I made it! It took me all week but I finally caught up with this thread.
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Hi C_L, welcome back, hope you enjoyed your family visit. Although this will be my first post to you outside of your intro, after this mammoth read, I feel as though I've got to know you a little. Since there's been a lot of digression, I thought I'd pull this back to the OP.
Tonechaser gave you a great biological/neurological summary of what 'good' is and coincidentally described that the reason how we feel what is good is also the answer to the question why we feel what is good. I can't recommend enough that you read up on his post. I'd like to put that in to other terms for you: cogitet quod sit bonum ergo sum sit bonum - I think what is good therefore I am what is good. The nature of the arisal of any single moral impulse is necessarily isolated, unique and subjective. We know what we intuit as 'moral' and that's it; ultimately, we can know of the 'rightness' of no morals but our own. But humans are a social species: the development of this moral faculty was key to our evolutionary survival strategy of cooperation and we can observe other humans demonstrating 'moral' behaviour that we can judge is, to a greater or lesser extent, in line with our own. From there, we can decide whether other people are suited to cooperating with us in the execution of our individual survival strategies. This is how communities are formed. Due to this socially dynamic context of our species' development, we all share this moral faculty (with the notable misfires of sociopathy & psychopathy).
So that is how we know what is good: when we instinctively intuit that it is. Everything else is socio-cultural.
Addendum: Part of my reputation here has been built on my being a stickler for accuracy of definition and precision of usage (it's what I do in the real world, too) so I think that we can benefit from going back to basics.
Facts are objective, objective things are factual. Simple, yes? That's they key to recognising your misuse of the term 'objective'. Facts/objective things are not subject to context. For example, it's a fact that matter attracts matter with a force in proportion to it's mass. There's no 'context' in which this becomes non-factual consequently, we can say that it's objectively true. So when you say, for example, that 'Murder is always wrong' but then list scenarios in which 'culpability is variable', you're applying contexts in which the term 'murder is always wrong' becomes non-factual. The moment you add that '...but...' to the phrase, you recognise the subjectivity of the wrongness of murder. Does that make sense to you?
Hi C_L, welcome back, hope you enjoyed your family visit. Although this will be my first post to you outside of your intro, after this mammoth read, I feel as though I've got to know you a little. Since there's been a lot of digression, I thought I'd pull this back to the OP.
Tonechaser gave you a great biological/neurological summary of what 'good' is and coincidentally described that the reason how we feel what is good is also the answer to the question why we feel what is good. I can't recommend enough that you read up on his post. I'd like to put that in to other terms for you: cogitet quod sit bonum ergo sum sit bonum - I think what is good therefore I am what is good. The nature of the arisal of any single moral impulse is necessarily isolated, unique and subjective. We know what we intuit as 'moral' and that's it; ultimately, we can know of the 'rightness' of no morals but our own. But humans are a social species: the development of this moral faculty was key to our evolutionary survival strategy of cooperation and we can observe other humans demonstrating 'moral' behaviour that we can judge is, to a greater or lesser extent, in line with our own. From there, we can decide whether other people are suited to cooperating with us in the execution of our individual survival strategies. This is how communities are formed. Due to this socially dynamic context of our species' development, we all share this moral faculty (with the notable misfires of sociopathy & psychopathy).
So that is how we know what is good: when we instinctively intuit that it is. Everything else is socio-cultural.
Addendum: Part of my reputation here has been built on my being a stickler for accuracy of definition and precision of usage (it's what I do in the real world, too) so I think that we can benefit from going back to basics.
Dictionary.com Wrote:objective
əbˈdʒɛktɪv
adjective
1.
(of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
"historians try to be objective and impartial"
synonyms: impartial, unbiased, unprejudiced, non-partisan, disinterested, non-discriminatory, neutral, uninvolved, even-handed, equitable, fair, fair-minded, just, open-minded, dispassionate, detached, impersonal, unemotional, clinical
"an interviewer must try to be objective"
Facts are objective, objective things are factual. Simple, yes? That's they key to recognising your misuse of the term 'objective'. Facts/objective things are not subject to context. For example, it's a fact that matter attracts matter with a force in proportion to it's mass. There's no 'context' in which this becomes non-factual consequently, we can say that it's objectively true. So when you say, for example, that 'Murder is always wrong' but then list scenarios in which 'culpability is variable', you're applying contexts in which the term 'murder is always wrong' becomes non-factual. The moment you add that '...but...' to the phrase, you recognise the subjectivity of the wrongness of murder. Does that make sense to you?
Sum ergo sum
