Morality is fake in the sense that it's subservient to the interests of individual and group actors, not that all prescriptive statements are false. I break with Nietzsche in thinking that there is, in fact, an existent greater good, but question the extent to which human reasoning can optimize for emboldening it.
>Separating "I did something bad" from "I am bad"
People seem to try to disassociate their bad actions and traits from themselves in ways that I find extremely odd. A woman once noticed that she often had instant, negative judgements about people which she later rationalized and scrutinized into something more positive; she asked which one of these patterns represented herself and she was told the latter by the answerer. Which is incorrect: neither of those thought patterns are here -- people are not their thoughts. They are their body.
That is a reasonable skepticism about morality. A few questions have to be answered:
1. What is the locus of morality? Humanity? God? A particular tribe? The self? Is the locus axiomatic, or the result of more fundamental axioms?
2. What is the best action to serve this locus?
3. How difficult is the calculation? If we take each possible factor as a polynomial variable, then the complexity quickly exceeds human understanding.
Deontology could cut through some of this calculation, but that is difficult to justify.
Regarding thoughts and bodies: one model is that a thought is a software, while the body is the hardware. Another model is that the body is a radio receiver, and the thought is the song being transmitted. I don't believe that self-conception is possible without thoughts, in the same way that computers are useless without operating systems. These are interdependent phenomena.
>What is the locus of morality? Humanity? God? A particular tribe? The self? Is the locus axiomatic, or the result of more fundamental axioms?
Value is axiomatic by definition; it arises from there.
>What is the best action to serve this locus?
I am not sure, as I do not optimize for the morality of my actions.
>How difficult is the calculation? If we take each possible factor as a polynomial variable, then the complexity quickly exceeds human understanding.
A precise one is impossible. A reasonably precise one can be done easily.
>Deontology could cut through some of this calculation, but that is difficult to justify.
I view every moral system as fundamentaly utilitarian, but optimizing for different variables: virtue ethics optimizes for virtue, deontology optimizes for law, and consequentalism optimizes for outcome.
>I think locus still matters even after establishing value, since you could value health, but the question is whether you value the health of the self only, or the health of humanity universally, or a particular group.
>I would say that morality is any superegoic system which governs behavior. So it is possible to do things amorally as long as these things are done unconsciously or reactively. But to the extent that one has guilt or shame one is governed by morality. Even sociopaths theoretically act morally as a result of their attempt to blend in with others or avoid consequences.
People are not their body, either, unless by 'body' you mean some distributed or networked sense of 'self' embeds and extends into various slices of perceptual timespace, i.e., an overlapping set of many – possibly infinite – 'bodies' of all sorts of natures (chemical-cognitive, mental-emotional, participatory-kinesthetic, memory-based, dream-based, etc.) that appears to derive its sense of agency from a singular sense of 'I' that is a partially continuous and hierarchically and/or holographically mediated presentation and experience of these many factors in dynamic arrangements.
Morality is one avenue that this 'body' or 'self' seeks to condition itself (which necessarily includes its model of itself, which is distinct from or subordinate to its 'actual self') in relation to other selves.
You seem to be trying to claim that 'thought' belongs exclusively to the model, and not the thing that generates the model, so you have to be more specific about what you mean by thought (e.g. the series and parallels of abstractions that seem to constantly take place inside the head area).
The Munchhausen Trilemma is interesting as I haven't heard of it before, but it sounds reasonable to assert that all statements require unprovable assertions, in the same way that all matter is composed of true atoms. Even if "atoms" are divisible, there is a true atom (quark? string? something smaller?) which cannot be cut further. Unless there is infinite regression (universes within atoms, for example).
Regarding is/ought, we can create conditional statements, like "if the goal is to maximize X, the optimal action is Y." How is the goal determined? One could say, "you should serve God because you will go to heaven; otherwise you will go to hell." This is justifying serving God as an ultimately selfish act, to avoid infinite pain, so in this case, the goal is self-satisfaction more than it is to satisfy God. If self-satisfaction and God-satisfaction are exactly the same, then the contradiction is not troublesome.
If we assume there is such a thing as human flourishing, are we assuming there is an objective good? Or if it is subjectively determined by humanity, can we say, "there is an optimal religion for human flourishing"? How do we define human flourishing? Wealth? Population? Pain activity in the neurons? Self-reporting?
Morality is a personal understanding of best practices when dealing with other creatures. Ethics is formalized, usually shared, morality.
The spirit of all religions is dogma - belief without appeal to evidence and all religions are, therefore, intellectually regressive. It's impossible to have rational ethics with irrational beliefs.
>Morality is fake
Morality is fake in the sense that it's subservient to the interests of individual and group actors, not that all prescriptive statements are false. I break with Nietzsche in thinking that there is, in fact, an existent greater good, but question the extent to which human reasoning can optimize for emboldening it.
>Separating "I did something bad" from "I am bad"
People seem to try to disassociate their bad actions and traits from themselves in ways that I find extremely odd. A woman once noticed that she often had instant, negative judgements about people which she later rationalized and scrutinized into something more positive; she asked which one of these patterns represented herself and she was told the latter by the answerer. Which is incorrect: neither of those thought patterns are here -- people are not their thoughts. They are their body.
That is a reasonable skepticism about morality. A few questions have to be answered:
1. What is the locus of morality? Humanity? God? A particular tribe? The self? Is the locus axiomatic, or the result of more fundamental axioms?
2. What is the best action to serve this locus?
3. How difficult is the calculation? If we take each possible factor as a polynomial variable, then the complexity quickly exceeds human understanding.
Deontology could cut through some of this calculation, but that is difficult to justify.
Regarding thoughts and bodies: one model is that a thought is a software, while the body is the hardware. Another model is that the body is a radio receiver, and the thought is the song being transmitted. I don't believe that self-conception is possible without thoughts, in the same way that computers are useless without operating systems. These are interdependent phenomena.
>What is the locus of morality? Humanity? God? A particular tribe? The self? Is the locus axiomatic, or the result of more fundamental axioms?
Value is axiomatic by definition; it arises from there.
>What is the best action to serve this locus?
I am not sure, as I do not optimize for the morality of my actions.
>How difficult is the calculation? If we take each possible factor as a polynomial variable, then the complexity quickly exceeds human understanding.
A precise one is impossible. A reasonably precise one can be done easily.
>Deontology could cut through some of this calculation, but that is difficult to justify.
I view every moral system as fundamentaly utilitarian, but optimizing for different variables: virtue ethics optimizes for virtue, deontology optimizes for law, and consequentalism optimizes for outcome.
>I think locus still matters even after establishing value, since you could value health, but the question is whether you value the health of the self only, or the health of humanity universally, or a particular group.
>I would say that morality is any superegoic system which governs behavior. So it is possible to do things amorally as long as these things are done unconsciously or reactively. But to the extent that one has guilt or shame one is governed by morality. Even sociopaths theoretically act morally as a result of their attempt to blend in with others or avoid consequences.
People are not their body, either, unless by 'body' you mean some distributed or networked sense of 'self' embeds and extends into various slices of perceptual timespace, i.e., an overlapping set of many – possibly infinite – 'bodies' of all sorts of natures (chemical-cognitive, mental-emotional, participatory-kinesthetic, memory-based, dream-based, etc.) that appears to derive its sense of agency from a singular sense of 'I' that is a partially continuous and hierarchically and/or holographically mediated presentation and experience of these many factors in dynamic arrangements.
Morality is one avenue that this 'body' or 'self' seeks to condition itself (which necessarily includes its model of itself, which is distinct from or subordinate to its 'actual self') in relation to other selves.
You seem to be trying to claim that 'thought' belongs exclusively to the model, and not the thing that generates the model, so you have to be more specific about what you mean by thought (e.g. the series and parallels of abstractions that seem to constantly take place inside the head area).
https://kaiserbasileus.substack.com/p/metaphysics-in-a-nutshell
How do you get past the is/ought problem? Or munchhausen trilemma?
The Munchhausen Trilemma is interesting as I haven't heard of it before, but it sounds reasonable to assert that all statements require unprovable assertions, in the same way that all matter is composed of true atoms. Even if "atoms" are divisible, there is a true atom (quark? string? something smaller?) which cannot be cut further. Unless there is infinite regression (universes within atoms, for example).
Regarding is/ought, we can create conditional statements, like "if the goal is to maximize X, the optimal action is Y." How is the goal determined? One could say, "you should serve God because you will go to heaven; otherwise you will go to hell." This is justifying serving God as an ultimately selfish act, to avoid infinite pain, so in this case, the goal is self-satisfaction more than it is to satisfy God. If self-satisfaction and God-satisfaction are exactly the same, then the contradiction is not troublesome.
How was the goal determined?
You should serve God because he is oughtness.
If we assume there is such a thing as human flourishing, are we assuming there is an objective good? Or if it is subjectively determined by humanity, can we say, "there is an optimal religion for human flourishing"? How do we define human flourishing? Wealth? Population? Pain activity in the neurons? Self-reporting?
Morality is a personal understanding of best practices when dealing with other creatures. Ethics is formalized, usually shared, morality.
The spirit of all religions is dogma - belief without appeal to evidence and all religions are, therefore, intellectually regressive. It's impossible to have rational ethics with irrational beliefs.