Good and Evil

[bennyboy]

That situation differs from knowledge.  Knowledge cannot conflict with other knowledge.  If there is a conflict in two purported pieces of knowledge, one knows that at least one of them is wrong.  For example, if we look at the claim that Anne Boleyn cheated on Henry VIII and committed adultery, and compare that with the claim that Anne Boleyn was ever faithful to Henry VIII, we KNOW that one of those has to be wrong.  Conflicts in knowledge are impossible, as one of the conflicting claims must be false.

In the case of a physical action, either someone committed an action or did not commit it. In the case of an idea, it is not necessarily true that either an idea represents truth or it does not. And the reason for this is that the scope of a particular truth may be limited to a certain context.

Let me ask you-- is chocolate ice cream delicious? For the majority of American people, I think the answer would be yes. You could look to objective reasons why this might be the case: genetic predispositions for food with high fat and sugar content, for example. However, the ones who answer "no" are not missing any knowledge; they have knowledge of what it's like to taste chocolate ice cream in the context of THEIR genetics and physical apparatus.

I know chocolate ice cream is delicious. I've eaten it. Someone else knows that it is not delicious. They've eaten it, too. That we have different knowledge only means that the SCOPE of tha knowledge is limited: it does not transcend to all instances of human existence.

I think this is why morality pisses people off. I claim knowledge of a moral truth, and some other guy just calls my knowledge an opinion.

---

I feel like it's completely pointless to even attempt a discussion about morality if we concede that it has no basis in reason. All it will boil down to is "I feel this way," "I dislike that," and nothing could be more unproductive than a back and forth involving nothing but assertions that don't even carry the possibility of being assessed as correct or incorrect.

Of course morality has a basis in reason.  It represents a set of answers to a set of "should" questions: "How should I behave?" for example, or even "How should I think?"

But if I ask "How should I behave," there's always an implied goal there: "How should I behave if I want to be appreciated and loved by my community?"
 or "How should I behave if I dream of a peaceful, harmonious society?" or "How should I behave if I want to maximize the chances of others to live harmonious and fulfulling lives?" These questions, while solved or at least addressed by moral systems, are at their root emotionally motivated. And this is to be expected. After all, if you literally were incapable of giving a shit about anything, even pain and pleasure, then what would be the motivation for choosing a moral system or acting on it?

[emjay]

edit: never mind

[Hatshepsut]

... We had Zeno's paradox of the arrow arguing that motion or change can't be real...

It should serve as a warning for trusting an abstract argument too much and not paying attention to counter-evidence that is readily available.  The error of Zeno's reasoning is explained in Calculus, but even without the explanation, it should be clear enough that he made a mistake somewhere, even if one does not know what the mistake is.

As taught to me, the explanation in calculus was that the sequence {1/2, 3/4, ... (2^n - 1)/2^n} has a limit point at 1. None of the sequence's elements themselves are equal to 1; there's apparently no motion involved with constructing limits in calculus, a form of math as stationary as geometry, which can nonetheless describe rates of change. I wonder if Zeno's mistake was to assume that a thing is "real" only if it admits of formulation with a finite number of discrete steps. Natural language, which has a finite vocabulary and grammar, forces us to do the latter for everything we want to describe.

I feel like it's completely pointless to even attempt a discussion about morality if we concede that it has no basis in reason...

Yet is it possible to observe that, even if morality represents shared preference rather than a thing emerging from logical necessity, it still makes use of reason? Stanford Plato states that in ethics one deals with propositions that are "true" only most of the time, a significant concession in terms of rigor. A system of value statements, taken together, can still have deducible logical consequences.

These consequences become a matter for discussion, especially in the event it's found they go contrary to one or more of the original values whose realization was sought in the system. For instance, measures to promote social equality can paradoxically work to undermine it, as we see in the conflict between individual rights and cultural rights. For instance, certain groups have a custom of cutting deep scars on their members as a way of marking them, and this is done whether that member consents or not. Yet to forbid the practice in honor of individual liberty denies the right of that group to self-determination. They may not treasure individual freedoms as much as we do, and will argue that we have no right to impose this value on their society.

Yes, people have feelings, but feelings are not knowledge.

This a contestable premise. Are things that people learn through their sense organs knowledge? If not, then we don't know much. Another post has already pointed out that the brain computes emotional states in response to information coming in from the body and from the outside world, effectively making the emotional system a sense organ as well. Fear usually alerts an animal that it may be in danger.

A partition between logos and pathos goes back to Aristotle's rhetoric and yet, while intuitively obvious, is somewhat artificial. Emotions don't arrive at random; they have causes and evolve according to predictable laws. Psychology studies such laws and uses them in the clinic. The sense of fairness in chimps (thanks for the links to it) isn't totally divorced from reason. That chimps and humans value self cannot be a cosmic requirement, yet it is prerequisite to our continued existence. (If we are extinct no one will be discussing morality.) The "fairness" settlements of chimps are "designed" to reconcile conflicts within their troops that could negatively impact survival of each chimp that belongs to such a group. In a fairness settlement, one "purchases" safety at the price of "agreeing" to consider others' needs in addition to one's own. The chimps may not understand exactly what they're doing in process, yet their lack of metaknowledge doesn't impede their calculations.

Practical knowledge, the ability to compute or to do something, should be distinguished from knowledge about the computational process. Children learn to speak grammatical English with no formal grammar instruction. They know nothing about how English works, subject & predicate and so on. This doesn't keep them from using English effectively.

None of which establishes that feelings can generate an "objective" morality, a thing that probably doesn't exist. Some value statements must be agreed on when starting a moral system; then the consequences of those statements can be explored using reason.

[bennyboy]

It should serve as a warning for trusting an abstract argument too much and not paying attention to counter-evidence that is readily available.  The error of Zeno's reasoning is explained in Calculus, but even without the explanation, it should be clear enough that he made a mistake somewhere, even if one does not know what the mistake is.

As taught to me, the explanation in calculus was that the sequence {1/2, 3/4, ... (2^n - 1)/2^n} has a limit point at 1. None of the sequence's elements themselves are equal to 1; there's apparently no motion involved with constructing limits in calculus, a form of math as stationary as geometry, which can nonetheless describe rates of change. I wonder if Zeno's mistake was to assume that a thing is "real" only if it admits of formulation with a finite number of discrete steps. Natural language, which has a finite vocabulary and grammar, forces us to do the latter for everything we want to describe.

Yeah, it's obvious to us now that even though each division takes time, it's less time. So an infinitely short distance will take infinitely short time.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The solution is that reality is not infinitely divisible. The universe is 0ixilated at the plank scale

[Whateverist]

I feel like it's completely pointless to even attempt a discussion about morality if we concede that it has no basis in reason. All it will boil down to is "I feel this way," "I dislike that," and nothing could be more unproductive than a back and forth involving nothing but assertions that don't even carry the possibility of being assessed as correct or incorrect.

Perhaps it is like in Star Wars when Obi Wan tells Luke to consult his feeling. A moral claim amounts to a request that the other person consult their feeling. (That is why anyone who ends the request with "you asshole" is almost never successful.) No one is required to consult their feeling (empathy). We can all invite the other person to stick it in their ear instead, but what really is the alternative?

Suppose you make an airtight case why your your iron pumping prison bunkmate ought not to anally rape you. What description of "morality" best describes what is likely to happen next?

Hopefully that doesn't mean we shouldn't appeal to each other's better lights over moral matters, especially when we find them morally significant. Perhaps the only one who feels the force of our moral oughts is ourselves. Nevertheless we ought to try, whether or not we expect the other person to always be reasonable.

[Hatshepsut]

We mighta scared the main debate team off the podium.

The wanted Immanuel Kant and David Hume.
And if it's morals or liberty at hoist
perhaps Edmund Burke can join them.

[Neo-Scholastic]

At least it has become clear that for some their own personal feelings sufficiently justify whatever they want to do.

[bennyboy]

At least it has become clear that for some their own personal feelings sufficiently justify whatever they want to do.

Really?  Who said that?

[emjay]

At least it has become clear that for some their own personal feelings sufficiently justify whatever they want to do.

Really?  Who said that?

He possibly means me, from before I pulled my post - I don't know. My post was ill thought out - as usual - so I'm not entirely surprised he came to the above conclusion, if that comment was about me. But that was my fault for doing what I usually do on this forum, and which never goes down well, which is to a) talk about brain processes and expect people to understand or even care what I'm talking about, neutrally, in those terms, and b) play Devil's Advocate/take both sides of an argument in the same post. I was explaining an emotional brain process but at the same time saying it was inaccurate precisely because it was an emotional process and therefore needed 'extra effort' to correct using more objective means. But by trying to detail that process I lost sight of the original question of the thread and in realising that, decided to pull my post in case it was misconstrued.