What could make morality objective?

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2024 12:19 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2024 8:43 am
Your ideological view [philosophical realism] is very mystical [metaphysical] in that you are chasing for an illusion that is beyond the empirical.
Not so. You fantasise about something beyond the physical. I don't, and won't until there's evidence for it.
Seriously, How?

What is real to me is what is empirically real, confined to what is empirically possible.
What is a real apple to me is that apple that I can interact with physically, empirically and intellectually altogether.
As such, this real apple cannot exists absolutely independent of my human conditions.

On the other hand, you are the one who is fantasizing about an apple that is beside the empirical apple, i.e. the apple-as-a-fact that exists absolutely independent of the human conditions, i.e. it exists regardless of whether there are humans or not.

What you are engaging with is metaphysical and chasing an illusion as misled by an evolutionary default.
Also, if there is no noumenon (thing-in-itself), it's irrational to conclude that there is something we can never know about reality, including our selves. It's a kind of mysticism. And its unfalsifiable circularity is what has dazzled and seduced you, along with many others.
VA: Cannot understand your point.
Quite. And that incomprehension is what's holding you back.
The protocol is when someone don't understand, the onus is on you to explain and make it simpler to understand.

In this case, it is more likely you cannot comprehend the concept of noumenon, which is my forte.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 4:07 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2024 12:19 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2024 8:43 am
Your ideological view [philosophical realism] is very mystical [metaphysical] in that you are chasing for an illusion that is beyond the empirical.
Not so. You fantasise about something beyond the physical. I don't, and won't until there's evidence for it.
Seriously, How?

What is real to me is what is empirically real, confined to what is empirically possible.
What is a real apple to me is that apple that I can interact with physically, empirically and intellectually altogether.
As such, this real apple cannot exists absolutely independent of my human conditions.
Why can't it? Why can't things exist independently from humans? After all, they existed before humans evolved; would have existed had humans not evolved; and will exist when we've gone. And there's absolutely no reason to think otherwise. And you have not presented any argument to justify your claim.

Try to complete this sentence. 'Things cannot exist absolutely independent from humans because...'

And, to repeat my point about the noumenon:

If there is no noumenon (thing-in-itself), it's irrational to conclude that there is something we can never know about reality, including our selves. It's a kind of mysticism. And its unfalsifiable circularity is what has dazzled and seduced you, along with many others.

Let me try to explain this.

1 There is no noumenon - no thing-in-itself.
2 Therefore, there is no reality that we humans can't know or know about.
3 Therefore, we humans are not limited to knowing only the reality that we can know, because there is no other reality.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 4:07 am real to me
That's not the same as real
Atla
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Atla »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 4:07 am What you are engaging with is metaphysical and chasing an illusion as misled by an evolutionary default.
Yes he's chasing the illusion of direct perception, do you know who else are chasing another illusion (a much worse one)? The Kantians who think that the representation they experience is reality itself.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 2:20 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 4:07 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2024 12:19 pm
Not so. You fantasise about something beyond the physical. I don't, and won't until there's evidence for it.
Seriously, How?

What is real to me is what is empirically real, confined to what is empirically possible.
What is a real apple to me is that apple that I can interact with physically, empirically and intellectually altogether.
As such, this real apple cannot exists absolutely independent of my human conditions.
Why can't it? Why can't things exist independently from humans? After all, they existed before humans evolved; would have existed had humans not evolved; and will exist when we've gone. And there's absolutely no reason to think otherwise. And you have not presented any argument to justify your claim.

Try to complete this sentence. 'Things cannot exist absolutely independent from humans because...'
I highlighted the difference between relative and absolute independent from humans.

The emergence, realization, cognition, perception and description that things exist independently from humans or before there were humans
is contingent upon a specific human-based collective of subjects FSERC.

The concept of before or after humans is based on the concept of time which is grounded and contingent upon the human-based science-physics FSERC.
The concept of "independence" from humans is based on the human-based common sense and science-physics FSERC. So this 'independence' is relative to a human-based FSERC.

As such, things can only exist relatively independent from humans as conditioned upon a collective-of-subjects human based FSERC.
It is obvious, the apple [all external things] exist out there independent from my human conditions but such an independence is only relative, i.e. relative to a human based FSERC.

Therefore things cannot exist absolutely independent from humans, i.e. things cannot exist absolutely by themselves regardless of whether there are humans or not.

And, to repeat my point about the noumenon:

If there is no noumenon (thing-in-itself), it's irrational to conclude that there is something we can never know about reality, including our selves. It's a kind of mysticism. And its unfalsifiable circularity is what has dazzled and seduced you, along with many others.
True, that is why Kant stated,
"otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be Appearance without anything-that-appears"
as you stated is 'irrational'.

Thus, according to Kant for rational sake we have to assume there is a noumenon [thing-in-itself].
However, for Kant to rationalize something does not mean it exists as something that is really real, i.e. a matter of fact. This is merely a logical-fact, not a real-fact.
In this case, the noumenon [thing-in-itself] [thing-in-general] is merely a rational reasoned-thought and not something that really real.
There is nothing empirical to it.

As for the self, the reference the noumenal self or self-in-itself is the unconditional and independent soul, so independent that it survive physical death. This independent self is what the religious are claiming.

As far as humans are concerned, it is rational to conclude there is a self within the living human, but that is only the empirical-self that can be justified via the science-biology and science-psychological FSERC.
To claim there is a noumenal self and the noumenon as really real is delusional.

You claim there is the noumenon, thing-in-itself, self-in-itself that exist absolutely independent of the humans conditions, the collective-of-subject, that is pure metaphysic and mysticism.

Let me try to explain this.
1 There is no noumenon - no thing-in-itself.
2 Therefore, there is no reality that we humans can't know or know about.
3 Therefore, we humans are not limited to knowing only the reality that we can know, because there is no other reality.
Not sure where you are going with the above??

1 There is no real noumenon - no real thing-in-itself within reality.
2. However, one can think of a noumenon but only as a thought never as something that is real.

What is real [true, factual, knowledge, objective] is contingent upon a human-based collective-of-subjects FSERC; it is relatively independent of the human conditions but NEVER absolutely independent of the human conditions.
Atla
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Atla »

Kant and VA asserted that time is human-dependent-a-priori, therefore it is. Case closed.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Atla wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 3:19 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 4:07 am What you are engaging with is metaphysical and chasing an illusion as misled by an evolutionary default.
Yes he's chasing the illusion of direct perception, do you know who else are chasing another illusion (a much worse one)? The Kantians who think that the representation they experience is reality itself.
Kantian do not chase after 'representations' as reality itself, that is what the hardcore idealist are claiming and doing.

What Kantians and the like claim is;
Whatever thing emerged as real to our observations and experience is a culmination of a complex process of emergence, realization of reality, perception of representations, cognition and appearances, which is subsequently justified and described as knowledge.

This culmination of that-something realized as real cannot be absolutely independent of the human conditions.
Somehow the human conditions is intricately part and parcel of the whole process that enable the emergence of that-something as observed and experienced plus being thought, rationalized and justified via a specific collective of subject human based FSERC.

It is only via an evolutionary default driven by an existential crisis that philosophical realists are instinctuated [to facilitate basis survival] to believe [very necessarily within condition] things as observed and experienced are absolutely independent of the human conditions. This is very primal and primitive psychology and philosophical realists [direct and indirect realism, and the like] adopt such an instinct as an fundamentalistic ideology which had hindered humanity's progress.

It is now 2024, not 10,000 BC wherein it is time for humanity to progress to the human-based FSERC basis of relative independence in their grasp of reality.

Question: what has the philosophical realists to lose if they are to wean off their clingingness to the idea of an absolutely independent reality?
Unfortunately the majority of philosophical realists are unable to do so because they are entrapped and infected with the "absolutely-independence" virus; if they can wean it off, they would have gained philosophical maturity.
Atla
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Atla »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2024 5:47 am
Atla wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 3:19 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 4:07 am What you are engaging with is metaphysical and chasing an illusion as misled by an evolutionary default.
Yes he's chasing the illusion of direct perception, do you know who else are chasing another illusion (a much worse one)? The Kantians who think that the representation they experience is reality itself.
Kantian do not chase after 'representations' as reality itself, that is what the hardcore idealist are claiming and doing.

What Kantians and the like claim is;
Whatever thing emerged as real to our observations and experience is a culmination of a complex process of emergence, realization of reality, perception of representations, cognition and appearances, which is subsequently justified and described as knowledge.

This culmination of that-something realized as real cannot be absolutely independent of the human conditions.
Somehow the human conditions is intricately part and parcel of the whole process that enable the emergence of that-something as observed and experienced plus being thought, rationalized and justified via a specific collective of subject human based FSERC.

It is only via an evolutionary default driven by an existential crisis that philosophical realists are instinctuated [to facilitate basis survival] to believe [very necessarily within condition] things as observed and experienced are absolutely independent of the human conditions. This is very primal and primitive psychology and philosophical realists [direct and indirect realism, and the like] adopt such an instinct as an fundamentalistic ideology which had hindered humanity's progress.

It is now 2024, not 10,000 BC wherein it is time for humanity to progress to the human-based FSERC basis of relative independence in their grasp of reality.

Question: what has the philosophical realists to lose if they are to wean off their clingingness to the idea of an absolutely independent reality?
Unfortunately the majority of philosophical realists are unable to do so because they are entrapped and infected with the "absolutely-independence" virus; if they can wean it off, they would have gained philosophical maturity.
Then you are a hardcore idealist, you think what you experience is reality itself and not just a representation of reality within reality. You are chasing a far worse illusion than the direct realists.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Atla wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2024 5:52 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2024 5:47 am
Atla wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 3:19 pm
Yes he's chasing the illusion of direct perception, do you know who else are chasing another illusion (a much worse one)? The Kantians who think that the representation they experience is reality itself.
Kantian do not chase after 'representations' as reality itself, that is what the hardcore idealist are claiming and doing.

What Kantians and the like claim is;
Whatever thing emerged as real to our observations and experience is a culmination of a complex process of emergence, realization of reality, perception of representations, cognition and appearances, which is subsequently justified and described as knowledge.

This culmination of that-something realized as real cannot be absolutely independent of the human conditions.
Somehow the human conditions is intricately part and parcel of the whole process that enable the emergence of that-something as observed and experienced plus being thought, rationalized and justified via a specific collective of subject human based FSERC.

It is only via an evolutionary default driven by an existential crisis that philosophical realists are instinctuated [to facilitate basis survival] to believe [very necessarily within condition] things as observed and experienced are absolutely independent of the human conditions. This is very primal and primitive psychology and philosophical realists [direct and indirect realism, and the like] adopt such an instinct as an fundamentalistic ideology which had hindered humanity's progress.

It is now 2024, not 10,000 BC wherein it is time for humanity to progress to the human-based FSERC basis of relative independence in their grasp of reality.

Question: what has the philosophical realists to lose if they are to wean off their clingingness to the idea of an absolutely independent reality?
Unfortunately the majority of philosophical realists are unable to do so because they are entrapped and infected with the "absolutely-independence" virus; if they can wean it off, they would have gained philosophical maturity.
Then you are a hardcore idealist, you think what you experience is reality itself and not just a representation of reality within reality. You are chasing a far worse illusion than the direct realists.
You are so ignorant.
Idealism is a loose and ambiguous term.
Mine is related to Kant's Transcendent Idealism which unique and totally different from what is term 'hardcore idealism'.

Btw, you are a empirical idealist which is hardcore idealism, i.e.
what is empirical to you is only in the mind [idealism] and then you use your mind's [rational] faculty to speculate and assume there is something most real beyond the empirical.
Problem is the human mind's faculty of rationalization of fallible and conditioned upon the human self.
As such, it is a contradiction to claim there exists a reality that is absolutely independent of the human mind as in 'indirect realism'.
Indirect realism [as with all philosophical realism] is self-contradictory.
Atla
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Atla »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2024 6:04 am You are so ignorant.
Idealism is a loose and ambiguous term.
Mine is related to Kant's Transcendent Idealism which unique and totally different from what is term 'hardcore idealism'.
No it's not, you end up forever trapped in your 'mental realm', and mistake that representative mental realm for reality as a whole. By your own definition you are a hardcore idealist.
Btw, you are a empirical idealist which is hardcore idealism, i.e.
what is empirical to you is only in the mind [idealism] and then you use your mind's [rational] faculty to speculate and assume there is something most real beyond the empirical.
Problem is the human mind's faculty of rationalization of fallible and conditioned upon the human self.
As such, it is a contradiction to claim there exists a reality that is absolutely independent of the human mind as in 'indirect realism'.
Indirect realism [as with all philosophical realism] is self-contradictory.
I'm not an empirical idealist, you believe that because you chase the illusion I mentioned above and because you are a philosophical gnat.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

If we abandon the dualist myth of the (human) mind which perceives reality (directly or indirectly - makes no difference), then we can get over this silly argument about the supposed illusions of realism.

For example, the expressions 'mind-dependence' and 'mind-independence' - relative or absolute - will seem obviously redundant. And the argument over whether we perceive reality or a representation of reality will evaporate.

In other words, it's the model - what Wittgenstein called the 'picture' - that has always confused us, and continues to do so.

Questions. At what point, in the physical causal chain between the perceived and the perceiver, does the perceived - the thing-in-itself - become a representation? And at what point in the physical causal chain does the perceiver perceive the perceived? And what constitutes perception? And do we have direct knowledge of the physical causal chain, or only knowledge of representations?

This has always been nonsense. Indirect realism is on exactly the same supposed hook as direct realism. And the hook itself is an illusion.
CIN
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by CIN »

The only two philosophers who said anything useful on this issue were Descartes and Hume. Descartes pointed out that I think, therefore I am, but that's all I know, while Hume pointed out that I have no direct experience of my self, so I can't even be sure what kind of thing I am. So I can't know what I am, nor whether the experiences I am currently having are caused by an external world, as they appear to be, or whether this is an illusion, and they are being caused by something else that I can't detect. Hence it would be irrational for me to be either a realist or an idealist.

If you people exist, you are in the same position as me. You should therefore give up this futile argument, which can never be resolved, and talk about something else.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2024 9:45 am If we abandon the dualist myth of the (human) mind which perceives reality (directly or indirectly - makes no difference), then we can get over this silly argument about the supposed illusions of realism.

For example, the expressions 'mind-dependence' and 'mind-independence' - relative or absolute - will seem obviously redundant. And the argument over whether we perceive reality or a representation of reality will evaporate.

In other words, it's the model - what Wittgenstein called the 'picture' - that has always confused us, and continues to do so.

Questions. At what point, in the physical causal chain between the perceived and the perceiver, does the perceived - the thing-in-itself - become a representation? And at what point in the physical causal chain does the perceiver perceive the perceived? And what constitutes perception? And do we have direct knowledge of the physical causal chain, or only knowledge of representations?

This has always been nonsense. Indirect realism is on exactly the same supposed hook as direct realism. And the hook itself is an illusion.
There is no need to abandon the concept of dualism, i.e. p and not-p.
All humans are 'programmed' with dualism which is critical for basic survival.
What is relevant is to understand the limitations of dualism when we must use it necessarily.

You are ignorant where you calls for a rejection of dualism when you are actually adopting dualism instinctively & naturally.

When you claims that the moon exists regardless of whether there are humans or not, i.e. the moon exists absolutely independent of the human conditions, this is dualism, i.e. the moon [discrete object] exists as separated from the human condition [another discrete object].

When you claim a fact is a feature of reality, state of affairs, just-is and exists absolutely independent of human opinions, beliefs and judgment, you are adopting dualism in separating fact as independent from the human self.
Questions. At what point, in the physical causal chain between the perceived and the perceiver, does the perceived - the thing-in-itself - become a representation? And at what point in the physical causal chain does the perceiver perceive the perceived? And what constitutes perception? And do we have direct knowledge of the physical causal chain, or only knowledge of representations?
The above question is moot and unreal because there is no real thing-in-itself to be caused as a representation.

What we need to abandon is the idea there is a fact-in-itself as a feature of reality that is absolutely independent of a human's opinion, beliefs and judgment, i.e. exists regardless of whether there are human or not.

Rather, what is really real or fact [plus dualism and whatever ism] is contingent upon a specific human-based collective-of-subjects framework and system of emergence, realization, cognition, perception, knowing and description of reality.

So, your critic is hypocritical, i.e. you are engaging in dualism at a finer level with your absolutely independent fact-in-itself out there which is independent of you as a human being.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

CIN wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 12:18 am The only two philosophers who said anything useful on this issue were Descartes and Hume. Descartes pointed out that I think, therefore I am, but that's all I know, while Hume pointed out that I have no direct experience of my self, so I can't even be sure what kind of thing I am. So I can't know what I am, nor whether the experiences I am currently having are caused by an external world, as they appear to be, or whether this is an illusion, and they are being caused by something else that I can't detect. Hence it would be irrational for me to be either a realist or an idealist.

If you people exist, you are in the same position as me. You should therefore give up this futile argument, which can never be resolved, and talk about something else.
Humans evolved ["programmed"] [from ancestors 3.5 billion years ago] with a sense of externalness and things existing absolutely independent from the person; this dualism is critical for basic survival, i.e. on the look out for food, threats [fatal, etc.] female to f, etc.

The problem arose when humans adopt this externalness and independence as a dogmatic ideology as an ism, i.e. philosophical realism with absoluteness. It is compounded with tribalism 'us versus them'.
This problem involved the conception of the thing-in-itself and self-in-itself which are illusory but reified as real by philosophical realists.

The issue was raised by Descartes and Hume because realists insist things exist as absolutely independent of the human conditions and mind as driven by the evolutionary default.
Kant resolved this issue by asserting the independence of things from the self is critically necessary but can only be adopted relatively [regulatively] but not absolutely & dogmatically [constitutively].

Thus, Kant resolved the issue and asserted, in general, things exist as an emergence of which the self [person, human] is somehow involved thus relative independence, so there are no absolutely mind-independent things.
This relative independence view of reality is the most optimal, which to insist dogmatically reality is absolutely independent of the human condition/mind is unrealistic and illusory.
Atla
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Atla »

CIN wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 12:18 am The only two philosophers who said anything useful on this issue were Descartes and Hume. Descartes pointed out that I think, therefore I am, but that's all I know, while Hume pointed out that I have no direct experience of my self, so I can't even be sure what kind of thing I am. So I can't know what I am, nor whether the experiences I am currently having are caused by an external world, as they appear to be, or whether this is an illusion, and they are being caused by something else that I can't detect. Hence it would be irrational for me to be either a realist or an idealist.

If you people exist, you are in the same position as me. You should therefore give up this futile argument, which can never be resolved, and talk about something else.
And that something else can therefore never be resolved either. What was the point?
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