Moral Realism

Moral realism in metaethics. @PhiloofAlexandria

[terpy]

This post contains my first ever attempt a philosophy paper, I have no formal training out side of these videos,
if you can stomach the read please leave feed back, and i really do mean anyone:

Labels, lairs, and subversives.

Often, I find myself considering the notion that redefinition of words is a tactic of subversion or defense individuals use to remove themselves from a label like, “liar” and its connotations. Sadly, this current generation is enamored with subversion and social justice, labels can never be applicable to them. In fact, attempting to label any consistent repeatable pattern of behavior is often taken as personal attacks. Either its a reduction of the individual, or a self-projection by the observer. Consequently, labels have had their meaning subverted when applied to individuals, taking on a whole new connotation as a result.
How does an individual identify their own personality traits and labels? On many occasions it seems my self-evaluation is based in projections of self onto another. But these projections are not merely an externalization of my inner narrative, they are observations based in personal experience, defined by labels with immutable definitions. A sum of my relative experience projected on another. What steps does an individual take to attempt this type of subjective comparison? Its egotistical by nature but also emphatic, an attempt to cultivate some type of understanding or recognition, followed by an attempt to rationalize the situation based on the variation between me and my comparator. Labeling life experience as advice often derives from self-appointed labels to identify the value of an experience, to the self and others allowing it to gain relativity outside its preconditions of subjectivity, in a sense also serving as self-validation of experiences.
Peer-to-peer catharsis is essential to experience based validation for both parties. The listener gains valuable time to consider themselves, the situation at hand, and the experience being shared with them; and make their own comparison, then give validity to the present information pertaining to them. These identifications of self are also projections of the listener onto another’s situation, objectively a selfish mechanism or a shared experience of self-indulgence. Both parties practice self-reflection in experiences removed from their adjective selves for validation. Group catharsis allows validation of self simultaneously with validation or recognition from everyone involved. A paradox of selfless selfishness for all who take part, allowing for vulnerability whilst seeking validation.
It is my belief this type of group catharsis attempts to convey something by which its nature is subjective. We use labels to identify this subjectivity and gain an objective understanding. Through these labels we are attempting to convey something personal, but undeniably universal about our experiences. However, we require some common terms with to communicate them by, and as proposed above labels are quite frequently a reasonable and broadly universal form of association by which we gain common ground to express experiences.
Consider yourself in this situation; in conversation with a close friend you reveal a personal taboo, something in a morally gray area, what could possibly motivate you to reveal such information? The normal gage for most people is how much they trust someone or a “level of trust” they have with groups. What is this trust based off though? A multitude of different labels, “consistency”, “integrity”, “confidentiality”; a sum of labeled information to help you gage reaction and judgment on information revealed. Hence forth to trust someone or deem them trustworthy, you have Labeled them. For example, trust as labeled above, the “consistent integrity of your confidentiality”, which matches the dictionary definition: “firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.”. Quite often the sum off all known labels defines a meta-label literally if not exactly and this hirer archery is reflected top to bottom of labeling.
All labels are capable of being meta-labels, except for words whose definitions are immutable such as True False, cardinal-left, cardinal-right, ordinal numbers, cardinal numbers, process, fact, fiction, yes, no, rational, irrational and so on, known as base labels. Meta-labels can contain all known labels below them and vice versa in a form of global inheritance. What makes base labels definitions immutable? Take rational for example, it refers to a base label of logic or reason which describe the base-label result. So, in practice rational and irrational can only be a base label, who’s state of rationality Is described by base labels true or false. In theory if you manipulate a base labels definition your concept of the world suddenly stops matching reality. If you decided that rational and irrational now descried heat and lack of heat, do “rational/irrational heat” describe anything? You would never find out because heat does not describe a result, it describes a state of energy and its activity level which is likely to result in a threshold value and a base-label of True/False that describes the state.
Then what is the issue with labeling? Everyone wants to be trustworthy; it has a positive connotation associated with it. However, if you take an example where someone is objectively a liar it is a negative connotation. Obviously, no one wants to be called a liar and a reasonable course of action is to reject the allegation and present proof on the contrary. Unfortunately, in recent times new tactics of discreditation have emerged, in the subversion of meaning. A common tactic is to subvert the meaning of a label in the meta-label such as consistency, claiming variation of some degree is required to qualify them of negatively connotated behavior. A far more a sinister approach is implying that by observing their behavior and defining it, you have projected personal meta-labels onto them. This approach attempts to discredit the defined meta-label as subjective by gaslighting the observers labels as part of a personal narrative or projecting, which is an “inherently true statement”, unfortunately. However, when one considers the actual mechanism by which personal narrative, self-evaluation, and meta-labeling occur, the gaslight goes out.
Claiming “that observation is a self-projection”, and “your definition of given label is subjective” only goes to further prove the objective nature of a given observation in practice. Foremost, we all read the same dictionary, and learned the same definitions of, behavior, process, cause, effect, all these labels with immutable definitions, taught to a national standard. So, to claim different definitions of the label “true” based on subjectivity means you experience the definition of true differently than everyone else. That is an easy claim to test, ask them to complete the sentence “true or false equals what?”. If they answer anything besides “true” it is subverting the meaning of true because “true or false” is always true. Let us expand further, say you observe someone to be religious and give them the labels “spiritual” and “acknowledgment”. Religious is “relating to or believing in a religion” or in this case the “acknowledgment of spirituality” these subjective labels resulted in an objectively correct description of what it is to be religious without implication of faith or denomination. While that could be available information, its unnecessary when the known labels crate an accurate description of the meta-label.

[praveencharan]

Can't thank enough for your classes , sir

[cosmic.turtle]

If there are underlying imperatives to the universe... a bent towards order, for instance... the functions that contribute to that imperative would be considered 'virtuous' or 'good', wouldn't they? And so these mind-independent morals wouldn't have to be metaphysical entity-like things, but the description of a type of process (organizing, from my earlier example). To go against these inherit underlying universal imperatives would be considered then 'vices' or 'sins'. This of course assumes there is some underlying universal imperative, but I think that's somewhat obvious after listening to your lecture on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason -- we may not know what exist in the noumenon, but given that there is that sense of consistency in our individual and collective experiences, there at least must be something beyond pure random or void (which would both be lacking imperatives, or else morality in those universes might be bent towards chaos and non-existence!)

[adamgibbons]

Somewhat annoyingly, some philosophers use "moral realism" in such a way that it includes relativist and subjectivism views. In short, for these philosophers, moral realism is the thesis that (1) cognitivism is true, and (2) there are some moral truths.

This is obviously a terminological dispute, but I agree that your way of carving the terrain is better.

[bumlace]

Woke up to this!
Watched it twice, lol.
First just listening and second time looking and listening.
Good times!
Thank you

[CosmoPhiloPharmaco]

I think this view that moral properties are human-mind-independent is absurd. It is similar to Platonism which says numbers and ideas literally float around and we perceive such abstract entities with our mystical Third Eye or Sixth Sense. No, people should really ask themselves: "Am I really perceiving these spooky objects? Is it really self-evident to me that I'm directly aware of these Platonic objects?" I think most people would deny that's the case if they really thought about the implications of this absurd view.

[martinbennett]

When you say 'mind independent' do you mean not dualist? Religious moral realism obviously makes dualistic space for moral realism. There is also a materialist moral realism which is necessarily brain dependent, though not mind dependent in a dualistic sense.

[musbahalassouli]

Do you consider "Secular ethics" a mind independent truth?

[lanceindependent]

At 9:07 you indicate that you think most people are intuitive moral realists. Why do you think this is true?

I take this to be an empirical claim, and I don't think existing empirical data provides much in the way of compelling evidence that most people are intuitive moral realists.

[ShadowZZZ]

thanks for the video, its very intellectually enlightening. But I think that moral realists are confused about the fundamental structure truth claims. But I don't know much about the arguments, so i'd certainly like to know more about the metaethical reasonings for moral realism. its just that i'm fairly confident, after the logical debuttals I've heard so far, that there can never be truth to normative claims because morality is of a different enterprise than epistemology you can break the laws of ethics, you cant break the laws of physics. the greatest german philosopher of all time, friedrich nietzsche, completely demolishes the supposed sound justifications for one set of morality against another. its a very deep truth, which I however would not like to talk about or mention. because having made this insight might lead people to be less motivated to do ethical activism. some realist philosophers I debated, who study philosophy, were a bit annoyed and disrespectful but I understand why they reacted that way. in their mind I seemed arrogant and disrespectful, because they study philosophy, that I essentially seemed to invalidate their life passion and work. they also claimed most philosophers are moral realists, which I'm still a bit skeptical about. they need to provide evidence for that claim as well. but hypothetically saying it was true, then that arguments would face 2 points of criticisms from me:
1. its understandable that most philosophers would believe morality to be objective since it's their life work and passion, and they would not like to believe that it isnt objective. most theologians believe god exists, (for obvious reasons) but thats still not a good reason to why god exists. imo you're just replacing god with moral realism.
2. the deepest insight in the moral philosophical inquiry is nietzsches beyond good and evil, which utterly demolishes moral realism. I think those moral philosophers who are realists are in their profession not intellectually progressed enough to really understand beyond good and evil, because afterall you can have a masters degree in philosophy and be one of the thoustands of philosophy teachers, while not being educated on the deepest fronts of your field. I actually wanted to study philosophy originally, but choose not to because science is more solid knowledge wise than philosophy. its like this: as a scientists its relatively easier to read into philosophical literature in your sparetime constrasted to as a philosopher reading scientific textbooks. So in the end, as a vegan humanist, I really wish that moral realism was true, but unfortunately imperatives "truths" are not the same as descriptive truths. I think this analogy with the scientific method is a fundamental fallacy. the burden of proof is on the realist

[jaisingh]

Morality is entirely subjectivistic. History alone, in regards to specific instantiations of moral 'truths' shows this to be the case. Unlike the physical universe, there are no known human mind external and independent systems or methods for encoding or carrying (entirely human abstractions) of morality.

[pascalbro]

These concepts are an example of why philosophy is antiquated and nobody takes it seriously outside of those unfortunate enough to have invested in a philosophy degree. Only a small minority have bothered looking into cog-sci and what it has provided which basically renders the vast majority of established categories in ethics and meta-ethics, useless. Do yourselves a favour and tour Rebecca Saxe and George Lakoff's work on morality then work your way towards neurolinguistics only to realize Wittgenstein was right and contextualism is the only thing that's really left standing as a result.