moral relativism

[iambiguous]

Note to others:

Anyone here share Silver's assessment of permissibility rules as fonts for moral objectivism?

Why are you quoting me if you are asking people about Silver's use of permissability rules?

Did Silver use the term fonts? Do you mean this in the sense of source? He did n't argue that.

Note to others:

Anyone here willing to share whatever they believe Mitchell Silver means by permissibility rules intertwined in whatever they believe he means by moral objectivism?

Yes?

Okay, please note a few examples of how this played out in your own interactions with others resulting in behaviors that came into conflict over value judgments.

I have acknowledged above that I may be misconstruing his points...philosophically? Just as I may have misconstrued Raymond Tallis's technical arguments regarding physicalism and human consciousness.

[Iwannaplato]

Note to others:

Anyone here share Silver's assessment of permissibility rules as fonts for moral objectivism?

Why are you quoting me if you are asking people about Silver's use of permissability rules?

Did Silver use the term fonts? Do you mean this in the sense of source? He did n't argue that.

Note to others:

Anyone here willing to share whatever they believe Mitchell Silver means by permissibility rules intertwined in whatever they believe he means by moral objectivism?

Yes?

Okay, please note a few examples of how this played out in your own interactions with others resulting in behaviors that came into conflict over value judgments.

I have acknowledged above that I may be misconstruing his points...philosophically? Just as I may have misconstrued Raymond Tallis's technical arguments regarding physicalism and human consciousness.

Why didn't you answer the questions?
You could simply ask people in a post without quoting me, to answer your questions. And now you've done it again.
What is your intention with quoting me

What did you mean by 'font'?`

Permissability rules. Believing that some actions are permissable, period and/or (though almost universally 'and') some actions are impermissable. IOW actions X Y and Z should be allowed. Some would frame this as a 'we have a moral right to do X' if we want to. Or we don't have the right to do X. It is not permitted. So on the issue of abortion, people have
different
moral objectivisms.
Some people think abortion should be permitted - with subgroups having provisos related to rape, age of the pregnant woman, how old the fetus is, etc.
Some people think abortion should not be permitted - with a different set of subgroups having potential provisos.

So, what he is doing, in his use of permissability rules is look at moral objectivities in terms of permissability. Some might do it through rights or some other schema.

But for the purposes of his article or perhaps in generally he thinks this is a good way to analyze/explain someone's moral objectivism or some group's moral objectivism.

This description is not normative. He is not saying this means permissability rules are the right way to look at objectivism or are good in and of themselves. He is using it as a way to describe someone's or some groups moral objectivism.

So, before you go one to say this doesn't solve conflicting goods or how Mary would choose to have an abortion or not using it......do you see that it could be a way to look at moral objectivism? To break each moral objectivism down into permissability rules?

If you can understand that and consider it a reasonable way to analyze a specific moral objectivism, then we could move on to what he is saying about moral objectivist where he does weigh in and defend it.

I don't generally think of objectivism this way, though I think it's a reasonable way to break down objectivisms.

I have acknowledged above that I may be misconstruing his points...philosophically? Just as I may have misconstrued Raymond Tallis's technical arguments regarding physicalism and human consciousness.

Yes, but you never seemed interested in finding out if you had, nor did you explain why you believed in your view on them.

[iambiguous]

Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

There may be people who share your permissibility rules, but also accept additional permissibility rules you do not accept. Maybe, like you, they think it immoral to eat animals, but unlike you, they also believe it is immoral to eat carrots. What are you to make of these people?

Or, perhaps, more to the point [mine], if you live among others in a community that pass laws prohibiting the consumption of animals? In other words, saying something is objectively immoral for any number of moral objectivists then involves actual consequences [ rewards and punishments] embedded in conflicting political agendas.

Then what?

What will or will not be permitted in regard to animals in a community where permissibility rules come into conflict? And what will the consequences be for those who are arrested for breaking laws they believe permit behaviors that they deem to be immoral?

You must judge that these people misclassify many actions as immoral. You must judge that they have mistaken what are matters of custom, convention, or personal taste, for matters of moral import. You may well judge that two parties, both of whom take themselves to be in serious moral conflict – one says it is immoral to eat carrots, the other that it is immoral not to eat carrots – are both correct that their preferred course of action is morally permissible, and are both incorrect that the other’s preference is morally forbidden.

And all of this unfolds, where, theoretically up in the philosophical clouds? Up where a failure to communicate revolves largely around definitions and deductions?

What I'm trying to grapple with is how all of this would unfold for all practical purposes from day to day to day. Given how many people believe that what is immoral [God or No God] ought to be prohibited.

This all reminds me somewhat of discussions I had with Maia, the blind Paganist from England, a while back. She subscribed to the belief that each Pagan sustained their own relationship with Mother Nature or with the Goddess. So, there may be Pagans in the community that believed abortion is unnatural [immoral], while others believed it is entirely natural [moral].

Though, sure, that's all predicated on the assumption that I really do understand her point of view. And, here, Silver's.

Their passionate belief that they are in moral disagreement does not mean you must, from your perspective, take them to be in moral disagreement.

Please.

Either within any particular such community, women are permitted to abort their unborn babies/clumps of cells or they are not.

Otherwise it would seem to come down to living in a world where "we're right from our side and you're right from your side".

But we don't/can't live in a world where we only obey the laws that are wholly in sync with our own moral philosophy. Which is why, in my view, democracy and the rule of law reflects the best of all possible worlds.

Your assessment of other people’s morality depends on which specific permissibility rules you genuinely accept. If you really accept as categorical a rule that permits carrot eating, then you must conclude that others are simply morally incorrect to judge carrot eating immoral. You are not doubting the sincerity of their judgment; but acknowledging their sincerity is not the same as acknowledging their correctness.

And, of course, on their side they are saying the same thing about your own incorrect value judgments. And until someone comes along to demonstrate definitively that eating carrots is either moral or immoral, the law of the land will revolves around those who have the power to enforce their own moral precepts.

And, as well, in my view, this frame of mind simply shrugs off the arguments I make regarding how existentially we come to acquire our value judgments out in a particular world understood in a particular way.

[iambiguous]

So, each individual in the community can be a moral objectivist? Every time an individual bumps into someone new in situations that involve conflicting goods, they have to exchange permissibility rules in order to arrive at a set of behaviors that are the least objectionable to all parties?

No, if someone believes that something is permissable, period, or something is impermissable period, they are a moral objectivist. It is a way of defining what a moral objectivist is.

Exactly!

One merely has to believe their own definition of all the words used in arguments pertaining to permissibility rules and objective morality are by default the starting point for those who wish to be thought of as serious philosophers.

Again, take this to the folks at a Planned Parenthood Clinic. Those inside acting on their permissibility rules and those outside protesting those rules with an entirely differnt set of permissions.

Ironically enough, the six Christians on the Supreme Court today granted Donald Trump permission to place himself above the law. Apparently Trump's definitions here are wholly in sync with God's definitions.

Again, given the manner in which I have come to understand moral objectivists [existentially], it hardly ever works that way at all.

Well, you made it up. It's not what Silver's saying.

What Silver is saying -- what he believes -- is of less interest to those like me than the extent to which they can demonstrate how "for all practical purposes" their moral philosophy would play out in regard to things like the abortion wars, Gaza, Ukraine, Biden/Trump. Back to Maia and those Pagans.

Thus...

Then we simply think about moral objectivism in very different ways. And then the part where permissibility rules fiercely clash -- gaza, ukraine, the abortion clinic, etc.

So, if someone said to you abortion is not permissable, period, you wouldn't consider them a moral objectivist.

What we say about things like abortion pales next to what politicians and judges do when they are in possession of the political power to enforce what they say is true. By definition?

And, again, my own existential spin on all of this still leaves me fractured and fragmented. And this in my view is why so many embrace objective morality. Any number of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...sustain their own comfort and consolation by convincing themselves -- as philosophers? -- that their own definitions and deductions do indeed permit them to believe that their own behaviors reflect either the optimal moral truth or the only moral truth.

And note they are not talking about the law, they are talking about morality. And if someone on the other side said abortions are permissable, period. Woman should be allowed to make that choice. You wouldn't consider them an objectivity.

Right. What on Earth does the law have to do with morality?!

It was 100% the Constitution and 0% the Bible that prompted the Supremes to revoke Roe v. Wade.

And, as I elaborated here -- https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... lity/30639 -- permissibility rules in regard to abortion can either be anchored in God or ideology or deontology or genes...or far more precariously attached to "I" through dasein and the Benjamin Button Syndrome.

So, you're not an objectivist if you go about trying to convince others in a nice way?

No, from my frame if mind, you are an objectivist if you have convinced yourself that one can discover the Real Me and that this Real Me by discovering the One True Path can embody The Right Thing To Do.

Then those moral objectivists among us who insist further that all others are obligated to think as they do. Apparently, one can only Know Thyself like these "serious philosophers" do: https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora

Or else.

And, of course, for some of them, their own permissibility rules are not even applicable to those of the wrong color, the wrong gender, the wrong sexual orientation. Or else here permitting the extermination of Jews.

He's not talking about how one goes about trying to get others to accept one's permissability rules.

Then he's not talking about the real world, in my view. After all, we don't exactly live in a world where all that matters is what "here and now" we believe should be permitted at Planned Parenthood. Instead, it always comes back around to the law, to government policies. To consequences. Then "my" moral objectivists who do embrace a one size -- their own -- fits all dogma.

Well, how others define moral objectivism in a philosophical argument is one thing, how they deal with those who define it differently given particular sets of circumstances that precipitate conflict another thing altogether. At least for me.

Sure, that's a valid issue. But you're reacting to Silver as if his idea of looking at objectivity as permissability rules is an argument about that topic. And you haven't responded to the parts of his article that actually you and he disagree on.

Again, as with the Tallis article, I reacted to Silver's arguments given my own set of assumption regarding the existential [historical, cultural] parameters of human consciousness, of human morality.

Joan thinks that abortions should be permitted and that it is wrong not to permit them.
Jean thinks that abortions should not be permitted and that it is wrong to permit them.

Both objectivists according to Silver.

Okay, let's suppose both Jean and Joan become pregnant. Then let's suppose hypothetically they are both top-notch attorneys and are arguing their entirely conflicting moral/legal/political philosophies before the Supreme Court.

John Roberts: "Having determined that the definitions given to us by Jean are clearly more in sync with the Bible than Joan's..."

Now, I would call them moral objectivists only to the extent they insisted all others should think and feel as they do. Then those who insist that all others must think and feel as they do.

I don't think you understand what the word 'should' means.

Indeed, that's why any number of moral objectivists insist on attaching "or else" to their own political agendas.

So, if you are a moral realist and you use, say, democratic processes to affect the law so it reflects your morals, you aren't an objectist?

What I keep waiting for in regard to moral realism are those who claim there are "moral facts" to be found in regard to conflagrations like abortion in the Ethical Theory forum but won't actually note their own facts in the Applied Ethics forum. Let alone explore the extent to which dasein might be pertinent in explaining their own value judgments.

You're reacting to him as if he is saying: people should just come up as individuals with their own permissability rules and tell each other them and that's make things better and that's how we do things.

We'll need a context, of course.

[Iwannaplato]

So, each individual in the community can be a moral objectivist? Every time an individual bumps into someone new in situations that involve conflicting goods, they have to exchange permissibility rules in order to arrive at a set of behaviors that are the least objectionable to all parties?

No, if someone believes that something is permissable, period, or something is impermissable period, they are a moral objectivist. It is a way of defining what a moral objectivist is.

Exactly!

Well, that's not what you said in the quote above.

One merely has to believe their own definition of all the words used in arguments pertaining to permissibility rules and objective morality are by default the starting point for those who wish to be thought of as serious philosophers.

No idea what you're talking about.

Again, take this to the folks at a Planned Parenthood Clinic. Those inside acting on their permissibility rules and those outside protesting those rules with an entirely differnt set of permissions.

Yes, people's permissability rules clash.

Ironically enough, the six Christians on the Supreme Court today granted Donald Trump permission to place himself above the law. Apparently Trump's definitions here are wholly in sync with God's definitions.

According to Silver, me...?

Again, given the manner in which I have come to understand moral objectivists [existentially], it hardly ever works that way at all.

Well, you made it up. It's not what Silver's saying.

What Silver is saying -- what he believes -- is of less interest to those like me than the extent to which they can demonstrate how "for all practical purposes" their moral philosophy would play out in regard to things like the abortion wars, Gaza, Ukraine, Biden/Trump. Back to Maia and those Pagans.

Well, you could write him and ask him. We can't figure that out from the article.

So, if someone said to you abortion is not permissable, period, you wouldn't consider them a moral objectivist.

What we say about things like abortion pales next to what politicians and judges do when they are in possession of the political power to enforce what they say is true. By definition?

And, again, my own existential spin on all of this still leaves me fractured and fragmented. And this in my view is why so many embrace objective morality. Any number of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...sustain their own comfort and consolation by convincing themselves -- as philosophers? -- that their own definitions and deductions do indeed permit them to believe that their own behaviors reflect either the optimal moral truth or the only moral truth.

OK, well you could respond to Silver's take on what he focused on, or not.

And note they are not talking about the law, they are talking about morality. And if someone on the other side said abortions are permissable, period. Woman should be allowed to make that choice. You wouldn't consider them an objectivity.

Right. What on Earth does the law have to do with morality?!

It was 100% the Constitution and 0% the Bible that prompted the Supremes to revoke Roe v. Wade.

And, as I elaborated here -- https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... lity/30639 -- permissibility rules in regard to abortion can either be anchored in God or ideology or deontology or genes...or far more precariously attached to "I" through dasein and the Benjamin Button Syndrome.

Yes, that doesn't contradict the Silver article at all.

So, you're not an objectivist if you go about trying to convince others in a nice way?

No, from my frame if mind, you are an objectivist if you have convinced yourself that one can discover the Real Me and that this Real Me by discovering the One True Path can embody The Right Thing To Do.

That criterion and the one I mentioned are not mutually exclusive.

Then those moral objectivists among us who insist further that all others are obligated to think as they do. Apparently, one can only Know Thyself like these "serious philosophers" do: https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora

Or else.

And, of course, for some of them, their own permissibility rules are not even applicable to those of the wrong color, the wrong gender, the wrong sexual orientation. Or else here permitting the extermination of Jews.

Sure, that doesn't contradict the Silver article either.

He's not talking about how one goes about trying to get others to accept one's permissability rules.

Then he's not talking about the real world, in my view.

Of course he is. It's an article on a specific topic. He's coming up with 1) a way to define moral objectivism or a way to look at it in general - which is looking precisely at how real people in the real world conceive morality. Then 2) he makes an argument using that way of defining it. So far, I can't see any response on your part to the argument he makes.

His article does not claim to solve all the problems of moral objectivism or conflicting goods.

After all, we don't exactly live in a world where all that matters is what "here and now" we believe should be permitted at Planned Parenthood. Instead, it always comes back around to the law, to government policies. To consequences. Then "my" moral objectivists who do embrace a one size -- their own -- fits all dogma.

Yes, I am pretty sure I have known for years what you are concerned about.

Well, how others define moral objectivism in a philosophical argument is one thing, how they deal with those who define it differently given particular sets of circumstances that precipitate conflict another thing altogether. At least for me.

Sure, that's a valid issue. But you're reacting to Silver as if his idea of looking at objectivity as permissability rules is an argument about that topic. And you haven't responded to the parts of his article that actually you and he disagree on.

Again, as with the Tallis article, I reacted to Silver's arguments given my own set of assumption regarding the existential [historical, cultural] parameters of human consciousness, of human morality.

Yup, though it's as if what they actually wrote and wrote about wasn't what you were responding to.

Joan thinks that abortions should be permitted and that it is wrong not to permit them.
Jean thinks that abortions should not be permitted and that it is wrong to permit them.

Both objectivists according to Silver.

Okay, let's suppose both Jean and Joan become pregnant. Then let's suppose hypothetically they are both top-notch attorneys and are arguing their entirely conflicting moral/legal/political philosophies before the Supreme Court.

John Roberts: "Having determined that the definitions given to us by Jean are clearly more in sync with the Bible than Joan's..."

Yes, objectivists have conflicts and this is a huge problem.

Now, I would call them moral objectivists only to the extent they insisted all others should think and feel as they do. Then those who insist that all others must think and feel as they do.

I don't think you understand what the word 'should' means.

Indeed, that's why any number of moral objectivists insist on attaching "or else" to their own political agendas.

So, if you are a moral realist and you use, say, democratic processes to affect the law so it reflects your morals, you aren't an objectist?

What I keep waiting for in regard to moral realism are those who claim there are "moral facts" to be found in regard to conflagrations like abortion in the Ethical Theory forum but won't actually note their own facts in the Applied Ethics forum. Let alone explore the extent to which dasein might be pertinent in explaining their own value judgments.

Which doesn't need the Silver and doesn't really react to the Silver article.

You're reacting to him as if he is saying: people should just come up as individuals with their own permissability rules and tell each other them and that's make things better and that's how we do things.

We'll need a context, of course.

OK, not a response to what you quoted me as saying.

OK, I've tried to communicate what Silver is actually saying. What he is saying about permissability rules, which you respond to as if he is failed in some other task and was making normative statements about how it's fine to come up with your own permissability rules, despite that section of the essay being a suggestion for description.

You do have a major difference from Silver, but despite my quoting that section, you haven't responded to that section.

Yes, all the issues you raise are important ones, but despite quoting Silver repeatedly you haven't actually responded to his essay.

It inspired you to say things you have said many times before.

I don't know why you quote people here and philosophers if you aren't actually going to respond to what they write. You get inspired to repeat things you have said before. But then that doesn't need a new article.

I know you may well think this is merely another hegemonic attempt on my part to create false certainty over the article's interpretation, which is why I started with my own quotes from the article with explanations.

I did my best, clearly failed.

Those few people, here, who read your posts may well assume that what you quote is what you are responding to. They may, as I did, read the quotes, and then be confused by your responses. Then may think using quotes as meaning that what is quoted won't merely remind you of things you have said before, but be responded to.

I think it would actually have created new things if you had responded to what Silver wrote. It wouldn't have solved the problems you raise, but it did raise a new argument related to moral objectivism and your main interest, one I haven't seen you respond to earlier, and would have added a different way to discuss conflicting objectivisms. But, so it went...

I'll leave you to it. I did my best.

[iambiguous]

Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

Now if your permissibility rules conflict with the rules I accept, we are both objectivists, but we’re in fundamental moral conflict.

Again, if you are able to convince yourself that merely believing or calling yourself a moral objectivist makes you one, fine, that's what you will take to the grave unless someone like me is able to convince you instead that believing in objective morality is nowhere near the same as demonstrating that only your own "permissibility rules" actually are deontologically sound.

How is the following...

To remain true to my acceptance of rules that allow but do not demand carrot eating, I must conclude that you are mistaken to think eating carrots is immoral. True to your different permissibility rules, you must judge my moral indifference to carrot consumption morally incorrect. Anyone tempted to take a perspective above the fray will either have permissibility rules from which she can judge which of us is correct (if either), or she has not accepted any permissibility rules. If she has accepted permissibility rules, they will either allow or disallow carrot eating.

...not just another philosophical contraption that tells us very, very little about the objective reality of eating carrots or cows.

Also, the point I come back to over and again is that any number of moral objectivists do demand that there be consequences for those who don't toe their line.

Then the "for all practical purposes" reality of dueling definitions and deductions:

She is an objectivist, just like us, and can weigh in on our dispute. If she accepts no permissibility rules whatsoever, the very idea of moral permissibility has no claim on her, and she has nothing relevant to offer those of us who do feel the pull of permissibility rules. She is not an objectivist, and both you and I (albeit by virtue of different rules) must conclude that she is without morals. Hardly someone we should ask to arbitrate our moral dispute over carrot eating.

You live in a community where some eat carrots and some don't. Now, those that don't may not like the taste of carrots or they might be allergic to them. It's not a moral issue for them. Instead, they are more concerned with those who eat other animals, or turn them into fur coats or use them to test medicines and cosmetics.

Here in my view the only political economy that makes sense is democracy and the rule of law. You might believe that eating carrots should not be permitted, but you are willing to concede that those who do eat them have legitimate reasons for doing so. So, given the political process, you attempt to pass legislation that revolves around moderation, negotiation and compromise. It's okay to eat carrots in some sets of circumstances [in the privacy of your own home] but not in other circumstances [around those who eschew carrots].

But is that really the same as actually establishing whether the consumption of carrots or cows is something that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated either to pursue or to eschew.

[iambiguous]

One merely has to believe their own definition of all the words used in arguments pertaining to permissibility rules and objective morality are by default the starting point for those who wish to be thought of as serious philosophers.

No idea what you're talking about.

Jim: "I believe that homosexuality is morally impermissible behavior"
Joe: "I believe that homosexuality is morally permissible behavior."

Then they both provide us with their arguments. And what does that revolve around if not what they believe the words in the argument mean. How -- philosophically? -- rational men and women are obligated to define the words.

Okay, so how does that demonstrate whether or not homosexuality either is or is not moral?

Instead, if Jim's political party is in power...and you're a homosexual?

Again, take this to the folks at a Planned Parenthood Clinic. Those inside acting on their permissibility rules and those outside protesting those rules with an entirely different set of permissions.

Yes, people's permissability rules clash.

Yes, and if you embody the frame of mind that I associate with moral objectivism, you are likely to make life miserable as hell for homosexuals. Especially if you believe that it is morally permissible to send them to death camps.

Ironically enough, the six Christians on the Supreme Court today granted Donald Trump permission to place himself above the law. Apparently Trump's definitions here are wholly in sync with God's definitions.

According to Silver, me...?

I'm just noting a "for all practical purposes" example of what happens when moral objectivists as I construe them are in positions of power to enforce their own rules.

Again, given the manner in which I have come to understand moral objectivists [existentially], it hardly ever works that way at all.

Well, you made it up. It's not what Silver's saying.

What Silver is saying -- what he believes -- is of less interest to those like me than the extent to which they can demonstrate how "for all practical purposes" their moral philosophy would play out in regard to things like the abortion wars, Gaza, Ukraine, Biden/Trump. Back to Maia and those Pagans.

Well, you could write him and ask him. We can't figure that out from the article.

Okay, but given his arguments here, what would you imagine him saying? My guess is that the truly hardcore moral objectivists would probably never tire of mocking him. Why? Because the last thing "my" moral objectivist will accept is a "you're right from your side and I'm right from mine" moral philosophy.

He's not talking about how one goes about trying to get others to accept one's permissability rules.

Then he's not talking about the real world, in my view.

Of course he is. It's an article on a specific topic. He's coming up with 1) a way to define moral objectivism or a way to look at it in general - which is looking precisely at how real people in the real world conceive morality. Then 2) he makes an argument using that way of defining it. So far, I can't see any response on your part to the argument he makes.

Look, the one thing I truly did appreciate about the article was the fact that in regard to eating carrots and cows, he does bring his argument down out of the theoretical clouds. And, above, I reacted to this by noting my own assessment of permissibility rules...given a "might makes right" mentality, a "right makes might" mentality and a "democracy and the rule of law" mentality.

For groups like Peta, it's not just telling us what is permissible, it's going after those who refuse accept that. And, of course, the carnivore equivalent. Those who heap scorn on the "tree huggers" while gorging themselves on hamburgers and pork chops.

[iambiguous]

Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

Relativists, Nihilists, Amoralists and Objectivists

If you, dear reader, claim in perfectly good faith not to accept any permissibility rules, then I could in haste judge that you are without morals.

For all practical purposes, in my view, it's less a question of accepting permissibility rules and more a question of "what is to be done" when permissibility rules clash? Why one set of behaviors and not another? And what happens in a community when it comes time to actually proscribe behaviors legally?

"You're right from your side and I'm right from mine", only goes so far, even in a democracy.

But not to worry; I believe that your moral nihilism is probably only a theoretical posture, inconsistent with your actual acceptance of permissibility rules, as reflected in your actual judgments of particular actions.

On the other hand, what does this have to do with the reality of human interactions? If you choose to interact with others socially, politically and/or economically, there is no getting around the need for "rules of behavior". It's only a question of how they are arrived -- might makes right, right makes might, moderation negotiation, compromise -- and the extent to which they are able to be enforced.

As for this...

Although your acceptance of permissibility rules implies that you accept that those rules are applicable to all actions and judgments, including your own theoretical judgments, your permissibility rules may allow you (as mine do me) to temporarily pretend that you do not accept them, in order to see what might in theory follow from their non-acceptance. But temporarily playing the amoralist in order to try and imagine how the world looks from that perspective, is not genuine amorality.

...what have you pretended to accept or reject temporarily given your own interactions with others? Me, in being fractured and fragmented morally and politically, my own accommodations to "society" reflect a measure ambiguity that moral objectivists seek to eschew at all costs.

That's why they react to me as they do, in my opinion. Better to convince yourself that permissibility rules are the real deal, enabling you to call yourself a moral objectivist, then to focus more on the actual historical repercussions of conflicting goods where, as often as not, "you're right from your side and I'm right from mine" was seen as blasphemy among the moral objectivists as I understand them. Then the part where I root all this existentially in dasein. The part where I suggest that even if one does accept the author's arguments regarding permissibility rules, the rules themselves revolve largely around this: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-man ... sein/31641

[iambiguous]

Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.

It is important (and often difficult) to keep in mind that moral relativism is not the descriptive claim that people have different and conflicting moral judgments; rather it is the normative claim that no moral judgment is more or less correct than any other.

Sure, there are those who argue that. But I am certainly not one of them. After all, there may well be a God. And one day I might come across a philosophical or an ideological argument that convinces me [again] there are moral facts to be found. Facts that allow us to readily distinguish between Good and Evil.

And for those here already convinced of that, let's focus in on a particular set of circumstances and examine their theoretical assumptions.

To become a sincere moral relativist one must abandon one’s permissibility rules without embracing other permissibility rules. A relativist could consistently act in accordance with any permissibility rule, but she cannot consistently believe there are any justifications for these actions.

In other words, moral relativists who are themselves objectivists. And from my frame of mind, we have a few of them here. They often mock those who do have a belief in God or those who have managed to convince themselves they are on the One True Path to Enlightenment and Salvation.

If you sincerely and fully, even if only in theory, accept, say, a rule that it’s immoral to torture people, a rule that it’s immoral not to torture people, and another rule that torture is morally indifferent, then you’ve taken an incoherent theoretical position that’s equivalent to the denial of morality – moral nihilism.

What's that make Dick Cheney then? It's moral to waterboard the "bad guys" when you are one of the "good guys"?

And when exactly are people being tortured? There are any number of circumstances where men, women and children suffer grievously from starvation, poverty, disease, racism, homophobia, government policies, etc. Or they are victims of natural disasters. People tortured by God in other words.

How about this...

We choose an issue that has clearly precipitated conflicting goods down through the centuries. Then those here who have their own "permissibility rules" can defend particular sets of behaviors against those who embody different rules.

Then we take our conclusions to the politicians assigned the task of reconfiguring conflicting permissibility rules into actual legislation. Laws that both prescribe and proscribe behaviors. Laws that reward and laws that punish.

Or else?

In other words, actually consequences.

Moral objectivism requires only the acceptance of a set of permissibility rules. This involves no metaphysical delusions. Your permissibility rules may be tolerant, liberal, modest, tentative and undogmatic, or the opposite. So long as they’re truly yours, you are a moral objectivist. So are you?

Nope.

And, further, given my own set of assumptions -- philosophical prejudices? -- regarding moral objectivism, permissibility rules are no less rooted historically, culturally and experientially in dasein.

[iambiguous]

Question of the Month
What Grounds or Justifies Morality?
Nella Leontieva

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature… Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Then those like me who doubt that mere mortals have access to the truth in regard to "creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last."

Instead, that mentality is embraced by and large by the objectivists among us. Only, for any number them, it's not just my own moral philosophy they reject, but, as well, all of the other objectivist philosophers here who refuse to think about all of this only as they do.

Would you consent?

Over and over again: that depends. Also, I suspect there might be more than just one volunteer? Sans the part about being tortured, say?

Still, if the context/situation/set of circumstances was such that it was "essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature" to create an optimal "fabric of reality" for all the rest of us? Well, what exactly does that mean? What actual explanation is given for why this is necessary? Why torture? How does our choice here impact the fate of "I" beyond the grave?

Then the part where it is merely assumed that we do have the autonomy necessary to choose of our own volition here.

Bentham’s utilitarianism justifies the morality of an action on the principle of ‘maximising the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ of people.

Context please.

Kant insists that one’s actions possess moral worth only when one does one’s duty for its own sake, and in this sense consequences are morally irrelevant. What matters, according to Kant, is what we ought to do, which reason alone can establish. Kant believes morality is grounded in reason: we are not only sentient beings, governed by the pleasure and pain delivered by our senses; we are also rational beings, capable of freedom.

Context please.

Only with Kant, we arrive at those philosophers who posited a deontological moral philosophy. But: only by positing in turn a "transcending" font able "in the end" to judge us...Divinely?

We must be capable of acting according to laws other than the laws of physics. If our actions were governed solely by the laws of physics, then we would be no different from objects or animals. Kant further argues that we must be capable of acting according to the moral law we give ourselves, and this law is determined by reason.

Only we are, in one respect, profoundly different: all the other animals by and large are not exploring their own interactions on philosophy boards.

In other words, the truly profound mystery embedded in how matter itself was able to become "alive". Let alone able to invent philosophy.

[Iwannaplato]

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature… Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Then those like me who doubt that mere mortals have access to the truth in regard to "creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last."

It's a thought experiment. It's asking if you wanted to do that and it was your responsibility would you torture one tiny creature. No one is saying that the making people happy is objectively moral, nor giving them peace and rest. It is askng if you would be willing to torture a tiny creature to reach that end. It's a fairly basic philosophicl thought experiment and even moral relativists can wrestle with hurting one or some in order to reduct the suffering of others. That only requires one has feelings about other people's suffering, not that one is objectivist or some kind of genius social engineer. We presume for the sake of argument hat we could bring some peach, happiness and rest to most humans and want to do that.

Instead, that mentality is embraced by and large by the objectivists among us. Only, for any number them, it's not just my own moral philosophy they reject, but, as well, all of the other objectivist philosophers here who refuse to think about all of this only as they do.

Would you consent?

Over and over again: that depends. Also, I suspect there might be more than just one volunteer? Sans the part about being tortured, say?

Still, if the context/situation/set of circumstances was such that it was "essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature" to create an optimal "fabric of reality" for all the rest of us? Well, what exactly does that mean? What actual explanation is given for why this is necessary? Why torture? How does our choice here impact the fate of "I" beyond the grave?

Then the part where it is merely assumed that we do have the autonomy necessary to choose of our own volition here.

No, that's not presumed. Whether in the thought experiment you are compelled to think you would do X or you are free to do X or not, there is an answer. Unless you simply feel you don't know what the answer is. One need have no stand on determinism/free will in this thought experiement.

Bentham’s utilitarianism justifies the morality of an action on the principle of ‘maximising the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ of people.

Context please.

The context is the thought experiment. IOW she presents the thought experiment then directly after lists some metaethical positions. B's being one of them.

Kant insists that one’s actions possess moral worth only when one does one’s duty for its own sake, and in this sense consequences are morally irrelevant. What matters, according to Kant, is what we ought to do, which reason alone can establish. Kant believes morality is grounded in reason: we are not only sentient beings, governed by the pleasure and pain delivered by our senses; we are also rational beings, capable of freedom.

Context please.

Same as above.

We must be capable of acting according to laws other than the laws of physics. If our actions were governed solely by the laws of physics, then we would be no different from objects or animals. Kant further argues that we must be capable of acting according to the moral law we give ourselves, and this law is determined by reason.

Only we are, in one respect, profoundly different: all the other animals by and large are not exploring their own interactions on philosophy boards.

He's saying that if we are as determined as animals are - in his estimation on the latter - than we cannot be moral agents.

[iambiguous]

Question of the Month
What Grounds or Justifies Morality?
Nella Leontieva

However, [Kant's] conception of reason is different from that of the utilitarians, who view human beings as capable of only instrumental reason. The job of instrumental reason is to figure out how to maximize satisfying our desires for pleasure and happiness.

Utilitarians believe that the purpose of morality is to make life better by increasing the amount of good things (such as pleasure and happiness) in the world and decreasing the amount of bad things (such as pain and unhappiness). IEP

Kant's conception of morality is, in my view, just that: a theoretical construct broached, examined and judged up in the obligatory clouds.

As for utilitarians, no categorical imperatives perhaps but still the conviction that mere mortals in a No God universe can somehow "figure out" what would -- should? -- make mere mortals happy and pleased?

But for Kant, reason is not just the ‘slave of the passions’ as David Hume called it, but of ‘pure practical reason’ – “which legislates a priori, regardless of empirical ends.” If reason was simply an instrument to achieve our desires – “if that were all reason amounted to”, Kant says, then “we would be better off with instincts.”

Indeed, and how often has one of us noted that crucial distinction between animals compelled almost entirely by biological imperatives, oblivious to both morality and death, and human beings? Other animals don't have to weigh any number of complex social, political and economic variables...ever evolving and changing culturally and historically.

And all those my of ilk can do is to ask the Kantians among us to bring their theoretical constructs out into the world of, among other things, all those newspaper headlines. Headlines that exist precisely because neither philosophers nor scientists nor theologians have been able to provide mere mortals with anything in the way of one or another optimal consensus? Let alone a deontological assessment able to be demonstrated other than in a world of words.

Instead, in my view, it's just more of the same...

Moreover, unlike individual feelings, emotions and desires that are chaotic and based on self-interest, reason is universal and so establishes our moral duties as categorical imperatives that must be demanded of all rational beings. Therefore, I believe that morality can be justified only by reason, regardless of how many people we make happy or unhappy. And our moral duties are… Well, every reasonable person knows what they are!

Moral duties and obligations. And everyone here knows what they are?

On the other hand, as with those like Ayn Rand, it seems the duty and the obligations of Kantians is to insist that it is the duty and the obligation all reasonable men and women to think like they do. Only, unlike Kant, Rand didn't think up a "transcending font" -- God -- able to provide the ultimate assessment. And on Judgment Day no less.

[iambiguous]

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature… Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Then those like me who doubt that mere mortals have access to the truth in regard to "creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last."

It's a thought experiment. It's asking if you wanted to do that and it was your responsibility would you torture one tiny creature. No one is saying that the making people happy is objectively moral, nor giving them peace and rest. It is asking if you would be willing to torture a tiny creature to reach that end.

In other words, given my own philosophical prejudices "here and now", value judgments as the existential embodiment of dasein. Then those who never take it much beyond the thinking part. Exchanges up in the philosophical clouds. Okay, this is what they think about torturing a child as a sociopath or torturing the enemy in wartime. Or about the trolley problem, or about abortion, or about gun control.

And isn't it basically the contention of any number of moral objectivists that their own thought experiments bring us closer to being able to embrace a deontological moral philosophy? What after all is Kant's "don't lie" argument but another thought experiment. Then the part where it's God who gets the final say on Judgment Day.

It's a fairly basic philosophical thought experiment and even moral relativists can wrestle with hurting one or some in order to reduct the suffering of others. That only requires one has feelings about other people's suffering, not that one is objectivist or some kind of genius social engineer. We presume for the sake of argument hat we could bring some peach, happiness and rest to most humans and want to do that.

From my own frame of mind, the whole point of any number of objectivists here is in wrestling all right...wrestling with other objectivists. God or No God. Why? In order to convince them that it is their own One True Path, and only their own Path that leads to moral truth. Indeed, the reason I am often attacked by many here is because I suggest that in the absence of God, what is there to take His place in connecting the dots between what we believe and how we behave on this side of the grave and the fate of "I" for, say, all the rest of eternity?

Would you consent?

Over and over again: that depends. Also, I suspect there might be more than just one volunteer? Sans the part about being tortured, say?

Still, if the context/situation/set of circumstances was such that it was "essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature" to create an optimal "fabric of reality" for all the rest of us? Well, what exactly does that mean? What actual explanation is given for why this is necessary? Why torture? How does our choice here impact the fate of "I" beyond the grave?

Then the part where it is merely assumed that we do have the autonomy necessary to choose of our own volition here.

No, that's not presumed. Whether in the thought experiment you are compelled to think you would do X or you are free to do X or not, there is an answer. Unless you simply feel you don't know what the answer is. One need have no stand on determinism/free will in this thought experiement.

From my own existential vantage point, until it can be established unequivocally that we either do or do not have free will, what on Earth are we exchanging here if not sets of philosophical presumptions? And, again, for those who argue that we are only ever able to answer [anything] in the manner in which our brains, wholly in sync with the laws of matter going back to everything we still do not know that we do not even know yet about existence, let them actually demonstrate empirically, experientially, experimentally, how that is still compatible with moral responsibility.

We must be capable of acting according to laws other than the laws of physics. If our actions were governed solely by the laws of physics, then we would be no different from objects or animals. Kant further argues that we must be capable of acting according to the moral law we give ourselves, and this law is determined by reason.

Only we are, in one respect, profoundly different: all the other animals by and large are not exploring their own interactions on philosophy boards.

He's saying that if we are as determined as animals are - in his estimation on the latter - than we cannot be moral agents.

And that is because we are the only animals on planet Earth able to invent Gods and ideologies and ethics and biological imperatives. We do have instincts and drives and libidos just like they do. But they lack the capacity to take what they do beyond instinct and drives and libidos. What disturbs many though is even the possibility that free will is a psychological illusion. They can't demonstrate that they do but then they were never able to.

[iambiguous]

Question of the Month
What Grounds or Justifies Morality?
Colin Brookes

Those examples which comprise the vast history of ethics are what potentially ground or justify morality. It’s up to us to discover from this considerable history those instances sufficiently cogent to provide a foundational, even universal basis – as was ambitiously approached by Parfit in On What Matters (2017).

This makes sense [to me] in that if we are ever going to find behaviors at least in the vicinity of objective morality we would need to take into account all of the different paths that have been taken historically, culturally and in regard to our own uniquely persoanl experiences.

On the other hand, if the history of human ethics has taught us anything at all it is this...that when things are "left up to us", we end up concocting hundreds and hundreds of at times hopelessly conflicting One True Paths to enlightenment.

Though, sure, who can ever really rule out the possibility that one day a "universal morality" might be discovered...invented?

Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) is an apt starting point for considering this question. Kant argues that making moral choices and judgements presupposes, even necessitates, that we are free agents...

And who can doubt that Kant had a vast knowledge of neuroscience. Then the part where he brings morality back to God?

Kant obviously is an ethical objectivist. Moral rules do not depend on the will of humans or God, but are found in the very nature of the soul, a rational soul. We are back to Aquinas' moral rationalism, but Kant's God plays a lesser role in morality. There are universal moral rules that humans must follow. university of idaho

Just more of the same? Kant tells us what he believes here about morality and then predicates that in part on what he believes in turn about God. But what was he actually able to demonstrate is in fact true about either of them?

...that our choices and judgements are not beyond our control. This forms the basis of our duty to take moral responsibility, and so “act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”

Okay, let's focus in on a particularly tough nut to crack here. A moral conflagration that cries out for a universal morality. If only to end all the at times brutal strife these conflicts sustain.

[iambiguous]

Question of the Month
What Grounds or Justifies Morality?
Colin Brookes

These rational grounds [above] are undermined by those who deny free will, claiming that all our motives and behaviour are determined and best understood through reductive scientific explanations, from the psychological to physiological, then chemical, and ultimately to those of physics.

And in regard to morality, nothing seems more important than in being able to establish that we do indeed have free will.

Well, other than the fact that we still have no way in which to establish that. Other than [here] philosophically in a world of words.

To logical positivists, for example, the claims of metaphysics, ethics, and theology, were meaningless.

Not so much meaningless from my frame of mind as [historically and cuturally and individually] awash in conflicting and contradictory meaning rooted existentially in dasein.

However, their disdain for mystery and metaphysics was met with a joint "No!" from those Metaphysical Animals featured in MacCumhaill and Wiseman’s recent book (2022) – Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch. This group of four Oxford friends are credited with breathing new life into philosophy and ethical thinking.

In that case, for those who are familiar with their conclusions, please note how they breathed new life into your own philosophy and ethcial thinking. Given particular contexts.

In ambiguous contrast, the American pragmatist Richard Rorty, though eschewing the relativism simplistically associated with him by critics, nevertheless implies a version of moral relativism when claiming that “belief is caused by nothing deeper that contingent historical circumstance” (Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, 1989). However, this claim presumably applies equally to his own position, too.

Ironism:

* She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered;
*She realizes that arguments phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts;
*Insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.

Which seems clearly to be more applicable to the is/ought world, in my view. His own rendition of my own rendition of contingency, chance and change. In this Benjamin Button universe.