thefranzkafkafront wrote:

Non Sequitor wrote: thefranzkafkafront wrote: Non Sequitor wrote: thefranzkafkafront wrote: If a maxim is a law then the maxim has intrinsically normative structure. isnt that contradictory and just a semantic leap? its sort of hard to answer this without going into a massive dicussion on how Kantian ethics works. But i'll try. (if this is confusing nonsense, sorry im not the best Kant scholar in the world). Its not contradictory, because to can't moral laws are laws necessitated by the co-existence of morally autonmous agents. But there created by the morally autonomous agents (thus making them normative, and having a structure at least some what like the catergorical imperative). Its a law/normative structure because its a relation that rational morally autonomous agents should have to each other if they organised themselves rationally. You'd have to explain what you mean by semantic leap. Though, because yeah this is a progress in meaningful concepts. Im not how in this case that is some how a negative thing. More than anything else i'd read Korsgaard's Tanner lectures. This is mostly her original take on Kant and obviously she is a lot better at this than I am. hmmm, no my issue is not with kant but your use of normative, kant is deontological. if its normative it cannot be a priori universal, and vice versa. you got your is/ought being a is=ought, i'm not sure that's possible in any sense, nor defensible. either your word choice is poor, or your argument is fatally flawed. Uh. Theres no contradiction between something being normative and deontological. Deontological ethics are normative ethics. Deontology is a position where by acts are either good or bad in and of themselves. Where as normative ethics are ethics which aim for the question 'how ought I/you/we to act' in the simplest terms. So im sorry I don't see what your contention is there. Perhaps you could rephrase it.

Im sorry but you are mistaken. Deontological ethics are the attempt o discover what ethical laws ALREADY EXIST. ie, what the right action is. These laws would be by nature objective.

Normative ethics is the attempt to discover or argue what ethics OUGHT to be. They are after the fact, and fully subjective.

I think you are confused about these two methods to achieve knowledge of ethical action. The result can overlap and one can merge them in an attempt to rationalize, but these three schools of thought are well known. Deonotogical is not the attempt to discover or argue what we ought to do, it is the attempt to know what the right ethical action is.

An is is an is, it aint an ought.

The third school being virtue ethics. those are the three main schools of ethics. I am afraid your foundational knowledge on the issue is not very sound and thus your argument falls apart.

some ppl use normative as a meta-category, in which case if that is what you are doing I don't understand why you state that at all. Its would like saying ethics are normative because they are ethics. thats silly.

and thats just one problem, frankly the entire proposition of looking for the objective based on human reasoning and understanding is a failed proposition from the get-go

this argument you've paraphrased is bsed on some really stupid conditionals, that of 'identitiy' and human rationality.

first, reasoning and/or reasoning based on the lack of conflict with this identity is just bullpap. all human decision making models are intrisically subjected to pretending we are homo economicus, that means the assumption is the REASONING IS PERFECT. worse, that the INFORMATION is perfect.

and that's all floating on this notion of identity which you QED with 'based in humanity'?

no, that's humanistic philosophy and while it may be a very good 'ought' system, it divines no knowledge of the objective ethical 'law' is other than human agreement with these laws.

the only place one can find objective knowledge is in the analytical school, which I prefer to call science.

what I don't get is how it is you or anyone else is looking for the 'is' in the realm of the 'ought.'

been a while since i've read the thread, so the comment may not be relevant. but when people say objective ethical values, what they really want isn't a particular epistemological status for an abstract category of things called ethical values, they want to have some strength to the declarations of their ethics. in other words, they want to continue to think in ethically vigorous ways. the problem is needlessly complicated by this digression into epistemological metaethics. taken another way, i see no potential for progress in this line of thought. at best, having an answer to the question of "objective" moral values in the metaethical sense will only answer the question "can/are certain/is it possible that ethics be objective" in an abstract manner. it wont have any impact on the worth of particular ethical questions. when such inquiry is inert to everything except narrowly and contingently framed metaethical questions, i think those questions should be abandoned in favor of approaches more germane to answering actual, important ethical concerns.

to be more fair, when people ask the metaethical question, they do have in mind some problem about the proper way to think about ethics. but bringing out a stiff word like objective surely isn't the best approach.

a fair survey of morality in practice reveals that people hold dogmatic beliefs and also conflicting ones. often times conflicting dogmas are held at the same time. in other words, an impulse to declare moral objectivity can coexist with truly objective contrary fact of conflicting beliefs in the same person. what is the declaration of objectivity then if not a declaration of moral affirmation, except conveyed in distinctively rationalistic rhetoric?

using this sort of rhetoric isn't problematic for the laysperson, at least to me. i can understand what some guy means to say when he says objective morality. but doing philosophy on the term is just archaic. the basic problem is that saying morality is objective may mean different things; coherent, but different things.

there is the objective as a punctuation in normative talk (much like wittgenstein's saying that certain logical objects are punctuations)
we should first recognzie that moral attitudes are talked about, performed as it were, in the normative mode. it is impossible to say anything normative except to say it normatively. some guy who says "

then, if we take morality to be a description of the set of values one holds, objective morality means the descriptive question "does everyone believe in the same moral system" or "does this morality hold universal sway"
the answer to this is no.

however, that last question may prove nasty because it provokes the retort, "what if i, or god, or A is right and everyone else is wrong." rephrased, the question is "given that everyone believes in different moral systems, can we make judgments from a particular standard upon their beliefs."

although the third question is interesting, it, just like the first two, should be recognized as distinct questions and considered in their own specificity. rendering the umbrella question "is morality objective" useless and confused.

now, this third question touches on the essence of philosophical stress about morality. however, let us step back from the well recognized gyrations generated from this question. there is the relativistic answer of "we can't really judge other systems, but we must not privilege ours and thus must respect other customs" then, there is the foundationalists who split into two camps, nihilists and absolutists. nihilists believe that since there are no objective systems, we should stop practicing morality. absolutists believe that since the nihilist answer is unacceptable, there must be objectivity to support honest moral thinking. it is understandable that these two have evolved as reactions and counterreactions in society, however, as pieces of philosophy they both assume that a foundational metaethical theory is a productive, and necessary first step toward moral thinking. the truth might just be that such metaethical thinking is pointless, not because their answers do not , but because we can't change who we are. if we have no absolute moral reference, then the very act of demanding a reference of the metaethical sort is pointless. nevertheless, if we are to indulge in any moral sentiments, we still should think morally. we would prefer that this thinking is done with reason and reflection. with increased diversity and complications such as animal ethics etc, isn't energy more productively spent on reasonable and reflective moral thinking? given that such thinking is often done with mutiiple individuals, i find the answer to the third question most productively rendered as a standard of baseline grants of "openmindedness," or w/e.


we often encounter laypersons who say "morality is objective" and are in fact referencing particular moral principles (as it is often found in reality). for instance a devout christian who self describes as a believer in the objective wrongfulness of homosexuality). we can see that the above beliefs go together in a system. the person believes strongly in a normative principle, also believes that this is the right thing to believe for all people/descriptively speaking, this is the only right standard. it is also likely to observe in such a person a particular route of moral thinking whenever the status of homosexuality is brought up. it goes like, "i feel it is wrong," --> "god is the only judge of rightness" --> "it is objectively wrong." now we get into the more interesting and substantial question of how a person's moral mindset functions, or how morality is practiced.

in the light of this particular case, let us again reconsider the question of the point of metaethics. certainly, a part of it should be to cultivate a method of critically examining normative beliefs that jumps outside of that aforementioned circle which has been reinforced by a faulty understanding of morality. however, it is not clear what metaethics may do to the question of the status of homosexuality etc after it has done the work of clearing the path for fair and critical normative inquiry. it does this work of cleaning by answering the aforementioned three questions like so:

1. yes, you believe you are right. you have the right to believe so...

2. however, reasonable persons might disagree...

3. but you should treat them as reasonable disagreements
3a. ethical beliefs are worthwhile, and thus are ethical conversations
3ai. one may even say, there is a right to disagree ethically, to bring an issue under normative review, or to raise an ethical objection. in other words, there is a right to form opinions and judge.

now, the conversation may proceed.

it should be noted that, even if this procedure is followed, there may not be a good conversation because the conversation may be stuck at the "a is right" "a is wrong" level. theories of morality do inform normative beliefs. knowing the history of a particular moral sentiment, having in mind particular sociological or psychological theories of morality etc are hugely important in eventually resolving any dispute. a feature of many moral educations is the lack of meta-level theory, a lack of context for critical self reflection. this results in inflexibility and narrowness of thought. however, it is clear that these things are distinctly different from the rhetorical/discourse understanding of metaethics as outlined above.

the very belabored point here is that despite efforts to the contrary, metaethics isn't much a foundational basis of normativity. it instead should be seen as a part of the effort to construct proper ethical discourse. how to teach people to rethink their normative beliefs.

anyway, apart from the layperson, in professional philosophy i see the insistence on objective values as a codeword for constructivism and assorted rationalistic structure building in ethics. these efforts are admirable, but their self image of rationality/objectivity are, at best, merely rhetorical devices. i never take these claims of objectivity seriously, even though their intent is appreciated. i find a moral argument convincing on the ground that it is the right normative argument alone, not metaethical acrobatics

anselfir, that is extremely well stated and I pretty much completely agree

ani wrote:

the very belabored point here is that despite efforts to the contrary, metaethics isn't much a foundational basis of normativity. it instead should be seen as a part of the effort to construct proper ethical discourse....

agreed

ani wrote:

anyway, apart from the layperson, in professional philosophy i see the insistence on objective values as a codeword for constructivism and assorted rationalistic structure building in ethics. these efforts are admirable, but their self image of rationality/objectivity are, at best, merely rhetorical devices. i never take these claims of objectivity seriously, even though their intent is appreciated. i find a moral argument convincing on the ground that it is the right normative argument alone, not metaethical acrobatics

now what about metaethics as psychology/proto-existential empirical science?

i could see breaking down the construct in question (the "person") into a pattern (or a progressive occurrence) of action and principle, understanding this as a relative function of other people and occurrences, and thereby arrive at a better model of what is (through a working understanding of how people "move" beyond strict physical presence and/or strict rational operation)

here the metaethical project could maybe gain some ground in determining the "objective" form of morality through attention to the basic movements a person goes through as it acts morally and immorally.
this would likely be best deemed a metapsychological project.

to say that it is the normative argument which has weight is obviously valid, yet this does not belay the possibility of there being an underlying movement which gives the moral judgment force beyond mere coincidence with perceived reality.

this of course would be a move away from a descriptive ethics of states of affairs, and towards a paradigm based on active/changeable states and ultimately on the freedom of will to effect these states through synthetic correlation of experience and psychological construct.

i.e. it would be a move toward Morality as it exists essentially in/of the Being of man, not as mere attribute or or state of beleif

well, the rhetoric of metaethics is important beyond physical facts. or rather, there are no simple moral facts. we use words like exploitation, power, production etc to describe events in moral history, but these have clear normative dimensions. an "objective" metaethics is one kind of rhetoric. the endgame here is to use metaethics as a tool to critically evaluate moral behavior. it is not bootstrapping morality through history per se.

a descriptive theory of the biological function of morality, wihch you probaby have in mind here, is somewhat different of a project. taken in the right way, it can be informative, but it can easily be taken to nihilistic or other value laden abuses.

as for "justifying moral thinking." that is just a silly thing. what are we accomplishing here really. cite some authority so that our moral beliefs acquire the power of convention and respectability? doesn't seem like good philospohy. we can refine and rethink things through metaethical insights, or use knowledge of how people think morally to get people to commit to some belief or other, but the moral function in humans is just there. we have the capacity to exercise it.

but it would seem taht the base moral valuation is operative beyond mere proscriptions of willful action, extending to the essential existential realities of a person.

...i'm not sure what you mean by "a descriptive theory of the biological function of morality"
perhaps an organic theory, but more abstractly understood

well, i kind of see moraltiy as a function of the human animal. it is like a pattern of behavior but with representations in the space of reason etc. specifically, i have in mind situations where someone believes that the foreigner is less worthwhile than a kinsman, we could say that there is a biological/evolutionary theory to explain that moral sentiment. carried with that view of the situation is a peculiar moral perspective, one that, if not deeper, then at least different from thinking within the sentiments themselves and maybe not go anywhere.

"but it would seem taht the base moral valuation is operative beyond mere proscriptions of willful action, extending to the essential existential realities of a person. "
i dont like to found things on metaphysics. although i don't know if, in the end, founding things on metaphysics is in some way necessary. but really, if you are committed to moral principles etc, your metaphysics of reason/will is just performative. a metaphysical declaration like "i am a reasoning person with moral essence" amounts to a declaration of "i am committed to reason and moral thinking."

but i wonder if resorting to nominalism here would actually weaken the moral circuitry. say a person who is unable to join with the moral metaphysicians' declaration of absolute will etc because of a technical difficulty wiht their way of phrasing things. let's say she instead says "no no no, it is not that we "are" moral beings, but that we "act" morally, or commit to a moral life. is her position weaker in a substantive way? i think there is at least a change in tone. the moral metaphysicians do seem like to draw on a "order of the universe" sort of authority, while the other phrasing makes it seem like an abstract choice when the normative commitment is taken away. in other words, the pure commitment to acting morally is reinforced by a metaphysics in either one case, or both cases (but one is a stronger metaphysical impression, the other weak).

so i do think a moral metaphysics is at least impactful. even nonsense can be impactful when people think through them, all it means is that the way pepole think isn't particularly logical or even meaningful. after all, i don't think we can freely construct just any structure of thought in ourselves. if the idea that man is a moral being is fixated in some way in the moral psyche, it is better to defend it as such. but as a philosophical construct, i do think moral metaphysics are illusionary, even if they are worthwhile clutches. problem is, when you don't trust in your clutches, they cease to be functional.

anselfir wrote:

...let's say she instead says "no no no, it is not that we "are" moral beings, but that we "act" morally, or commit to a moral life. is her position weaker in a substantive way? i think there is at least a change in tone....

'ere ya go, good "diy how to" vid imo (not rly tho). def tone changin goin on at the end there.



2 pts. swish......

prolly not home run 1st time though. unless herp is knockin. then u wear double protection just to be extra sure.

anselfir wrote:

well, i kind of see moraltiy as a function of the human animal. it is like a pattern of behavior but with representations in the space of reason etc. specifically, i have in mind situations where someone believes that the foreigner is less worthwhile than a kinsman, we could say that there is a biological/evolutionary theory to explain that moral sentiment. carried with that view of the situation is a peculiar moral perspective, one that, if not deeper, then at least different from thinking within the sentiments themselves and maybe not go anywhere. "but it would seem taht the base moral valuation is operative beyond mere proscriptions of willful action, extending to the essential existential realities of a person. " i dont like to found things on metaphysics. although i don't know if, in the end, founding things on metaphysics is in some way necessary. but really, if you are committed to moral principles etc, your metaphysics of reason/will is just performative. a metaphysical declaration like "i am a reasoning person with moral essence" amounts to a declaration of "i am committed to reason and moral thinking." but i wonder if resorting to nominalism here would actually weaken the moral circuitry. say a person who is unable to join with the moral metaphysicians' declaration of absolute will etc because of a technical difficulty wiht their way of phrasing things. let's say she instead says "no no no, it is not that we "are" moral beings, but that we "act" morally, or commit to a moral life. is her position weaker in a substantive way? i think there is at least a change in tone. the moral metaphysicians do seem like to draw on a "order of the universe" sort of authority, while the other phrasing makes it seem like an abstract choice when the normative commitment is taken away. in other words, the pure commitment to acting morally is reinforced by a metaphysics in either one case, or both cases (but one is a stronger metaphysical impression, the other weak). so i do think a moral metaphysics is at least impactful. even nonsense can be impactful when people think through them, all it means is that the way pepole think isn't particularly logical or even meaningful. after all, i don't think we can freely construct just any structure of thought in ourselves. if the idea that man is a moral being is fixated in some way in the moral psyche, it is better to defend it as such. but as a philosophical construct, i do think moral metaphysics are illusionary, even if they are worthwhile clutches. problem is, when you don't trust in your clutches, they cease to be functional.

it seems that we can ground such a physics on the empirical reality of Reason (part of my read on Kant here), on the Unity of reason as that which Is the Unity of existence. Morality is a part or Rationality, its basic form implicit in the existential statement itself ("there exists an 'x' such that..."), and Morality proper if found when this sort of thinking is applied to oneself....

Non Sequitor wrote:

thefranzkafkafront wrote: Non Sequitor wrote: thefranzkafkafront wrote: Non Sequitor wrote: thefranzkafkafront wrote: If a maxim is a law then the maxim has intrinsically normative structure. isnt that contradictory and just a semantic leap? its sort of hard to answer this without going into a massive dicussion on how Kantian ethics works. But i'll try. (if this is confusing nonsense, sorry im not the best Kant scholar in the world). Its not contradictory, because to can't moral laws are laws necessitated by the co-existence of morally autonmous agents. But there created by the morally autonomous agents (thus making them normative, and having a structure at least some what like the catergorical imperative). Its a law/normative structure because its a relation that rational morally autonomous agents should have to each other if they organised themselves rationally. You'd have to explain what you mean by semantic leap. Though, because yeah this is a progress in meaningful concepts. Im not how in this case that is some how a negative thing. More than anything else i'd read Korsgaard's Tanner lectures. This is mostly her original take on Kant and obviously she is a lot better at this than I am. hmmm, no my issue is not with kant but your use of normative, kant is deontological. if its normative it cannot be a priori universal, and vice versa. you got your is/ought being a is=ought, i'm not sure that's possible in any sense, nor defensible. either your word choice is poor, or your argument is fatally flawed. Uh. Theres no contradiction between something being normative and deontological. Deontological ethics are normative ethics. Deontology is a position where by acts are either good or bad in and of themselves. Where as normative ethics are ethics which aim for the question 'how ought I/you/we to act' in the simplest terms. So im sorry I don't see what your contention is there. Perhaps you could rephrase it. Im sorry but you are mistaken. Deontological ethics are the attempt o discover what ethical laws ALREADY EXIST. ie, what the right action is. These laws would be by nature objective. Normative ethics is the attempt to discover or argue what ethics OUGHT to be. They are after the fact, and fully subjective. I think you are confused about these two methods to achieve knowledge of ethical action. The result can overlap and one can merge them in an attempt to rationalize, but these three schools of thought are well known. Deonotogical is not the attempt to discover or argue what we ought to do, it is the attempt to know what the right ethical action is. An is is an is, it aint an ought.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/#DeoFoiCon

I think you need to give that a ready poos.

Quote:

The third school being virtue ethics. those are the three main schools of ethics. I am afraid your foundational knowledge on the issue is not very sound and thus your argument falls apart.

Three main schools of normative ethics. You missed out teleological/consequentialist ethics which assets the value on the basis of the outcome.

Quote:

some ppl use normative as a meta-category, in which case if that is what you are doing I don't understand why you state that at all. Its would like saying ethics are normative because they are ethics. thats silly.

Its one of 3-5 branches of ethics.

AccoutabilityUSA wrote:

anselfir wrote: well, i kind of see moraltiy as a function of the human animal. it is like a pattern of behavior but with representations in the space of reason etc. specifically, i have in mind situations where someone believes that the foreigner is less worthwhile than a kinsman, we could say that there is a biological/evolutionary theory to explain that moral sentiment. carried with that view of the situation is a peculiar moral perspective, one that, if not deeper, then at least different from thinking within the sentiments themselves and maybe not go anywhere. "but it would seem taht the base moral valuation is operative beyond mere proscriptions of willful action, extending to the essential existential realities of a person. " i dont like to found things on metaphysics. although i don't know if, in the end, founding things on metaphysics is in some way necessary. but really, if you are committed to moral principles etc, your metaphysics of reason/will is just performative. a metaphysical declaration like "i am a reasoning person with moral essence" amounts to a declaration of "i am committed to reason and moral thinking." but i wonder if resorting to nominalism here would actually weaken the moral circuitry. say a person who is unable to join with the moral metaphysicians' declaration of absolute will etc because of a technical difficulty wiht their way of phrasing things. let's say she instead says "no no no, it is not that we "are" moral beings, but that we "act" morally, or commit to a moral life. is her position weaker in a substantive way? i think there is at least a change in tone. the moral metaphysicians do seem like to draw on a "order of the universe" sort of authority, while the other phrasing makes it seem like an abstract choice when the normative commitment is taken away. in other words, the pure commitment to acting morally is reinforced by a metaphysics in either one case, or both cases (but one is a stronger metaphysical impression, the other weak). so i do think a moral metaphysics is at least impactful. even nonsense can be impactful when people think through them, all it means is that the way pepole think isn't particularly logical or even meaningful. after all, i don't think we can freely construct just any structure of thought in ourselves. if the idea that man is a moral being is fixated in some way in the moral psyche, it is better to defend it as such. but as a philosophical construct, i do think moral metaphysics are illusionary, even if they are worthwhile clutches. problem is, when you don't trust in your clutches, they cease to be functional. it seems that we can ground such a physics on the empirical reality of Reason (part of my read on Kant here), on the Unity of reason as that which Is the Unity of existence. Morality is a part or Rationality, its basic form implicit in the existential statement itself ("there exists an 'x' such that..."), and Morality proper if found when this sort of thinking is applied to oneself....

i made an oversight here. talking about reasons in persons is not only a way of analyzing the moral subject, but also a large category of beings we interact with under normativity. having a metaphysics of reasonable people can be a way of arguing for a particular ethics of treating other people, one with obvious and perhaps inseparable political aspirations.

thefranzkafkafront wrote:

Non Sequitor wrote: thefranzkafkafront wrote: Non Sequitor wrote: thefranzkafkafront wrote: Non Sequitor wrote: thefranzkafkafront wrote: If a maxim is a law then the maxim has intrinsically normative structure. isnt that contradictory and just a semantic leap? its sort of hard to answer this without going into a massive dicussion on how Kantian ethics works. But i'll try. (if this is confusing nonsense, sorry im not the best Kant scholar in the world). Its not contradictory, because to can't moral laws are laws necessitated by the co-existence of morally autonmous agents. But there created by the morally autonomous agents (thus making them normative, and having a structure at least some what like the catergorical imperative). Its a law/normative structure because its a relation that rational morally autonomous agents should have to each other if they organised themselves rationally. You'd have to explain what you mean by semantic leap. Though, because yeah this is a progress in meaningful concepts. Im not how in this case that is some how a negative thing. More than anything else i'd read Korsgaard's Tanner lectures. This is mostly her original take on Kant and obviously she is a lot better at this than I am. hmmm, no my issue is not with kant but your use of normative, kant is deontological. if its normative it cannot be a priori universal, and vice versa. you got your is/ought being a is=ought, i'm not sure that's possible in any sense, nor defensible. either your word choice is poor, or your argument is fatally flawed. Uh. Theres no contradiction between something being normative and deontological. Deontological ethics are normative ethics. Deontology is a position where by acts are either good or bad in and of themselves. Where as normative ethics are ethics which aim for the question 'how ought I/you/we to act' in the simplest terms. So im sorry I don't see what your contention is there. Perhaps you could rephrase it. Im sorry but you are mistaken. Deontological ethics are the attempt o discover what ethical laws ALREADY EXIST. ie, what the right action is. These laws would be by nature objective. Normative ethics is the attempt to discover or argue what ethics OUGHT to be. They are after the fact, and fully subjective. I think you are confused about these two methods to achieve knowledge of ethical action. The result can overlap and one can merge them in an attempt to rationalize, but these three schools of thought are well known. Deonotogical is not the attempt to discover or argue what we ought to do, it is the attempt to know what the right ethical action is. An is is an is, it aint an ought. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/#DeoFoiCon I think you need to give that a ready poos. Quote: The third school being virtue ethics. those are the three main schools of ethics. I am afraid your foundational knowledge on the issue is not very sound and thus your argument falls apart. Three main schools of normative ethics. You missed out teleological/consequentialist ethics which assets the value on the basis of the outcome. Quote: some ppl use normative as a meta-category, in which case if that is what you are doing I don't understand why you state that at all. Its would like saying ethics are normative because they are ethics. thats silly. Its one of 3-5 branches of ethics.

you are still not understanding.

normative is about "ought" - whereas your topic is objective, no?

is not your entire argument residing on what the 'objective ethical laws' ought to be? or is it about what the ethical law is?

its like you are trying to fly fish with a spear.

again, you seem confused about the knowledge of said laws concerning right action, versus the laws in and of themselves.

OK, so morality is objective.

Which morality, then?

thefranzkafkafront wrote:

This relfective nature of human conciousness means we cannot act without reasons. (reasons being the reflective endorsement of a desire)

depends on what you mean by "reasons." An apple falls from the tree for a reason too--the reason being gravity.

thefranzkafkafront wrote:

That as a matter of consistency because I value myself on the basis of my humanity, anything else that is human I must value also and on an equal level.

"as a matter of consistency?" since when are morals ever consistent? I know of no one whose morals are entirely logically consistent.

thefranzkafkafront wrote:

QED morals are objective. Because they are grounded in Humanity.

except that morals are almost never logically consistent. Therefore, they cannot be objective. QED. They're just a product of the whims of human emotion, which is often demonstrably inconsistent.

from what i gather from the lectures the consistency is not at issue, merely the public character of the moral reason.
a public character which makes the moral reason objective in teh sense that it can be communicated accurately through language and equivocation of signs.

she doesnt claim a single demonstrable moral code, just that there are no purely necassarily personal moral reasons

AccoutabilityUSA wrote:

from what i gather from the lectures the consistency is not at issue, merely the public character of the moral reason. a public character which makes the moral reason objective in teh sense that it can be communicated accurately through language and equivocation of signs. she doesnt claim a single demonstrable moral code, just that there are no purely necassarily personal moral reasons

insofar as morals are the directly linked to human emotions, and human emotions are objective biochemical events in the human brain, then I guess you could argue the morals are objective. But if you aren't going to go so far as to claim that there exists some unified objective moral code--then what significance does this have?

well, she employes Witgensteins argument against private language,
which kinda goes: since even in private language the use of reason is essentially empirical, any references which give the language meaning are of an empirical nature (a=b etc), and as such you can always elaborate the reference to include phenomena which others are present to, and thus communicate the beleif/reason.

as for the unified code (Moral Law), she draws on Kant and the Categorical Imperative, which dictates that the only maxims which may be deemed moral are those which can be willed as a universal law, the determination of which is made by reflection of the universal character of teh form of the judgment.

------------------------

many would say that the CI is unable to birth an objective morality as everyone relates to the world differently, and thus has different conceptions and forms of conception, and thus differing modes of being and contingently will have different "universal forms" of Practical Reason (the actualizer of action)

she seems to claim that since we can always objectify the language we use to relate to these forms, we can communicate them and arrive at an objective universal form which is valid for all people.

...an underlying premise here is that the basic operation of Reason is universally similar among men.

------------------------

as for biochemically induced emotions, these play no part here, as the form of morality in question is Rational, based off the CI.

...also would point out that there is an organic and essential relationship between neurobiology and Mental being such that the two recursively determine one-another, and that both have a certain basic (fundemental) constitution upon which they operate and develope,
so
to say that "emotions are objective biochemical events in the brain" is misleading. there is a coincidence of the occurrence, to be sure, but its not like they are essentially caused by chemical reactions... there is an essential relationship between the two... at least that is as much as any rational person can reasonably claim.

but that aspect here is moot, such a definitive relationship is assumed as unified, and is not relevant to what is under discussion.

------------------

for more on the CI, maybe see tha latter half of this thread

AccoutabilityUSA wrote:

she seems to claim that since we can always objectify the language we use to relate to these forms, we can communicate them and arrive at an objective universal form which is valid for all people. ...an underlying premise here is that the basic operation of Reason is universally similar among men.

i don't disagree that there are certain qualities that are universal to all men. But i dont see why these qualities make it any more "objective." Even if all men were genetically predisposed to like chocolate ice cream and hate strawberry, would you say that chocolate ice cream is objectively better than strawberry?

AccoutabilityUSA wrote:

to say that "emotions are objective biochemical events in the brain" is misleading. there is a coincidence of the occurrence, to be sure, but its not like they are essentially caused by chemical reactions...

except that modern neuroscience is establishing these causal relationships, and finding that manipulation of these biochemical events can literally cause changes in emotions. IMHO, it seems that the science is bringing us closer to the conclusoin that we are essentially biochemical robots, and that things like conscience, emotions, and reason--are essentially all higher functions of fundamental biochemical reactions.

i think that you are missing the import of recursively related...

the same system. one effects the other.

...really just two ways of looking at the same group of phenomena.

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also: you are attempting to force an elementary and inapplicable meaning of "objective"here.

the main argument is that moral reasons are not essentially private.

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the "i am merely chemistry" schtick is oh-so overused and oh-so overstated, and itself is merely a confusion of representational paradigm, confusing the picture by taking one side of an explanatory paradigm (experience) and claiming that it is the only way to look at it.

"higher functions of biochemical reactions" is just a way of restating the same thing with a different focus...
...yet as you imply such a paradigm is unable to account for simple realities like free will etc, explaining them away in a Humean (see: Hume) fallacy that everything can be explained by mechanism and reasons, if only we are to look closely enough.

it is precisely this way of thinking that Kantian analysis continually and effectively debunks time and again. the bound of experience are only of such and such an extent, and that which is beyond them cannot be seen through any sort of augmentation-- the essential experience is limited to its own domain of empirical meaning.

it is when we loose sight of this simple truth that we waste time arguing nonsensical points like "reason is just chemistry"... i mean: duh. its one system.
but
this doesnt belay thet fact that the mental can effect the chemical, even willfully, and vice versa. the way we represent chemical reactions is based on certain combination potentials of the system, and speaks only to this aspect of reality.

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really though, if you wanna start a chemistry vs psycology thread, or a general objective morality thread i'll see you there,
but
this conversaion is about Kant and the implications of his work drawn by the speaker of the lectures (with help from others) as to the nature of moral reasons.

if you dont have anything to say on this topic, i really dont see the point.