Is morality objective or subjective?

[henry quirk]

Do you slit the throats of people you find obnoxious?

As a moral subjectivist: he has no reason not to outside of personal preference and fear of reprisal.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Have you read other Kant scholars such as Berlin?

I had a quick review of where Isaiah Berlin stand re Kant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berlin/

It's all just books you haven't read at this moment isn't it? You didn't read those chapters of Blackburn either, did you?

I had converted Blackburn's two book 'Ruling Passion' and Essays to Words and formatted them nicely for speed reading.
It would a waste of my effort if I had not read what is relevant [at present] from the two Blackburn book.
As mentioned I have read Ruling Passion's Preface, Introduction Chapter 7&8 and 9:5.
As for Essay I have read the Intro and 'Moral Realism'.
Generally, one can get a quick idea of the theme of what is read, but I would not claim I am an expert in this case.
If you have strong counter I will read the relevant or the whole book.

Should I presume that when your bring 'Isaiah Berlin' to my attention, that there is something in his writing that would counter my claims re Morality is Objective?

Every good philosoher who covers ethics even tangentially writes something that is counter to your claims. Berlin was an excellent philosopher.

I have 60+ files in my "Critiques of CPR" files.

If there is nothing significant that will counter my claims, then it is not worthwhile for me to read up Berlin's book.

That you would supopose it a waste of your valuable time to read him does you little credit. You must be remarkably conceited to think you are too important for one of the greats.

As stated, I have 60+ files in my "Critiques of CPR" files which would cover those very serious counter of Kant's CPR.
Berlin had not come within my radar from my survey.
If Berlin has very significant counters, he would have been referred by the other Critiques or countered by pro-Kantian.
It is noted Berlin's focus is on the Neo-Kantians where many had bastardized Kant's philosophy; they are those who are dragged into the whirlpool of illusions as warned by Kant in;

Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them {the illusions}.
After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the Illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him. CPR B397

Are you pro-Berlin or against his philosophy?

I'm smart enough to see good in things I don't agree with. Value Pluralism is a very good theory, I can maybe go with it, or with some form of it. But I did actually mention Berlin because of his great many call backs to Kant.

Since you mentioned Berlin, I have given him some attention since I am always focused on looking out for strong critiques of Kant's philosophy.
But I noted there are no serious and significant counters from Berlin.

From ChatGpt [with reservations];

Isaiah Berlin is often considered a pluralist rather than a strict realist or antirealist. Berlin's philosophical stance is characterized by a rejection of monism—the idea that there is a single, all-encompassing truth or value that can be applied universally. Instead, he embraced the idea that there are irreducible and conflicting values, and different individuals or cultures may legitimately hold different and irreconcilable values.

Berlin's pluralism is evident in his famous essay "Two Concepts of Liberty," where he distinguished between negative freedom (freedom from interference) and positive freedom (freedom as self-mastery). He argued that these two concepts of freedom can come into conflict and that there is no easy reconciliation between them. This reflects his broader view that values and goods are plural and sometimes incompatible.

In summary, Isaiah Berlin is often seen as a pluralist who rejects the idea of a single, overarching truth or set of values, and instead, he acknowledges the existence of multiple, conflicting values in the realm of philosophy and political thought.

If the above is true, then based on the first para above
"instead, he embraced the idea that there are irreducible and conflicting values, and different individuals or cultures may legitimately hold different and irreconcilable values"
then, Berlin's philosophical view is a FSK-ed view based on different individuals' or cultural FSKs.

A little bit, yes. Imagine if that FSK theory was proposed by a sane person who didn't want to proceed to a megalomaniacal project to create one FSK to rule them all. Somebody who sees the incommensurable nature of conflicting moral desires and rather than saying "I shall dominate them with my perfect one size eats all moral FSK", instead just observes how things actually are.

There's an awful lot there for you to learn from if you read books and learn from them. But what you are going to do is declare Berlin one of your greatest fans because you think he FSKs aren't you?

You understand what is "system theory" which in inherent in reality.
Even Blackburn mentioned 'inputs and outputs' which implied "system."

Systems theory is the transdisciplinary[1] study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structure, function and role, and expressed through its relations with other systems. A system is "more than the sum of its parts" by expressing synergy or emergent behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory

Thus my proposed of a Framework and System to cover [not rule] all of reality is not invalid nor unsound, i.e. Framework and System of Realization [emergence of reality] and Knowledge.
Note the mentioned of 'emergence' in the above quote.

Your denier of my FSK approach in the light of 'System Theory' indicate your ignorance of reality from this perspective.

Either you reject "system theory" or you counter my FSK has nothing to do with "system theory".
"Framework" is critical to identify what type of 'system' and sub-system is involved.

[Immanuel Can]

Do you slit the throats of people you find obnoxious?

As a moral subjectivist: he has no reason not to outside of personal preference and fear of reprisal.

So if he supposes he can get away with it, and he wants to, then it's not immoral. And afterward, nobody can explain why they would have any right to incarcerate him either, since he will have done nothing immoral.

Maybe the kind of thinking that it takes to make somebody a Hamas terrorist isn't so hard to find after all.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Controlling root cause of evil via restricting birth of 'supposed evil' sources is not effective.
Evil is an inherent potential in all humans [deviated from evolutionary defaults].
As such, evil can rear its ugly head from other sources when one source is eliminated.

I don't understand what you mean by that.

If evil is an inherent potential in humans, eliminating that source would eliminate the knowledge that evil is being commited.
So where do you imagine this 'other' source of evil is going to rear-up from... if and when the human source is eliminated?

From what I read if you proposed we limit the birth of people from a group of people who are evidently evil, e.g. say those who are member of the Nazi Party or perhaps Germans then.

The above approach is not effective and perhaps immoral because within the Nazi members there are inherently good people who had no choice but for optimality sake joined the Nazi party to facilitate their well-being.
Another problem is how do you determine who is evil and who is not to impose birth control on them?

Now even, if you got prevented birth of all Nazi then, it will not work because evil will rear its ugly head elsewhere.
Note ISIS, Pol Pot and genocides from other groups that appeared after the Nazi party was dismembered.

Thus the control of 'birth' is not an effective approach to mitigate evil.

[Veritas Aequitas]

And incest is only truly problematic in regard to possible biological defects.
Otherwise, any number of men and women have engaged in incestuous relationships and found them entirely fulfilling. Myself, for example.

This strike my attention, so warrant a highlight.
Did I read it correctly that trigger a shock, especially with reference to this forum??

[promethean75]

"Good to know where you stand."

I'm dismissed then? Nice! This reminds me of one of those half days at school where u get there in the morning and pretend to do your work when you're really only watchin the clock ready to get da fuk outta there.

[Atla]

That sounds like the opening sentence of an interesting theory. I would like to read the rest one day.

It's a brand new theory, I just came up with it an hour ago. I'm just coming with it right now. Let's write a theory:

Having been forced to deal with sociopaths, narcissists, and even one female psychopath (seriously guys, you can't even begin to imagine how otherworldly that one was), but also dealing with many moral and empathetic people, I think I know a thing or two about morality. I mean, I think I know exactly what it is. It's all a fairly simple psychological thing really at its basis.

And then there's this field of ethics and I can't make heads or tails of it. This theory, that theory, long debates, this position, that position, maybe this, maybe that, we can't decide, like wtf are they talking about?

Well can't it be that that entire field is backwards? Obviously in ethics you must take the human conscience, see how it generates moral views that are visceral first as in they are felt, and then see how these views get expressed in language. Trying to start from language is patent nonsense. (And from this basis the rest of ethics can be built up. Like my position, that the optimal solution would be a worldwide pseudo-realist ethical consensus, but I know this won't happen.)

So how could it be all backwards? Hmm let's see. Well two factors come to mind now. First there is this thousands of years old delusion called objective morality, which is available in texts like the Bible, so I guess that's one reason to start from texts.

The other one: well there are these people who are fairly morally retarded, but not entirely, but otherwise they are nice guys. And they notice that something is quite off, and get super curious about this thing called morality, but never really manage to put their fingers on it. They become obsessed with it, read a lot about it, write a lot about it, try to analyze a lot of text about it, maybe start a philosophical school about it. They write it all down, and then stare at the words, hoping that the words will give them some more answers.

Not sure if I'm one of the retarded ones there, but I won't take that personally. There are philosophers who make a big point of the the notion that humans naturally and unavoidably see the world in normative terms. And when we see the behaviour of animals, they can demonstrate some of the same, but on a more limited scale because they can't articulate their thoughts in words as we do. We are able to recognise in some situations that dogs have a sense of what is fair and unfair, and they clearly don't approve of unfairness. But we're likely fooling ourselves if we think our pets have complex second order moral attitudes such as remorse. There's a line to be drawn between what we can do morally without language and what just doesn't work under that paradigm.

There's a moral realist called Christine Korsgaard who has done a bunch of stuff along those lines. She does Neo-Kantian Constructivism, which is another weird theory. If VA could read and understand things other people write, this shoit would blow his mind. But the very broad brush version of it isn't a million miles from some stuff you've said about making morality real if everyone can agree an agenda. While I think it's a bit wrong headed I get the point and I wouldn't say it was junk. here's a 15 minute interview with her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzBLPDt-Bl0

Err no, I didn't have you in mind.
I wasn't talking about seeing the world in normative terms, I was talking about seeing it in moral terms. That is given and the field should already start from there obviously, imo.

We tend to see the world in normative terms, and behind some of this there is morality, behind some of this there isn't.

Don't know what you mean by an agenda that everyone can agree on. A beneficial worldwide consensus would deep down be based on our capacity for morality, but then go against what many people want. It's not possible today because it would go against like what 80% of humans want and this needs to go way below 50. People don't want a worldwide beneficial consensus because they don't want to make the necessary sacrifices. Maybe in 300 years, after we've been sufficiently gene modified.

[Dontaskme]

Some wise questions for you IC

What wisdom says, is "Don't bother answering her."

Seems like a reasonably straightforward intelligent question to ask you Mr Dodge Y

I'll put it to you again: If God claims to be the Father of all earthly beings, like it is written in the Bible, then surely God himself to pull off that trick would have needed to have his own biological Father, if not, then where did he get all his human sperm from, the capacity to sire all the children on earth?

My point is, You're God is just a very silly idea isn't it? And I am sorry if I offend you by using facts and logic.

Failure to explain is failure to communicate you're God. Good luck!

Isaiah 64:7 – “Yet, Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you our potter: we are all the work of your hand.” 1 John 3:1 – “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.

[Harbal]

You don't have to know them personally. The evidence is abundant. Right now, you could find a bunch of gleeful terrorists shooting, raping and murdering Israelis. Then you could find thousands of people engaged in demonstrations in support of the murderers, chanting "Gas the Jews" a the top of their lungs.

What I have said to you about morality is based on my own experience of it...

You're deliberately avoiding the stuff I showed you. But it doesn't change the obvious truth that different people have different emotions over the same situation. And even your experience will show you that, if you're married.

Of course different people have different emotions over the same situation, that's the point.

I am not familiar with the concept of "reliable moral information", so I really can't comment.

A subjectivist won't have any, of course. But "reliable moral information" would be something capable of actually giving a moral person a reason to think something is actually right or wrong, and getting it right.

What is a moral person? And you still haven't explained what this mysterious thing, "reliable moral information", is. You have only said what you think it should be capable of.

Okay, then...that's as far as we can go. You like emotions. You want to call them "morality." You don't care about any evidence to the contrary. What more can I say about that?

[Dontaskme]

Controlling root cause of evil via restricting birth of 'supposed evil' sources is not effective.
Evil is an inherent potential in all humans [deviated from evolutionary defaults].
As such, evil can rear its ugly head from other sources when one source is eliminated.

I don't understand what you mean by that.

If evil is an inherent potential in humans, eliminating that source would eliminate the knowledge that evil is being commited.
So where do you imagine this 'other' source of evil is going to rear-up from... if and when the human source is eliminated?

From what I read if you proposed we limit the birth of people from a group of people who are evidently evil, e.g. say those who are member of the Nazi Party or perhaps Germans then.

The above approach is not effective and perhaps immoral because within the Nazi members there are inherently good people who had no choice but for optimality sake joined the Nazi party to facilitate their well-being.
Another problem is how do you determine who is evil and who is not to impose birth control on them?

Now even, if you got prevented birth of all Nazi then, it will not work because evil will rear its ugly head elsewhere.
Note ISIS, Pol Pot and genocides from other groups that appeared after the Nazi party was dismembered.

Thus the control of 'birth' is not an effective approach to mitigate evil.

I'll ask you again, and this time do not drag ISIS, Nazi's and the Pol pots into this mess.


If evil is an inherent potential in humans, aka ( the potential source of evil ) surely wouldn't it just be obvious and logical to assume that by eliminating every last drop of that source from the face of the earth ( sorry to be so blunt ) that would be a sure way to eliminate the very knowledge held by humans that the potential for evil is within every human being.

I'm talking about eliminating the source of evil, the knowing/knower of evil. If there was no one to know evil, then would evil ever be an actual event that happens?

Does my cat know evil, does the mouse he caught and tossed around it's jaws until it's slow horrible death know evil? That's what I'm talking about. The knowledge of evil. The knowing / knower of evil.

[Harbal]

Do you slit the throats of people you find obnoxious?

As a moral subjectivist: he has no reason not to outside of personal preference and fear of reprisal.

So if he supposes he can get away with it, and he wants to, then it's not immoral. And afterward, nobody can explain why they would have any right to incarcerate him either, since he will have done nothing immoral.

Maybe the kind of thinking that it takes to make somebody a Hamas terrorist isn't so hard to find after all.

If you two guys could only agree on where objective morality comes from, you would make a very formidable team.

[Dontaskme]

You like emotions. You want to call them "morality." You don't care about any evidence to the contrary.

Morality is a concept known. To know a concept requires a knower, and a knower requires both a knowing subject and the object of that knowing, it's the same aware phenomena being aware of itself as a concept known...all these words are concepts known that point to knowledge, and is how knowledge is formed.

I can't believe I'm having to repeat this to you.

The Morality concept: according to the knower...principles the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.

How are these distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad known? they are known in their experience as and through the senses. I touch some hot fire, it burns, I feel sad, not happy. I'm in pain which is bad, not good.
I make love to my loved one, it's a happy sensation, it feels good, it feels right, not bad or sad or wrong.

That's how distinctions are known, in this conception, they are inherent within us via their experience within the dream of separation, the artificially imposed realm of duality, the one appearing as the many, two, but not two. Not two, because there is no where for this one to ground itself as a separate entity. One is everywhere at once, one without a second, it is everything all at once.

The noumena is inaccessible to the senses, if the noumena was "accessible" then it would be a phenomenon, and require a further grounding (another noumenon, ad infinitum) Iows, we cannot have any knowledge whatsoever of this world, because we can never, necessarily, experience it as a thing in and of itself independant of the knower. There is only ''knowing'' that cannot be known. Iows, knowledge can only point to the illusory nature of reality, in that it is totally inaccessible. We just have to act as if there is a "real world", even if we cannot verify it.


You cannot know the absolute, because you are the absolute, you are the knowing that cannot be known. There is here, no evidence to the contrary.

Another more succulently explained theory into the nature of mind, lurks somewhere inside the mysterious cavern of every human brain is the inseparable nature of the subject and object phenomena can be read here > viewtopic.php?t=41077

[Iwannaplato]

As a moral subjectivist: he has no reason not to outside of personal preference and fear of reprisal.

So if he supposes he can get away with it, and he wants to, then it's not immoral. And afterward, nobody can explain why they would have any right to incarcerate him either, since he will have done nothing immoral.

Maybe the kind of thinking that it takes to make somebody a Hamas terrorist isn't so hard to find after all.

If you two guys could only agree on where objective morality comes from, you would make a very formidable team.

And then what it is. They have some tendencies to the same side of the spectrum, but what do they do on issues they disagree on?

[Peter Holmes]

You like emotions. You want to call them "morality." You don't care about any evidence to the contrary.

Morality is a concept known. To know a concept requires a knower, and a knower requires both a knowing subject and the object of that knowing, it's the same aware phenomena being aware of itself as a concept known...all these words are concepts known that point to knowledge, and is how knowledge is formed.

I can't believe I'm having to repeat this to you.

The Morality concept: according to the knower...principles the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.

How are these distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad known? they are known in their experience as and through the senses. I touch some hot fire, it burns, I feel sad, not happy. I'm in pain which is bad, not good.
I make love to my loved one, it's a happy sensation, it feels good, it feels right, not bad or sad or wrong.

That's how distinctions are known, in this conception, they are inherent within us via their experience within the dream of separation, the artificially imposed realm of duality, the one appearing as the many, two, but not two. Not two, because there is no where for this one to ground itself as a separate entity. One is everywhere at once, one without a second, it is everything all at once.

The noumena is inaccessible to the senses, if the noumena was "accessible" then it would be a phenomenon, and require a further grounding (another noumenon, ad infinitum) Iows, we cannot have any knowledge whatsoever of this world, because we can never, necessarily, experience it as a thing in and of itself independant of the knower. There is only ''knowing'' that cannot be known. Iows, knowledge can only point to the illusory nature of reality, in that it is totally inaccessible. We just have to act as if there is a "real world", even if we cannot verify it.


You cannot know the absolute, because you are the absolute, you are the knowing that cannot be known. There is here, no evidence to the contrary.

Another more succulently explained theory into the nature of mind, lurks somewhere inside the mysterious cavern of every human brain is the inseparable nature of the subject and object phenomena can be read here > viewtopic.php?t=41077

Thanks. But I fear you may not be joking.

The trouble with mysticism is that you can say what you like.

And that's okay. I just resonate to a different cosmic frequency.

[Harbal]

So if he supposes he can get away with it, and he wants to, then it's not immoral. And afterward, nobody can explain why they would have any right to incarcerate him either, since he will have done nothing immoral.

Maybe the kind of thinking that it takes to make somebody a Hamas terrorist isn't so hard to find after all.

If you two guys could only agree on where objective morality comes from, you would make a very formidable team.

And then what it is. They have some tendencies to the same side of the spectrum, but what do they do on issues they disagree on?

Well IC does the same as he does with problematic questions; he just ignores them. I haven't studied henry deeply enough to know what he does.