My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

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Ishkah
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My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Ishkah »

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Hey all, is this a thorough enough explanation of my virtue-existentialist ethics? Is it coherent & consistent? Does it show where I think virtues come from and how they should be applied? What do you think?

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Major influences
In After Virtue, MacIntyre tries to explain another element of what is missing in modern life through his use of the concept of a practice. He illustrates this with the example of a person wishing to teach a disinterested child how to play chess.

The teaching process may begin with the teacher offering the child candy to play and enough additional candy if the child wins to motivate the child to play. It might be assumed that this is sufficient to motivate the child to learn to play chess well, but as MacIntyre notes, it is sufficient only to motivate the child to learn to win – which may mean cheating if the opportunity arises. However, over time, the child may come to appreciate the unique combination of skills and abilities that chess calls on, and may learn to enjoy exercising and developing those skills and abilities. At this point, the child will be interested in learning to play chess well for its own sake. Cheating to win will, from this point on, be a form of losing, not winning, because the child will be denying themselves the true rewards of chess playing, which are internal to the game. The child will also, it should be noted, enjoy playing chess; there is pleasure associated with developing one’s skills and abilities that cannot come if one cheats in order to win.

MacIntyre concludes that there are two kinds of goods attached to the practice of chess-playing and to practices in general. One kind, external goods, are goods attached to the practice “by the accidents of social circumstance” – in his example, the candy given to the child, but in the real world typically money, power, and fame (After Virtue 188). These can be achieved in any number of ways. Internal goods are the goods that can only be achieved by participating in the practice itself. If you want the benefits to be gained by playing chess, you will have to play chess. And in pursuing them while playing chess, you gain other goods as well – you will get an education in the virtues. The two kinds of goods differ as well in that external goods end up as someone’s property, and the more one person has of any of them the less there is for anyone else (money, power, and fame are often of this nature). Internal goods are competed for as well, “but it is characteristic of them that their achievement is a good for the whole community who participate in the practice” (After Virtue 190-191). A well played chess game benefits both the winner and loser, and the community as a whole can learn from the play of the game and develop their own skills and talents by learning from it.

MacIntyre believes that politics should be a practice with internal goods, but as it is now it only leads to external goods. Some win, others lose; there is no good achieved that is good for the whole community; cheating and exploitation are frequent, and this damages the community as a whole.

– Political Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

One alternative is a prefigurative or practical anarchism, based on a social account of the virtues (based on a revision of MacIntyre’s virtue theory). This identifies goods as being inherent to social practices, which have their own rules, which are negotiable and alter over time. It stresses the immanent values of particular practices rather than on the externally decided (consequentialist) values that will accrue.

Thus, those tactics which are consistent with anarchism are those that are rewarding in their own terms rather than on the basis of external benefits alone. The different approaches to political-social organisation provide an illustration, in which Leninism exemplifies the instrumental approach, whilst a case from contemporary anarchism provides a contrast. Leninism concentrates on the external goods of the disciplined party, its success is primarily judged on its efficiency in reaching the desired goal of revolution. However, a different non-consequentialist approach to political organisation is to view political structures as the manifestation of internal goods, such as enhancing wisdom and the embodiment of social relationships that disperse social power. Standards are generated by, and help to form, anti-hierarchical social practices. For instance the norms required for secretly subverting corporate advertising or state propaganda are not identical to those required to maintain an inclusive, multi-functional social centre. Whilst different, the norms of both are open, to those entering these practices, they are open to critical dialogue and can alter over time.

Each anarchist practice produces their own standards, which overlap with others. The norms by which a successful social centre is run, will be different to, but bear some similarities with an inclusive, participatory website or periodical. Thus the standards for the goods, the types of social relationship that constitute (and are constituted by) non- or anti-hierarchical practice are observable and assessable within a domain – and between adjacent domains. So that the relatively stable, and common, norms of bravery (opposing dominating power), solidarity (reciprocal assistance between those in a subjugated position) and wisdom (coming to understand the structures of oppression and the means by which ‘other values’ can be created) are identifiable within anarchist practices, but are not necessarily universal. Similar practices involving subtly different actors will generate distinctive other goods (or bads).

Like the Stirnerite subject, there is no universal agent of change, but one in constant flux, resisting, challenging or fleeing the changing dominating powers within a given context. Within these radical practices, it produces its own immanent values. Because social practices are not distinct but overlap there are possibilities for links of solidarity across the different domains between different agents, although there is no universal agent who participates in all practices. A narrative of anti-hierarchical liberation, might provide a link between different practices, and provide routes for new social practices (and new agents to develop). The contestation of hierarchy, however, does not represent a new universal value. There are contexts in which goods are immanently developed but a challenge to structures that maintain inequalities of power is not generated – for instance, children playing in a sandbox. Thus, the rejection of hierarchy is not a universal guide to action, though, given the persistence of economic structures and institutions that enforce and legitimise these inequalities of power, it is highly likely that the contestation of hierarchy will remain a core anarchist value.

– Anarchism; Ethics & Meta-Ethics by Benjamin Franks

Purpose & Meaning

We are born with biological drives and grow up being taught environmental drives we have to grapple with and make sense of.

We can’t quantify for the abused person what level of suffering it is right that they owe themselves to muddle through to acheive some level of happiness later on.

We can only say if a persons reason for ending one’s own life, is to desire to make a meaningful decision, in the face of unfair meaninglessness, the sum of one’s existence only becomes more absurd. So, suicide being viewed as meaningfull, is simply an attempt to deny that meaninglessness or no one stable meaning is the foundation to all life.

So, grappling with these biologically and environmentally bestowed drives is a goal in which acheiving some headway, brings us happy flourishing.


What constitutes right and wrong?
Because human beings are complex, their flourishing takes complex forms: we can flourish intellectually – hence, the “intellectual virtues” (both practical and theoretical); we can flourish as builders and makers and artists – hence, the “virtues of craft” – and we can flourish in terms of our non-technical, social and civic activities – hence, the “moral” virtues.
Now, if you’re a consequentialist, you can simply relate to this philosophy as through persuing your own happy flourishing, either the goals are related to other people or it’s more easily acheived by helping others, so we have an obligation to be altruistic and acheive a global calculus of happy flourishing.

But, I would simply appeal to what is good for any one person being more complicated than an external calculation of ends:
Virtues and therefore morality can only make sense in the context of a practice: they require a shared end, shared rules, and shared standards of evaluation. The virtues also define the relationships among those who share a practice: “….the virtues are those goods by reference to which, whether we like it or not, we define our relationships to those other people with whom we share the kind of purposes and standards which inform practices” (After Virtue 191). We must have the virtues if we are to have healthy practices and healthy communities.
So, if how a person was raised to understand virtue is primarily respecing the shared rule that the dignity of a person not be violated then, in so far as practicing that virtue is meaningful to that person, it will bring that person happy flourishing.
It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain [and interests], but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is. . . [and] that the dignity of living organisms not be violated.

Socialist Entailments

Due to the unfair distribution of power in society in the hands of very few, the good any one person can strive to acheive is a large amount, because one can imagine weilding the kind of power those at the top currently have to do good.

So, like Bernie Sanders educating the masses on the positives to socialised government institutions and, if he’d gotten into power, mobilising a grassroots movement to demonstrate and strike to push through bills.

Or the personal heroism of people flying to Syria to fight Islamic Fascism.

But, counter-intuitively, the goal should be to move to a world where grand feats of good deed aren’t necessary or possible. So that more people get a chance to strive to do good.

Either, because government power has been devolved through a move to a multi-party system through preferential voting, to… Some local gov positions being elected by sortition, to… The majority of society being so content with worker-co-ops and syndicalist unions that we transition from representative democracy to direct democracy. So, a chamber of ministers to federated spokes councils.

Or, because border conflicts are fought between well meaning soldiers, where their only heroism is being willing to sacrifice their lives when representatives of opposing government systems fail to communicate.


Legal animal rights entailments

If the wonder that we experience in viewing wild animals is not ‘how similar to us they are’, but their ‘real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value’ and one sufficient reason we grant this freedom at least to a basic extent to humans is they have a desire to achieve what they find valuable then; the fact non-human animals experience this desire too means we ought extend these freedoms to animals.

So, a holistic world-view of not wanting to reduce both the quality and quantity of positive experiences humans can have with animals, as well as animals with other animals for low-order pleasures such as taste/texture.


In Summary

Any highest good we can acheive, would also be seen as a practice that in some way serves as an example that can be replicated.

Therefore, what’s most important is devolving power to a larger body of people to be able to strive to a higher good.

Though the governance model needs to be built up slowly enough to match expertise, so as not to falter with people pushing for ideals before having adequately put them to the test. As well, so as not to cause a whiplash effect, where people desire a reactionairy politics of conformity, under more rigid hierarchy of just the few:

I plan to write more soon about how people can identify with conservativism as a virtue philosophy and happen to be a virtue exemplar for devolving power to those without it. Like Malcolm X denouncing drug taking, to keep minority communities strong, in response to the flooding of the streets with drugs by the CIA to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. But, how I still view co-operation as a virtue as providing a more stable foundation for building up institutions with social virtue.



My Further Reading

Egoist

The Politics of Postanarchism by Saul Newman
However, can we assume that the possibilities of human freedom lie rooted in the natural order, as a secret waiting to be discovered, as a flower waiting to blossom, to use Bookchin’s metaphor? Can we assume that there is a rational unfolding of possibilities, driven by a certain historical and social logic? This would seem to fall into the trap of essentialism, whereby there is a rational essence or being at the foundation of society whose truth we must perceive. There is an implicit positivism here, in which political and social phenomena are seen as conditioned by natural principles and scientifically observable conditions. Here I think one should reject this view of a social order founded on deep rational principles. In the words of Stirner, ‘The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for him who looks to the bottom of it – emptiness.’ In other words, rather than there being a rational objectivity at the foundation of society, an immanent wholeness embodying the potential for human freedom, there is a certain void or emptiness, one that produces radical contingency and indeterminacy rather than scientific objectivity. This idea has been elaborated by Laclau and Mouffe, who eschew the idea of society as a rationally intelligible totality, and instead see it as a field of antagonisms which function as its discursive limit. In other words, what gives society its definitional limit at the same time subverts it as a coherent, whole identity. Therefore, they argue, ‘Society never manages fully to be society, because everything in it is penetrated by its limits, which prevent it from constituting itself as an objective reality.’ Antagonism should not be thought of here in the sense of the Hobbesian state of nature, as a war of everyman against everyman, but rather as a kind of rupturing or displacement of social identities that prevents the closure of society as a coherent identity.
Science, Perception, and Reality Kindle Edition by Wilfrid Sellars

It’s Just a Feeling: The Philosophy of Desirism by Joel Marks



Moral Relativism

Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge by Jerry Gershenhorn
Is a prescriptive position adopted initially by many anthropologists reacting against the ethnocentrism characteristic of the colonial era. Melvelle Herskovits, for instance, affirms that “… in practice, the philosophy of relativism is a philosophy of tolerance” (Cultural Relativism, p. 31).


Preference Consequentialism

Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality by Douglas W. Portmore

Nonzero: History, Evolution & Human Cooperation: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright



Hedonistic Utilitarianism

Utiltarianism by John Stuart Mill



Co-operative Virtue Ethics

Anarchism and Moral Philosophy by Benjamin Franks

Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context: Dialogues with James Tully by Robert Nichols and Jakeet Singh

Stoic virtue ethics by Matthew Sharpe

Feral Children and Clever Animals; Reflections on Human Nature
Our common way of thinking about the difference between physical and behavioral science, described in Chapter 3, is that the goal of the first is to eliminate variance, while the second accepts variance as the essential characteristic of the subject worthy of study. The physical sciences seek to eliminate variation because variation confounds accuracy of prediction. The behavioral sciences should accept variation as the essential aspect of living beings, and thereby strive to measure variance as a technique of describing the nature of life itself. We often confuse the legitimacy of these different goals, thereby leading us to the conclusion, for example, that the physical sciences are more “scientific” than the behavioral because they strive for accuracy and prediction. Some appear to think that a measure of the applicability of science is accuracy of prediction, but variance, too, is a legitimate interest of the scientific method. Science is a unique method, a method independent of what it studies. Measures of variance can be just as reliable as formulas that strive to eliminate or reduce variance. As always, the meaningful issue is what one wants to know, what one wants to accomplish through the application of the methods of science. Let us put to rest the notion that there can be no science of living beings or that scientific procedures somehow diminish and degrade the awesomeness of life. The chief characteristic of life forms, as opposed to physical objects, is variation. It is variation that permits evolution, for without variation, there is nothing for natural selection to select. The study of variation may be done in two ways: by study of the unique or by study of the general. In this book, we have examined examples of both, although study of the unique case dominates, to be sure; but what Thorndike, Haggerty, and Hamilton contributed is the importance of general variation. Both ways must be investigated because we cannot know what is unique without knowing what is general. Behavioral science, therefore, proceeds on two fronts: the study of the unusual and the study of the variation characteristic of groups.


Conservative Virtue Ethics

After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre



Intuitionist Deontology

Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle & W. D. Ross

Daniel Kaufman On Intuitionism and Folk Psychology

Of the Standard of Taste by David Hume (1909)



Absolutist Deontology

The Sources of Normativity by Christine M. Korsgaard

Consequentialism and Deontology in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by Dean Moyar



Absurdism

Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 by Nick Land

Tiqqun 1: Conscious Organ of The Imaginary Party by Tiqqun



Liberation Theology

The Selfless Mind; Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism by Peter Harvey

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Terrapin Station
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Terrapin Station »

I think this would benefit from being more focused and not trying to address so many different things at once. For one, re your summary:
Ishkah wrote: September 21st, 2020, 9:45 am Any highest good we can acheive, would also be seen as a practice that in some way serves as an example that can be replicated.
That's the first place you mention anything about a "highest" good.

Also, "would also be seen as a practice," "that in some ways serves as an example," and "that can be replicated," seem like three claims that you're endorsing simply because it's what someone else (namely, MacIntyre) thought.

Is MacIntyre correct when he says, "Virtues and therefore morality can only make sense in the context of a practice: they require a shared end, shared rules, and shared standards of evaluation"? I don't think so.
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Ishkah
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Ishkah »

Terrapin Station wrote: September 22nd, 2020, 9:47 amAlso, "would also be seen as a practice," "that in some ways serves as an example," and "that can be replicated," seem like three claims that you're endorsing simply because it's what someone else (namely, MacIntyre) thought.

Is MacIntyre correct when he says, "Virtues and therefore morality can only make sense in the context of a practice: they require a shared end, shared rules, and shared standards of evaluation"? I don't think so.
So my claim is; any highest good we can acheive, would also be a practice that’s replicatable and easily understood through shared rules and ends. I think only lesser goods can be acheived through only seeking a shared means or only shared ends.

Then the reason I agree with MacIntyre in viewing morality as not making sense outside of both shared rules and ends, is it would be something fundimentally inhuman, to try to bend human behaviour to a means of doing something or end goal without taking into consideration both means and ends into a set of values for what kind of charachter people desire to be. Here's another way of saying it; "there is only the interplay of forms-of-life among themselves, and the protocols of experimentation that guide them locally."
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Marvin_Edwards »

There is no such thing as "anarchy". The "anarchist" is an archist who wishes to replace your archy with his own.
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Ishkah
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Ishkah »

Marvin_Edwards wrote: September 23rd, 2020, 6:18 am There is no such thing as "anarchy". The "anarchist" is an archist who wishes to replace your archy with his own.
I disagree, the etymology of the word anarchy = from the Greek word anarkhos, meaning an- ‘without’ + arkhos ‘chief, ruler’, so a society without one single chief or ruler. So a desire that the world move away from a system of government where one single leadership position dominates political discourse.

So, we can define the word as such; "Absence of a single leader and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal."

I don't think the word you're looking for exists and sounds more like "against the current ruler" so in Greek enantíon-to-usimerinoú-archos.
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by LuckyR »

Ishkah wrote: September 23rd, 2020, 8:48 am
Marvin_Edwards wrote: September 23rd, 2020, 6:18 am There is no such thing as "anarchy". The "anarchist" is an archist who wishes to replace your archy with his own.
I disagree, the etymology of the word anarchy = from the Greek word anarkhos, meaning an- ‘without’ + arkhos ‘chief, ruler’, so a society without one single chief or ruler. So a desire that the world move away from a system of government where one single leadership position dominates political discourse.

So, we can define the word as such; "Absence of a single leader and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal."

I don't think the word you're looking for exists and sounds more like "against the current ruler" so in Greek enantíon-to-usimerinoú-archos.
You're right, of course... from a theoretical standpoint. Though Marvin's observation is true in that no one has yet observed your dictionary definition of anarchy in Real Life before.
"As usual... it depends."
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Ishkah »

LuckyR wrote: September 23rd, 2020, 12:25 pmYou're right, of course... from a theoretical standpoint. Though Marvin's observation is true in that no one has yet observed your dictionary definition of anarchy in Real Life before.
Oh in the sense that the left-anarchist ideal has never existed fully yet, sure. But I think having the word 'ideal' in the definition is a positive, as it makes clear you're not simply trying to re-create a set of circumstances that has already happened in the past or present. Examples we can point to that came close were revolutionairy Catalonia in North-East Spain, the Free Territory in South-East Ukraine, and presently The Federation in North-East Syria and the Zapatista Municipalities in Southern Mexico.

I actually don't mind the secondary possible definition of "a state of disorder due to absence of government." Like the Yazidis in Iraq, who experienced this second kind of anarchy from having a curropt conservative state pull their forces out and leave you in disorder, then... taken over by fascists (ISIS), who then... are liberated partially by revolutionaries who are inspired by the first kind of idealist anarchism in the writings of Murray Buckchin.
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by h_k_s »

Ishkah wrote: September 21st, 2020, 9:45 am -

Hey all, is this a thorough enough explanation of my virtue-existentialist ethics? Is it coherent & consistent? Does it show where I think virtues come from and how they should be applied? What do you think?

-

Major influences
In After Virtue, MacIntyre tries to explain another element of what is missing in modern life through his use of the concept of a practice. He illustrates this with the example of a person wishing to teach a disinterested child how to play chess.

The teaching process may begin with the teacher offering the child candy to play and enough additional candy if the child wins to motivate the child to play. It might be assumed that this is sufficient to motivate the child to learn to play chess well, but as MacIntyre notes, it is sufficient only to motivate the child to learn to win – which may mean cheating if the opportunity arises. However, over time, the child may come to appreciate the unique combination of skills and abilities that chess calls on, and may learn to enjoy exercising and developing those skills and abilities. At this point, the child will be interested in learning to play chess well for its own sake. Cheating to win will, from this point on, be a form of losing, not winning, because the child will be denying themselves the true rewards of chess playing, which are internal to the game. The child will also, it should be noted, enjoy playing chess; there is pleasure associated with developing one’s skills and abilities that cannot come if one cheats in order to win.

MacIntyre concludes that there are two kinds of goods attached to the practice of chess-playing and to practices in general. One kind, external goods, are goods attached to the practice “by the accidents of social circumstance” – in his example, the candy given to the child, but in the real world typically money, power, and fame (After Virtue 188). These can be achieved in any number of ways. Internal goods are the goods that can only be achieved by participating in the practice itself. If you want the benefits to be gained by playing chess, you will have to play chess. And in pursuing them while playing chess, you gain other goods as well – you will get an education in the virtues. The two kinds of goods differ as well in that external goods end up as someone’s property, and the more one person has of any of them the less there is for anyone else (money, power, and fame are often of this nature). Internal goods are competed for as well, “but it is characteristic of them that their achievement is a good for the whole community who participate in the practice” (After Virtue 190-191). A well played chess game benefits both the winner and loser, and the community as a whole can learn from the play of the game and develop their own skills and talents by learning from it.

MacIntyre believes that politics should be a practice with internal goods, but as it is now it only leads to external goods. Some win, others lose; there is no good achieved that is good for the whole community; cheating and exploitation are frequent, and this damages the community as a whole.

– Political Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

One alternative is a prefigurative or practical anarchism, based on a social account of the virtues (based on a revision of MacIntyre’s virtue theory). This identifies goods as being inherent to social practices, which have their own rules, which are negotiable and alter over time. It stresses the immanent values of particular practices rather than on the externally decided (consequentialist) values that will accrue.

Thus, those tactics which are consistent with anarchism are those that are rewarding in their own terms rather than on the basis of external benefits alone. The different approaches to political-social organisation provide an illustration, in which Leninism exemplifies the instrumental approach, whilst a case from contemporary anarchism provides a contrast. Leninism concentrates on the external goods of the disciplined party, its success is primarily judged on its efficiency in reaching the desired goal of revolution. However, a different non-consequentialist approach to political organisation is to view political structures as the manifestation of internal goods, such as enhancing wisdom and the embodiment of social relationships that disperse social power. Standards are generated by, and help to form, anti-hierarchical social practices. For instance the norms required for secretly subverting corporate advertising or state propaganda are not identical to those required to maintain an inclusive, multi-functional social centre. Whilst different, the norms of both are open, to those entering these practices, they are open to critical dialogue and can alter over time.

Each anarchist practice produces their own standards, which overlap with others. The norms by which a successful social centre is run, will be different to, but bear some similarities with an inclusive, participatory website or periodical. Thus the standards for the goods, the types of social relationship that constitute (and are constituted by) non- or anti-hierarchical practice are observable and assessable within a domain – and between adjacent domains. So that the relatively stable, and common, norms of bravery (opposing dominating power), solidarity (reciprocal assistance between those in a subjugated position) and wisdom (coming to understand the structures of oppression and the means by which ‘other values’ can be created) are identifiable within anarchist practices, but are not necessarily universal. Similar practices involving subtly different actors will generate distinctive other goods (or bads).

Like the Stirnerite subject, there is no universal agent of change, but one in constant flux, resisting, challenging or fleeing the changing dominating powers within a given context. Within these radical practices, it produces its own immanent values. Because social practices are not distinct but overlap there are possibilities for links of solidarity across the different domains between different agents, although there is no universal agent who participates in all practices. A narrative of anti-hierarchical liberation, might provide a link between different practices, and provide routes for new social practices (and new agents to develop). The contestation of hierarchy, however, does not represent a new universal value. There are contexts in which goods are immanently developed but a challenge to structures that maintain inequalities of power is not generated – for instance, children playing in a sandbox. Thus, the rejection of hierarchy is not a universal guide to action, though, given the persistence of economic structures and institutions that enforce and legitimise these inequalities of power, it is highly likely that the contestation of hierarchy will remain a core anarchist value.

– Anarchism; Ethics & Meta-Ethics by Benjamin Franks

Purpose & Meaning

We are born with biological drives and grow up being taught environmental drives we have to grapple with and make sense of.

We can’t quantify for the abused person what level of suffering it is right that they owe themselves to muddle through to acheive some level of happiness later on.

We can only say if a persons reason for ending one’s own life, is to desire to make a meaningful decision, in the face of unfair meaninglessness, the sum of one’s existence only becomes more absurd. So, suicide being viewed as meaningfull, is simply an attempt to deny that meaninglessness or no one stable meaning is the foundation to all life.

So, grappling with these biologically and environmentally bestowed drives is a goal in which acheiving some headway, brings us happy flourishing.


What constitutes right and wrong?
Because human beings are complex, their flourishing takes complex forms: we can flourish intellectually – hence, the “intellectual virtues” (both practical and theoretical); we can flourish as builders and makers and artists – hence, the “virtues of craft” – and we can flourish in terms of our non-technical, social and civic activities – hence, the “moral” virtues.
Now, if you’re a consequentialist, you can simply relate to this philosophy as through persuing your own happy flourishing, either the goals are related to other people or it’s more easily acheived by helping others, so we have an obligation to be altruistic and acheive a global calculus of happy flourishing.

But, I would simply appeal to what is good for any one person being more complicated than an external calculation of ends:
Virtues and therefore morality can only make sense in the context of a practice: they require a shared end, shared rules, and shared standards of evaluation. The virtues also define the relationships among those who share a practice: “….the virtues are those goods by reference to which, whether we like it or not, we define our relationships to those other people with whom we share the kind of purposes and standards which inform practices” (After Virtue 191). We must have the virtues if we are to have healthy practices and healthy communities.
So, if how a person was raised to understand virtue is primarily respecing the shared rule that the dignity of a person not be violated then, in so far as practicing that virtue is meaningful to that person, it will bring that person happy flourishing.
It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain [and interests], but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is. . . [and] that the dignity of living organisms not be violated.

Socialist Entailments

Due to the unfair distribution of power in society in the hands of very few, the good any one person can strive to acheive is a large amount, because one can imagine weilding the kind of power those at the top currently have to do good.

So, like Bernie Sanders educating the masses on the positives to socialised government institutions and, if he’d gotten into power, mobilising a grassroots movement to demonstrate and strike to push through bills.

Or the personal heroism of people flying to Syria to fight Islamic Fascism.

But, counter-intuitively, the goal should be to move to a world where grand feats of good deed aren’t necessary or possible. So that more people get a chance to strive to do good.

Either, because government power has been devolved through a move to a multi-party system through preferential voting, to… Some local gov positions being elected by sortition, to… The majority of society being so content with worker-co-ops and syndicalist unions that we transition from representative democracy to direct democracy. So, a chamber of ministers to federated spokes councils.

Or, because border conflicts are fought between well meaning soldiers, where their only heroism is being willing to sacrifice their lives when representatives of opposing government systems fail to communicate.


Legal animal rights entailments

If the wonder that we experience in viewing wild animals is not ‘how similar to us they are’, but their ‘real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value’ and one sufficient reason we grant this freedom at least to a basic extent to humans is they have a desire to achieve what they find valuable then; the fact non-human animals experience this desire too means we ought extend these freedoms to animals.

So, a holistic world-view of not wanting to reduce both the quality and quantity of positive experiences humans can have with animals, as well as animals with other animals for low-order pleasures such as taste/texture.


In Summary

Any highest good we can acheive, would also be seen as a practice that in some way serves as an example that can be replicated.

Therefore, what’s most important is devolving power to a larger body of people to be able to strive to a higher good.

Though the governance model needs to be built up slowly enough to match expertise, so as not to falter with people pushing for ideals before having adequately put them to the test. As well, so as not to cause a whiplash effect, where people desire a reactionairy politics of conformity, under more rigid hierarchy of just the few:

I plan to write more soon about how people can identify with conservativism as a virtue philosophy and happen to be a virtue exemplar for devolving power to those without it. Like Malcolm X denouncing drug taking, to keep minority communities strong, in response to the flooding of the streets with drugs by the CIA to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. But, how I still view co-operation as a virtue as providing a more stable foundation for building up institutions with social virtue.



My Further Reading

Egoist

The Politics of Postanarchism by Saul Newman
However, can we assume that the possibilities of human freedom lie rooted in the natural order, as a secret waiting to be discovered, as a flower waiting to blossom, to use Bookchin’s metaphor? Can we assume that there is a rational unfolding of possibilities, driven by a certain historical and social logic? This would seem to fall into the trap of essentialism, whereby there is a rational essence or being at the foundation of society whose truth we must perceive. There is an implicit positivism here, in which political and social phenomena are seen as conditioned by natural principles and scientifically observable conditions. Here I think one should reject this view of a social order founded on deep rational principles. In the words of Stirner, ‘The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for him who looks to the bottom of it – emptiness.’ In other words, rather than there being a rational objectivity at the foundation of society, an immanent wholeness embodying the potential for human freedom, there is a certain void or emptiness, one that produces radical contingency and indeterminacy rather than scientific objectivity. This idea has been elaborated by Laclau and Mouffe, who eschew the idea of society as a rationally intelligible totality, and instead see it as a field of antagonisms which function as its discursive limit. In other words, what gives society its definitional limit at the same time subverts it as a coherent, whole identity. Therefore, they argue, ‘Society never manages fully to be society, because everything in it is penetrated by its limits, which prevent it from constituting itself as an objective reality.’ Antagonism should not be thought of here in the sense of the Hobbesian state of nature, as a war of everyman against everyman, but rather as a kind of rupturing or displacement of social identities that prevents the closure of society as a coherent identity.
Science, Perception, and Reality Kindle Edition by Wilfrid Sellars

It’s Just a Feeling: The Philosophy of Desirism by Joel Marks



Moral Relativism

Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge by Jerry Gershenhorn
Is a prescriptive position adopted initially by many anthropologists reacting against the ethnocentrism characteristic of the colonial era. Melvelle Herskovits, for instance, affirms that “… in practice, the philosophy of relativism is a philosophy of tolerance” (Cultural Relativism, p. 31).


Preference Consequentialism

Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality by Douglas W. Portmore

Nonzero: History, Evolution & Human Cooperation: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright



Hedonistic Utilitarianism

Utiltarianism by John Stuart Mill



Co-operative Virtue Ethics

Anarchism and Moral Philosophy by Benjamin Franks

Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context: Dialogues with James Tully by Robert Nichols and Jakeet Singh

Stoic virtue ethics by Matthew Sharpe

Feral Children and Clever Animals; Reflections on Human Nature
Our common way of thinking about the difference between physical and behavioral science, described in Chapter 3, is that the goal of the first is to eliminate variance, while the second accepts variance as the essential characteristic of the subject worthy of study. The physical sciences seek to eliminate variation because variation confounds accuracy of prediction. The behavioral sciences should accept variation as the essential aspect of living beings, and thereby strive to measure variance as a technique of describing the nature of life itself. We often confuse the legitimacy of these different goals, thereby leading us to the conclusion, for example, that the physical sciences are more “scientific” than the behavioral because they strive for accuracy and prediction. Some appear to think that a measure of the applicability of science is accuracy of prediction, but variance, too, is a legitimate interest of the scientific method. Science is a unique method, a method independent of what it studies. Measures of variance can be just as reliable as formulas that strive to eliminate or reduce variance. As always, the meaningful issue is what one wants to know, what one wants to accomplish through the application of the methods of science. Let us put to rest the notion that there can be no science of living beings or that scientific procedures somehow diminish and degrade the awesomeness of life. The chief characteristic of life forms, as opposed to physical objects, is variation. It is variation that permits evolution, for without variation, there is nothing for natural selection to select. The study of variation may be done in two ways: by study of the unique or by study of the general. In this book, we have examined examples of both, although study of the unique case dominates, to be sure; but what Thorndike, Haggerty, and Hamilton contributed is the importance of general variation. Both ways must be investigated because we cannot know what is unique without knowing what is general. Behavioral science, therefore, proceeds on two fronts: the study of the unusual and the study of the variation characteristic of groups.


Conservative Virtue Ethics

After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre



Intuitionist Deontology

Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle & W. D. Ross

Daniel Kaufman On Intuitionism and Folk Psychology

Of the Standard of Taste by David Hume (1909)



Absolutist Deontology

The Sources of Normativity by Christine M. Korsgaard

Consequentialism and Deontology in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by Dean Moyar



Absurdism

Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 by Nick Land

Tiqqun 1: Conscious Organ of The Imaginary Party by Tiqqun



Liberation Theology

The Selfless Mind; Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism by Peter Harvey

Yet another really long rant. AHEM !!

Your first salient point is to mention suicide, perhaps only in passing, perhaps more.

We at my high school had a girl whose name I have forgotten who was dating a guy named Phil who still comes to our reunions to this very day as of 2012, and this girl committed suicide.

I remember her younger sister's name was Diane because I dated Diane and she was a very good kisser.

We all then went through counselling sessions at school in group sessions about her sister and a local Baptist minister was invited to attend, presumably since the girl was Protestant, and the Baptists are presumably the biggest Protestant group in the USA. Just guessing.

We learned that suicide is both an act of desperation bent on escape, as well as an act of revenge.

We learned that her father had been beating her often.

We learned that her boyfriend Phil had been cheating on her.

Presumable these were more than she could take.

Supposedly she was beyond her breaking point and wanted to escape from her father and also wreck revenge on Phil.

So she did it.

Not sure how that fits into your equation, but I wanted to provide you with these data for your further analysis regarding suicide.

The Catholic Church sorely condemns suicide and lays a heavy guilt trip upon thinking about it. We Catholic kids just blew her suicide off as the workings of Satan upon the apostate Protestant religion. But that's religion not philosophy nor science.

Anyway these long rants of yours are very off-putting. You must be OCD. Nobody else here composes long rants like this.

But I'll tackle a few more salient points as I come to them starting from the beginning.
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by h_k_s »

Ishkah wrote: September 21st, 2020, 9:45 am -

Hey all, is this a thorough enough explanation of my virtue-existentialist ethics? Is it coherent & consistent? Does it show where I think virtues come from and how they should be applied? What do you think?

-

Major influences
In After Virtue, MacIntyre tries to explain another element of what is missing in modern life through his use of the concept of a practice. He illustrates this with the example of a person wishing to teach a disinterested child how to play chess.

The teaching process may begin with the teacher offering the child candy to play and enough additional candy if the child wins to motivate the child to play. It might be assumed that this is sufficient to motivate the child to learn to play chess well, but as MacIntyre notes, it is sufficient only to motivate the child to learn to win – which may mean cheating if the opportunity arises. However, over time, the child may come to appreciate the unique combination of skills and abilities that chess calls on, and may learn to enjoy exercising and developing those skills and abilities. At this point, the child will be interested in learning to play chess well for its own sake. Cheating to win will, from this point on, be a form of losing, not winning, because the child will be denying themselves the true rewards of chess playing, which are internal to the game. The child will also, it should be noted, enjoy playing chess; there is pleasure associated with developing one’s skills and abilities that cannot come if one cheats in order to win.

MacIntyre concludes that there are two kinds of goods attached to the practice of chess-playing and to practices in general. One kind, external goods, are goods attached to the practice “by the accidents of social circumstance” – in his example, the candy given to the child, but in the real world typically money, power, and fame (After Virtue 188). These can be achieved in any number of ways. Internal goods are the goods that can only be achieved by participating in the practice itself. If you want the benefits to be gained by playing chess, you will have to play chess. And in pursuing them while playing chess, you gain other goods as well – you will get an education in the virtues. The two kinds of goods differ as well in that external goods end up as someone’s property, and the more one person has of any of them the less there is for anyone else (money, power, and fame are often of this nature). Internal goods are competed for as well, “but it is characteristic of them that their achievement is a good for the whole community who participate in the practice” (After Virtue 190-191). A well played chess game benefits both the winner and loser, and the community as a whole can learn from the play of the game and develop their own skills and talents by learning from it.

MacIntyre believes that politics should be a practice with internal goods, but as it is now it only leads to external goods. Some win, others lose; there is no good achieved that is good for the whole community; cheating and exploitation are frequent, and this damages the community as a whole.

– Political Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

One alternative is a prefigurative or practical anarchism, based on a social account of the virtues (based on a revision of MacIntyre’s virtue theory). This identifies goods as being inherent to social practices, which have their own rules, which are negotiable and alter over time. It stresses the immanent values of particular practices rather than on the externally decided (consequentialist) values that will accrue.

Thus, those tactics which are consistent with anarchism are those that are rewarding in their own terms rather than on the basis of external benefits alone. The different approaches to political-social organisation provide an illustration, in which Leninism exemplifies the instrumental approach, whilst a case from contemporary anarchism provides a contrast. Leninism concentrates on the external goods of the disciplined party, its success is primarily judged on its efficiency in reaching the desired goal of revolution. However, a different non-consequentialist approach to political organisation is to view political structures as the manifestation of internal goods, such as enhancing wisdom and the embodiment of social relationships that disperse social power. Standards are generated by, and help to form, anti-hierarchical social practices. For instance the norms required for secretly subverting corporate advertising or state propaganda are not identical to those required to maintain an inclusive, multi-functional social centre. Whilst different, the norms of both are open, to those entering these practices, they are open to critical dialogue and can alter over time.

Each anarchist practice produces their own standards, which overlap with others. The norms by which a successful social centre is run, will be different to, but bear some similarities with an inclusive, participatory website or periodical. Thus the standards for the goods, the types of social relationship that constitute (and are constituted by) non- or anti-hierarchical practice are observable and assessable within a domain – and between adjacent domains. So that the relatively stable, and common, norms of bravery (opposing dominating power), solidarity (reciprocal assistance between those in a subjugated position) and wisdom (coming to understand the structures of oppression and the means by which ‘other values’ can be created) are identifiable within anarchist practices, but are not necessarily universal. Similar practices involving subtly different actors will generate distinctive other goods (or bads).

Like the Stirnerite subject, there is no universal agent of change, but one in constant flux, resisting, challenging or fleeing the changing dominating powers within a given context. Within these radical practices, it produces its own immanent values. Because social practices are not distinct but overlap there are possibilities for links of solidarity across the different domains between different agents, although there is no universal agent who participates in all practices. A narrative of anti-hierarchical liberation, might provide a link between different practices, and provide routes for new social practices (and new agents to develop). The contestation of hierarchy, however, does not represent a new universal value. There are contexts in which goods are immanently developed but a challenge to structures that maintain inequalities of power is not generated – for instance, children playing in a sandbox. Thus, the rejection of hierarchy is not a universal guide to action, though, given the persistence of economic structures and institutions that enforce and legitimise these inequalities of power, it is highly likely that the contestation of hierarchy will remain a core anarchist value.

– Anarchism; Ethics & Meta-Ethics by Benjamin Franks

Purpose & Meaning

We are born with biological drives and grow up being taught environmental drives we have to grapple with and make sense of.

We can’t quantify for the abused person what level of suffering it is right that they owe themselves to muddle through to acheive some level of happiness later on.

We can only say if a persons reason for ending one’s own life, is to desire to make a meaningful decision, in the face of unfair meaninglessness, the sum of one’s existence only becomes more absurd. So, suicide being viewed as meaningfull, is simply an attempt to deny that meaninglessness or no one stable meaning is the foundation to all life.

So, grappling with these biologically and environmentally bestowed drives is a goal in which acheiving some headway, brings us happy flourishing.


What constitutes right and wrong?
Because human beings are complex, their flourishing takes complex forms: we can flourish intellectually – hence, the “intellectual virtues” (both practical and theoretical); we can flourish as builders and makers and artists – hence, the “virtues of craft” – and we can flourish in terms of our non-technical, social and civic activities – hence, the “moral” virtues.
Now, if you’re a consequentialist, you can simply relate to this philosophy as through persuing your own happy flourishing, either the goals are related to other people or it’s more easily acheived by helping others, so we have an obligation to be altruistic and acheive a global calculus of happy flourishing.

But, I would simply appeal to what is good for any one person being more complicated than an external calculation of ends:
Virtues and therefore morality can only make sense in the context of a practice: they require a shared end, shared rules, and shared standards of evaluation. The virtues also define the relationships among those who share a practice: “….the virtues are those goods by reference to which, whether we like it or not, we define our relationships to those other people with whom we share the kind of purposes and standards which inform practices” (After Virtue 191). We must have the virtues if we are to have healthy practices and healthy communities.
So, if how a person was raised to understand virtue is primarily respecing the shared rule that the dignity of a person not be violated then, in so far as practicing that virtue is meaningful to that person, it will bring that person happy flourishing.
It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain [and interests], but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is. . . [and] that the dignity of living organisms not be violated.

Socialist Entailments

Due to the unfair distribution of power in society in the hands of very few, the good any one person can strive to acheive is a large amount, because one can imagine weilding the kind of power those at the top currently have to do good.

So, like Bernie Sanders educating the masses on the positives to socialised government institutions and, if he’d gotten into power, mobilising a grassroots movement to demonstrate and strike to push through bills.

Or the personal heroism of people flying to Syria to fight Islamic Fascism.

But, counter-intuitively, the goal should be to move to a world where grand feats of good deed aren’t necessary or possible. So that more people get a chance to strive to do good.

Either, because government power has been devolved through a move to a multi-party system through preferential voting, to… Some local gov positions being elected by sortition, to… The majority of society being so content with worker-co-ops and syndicalist unions that we transition from representative democracy to direct democracy. So, a chamber of ministers to federated spokes councils.

Or, because border conflicts are fought between well meaning soldiers, where their only heroism is being willing to sacrifice their lives when representatives of opposing government systems fail to communicate.


Legal animal rights entailments

If the wonder that we experience in viewing wild animals is not ‘how similar to us they are’, but their ‘real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value’ and one sufficient reason we grant this freedom at least to a basic extent to humans is they have a desire to achieve what they find valuable then; the fact non-human animals experience this desire too means we ought extend these freedoms to animals.

So, a holistic world-view of not wanting to reduce both the quality and quantity of positive experiences humans can have with animals, as well as animals with other animals for low-order pleasures such as taste/texture.


In Summary

Any highest good we can acheive, would also be seen as a practice that in some way serves as an example that can be replicated.

Therefore, what’s most important is devolving power to a larger body of people to be able to strive to a higher good.

Though the governance model needs to be built up slowly enough to match expertise, so as not to falter with people pushing for ideals before having adequately put them to the test. As well, so as not to cause a whiplash effect, where people desire a reactionairy politics of conformity, under more rigid hierarchy of just the few:

I plan to write more soon about how people can identify with conservativism as a virtue philosophy and happen to be a virtue exemplar for devolving power to those without it. Like Malcolm X denouncing drug taking, to keep minority communities strong, in response to the flooding of the streets with drugs by the CIA to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. But, how I still view co-operation as a virtue as providing a more stable foundation for building up institutions with social virtue.



My Further Reading

Egoist

The Politics of Postanarchism by Saul Newman
However, can we assume that the possibilities of human freedom lie rooted in the natural order, as a secret waiting to be discovered, as a flower waiting to blossom, to use Bookchin’s metaphor? Can we assume that there is a rational unfolding of possibilities, driven by a certain historical and social logic? This would seem to fall into the trap of essentialism, whereby there is a rational essence or being at the foundation of society whose truth we must perceive. There is an implicit positivism here, in which political and social phenomena are seen as conditioned by natural principles and scientifically observable conditions. Here I think one should reject this view of a social order founded on deep rational principles. In the words of Stirner, ‘The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for him who looks to the bottom of it – emptiness.’ In other words, rather than there being a rational objectivity at the foundation of society, an immanent wholeness embodying the potential for human freedom, there is a certain void or emptiness, one that produces radical contingency and indeterminacy rather than scientific objectivity. This idea has been elaborated by Laclau and Mouffe, who eschew the idea of society as a rationally intelligible totality, and instead see it as a field of antagonisms which function as its discursive limit. In other words, what gives society its definitional limit at the same time subverts it as a coherent, whole identity. Therefore, they argue, ‘Society never manages fully to be society, because everything in it is penetrated by its limits, which prevent it from constituting itself as an objective reality.’ Antagonism should not be thought of here in the sense of the Hobbesian state of nature, as a war of everyman against everyman, but rather as a kind of rupturing or displacement of social identities that prevents the closure of society as a coherent identity.
Science, Perception, and Reality Kindle Edition by Wilfrid Sellars

It’s Just a Feeling: The Philosophy of Desirism by Joel Marks



Moral Relativism

Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge by Jerry Gershenhorn
Is a prescriptive position adopted initially by many anthropologists reacting against the ethnocentrism characteristic of the colonial era. Melvelle Herskovits, for instance, affirms that “… in practice, the philosophy of relativism is a philosophy of tolerance” (Cultural Relativism, p. 31).


Preference Consequentialism

Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality by Douglas W. Portmore

Nonzero: History, Evolution & Human Cooperation: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright



Hedonistic Utilitarianism

Utiltarianism by John Stuart Mill



Co-operative Virtue Ethics

Anarchism and Moral Philosophy by Benjamin Franks

Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context: Dialogues with James Tully by Robert Nichols and Jakeet Singh

Stoic virtue ethics by Matthew Sharpe

Feral Children and Clever Animals; Reflections on Human Nature
Our common way of thinking about the difference between physical and behavioral science, described in Chapter 3, is that the goal of the first is to eliminate variance, while the second accepts variance as the essential characteristic of the subject worthy of study. The physical sciences seek to eliminate variation because variation confounds accuracy of prediction. The behavioral sciences should accept variation as the essential aspect of living beings, and thereby strive to measure variance as a technique of describing the nature of life itself. We often confuse the legitimacy of these different goals, thereby leading us to the conclusion, for example, that the physical sciences are more “scientific” than the behavioral because they strive for accuracy and prediction. Some appear to think that a measure of the applicability of science is accuracy of prediction, but variance, too, is a legitimate interest of the scientific method. Science is a unique method, a method independent of what it studies. Measures of variance can be just as reliable as formulas that strive to eliminate or reduce variance. As always, the meaningful issue is what one wants to know, what one wants to accomplish through the application of the methods of science. Let us put to rest the notion that there can be no science of living beings or that scientific procedures somehow diminish and degrade the awesomeness of life. The chief characteristic of life forms, as opposed to physical objects, is variation. It is variation that permits evolution, for without variation, there is nothing for natural selection to select. The study of variation may be done in two ways: by study of the unique or by study of the general. In this book, we have examined examples of both, although study of the unique case dominates, to be sure; but what Thorndike, Haggerty, and Hamilton contributed is the importance of general variation. Both ways must be investigated because we cannot know what is unique without knowing what is general. Behavioral science, therefore, proceeds on two fronts: the study of the unusual and the study of the variation characteristic of groups.


Conservative Virtue Ethics

After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre



Intuitionist Deontology

Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle & W. D. Ross

Daniel Kaufman On Intuitionism and Folk Psychology

Of the Standard of Taste by David Hume (1909)



Absolutist Deontology

The Sources of Normativity by Christine M. Korsgaard

Consequentialism and Deontology in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by Dean Moyar



Absurdism

Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 by Nick Land

Tiqqun 1: Conscious Organ of The Imaginary Party by Tiqqun



Liberation Theology

The Selfless Mind; Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism by Peter Harvey

Your second salient point as far as I can tell is that you believe in relativism and subjectivism, not in objectivism.

For myself on the other hand, I believe in objectivism.

To me it seems that we are born, and whether we chose birth or not we cannot say.

Once born, we are dependent on our mothers and other significant relatives like our fathers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, to raise us to adulthood.

In ancient Sparta, this was for boys a very grueling ordeal. Sparta wanted soldiers for war not citizens for democracy as in Athens.

So if you had grown up in ancient Athens then your life would be considerable more tame than for a Spartan. But your fate was determined by your birth. Neither system was right or wrong. They were simply different.

With the passage of the Age both the Athenians and the Spartans committed many attacks and murders upon their neighbors. You need a score card to figure out which of them was more ruthless.

Ultimately the ancient Thebans conquered both of them, and then the Macedonians in turn conquered them, who were then in turn conquered by the Romans, who themselves were conquered by the Goths and Turks, who each themselves are still with us to this day in the form of the Germans and the modern Turks of Turkey.

History is a good school teacher for atrocity, which is a good test tube for what is right or wrong.

If Daniel in the Bible is correct, then a God of Heaven watches over the nations of the Earth and deals with them all based on their righteous or wicked deeds. But that is religion not philosophy nor science.

In philosophy we have arguments in favor of the proof of God and others that deny a God.

Those which deny God are called Relativists. They date back to the Sophists of ancient Athens. This philosophy exists among us still today.

If you want to call yourself a relativist then do so. Spare us the relativist arguments. They are all lame and we have heard them all for at least 25 centuries so far.

Q.E.D.
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Ishkah »

h_k_s wrote: September 25th, 2020, 5:08 pmIn philosophy we have arguments in favor of the proof of God and others that deny a God.
I honestly don't know how you think you've proven that everyone gets their morality from god or they're forced to be moral relativists. I'm likely just going to ignore your posts, unless I feel it necessary to correct something for a wider audience. But, all the best.
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Terrapin Station »

Ishkah wrote: September 22nd, 2020, 10:10 am So my claim is; any highest good we can acheive, would also be a practice that’s replicatable and easily understood through shared rules and ends. I think only lesser goods can be acheived through only seeking a shared means or only shared ends.
I still have no idea what "higher" and "lesser" goods is even supposed to amount to.
Then the reason I agree with MacIntyre in viewing morality as not making sense outside of both shared rules and ends, is it would be something fundimentally inhuman, to try to bend human behaviour to a means of doing something or end goal without taking into consideration both means and ends into a set of values for what kind of charachter people desire to be. Here's another way of saying it; "there is only the interplay of forms-of-life among themselves, and the protocols of experimentation that guide them locally."
The reason I disagree with MacIntyre is that it's easy to make sense of morality as dispositions or feelings (preferences, etc.) individuals have about interpersonal interaction that they consider to be more significant than etiquette, where they don't have to have anything in mind at all about (the necessity of) shared rules, etc. . . and in fact, that's exactly what morality/ethics is.
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Ishkah »

Terrapin Station wrote:The reason I disagree with MacIntyre is that it's easy to make sense of morality as dispositions or feelings (preferences, etc.) individuals have about interpersonal interaction that they consider to be more significant than etiquette, where they don't have to have anything in mind at all about (the necessity of) shared rules, etc. . . and in fact, that's exactly what morality/ethics is.
We might be angels dancing on a pinhead of difference, because I can absolutely acknowledge there are preferences we can have for a consequential ends, and working towards them, which improves society dramatically. Like desiring the end goal of the abolition of slavery, during the peak of chattel slavery. I just view people's engagement with that task as necessarily upgrading people's shared rules and shared ends.
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Terrapin Station »

Ishkah wrote: September 26th, 2020, 1:52 pm
Terrapin Station wrote:The reason I disagree with MacIntyre is that it's easy to make sense of morality as dispositions or feelings (preferences, etc.) individuals have about interpersonal interaction that they consider to be more significant than etiquette, where they don't have to have anything in mind at all about (the necessity of) shared rules, etc. . . and in fact, that's exactly what morality/ethics is.
We might be angels dancing on a pinhead of difference, because I can absolutely acknowledge there are preferences we can have for a consequential ends, and working towards them, which improves society dramatically. Like desiring the end goal of the abolition of slavery, during the peak of chattel slavery. I just view people's engagement with that task as necessarily upgrading people's shared rules and shared ends.
Whether any particular thing improves society depends on who you ask though. Different people will have different opinions about any issue there.
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Ishkah »

Terrapin Station wrote:Whether any particular thing improves society depends on who you ask though. Different people will have different opinions about any issue there.
For sure... I don't say what I would call social virtue, will be experienced as virtuous universally, nor should it be, just that building up certain instutions and communities with co-operative virtue practices would benefit the majority.
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Re: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Post by Gertie »

Ishkah

I like the thrust of your posts, but don't know enough to contribute much re the implications of trying to bring about the sort of changes you seek, which sound attractive to me. (I'm a lefty who's not keen on heirarchies, but think order is required to establish desirable goods in a fair and equitable way).

Practical details aside of how we organise societies, what I think I can usefully add is a philosophical foundational grounding for morality, which justifies your focus on flourishing.

My view is that our predispositions towards caring and cooperating with others are a result of our evolution as social mammals. (see Pat Churchland Brain Trust). These 'moral intuitions' are then honed by environmental factors, and will vary in their specifics from place to place, from individual to individual and over time. (see Moral Foundations Theory as an attempt to broadly categorise the way universal predispositions may play out).

This leaves us with a philosophical quandary, if our notions of right and wrong can apparently be fully accounted for by our evolved neurology being honed by environmental influences (nature + nurture). It makes morality a matter of evolutionary and cultural happenstance. And Subjective, in that there's nothing to refer to for guidance outside our own feelings on particular issues of right and wrong.

The way to rescue morality from the conclusion that ''all is permissable'' because morality is subjective, lies in the particular nature of consciousness imo. In that it is qualiative, it has this special ''what it is like'' characteristic. Which means sentient creatures have a quality of life, can suffer or flourish, and so have interests.

Goldstein puts it in terms of Mattering. Whether or not morality is subjective or objective isn't what's relevant. Morality is about Mattering. It Matters to me if you harm me, or enable me to flourish, because my quality of life Matters to me. And vice versa. Other sentient species which also have a quality of life, also have interests, whereby it Matters to them how they are treated. Whether they flourish or suffer, or are killed and can no longer experience a quality of life at all.

Of course what it means for different species to flourish, and different people too, isn't quantifiable in a scientific way, and will vary, so practical structures and actions need to allow for that and enable individuals to seek their own goals. This has to be balanced in some way, with enabling the group to flourish overall. Which is where social contract theory and ideas like yours come in.

But having that foundational grounding of quality of life Mattering is a useful touchstone to keep individuals and societies on track, to refer to as situations change and consequences of actions emerge, and prevent ideological rigidity usurping the foundational goal and becoming an end in itself.
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