A better understanding about subjective concepts.

I would hope that RL's motives for starting a thread like this would be genuine intellectual curiosity, as opposed to waiting for an opportunity to proclaim how reasoning and logical he is because he's an atheist, and how stupid and/or delusional religious people are for not thinking the same as him.

That would be the triumph of hope over experience.

I have seen Theist and Atheist who I agree with when it comes to a concept morality, "though I do not think morality comes from a God like theist do But religion is another subject that has many threads on this forum but I do welcome theist to share their views about morality and concepts.

I think the rejoinders to that research which were printed below are significant.
As several theorists have implied, neurology may be necessary for what we call "cognitive behavior" but not sufficient. Even color theorists argue that there is a culture specific element involved in our "perception" of color and that is reflected in different segmentations of color classes in different languages. (Zulus for example have a single word for what we call "blue" and "green").

The general problem when dealing with "concepts" is that there is no axiomatic "given". That is where "traditional logic" becomes useless since there is no agreement on premises. "Words" may suggest "concepts" but language has been shown NOT to be representational of an "objective reality". (ref: Rorty) Even the term "sensory stimuli" has been questioned by those researchers who see perception as predominantly active rather than passive, and there are those who would even deflate "thinking" as an epiphenomenon of a dynamic system (Maturana).

I doubt it ! Speaking as an atheist myself, I see RL's attraction to "moral universals" to be more religious than secular. I have argued elsewhere that atheism based on "scientific rationality" is is impotent against the theistic catch-all clause that "knowledge lies in the gift of God".

It is wrong to say that Hartman follows Kierkegaard with regard to ideas of value. He did find Soren K. 's two short essays, Fear And Trembling as well as Either-Or to be of relevance to one aspect of ethics, namely, the valuing of the individual above the state ... in contradistinction to Hegel who placed the government (or the ruling authority) above the individual person, and praised conformity and/or subservience. He also liked Soren's emphasis on the notion: Accept yourself ....(warts and all.) He believed Soren K. had something significant to contribute to the concept of "morality", as defined in the new paradigm for Ethics which I have developed further. [Granted it is still in the incipient stage, and will benefit from further development by those who are so inclined and who think constructively and creatively with respect to ethics.] He did not subscribe to Soren's ethical philosophy; it is misleading to imply otherwise. Bob Hartman was my friend, teacher and mentor; I am rather familiar with his thinking. He selected me to be his research assistant.

The Ethics I am constructing is secular. It makes no allusions to God or to faith. You claim to have skimmed it; and my response to this is:
"A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE IS A DANGEROUS THING."

Can we all agree on that idea?

With all due respect, it would be preferable for you, or for any philosophy student, to read more carefully - and when presented with a totally-new frame of reference to study it before 'shooting from the lip': Someone here may have jumped to conclusions in re the reliance upon God rather than upon reason and plausibility as a basis for the system. Shooting before aiming is, in general, not a good idea. {No offense intended. If the suit doesn't fit, please don't wear it.}

So check out all four parts of the Unified Theory by clicking on the links, offered free of charge, as is befitting an ethical theory. Read the End Notes and the Epilog (to get familiar with the structure of the system.) A mere skim just won't do.

I wish you a quality life !!!

Happy reading !!!!!!

So do I.

No offense taken I assure you.
The somewhat secondary issue which has raised its head in this thread which was ostensibly about "concepts" in general, is whether the concept of "morality"has "universal attributes". My understanding from the references given was that such a claim was being made. If Hartman takes that line, then I would dispute it (via Derrida) irrespective of whether such a claim were linked to theism or otherwise. If he does not, then my assumption of the chain of references was indeed misguided.

BTW I should perhaps add that I consider universality, absolutism, and theism as variants of each other.

not at all it shows the wrong u r to claim that

universality is to objectiveness of one fact
absolutism is to true one ends that cant but be through absolutes steadiness of facts values
and theism is the opposite, theism is to invented one ends, so free wills through abusing absolute knowledge by forcing inferiority fun by destroying objective affiliations to truth, therefor to force one invented will over all as everything source

Thank you for your mature reply: it sets a standard for what good dialogue should be.

An argument could easily be made that the Standard Model for Physical Chemistry is not universal because the majority of people are ignorant of it.

The concept "mores" ought not be conflated with the concept "morality." They are two distinct ideas. The latter is a technical term in my system.

As I define "morality", it is a relationship between one's (conceptual) self-identity and one's (observable) conduct. Even the self-identity, though, can be measured by a good objectively-scored projective test, by self reports, and by techniques of Cognitive Psych, such as Q-sorts. Psychiatrists, counsellors, therapists, and life coaches have used the H.V.P. test [listed in the Buros Manual of Psychological Tests] to good effect for more than 40 years.

Here is a link to a paper I wrote a few years ago, and if one endures the first 19 pages - which are technical - and reads the entire booklet one may learn my approach to ethics. The title of the little booklet is ETHICS: A College Course.
See: - http://tinyurl.com/24cs9y7

In it, the reader will find that the assumptions are clearly stated, and certain terms crucial to ethics are derived from the initial definitions. "Morality" is one of the key terms. So is "Hypocrisy." The booklet analyzes such concepts as "happiness" and "success."Just recently I have managed to define "Corruption" in terms of the system, but it is so recent, that it is not in that paper. More current is the material in A UNIFIED THEORY OF ETHICS. Links to that four-part book was given in an earlier post.

Enjoy !

Far be it for me to attempt to throw spanners in your academic work in progress. I would merely remark that I am somewhat cynical about the claims for "construct validity" or "concept validity" for psychological tests. In my opinion such tests are often merely "better than nothing" as a tool to aid personnel decision procedures. Also the relationship between "self identity" and "observable conduct" seems to be a foregone conclusion on the basis of the common thesis that self concepts are socially acquired, and behaviour is socially evaluated. In my opinion consideration of "ethics" starts somewhere near the top of Maslow's "hierarchy of needs",and given that most of the earth's population are not "near the top", Western academics may be claiming "niches" and playing an esoteric or parochial "publications game" of little significance to the real dynamics of world conflict.

I apologize for such iconoclasm, but having myself published in the general area of "behavioral science" I am aware of its potential nebulousness.

Thank you for sharing. I learn something new everyday. I wonder why, could it have been that the person who came up with their concept had a problem distinguishing the 2 colors? I doubt it, maybe that is as far as he took their concept. I work with greens in blues at my job and I will tell you that sometimes it is hard to distinguish the 2 colors.

I bet if you were to offer them a lot of money for pairing up different shades of blue and different shades of green that they would not be pairing up blues with greens but rather they would be walking away with a lot of money if they were not colorblind.



It does seem that our culture has the biggest influence on our behavior in my opinion.

Thank you for taking the time and sharing your knowledge with us Dr Katz

no matter what our "culture" calls it, agreenish color has a wavelength in the neighborhood of 500nm. Thats a constant. Youre quibbling about the name of the rose

I am not sure that you gave the correct measure nor am I saying that you did not but I do agree that it can be measured scientifically.



Are you saying this because I agree with your previous statement? If not would you care too go into detail about how you viewed what I said as being incorrect or the thought you had on my last reply?

"Wavelength of color" and "perception of color" can be as difficult to link as chemical composition of food and taste. Contrary to your quotation, " a rose by any other name would NOT smell as sweet" !
(Check out references on color dimensionality , or the failure of psycho-physical parallelism for more on that.)

Zulus are not color blind and can learn to use our terminology for reporting "blue" versus " green". The significance of the point is that what we call "perception" includes cultural bias and local functionality regarding conceptual mapping. Consider for example that in medieval times the rainbow was "known" to contain four colors as it was thought to be a manifestation of the four gospels! Note also that the arbitrary "seven" colors reported nowadays has a lot to do with the association with the diatonic scale in music plus "the music of the spheres", hence the invention of the category "indigo" to make up "the seven".

BTW, you are correct in identifying "color" as a research microcosm for the study of cognitive concepts, You might be interested in the fact that it was consideration of color which led Wittgenstein to reject much of his own celebrated "logical" work in his Tractatus, in favor of a view of philosophy as "therapy" for exposing and dissipating pseudo-problems created by "language games". From that point of view Niels Bohr's famous comment "You are not thinking, you are just being logical" begins to make sense !

You probably already know that there are some here that consider you to be an intellectual as I do myself but even so I think we all get it a little wrong.
Are you familiar with Patricia Churchland's work?

She says that Sam Harris has it wrong and that science can not determine morality much like what I think you are saying but I think that she is using science to come to this conclusion which I find to add value to moral understandings.


This is a short video of her but there are others that go into more detail if anyone has an interest.

i dont have that time to read wat another say about smthg i surely know better since it is nothing that matters really since fully subjective so i can come up with better inventions of nothing really that could sound not wrong for sure

but, morality is about moral being that is certain which matters always and not invented by me, so morality exist morons then it can b scientifically proven

being mor al, is about representing existing value one objectively, that is how lawyers that are defending ones intentional ends are moral beings in the matters they provide that assist the case

what is hilarious is that **** drive for declaring everything and anything being invented, so to say that what is really done only to support what is really there right, is invented and queen of inventions too, **** u

Interesting clip, thanks.
I'll think about it and get back to you.