Do feelings count?

Nuh-uh. If humans have free will then what gods say don't necessarily occur. And what is free will without the ability to have free moral judgement?By granting humans free will, subjectivism was made reality and objective moral truth ruled out. There is simply compliance to a god's moral viewpoint, or noncompliance. No objective status exists.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

Don't confuse two different things. Chiro's description of my position was dead on. In other words he answered your original statement about my position perfectly.In my response to you, I added a further nuance about me personally. Regardless of whether feelings of good and evil are objective or subjective, I personally do not feel good and evil at all. But that does not mean I have no feelings or tastes.Let's take a soldier who has been ordered to fight in a war he does not believe in. In fact he believes it is a criminal act and his superiors true enemies of the state. What is good and what is evil, whatever he does? If he chooses not to fight then he is brave and honest and just but disloyal and not law abiding. If he chooses to fight he is perhaps still brave but not honest nor just though he is loyal and law abiding.In that position I would have certain very strong feelings and take a position. No one could tell me which was truly good and evil, just which one's they do not agree with and why. Neither could I say which was truly good or evil, only the characteristics which mean the most to me. I am defined, and they are. Huh? Point to where we steered it to religion as an example of moral values being objective external reality? It was not just other religions but also other cultures which did not have the same concept of good and evil.As far as I can tell good and evil are shorthand for "I like it" and "I don't like it", only puffed up into something larger than onesself. Perhaps a moral scarecrow, propped for the benefit of others.If you are uninterested or afraid of dealing with a subject you have broached, then that's one thing. But don't try and suggest I was angling to punk on abrahamic religions. I was fine without their ever being mentioned.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

What gods and who measures them? People are already having a tough time trying to explain what morals are real, much less gods. For a rabid Xian, it might be bad to be cruel to all Xians, but okay to be cruel to everyone else. For a rabid muslim it may be bad to be cruel to all muslims, but okay to be cruel to everyone else. Same for rabid jews, same for rabid atheists.Thus when it is added all up there is no sense that "cruelty" is bad. Essentially cruelty is just fine, just not to your friends. And even then some people believe that cruelty is fine for friends.Where is the moral objectivity regarding cruelty? I don't see how this could be off topic. The question is if feelings count, as in if it means there are objective truths. My answer is yes, but limited to the individual. You have taken that to mean they are worthless, and I am explaining that's not what that means.I would suggest bringing gods into it is more of a step away from the topic, since we have no clue what gods feel. Really? Describe how you feel when you see a painting which is offensive to you, and describe how you feel when you see an activity which is offensive to you. Okay so it is all a stand off, right? This sword cuts both ways. You don't know me, and you are way off. I have no idea what the universe is. I am agnostic-atheist, not atheist-atheist.And whether good and evil exist or not is not dependent on whether there are deities or not. Believe it or not there were pantheons which simply did not use good and evil as the abrahamic religions did. They were just as much gods, and the people worshipping them were just as religious as you.I believe that I DON'T KNOW if there is more to this universe than what we can discover through sensorial investigation. I DON'T KNOW if there are powerful entities which created or control this universe (or others). I DO KNOW that no entities of this kind have been proven or work openly on this planet. I DO KNOW that some gods are postulated to have decreed morals in a black/white sense while others are not. I DO KNOW that that is the same for humans. I DO KNOW that people do not act as if there is a moral absolute.My summation of this is that whether there are gods or not, there is no active moral absolute. If gods have declared such things (or imprinted them on reality) they are opaque to humans and so there are no absolutes in a practical sense. But more likely the gods have not created such sets, or there are no gods.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

1) Prove that you know what creator is real and that that creator has moral preferences which are black and white.2) Once gods create free will, they inherently remove objective moral value. In other words, when gods prefer free will, moral subjectivity becomes our reality.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

Unfortunately gods also had to create the patrons, and according to the free will version allowed those patrons the freedom to view those paintings and have many different reactions to them. That is subjectivity.Granted some gods don't seem to like criticism.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

Uh... I'm not just trying to give you a hard time here... but what makes that the "ideal god"? What does bumping your head have to do with viewing a painting you find repulsive? I agree that physical discomfort from physical damage, is different than moral or aesthetic judgement. That is not the example I asked for. That is completely illogical. If we have no evidence to support the theory that there is an objective moral reality, then we definitely do NOT have the choice of determining which feelings are associated with such a reality.The default position is to say I do not know. We do not know. And we cannot choose or say anything. That is not true and I explained it prior to my summation. That you want to believe an ideal universe is one way, does not somehow remove the possibility that other realities may exist which are just as "ideal". I'll try to explain this again. Some people have and do view the world as ideal in nature, and that it does not contain good/evil in the same way that you conceive of such concepts.I'm not sure why "ideal" universes must contain moral absolutes, rather than just being. I said it is opaque to humans, which I meant in the sense of humanity as a whole. Individuals might, but are given no way to judge who has pierced that veil, and so its as good as if no one has.For all we know I have been granted true sight by the true gods, and it is that their universe contains no good and evil as you believe, particularly not to to individual actions. They created and we see only traits which stand in balance with other traits and so create a harmony throughout the universe. It is an attempt to choose a trait or action and view it as one way only, which causes distress and lack of harmony within the individual. It is a desire to see things not as they are but as you wish. It is to try to change things into what you wish rather than deal with them as they are. Can one man control 10,000 things?

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

If you don't see that I used a completely different process then I'm not sure what to say. I was not discussing violation of a number of moral codes. Quite the opposite of what you say above, it is the fact that people end up realizing there is more to any action or person than one choice "good"/"evil" is evidence than no such thing exists. There are only spectrums of observed traits which an individual expresses about themself by making choices in context.Not one of those traits are "good" or "evil".If you don't like the example choose a simple one. I am open to any.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

First of all I didn't say I didn't know what it meant, I said what makes that the "ideal god"? My question remains as secondly your answer did not answer my question. Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, and Hegel had very different concepts of what the universe is. For example there isn't necessarily a god or heaven in Buddhism. Once again trotting out your strawman. What does their being in a material form or not have to do with being objectively true? I have already stated I could hold a religious view point and come to the same conclusion regarding good and evil. If the question is whether feelings count as evidence for objective moral realities, then feelings cannot be the evidence for the answer to that question. That would be circular. If one god told you to torture an innocent little girl, it would become right and you would do it, right? That makes no sense. Why can't we accept our feelings as pointing towards personal identity and so knowledge regarding ourselves? I don't see how it has to be your way or rejection of all knowledge.And you are conveniently ducking the fact that many people have many different views on things. You can't say we don't know, oh yeah but anyone who doesn't feel as I do has a broken moral compass. See how your argument starts bringing in more issues? And this is condescending proselytizing. I did not "reject" anything. They did not "reject" anything. People really can have no feeling of what you say you feel. I could just as easily say that it is your choice to manufacture realities (and perhaps even feelings) that do not exist, so that you can dismiss objective reality in favor of a superstition which makes you right and everyone else wrong. Yeah, but it can't be known beyond that. I'm telling you what I have seen beyond the veil and you reject it out of hand, then pronounce your own as gold. Uh-huh. Your feelings have meaning, even within my described universe. Note that in some religions feelings are illusions and meaningless (other than being traps). There were even Xians who felt that way.None of this has changed the way I behave, other than to help me examine my course of action by attempting to define myself better. How can they be more persuasive than my own feelings? This simply makes no sense. I have only acknowledged that their own voices are persuasive to them, not that mine is meaningless.You are abandoning knowledge based on your personal feelings. How simple it must be to say I am right and anyone who disagrees is wrong. There is an objective way to feel and I am feeling it. How uninsightful and dogmatic. How solipsistic.This message has been edited by holmes, 03-09-2006 11:23 PM

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

You are simply imposing your own view on this. Every subjective feeling could also be cogitated by gods, or there could be a universe that has portions which do not need cogitation to continue existing after the gods have created them. Okay, then how is their idealism any different than mine? And frankly its more than a little self serving to refer to their ideal as "god" when some have many or none. There is your mind and the world around it. That holds true whether the universe is wholly materialistic or wholly immaterial (with gods tying everything together through force of will into a cogent picture). Your mind experiences feelings regarding internal issues of the mind, and external issues from the part of the world which is not your mind.Of those that are of the external world the question is raised whether some are intrinsic or extrinsic characteristics of the item itself. Or perhaps better called inherent, or applied to the item itself.You are arguing that every feeling regarding an external item (and perhaps internal as well) must be an intrinsic or inherent property rather than extrinsic or applied. How does one make that determination? I use the same principle we use to prize out whether other matters are intrinsic v extrinsic.If a value is intrinsic an item will likely be viewed as having that value by others. And variances can be explained via observable differences in sensory abilities. Such values may also be shown to have an underlying singular value which is measurable indirectly (by nonhuman receptors). Thus we see consistency and cogency of "feeling" regarding a value.If a value is extrinsic and item will likely be viewed as having many different values across human populations, which may be traced to instruction about these values, and not to any observable sensory abilities. And there are no indirect, nonhuman detection systems which can relate a singular quality we may be detecting. Thus no evidence of consistency or cogency of "feeling" regarding a value. That holds true for everything. And I can tell you right now there is more logical internal consistency with a system I described than the one you have described. That's called a circular argument. Its a logical fallacy.Here is my argument.We don't know gods, and we don't know what they have created. At least not in any provable way. We do know that people have feelings about actions, and these feelings are very important to them. It guides their actions and we can learn about them and ourselves based on these feelings. They are not unified, and can be seen to follow cultural upbringing to some degree. Indeed they are not even unified for an individual across their own lifetime.Thus there does not seem to be any evidence for feelings to be observations of intrinsic values (of actions or objects). And thus there is no logic to asserting that they could be or that they are intrinsic values of actions or objects. However, there is some logic and consistency in arguing that they are applied by individuals, and how they are applied allows us at least a temporary knowledge of how an individual acts and feels.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

It would seem so. They objectively belong to each of them separately and are important to each of them separately.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

This is how I experience the world. It is also how others experience the world. Unless there are such Minds as you suggest and they tell us this is how they operate, then the perspective I outlined is what we have. I know for sure what you just suggested is not in the Bible, so its pure speculation on your part, even if you were a biblical literalist. 1) This only supports my position as I have said that feelings are objective truths about individuals, and not about the world other than to say "mr X feels Y". The only thing you have done is add that some Minds will know for certain that mr X feels Y, because those minds put Y there.2) If what you say is true then Gods (or in your case your God) is the author of all of the most criminal and destructive behaviors, and feelings to do such things are objectively real. Thus a rapists "feeling" that their target needs and deserves to be raped, or that a prostitute should be killed, is a moral objective truth. Crash is correct that the argument you are advancing is on its face not just a circular argument. It is however a circular one once you unpack the hidden premises which I had already addressed earlier... and I see you are proving that with your answer to rr.But I'll start from scratch to make it easier. I'll step back past the "you too" and the "circular" problem, and address the underpinnings of your stated argument. You are equivocating on the use of the term "feeling". There are sensations and there are emotions. Sensations come from organs which continuously deliver inputs from the world around us to our minds. Emotions do not appear to have any organ structure which can receive inputs from the world. Rather they appear to be "feelings" which we manufacture based on kinds (or sets) of sensations we are getting from the outside world.You are correct that sensations may be dulled or fooled, and are powerless to "prove" the existence of objective reality. However we can gain practical knowledge about objective reality using them. And the way we do this is by constructing mechanisms so that we do not base statements of objective reality on one person's sensations, or even a group of person's sensations. We will certainly use them, but it is to uncover a common reality which can be tested so that we can make predictions which will be common to all.This does not occur with emotions. While we can use these to construct models which uncover the a common reality, the reality uncovered has been that emotions are personal assessments which derive from personal history/environment, with no inherent or universal characteristic we can key on to make statements of absolute moral worth.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)