What is your moral philosophy?

[Ren]

Yeah that's another one. What is open monism though?

A system I'm developing.

 

[PerfectImperfect]

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

I can say I really do follow by this principle. Hence why I take 0.1% of offenses offensively, I completely understand we're all human and it just be that way sometime.

 

[charlatan]

world that was intrinsically evil because individually experienced suffering is then predetermined and totally unavoidable.

Same here, actually. Remembering that my criterion is based on the capacity to predict, avoid, etc suffering....this would precisely be the sort of world that ought not to exist.

Which basically speaks to my point that the only thing we can't do in a world with no choice is talk of genuine blame.
We can still call someone evil for having evil attitudes and so on, but we cannot blame them for doing evil.

 

[Ren]

By the way, just one note on this: what if someone said to the extent morals are subjective, they don't exist? That is, if morals are about what one *ought to do*, perhaps the real options are either we don't have any such *ought* reasons and we simply do things..... or we actually have *ought* reasons, in which case it's objective.

I know what people are trying to get at when they say morals are subjective is that they value different things. But at best, that would show there's an objective morality that simply requires different people to do different things in order to uphold it. Perhaps it would require Hitler to commit genocide, and require me not to commit genocide.

But the greater challenge is perhaps this is more convoluted than just saying there don't exist 'oughts' period, kind of like a Dark Knight Joker "I just do things!" free-for-all.
What the above scenario sounds like to me is that the objective morals speak to objective obligations, but to strive for different results. That is, it says it's coherent for me to be obligated to pursue X and you to be obligated to pursue not-X. That's still objective morals but just not in terms of consequences.

Overall, I have a hard time understanding how one would found morals on this contradictory consequences basis, so it leads me to suspect what's really being stated is a Joker-morality, aka no morality.

Where I think you’re right is that the concept of morals – understood as an ‘ought’ concept – can’t be a subjective one, since it relates to a duty that is necessarily connected with an external realm. In a sense the very idea of duty is hardly conceivable as subjective.

But it’s the content of morals - the content of what one must then (objectively) relate to and follow - which I think is the issue. In other words, the kind of subscript that accompanies our ‘oughts’. One complies with that script in an objective sense; but how is the script itself objective, and how can it be ‘improved’? What is the yardstick?

Rather than ‘subjective’, I would prefer the expression ‘context-dependent’, or ‘culture-dependent’. The importance you give rationality your moral framework might not be found in the morality of a South American shaman. And I don’t think it can easily be said that the ‘rational’ morality it superior – or inferior, for that matter. To me it rather sounds like nonsense to try to compare the two and tell which one has ‘improved’ the other. There is incommensurability at play here, I think – and if so, this would provide the limits of the objectivity of morals.

 

[charlatan]

One complies with that script in an objective sense; but how is the script itself objective, and how can it be ‘improved’? What is the yardstick?

Rather than ‘subjective’, I would prefer the expression ‘context-dependent’, or ‘culture-dependent’. The importance you give rationality your moral framework might not be found in the morality of a South American shaman

Complying with the script is the 'is' portion -- that is, I follow a framework/rules.

The real question of morality, though, isn't whether one DOES comply with a script, but whether one OUGHT to. Now, I've basically said this leaves two options: either there are oughts or there are not.
To me, what you describe sounds a lot like saying there are not oughts, which seems to me a more intelligible position than saying the oughts are cultural or whatever. I don't see how the fact that someone follows a script (e.g. out of culture) is any indicator that they ought to! Perhaps they could just diverge from the script tomorrow....perhaps they won't out of habit. Either way, there seems to be no foundation to say there are any 'oughts' going on there.


The rationality stuff does not seem to me to be arbitrary subjective valuation so much as saying the alternative (that is, if you accept contradictions) is acting randomly (which is precisely saying there are no oughts/you simply do things like the Joker).


What seems to be going on here is you seem to start with values as the foundation for action, not rationality, first --- you seem to suggest it is coherent to value the shaman way for cultural reasons while rejecting reason, while I seem to say once you've rejected reason, you're at random action -- that is, you can't even have values once you accept contradictions (if you make mistakes, on the other hand, that's fine -- meaning you reject contradictions but may not notice them).
If someone can tell me how values can be held by someone who accepts contradictions, I guess I could try to understand that road?
I guess part of the thing is rationality seems such a basic constraint that I have a hard time imagining where we even can go without that. To even have a self-concept saying "I value this, not that" it seems to me some rationality is necessary.

By the way, among mystics, I'd guess a lot of them would actually agree with me that the alternative to rational oughts is no oughts. That is, a lot of mystics seem to just observe what happens, not trying to form a self-concept of "I value this, not that" precisely because they reject any notion of self. They actually DO adhere to the "I simply do things -- things simply happen."

this gets very extreme --- some mystics would say there is not even an "ought" except on a crude practical level to pursue enlightenment/nirvana/whatever! They go the extreme of saying you already are enlightened and that you are not is an illusion. In other words, there really is just Reality and 'Is' to them, it seems.

For me, the moral problem comes down to whether there ARE rational oughts, or if ultimately at rock bottom there aren't reasons for acting any particular way/stipulating the world should be a certain way. I'm not taking it for granted that there are, but I've started explaining why the arguments seem to point that way

Basically, how I would act on ideal rational reflection more or less = how I ought to act. And I think the nontrivial part isn't this, but rather figuring out if ultimately, it's arbitrary, or if there are at least some oughts out there.

 

[charlatan]

Anyway @Ren, just to be very clear, I'm just saying I get your skepticism with objective morals, and I get that a lot of folk just kind of assume they exist, which probably leads you (rightly) to wonder if at bottom there's just goals you can pursue, and degrees of success at achieving them.

What I'm pointing out is that the alternative can't be subjective oughts. The alternative is NO oughts, because subjective oughts seem like nonsense. Experience can be subjective, but oughts are about imposing a goal / obligation on you, and if you're choosing whatever goal based on a whim, that precisely means there ain't an ought binding you one way or another.

 

[Ren]

The real question of morality, though, isn't whether one DOES comply with a script, but whether one OUGHT to. Now, I've basically said this leaves two options: either there are oughts or there are not.

But isn’t it important to know what kind of script one ought to comply with? Based on your post I’m assuming you’re referring to a kind of transcendental moral law. A law which is objectively laid out for all and in which can be found the moral propositions that bind us (the obligations). Is that what you’re saying in a nutshell? For example, this moral law might contain ‘articles’ about killing, lying, etc. – or at a higher level perhaps, not causing injury to others.

If you consider that the two options are “either there are oughts or there are not” about that, then you’re right, I’m inclined to side with the no oughts camp. I do not think such a transcendental law exists (in whatever form). To that extent I am sympathetic to those who say that “morals are subjective”, though a better way to phrase it would be to say: “morals are not to be strictly understood in terms of transcendental oughts”.

I simply have not encountered convincing arguments in its favor. I think it’s a disembodied concept, which disregards that morality is always deeply embedded within a given Weltanschauung. If one reasons in terms of transcendental oughts then sure, thinking morality in terms of context/culture does not make sense, I agree with you on that. But I don’t think the oughts need to be law-like – or rather, I don’t think morality is necessarily to be understood in terms of oughts. Thinking about morality in terms of duty by definition (the definition of the terms of the conversation) is a little misleading, a little too Kantian for my taste. There are other ways to look at morals.

I guess part of the thing is rationality seems such a basic constraint that I have a hard time imagining where we even can go without that. To even have a self-concept saying "I value this, not that" it seems to me some rationality is necessary.

I’ve a feeling that you might be playing with two different senses of ‘rational’ here. There is the rationality that everybody employs in their day-to-day, i.e. reasoning (“I value this, not that”.) Saying that the cornerstone of morality is to be rational is different. It means not simply acknowledging that we are creatures of reason but that reason should be a goal/an end in itself.

As far as I’m concerned, I do not subscribe to there being oughts in the sense in which duty-oriented morality understands them. Which (again) does not mean that I reject morality en bloc.

What I'm pointing out is that the alternative can't be subjective oughts. The alternative is NO oughts, because subjective oughts seem like nonsense. Experience can be subjective, but oughts are about imposing a goal / obligation on you, and if you're choosing whatever goal based on a whim, that precisely means there ain't an ought binding you one way or another.

I think you're right on this point. The concept of subjective oughts does not make sense. At best it just refers to personal values. However, a morality of purely personal valuation might be defensible, along Nietzschean lines for example. However, this is not what I would embrace either. I embrace something else

 

[charlatan]

I think you're right on this point. Subjective oughts does not make sense.

If you agree with that, then I'd say we're in good understanding.

I'm not very Kantian or anything in the sense that I fear a lot of deontological theories of morality seem rigid and arbitrary.
After all, one can just as easily ground 'oughts' at least as I'm thinking of it in the foundation of 'you ought to pursue the optimal consequences' and thus go towards consequentialism more. I try to stay away from deontological vs consequential stuff for now, though I might some day return more seriously to it.
The question is really if there are objective overriding reasons to act one way over another -- if the answer is no, sure we can still talk of morality in a practical sense, but somehow it lacks the kick/controversy that drives me to the topic. The real question is if reason only describes what is, not what ought to be.


As to whether rationality is a goal of morality, for what it's worth, it's more like the most basic requirement -- once you accept contradictions/nonsense it's hard to decide what the right or wrong course is, or really to decide anything. Seems the option is just do random things.


As to whether there ARE objective oughts, the main place I see a suggestion of that is in things like unbearable agony, because here, the mental state, kind of like an empirical datum, seems to be negative basically by definition. I'm not sure I can self-consistently accept it. Almost seems the definition of unbearable agony to say I can't self-consistently accept it, approve of it, and so on.

When you talk of cultural morality, you're talking of acting in a way that is internally consistent with some framework. What I'm saying here is the framework is imposed by your very nature, so it isn't chosen by you.
It is in this sense that it seems objective.

 

[Ren]

When you talk of cultural morality, you're talking of acting in a way that is internally consistent with some framework. What I'm saying here is the framework is imposed by your very nature, so it isn't chosen by you.
It is in this sense that it seems objective.

Yep, I agree with that! What you call "the framework being imposed by your very nature" I referred to above as "moral law". I meant the same thing.

The jist of my own position (currently) is: in line with my open monist ideas, I reject the traditional subject-object distinction, so it makes no sense for me to speak of morality as either subjective or objective. I'm still thinking about how to present my thoughts here (they are at least somewhat familiar to @John K).

By the way, charlie: same reason why I had trouble following up on the neutral monism conversation. I came to realize that I hadn't fully fleshed out my conception of what the I is. Similarly to the subject-object distinction I reject, my understanding of the I/self-consciousness is also quite... different, let's say. I have now settled the question in my notes, so I hope to return to that topic with my findings/resolution and a bit of context around it too.

 

[John K]

Yep, I agree with that! What you call "the framework being imposed by your very nature" I referred to above as "moral law". I meant the same thing.

The jist of my own position (currently) is: in line with my open monist ideas, I reject the traditional subject-object distinction, so it makes no sense for me to speak of morality as either subjective or objective. I'm still thinking about how to present my thoughts here (they are at least somewhat familiar to @John K).

By the way, charlie: same reason why I had trouble following up on the neutral monism conversation. I came to realize that I hadn't fully fleshed out my conception of what the I is. Similarly to the subject-object distinction I reject, my understanding of the I/self-consciousness is also quite... different, let's say. I have now settled the question in my notes, so I hope to return to that topic with my findings/resolution and a bit of context around it too.

Yes, I see what you mean, Ren - It's not the time to try and build the clock tower when the foundations are still being developed.

I have to be very careful here because of course I have only got sight of the end-point inner vision that is leading you on with open monism "through a glass darkly" as your ideas unfold. My feeling is that any moral framework that emerges from it could well be linked to how well we who have second order openness achieve our entelechy in so far as we have a free choice to achieve this. And as our entelechy is intimately "embedded" in that of the ground that it emerges from, then this could intrinsically involve our individual contributions to the success or failure of our whole world to achieve its entelechy. It is conceivable that such a grand target would quite happily analyse down into the individual atoms of right and wrong that we experience in our ordinary everyday lives in the same way that the moral framework embedded in the salvation of the world in Christianity quite happily deals with the nuts and bolts of how honest I am when the guy who serves me in a shop gives me too much change. But this is pure speculation on my part - and I fear that I may not be sufficiently fluent with your terminological concepts to express this correctly in the language of open monism. I hope you get the intent of my meaning even if it is clumsily expressed.

Another speculation ….. I wonder if there can ever be a satisfactory purely logical approach to morality. Even the very cerebral approach that @charlatan takes by using suffering as a possible foundation of an objective morality is rooted in feeling judgement as an a priori - ie that suffering is abhorrent. It may be that logical thinking is orthogonal to the conceptual foundations of moral outlook and cannot really grip it there - the same way that I can't travel any distance in the Y direction no matter how far I move in the X direction in a Cartesian graph. The same is true of what I just speculated about a possible open monism morality - the value judgement that we should aim at achieving entelechy is a feeling judgement. As far as I can see logic wouldn't give a toss either way (but of course would be vital once that feeling judgement had been made).

 

[charlatan]

Yep, I agree with that! What you call "the framework being imposed by your very nature" I referred to above as "moral law". I meant the same thing.

Well you see the significance of the agony/suffering though, then, right? If you're in unbearable pain, unlike with the cultural frameworks, it's not just a game you CHOOSE to play, it's an 'ought' that's imposed on you.

That means there are at least some rational oughts. Let's not say objective, so as to not get caught up in subject-object talk, but rational, meaning you can't be self-consistent and hold to certain positions on how to act.

ie that suffering is abhorrent.

I wanted to make this case as hard to refute as possible, so I made sure not to go with any very simple notion of 'life is about pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.' For instance, we may eat spicy food despite the pain, for the rush.

But when we speak of unbearable agony, by definition, we CANNOT self-consistently accept it. Hence, there is an ought imposed by the fact of it existing.

I'm very sensitive to the idea that many want to say the only morality is being consistent with the frameworks you choose to follow, such as cultural frameworks -- that's why I wanted to show that there are cases where the framework is not adopted by choice but exists basically by definition.

 

[charlatan]

Oh and, @Ren, I had suspicions along those lines about the subject/object. That is, it did seem like I was addressing the issue of there not being a 'pure I thought' by saying that can be grounded in the idea that a substance without any of its properties may not make sense. One could also say the experience of "I" may need to accompany other experiential properties, rather than existing by itself, if one wants to bring in the issue of self-consciousness requiring something besides an "I".
Sounds a coherent way of making sense of the issues you were bringing up.

But this could be a case where you find another view more plausible even if you can consistently make the above case. Generally, I doubt the arguments for physicalism or idealism etc will be resolved by logical coherency alone as the check.

I myself think one of the biggest forces for nonreductive physicalism really is that it can accommodate aspects of the neutral pov and ultimately, one might surmise we ain't going to find anything that isn't at bedrock encoded in physical properties. Never have so far and the search has been very vast.

 

[Pin]

Contradiction.

How? No it's not, I'm merely acknowledging that one cannot choose their intentions, regardless of how "moral."

 

[Pin]

@Pin Do you think it is possible to take a moral position in the absence of free will? It's always seemed to me that if my behaviour contains no element of choice, then I cannot be held accountable for my actions and there is no right and wrong.

My personal subjective experience is that I do have freedom of choice - but this could itself be a deterministically generated illusion. The current foundations of science lead to the conclusion that the world is deterministic - even quantum mechanics seems to be that way orientated at close examination, with the universe as we know it being fully in existence as an eternal completed 4 dimensional object in space time. My instinct is that current scientific thinking gives an incomplete picture and that there is freedom of will which will emerge from yet more advanced scientific thinking - but perhaps I'm just programmed to think like that forever in my own eternal space time timeline. All good stuff to dwell on over plenty of alcohol ??

It is possible to make a moral position in the absence of free will. Even though a thief couldn't help but steal, (in the absence of free-will) I still consider thievery wrong. You might not necessarily be choosing your actions, but if your actions are wrong, I don't like them.

 

[John K]

It is possible to make a moral position in the absence of free will. Even though a thief couldn't help but steal, (in the absence of free-will) I still consider thievery wrong. You might not necessarily be choosing your actions, but if your actions are wrong, I don't like them.

I see where you are coming from. My own attitude to right and wrong is pretty visceral as well - I start off with a gut feeling that something is wrong, and I'd only analyse it if were not clear. For example, as my father's dementia got worse and worse, I had do things like stopping him driving, taking over his finances and his healthcare, and eventually getting him into a care home. These felt like violations to me, but the alternatives were far worse - I had to think (and agonise!) a lot about the options - both practically and morally. But mostly life is simpler, thank God, and I can just react on gut most of the time. I suppose a lot of this clarity is down to the fact I was brought up a Catholic so I've got a prefabricated set of values off the Church - mostly they are good common sense and only need serious attention from me when they come into conflict with secular values and I have to do some processing to see which way to go with them.

I certainly differ from you in that I think we have some freedom of will, but there are plenty like yourself who don't. If I had a deterministic view, then I'd probably treat any moral philosophy as absurd and ignore it. That's because I associate it with culpability, guilt, repentance, reparation, etc. - I feel that my deterministic programming would lead me to the view that these sort of things are only worth any attention if they could affect the way I exercised freedom of choice at key points in my life. I'm sure I would conform to the behavioural norms of society though, for an easy life!

 

[Pin]

I feel that my deterministic programming would lead me to the view that these sort of things are only worth any attention if they could affect the way I exercised freedom of choice at key points in my life. I'm sure I would conform to the behavioural norms of society though, for an easy life!

These being?

 

[Ren]

How? No it's not, I'm merely acknowledging that one cannot choose their intentions, regardless of how "moral."

Well, presumably if you can't choose your intentions, you can't choose anything whatsoever. Every choice really becomes the illusion of a choice, against a completely deterministic background (what you call "fate"). Thus you can't be deemed responsible for your actions. Thus your actions lie outside the moral compass - in the same way that we don't speak of the moral wrongdoings of lions when they eat a man.

Of course you might say: "But these actions would still be unlawful in human society." Yes, in the sense that the State would punish them, for reasons of safety, protection of property against thievery, etc. But still they would be emptied of their moral content. There'd be unlawful actions, but not immoral ones.

 

[Ren]

Even though a thief couldn't help but steal, (in the absence of free-will) I still consider thievery wrong.

You can consider something wrong without it being morally wrong. Much confusion arises from the polysemy of terms like "bad", "good", "wrong", "evil", "will", etc. during a conversation about morality.

 

[John K]

These being?

The civil laws of the society I lived in, and the social conventions of the people I spent most of my time with. I think cause and effect would determine that this would be my path of least resistance.

 

[Rowan Tree]

If you had to give an outline of your moral philosophy, what would it be?

Some form of virtue ethics, as the foundational claims of modernist conceptions of ethics (Deontology, Consequentialism) fall apart. Stoicism particularly interests me. Like Hellenistic Cynicism, it maintains that the good is to live in accord with our nature (as social animals capable of reason) and to be indifferent to everything outside of our control, which is to say everything other than our virtue: wisdom, justice, courage and moderation. However, it goes further than the Cynics with the Stoic notion of preferred and nonpreferred indifferents—that is, amongst those things outside of our control, some are desirable (a good reputation, food, health) and some undesirable (being tortured, living in poverty, etc.). Only virtue is an incommensurable good, so even if you do not have preferred indifferents or suffer from nonpreferred indifferents, as long as you have wisdom, justice, courage and moderation, it does not matter.

And do you think you manage (more or less) to apply it in real life?

I certainly try, but I am definitely not a Stoic sage yet