Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[value]

A user on this forum that might be a pseudonym of Robert Pirsig, author of the most sold philosophy book ever, said the following:

I think there are serious problems with the whole... subjective/objective idea. It does not allow for a wide enough range of possibility, it is an either or system. It shouldn't be a either or system.

New reading material for fans of Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18771

Robert Pirsig, the author of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," is known for his criticism of the subjective/objective dichotomy. He challenged the traditional Western philosophy's "fact-value" or "subject-object" division, arguing that it has banished the questions of quality, values, and morality from the objective realm, relegating them to the subjective.

Philosophy can make a case for "the why of existence (e.g. 'the philosophical God', Schopenhauer's Will or Robert Pirsig's Quality) and that means that philosophy can transcend the subjective/objective dichotomy without losing touch with an aspect that is fundamental to reality. That ability does not spring from existence itself, but from an aspect that is more fundamental than existence itself.

The idea of the ability to transcend the subjective/objective dichotomy, implies that science is fundamentally dogmatic, and that science is fallacious when used as a guiding principle. It implies that the idea that science can emancipate from philosophy, is a fallacy.

Nietzsche wrote the following observation in Beyond Good and Evil (Chapter 6 – We Scholars), in 1886:

"Freedom from all masters!

The declaration of independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy ... science now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to play the “master” – what am I saying! to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account."

Science has attempted to rid itself of moral constraints in order to become the master of itself and to "advance immorally", for the the greater good interests of science.

Immoral advances: Is science out of control?
To most scientists, moral objections to their work are not valid: science, by definition, is morally neutral, so any moral judgement on it simply reflects scientific illiteracy.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... f-control/

Most scientists today believe that science has nothing to do with philosophy.

"Science is no more or less than the application of the process of observe, hypothesise, test, repeat. There's no suggestion of belief, philosophy or validity, any more than there is in the rules of cricket or the instructions on a bottle of shampoo: it's what distinguishes cricket from football, and how we wash hair. The value of science is in its utility. Philosophy is something else."

The belief that science can be practiced autonomously, independent of philosophy, is based on a dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism, which is the belief that the facts of science are fundamentally valid without philosophy, independent of mind and time.

Uniformitarianism provides science with a fundamental inclination to break free from morality, to "advance immorally", without thinking about whether it is actually good what is being done.

William James: "Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it. The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons."

Science is a method invented by philosophy to acquire knowledge from truth, which is a belief-based concept (dogma).

Questions:

1) What is your opinion on the subjective/objective dichotomy?
2) Do you believe that Robert Pirsig was right that philosophy can transcend the subjective/objective dichotomy?

[Mercury]

I see things a little differently. The key to the issue for me, is the fact Descartes withdrew a work on physics from publication while Galileo was on trial for the heresy of proving earth orbits the sun. Meditations on First Philosophy (I think therefore I am) was Descartes covering his backside. He did expect the Spanish Inquisition! And he prepared by inventing an alternate epistemology, that subsequently cast him as 'the father of modern philosophy.' But Galileo was right. John Paul II admitted as much in 1979 - yet Western civilisation continues in the course of subjectivism, unto a state of post modern solipsistic nihilism.

Explaining how we get from Descartes to Nietzsche and beyond requires considering the alternative reality; one in which the Church welcomed Galileo, and pursued science as the means to decode the word of God made manifest in Creation. Because no rational/spiritual schism is introduced, we don't get the subject/object dichotomy, and Nietzsche doesn't worry himself to death over science undermining the Church as the authority for moral values.

Had the Church not made an error, that was perhaps understandable at the time, we wouldn't have Hume complaining that:

"...when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence."

The 'is' and the 'ought' are given to humankind to understand. We, human beings are the nexus of scientific fact and the moral good. One may not logically, be able to derive a moral value from a list of facts - but we cannot but look at a list of facts without prioritising them in terms of our values. What Hume identified should have been considered a rightful spiritual relation to Creation; knowing what's scientifically true and doing what's morally right in terms of what's true. Democracy should be the task of arguing over the moral implications of agreed scientific fact.

I can barely glimpse the shape and nature of a philosophy of Galilean objectivism that hasn't been developed over the past 400 years. But I think "truth" is the bridge, because it is both a fact and a value - in one extension leading to valid knowledge and mechanical function, and in the other extension to honesty and justice.

[Lagayscienza]

I doubt philosophy can transcend the objective/subjective dichotomy. Philosophers have been trying to do that for over 2000 years. No joy there. Some things just cannot be objectified. Except perhaps by fiat. Sure, we can take a list of facts and prioritize them according to someone's set of values but that does not make those values, or a ranking based thereon, objective. We're stuck with at least a degree of subjectivity in ethics and aesthetics. If that were not the case we could just do a logical deduction to figure out right and wrong and everyone would agree.

[Mercury]

I doubt philosophy can transcend the objective/subjective dichotomy. Philosophers have been trying to do that for over 2000 years. No joy there. Some things just cannot be objectified. Except perhaps by fiat. Sure, we can take a list of facts and prioritize them according to someone's set of values but that does not make those values, or a ranking based thereon, objective. We're stuck with at least a degree of subjectivity in ethics and aesthetics. If that were not the case we could just do a logical deduction to figure out right and wrong and everyone would agree.

I don't know whether philosophy can transcend the subject/object dichotomy, but I have. I find my conclusions satisfying. I don't know what it is that others would object to. Is it the assertion that morality is fundamentally a sense ingrained into human beings by social evolution within the hunter gatherer tribe? That's been fairly well established by Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees - that chimps have hierarchies, share food, groom eachother etc, and they remember who reciprocates and withhold such favours in future. Proto-morality in our, 5 million years distant evolutionary cousins.

Nietzsche's ubermensch is destroyed by a modern evolutionary understanding of man in a state of nature. Man was not some amoral brute; humans could not survived generation to generation were it so. His conclusions are drawn from ignorance of a more nuanced knowledge of evolution than is contained in the axiom 'survival of the fittest.' If we recognise human beings have an innate moral sense, the rest follows naturally.

Hume's objection:

'...when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence.'

...cannot be maintained. It is a ubiquitous mode of thought because we are moral creatures. Hume's error is to suppose, as did Nietzsche, that morality is external to us; God given values. But the commandments are not the source of moral value; they are necessary expressions of the innate moral sense; necessary because hunter gatherers joined together to form multi-tribal social groups.

"We're stuck with at least a degree of subjectivity in ethics and aesthetics. If that were not the case we could just do a logical deduction to figure out right and wrong and everyone would agree."

I don't think you mean ethics. Ethics are values from an external source. Morality, like aesthetics, is a sense. We know instinctively what is beautiful; and similarly, we know right from wrong instinctively.
When we ask why a work of art is beautiful - we can identify regularities, like the golden ratio, examples of which appeal to our aesthetic sense. Similarly we identify regularities that appeal to the moral sense, embed them in institutions and call them ethics, laws, codes of conduct.
The expectation that morality should or could be objective is a misconception of the very nature of morality; a supposition morality derives from an external source.

One might ask; is the moral sense subjective?
No, because subjectivism is the domain of the thinking thing, from 'I think therefore I am.' Only by using the term subjectivity in the widest possible sense to refer to all human sensory experience and cognitive function, can we answer in the affirmative, but we do not 'think' the painting is beautiful, we do not 'think' stealing is wrong, it appears to us as such, and we post-rationalise the instinctive reaction.

Given these reasons and others, I argue that a rightful relation to reality is exactly that Hume objected to; that the task is not deriving values from facts, but ordering facts in terms of an innate moral sense.

[Good_Egg]

Transcended? No.

The job of philosophy is clear and accurate thinking and putting-into-words. Truth = correspondence with reality.

Part of that is correctly assigning phenomena to the fundamental categories objective, subjective, and the one in between - inter-subjective, the things that are only true because people agree on them. Recognising whether something exists externally to any subject, or internally to oneself, or by shared agreement, is a key part of understanding its nature.

There may be further in-between categories that I have not yet come across ?

A child at school may learn about gravity (objective, exists whatever anyone thinks or feels or wills about it). And then in the next lesson learn that the French for car is "voiture" (inter-subjective; true until the French people collectively decide to use a different word). And then in a moment of insight come to realise why they don't like French lessons (subjective - they may be able to change their attitude but it's all in their own mind).

Which category morality falls onto seems to be in dispute. One of the arguments that spreads over many threads on these boards. For lack of clear thinking.

Once you admit that
- humans have a moral sense, a moral intuition; feel some acts to be wrong
- communities have norms of behaviour that can be changed by agreement, and some of these relate to wrongdoing
- some instincts are hardwired into us by evolution, including an instinct for empathy or co-operation, and this instinct urges us against certain acts incompatible with a thriving community
Then it should be obvious that morality is a complex phenomenon which includes elements in all three categories.

Mind is complex. Our moral sense is not fully explained by external evolutionary reality, or fully explained by our cultural background, or fully explained by individual thoughts and experience. A full description would involve all three levels.

[Pattern-chaser]

Do you believe that Robert Pirsig was right that philosophy can transcend the subjective/objective dichotomy?

Not "transcend", as I read it, but only side-step to an alternative. Pirsig described a different series of metaphysical cuts in reality. Instead of subject/object, he chose the route of MoQ.

[Mercury]

Transcended? No.

The job of philosophy is clear and accurate thinking and putting-into-words. Truth = correspondence with reality.

Part of that is correctly assigning phenomena to the fundamental categories objective, subjective, and the one in between - inter-subjective, the things that are only true because people agree on them. Recognising whether something exists externally to any subject, or internally to oneself, or by shared agreement, is a key part of understanding its nature.

There may be further in-between categories that I have not yet come across ?

A child at school may learn about gravity (objective, exists whatever anyone thinks or feels or wills about it). And then in the next lesson learn that the French for car is "voiture" (inter-subjective; true until the French people collectively decide to use a different word). And then in a moment of insight come to realise why they don't like French lessons (subjective - they may be able to change their attitude but it's all in their own mind).

Which category morality falls onto seems to be in dispute. One of the arguments that spreads over many threads on these boards. For lack of clear thinking.

Once you admit that
- humans have a moral sense, a moral intuition; feel some acts to be wrong
- communities have norms of behaviour that can be changed by agreement, and some of these relate to wrongdoing
- some instincts are hardwired into us by evolution, including an instinct for empathy or co-operation, and this instinct urges us against certain acts incompatible with a thriving community
Then it should be obvious that morality is a complex phenomenon which includes elements in all three categories.

Mind is complex. Our moral sense is not fully explained by external evolutionary reality, or fully explained by our cultural background, or fully explained by individual thoughts and experience. A full description would involve all three levels.

I've only just realised this is a response to my post because I didn't get a notification for it. No quotes. No, hey Mercury!

I've previously posited two philosophical camps - claricists and obscurantists. I agree with you that philosophy is the job of thinking correctly, and putting into words. You're a claricist. But the subjectivist tradition is quite the opposite. They use jargon to weave a virtually impenetrable philosophical mystique, while surreptitiously undermining ideas of sensory perception, objective reality, truth, morality, human nature, reason, language, and social progress. Ironically, they do so in the course of papering over a rational/spiritual schism introduced by the Church's treatment of Galileo - and yet think of themselves as iconoclasts. The epistemic and moral relativism of subjectivist thought could not be further from iconoclastic. It's nihilistic, but that is to offer nothing in substitution for something, like Just Stop Oil! So we keep using oil.

In the course of Galilean objectivism - or science for short, we discover causality and evolution. Causality is the physics of a cause and effect reality that characterises the environment within which the organism strives to survive, to breed, to pass on half its characteristics to subsequent generations, with the other half, plus or minus some random mutation, coming from another surviving organism of the same species. (let's put aside parthenogenesis.) The implication is that the organism needs to be right to reality to survive - so we can cross off the subjectivist assertion that sensory perception is not accurate to reality. It's limited to a narrow band of the spectrum, and subject to ambiguity - but it's necessarily sufficiently correct to reality to facilitate survival.

I appreciate how close I'm bordering on naturalistic fallacy here, but I hope you'll concur I'm the right side of the line. Subjectivity in this context has almost none of the implications claimed for it, and consequently is demoted to the status almost of an optical illusion. There's little that cannot be explained in objective terms; those of the evolutionary organism, surviving, in relation to a physical reality with definite physical characteristics, where the physiology, perception, psychology of the organism is crafted by the function or die algorithm of evolution over millions and billions of years, from the earliest single celled organism, via the whole tree of life, to us, to facilitate survival.

As stated earlier, our moral sense is not subjective in the strict sense, because it's prior to cognition. We don't 'think' things are pretty or wrong or funny, per se, we find them so - and often wonder why! That's the thinking thing kicking in post hoc. Yet for want of a philosophy of Galilean objectivism, subjectivism colonises what is essentially evolutionary physiology, including a moral sense ingrained as tribal psychology. Subjectivism hoovers up all subconscious and conscious mental experience, but were we methodologically strict, the only thing that can be described as subjective is wilful cognitive mobilisation. I think therefore I am.

The qualitatively distinct mode of thought humans suddenly developed, according to James Shreeve's The Neanderthal Enigma, very suddenly, and without any radical change in environmental conditions or cranial capacity, is a genuine mystery. Dennett simply dismisses the idea of consciousness as an illusion, as if to cast humans as mere machines to facilitate genetic reproduction. Despite my rampant objectivism, I reject his view entirely. You cannot stand in the Lascaux caves in southern France and say humans are merely machines to facilitate genetic reproduction.

[Good_Egg]

.. subjectivism is the domain of the thinking thing, from 'I think therefore I am.' Only by using the term subjectivity in the widest possible sense to refer to all human sensory experience and cognitive function, can we answer in the affirmative, but we do not 'think' the painting is beautiful, we do not 'think' stealing is wrong, it appears to us as such, and we post-rationalise the instinctive reaction.

Hi Mercury.

This particular idea - that "subjective" refers only to the thinking side of the thinking/feeling distinction - is new to me.

It may be established philosophical usage, I don't know. I would have said that in common usage "subjective" refers to everything going on inside a mind.

The mind/brain distinction being one of the great mysteries.

If we imagine a person in a shop choosing wallpaper, or clothes, for example, what's going on in their mind seems like a mix of nature, nurture and free will. Aspects shared with all humans, aspects shared within the culture they come from, and aspects specific to the individual. And the choosing has aspects of thinking, feeling and willing.

It would be odd to suggest that what's going on in a person facing a moral dilemma (? a trolley problem?) is any simpler.

[Mercury]

.. subjectivism is the domain of the thinking thing, from 'I think therefore I am.' Only by using the term subjectivity in the widest possible sense to refer to all human sensory experience and cognitive function, can we answer in the affirmative, but we do not 'think' the painting is beautiful, we do not 'think' stealing is wrong, it appears to us as such, and we post-rationalise the instinctive reaction.

Hi Mercury.

This particular idea - that "subjective" refers only to the thinking side of the thinking/feeling distinction - is new to me.

It may be established philosophical usage, I don't know. I would have said that in common usage "subjective" refers to everything going on inside a mind.

The mind/brain distinction being one of the great mysteries.

If we imagine a person in a shop choosing wallpaper, or clothes, for example, what's going on in their mind seems like a mix of nature, nurture and free will. Aspects shared with all humans, aspects shared within the culture they come from, and aspects specific to the individual. And the choosing has aspects of thinking, feeling and willing.

It would be odd to suggest that what's going on in a person facing a moral dilemma (? a trolley problem?) is any simpler.

Both examples you give, shopping and the trolley problem, are examples in which the 'thinking thing' is engaged, putting the subject in subjectivity. But with the trolley problem, many people know from the show 'The Good Place' no-one ever makes the mistake of assuming the question is: 'How do we kill the people on both tracks?' - as Micheal did!
We may be thinking, but the core moral value we are wrestling with in the trolley problem is prior to cognition. The assumed value - it is bad when people die, and worse if you are responsible for it, is innate. It's the underlying assumption of the trolley problem, spoofed to hilarious, but instructive effect.

Piaget is a developmental psychologist, who did a lot of experiments on babies and infants - nothing cruel, but mazes and such like. In one experiment, he put two infants in chairs side by side, and gave one two sweets, and the other six sweets, and recorded what happened. Invariably, the child with two sweets would start yelling, and the other child would share - but not equally. They would share just enough to stop the yelling. Because they're infants, and because this behaviour is repeated with many different test subjects, it cannot be considered nurture. It's not a learnt behaviour. It's innate.

For these and other reasons, I assert that we have an innate moral sense that is the origin of explicit religious, political, legal and other forms of social values. This drives a horse and carriage through subjectivist philosophy - in particular, trampling moral relativism.

Subjectivism from Descartes; leading to moral relativism via Nietzsche, absurdism, critical theory and post-modernism is the 'established philosophical usage' that I'm saying is wrong.

Looking to historical context, we discover why. Descartes wrote Meditations on First Philosophy while Galileo was on trial for the heresy of proving earth orbits the sun using scientific method. Descartes developed an alternate epistemology to cover himself, and because the Church was burning people alive for heresy through to 1792, philosophy followed Descartes' lead, and subjectivism expanded to colonise over 'everything going on inside a mind.' But it's not so, and not even nearly. Conscious cognition; i.e. thinking, from I think therefore I am, is a very small part of all mental events.

[Pattern-chaser]

I've previously posited two philosophical camps - claricists and obscurantists. I agree with you that philosophy is the job of thinking correctly, and putting into words. You're a claricist. But the subjectivist tradition is quite the opposite. They use jargon to weave a virtually impenetrable philosophical mystique, while surreptitiously undermining ideas of sensory perception, objective reality, truth, morality, human nature, reason, language, and social progress...

I see what you're saying, but I wonder if your path leads to a human-independent view of reality? To deny, or set aside, subjective issues, we ignore human values. Subjective human values. A pragmatic view pushes me toward the view that, if my philosophy does not consider these values, it is less useful to me, and to my fellow humans...? Philosophy that is wholly objective (as opposed to subjective) does not seem relevant or useful to me?

[Good_Egg]

I assert that we have an innate moral sense that is the origin of explicit religious, political, legal and other forms of social values.

I agree that that we have a moral sense. That moral reasoning does not start from a blank sheet, but from existing moral intuitions.

It's less clear how much of our moral sense is prior to culture or prior to development of a personality that makes (possibly idiosyncratic) choices, or prior to reasoning.

I suspect that we innately recognise as wrongs those wrongs that are done to us (assaults, deceit, theft). But that we need to learn that other people are beings like us, to reason that if it 's wrong for them to assault me, then it's equally wrong for me to assault them.

And we learn from culture the idea of punishment - that it's OK to do certain wrongs to person X if that's a punishment for what X has done.

[Mercury]

I've previously posited two philosophical camps - claricists and obscurantists. I agree with you that philosophy is the job of thinking correctly, and putting into words. You're a claricist. But the subjectivist tradition is quite the opposite. They use jargon to weave a virtually impenetrable philosophical mystique, while surreptitiously undermining ideas of sensory perception, objective reality, truth, morality, human nature, reason, language, and social progress...

I see what you're saying, but I wonder if your path leads to a human-independent view of reality? To deny, or set aside, subjective issues, we ignore human values. Subjective human values. A pragmatic view pushes me toward the view that, if my philosophy does not consider these values, it is less useful to me, and to my fellow humans...? Philosophy that is wholly objective (as opposed to subjective) does not seem relevant or useful to me?

For my money, ideally, what would have occurred places humankind at the nexus of the 'is' and the 'ought' - where truth is both a fact and a value, leading in one dimension to science, technology, function - and in the other dimension, to honesty, morality, justice.

Where Hume complains that "people begin in the ordinary way of reasoning stating facts about this and that, and then imperceptibly shift to ought mode... as if the latter followed naturally from the former..."

...or words to that effect, I would argue this is a ubiquitous mode of thought because it's who we are; given to know both fact and value. How precisely any particular individuals' moral sense is informed by the nurture of their upbringing, (like a predisposition to learn language is informed by the culture in which you are raised) implies two individuals might draw different implications from the same list of facts.

So no, no allusion to some absolute scientific objectivity, nor objective morality - if that's what you mean by 'a human-independent view of reality.'

It's rather that subjectivity is an artefact of radical scepticism; of the idea we cannot know an objective world exists 'out there.' Insofar as it is notionally true, it has no practical value. That notion aside, we can talk about evolutionary psychology and the nurture of an individuals' life to describe the contents of the mind, we can conduct democracy, and establish laws, without projecting upon the world the insecurity of epistemic and moral relativism.

[Mercury]

I assert that we have an innate moral sense that is the origin of explicit religious, political, legal and other forms of social values.

I agree that that we have a moral sense. That moral reasoning does not start from a blank sheet, but from existing moral intuitions.

It's less clear how much of our moral sense is prior to culture or prior to development of a personality that makes (possibly idiosyncratic) choices, or prior to reasoning.

I suspect that we innately recognise as wrongs those wrongs that are done to us (assaults, deceit, theft). But that we need to learn that other people are beings like us, to reason that if it 's wrong for them to assault me, then it's equally wrong for me to assault them.

And we learn from culture the idea of punishment - that it's OK to do certain wrongs to person X if that's a punishment for what X has done.

I'd ask you the question 'do you support law and order?' and I'd wait for your reply if it were not incredibly inconvenient to do so. I'm going to assume you answered in the affirmative, and then ask: Do you think you need telling what, and what not to do? I'm guessing you'd answer in the negative. This apparent contradiction is explained by the difference between individual and social values; we support law and order so we know what others should and shouldn't do.

It's complicated. We internalise social values, and to greater or lesser degrees, apply cognitive mobilisation to the formation of our own moral values. The moral sense is a back seat, and often post hoc driver - one would assume, because the survival imperative in a state of nature required immoral action. We do the wrong thing and suffer for it afterward - both through bad conscience and social disapproval.

But it's indisputable, humans lived as hunter gatherers for most of our evolutionary history, and now we don't. Hunter gatherers joined together to form multi-tribal social groups unto civilisations. As a consequence we needed to develop explicit moral codes embedded in religion, law, politics, economics etc, as opposed, for example, to Sassure's description of the structural relations of kinship tribes, or Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees, both of which speak of an implicit morality - i.e. the moral sense.

This is where it gets interesting; for religion claimed unto God authority for explicit moral codes, for political reasons, in the joining together of tribal societies. It would be very difficult for two tribal hierarchies to join together without an explicit moral code, because any dispute over sex or food would dissolve the fledgling society into its tribal components. They needed an objective authority for moral law, and called it religion, and religion required faith - thus externalising morality. That assumption that morality is external to us is pervasive.

It's seen in ancient Greek philosophy - like Platonic idealism, through to Nietzsche who despairs that, if science killed God, then we are left in a nihilistic vacuum. This also plays into Descartes subjectivism, that leads to moral and epistemic relativism - leading in turn to Durkhiem's anomie, and a whole raft of philosophy that's undercut by the conception of an innate moral sense - as opposed to an explicit, ideal, or God given - but objective source of morality.

[Good_Egg]

It's complicated. We internalise social values, and to greater or lesser degrees, apply cognitive mobilisation to the formation of our own moral values.

Yes it's complicated. We partly internalise social norms.incorporate them into our moral sense. But that's not the entire source of our moral sense. Because it's possible for us to sense that our community norms are morally wrong (e.g. pacifists in wartime). And community norms do not arise spontaneously, but are in turn built on the moral convictions of individuals within the community.

When we are asked our opinion on a proposed new law, three different things can happen. Our moral sense may tell us that this law corresponds to a moral imperative. (Of course we should protect children from sexual predators; it's the right thing to do). Or it can tell us that such a law breaches a moral imperative (compulsory vaccination is an assault on the person and therefore wrong). Or it can be silent, tell us that we are morally free to choose a society that works this way or works that way; that it's a morally-neutral difference.

As a consequence we needed to develop explicit moral codes embedded in religion, law, politics, economics etc,

Law is a formalisation of community norms. Is there an "embedded moral code" in a set of laws ? There is clearly an ethical theory that identifies morality with the law. That says that it is morally permissible to do anything that is within the law, and morally forbidden to do anything that breaks the law. Not sure what the best label for such an ethic is. But it seems to me that very few people hold such an ethic. And that such an ethic necessarily says nothing about what is a good law or a bad law.

Do economics and politics contain an embedded morality ? They involve social norms, yes, but once we've distinguished social norms from morality, is there necessarily a moral content to economics ?

I'm wary of attributing to religion in general characteristics that may be peculiar to Christianity, with its emphasis on sin. And also wary of attributing to Christianity in general any of its more abusive manifestations,where the notion of sin is expanded to anything that goes against the will of the ruling clergy.

religion claimed unto God authority for explicit moral codes, for political reasons, in the joining together of tribal societies.

If you can say that of Buddhism, and back it up, then I may believe it of religion in general.

It would be very difficult for two tribal hierarchies to join together without an explicit moral code, because any dispute over sex or food would dissolve the fledgling society into its tribal components. They needed an objective authority for moral law

A valid argument for a formalised code of law.

...a whole raft of philosophy that's undercut by the conception of an innate moral sense - as opposed to an explicit, ideal, or God given - but objective source of morality.

You're contrasting innate moral sense with explicit God-given morality ? But the religious claim is that we have an innate moral sense because a creator God willed it so.... No contradiction.

[Mercury]

It's complicated. We internalise social values, and to greater or lesser degrees, apply cognitive mobilisation to the formation of our own moral values.

Yes it's complicated. We partly internalise social norms, incorporate them into our moral sense. But that's not the entire source of our moral sense. Because it's possible for us to sense that our community norms are morally wrong (e.g. pacifists in wartime). And community norms do not arise spontaneously, but are in turn built on the moral convictions of individuals within the community.

When we are asked our opinion on a proposed new law, three different things can happen. Our moral sense may tell us that this law corresponds to a moral imperative. (Of course we should protect children from sexual predators; it's the right thing to do). Or it can tell us that such a law breaches a moral imperative (compulsory vaccination is an assault on the person and therefore wrong). Or it can be silent, tell us that we are morally free to choose a society that works this way or works that way; that it's a morally-neutral difference.

As a consequence we needed to develop explicit moral codes embedded in religion, law, politics, economics etc,

Law is a formalisation of community norms. Is there an "embedded moral code" in a set of laws ? There is clearly an ethical theory that identifies morality with the law. That says that it is morally permissible to do anything that is within the law, and morally forbidden to do anything that breaks the law. Not sure what the best label for such an ethic is. But it seems to me that very few people hold such an ethic. And that such an ethic necessarily says nothing about what is a good law or a bad law.

Do economics and politics contain an embedded morality ? They involve social norms, yes, but once we've distinguished social norms from morality, is there necessarily a moral content to economics ?

I'm wary of attributing to religion in general characteristics that may be peculiar to Christianity, with its emphasis on sin. And also wary of attributing to Christianity in general any of its more abusive manifestations,where the notion of sin is expanded to anything that goes against the will of the ruling clergy.

religion claimed unto God authority for explicit moral codes, for political reasons, in the joining together of tribal societies.

If you can say that of Buddhism, and back it up, then I may believe it of religion in general.

It would be very difficult for two tribal hierarchies to join together without an explicit moral code, because any dispute over sex or food would dissolve the fledgling society into its tribal components. They needed an objective authority for moral law

A valid argument for a formalised code of law.

...a whole raft of philosophy that's undercut by the conception of an innate moral sense - as opposed to an explicit, ideal, or God given - but objective source of morality.

You're contrasting innate moral sense with explicit God-given morality ? But the religious claim is that we have an innate moral sense because a creator God willed it so.... No contradiction.

Good Egg,

Are you asking that I insult Buddhist beliefs? Do I need to point out that there have been thousands of concepts of God, come and gone as civilisations rise and fall? There's an underlying conceptual archetype, and I think that was the creator God because it's the smallest conceptual leap hunter gatherers would need to make.

It follows from the Watchmaker argument; the idea found in Paley's Natural Theology, 1802. He's walking on a moor and finds a watch - implying that, if he knows nothing else, somewhere there is a Watchmaker. The artefact implies the artificer. I'm saying that conceptual leap was possible for hunter gatherers; from footprints they'd imply the proximity of some animal they hunt, or another tribe. They'd be forced to this concept by survival, and sooner or later - apply the concept to the world, to nature, to themselves construed as artefacts; and ask who made this, who made me, who made the world? They'd arrive at the concept of a creator God first, and that would be a story retold a million different ways.

[Culturally specific concepts of] God is the authority for moral codes in a multi-tribal setting, such that an offence is an offence against an external authority, rather than an offence committed by one tribe against another, ripping the society apart.

As you press deeper into the weeds, seemingly raising any and every objection that springs to mind, I'm wondering where we came in on this. Transcending the subject/object dichotomy. Heading back toward that question, from here, I'm going to suggest that the moral sense, the source of explicit moral codes, is fostered by the survival advantage it affords the individual within the tribe, and the tribe composed of individuals that will share food, fight for eachother, share childcare responsibilities and so on. Humans have a moral sense for objective reasons; not for some ideal reason, like there were somewhere, an ideal of perfect justice floating about, of which we see the shadow. The philosophical externalisation of morality is a failure to appreciate morality is innate; morality described by civilised man - for whom morality is externalised politically.

This is where it get's interesting; because it might be argued the Church defended its moral authority against Galileo's proof Earth orbits the sun, and this led Descartes to write Meditations on First philosophy, throwing the subjectivist spanner into the works. But there's no need for it. It's a negligible observation that we cannot 'know' with absolute certainty there's a world beyond the experiencing subject. And arguably, we can because it hurts. I hurt therefore I am. I do not think it hurts. Just as I don't think something is funny, or think something is beautiful, or morally wrong. I experience these things first, and think about the experience afterwards. The cogito in cogito ergo sum is pot hoc to the objective experience.