Why don't we know ethics by something like sight?

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

I am fairly well persuaded that G. E. Moore and similar theorists are mistaken to say that we, in a mostly non-metaphorical sense, just "see" that some things are right or wrong or good or evil, or the like. Maybe we do "see" it sometimes but only in the way that some mathematicians are apt at chunking massive sequences of argument into "intuitive" packages. Like, there was this guy in India who sorta seemed to "just know" certain facts (think, that there are an infinity of prime numbers, but on a higher scale). So anyway, though, if there are unique, fundamental, or whatever, ethical things, like certain colors or sounds or something, well, they're not really like those in the end, for us, I think. That is, the core of our moral knowledge is inside our consciousness of our free will, but this in a way that we must represent discursively---for some reason.

Another way to say it would be that there are abstract moral assertions that we can know "just like that," sort of: but concrete guidance in actual physical life must be accompanied by a more expansive justification, or else we are saying that we can just know a social policy is good, to the exclusion of any reasons on offer from others that it is not, or whatever, maybe. Something like that, something that seems a little arrogant, I think.

Virtue ethics abounds in a more subtle take on the intuition of morality, at least(?) if crossed with virtue epistemology too. That is, maybe it is not principles or objects that we "just know" are good or evil, but virtues like kindness versus cruelty. Or even if we don't "just know it" there's an element that's like knowledge of colors in this, after all. But I have not the time to go into that topic, I suspect.

But now let us suppose that the morally correct theory of moral knowledge itself, involved us not disposing ourselves viciously towards this knowledge. So it would perchance quickly enough follow that we ought not be arrogant about what we know, or even more precisely that we ought not to believe that our knowledge is based on something that it would be "rational" to be arrogant about. It is not immediate that Moorean sensations of goodness, as felt or whatever, imply moral arrogance on the part of those who share such intuitions. After all, in Moore's own case, it would seem that everyone knows what goodness is just like they know what the color blue is, such that everyone knows when they converge in perceiving it what is good (or blue!). But this disposes Moore's doctrine to portray or suggest disagreements in ethics as founded in something dishonest or deceptive. Now it is true that self-deception is involved in the foundations of sin, but this has to be shown by analysis more than raw sensation. That is, the self-deception evident in the depths of corrupt moral judgment, is not like the mere denial of the color blue in some blue thing. Moore's fundamental famous moral treatise is very, shall I say, shrill. He does not respectfully discuss dissenting doctrines, at least not in the sections I have heavily read over. A recent defender of a similar theory, Michael Huemer I think it is, also seems to lapse into at least almost-ranting at times. But though more, let us say, "mathematical" moral philosophers might seem acerbic or slyly witty towards each other's indicated errors, they are not so... haughty, maybe's the word.

Now for something totally different, though, anyway. It seems a shame to me that concrete moral knowledge isn't so pristine as knowledge of the color blue. And why isn't it? If with Kant we equate the nature of moral reality or facts or whatever, with the nature of free will, then it seems to follow that the nature of our moral knowledge is also, in part, a matter of free will. It seems, then, possible, that we have chosen to know morality discursively more, on so many relevant levels, than ostensively/perceptually/intuitively/w/e.

Is this a good choice? Let us say we could have chosen to know it only one way, or only the other, or altogether in either way. I would say that the first and the last choices would be wrong, or unfitting, or something along such a line. Because it is more difficult to know morality if it is only discursive (on the relevant levels), and because it is more difficult to express the appropriate emotions to the fact of moral reality's existence is this is only intuitively given (since then it cannot be proven to others), only the center-choice would map all the grace of the intellect possible for us in this case. At least, then, maybe the choice to not know right from wrong at all, would be the purely depraved one, and the other fractured wills would contain grace (enough?) of their own.

Be that as it may, it seems to me possible to imagine that we might indeed have, as it goes, a duty to know morality intuitively, in the seeing-blue sort of way more than less even. And if we ought to do something, then we can, somehow, do it, supposedly. So it seems as if it must be possible to reconfigure our moral knowledge's parameters so as to transfigure them (even!).

How? Well, here's where that passing remark about aretaic intuition comes into play. So, unfortunately, here's where this rant ends /endrant

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

OK, if you got through all that without giving up on it as overwrought or gibberishy or whatever, here goes.

There is, in fact, a way to accomplish exactly what would be required of a "reconstruction" of our moral knowledge so that we at least do know some concrete choices to be good or evil, "just like that." However, though I think glorious in itself, it might seem disappointing. With that caveat in mind...

First, to get the most ridiculous claim out of the way. This entire theory is predicated on the idea that time is (at least!) three-dimensional, and that the Kantian division between physical and moral causality corresponds to the subsistence of agency in higher-dimensional time, deterministic causation confined to the transcendental construction of the lines of events of physical motion in space. However, the argument for this is based on an attempt to describe what emotions actually are. The idea is that musical notation is analogous to graphs of points in space, only due to the correspondence, else-mysterious, between music and emotions, it turns out that feelings are actually like kinesthetic knowledge of higher-dimensional time (of our place in it, our e-motion through it as it were...).

Accordingly, emotional knowledge is like knowledge of colors, sort of. Or sounds, rather, maybe. Now, a quick advantage of this framework is that we have a way to explain what happiness is that doesn't seem so circular or obscure or whatever. Different emotions can represent different forms of "mathematical problems" in the geometry of time, so to speak, and happiness is the state of one's emotional problems' solutions. That is, a person is happy to the extent that their emotional problems are resolved, whatever those are. (C.f. the description as "the state of knowing oneself to have achieved a goal/one's goals.") Because the algebra of the solutions in general will have a distinctive structure, it will present as a unique "feeling" with many "objects," like shades of a color even, so to say, so the range of the conception of happiness is as expansive as it needs to be.

Of course I don't have a perfect analogy for each emotion in terms of geometry or filling up of spaces or whatever. However, love and saudade do seem to have crystallized, here (as the feeling of the the pure space of tridimensional time, like the feeling of looking at outer space then, but transposed into the domain where feelings come from in the first place--and as the feeling involved in pure creation in time), and anyway once we are in the province of emotions, I think that as long as we have a fixed reference by the by for the spectra of our concepts, here, we can get by with referring directly to relations between, say, rage and sadness, or fear and happiness, or whatever.

But now if this is all so, then it becomes possible to fit our intuitions of our own emotions into a state of intuitive moral knowledge, I think. That is, the construction in emotional-transmusical intuition of a sign for the order of redemption, would constitute the act of redemption for the wrong choice regarding the discursion and intuition balanced in the power of ethical consciousness. This is, then, an intuitive knowledge of[i/] discursive reality, that is a harmony for them also, as far as value and grace and virtue and the like are constructive forces.

[Zarathustra]

Whoa, I go to admit that's a bit hard to get through. I can't give a detailed response. Your question reminds me of the "Judging Eye" in R. Scott Bakker's work (we're discussing the latest in the gen fantasy forum). One particular character can see Good and Evil as objective facts, just as you suggest. It has some interesting implications on the plot and themes. You might enjoy it. I suppose it's somewhat like Healthsense, except without the health implications, pure morality.

Didn't Kant think that our moral sense was a sort of transcendental vision of the world, where we transcend the phenomena to the noumena? It's been a long time since I studied Kant, but I seem to remember one of my professors suggesting that this was one of his "big conclusions."

I personally don't believe there exist absolute, objective Good and Evil. I think these are merely our subjective preferences--usually self-serving, even when we think they're selfless. Evolution has given us a moral sense because it helps us survive more efficiently to pass our genes (which encode this moral sense) to the next generation. Moral animals are more likely to thrive than immoral animals. Most "immoral" acts are self-destructive or destructive to society itself. Morality is thus nothing more than a meme that is good at reproducing itself because it helps its host organisms survive and thrive. The only objective part of this is the results. Morality is not itself an objective cause, it's only an accidental benefit.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Your question reminds me of the "Judging Eye" in R. Scott Bakker's work (we're discussing the latest in the gen fantasy forum). One particular character can see Good and Evil as objective facts, just as you suggest. It has some interesting implications on the plot and themes. You might enjoy it.

I'll definitely have to look into it. The name Bakker seems familiar to me but I'm not sure why...

Didn't Kant think that our moral sense was a sort of transcendental vision of the world, where we transcend the phenomena to the noumena? It's been a long time since I studied Kant, but I seem to remember one of my professors suggesting that this was one of his "big conclusions."

Kant did think that the feeling of respect for persons was "wrought by reason" but this feeling isn't a moral sense. Feeling respect for a person is not quite like "seeing" that they have personal moral value or whatever (at least, it is more like a sense of beauty than of color, if a response to an object instead of a projection onto one). Indeed he had a moral-sense theory of ethics but that was in his pre-critical writings.

The doctrine of the categorical imperative, so to speak, though, then, is a squarely discursive one. There is a "fact of reason," the fact that reason exists and does not depend on any given physical interpretation of reality to make sense (i.e. reason would "do its own thing" if classical mechanics was true, if quantum mechanics is, or any other such option, so that reason in itself doesn't "come from" the world as described under these headings). And since this reason contains a prescriptive, commanding, demanding, w/e element, it follows that it in Kantian terms a "fact" that morality exists so independently of physical possibilities, too. However he stresses that this fact is not known by intuition-sensation. Unfortunately, Kant never explains how to fit judgments like, "There are 12 categories and 2 forms of intuition," into his analysis-synthesis dichotomy, so ditto for his account of the "fact of reason."

Evolution has given us a moral sense because it helps us survive more efficiently to pass our genes (which encode this moral sense) to the next generation. Moral animals are more likely to thrive than immoral animals. Most "immoral" acts are self-destructive or destructive to society itself. Morality is thus nothing more than a meme that is good at reproducing itself because it helps its host organisms survive and thrive. The only objective part of this is the results. Morality is not itself an objective cause, it's only an accidental benefit.

I won't object to this, but just inasmuch as the reference for "morality" here is a sort of "moral grocery list." However, philosophers, cultural reformers, etc. usually try to rewrite these lists so the question is to where the concepts they use to do so, come from.

Now, let us suppose our propositional abilities are evolved, that is we evolved to have beliefs. There's one rather fanatical Christian philosopher who has argued that if this is true, then we have no reason to believe that our belief-forming capacities are aimed at truth, or in other words, if this simple naturalism/evolutionary theory of belief is true, we have no reason to believe that our beliefs are formed for the sake of the truth. For evolution's "goal" is survival. So the beliefs we have are just those that are most likely to help us survive. OTOH the guy seems to forget that some modules, so to speak, have to exist "all at once" or not at all. Our ability to believe things is like that: an evolved electroneural module would not count as a belief-producing one unless truth-conduciveness was built into it. The very notion of a proposition at all, contains the pure truth function. So no one could evolve to have beliefs that were unknowably helpful for the sake of survival.

Is the moral electroneural module like this? It is, if the idea of "doing X is right" is like "doing X is the only way to acknowledge the truth of X." That is, the very notion of morality seems based on a sort of "truth in action" instead of just "truth in belief." That is, my actions would be true or false, somehow, and in this right or wrong. Of course this might turn out to just be a hopelessly poetic account of the meaning of the electroneural moral module; isn't it possible to steal from someone while having all sorts of true beliefs about stealing (including from the person in question)?

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Random but how did this end up in "The Entire Chronicles"? I thought I posted it in The Close...

[Zarathustra]

Test post ... for some reason, my long response won't post. I tried removing the diacritics, didn't work.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

Test post ... for some reason, my long response won't post. I tried removing the diacritics, didn't work.

Dollars to Donuts says that you've still got diacritics somewhere.

My advice: Try breaking up your post into discrete segments and Preview them each individually. Then, you can locate, first, the paragraph and, then, the sentence that has the problem, based on ruling out those which pass the Preview test.

[Avatar]

What a pain. (Yeah, probably still one in there somewhere...they can creep in in unusual places.)

Bloody Vain.

--A

[Zarathustra]

I saved it into Word so I wouldn't lose it. I'll try your suggestion, Wos.

Now, let us suppose our propositional abilities are evolved, that is we evolved to have beliefs. There's one rather fanatical Christian philosopher who has argued that if this is true, then we have no reason to believe that our belief-forming capacities are aimed at truth, or in other words, if this simple naturalism/evolutionary theory of belief is true, we have no reason to believe that our beliefs are formed for the sake of the truth.

The fact that we so often believe things that are false seems to imply that our capacity for forming beliefs has nothing to do with Truth. I think this capacity is neutral in that regard, it's merely the capacity to entertain ideas, concepts, memes. Those memes that are useful to us or merely good at reproducing themselves (like a catchy song) are the ones that catch on. Much too often, incorrect or destructive beliefs end up being reproduced in far too many minds (like racism, radical Islam, etc.). They probably help their human "hosts" to some extent, to the benefit of the in-group at the cost of those perceived as "other."

OTOH the guy seems to forget that some modules, so to speak, have to exist "all at once" or not at all. Our ability to believe things is like that: an evolved electroneural module would not count as a belief-producing one unless truth-conduciveness was built into it.

Can you give an example? I think most belief systems are built up over time. This claim seems like a counterpart to the intelligent design claim that things like eyeballs or lungs couldn't have formed gradually over time, because the constituent parts are useless outside the context of the working whole. But this has been shown time after time to be the failure of imagination and knowledge of how evolution actually works. People think certain processes are unthinkable (unimaginable) because they are ignorant of the details of how it actually happened.

So no one could evolve to have beliefs that were unknowably helpful for the sake of survival.

Children adopt beliefs that are "unknowably helpful" all the time. They listen to their authority figures without knowing the full justification for these beliefs. "Because I said so," often substitutes for logical development of a particular belief. Humans have evolved to obey authority, in addition to believing things.

It's not that our brains evolve to form specific beliefs. The evolution of our genes didn't go hand-in-hand with the evolution of specific beliefs. Our beliefs themselves evolve, separately from our genes. Have you ever played the game in school where one person starts a story and then passes it unfinished to another person, and so on to the entire class? Belief systems are like that, evolving haphazardly by many different authors. Just like the Bible.

[Zarathustra]

I can't get the rest to post. I'm going to try retyping it, just in case it's a formatting issue ...

I'm not sure exactly what "truth in action" means. I think morality is self serving. As Nietzsche says, our moral systems are usually just lists of the ways we've overcome; our victories. They're ways that we pat ourselves on the back for ways we persevere and survive. Masters have master moralities, while slaves have slave moralities. Two different people can make a virtue or a vice out of the same attribute. For instance, some think that the meek will inherit the earth (usually the meek), while the strong have the opposite belief.

[Zarathustra]

There's a problem with my final paragraph, but I give up.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Can you give an example? I think most belief systems are built up over time.

I'm not referring to a specific belief system but to the concept of belief itself. Or, maybe better, I'm referring to the disquotational scheme:

• "X is Y" [or the proposition that X is Y] is true if and only X is Y.

E.g., "Snow is white," is true if and only if snow is white (to cite the stock example).

This claim seems like a counterpart to the intelligent design claim that things like eyeballs or lungs couldn't have formed gradually over time, because the constituent parts are useless outside the context of the working whole.

Well ironically or not I really was thinking of the ID argument, but using its form against its kind of conclusion haha.

Children adopt beliefs that are "unknowably helpful" all the time. They listen to their authority figures without knowing the full justification for these beliefs. "Because I said so," often substitutes for logical development of a particular belief. Humans have evolved to obey authority, in addition to believing things.

I would stress the difference between beliefs that are not known to be helpful, or beliefs that are not known to be true but are helpful, on the one hand, and then beliefs that cannot be known to be true or helpful as such, on the other. The supernaturalist (we'll call him/her/it(!)) claims we cannot know anything to be true, in the abstract, if our ability to believe things is merely an evolved feature of ourselves. They think that there is a discontinuity between the concept of belief and the concept of the disquotational scheme, such that we could have propositional abilities without alethic ones. But the ability to use propositions at all encodes(?) the disquotational scheme, so that the ability to believe things and the ability to know things go hand in hand.

To go back to my "perverted" application of the ID argument-type, eye-like collections of molecules can stably develop without having all the features we associate with human (or mammalian, or w/e) eyes. But our kind of eyes could not, by definition, exist, unless they were related somehow to seeing. Once our kind of eyes develop, sight follows more than less. To say that in lived history, the beliefs that "survive" in human minds are the ones that encourage human survival to the relevant extent in the relevant way, is not to say that we cannot tell whether these beliefs are true without supernatural help. We don't need supernatural help to know the truth (unless supernatural things do exist, but then the truth they would help us know would be truth referring to them, not all truth without distinction).