Philosophy Shmilosophy

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
I think this answers StTito's question quite well (shudder). But we're not going defenestrate moral philosophy (otherwise known as ethics) because it doesn't fit in with science, are we?

Russell's chum Wittgenstein was fascinating on the subject of ethics.

…But we're not going defenestrate moral philosophy (otherwise known as ethics) because it doesn't fit in with science, are we?
…

Not for THAT specific reason, no. My aesthetic tests and my emotional preferences also “doesn't fit in with science” in the very narrow sense that, just like moral philosophy, they cannot be used to rationally obtain truths about the external world and yet I don’t see that as a reason to defenestrate my aesthetic tests and my emotional preferences.

But I personally would (and long have) defenestrate moral philosophy for a different reason -it is ‘unnecessary’: I have, like most people, have emotional disapprovals of certain forms of human behaviour (such as murder etc) but, because I recognise the fact that this is purely an EMOTIONAL disapproval (at least in my case), I am not thinking anything about what we ‘morally’ shouldn’t do (actually, I see ‘moral’ ‘ethics’ etc as meaningless concepts) merely by having this emotional disapproval.
And, because it is purely an EMOTIONAL disapproval based on MY personal emotions, it is somewhat subjective because somebody else may naturally have different emotions and NOT emotionally disapprove of the same human behaviour like I do and there would be no rational argument (moral or otherwise) I could give to such a person to persuade him that he “should”, in some sense, have the same emotional disapproval as I do.
Hence I don’t think there is such thing as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or ‘ethical’ or ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ or ‘moral rights’. But, I don’t see why a ‘justification’ (moral or otherwise) of my emotional disapprovals would be ‘required’ -after all, emotions are not even supposed to come from the rational mind.

I hope that all makes sense to you 😉

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
[b]…But we're not going defenestrate moral philosophy (otherwise known as ethics) because it doesn't fit in with science, are we?
…

Not for THAT specific reason, no. My aesthetic tests and my emotional preferences also “doesn't fit in with science” in the very narrow sense that, just like moral philosophy, they cannot be used to rationally ...[text shortened]... re not even supposed to come from the rational mind.

I hope that all makes sense to you 😉[/b]

Disapproval of murder is merely emotional and therefore meaningless? Interesting, Dr Mengele ... Hope you don't mind if I stab you in the face 🙂

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Disapproval of murder is merely emotional and therefore meaningless? Interesting, Dr Mengele ... Hope you don't mind if I stab you in the face 🙂

…Disapproval of murder is MERELY emotional and therefore meaningless?
… (my emphasis)

Firstly, I didn’t say (nor believe) that what is EMOTIONAL is “meaningless” -what I said was that MORAL concepts are “meaningless” (because they are at least to me).
Secondly, what is this “MERELY emotional“? I mean, just because something is purely emotional doesn’t mean we should attach no value to it -right?
It just so happens I mentally attach significant value to emotions -and why not?

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
[b]…Disapproval of murder is MERELY emotional and therefore meaningless?
… (my emphasis)

Firstly, I didn’t say (nor believe) that what is EMOTIONAL is “meaningless” -what I said was that MORAL concepts are “meaningless” (because they are at least to me).
Secondly, what is this “MERELY emotional“? I mean, just because something is purely em ...[text shortened]... to it -right?
It just so happens I mentally attach significant value to emotions -and why not?[/b]

Have you seen these news reports? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/5373379/Animals-can-tell-right-from-wrong.html ?

News reports like these can be easily dismissed as anthropomorphistic, certainly the headlines. But Frans de Waal offers a more nuanced view on animal morality: "I don't believe animals are moral in the sense we humans are – with well developed and reasoned sense of right and wrong – rather that human morality incorporates a set of psychological tendencies and capacities such as empathy, reciprocity, a desire for co-operation and harmony that are older than our species."

Doesn't this suggest that moral concepts are more than just personal emotions?

I think you all answered my question, I now believe you all listen to to much free jazz.

Originally posted by DdV
Have you seen these news reports? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/5373379/Animals-can-tell-right-from-wrong.html ?

News reports like these can be easily dismissed as anthropomorphistic, certainly the headlines. But Frans de Waal offers a more nuanced view on animal morality: "I don't believe animals are moral in the sense we humans are – with well d ...[text shortened]... species."

Doesn't this suggest that moral concepts are more than just personal emotions?

No -because his reasoning is sadly fatally flawed:

”…with well developed and REASONED sense of right and wrong
…”

Sadly Frans de Waal clearly has completely unscientifically made the assumption, like so many people do so (even many scientists!), that somehow ‘morally right and wrong’ can be deduced using unflawed REASONING -an extremely common (virtually universal) error! Nobody literally obtains ’moral truths’ (actually there is no premise to believe that there exists any ’moral truths&rsquo😉 from flawless reason even though many erroneously believe they do. You can never logically deduce a ’moral truth’ nor rationally have a ’moral truth’ as a conclusion from analysing evidence/observation therefore ‘morality’ can never be part of science and science and ‘morality’ should never be confused with each other.

If Frans de Waal is correct and not in logical error here then it should be possible to show at least just one hypothetical example of how you could using flawless logic logically deduce a ’moral truth’ using ‘pure logic’/evidence/observation.
Can you or anyone else give such an example? -I would really like to see an attempt to create such an example so that I can point out where it is logically flawed. I have extremely often seen people give many such logically flawed examples and it is always very easy to point out where the flaw is.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
No -because his reasoning is sadly fatally flawed:

[b]”…with well developed and REASONED sense of right and wrong
…”

Sadly Frans de Waal clearly has completely unscientifically made the assumption, like so many people do so (even many scientists!), that somehow ‘morally right and wrong’ can be deduced using unflawed REASONING -an extremel ...[text shortened]... e many such logically flawed examples and it is always very easy to point out where the flaw is.[/b]

I think you read more in De Waals statement than he intended, I doubt he used reasoning here as "flawless logical deduction".

But that wasn't the part of the article I wanted to draw attention to, the part I found interesting was: "[...]human morality incorporates a set of psychological tendencies and capacities such as empathy, reciprocity, a desire for co-operation and harmony that are older than our species."

If I read your message correctly, you seem to consider your emotional disapproval as highly personal and arbitray. If De Waal is correct, it seems to me this would mean human moral concepts are influenced by our evolutionary history and therefore less arbitrary than you consider them to be.

Originally posted by DdV
I think you read more in De Waals statement than he intended, I doubt he used reasoning here as "flawless logical deduction".

But that wasn't the part of the article I wanted to draw attention to, the part I found interesting was: "[...]human morality incorporates a set of psychological tendencies and capacities such as empathy, reciprocity, a desire for co-o nced by our evolutionary history and therefore less arbitrary than you consider them to be.

…If I read your message correctly, you seem to consider your emotional disapproval as highly personal and arbitrary.
…

Absolutely correct -BUT don’t misunderstand what I am saying here; that does NOT imply anything about whether or not I or anyone else “should” or “shouldn’t” personally attach importance to emotional disapproval.
This seems to be the main type of misunderstanding of what I claim here -it does NOT logically follow from “X is purely personal and emotional“ that “we should all personally psychologically attach no value to X“ and nor am I claiming such a thing.

…If De Waal is correct, it seems to me this would mean human moral concepts are influenced by our evolutionary history and therefore less arbitrary than you consider them to be...…

I would claim that human moral concepts are influenced by our evolutionary history because they are bound to be.
I would claim that the virtually universal human ‘delusion’ (and I do see it as a ‘dilution&lsquo😉 of “morally right and wrong” is as a result of combination of an ‘arbitrary’ set of influences by our genetic evolutionary history (and possibly also some cultural evolutionary history? -not so sure about that part).
I would claim that the predisposition for most of us humans to have this ‘delusion’ (as I would call it) is as a result of an ‘accident’ of evolution that is prone to creating ‘obvious’ (although sometimes not so ‘obvious&lsquo😉 design flaws (whether of the brain or body) just like the fact we have blood vessels in front of our retina is a result of an ‘accident’ of evolution that resulting in that ‘obvious’ design flaw.

Note that I don’t expect most people to agree with what I am saying here.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
[b]…If I read your message correctly, you seem to consider your emotional disapproval as highly personal and arbitrary.
…

Absolutely correct -BUT don’t misunderstand what I am saying here; that does NOT imply anything about whether or not I or anyone else “should” or “shouldn’t” personally attach importance to emotional disapproval.
This se ...[text shortened]... vious’ design flaw.

Note that I don’t expect most people to agree with what I am saying here.[/b]

Assuming that you are right, how does the fact that human morality is hardwired help to solve ethical problems? Your ideas of right and wrong may be delusional (although if evolutionary determinism (the basis of your philosophy?) is responsible for them, they are inevitable delusions, which begs the question why it is inevitable that our sense of right and wrong should be delusional), but that's of little practical help in determining how to act in a given situation.

You can approach ethics scientifically; you'll still be talking ethics. What's the big deal?

Originally posted by StTito
I think you all answered my question, I now believe you all listen to to much free jazz.

From a certain perspective, every kind of music can be seen as free jazz.

But ethics may best be approached as aesthetics, in which case your musical analogy assumes the highest importance. As it happens, those philosophers I enjoy most are stylists -- they don't forget that readers have ears. Quite what music their styles approximate is something I'm going to enjoy thinking about. Thanks!

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Assuming that you are right, how does the fact that human morality is hardwired help to solve ethical problems? Your ideas of right and wrong may be delusional (although if evolutionary determinism (the basis of your philosophy?) is responsible for them, they are inevitable delusions, which begs the question why it is inevitable that our sense of right ...[text shortened]...
You can approach ethics scientifically; you'll still be talking ethics. What's the big deal?

…Assuming that you are right, how does the fact that human morality is hardwired help to solve ethical problems?
… (my emphasis)

I am a little uncertain what you mean by the phrase “human morality is hardwired”; am I correct in assuming you mean “the human brain is hardwired”? so do you mean “how does the fact that the human brain is hardwired help to solve ethical problems?”
-If so, I would say there isn’t such thing as “ethical problems” (thus our brain is NOT hardwired to “help to solve ethical problems“ because there is no such thing) for to assume the existence of “ethical problems” would be to assume the existence of “morally right and wrong”.

although if evolutionary determinism (the basis of your philosophy?) is responsible for them, they are inevitable delusions,
..…

I googled “evolutionary determinism” and confusingly got several apparently (at least to me) slightly logically inconsistent definitions of this term so I would like to know exactly what you are referring to by “evolutionary determinism” as it isn’t clear to me what this term means.
Does it simply mean the influence of the non-random aspects of natural selection on our evolution?
Either way, I cannot think of any reason why it would be ‘inevitable’ for us to evolve any particular delusion including this one. As I said before, I think it was most probably as a result of an ‘accident’ of evolution (which implies non-inevitability).

I thought I already gave the basis of this ‘philosophy’; the basis being you cannot logically deduce any hypothesis on what is morality right and wrong using reason or from evidence/observation (thus there is no rational reason to believe there IS a morality right and wrong).

…. which begs the question why it is inevitable that our sense of right and wrong should be delusional…

Because (if I am correct) there is no right and wrong.
It would be like asking; “IF we evolved to have a sense that there is a Santa then why it is inevitable that our sense of the existence of a Santa be delusional” and the answer to that would be because the is no Santa.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
[b]…Assuming that you are right, how does the fact that human morality is hardwired help to solve ethical problems?
… (my emphasis)

I am a little uncertain what you mean by the phrase “human morality is hardwired”; am I correct in assuming you mean “the human brain is hardwired”? so do you mean “how does the fact that the human brain is har ...[text shortened]... the existence of a Santa be delusional” and the answer to that would be because the is no Santa.[/b]

You're boring.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
You're boring.

Yes, I know. And you are fascinating.

Would you like a boring versus fascinating game of chess?

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
Yes, I know. And you are fascinating.

Would you like a boring versus fascinating game of chess?

I see you saw through my trap. After all, to call you boring is tantamount to accusing you of being human.

Why not?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
I see you saw through my trap. After all, to call you boring is tantamount to accusing you of being human.

Why not?

…I see you saw through my trap.…

lol

…. After all, to call you boring is tantamount to accusing you of being human.
…

Are you saying that all humans are boring? -But… …sorry, just kidding.

…Why not?..…

ok; I will start a game.