Peter Holmes: What is Fact.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Since our definition of morality differ contrastingly, I would not be able to go along with the above.

In the above casuistry scenario, I would say, the person should do what is best to his current circumstances.
It is possible for there to be 7+ billions views given the 7+ billion of humans with different varieties of human nature and inclinations.

In my model and system of morality, and upon the above events, I will just let nature takes its course and hope for the best, but what is critical is we must go back to the drawing board and ensure no one will ever think or is motivated to rob a bank in the future. Thus we need to nip the problem at the roots rather than fire-fighting.

To nip the problem at the bud, we need a moral system that understand the whys [genus and species] of the relevant moral facts.

The example I gave was only to show that you can have more than one possible 'moral' concern, making them non-universal. You added one of your own but that just proves these are artificial constructs, not literally real 'facts' about nature itself.

Moral facts are not of physical nature but rather they are "programmed" within human nature which the latter is part of the whole of Nature.

The meaning of anything "moral" relates at minimal to what one 'should' do in given circumstances. But even "should" (or ought) mean nothing without at least some other person or being of which your behavior can impose upon. If no one is around to be affected, is masturbating a 'good' or 'bad' thing? Is killing oneself, even, a relevant misdeed to oneself given the consequence of being dead holds no debt of conscience to matter.

As I had stated morality is confined to the individual to manage his actions, which obviously will impact himself, others and the environment.
Thus the question of 'if no one is around' is irrelevant to morality.

If every each individual were to manage his own moral competence effectively in not killing humans in alignment with the inherent moral fact, then no humans will be killed. This is extended to every each individual not doing evil, then there will be no human based evil at all.
The above is seemingly idealistic, but the objective is to progressively get as close as possible to the "impossible" ideal.

Moral codes are necessarily social. They are also NOT universal because how could a lion ever be considered behaving when they have to eat their prey? I'm sure that a giselle would say eating them by lions is a sin and that they should rightfully be penalized for it....or at least be ashamed and guilty for behaving as themselves.

I have been discussing this with Belinda.
Individuals, family, groups, States, Nation, even the United Nations with consensus established 'moral codes' but these are relative/subjective to a committee and people who agree with them.
As I had stated these "moral" codes are constructed based on intuitions and they may or may not be in alignment with the inherent moral facts. The point is these subjective "moral" codes are not verified empirically and philosophically to their groundings to something physical and mental within nature, i.e. human nature.

Nevertheless, these varieties of 'moral' codes by groups, tribes, politics, governments, religions, United Nations do align with the moral facts on 'humans killing humans'. There is no evidence of any groups that condoned premeditated murder of humans.
While some groups will permit killing of humans in certain circumstances, it only mean they have to strive for greater moral progress to align with the inherent moral fact within each individual.

The trolley dilemmas, as with other similar moral dilemmas, suffice to demonstate situations in which one's actions (even if indeterminately moral or immoral), are still relatively judged by the 'objects' in the imaginary experiments. That is, the other people involved. The one you saved will believe you did a 'good' thing for them regardless of who they are to you. This shows that what can be 'moral' to one person (or perspective of any class of conscience-holding beings) can be 'immoral' relative to another. So morals are relative, not universal as you are aiming for. They are also 'conditional' as these experiments demonstrate, which again implies them as only relative behaviors of judgeworthy conduct.

Btw, what I am aiming for is moral facts are universal to humans and human nature only, not eternal independent Universals as in Plato's sense.

If you are stuck with moral relativism then there will be no moral progress.
But in reality it is evident there are moral progress which must be against some moral standards.
These standards are the inherent moral facts [.. I have justified a few] that are driving moral progress.

I'm not sure that I can help much further at present because I too once thought that there had to be something universally and unequivocally 'virtuous' of behavior across any possible options. I'm not so hopeful now because I see it come down to 'politics' that have only conditional benefits AND drawbacks to every action because you cannot please everyone all the time without someone somewhere requiring to sacrifice their own comforts.

That is because you have not researched the topic extensively and reflect into the greater depths and widths.

Actually I have. I did this years ago when I first begun studying philosophy. The fact that I came to the conclusion that these are relative codes of conduct meant to me that I have no need to study more to determine whether they are or are not relative.

This leaves ONLY social contracting, whether imposed upon you by others or negotiated with your consent. And social contracts are the arena of 'politics' (exactly as the definition you provided above defines it.)

Note my usual hint [not a claim of certainty];
Survey: 56% of Philosophers Accept Moral Realism
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30893

If you are stuck with moral relativism, you are in the minority where your views are not realistic.
If there are no moral facts that drive moral standards of good, then evil will prevail where at every corner, there will be potential 'Hitlers' emerging to claim their "moral" codes are "moral".

I have researched on morality and ethics very extensively beginning with a focus on Kant and Nietzsche and my recently new directory on Morality and Ethics has >1000 files in >50 folders. Against what I know from my moral database, your knowledge of morality is very shallow and narrow.

You are just circling back to the fact that we DO have to use politics to measure, create, and enforce laws that just get treated as "tentative" solutions. And depending upon which political persuasion you choose, you might believe that we shall serve the majority. ...or the minority whom you might feel needs exception over the population.

I proposed the 'root' of the problem is those "windows of development". So you CAN use politics (with science) to try to optimally make everyone during these periods have the SAME experiences needed to get the assignments in sync.

For instance, we might make spanking illegal (as has many now do) on the assumed or determined validity and soundness of empirical studies AND logic. But the lack of any spanking can also create issues. Many psychopaths seem to have this property along with a likely indication of being single children of helicopter parents. They, for instance, may not learn the struggle that might be necessary to empathize internally WHY some behavior is deemed inappropriate socially.

At present 'morality' is entangled with politics but that is only circumstancial.
Morality must be independent of Politics in the future.
This is like at one time where Science was part of Philosophy, then it became independent by itself with its own Framework and System.
At present, human conduct [moral elements] are addressed everywhere, i.e. in politics, religion, tribes, gangs, etc..
To be effective, Morality must be independent of Politics and other set of activities.

As I had stated, re morality in dealing with evil and good, resolving its problem is to deal with its roots, i.e. identifying the inherent moral facts and strive to make them more effective.

In establishing an effective Framework and System of Moral and Ethics, we need to define what is evil and good, then construct a taxonomy of evil within a hierarchy of degree of evil_ness with human killing of humans at the highest degree of evilness.
Spanking is not a critical issue and it will be a non-issue when every each person improves his moral competence.

[Atla]

Kemp Smith! That's the one I have.
I f you ever want to discuss what he is talking about, let me know. I also have books nd papers about him too many to mention. I can send them on to you. somehow. if you like.

So after wading through all the introductions and prefaces, where Kant explains in complicated language, how his somewhat dogmatic version of representationalism is very complete and necessary and all that, I finally got to the Transcendental Aesthetic, Space. He says:

In the course of this investigation it will be found that there are two pure forms of sensible intuition, serving as principles of a priori knowledge, namely, space and time.

Conclusions from the above Concepts

(a) Space does not represent any property of things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relation to one another. That is to say, space does not represent any determination that attaches to the objects themselves, and which remains even when abstraction has been made of all the subjective conditions of intuition. For no determinations, whether absolute or relative, can be intuited prior to the existence of the things to which they belong, and none, therefore, can be intuited a priori.

So it seems like my suspicion was correct, Kant simply misses the twofold nature of space (and time). There is space and time as "pure forms of sensible intuition", and there is the spacetime of the natural world, and the two are not directly linked. But the former is in a way, a representation of the latter, when it comes to representing the outside world. Our existence is spaceless and timeless in the Kantian sense, but bound by spacetime in the Einsteinian (and formerly Newtonian) sense.

Besides, one can experience states of mind, where the Kantian space or time or both, kinda get switched off. This usually happens due to deep meditation, drugs, brain damage etc.

No, For our discussion here, I'm afraid you have this backwards. Look at it like this: Einstein might start a conversation on space and time with "Two objects exert a force of attraction on one another known as "gravity" and if we...."" ; then the interruption: Excuse me, but what do you mean by "objects" and "force" and "attraction" and the rest? Einstein, knowing where this goes, would politely respond that this is not a discussion of the phenomenological examination of concepts, or of space and time, but an apriori discussion of the empirical concept of gravity.

If you work within the empirical model, then you get what you say above; and if you work with the phenomenological model, you get the opposite. The phenomenological model is philosophy, physics is not, and the former is what is at issue here. What is NOT on the table here is what Einstein had to say about time and space as a physicist. If it were, this discussion would be very short lived: see Einstein's general theory of relativity. but that is not what this is about. It is about Kantian idealism, which is an examination of the presuppositions of language and logic and experience.

I'd say your phenomenology vs physics view is a false dichotomy. One doesn't get to choose one or the other, so I can't have it backwards either. Instead, they get unified into one picture, after we understand the twofold nature of space and time.

[Belinda]

Veritas Aequitas wrote :

There is no evidence of any groups that condoned premeditated murder of humans.
While some groups will permit killing of humans in certain circumstances, it only mean they have to strive for greater moral progress to align with the inherent moral fact within each individual.

But groups don't "strive for greater moral progress to align with the inherent moral fact within each individual"

Groups often premeditate war on other groups knowing full well there will be killing and other losses. Wars are at least as lethal as they ever were.

Whether or not individuals contain "inherent moral fact" , groups surely do not!

[Veritas Aequitas]

Veritas Aequitas wrote :

There is no evidence of any groups that condoned premeditated murder of humans.
While some groups will permit killing of humans in certain circumstances, it only mean they have to strive for greater moral progress to align with the inherent moral fact within each individual.

But groups don't "strive for greater moral progress to align with the inherent moral fact within each individual"

Groups often premeditate war on other groups knowing full well there will be killing and other losses. Wars are at least as lethal as they ever were.

Whether or not individuals contain "inherent moral fact" , groups surely do not!

Yes, groups comprising and led by individuals [e.g. Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and the likes] had been going on a killing spree via wars, genocides, mass rapes, and other terrible evil and violent acts.
As I had stated, that the above happened is because of either damage to, weakness or immaturity of the inherent moral function within the brain/mind.

In parallel to the terrible evilness that has occurred and still on-going there is the slow unfoldment and gradual activation of the inherent moral function within humans.
Note the trend of moral progress of chattel slavery since >10,000 years ago to the present where slavery is banned in all sovereign nations which are obviously groups.
There are other gradual progressive trends of various moral elements.

This gradual progress is driven by the inherent moral function pulsing within the individuals and converging collectively as a group activity.
Thus you cannot deny groups do not exercise moral drives within this collective sense and there has been gradual progress to that effect.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Kemp Smith! That's the one I have.
I f you ever want to discuss what he is talking about, let me know. I also have books nd papers about him too many to mention. I can send them on to you. somehow. if you like.

So after wading through all the introductions and prefaces, where Kant explains in complicated language, how his somewhat dogmatic version of representationalism is very complete and necessary and all that, I finally got to the Transcendental Aesthetic, Space. He says:

In the course of this investigation it will be found that there are two pure forms of sensible intuition, serving as principles of a priori knowledge, namely, space and time.

Conclusions from the above Concepts

(a) Space does not represent any property of things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relation to one another. That is to say, space does not represent any determination that attaches to the objects themselves, and which remains even when abstraction has been made of all the subjective conditions of intuition. For no determinations, whether absolute or relative, can be intuited prior to the existence of the things to which they belong, and none, therefore, can be intuited a priori.

So it seems like my suspicion was correct, Kant simply misses the twofold nature of space (and time). There is space and time as "pure forms of sensible intuition", and there is the spacetime of the natural world, and the two are not directly linked. But the former is in a way, a representation of the latter, when it comes to representing the outside world. Our existence is spaceless and timeless in the Kantian sense, but bound by spacetime in the Einsteinian (and formerly Newtonian) sense.

Besides, one can experience states of mind, where the Kantian space or time or both, kinda get switched off. This usually happens due to deep meditation, drugs, brain damage etc.

No, For our discussion here, I'm afraid you have this backwards. Look at it like this: Einstein might start a conversation on space and time with "Two objects exert a force of attraction on one another known as "gravity" and if we...."" ; then the interruption: Excuse me, but what do you mean by "objects" and "force" and "attraction" and the rest? Einstein, knowing where this goes, would politely respond that this is not a discussion of the phenomenological examination of concepts, or of space and time, but an apriori discussion of the empirical concept of gravity.

If you work within the empirical model, then you get what you say above; and if you work with the phenomenological model, you get the opposite. The phenomenological model is philosophy, physics is not, and the former is what is at issue here. What is NOT on the table here is what Einstein had to say about time and space as a physicist. If it were, this discussion would be very short lived: see Einstein's general theory of relativity. but that is not what this is about. It is about Kantian idealism, which is an examination of the presuppositions of language and logic and experience.

I'd say your phenomenology vs physics view is a false dichotomy. One doesn't get to choose one or the other, so I can't have it backwards either. Instead, they get unified into one picture, after we understand the twofold nature of space and time.

You preceded every response of yours to mine with an accusation of 'foolish, stupidity, insanity and madness' and I countered it is you are the one of what you are accusing of me.
Your above views are that of an ignorant and arrogant fool.

It is a good thing that you are reading Kant.
In general it is said, one need a 3-years full time or a 5-years part time reading and researching on Kant before one has a thorough grasp of Kant's theories.

Here you have merely spent one week or so on merely the very small tip of Kant's iceberg, i.e. the Transcendental Aesthetic and you are arrogantly pretending to be an expert on Kant and disputing his views on 'space'.
Worst you are ignorantly relying on authority, i.e. Einstein's relatively which is comparatively outdated by Quantum Mechanics.

Worst you have merely refer to one small part of the conclusion of the small section of Kant's whole book and not even grasping the essence of what you have quoted.
Kant warned against cherry picking in critiquing his view but insist one must understand the whole of his work before one critique can made any headway.

One of the central theme of Kant's theory is there is no things-in-themselves, i.e. thing-in-itself, thus no space-in-itself in the absolute sense.
It is said that Einstein's Physics is partially Kantian, i.e. relative to the observers, but his ultimate philosophy of an assumed-independent-objective-reality does not align with Kant's transcendental idealism [aka empirical realism].

However whilst Einstein's Physics is true, it is only true relative to his Framework and System of Relativity.
At present Einstein's relative truth is overridden by the truths of Quantum Mechanics just as Einstein's truths overrode those of Newton.

"Spooky" quantum mechanics [that spooked Einstein] is in alignment with Kant's central theme, there are no things-in-themselves; there are only things-upon-participation-of-humans as proven by Bell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stewart_Bell

I suggest you continue to read Kant to the end and don't try to critique Kant [that arrogantly] until you have at least spent one year full time reading and understand [not necessary agree with] the whole theory of Kant. Preferably it should be 3 years full time or 5 years part time.

[Atla]

You preceded every response of yours to mine with an accusation of 'foolish, stupidity, insanity and madness' and I countered it is you are the one of what you are accusing of me.
Your above views are that of an ignorant and arrogant fool.

It is a good thing that you are reading Kant.
In general it is said, one need a 3-years full time or a 5-years part time reading and researching on Kant before one has a thorough grasp of Kant's theories.

Here you have merely spent one week or so on merely the very small tip of Kant's iceberg, i.e. the Transcendental Aesthetic and you are arrogantly pretending to be an expert on Kant and disputing his views on 'space'.
Worst you are ignorantly relying on authority, i.e. Einstein's relatively which is comparatively outdated by Quantum Mechanics.

Worst you have merely refer to one small part of the conclusion of the small section of Kant's whole book and not even grasping the essence of what you have quoted.
Kant warned against cherry picking in critiquing his view but insist one must understand the whole of his work before one critique can made any headway.

One of the central theme of Kant's theory is there is no things-in-themselves, i.e. thing-in-itself, thus no space-in-itself in the absolute sense.
It is said that Einstein's Physics is partially Kantian, i.e. relative to the observers, but his ultimate philosophy of an assumed-independent-objective-reality does not align with Kant's transcendental idealism [aka empirical realism].

However whilst Einstein's Physics is true, it is only true relative to his Framework and System of Relativity.
At present Einstein's relative truth is overridden by the truths of Quantum Mechanics just as Einstein's truths overrode those of Newton.

"Spooky" quantum mechanics [that spooked Einstein] is in alignment with Kant's central theme, there are no things-in-themselves; there are only things-upon-participation-of-humans as proven by Bell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stewart_Bell

I suggest you continue to read Kant to the end and don't try to critique Kant [that arrogantly] until you have at least spent one year full time reading and understand [not necessary agree with] the whole theory of Kant. Preferably it should be 3 years full time or 5 years part time.

You can shove your 5 years of reading and misunderstanding Kant up your ass. You are a foolish, stupid, insane, mad ignorant and arrogant fool that's all.

I suggest you give up on 'philosophy' alltogether. Kant may have been wrong here and there, but still I highly doubt that he ever mad the claim that there are no things-in-themselves, and everything is related to humans. He himself seems to keep saying otherwise. You're the only one I've ever seen make that claim. You're the type of idiot who misunderstands representationalism, thinks that the representation IS the whole world.

"there are only things-upon-participation-of-humans as proven by Bell" you don't have the vaguest fucking clue what you are talking about, do you. Neither Einsteinian relativity, nor QM-type relativity claim anything like that, even remotely. I guess in your 60 IQ mind, if you see the word 'relative', you think it refers to one and the same thing, regardless of topic.

[Belinda]

Veritas Aequitas wrote :

There is no evidence of any groups that condoned premeditated murder of humans.
While some groups will permit killing of humans in certain circumstances, it only mean they have to strive for greater moral progress to align with the inherent moral fact within each individual.

But groups don't "strive for greater moral progress to align with the inherent moral fact within each individual"

Groups often premeditate war on other groups knowing full well there will be killing and other losses. Wars are at least as lethal as they ever were.

Whether or not individuals contain "inherent moral fact" , groups surely do not!

Yes, groups comprising and led by individuals [e.g. Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and the likes] had been going on a killing spree via wars, genocides, mass rapes, and other terrible evil and violent acts.
As I had stated, that the above happened is because of either damage to, weakness or immaturity of the inherent moral function within the brain/mind.

In parallel to the terrible evilness that has occurred and still on-going there is the slow unfoldment and gradual activation of the inherent moral function within humans.
Note the trend of moral progress of chattel slavery since >10,000 years ago to the present where slavery is banned in all sovereign nations which are obviously groups.
There are other gradual progressive trends of various moral elements.

This gradual progress is driven by the inherent moral function pulsing within the individuals and converging collectively as a group activity.
Thus you cannot deny groups do not exercise moral drives within this collective sense and there has been gradual progress to that effect.

You and I subscribe to the same moral function against brutality and against slavery. These moral functions are historical-cultural not genetic. There is a history of ideas against brutality and against slavery, and this history is sufficient explanation for progression away from brutality and slavery.

Your belief that men are genetically not slavers or brutes is a dangerous belief because it tends to cause complacency. There is a possibility of atrocity in all men and a collective of slavers and brutes is worse than the same number of isolated individual brutes.

An illustration of your belief in genetic morality is as follows. Shortly after the war, a man said to me "British people could not have become Nazis; those atrocities would not have happened here".

[Skepdick]

blah blah blah

Dude, you are as angry as somebody whose entire philosophy has been falsified!

[Atla]

blah blah blah

Dude, you are as angry as somebody whose entire philosophy has been falsified!

VA is a dog, you are also a dog, this is the only way to communicate. And no one has shown anything wrong with my philosophy.

[Advocate]

[quote=Atla post_id=483710 time=1607365898 user_id=15497]
[quote=Skepdick post_id=483656 time=1607348872 user_id=17350]
[quote=Atla post_id=483471 time=1607237743 user_id=15497]
blah blah blah
[/quote]
Dude, you are as angry as somebody whose entire philosophy has been falsified!
[/quote]
VA is a dog, you are also a dog, this is the only way to communicate. And no one has shown anything wrong with my philosophy. :)
[/quote]

What's wrong with it is that it's not mine. If your philosophy were right then it would be my philosophy.

[Atla]

Dude, you are as angry as somebody whose entire philosophy has been falsified!

VA is a dog, you are also a dog, this is the only way to communicate. And no one has shown anything wrong with my philosophy.

What's wrong with it is that it's not mine. If your philosophy were right then it would be my philosophy.

So you took a lot of rather obvious, instrumentalist, surface-level insight and unified them into one system, and then crowned yourself the greatest philosopher of all time. I think I'll pass

[Advocate]

[quote=Atla post_id=483712 time=1607368512 user_id=15497]
[quote=Advocate post_id=483711 time=1607366509 user_id=15238]
[quote=Atla post_id=483710 time=1607365898 user_id=15497]

VA is a dog, you are also a dog, this is the only way to communicate. And no one has shown anything wrong with my philosophy. :)
[/quote]

What's wrong with it is that it's not mine. If your philosophy were right then it would be my philosophy.
[/quote]
So you took a lot of rather obvious, instrumentalist, surface-level insight and unified them into one system, and then crowned yourself the greatest philosopher of all time. I think I'll pass :)
[/quote]

No other philosopher has been able to do remotely that much, so far as i've seen. None of the big names for certain, and the value of it is in it's pragmatic simplicity. Anyhow, it's The Truth and it'll be widely known as such sooner or later when other philosophers get their shit together. As for surface level, it goes all the way to the bottom.

[Atla]

What's wrong with it is that it's not mine. If your philosophy were right then it would be my philosophy.

So you took a lot of rather obvious, instrumentalist, surface-level insight and unified them into one system, and then crowned yourself the greatest philosopher of all time. I think I'll pass

No other philosopher has been able to do remotely that much, so far as i've seen. None of the big names for certain, and the value of it is in it's pragmatic simplicity. Anyhow, it's The Truth and it'll be widely known as such sooner or later when other philosophers get their shit together.

Suffice to say I aimed much higher than that with my unified picture

[Advocate]

[quote=Atla post_id=483714 time=1607370370 user_id=15497]
[quote=Advocate post_id=483713 time=1607369529 user_id=15238]
[quote=Atla post_id=483712 time=1607368512 user_id=15497]

So you took a lot of rather obvious, instrumentalist, surface-level insight and unified them into one system, and then crowned yourself the greatest philosopher of all time. I think I'll pass :)
[/quote]

No other philosopher has been able to do remotely that much, so far as i've seen. None of the big names for certain, and the value of it is in it's pragmatic simplicity. Anyhow, it's The Truth and it'll be widely known as such sooner or later when other philosophers get their shit together.
[/quote]
Suffice to say I aimed much higher than that with my unified picture
[/quote]

OK, so depth isn't the benchmark any more, then it goes as high as unifying all knowledge and creating utopia. Is that high enough?

[Atla]

No other philosopher has been able to do remotely that much, so far as i've seen. None of the big names for certain, and the value of it is in it's pragmatic simplicity. Anyhow, it's The Truth and it'll be widely known as such sooner or later when other philosophers get their shit together.

Suffice to say I aimed much higher than that with my unified picture

OK, so depth isn't the benchmark any more, then it goes as high as unifying all knowledge and creating utopia. Is that high enough?

If you are still after utopia with such enthusiasm, I would advise against unifying all knowledge, you might realize that utopia probably can't be done.