How to: Build a relative moral framework!

[RDF]

The quicksand is a problem only because you are looking for a firm foundation. That is a decision which you have made, to look for a firm foundation, not something which is inherent to logic or rationality. It is a consequence of philosophical presuppositions, implicit in the discussion, assumptions which are not beyond error, and indeed are erroneous. There is no need for a firm foundation, or justification, such a pursuit is a fools errand, and rationality is stronger without it as a goal.

I have to make this quick (long day tomorrow), but I agree with Nocturne. First off, how can you have an anchor point or firm foundation and still be relative? To me, there's no starting point. There is only putting things in context and setting up priorities, which may have to be rearranged in a new context.

It's like the "Welcome to Atheisia" thread. People wanted to deduce God's existence (or deduce that it's possible or impossible to deduce God's existence) based on universals. But to me, that achieved nothing. God also has to exist in real life, or what good is he? So I opined that any really useful belief about God has to encompass an accounting of where the rubber meets the road--how we apply the many religions and the many gods in real life.

I'm not sure that this matches the formal definition of relativism. It's partly an Fi thing, I suppose. I don't start from a starting point. I put things in context--the legal system, psychology, economic statistics, crime statistics, etc. If things aren't analyzed in the context of real life or don't immediately apply to real life, what good are they? It's a rhetorical question, of course--I realize the need to explore beyond what's immediately accessible to our five senses. But still, sooner or later things have to have application to real life, or it's just debates about angels dancing on the head of a pin, IMO.

Again, that's just my particular application of Fi. I'm not a philosopher by nature. I put things in context and set up priorities, and I accept that the priorities may have to be rearranged in a new context. Everything is relative to everything else, and nothing has intrinsic meaning; context and apposition supply the meaning.

If one must supply a firm foundation, I suppose it's life itself--experience, trial and error, application, compromises, trade-offs between competing priorities, issues of fairness, a bit of the Golden Rule, etc.

[Off to bed.]

 

[Mempy]

the snippet of Nocturne's post that FL quoted

FineLine's post in full

For the record, I am not decided at this moment on whether or not this is Fi at work, but this just makes perfect sense to me.

 

[bluebell]

Um, thanks for the responses, but I'll think I'll drop out of the thread now. It's either stuff that will make sense much further down the track, or it's not how my mind works. *shrug*

 

[RDF]

For the record, I am not decided at this moment on whether or not this is Fi at work, but this just makes perfect sense to me.

Thanks, Mempy! Good to hear that it works for another Fi Dominant!

It seems particularly Fi to me because in the end everything is measured through the prism of "me": a given consideration or situation is evaluated in terms of how it would affect me, my values, people I love, my interests, people I emphasize with, etc.

There's an empathy factor to Fi, and one end of the empathy equation is always "me." And since I exist in the real world, I want outside proofs to take into account the real world that I know and deal with. I want to get hands-on with proofs and make sure they stand up in light of my own values, experiences, and world.

That's as relative as one can get--to the point of solipsism. But if I have taken time and effort to hone my observational skills and judgments, if I've learned to be pragmatic and have incorporated a broad knowledge of the world through education and experience, then why not? Nothing wrong with having opinions and preferences. To me, it's the best reflection of how the world actually works: billions of people with their own opinions and preferences incorporating life as they see it, with a measure of empathy and/or pragmatism allowing them to incorporate the views of the people around them.

To me, that's a more realistic and workable view than arguing that every human being in the world and across time should recognize and accept this or that universal truth.

 

[RDF]

Um, thanks for the responses, but I'll think I'll drop out of the thread now. It's either stuff that will make sense much further down the track, or it's not how my mind works. *shrug*

It's the DWTS thread, isn't it. You're convinced you could never understand someone who gossips about ballroom dance shows.

(j/k)

 

[Mempy]

Are you narrowing self-context to Fi? I think no one can see anything outside the context of oneself. As you said:

It seems particularly Fi to me because in the end everything is measured through the prism of "me": a given consideration or situation is evaluated in terms of how it would affect me, my values, people I love, my interests, people I emphasize with, etc.

It seems impossible not to do this. You seemed to say as much here:

To me, it's the best reflection of how the world actually works: billions of people with their own opinions and preferences incorporating life as they see it, with a measure of empathy and/or pragmatism allowing them to incorporate the views of the people around them.

I do think everyone does this, so I agree. But if everyone does this, and if everyone sees things through the prism of "me," how is the prism of "me" a particularly Fi thing?

Basically, I think all decisions are made because they have some beneficial effect on us. We're all selfish, in the sense that every decision we make has some impetus for us. If there isn't an impetus for us to do something, we're not going to do it, even if the impetus is simply the marginally good feeling we get from donating five bucks to a save-the-wildlife fund.

I think everyone approaches every decision from the prism of "me," whether they realize it or not. I can't think of a single decision that doesn't have some aspect of "me" in it. Everyone asks themselves things like: how does this affect my loved ones, me, my framework of knowledge, and my principles?

If we all approach decisions through the spyglass of ourselves and what is beneficial to us, it seems strange to correlate the "me" prism with Fi.

 

[reason]

Basically, I think all decisions are made because they have some beneficial effect on us. We're all selfish...

And, apparently, we're all omniscient, too.

 

[Journey]

To put my two cents worth in where it probably isn't wanted... Pragmatism was made in the USA! Our very own philosophy. The only problem is it doesn't work. It just creates more problems. More problems than we will ever find solutions... (debased currency, graduated income tax, Social Security...) I would hate to have to write down every time I use expediency as the reason for an action without even thinking...

 

[Mempy]

And, apparently, we're all omniscient, too.

Well, I didn't bother using qualifiers for that post because I think that for a human to want to do something, they have to have an impetus, a boost. An impetus is merely a cause for motion, and the only impetus that works is one that appeals to a person's interests, which basically means that all decisions are put in the context of "me" and must have a payoff for "me," nevermind that they can have enormous beneficial effects on other people, outside systems, the world, etc.

The word selfish has a negative stigma. But in the context that I'm using it, "selfish" has a neutral connotation and simply means that an impetus has to exist for someone to want to do something, period. I think one can also consider others in one's decisions, but at the same time I think that no decision can be completely selfless, or be made entirely outside the context of "me," because for there to be an impetus, there has to be some kind of payoff for "me." Simply put, evaluating everything on the basis of how it affects us and our world is what every human on earth does, and that's why I have trouble understanding why FL correlates the self-prism with Fi. He basically said all this in his post, but he also seemed to correlate the self-prism with Fi, which doesn't make sense to me.

Ah, ahem.

 

[Mole]

Utilitarianism

To put my two cents worth in where it probably isn't wanted... Pragmatism was made in the USA! Our very own philosophy. The only problem is it doesn't work. It just creates more problems. More problems than we will ever find solutions... (debased currency, graduated income tax, Social Security...) I would hate to have to write down every time I use expediency as the reason for an action without even thinking...

Here, we call it Utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism was given to us by Jeremy Bentham.

You can see him today at the bottom of the stairs in University College, London, in a glass case.

Here we quote him in his dictum, "The greatest good for the greatest number".

And not only that but we have put his dictum into practice.

And have created one of the most successful, modern societies.

Victor.

 

[Journey]

Here, we call it Utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism was given to us by Jeremy Bentham.

You can see him today at the bottom of the stairs in University College, London, in a glass case.

Here we quote him in his dictum, "The greatest good for the greatest number".

And not only that but we have put his dictum into practice.

And have created one of the most successful, modern societies.

Victor.

I hope you didn't think I meant to imply that the philosophy behind pragmatism was something new. There is nothing new under the sun. Pragmatism by that name was born in the USA ironically enough in the nineteenth century from three former members of a Harvard Metaphysics Club. William James, Charles Pierce and Oliver Wendell Holmes--became, along with John Dewey, the leading spokesmen in the United States for the philosophy of pragmatism. The Metaphysics Club produced a violent antimetaphysical philosophy!

 

[Night]

Here we quote him in his dictum, "The greatest good for the greatest number".

And not only that but we have put his dictum into practice.


Victor.

Yes: to the wealthy go the spoils.

 

[Mole]

Philosophers in Glass Cases

I hope you didn't think I meant to imply that the philosophy behind pragmatism was something new. There is nothing new under the sun. Pragmatism by that name was born in the USA ironically enough in the nineteenth century from three former members of a Harvard Metaphysics Club. William James, Charles Pierce and Oliver Wendell Holmes--became, along with John Dewey, the leading spokesmen in the United States for the philosophy of pragmatism. The Metaphysics Club produced a violent antimetaphysical philosophy!

Good heavens, no. It's just that I live near Bentham street and I have always been struck by Jeremy, stuffed in his glass case at the foot of the stairs.

Do you think we should preserve more philosophers this way or are their works enough?

Victor.

 

[Journey]

Do you think we should preserve more philosophers this way or are their works enough?Victor.

I think that is a brilliant idea. We could house them all in one building, using wax for those we don't have actual bodies. I'm a librarian so how to classify them? By philosophy type? No, by the cycles of philosophy! You think the world would learn anything about the nonsense?