Belindi:
BTW I am going to have to think again about Jaspers's Theory of the Axial Age.
How so? With regard to prophets and kings or in general?
In general, certainly, and with regret.
Maybe you could start a topic.
-- Updated April 18th, 2017, 7:43 am to add the following --
Consul quoted this in another topic. I think it relevant to this discussion:
"Empathetic Imagination
Traditional moral theories have almost entirely ignored one of our most important moral capacities—the capacity for empathy. Hume's treatment of what he called 'sympathy' or 'fellow-feeling' touches on this issue, but it does not go to the heart of imaginative empathetic projection into the experience of other people. ' As a limiting case, it requires the ability to imagine ourselves in different situations and conditions at past and future times. Unless we can put ourselves in the place of another, unless we can enlarge our own perspective through an imaginative encounter with the experience of others, unless we can let our own values and ideals be called into question from various points of view, we cannot be morally sensitive.
…
This 'taking up the place of another' is an act of imaginative experience and dramatic rehearsal of the sort described by Nussbaum and Eldridge in their accounts of narrative moral explorations. It is perhaps the most important imaginative exploration we can perform. It is not sufficient merely to manipulate a cool, detached 'objective' reason toward the situation of others. We must, instead, go out toward people to inhabit their worlds, not just by rational calculations, but also in imagination, feeling, and expression.
Reflecting in this way involves an imaginative rationality through which we can participate empathetically in another's experience: their suffering, pain, humiliation, and frustrations, as well as their joy, fulfillment, plans, and hopes. Morally sensitive people are capable of living out, in and through such an experiential imagination, the reality of others with whom they are interacting, or whom their actions might affect."
(Johnson, Mark. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. pp. 199-200)
-- Updated April 18th, 2017, 10:21 am to add the following --
Greta:
I expect that moral intuition is surely evolved in us, passed on by those who survived in part due to their capacity to cooperate with and elicit cooperation from others.
I think that it is important to emphasize the role that pleasure plays in being and working together, in being a part of a community. It is not just the ability to cooperate but the desire, reward, and satisfaction of belonging, of caring, of nurturing that is a part of us.
Gertie:
So the question for us today, in light of this knowledge, is how do we come to a consensus on non-objective Oughts?
I'd say the answer lies in the fact that conscious creatures, humans and other species, have a quality of life, and there-in lies the basis for Value/Morality, or as I'd put it, Mattering. Because it matters how you treat an entity with the ability to suffer, be happy, etc. And that entails Oughts.
Googling “mattering ethics” brings up some interesting results.
I think this fits with most existing moral theories, it simply justifies them in a way consistent with current knowledge. A way which hopefully we can build an informed consensus around.
An ethics based on principles, rules, and the determination of obligations could be combined with an ethics of mattering, but it often seems that the search for abstract universals loses sight of living, breathing, individuals for whom things matter in circumstances that matter.
The root of the problem may be the presumed disjunction between reason or thinking and feeling.