Do feelings count?

Fine. Let me be more specific. What God prefers becomes our objective reality if God prefers that it becomes our objective reality. It seems really stupid to start throwing around limitations on the one who creates limitations. You just assume that God is the simplest of created creatures so that you can disprove Him. I believe thats called a strawman argument. Do you want to have an intellectual discussion or not? Honestly...If you believe that statement is false, then explain why; don't just state the obvious.

Now that was a mouthful.

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)

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It seems really stupid to start throwing around limitations on the one who creates limitations.

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It is a poor debating method it add assumptions and unsupported premises to an argument. By definition a triangle has three sides; God himself cannot create a triangle with four sides. It appears to me that morality is similar; it is simply the nature of morality that it is subjective, so, like a four-sided triangle, an objective standard of morality is not something that God can create. Maybe I am wrong on this, but so far no one has presented a cogent argument to show that I am wrong.-

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If you believe that statement is false....

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All I am saying is that I do not see how morality can be made "objective". You simply made up a sentence that I agree is grammatically correct, but not all grammatically correct sentences correspond to anything in reality. If you want to explain what your sentence means and give me reasons why I should consider it more than an empty string of words the we can have an "intellectual" discussion on this. But simply making statements as if they prove something is not an intellectual discussion.-Let's back up. The question is whether there is an objective standard of morality. (Actually, I think that the OP is whether we can trust our feelings to give us insight whether there is an objective standard of morality.)I have stated that there is no objective standard of morality. I state this because I don't even know what "objective standard of morality" even means. But I am willing to consider the possibility that one exists if one can explain good reasons why I should believe that such a thing exists.So far, there have been several attempts at a "yes" answer. One (which is relevant to the OP) is that the existence of a universal set of ethics among all human societies is evidence that an absolute standard exists. That is debatable, but it is also moot since there is no universal set of ethics (except of the most vague sort).Another argument, which seems to be yours (and you may clarify if I am wrong) is that God can set up an absolute standard by fiat. I am simply stating that I don't see this as possible.

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

Because its the logical conclusion of an idealistic monistic universe: if the universe is made ideas, then for it to exist, it must exist within a over-arching consciousness (e.g. God). If any part of the universe were not being cogitated, then it would cease to exist. I know they had different concepts of this, but their idealism is what I'm referring to as the "ideal God". Discussing the specific personality traits of that God or Realm of Forms, or Absolute Mind, or Brahma is a different matter. Let's go back and look at what you said in an early post: How do you make the distinction between which feelings suggest something about the "outer world" and which do not? Aren't assuming a dualistic materialistic universe here in referring to "the outer world", and aren't you implying that for something to have an objective existence outside an individual that it must be material in nature since you limit the objective existence of "ideas" to the minds of individuals? Of course! You can believe whatever the heck you want. As to whether its logically internally consistent or not could be debated and of course the founding assumptions can never be proven logically. That is not my argument! Have you been listening?Yes, the question is whether or not feelings count as evidence for objective moral realities outside ourselves.My argument is that we do use feelings as evidence for other objective realities outside ourselves even though they cannot be proven, even though there may be lack of consensus, and even though our senses can be dulled or fooled, so we CAN also use feelings as evidence for objective moral realities outside ourselves.If you fail to understand this, then we might as well quit arguing right now because this is pointless.

P.S. I'm done... Going to Mexico tomorrow and won't be back for a week. Sorry if I didn't get to reply to everyone else's replies.

Spring break?Have a good vacation. Hope that you enjoy yourself and return home safely.

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

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)

Since this thread has become a thread discussing whether or not the existence of God implies an absolute standard of morality, a topic that has just appeared in another thread, I am bumping this one.

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

You come across as being rather senile. How old are you exactly?

Thanks, robin. Do you have anything to contribute to the topic?

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

You started it. Do you remember what you said?

Well, I remember in another thread you made the comment: You seem to be implying here that if God existed then there would be an objective standard of morality. I bumped this thread in case you wanted to elaborate on that.

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

I'm talking about your ad hominem comment. Would you care to retract that?

An ad hominen would be if I were to use points of your character and claimed that refuted your argument when your character is, generally, irrelevant to the logic of an argument. So in actuality I never committed an ad hominen.

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt