Moral Realism

...note that a relativistic relational explanation of property´s as emergent effects does not peril a causal closed materialistic explanation of the world in any way, but rather makes you think on the very unified need to look at it as a final enclosed finite whole...it makes you think how forms are dependent on the arrangements of functions of a single unifying substance...matter or whatever other description of your liking.

...what I am trying to tell you without much success is that squareness does not inform squares...

By "painfull" I assume you mean "bad" since the dis value of pain is the point at issue. How can you tell when pain is not bad? That is an incoherent question because pain is defined by our experiences as bad. The sadist example might be what you are thinking but in the case it only shows that the sadist desires something bad to derive satisfaction. This makes sense because we desire bad things all the time.


This makes no sense. "measurements are relative to causes measurer's and consequences"? Say again? measurements relative to measurer's? Sorry but your terms and logic are vague, very vague.

If someone has only ever experienced pain (mild) and only ever seen others apparently experiencing in the same way, then how could that person ‘know’ that pain is bad. That person does things throughout their life but pain is the only sensation they feel and it is seems the same for others that, that person interacts with. How can this person know that pain is intrinsically bad? Does this show that pain is not intrinsically bad i.e. bad per se. In the same way that if every taste was sweet how could I know what sour was? How could that person know intrinsic moral value or disvalue using pain as a yardstick. Also:

BigStew said:

…we need to feel pain in order to understand why it itself is bad.

So the person in the scenario above only feels pain and only sees others apparently experiencing the same thing. How does this person ‘feel pain in order to understand why it itself is bad’? If you never experienced lack of pain then you can’t know that pain is bad and your argument stands or falls on whether pain is bad per se. You could argue this doesn’t reflect the real world but it could be, it’s not unreasonable and in my view shows that your argument is fundamentally untenable.

1 - "Painful" and "bad" might work has synonyms so you are not informing anything upon pain itself when you say its bad...that is a round argument from the beginning...is like saying that yellow is yellowish in itself and not counting the measurer apparatus in between...
...the question rather is WTF does "bad" means ? bad to whom ?
...and what is bad in badness, once there´s nothing bad in itself and something supposedly bad can result in something consequently good...
...if you want to know ,"bad" to me is an old highly subjective meaningless classification relative to biological entity´s I tell you...

2 - ...and yes, measurements are relative to the measurer´s apparatus and the raw data just like locks are relative to keys !

3 - is not that my reasoning is vague but rather that you fail to see its subtle point...above igm just pointed it out !

..."badness" itself is questionable...that is my point, all along...bad is a classification dependent on a relational dysfunction that might or might not happen depending on either side...so that "badness" cannot be said to be more informatively bad in itself then pain can be informatively painful in itself...
(good job up there by the way !)
...weck I don´t have a clue on what he is talking about when he speaks in pain being painful or bad in itself without a relation in place...

I agree with you and it will be interesting to see what his replies are.

Bigstew, you seem to be making three separate claims: (1) that pleasure/pain have intrinsic value/disvalue; (2) that pleasure/pain supply motivation; and (3) that pleasure/pain are moral properties. I think most people are willing to grant you (1) and (2). It's (3) that you have failed to explain, as I continue to bring to your attention. Your topic is titled "moral realism" not "value realism."

You have yet to provide a reasoned defense to these criticisms:

First, value or disvalue does not on its own make something moral or immoral. As you well know, food, water, shelter, education, friends, safety, material resources, political liberty, virtue, and so on, are all things people value. If you're going to arbitrarily label pleasure or pain as moral properties you need to explain why these other intrinsic values are not moral also. You can't simply reduce these other goods to pleasure and pain. We're dealing with "qualitatively different" types of values in these cases.

Second, there are countless forms of moral experience that are not primarily characterized by pleasure or pain. If someone is genuinely honest, it isn't that they are telling the truth to feel good; they are telling the truth for the "simple reason" that it is the right thing to do under the circumstances (i.e., because they value the truth or authenticity). Or take temperance: Are you sincerely willing to claim that someone refrains from pleasure for the sake of pleasure? That's nonsensical. A person is temperate in order to further their other "goals"; those other "values."

Third, you have yet to account for our moral language of praise and blame. Nobody calls another person good because they produced a pleasurable experience for themselves or others. We praise others for their moral character and fine actions: Because they do things for the right reasons or because their intentions are noble. Wouldn't you be suspicious of someone who only respected you for the sake of your pleasure or for the sake of the pleasure they could secure for themselves? To use your own example, if someone is set on fire, it isn't the pain that is morally at stake, it's the "life" and intrinsic worth of the "person." Pleasure and pain can never aspire to be anything more than the bodily consequences of our moral psychology.

...I tell you what, without contrast there is nothing with intrinsic value or disvalue...you missed the point above...this is not by far just about Moral, I said it several times...this goes far beyond morality, this is about any property said to have intrinsic value without a system of relations in place...like having an operating system like windows based alone on a property...

...contrarily to subjectivists transcendentalists this does not prevent realism from being obtained from the functions themselves...relations do exist and although they report effects from a set of interacting factors they are no less real although their causes are hard to describe without an holistic perspective...

Honestly, do you have any idea what you're even talking about? The topic is "moral" realism (i.e., the objective basis for ethics and morality). If you want to talk about multivariate calculus or systems theory, start another topic.

...if value only means a finite extension of "somethingness" which is not on its basic constituents qualitatively different from anything else but only quantitatively different, algorithmically arranged in a different way, and that value reports to identity in that strict sense, then relations alone do not peril the entitled rightful sense of "property´s" as systems, being effect "things" in their own right...I mean they are objectively real as systems in themselves...systems are effects in themselves once resulting already from relations...the catch who turns it increasingly complex and interesting is that such systems themselves are informatively adaptively reprocessed as information strings every time a new interacting factor/measurer enters the game...the entire whole dynamic changes...every "in touch" operator from its perspective or point of view, establishes a specific algorithmic both ways relational extraction of information upon any other system or thing in such a way that it can be said to have a specific resulting effect emerging in there, that to an extent, is a thing in itself, but also something else later on, to every other operator further down or up in line or in chain until the entire final set of all sets in the ultimate system establishes the whole of its potential descriptions...

...you said nothing in there...moral or whatever else is an "object" that needs clarifying by explaining what objects are, and how do objects work in a system...if you don´t get its not my problem!

oh and the multivariate calculus you are speaking about is entirely on my own philosophical words/terms since I have no mathematical formal instruction in any sense...although I am very confident on what I just write up there...have a nice day !

Your conception of value runs afoul of an infinite regress. Moral values are not entirely contained in an unbounded system of relations as you presuppose. When I perceive the colour indigo on my wall it is a self-enclosed property. It does not depend for its existence on all instances of colour. Similarly, the value I place on honesty is self-enclosed in a finite system of cultural and interpersonal relations. It does not depend for its existence on all instances of moral value. In fact, it collapses into my own subjective experience. It is very close to me, and quite "knowable."

Moreover, you are attempting to capture values mathematically; This is not how we experience or reason about moral phenomena. I'll say it again, Absolute Value or Moral Goodness is a metaphysical thesis; You will never comprehend this in the sense you describe. Here's what we CAN do: (1) we can refer to empirical work to understand our moral psychology; (2) we can use practical reason to map our moral values and concepts by understanding the nature of practical reality; and (3) we can attempt to integrate these ideas into a comprehensive theoretical system. All of that recognizes the limits of human knowledge. However, what you are suggesting is not realistic.

It does depend on another colour that isn't indigo though. A single colour i.e. everything being indigo wouldn't work. So are you sure your statement is correct?

This changes nothing. The colour spectrum is a universal; It can be instantiated in many different concrete instances. They can be considered self-enclosed universals with respect to specific cases. For example, water has the same molecular composition whether I find it Africa or in my kitchen sink. It is universally particular. Hopefully that clarifies the issue.

I think you'll find I'm not the only one who'd disagree with you philosophically.

If you are going to disagree, you need to state your reasons.

I have earlier. Now you need to prove your universal truth if it is one.

Water is only water if there is something that is not water to compare it with. Same problem same answer i.e. if all is water then what?