully conceding the point). Objective factors do indeed influence our views. However, there is a complication: in one region—say, Europe—raising pigs for food is objectively beneficial and advantageous. In another part of the world—such as the Middle East—raising pigs would be suicidal due to the heat, as it would create a breeding ground for disease. Some religions forbid the consumption of pork, while others permit it. It is interesting to note how these religious practices align with certain objective realities. Right now, technology makes it possible to produce high-quality, healthy pork all over the world. But what about religions? They are not so quick to change.
In conclusion, I would say that something objective—rather than merely subjective—does indeed influence our notions of good and evil, or our values. The catch, however, is that objective conditions can vary from place to place (referring to the differing living conditions across the planet’s regions). At the same time, I continue to maintain the validity of intersubjectivity. It works remarkably well and moves beyond any single individual’s opinion; yet, on the other hand, it does not prevent one from imposing one’s own views on everyone else, thereby creating the impression of “objectivity.”
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Sorry, I didn’t realize there was a story with a link there. But I’m still not sure how this pertains to point about the transcendent.