Do feelings count?

Hi Robin, Yep.Feelings are all we have to go on. I feel certain things are wrong just as strongly as I can feel the bark on a tree. Since I can keep feeling the trees just as well as the right and wrong, I believe both exist objectively.Like it has been said before, we can't have a worldview based on pure logic since logic has to have founding assumptions. This has led some to be existentialists rejecting all logic and merely living for the moment, since that is all that can be known.However, my thinking goes something like this. My subjective experience is not pure freedom. There are limitations to what I can do and consequences (feelings) for what I do. Therefore, these limitations and consequences must exist in some form as a truth beyond me since I cannot change them. Since I keep experiencing the same patterns over and over, I might as well accept them as truth. This is a leap of faith, but I must take it otherwise I'm stuck inside myself with no ability to reason, project my mind, or be anything beyond an animal.So yeah... feelings count.

Dito to what Robin said.Others can feel the same "moral bark" that I can.Some people might have been burned badly at one point in their life and lost feeling in their hand causing them to not feel the tree. In the same way, some people may have been "burned" mentally causing them to not have a conscience.However, even if the person can't feel the tree, if he runs smack into it, there will be consequences. Even if a person doesn't feel right and wrong, there will be consequences if he runs smack into immorality.So, IMO, I can't see any logical reason why one kind of feeling is completely acceptable for gathering information about the existence of an external objective reality, while another is not. All feelings and senses can be fooled, but we have to start accepting things as real at some point.

This argument is valid only in attacking the reliability of such feelings, but not in proving that such feelings have no correspondance to an objective reality.Just because someone is blind, that doesn't mean there's nothing out there to see. Just because someone doesn't feel the wrong he is doing doesn't mean that he might later come to recognize it as wrong. Just because someone has lived contentedly in the Sahara Desert his whole life doesn't mean he wouldn't much prefer Hawaii if given the opportunity to live there a little while.

In the same way if you feel tree bark, and believe you've felt a tree, aren't you assuming a tree exists? Yes.

I make the assumption that people are telling me the truth when they agree with me that an act strikes them as cruel.

All senses and feelings can be fooled. When this happens, its often called a lie.Just because our sense of morality can sometimes be fooled more easily than other senses, doesn't mean the morality that is sensed doesn't exist objectively. Of course those feelings don't prove it does either, just like feelings of bark don't prove trees exist.

Well, if that is your standard for "knowledge" then we can know nothing. Since we cannot get inside another's head to find out if blue to them feels the same way blue does to us, we can't "know" if the color blue exists.For us to "know" anything, at some point we have to start making assupmtions that what we feel and what others feel points to an objective reality, and though our perception of it may be imperfect, we may assume that we are grasping a piece of it as real knowledge.

The one who is right is the one with the purest heart. I've heard this argument so many times... its retarded. It has to do with equivocation on the meaning of "absolute". Since an action is inextricably tied to its context, ethics are inevitably situational; however, if an action in a particular context is wrong, it is absolutely wrong if wrong is an objective quality. Just like a rose is absolutely red, but only when in bloom. The person with the purest heart. Perhaps, but I would take issue with you for calling them "Christian"... and we don't need to debate the N.T.S. fallacy again. Perhaps this is the key point where we differ. By "outer world" I presume you have in mind the physical material world. I make no distinction between the physical and metaphysical except that they are simply two parts of the same whole existing within the mind of the creator, therefore, I believe that something can be objectively real and have no corresponding physical existence.By saying that feelings of morality are objectively real, but correspond to no objective reality, you are essentially saying that these feelings are meaningless. Its the same as saying there's really no tree.I think the only reason we tend to think of the things that can be perceived through the physical senses as more "objectively real" is that our physical senses have been more fully evolved and are less easily damaged. No, it means there is an objective entity called "head" that the person is sensing in an unusually unpleasant manner. Whether or not there is an objective standard for loudness depends on whether or not the One who created sound set that standard. I agree with the last part of that statement. If a person loves loud rock music and the culture of rock and all that jazz... then we might say that person is characterized as a "hardcore rocker." Similarly, if a person loves killing babies and Jews, we might say that person is characterized as hardcore "evil". Just as rock music exists objectively, so does evil.

The subjectivity of the creator is the objectivity of the created.If God says a rose is red, then by golly its red. If I am colorblind, that doesn't change the fact that its red to God. If God says murdering people is wrong, then by golly its wrong. If I am morally bankrupt, that doesn't change the fact that its wrong to God.This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 03-07-2006 07:55 PM

God. I'm still not clear on what point you're trying to make here. And that gets into a big ontological argument, which is not the subject of this thread. But for the record, I completely disagree with this statement. I totally reversed your point; I didn't prove it. Unpleasantness doesn't equal immorality. I can't, and I never said I could. I said we have to start believing in assumptions at some point if we want to "know" anything. So what? Like I already said, the number of people in agreement about a thing can be an argument that increases the credibility of a claim of objectivity, but it doesn't prove it; neither does a lack of consensus about a thing disprove its objective existence. I know you don't, and that's your choice. You reject your feelings about good and evil as having no basis in a reality external to yourself because you view the universe as solely materialistic in nature. I view the universe as primarily idealistic in nature so that all things and all feelings and all ideas are in the mind of THE God and as such abstract ideas like good and evil have an objective existence and meaning to The One that contains them.

More feelings. It all becomes a part of your experience as feelings. Wait... first you say an objective measure for feelings can ONLY occur if one can get inside another person's head to determine if they feel the same, but now you're saying that consensus by pretty much everyone is good enough to establish something as objective. Which is it?If it is the first then there is no way we can know anything by your standard. If it is the latter, then what percentage of the population must agree? And how do you know their senses aren't being fooled?

This statement is a meaningless statement unless you are playing off the semantics of my usage of the word "say" when by "say" I mean "create". Wait a minute... do you believe in good and evil or not? If you don't, then you've just contradicted yourself. If you do, then this is another meaningless statement like the previous one, since a thing can only exist as God creates it, if God is in fact the creator.

Yes. Everything. That is interesting. You have "beliefs" in regards to right and wrong, but you don't believe right and wrong exist. What do you believe in? You don't have beliefs in right and wrong. You have preferences about how people should behave. There is a difference. If you say an action is right or wrong, you are appealing to an objective absolute of rightness or wrongness and imposing that absolute on whatever you are applying it to. It is the same as saying that flower is red or that flower is blue. However; if you say I prefer that people didn't randomly kill people, then you are accurately stating your position. haha... no you have no "rights" whatsoever because nothing is right. All you have are your own preferences. You can't say someone ought or ought not to do something because that implies a higher authority. All you can do is say I wish people didn't do things I don't like.This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 03-08-2006 08:52 PM

Except that what God prefers becomes our objective reality.I'll say it again, the subjectivity of the creator is the objectivity of the created.

The ideal God. The mind that contains all existence. You can neither prove nor disprove the objectivity of a thing based on consensus! That has been my repeated point. Consensus can only serve to increase or decrease one's confidence in the objectivity of a thing.Suppose a group of 10 people is out in the grass stargazing. Only 1 of that 10 sees a meteor. Does that mean the meteor did not objectively fall? Of course not! Okay, well maybe its not off topic, but this has been debated many times before. What is meaning? Can an individual have meaning? Meaning implies a connection to logic and purpose. If an individual is the supreme being, then meaning cannot be tied to a logical purpose, but only to one's own desires; and that seems to me to be contrary to the very definition of meaning. On the other hand, if there is a supreme being beyond the individual, then meaning becomes serving the purposes of that being rather than one's self. Yes, really. If I bump my head, that's unpleasant, not immoral. Immorality may be unpleasant. Morality may be unpleasant. Or immorality may be pleasant. Or Morality may be pleasant. YES!!!!So we are left with the CHOICE of determining which feelings we are going to accept as corresponding to an objective external reality. That is the only logical explanation for your response. If you really were as willing to accept that the universe is ideal in nature, then you would not have rejected the conclusion that there are no objective moral absolutes as you do here: "My summation of this is that whether there are gods or not, there is no active moral absolute." How do you know that people cannot be allowed to see through this opacity? How do you know that Robin's feelings about cruelty are not a result of that reality penetrating his mind?