So you believe that people's emotions are important?


That is fine but how do you know they are important.


Science and knowledge of outcomes is critical to making and moral choice but the moral imperitive is really the same regardless. I would say moral choices are a mix of intent and knowledge.


How do you know your intent is right?

 

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I don't worry if my intent is right.

I worry about what I want, and the affect other people have on my ability to get it.

It's an axiomatic approach. Emotions seem to be important. One might even go so far and say they only exist to help us survive in the first place. So as a starting point it's not too bad I think. Then you build up from there.

Do you have an alternative to that?

 

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Ontology is a subset of Metaphysics. Before you take a position, it is important to ask yourself what metaphysical worldview you will adopt. There are basically five broad metaphysical categories:

1. Immanent Realism
2. Transcendental Realism
3. Nominalism
4. Meinongianism
5. Escapes me at the present ( my notes have been lost in some moves)* Note if anyone can help me please do.

I have a lot of work to do this morning. However, I will build on this to demonstrate, if you take a different metaphysical position, then it will affect the variables outlined in any epistemology or ontology.

 

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The OP is about approach and judging various approaches using logic. The idea of morality has always been a hard mix of logic and belief (or what you call emotion). There are those who thinks science can be used to answer moral questions without using those faulty approaches to obtaining knowledge. ie emotion, belief, etc.


Whether or not there is a higher power or not we as human beings have to make these moral choices. We have no choice but to attempt to define good and bad.

 

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Koneg is nearly-right on this one. And also, this followup quote above demonstrates the same problem. Root cause:

Humans cannot 'know' anything.

We can suspect... we can have a lot of evidence about... but we cannot 'know.'

That's why science seems more and more sure about something... riiiiight up until it takes a 180 and disavows that thing.

This likely reality makes most of your posts on this seem irrelevant and 7th-grade-ish in perceived validity.

 

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That was a great read.

Thanks.

You missed my post from back then that I'd be doing a lot of field research because of a NSF grant I received and wouldn't post as much. You don't get good 'net service in most of Greenland and Alaska. Now that I spent all the cash the university has me back at my old gig teaching and supervising grad students. So I'm back here instead of doing what they want.

 

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Of course. How you came to have your moral beliefs was learned using one of the four epistemologies. The question then becomes how valid is that belief in light of how you learned it. Since the first three ways are very flawed if you used them to gain your belief it could also be very flawed. Seriously, any information gained using the first three appeals is about as trustworthy as an op ed piece in the newspaper. You would be equally right/wrong in agreeing or disagreeing with any knowledge being passed to you that way.


Right now there is a big push in social psychology to understand right and wrong behavior based on information processing. Especially intriguing is the work being done on egalitarian actions that don't directly help and in some cases harm the person performing the action. Basically, these people are overcoming their base instincts of preservation for the greater good and it's somewhat surprising how many people have already evolved egalitarian instincts.

 

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I think the one you're looking for is Conceptualism.

 

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