Morality

[Peter Holmes]

The primary purpose of language is not communication. The purpose of language is knowledge and thinking. One must know something before it can be communicated and must think it before it can be written or spoken.

Words are not concepts, they are only symbols witch represent concepts. On their own, no symbol means anything. It is only the concepts words or symbols represent that have meaning and what they mean is the actual existents they refer to.

Your three beliefs about language are what is wrong with all of epistemology corrupted by logical positivists and linguistic analysis.

For anyone interested in the true meaning of words and concepts, see, "Epistemology, Concepts."

Wtf? We use language in order to know and think things? Arse-about-face nonsense. As you say: we have to know something before it can be communicated, and think it before it can be written or spoken. So the purpose of language isn't to know and think things. What are you on about?

And what and where is a concept? Metaphysical claptrap.

Concepts are not, "entities," like physical objects or substances. Do you deny their existence because they have no physical properties?

In a recent post, you use the words, "opinion," "obey," "critIcal," "objective," "assertions," "irrelevant," and "antithesis." What and were is/are opinions, obedience, objectivity, assertions, relevance, or the antithetical. What physical properties do any of them have? They certainly don't exist physically, so how do they exist? Concepts are the same kind of existents as those terms you use exist.

The meaning of a name is not the thing that it names - even if the name is dog. The meaning of any word can only be the way we use it. So we use the word dog to talk about the things we call dogs - real things that exist, that we know about, and that we can describe.

Only some of the words I used are abstract nouns. Others are verbs and adjectives. Do you think those are the names of concepts? And if you think the abstract nouns are the names of concepts - what and where are those concepts? And in what way do they exist?

If you can't answer these questions - which, of course, you can't - please ask yourself why not. We've suckered ourselves with the myth of abstract things, the nomenclaturist view of meaning, and mentalist dualism, for so long that it's hard to recognise the delusion and wake up.

[Skepdick]

The meaning of any word can only be the way we use it.

And when you use the same word in different ways - it means different things.

Only some of the words I used are abstract nouns.

In the phrase "moral conscience" you used the word "moral" as an adjective, not as an abstract noun.

What does it mean when you use it as an adjective?

[Peter Holmes]

As I explained at the 'What could make morality objective?' thread, the use of moral in moral conscience isn't adjectival.

Sigh.

[Skepdick]

As I explained at the 'What could make morality objective?' thread, the use of moral in moral conscience isn't adjectival.

Sigh.

Instead, the phrase moral conscience refers to how moral values - whatever their source - inform our judgements and actions.

So you are using it as a noun.

And you are implying that the moral conscience has a direct causal effect on our judgments and actions.
The moral conscience informs us and affects us, but has no ontological existence.

Do you also think that this moral conscience is a bearded old man who lives in the cloud and herds angels?

[RCSaunders]

The meaning of a name is not the thing that it names - even if the name is dog. The meaning of any word can only be the way we use it. So we use the word dog to talk about the things we call dogs - real things that exist, that we know about, and that we can describe.

Only some of the words I used are abstract nouns. Others are verbs and adjectives. Do you think those are the names of concepts? And if you think the abstract nouns are the names of concepts - what and where are those concepts? And in what way do they exist?

If you can't answer these questions - which, of course, you can't - please ask yourself why not. We've suckered ourselves with the myth of abstract things, the nomenclaturist view of meaning, and mentalist dualism, for so long that it's hard to recognise the delusion and wake up.

A word is not a, "name," it is a symbol. The word, "dog," only represents the concept that refers to actual canines. A concept, "means," the actual existents it refers to.

A concept identifies existents, any kind of existent, physical existents (entities) organism, or any of their attributes, actions, or relationships as well as all epistemological existents which only exist as the product of the human mind such as language, logic, math, geometry, as well as all the sciences, history, geography, philosophy, the arts and literature. It includes all the elements of any of those, like all the parts of language, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, perpositions, conjuctions, and interjections, for example.

Everything that exists, ontological (material or natural) and epistemological (psychological) that you can think about or talk about is identified by a concept and when you think or talk about anything that exists you must use the concept that identifies that existent to think and talk about it.

Every word you use, if it has any meaning at all, represents a concept. Words, sans concepts, are meaningless and have no use or function.

You don't have to understand or agree with any of that, and probably won't. You have, whether you know it or not, been influenced by the destroyers of epistemology, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein and the logical positivists, I'm afraid. You seem too intelligent to have come to the views you have on your own, without be influenced by some bad philosophy.

As far as where concepts are, they are not things that have a geographic location. When you think, where are you doing that thinking? You do think, don't you? Since to think, you must use concepts, wherever you are doing your thinking, that is where the concepts are.

You seem to think consciousness is some unnatural thing that is separate in some way from objective reality. Perhaps you think the same way about life. Life, consciousness, and the unique human consciousness called the mind are perfectly natural attributes of material existence, just as all the physical attributes are. Life, consciousness, and minds cannot exist independently of the physical organisms they are the life, consciousness, and minds of, but they are not, themselves, physical attributes, just additional natural attributes of existence. There is no dualism.

You may not like the answers, but I have certainly answered your questions.

[Peter Holmes]

The meaning of a name is not the thing that it names - even if the name is dog. The meaning of any word can only be the way we use it. So we use the word dog to talk about the things we call dogs - real things that exist, that we know about, and that we can describe.

Only some of the words I used are abstract nouns. Others are verbs and adjectives. Do you think those are the names of concepts? And if you think the abstract nouns are the names of concepts - what and where are those concepts? And in what way do they exist?

If you can't answer these questions - which, of course, you can't - please ask yourself why not. We've suckered ourselves with the myth of abstract things, the nomenclaturist view of meaning, and mentalist dualism, for so long that it's hard to recognise the delusion and wake up.

A word is not a, "name," it is a symbol. The word, "dog," only represents the concept that refers to actual canines. A concept, "means," the actual existents it refers to.

A concept identifies existents, any kind of existent, physical existents (entities) organism, or any of their attributes, actions, or relationships as well as all epistemological existents which only exist as the product of the human mind such as language, logic, math, geometry, as well as all the sciences, history, geography, philosophy, the arts and literature. It includes all the elements of any of those, like all the parts of language, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, perpositions, conjuctions, and interjections, for example.

Everything that exists, ontological (material or natural) and epistemological (psychological) that you can think about or talk about is identified by a concept and when you think or talk about anything that exists you must use the concept that identifies that existent to think and talk about it.

Every word you use, if it has any meaning at all, represents a concept. Words, sans concepts, are meaningless and have no use or function.

You don't have to understand or agree with any of that, and probably won't. You have, whether you know it or not, been influenced by the destroyers of epistemology, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein and the logical positivists, I'm afraid. You seem too intelligent to have come to the views you have on your own, without be influenced by some bad philosophy.

As far as where concepts are, they are not things that have a geographic location. When you think, where are you doing that thinking? You do think, don't you? Since to think, you must use concepts, wherever you are doing your thinking, that is where the concepts are.

You seem to think consciousness is some unnatural thing that is separate in some way from objective reality. Perhaps you think the same way about life. Life, consciousness, and the unique human consciousness called the mind are perfectly natural attributes of material existence, just as all the physical attributes are. Life, consciousness, and minds cannot exist independently of the physical organisms they are the life, consciousness, and minds of, but they are not, themselves, physical attributes, just additional natural attributes of existence. There is no dualism.

You may not like the answers, but I have certainly answered your questions.

Thanks. This reads like a credo - a rehearsal of your faith. And like all credos, it amounts to claims without evidence.

You say a word represents a concept that identifies an existent. You can't say what a concept is, or in what way it exists. And you think it has no location, but that we use it where we do thinking.

Perhaps this kind of mystical woo satisfies you. And that's fine.

[Veritas Aequitas]

thus again support objectivity of morality.

Although there is much disagreement about which label to stick on morality -objective or subjective, there seems to be a total consensus that it does need to have a label stuck onto it. It is becoming increasingly evident to me that this insistence on labelling is proving to be an impediment to our understanding.

In philosophy 'definition' and consensus [must be reached or with qualified reservations] to the definition is critical, else everyone will talk pass each other all the time.

I suggest the following:

We are born with a capacity for having a sense of morality. As we develop, this sense of morality becomes guided by moral precepts that we absorb along the way. Because these precepts are passed on to us, they tend to feel like self evident facts, but they are neither self evident, nor facts. They are not self evident, because no individual would necessarily have come up with them on his own, left to his own devices. Neither are they facts, because they wouldn't apply in all circumstances, they are dependant on whatever basis of principles happens to prevail in any particular place, at any particular time.

To me, the 'sense of morality' is like the sense of taste and other senses, emotional sense. Who would dispute one's sense of taste is not inherent and objective.
As such, the 'sense of morality' like the sense of taste exists in all humans and thus its existence is an evident fact [empirical].

As with all the other senses, there are certain principles that are generic or universal, i.e. taste of sour, sweet, bitter, salty. These are objective which can be tested in all humans.
However there will be variations in degrees of the above taste and in some cases perversion is in synaethesia - this is the subjective aspect of the objective sense of taste.

Similarly with the sense [faculty] of morality, there are objective and subjective elements.
You have missed the objective elements and take that all precepts out of the faculty of morality are subjective.
It is argued there are objective maxims from within the faculty of morality which can be derived from a Framework of Morality, for example the Golden Rule, Kant's Categorical Imperative and other universal maxims.
Since these universals are derived from a Framework of Morality, they are moral facts, i.e. Justified True Moral Beliefs [JTMB], thus are objective as conditioned by the collective and not by individuals' opinions and belief.

Is our having an innate sense of morality an objective fact? Well if we do have an innate sense of morality, then yes, I suppose it is. But anyone who accepts that we have an innate sense of morality will probably understand it to be pretty much the same thing that anyone else who accepts it does, regardless of its label.
Are the moral precepts that guide our behaviour objective in nature? Yes, because they come from outside of us. No, because they are arbitrary. Take your pick.

As explained above, those moral maxims that are universals as derived from the Moral Framework in relation to the inherent moral faculty are definitely objective [as defined].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)

Those rules and precepts of conducts that are not conditioned upon the faculty of morality but upon subjective feeling or even intersubjectivity are not morality proper.
This is why we need to define 'morality' precisely.
Political laws that enforce conduct are morality per se.
Religious command that enforce by a threat of hell from God is not morality per se.

[Harbal]

thus again support objectivity of morality.

Although there is much disagreement about which label to stick on morality -objective or subjective, there seems to be a total consensus that it does need to have a label stuck onto it. It is becoming increasingly evident to me that this insistence on labelling is proving to be an impediment to our understanding.

In philosophy 'definition' and consensus [must be reached or with qualified reservations] to the definition is critical, else everyone will talk pass each other all the time.

"Morality", "subjectivity" and "objectivity" are synthetically constructed concepts, none of them have any form of existence outside of human minds. Each of them is only what we say it is, and we humans not only have a tendency to disagree, many of us seem to take great delight in it. Philosophy may well demand precision, but it also has to accept that some things will simply not be bossed about in that way. Just because you've got a round hole called objectivity, and a square one called subjectivity, any object that you might want to put into one of them may well not be conveniently round or square. It is no good ordering it to make its mind up. You could probably bash it through either hole if you hit it hard enough with a hammer, but not without making a mess of both the object and the hole.

We often know what somebody means, even though they might not have used exactly the right word, or the proper terminology expected by over pedantic philosophers. Far better to ask for clarification than to force them to mean something they didn't. Perhaps if some of us were to stop behaving as though we were reincarnations of Kant or Nietzsche, or whoever. While many of those long dead philosophers may well have been geniuses, many also seem to have been antisocial crackpots. You can get away with being an antisocial crackpot when you are a genius, but I don't think there are any geniuses here.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Although there is much disagreement about which label to stick on morality -objective or subjective, there seems to be a total consensus that it does need to have a label stuck onto it. It is becoming increasingly evident to me that this insistence on labelling is proving to be an impediment to our understanding.

In philosophy 'definition' and consensus [must be reached or with qualified reservations] to the definition is critical, else everyone will talk pass each other all the time.

"Morality", "subjectivity" and "objectivity" are synthetically constructed concepts, none of them have any form of existence outside of human minds. Each of them is only what we say it is, and we humans not only have a tendency to disagree, many of us seem to take great delight in it. Philosophy may well demand precision, but it also has to accept that some things will simply not be bossed about in that way. Just because you've got a round hole called objectivity, and a square one called subjectivity, any object that you might want to put into one of them may well not be conveniently round or square. It is no good ordering it to make its mind up. You could probably bash it through either hole if you hit it hard enough with a hammer, but not without making a mess of both the object and the hole.

We often know what somebody means, even though they might not have used exactly the right word, or the proper terminology expected by over pedantic philosophers. Far better to ask for clarification than to force them to mean something they didn't. Perhaps if some of us were to stop behaving as though we were reincarnations of Kant or Nietzsche, or whoever. While many of those long dead philosophers may well have been geniuses, many also seem to have been antisocial crackpots. You can get away with being an antisocial crackpot when you are a genius, but I don't think there are any geniuses here.

Not sure of your point?

Are you implying we don't seek a consensus of the definition of the terms used [or at least with qualified reservations] then we can proceed to discuss and debates.
I think this is not advisable since both parties will be talking pass each other till the cows come home.

This is what happen with Peter's "What could make morality objective?" that is running up to 231 pages with no consensus.
I just realized Peter's basic definition of fact, objectivity, state of affairs are conditioned within the Framework of Analytic Philosophy which I believe is fundamentally unrealistic.
Meanwhile my definition of what is fact is common knowledge and with reference to scientific facts, i.e.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact

I have presented my definition of 'what is fact' many times within the thread, but he simply ignore it but have in mind his definition of "fact" based on Analytical Philosophy.

If we do not trash out to reach consensus on the various definition both of us will continue to talk pass each other.

I have explained the problem in the following thread.

What could make morality objective? 2
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29390

I don't believe Peter will accept my definition of what is fact as in Science, but stick to his 'fact' per Analytical Philosophy in this debate.
Thus there's NO point in debating the issue further rather,
I am not going to accept Peter's Analytic Philosophical terms and the onus is on Peter to prove his terms fundamentally represent reality and is realistic.
I will prove his underlying Analytic Philosophical is unrealistic and its ultimate truths are fundamentally illusory.

[Harbal]

Not sure of your point?

Are you implying we don't seek a consensus of the definition of the terms used [or at least with qualified reservations] then we can proceed to discuss and debates.

Can we not come to at least some understanding of what (in this case) morality is, without trying to force it into some fuzzy definition of either objective or subjective? Getting to the heart of the matter is the objective, isn't it, or do you think trying to sound like our idea of what proper philosophers sound like is the most important thing? Yes, we do have to use definitions, and it is important that they are clearly established at the outset, but they are only tools to help us, they are not an end in themselves.

I think this is not advisable since both parties will be talking pass each other till the cows come home.

Isn't that what is already happening? It seems that everybody is more interested in obliterating everybody else than trying to understand what they are saying. How many posts have their been about morality recently? Has anything at all been established about the nature of morality? You seem to be defending something that clearly is not working.

[Dontaskme]

"Morality", "subjectivity" and "objectivity" are synthetically constructed concepts, none of them have any form of existence outside of human minds.

The human mind is also a concept.

Reality is neither moral nor immoral...except in this conception that no-thing conceives.


Plato — 'No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.'

[Harbal]

"Morality", "subjectivity" and "objectivity" are synthetically constructed concepts, none of them have any form of existence outside of human minds.

The human mind is also a concept.

Reality is neither moral nor immoral...except in this conception that no-thing conceives.


Plato — 'No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.'

Do you feel that this brings much clarity and enlightenment to the situation, Dontask?

[Sculptor]

Plato — 'No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.'

Self flattery does not make what you say the truth.

[Dontaskme]

Plato — 'No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.'

Self flattery does not make what you say the truth.

There’s no one to speak the truth..that’s the truth ..it’s a relative empty concept, is truth....

The quote is metaphysical ..it has Nothing to do with self flattery foo.

[Dontaskme]

"Morality", "subjectivity" and "objectivity" are synthetically constructed concepts, none of them have any form of existence outside of human minds.

The human mind is also a concept.

Reality is neither moral nor immoral...except in this conception that no-thing conceives.


Plato — 'No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.'

Do you feel that this brings much clarity and enlightenment to the situation, Dontask?

Well sure it does.

To be fair, I really can’t even understand or get my head around why humans would bother to discuss anything on a forum with other people, I mean surely that would just lead to endless arguing ...it just seems all so self indulgent and pointless, creating unnecessary tension and disharmony within the mind body mechanism.

I think the brain got too big in the human primate, it developed language which led to knowledge, which resulted in conflict and separation and a drive to be competitive and selfish, almost destructive as the species became more self absorbed and greedy...this brain got too big...and has been the cause of all human mental suffering in my opinion...that’s why it’s a good idea to get enlightened..to go back to the garden, to the end of knowledge...and yet still be able to function at optimum capacity in a world shared by every other sentiment species or beast.

The only real thing worthy of discussion is the actual truth and being able to understand what real truth is, now that could well be the only way out of human suffering for good...but no one seems to want to hear the real actual truth of their being, rather they are too much focused on the fictional character, the one that is believed to be born, that more often than not lives a life of suffering and heartache and hardships...all to just get old and diseased until death comes.. I mean it’s not much of a life is it, hardly any point to it at all really.

What I find really crazy and sad about the human condition is that they set up these mental health groups....and that people actually do believe they have some kind of mental problem, when in reality there is absolutely nothing wrong with them whatsoever..it’s just that they’ve bought into the lie of conceptual belief that has been programmed to them from some other source outside their own mind.