What could make morality objective?

[Peter Holmes]

That's a Strawman. You got it wrong again.

Point is people who are Philosophical Realists [you for example] are the ones who claim that there are things-in-themselves, i.e. things existing absolutely independent of the human conditions.
What Kant and the likes stated there is no such things as things-in-themselves or a thing-in-itself and to reify it as really existing is an illusion.


Note I mentioned thing-in-itself [things-in-themselves] as ILLUSIONS many times [didn't you read & get it?].
Since it is an illusion, it implied it is not real so there is nothing to be know about it as real nor can it [an illusion] be described in the real sense. You missed out a lot of relevant nuances on the issue.


There is no way, Kant and likes would claim,
then the claim that we cannot perceive, know or describe reality-as-it-really-is,
in the ultimate sense [not conventional sense].

The point is people like you are naturally [evolutionarily] driven by desperate psychology to insist upon the existence of thing-in-itself or things-in-themselves as real and thus grasping at illusory things that are not real in the ultimate sense [not conventional sense].


I have NEVER claim scientific facts by themselves as [is-es] directly entail a moral 'ought'.

What you should counter is,
Scientific facts by themselves cannot entail moral oughts, even when processed via a Moral FSK?
Give your justification 'why not' if processed via a Moral FSK, note 'Moral FSK'?

I have already explained with examples and analogies, objective moral principles 'ought' are derived as 'output' from a credible Moral FSK [like a Moral Factory] with inputs from scientific facts, other evidences and philosophical reasoning. Note, such moral oughts are never enforceable but merely used as guides for moral progress.

Here is Kant with more severe warnings on how you and the likes get deluded with the illusion that there are things and reality that is absolutely independent of the human conditions.

• And secondly, both it and its opposite must involve no mere artificial Illusion such as at once vanishes upon detection,
  but a natural and unavoidable Illusion,
  which even after it has ceased to beguile still continues to delude though not to deceive us,
  and which though thus capable of being rendered harmless can never be eradicated. B449
  
  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. B397
  
  ..the Ideas produce what, though a mere Illusion,
  is nonetheless irresistible, and the harmful influence of which we can barely succeed in neutralizing even by means of the severest criticism. B670
  
  But there is no end to such discussions, unless we can penetrate to the True Cause of the Illusion by which even the wisest are deceived.B731

Kant is very serious and thorough on how people like you are deluded [ultimate senses, not conventional sense].
The problem here is you don't even have the competence to understand [not necessary agree] what Kant is talking about to begin to contribute any rational counter to his claims.
What you have always done is merely throwing childish jabs without any sound counter arguments.

1 I don't claim there are things-in-themselves. I have no idea what a thing-in-itself could be. So you've invented that straw man.

Note your post where it is implied you are claiming for things-in-themselves or reality-in-itself;

Veritas Aequitas

Here's my diagnosis of our disagreement. My starting point is what could be called a methodological taxonomy. I think there are three separate and different things, which it's a mistake to muddle up, as follows.

1 Features of reality that are or were the case. (The branch of philosophy that deals with these is ontology.)

2 What we believe or know about these features of reality. (The branch of philosophy that deals with this is epistemology.)

3 What we say about features of reality, which (in classical logic) may be true or false, given the way we use the words of other signs involved, in context. (Logic deals with what can be said consistently, without contradiction, in context.)

When you claim there are features of reality, which you can describe only, you are implying there exists a thing or reality which is absolutely independent of humans' opinions and beliefs.
That reality which is described is your so-called reality-in-itself, thing-in-itself or things-in-themselves which exists independent of the human conditions.

The thing-in-itself (German: Ding an sich) is a concept introduced by Immanuel Kant. Things-in-themselves would be objects as they are, independent of observation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself

The above statement is insufficient, rather it is
objects as they are, independent of observation, descriptions, opinions and beliefs.
This is exactly the same as your 'reality' which has features, that is the case and can be described, etc. which is independent of human descriptions, opinions and beliefs.

You still deny your reality not reality-in-itself and the things therein are things-in-themselves?

Well, if all we're talking about is the existence of things not being observed, then I absolutely affirm their existence. There's no reason to believe that unobserved things cease to exist. If that's what a 'thing-in-itself' really is, then my 'features of reality that are the case' are indeed what Kant called 'noumena'.

But, wait, Kant said that noumena don't exist - that unobserved things don't exist!? He was even wronger than I thought. Barmy.

[Peter Holmes]

Just to deal with Kant's ridiculous argument.

P1 There's a distinction between noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (things-as-they-appear).
P2 There are no noumena.
C Therefore, there are only phenomena.

Any torment here is of Kant's own making. It's the torment of thinking this argument is valid and sound - which has afflicted some philosophers ever since. (In my opinion, it's just Platonic dualism recycled, renamed and disguised.)

Meanwhile, civilians have never given a toss about philosophical lucubrations down the rabbit hole.

(And meanwhile, the claim that Kant's nonsensical distinction lends any credence to the claim that there are moral facts is ... well ... farcical.)

Your thinking is very immature in this case and thus insulting your own intelligence with the above short-sighted syllogism.
I'll accept your crude syllogism as a starting point but there are critical details you missed out either ignorantly or deliberately for rhetorical purpose.

• P1 There's a distinction between noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (things-as-they-appear). [in the conventional sense and crude logic (Kant called that Pure, Raw Reason)]
  
  P2 There are no noumena. [as justified and reasoned]
  
  C Therefore, there are only phenomena. [as verified, justified based on empirical evidences and reinforced with philosophical reasoning within a credible FSK, e.g. scientific FSK]

So what is wrong with C as detailed above?

Think about it. If P2 is true, then P1 is false. In other words, if there are no noumena, there's no distinction between noumena and phenomena. Now, as you know, if even one premise is false, the argument is unsound - and its conclusion is worthless. There's no reason to think of features of reality as phenomena - as 'appearances'. If there are no noumena, of what are phenomena phenomena?

Point is we take reality [an Emergence] which we are entangled with as far as our empirical evidences and philosophical reasonings can soundly and rationally support it with no addition of your mystical tripes.

OTOH, your claim would be

• P1 There's a distinction between noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (things-as-they-appear).[in the conventional sense and crude logic]
  P2 There are noumena. [based on crude primal logic]
  C Therefore, there are phenomena [as justified via the specific FSK] and noumena.

Obviously my detailed syllogism is more solid that yours.

Erm. You don't seem to understand how this all works.

Do you have a counter for my above claims?

In your case, you argument ended up with a claim of the noumena, noumenon which as the ultimate sense is a thing-in-itself and that is reasoned out to be an illusion.
In your case, that is philosophical realism while the theism will claim God [thing-in-itself as Father of all things-in-themselves] exists as real.

But elsewhere you describe Kant's things-in-themselves (noumena) as merely unobserved things. Do you think unobserved things don't exist? Are you a Berkeleyan idealist?

[Veritas Aequitas]

Well, if all we're talking about is the existence of things not being observed, then I absolutely affirm their existence. There's no reason to believe that unobserved things cease to exist. If that's what a 'thing-in-itself' really is, then my 'features of reality that are the case' are indeed what Kant called 'noumena'.

That is the problem when you lack the depth on Kantian knowledge and your approach is bottom-up i.e. philosophical realism.

Conventionally, the point is "something cannot come /originate from nothing", thus the drive for the assumption there must be something-X originating from the bottom-up to be reconciled with the top-down empirically observed thing.
Therefore logically from that whatever is phenomena, there must be the logical opposite, i.e. the noumena.
Thus for Kant the noumena [singular: noumenon] only has logical existence and not real existence.

The Concept of a Noumenon is thus a merely limiting Concept, the Function of which is to curb the pretensions of Sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment.
B311

In Kantian philosophy in the CPR, it is dealt within certain phases, i.e.
1. sensibility [the empirical],
2. the intellect [Understanding], and
3. Pure [raw reason].

Kant begin and has to exhaust each phase before moving to the next, but it is very natural for the majority of humans to jump ahead [driven psychologically] to 2 and 3 before they fully grasp what is 1 [sensibility -phenomena] all about.

Note Russell's No Man's Land, where it is very natural for many to leap hastily across the No Man's Land to the edge or into La La Land.

From 'No Man's Land' to 'La La Land'
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=31341

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/08 ... -land.html

To stop those who are hasty from jumping too far ahead, Kant introduced the concept of the noumena to contrast against what is phenomena. But the noumena in this case only has logical existence not real existence, thus can only as a limit of negative employment.

When Kant has exhausted whatever is necessary in the sensibility [phenomena] phase, he then moved on to explore the noumena within 2 and 3 which at that stage the noumenon is taken as a thing-in-itself.

Ultimately Kant demonstrated the noumenon [within sensibility] aka thing-in-itself [Pure Reason] is an illusion.

Thus what you claimed as noumena [at the edge of La La Land] is an illusion.
The theists will jump into La La Land and claimed the thing-in-itself is a God.

But, wait, Kant said that noumena don't exist - that unobserved things don't exist!? He was even wronger than I thought. Barmy.

As stated above the noumena [your reality with describable features] is ultimately an illusion.
The noumena are not unobserved things but rather they are illusion [limits if reified] in the first place. They don't have an empirical possibilities at all, e.g. like square-circles.

Note I can speculate unobserved unicorns exist as real in a planet light years away because all its elements has empirical possibilities, so it is matter of producing the empirical evidences to be verified for confirmation.
But the noumena is merely a logical entity that do not has any empirical possibility at all thus can never exists as a real thing.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Just to deal with Kant's ridiculous argument.

P1 There's a distinction between noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (things-as-they-appear).
P2 There are no noumena.
C Therefore, there are only phenomena.

Any torment here is of Kant's own making. It's the torment of thinking this argument is valid and sound - which has afflicted some philosophers ever since. (In my opinion, it's just Platonic dualism recycled, renamed and disguised.)

Meanwhile, civilians have never given a toss about philosophical lucubrations down the rabbit hole.

(And meanwhile, the claim that Kant's nonsensical distinction lends any credence to the claim that there are moral facts is ... well ... farcical.)

Your thinking is very immature in this case and thus insulting your own intelligence with the above short-sighted syllogism.
I'll accept your crude syllogism as a starting point but there are critical details you missed out either ignorantly or deliberately for rhetorical purpose.

• P1 There's a distinction between noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (things-as-they-appear). [in the conventional sense and crude logic (Kant called that Pure, Raw Reason)]
  
  P2 There are no noumena. [as justified and reasoned]
  
  C Therefore, there are only phenomena. [as verified, justified based on empirical evidences and reinforced with philosophical reasoning within a credible FSK, e.g. scientific FSK]

So what is wrong with C as detailed above?

Think about it.
If P2 is true, then P1 is false.
In other words, if there are no noumena, there's no distinction between noumena and phenomena.
Now, as you know, if even one premise is false, the argument is unsound - and its conclusion is worthless.
There's no reason to think of features of reality as phenomena - as 'appearances'. If there are no noumena, of what are phenomena phenomena?

You don't get my points in blue above?
Note my explanation above where Kant dealt with the issue in 3 phases.

P1 is raised within the conventional sense and sensibility where the majority of people will be driven psychologically to invent the noumena. So Kant made the assumption that the noumena exists [only to please his opponents not himself], but then only as a logical entity at the conventional level as a limit of negative employment [meaning one cannot claim it is something objectively real].

Note in the conventional sense, Kant himself raised the point, it is absurd to have appearance without something-that-appear. This is conventional logic. But logic is not reality!

P2 is subsequently in the next phase dealt within the Understanding and Pure Reason and justified as non existence as I had explained above.

Since P2 demonstrated the noumena is illusory, what is left that is real is the phenomena that can be verified and justified empirically as real via the scientific FSK.
There is nothing wrong with this argument at all.

PH:If there are no noumena, of what are phenomena phenomena?
As I had stated the term phenomena can be very misleading.
What we have are emergence[s] from the top-down approach and they can be verified and justified as real within the credible scientific FSK.

Point is we take reality [an Emergence] which we are entangled with as far as our empirical evidences and philosophical reasonings can soundly and rationally support it with no addition of your mystical tripes.

OTOH, your claim would be

• P1 There's a distinction between noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (things-as-they-appear).[in the conventional sense and crude logic]
  P2 There are noumena. [based on crude primal logic]
  C Therefore, there are phenomena [as justified via the specific FSK] and noumena.

Obviously my detailed syllogism is more solid that yours.

Erm. You don't seem to understand how this all works.

Do you have a counter for my above claims?

In your case, you argument ended up with a claim of the noumena, noumenon which as the ultimate sense is a thing-in-itself and that is reasoned out to be an illusion.
In your case, that is philosophical realism while the theism will claim God [thing-in-itself as Father of all things-in-themselves] exists as real.

But elsewhere you describe Kant's things-in-themselves (noumena) as merely unobserved things. Do you think unobserved things don't exist? Are you a Berkeleyan idealist?

Nope!
I've never described noumena as merely unobserved things.
Note how I explained it above.
I'd referenced Kant on how he defined what is noumena and its limited use B307 which I had done many times in this forum.

Whatever the unobserved thing it must be empirical possibility to be experienced and be verified and justified within a credible FSK.
The noumena [a mere logical entity] is like an unobservable square-circle.

Note this thread which relevant to you and the above issue.

Humans are more Animal than being more Human.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=34333&p=559300#p559300

[Belinda]

And these cultural values that are better than others, are subjectively better as agreed within one of these frameworks, or objectively better?

If one society organises its moral landscape around personal freedom, but another organises theirs around harmony, while a third uses concepts of natural order, what is the thing that makes one of those good and the other two less good? The people who built their entire moral language around peaceful harmony will surely all agree with each other that this is much more harmonious that the anarchical freedom thing and therefore better reasoned.

I genuinely can't distinguish between your description of moral fact and everyone else's description of relativism, and that's because you have downgraded the concept of fact to be relativistic. It would surely have been easier to just enter moral relativism through the front door.

Personal freedom is the best of the three you select. But personal freedom is not anarchical because personal freedom is relative to physical and moral constraints such as they are on the occasion of choosing. Within these necessary constraints the more choices the better.
My description is relativistic. I thought you asked me to explain and justify my stance.

Did you not recently accuse Pete of being on the fence?

You are working some seriously self contradictory notion of facts that are true for some and false for others but still 'facts', moral objectivity that is dependent for that objectivity on these FSK things that are only objective on some bandwagon basis of shared subjectivity. Nobody can tell what your position is. And now you are being relatvist as well, but the relativism thing isn't a dilemma you can fix by just grabbing the bull by the horns, it's incoherent to be a relativist moral objectivist.

Nothing about it makes any sense. You have your own fences to get off.

I remember accusing Peter of being on the fence. I always try to explain things to myself and sometimes get it wrong. My most recent inconsistency is that existential will is so similar to classic Free Will, and I am partial to both existentialism's authenticity and also determinism. I am not a genius and take my ideas from others.

One solution to the above inconsistency is to be an existentialist for myself and take full responsibility for my actions while at the same time applying the tenets of determinism to everybody else. Regarding objective morality, this would mean that I blame myself for my own bad actions (objective morality) but extend deterministic blamelessness to others (morality is not objective but is circumstantial).

[Peter Holmes]

Your thinking is very immature in this case and thus insulting your own intelligence with the above short-sighted syllogism.
I'll accept your crude syllogism as a starting point but there are critical details you missed out either ignorantly or deliberately for rhetorical purpose.

• P1 There's a distinction between noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (things-as-they-appear). [in the conventional sense and crude logic (Kant called that Pure, Raw Reason)]
  
  P2 There are no noumena. [as justified and reasoned]
  
  C Therefore, there are only phenomena. [as verified, justified based on empirical evidences and reinforced with philosophical reasoning within a credible FSK, e.g. scientific FSK]

So what is wrong with C as detailed above?

Think about it.
If P2 is true, then P1 is false.
In other words, if there are no noumena, there's no distinction between noumena and phenomena.
Now, as you know, if even one premise is false, the argument is unsound - and its conclusion is worthless.
There's no reason to think of features of reality as phenomena - as 'appearances'. If there are no noumena, of what are phenomena phenomena?

You don't get my points in blue above?
Note my explanation above where Kant dealt with the issue in 3 phases.

P1 is raised within the conventional sense and sensibility where the majority of people will be driven psychologically to invent the noumena. So Kant made the assumption that the noumena exists [only to please his opponents not himself], but then only as a logical entity at the conventional level as a limit of negative employment [meaning one cannot claim it is something objectively real].

Note in the conventional sense, Kant himself raised the point, it is absurd to have appearance without something-that-appear. This is conventional logic. But logic is not reality!

P2 is subsequently in the next phase dealt within the Understanding and Pure Reason and justified as non existence as I had explained above.

Since P2 demonstrated the noumena is illusory, what is left that is real is the phenomena that can be verified and justified empirically as real via the scientific FSK.
There is nothing wrong with this argument at all.

PH:If there are no noumena, of what are phenomena phenomena?
As I had stated the term phenomena can be very misleading.
What we have are emergence[s] from the top-down approach and they can be verified and justified as real within the credible scientific FSK.

Point is we take reality [an Emergence] which we are entangled with as far as our empirical evidences and philosophical reasonings can soundly and rationally support it with no addition of your mystical tripes.

OTOH, your claim would be

• P1 There's a distinction between noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (things-as-they-appear).[in the conventional sense and crude logic]
  P2 There are noumena. [based on crude primal logic]
  C Therefore, there are phenomena [as justified via the specific FSK] and noumena.

Obviously my detailed syllogism is more solid that yours.

Erm. You don't seem to understand how this all works.

Do you have a counter for my above claims?

In your case, you argument ended up with a claim of the noumena, noumenon which as the ultimate sense is a thing-in-itself and that is reasoned out to be an illusion.
In your case, that is philosophical realism while the theism will claim God [thing-in-itself as Father of all things-in-themselves] exists as real.

But elsewhere you describe Kant's things-in-themselves (noumena) as merely unobserved things. Do you think unobserved things don't exist? Are you a Berkeleyan idealist?

Nope!
I've never described noumena as merely unobserved things.
Note how I explained it above.
I'd referenced Kant on how he defined what is noumena and its limited use B307 which I had done many times in this forum.

Whatever the unobserved thing it must be empirical possibility to be experienced and be verified and justified within a credible FSK.
The noumena [a mere logical entity] is like an unobservable square-circle.

Note this thread which relevant to you and the above issue.

Humans are more Animal than being more Human.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=34333&p=559300#p559300

Sigh. If there are no noumena, then what we call reality does not consist of phenomena. It consists of features of reality that are or (in the past) were the case. My dog is a dog, not the appearance of a dog-in-itself that doesn't exist. And empirical evidence for the existence of my dog within a credible FSK is evidence for the existence of a dog, not the appearance of a dog-in-itself that doesn't exist.

You can keep blathering in defence of Kant's ridiculous idea. But, anyway, it does nothing to establish the existence of moral rightness and wrongness as features of reality that are or were the case. Your invented morality FSK is a joke - and one day you'll get it.

I suggest we leave it here, because we're going around in circles, getting nowhere.

[FlashDangerpants]

Personal freedom is the best of the three you select. But personal freedom is not anarchical because personal freedom is relative to physical and moral constraints such as they are on the occasion of choosing. Within these necessary constraints the more choices the better.
My description is relativistic. I thought you asked me to explain and justify my stance.

Did you not recently accuse Pete of being on the fence?

You are working some seriously self contradictory notion of facts that are true for some and false for others but still 'facts', moral objectivity that is dependent for that objectivity on these FSK things that are only objective on some bandwagon basis of shared subjectivity. Nobody can tell what your position is. And now you are being relatvist as well, but the relativism thing isn't a dilemma you can fix by just grabbing the bull by the horns, it's incoherent to be a relativist moral objectivist.

Nothing about it makes any sense. You have your own fences to get off.

I remember accusing Peter of being on the fence. I always try to explain things to myself and sometimes get it wrong. My most recent inconsistency is that existential will is so similar to classic Free Will, and I am partial to both existentialism's authenticity and also determinism. I am not a genius and take my ideas from others.

One solution to the above inconsistency is to be an existentialist for myself and take full responsibility for my actions while at the same time applying the tenets of determinism to everybody else. Regarding objective morality, this would mean that I blame myself for my own bad actions (objective morality) but extend deterministic blamelessness to others (morality is not objective but is circumstantial).

I can pitch some solutions that might work. That in itself might be a problem, because we are in danger of agreeing on some stuff and I am a moral skeptic of some sort....

Firstly I would suggest that there are some subjects which are the realm of pure reason and cannot (at least cannot yet) be applied in the realm of practical reason. Things like skepticism, Vertical Ambulance's obsession with antirealism, and also the free will question are examples. Practical reason is about what we as humans should do when we get out of bed in the morning, pure reason issues such as whether we should think very differently about what it is to be human and whether or not the bed is even there haven't been through the preliminary processes required to ready them for practical reason purposes. Think of this a pseudo-Wittgensteinian position where our way of being a human at all needs to be adressed first if this thing is going to change the way humans eat breakfast. Conversely, if that doesn't need to be done, then there is no moral impact to any of these things. If you agree, then good luck explainig that to VA.

For the other matter, I would avoid the solipsism inherent in applying different tests to yourself than to others, but I get the idea. I think the trick is to not fall for the idea that morality is a singular thing at all. Morality is a constantly churning form of social activities with a very ill defined set of available inputs.

The layer of reasoning that we apply on top of a bunch of our activities just helps us to talk about them in a context, but the context changes according to what we are trying to do at this minute, and the reasoning that we called on to inform some conversation yesterday can be completely discarded for today's new context. You can see this around you every day, this forum contains some spectacular hypocrites who genuinely consider themselves the best among us.

Our natural human desire is to fix broken things, and the underlying reasoning in our everyday moral conversations looks prima facie like a candidate. But you can't fix this logic unless you deal with that tangle of inputs, which is the basic thing that all the explicitly rigid moral philosophies do. So one set says the only moral concern is wellbing measured as the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Another says that the only concern is to follow correct rules. In doing this they all fall foul of something important, their recommendations are easily shown to be unjust or unfair, or unkind, because the list of these inputs is unquantifiable.

That's all I do when I see a new one of those things, I just look for which un-thing it is and then exploit that. It's why I like to make Henry and VA confess that they can't explain why it's immoral to shoot a dog (notoriously one of Kant's major problems too) in disloyal, unkind circumstances.

Like Hume, and probably Sartre but I can't say for sure, I argue that if we can't convert practical reason into pure reason, we are making a poor decision when we try to ignore that and just treat it as pure reason anyway. So we can't usefully proceed until we understand the ways in which moral reason is required to be deductively weak, because it doesn't do what we need it to do at all without those weaknesses.

That's my version of moral skepticism stripped down to nuts and bolts. And for what it's worth, half at least is stolen straight from Isiah Berlin, but he wouldn't agree exactly with my conclusion.

[henry quirk]

It's why I like to make Henry...confess that (he) can't explain why it's immoral to shoot a dog (notoriously one of Kant's major problems too) in disloyal, unkind circumstances.

you've never done that, guy...quit makin' shit up

and: ain't nuthin' immoral in shootin' a dog (unless the dog belongs to someone else, cuz then it's a kind of theft)

[Belinda]

Did you not recently accuse Pete of being on the fence?

You are working some seriously self contradictory notion of facts that are true for some and false for others but still 'facts', moral objectivity that is dependent for that objectivity on these FSK things that are only objective on some bandwagon basis of shared subjectivity. Nobody can tell what your position is. And now you are being relatvist as well, but the relativism thing isn't a dilemma you can fix by just grabbing the bull by the horns, it's incoherent to be a relativist moral objectivist.

Nothing about it makes any sense. You have your own fences to get off.

I remember accusing Peter of being on the fence. I always try to explain things to myself and sometimes get it wrong. My most recent inconsistency is that existential will is so similar to classic Free Will, and I am partial to both existentialism's authenticity and also determinism. I am not a genius and take my ideas from others.

One solution to the above inconsistency is to be an existentialist for myself and take full responsibility for my actions while at the same time applying the tenets of determinism to everybody else. Regarding objective morality, this would mean that I blame myself for my own bad actions (objective morality) but extend deterministic blamelessness to others (morality is not objective but is circumstantial).

I can pitch some solutions that might work. That in itself might be a problem, because we are in danger of agreeing on some stuff and I am a moral skeptic of some sort....

Firstly I would suggest that there are some subjects which are the realm of pure reason and cannot (at least cannot yet) be applied in the realm of practical reason. Things like skepticism, Vertical Ambulance's obsession with antirealism, and also the free will question are examples. Practical reason is about what we as humans should do when we get out of bed in the morning, pure reason issues such as whether we should think very differently about what it is to be human and whether or not the bed is even there haven't been through the preliminary processes required to ready them for practical reason purposes. Think of this a pseudo-Wittgensteinian position where our way of being a human at all needs to be adressed first if this thing is going to change the way humans eat breakfast. Conversely, if that doesn't need to be done, then there is no moral impact to any of these things. If you agree, then good luck explainig that to VA.

For the other matter, I would avoid the solipsism inherent in applying different tests to yourself than to others, but I get the idea. I think the trick is to not fall for the idea that morality is a singular thing at all. Morality is a constantly churning form of social activities with a very ill defined set of available inputs.

The layer of reasoning that we apply on top of a bunch of our activities just helps us to talk about them in a context, but the context changes according to what we are trying to do at this minute, and the reasoning that we called on to inform some conversation yesterday can be completely discarded for today's new context. You can see this around you every day, this forum contains some spectacular hypocrites who genuinely consider themselves the best among us.

Our natural human desire is to fix broken things, and the underlying reasoning in our everyday moral conversations looks prima facie like a candidate. But you can't fix this logic unless you deal with that tangle of inputs, which is the basic thing that all the explicitly rigid moral philosophies do. So one set says the only moral concern is wellbing measured as the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Another says that the only concern is to follow correct rules. In doing this they all fall foul of something important, their recommendations are easily shown to be unjust or unfair, or unkind, because the list of these inputs is unquantifiable.

That's all I do when I see a new one of those things, I just look for which un-thing it is and then exploit that. It's why I like to make Henry and VA confess that they can't explain why it's immoral to shoot a dog (notoriously one of Kant's major problems too) in disloyal, unkind circumstances.

Like Hume, and probably Sartre but I can't say for sure, I argue that if we can't convert practical reason into pure reason, we are making a poor decision when we try to ignore that and just treat it as pure reason anyway. So we can't usefully proceed until we understand the ways in which moral reason is required to be deductively weak, because it doesn't do what we need it to do at all without those weaknesses.

That's my version of moral skepticism stripped down to nuts and bolts. And for what it's worth, half at least is stolen straight from Isiah Berlin, but he wouldn't agree exactly with my conclusion.

I would have thought scepticism is mostly awareness of confirmation bias and awareness of illusions ; psychology has scepticism wrapped up. Descartes did make a great contribution regarding illusions despite that he was wrong about self. Regarding free will, many people fail to get a hold of the key belief in origination of will, but are side -tracked by the notion that free will can be a little bit of free and still pass for ontically free. Origination is all or nothing.


The existentialists Heidegger and Sartre draw together questions of practical morality and what is is to be a human being at all. The main idea is that all experiencers face forward towards the future, because we have to do so . Thrown-ness. We are thrown willy nilly into a life a time and a place and have to decide what to do about it as an ongoing situation. Men are specially burdened with anxt as unlike certain other animals we can look back in despair, and forward in fear and hope. That, apart from walking on two legs , opposable thumb, and anatomy that allows speech, is what defines the human. The moral impact is one of freedom of the subject of experience to maximise number and quality of choices.

This is not libertarianism because there can be no subject of experience without an object of experience, i.e. self and self's environment.

In fairness I have to say some people define the human as between God and angels. I discount supernatural order or hierarchy of being for reasons I'll not go into now.

I can't see any danger of idealism's sliding into solipsism because of the basic tenet of other minds as part of the experiencer's environment.

[FlashDangerpants]

It's why I like to make Henry...confess that (he) can't explain why it's immoral to shoot a dog (notoriously one of Kant's major problems too) in disloyal, unkind circumstances.

you've never done that, guy...quit makin' shit up

and: ain't nuthin' immoral in shootin' a dog (unless the dog belongs to someone else, cuz then it's a kind of theft)

You really just underlined my point for me there. You have a sad and inadequate moral theory that relies on leaving stuff out to maintain even a semblance of cohesion, and that's for the reasons I already gave.

[FlashDangerpants]

I would have thought scepticism is mostly awareness of confirmation bias and awareness of illusions

No, that is far too tepid. Moral skepticism involves the status of moral claims, and specifically whether any of them can amount to facts, and if we can refer to them as knowledge.

Having a whole thing about free will and then applying to one human activity such as moral decision making is no better than getting confused trying to have a little bit of free will. If there is no free will then entire concept of what we are has to be junked and done over again BEFORE you can even move onto wondering whether moral vocabulary expresses any content at all let alone what that ought to be. It's a canard to insert it into this conversation.

[henry quirk]

It's why I like to make Henry...confess that (he) can't explain why it's immoral to shoot a dog (notoriously one of Kant's major problems too) in disloyal, unkind circumstances.

you've never done that, guy...quit makin' shit up

and: ain't nuthin' immoral in shootin' a dog (unless the dog belongs to someone else, cuz then it's a kind of theft)

You really just underlined my point for me there. You have a sad and inadequate moral theory that relies on leaving stuff out to maintain even a semblance of cohesion, and that's for the reasons I already gave.

What I leave out of my fairly robust and way more than adequate codification of fact and moral fact are non-persons like rocks, grass, and dogs. Morality is for men, not animals.

And -- bringin' it round to the start -- you never had me confess that I can't explain why it's immoral to shoot a dog (cuz it's not, unless the dog belongs to another, then it's theft).

If you're gonna drag me in to a continuation of a tired conversation: do it honestly, not with a lie.

[FlashDangerpants]

If you're gonna drag me in to a continuation of a tired conversation: do it honestly, not with a lie.

I was just using you as an example.

[henry quirk]

If you're gonna drag me in to a continuation of a tired conversation: do it honestly, not with a lie.

I was just using you as an example.

You lied.

[FlashDangerpants]

If you're gonna drag me in to a continuation of a tired conversation: do it honestly, not with a lie.

I was just using you as an example.

You lied.

Actually I just didn't care. You can boast that you think you can prove that holding a dog down and shitting on its head isn't immoral if you prefer that to confessing that you can't explain why it is immoral and it makes precisely zero difference to me.

So if you are this pissed off then I appologise very very humbly, I didn't realise I was taking any of your property away.