to defend objective morality

It is possible to defend objective morality. I think I did so on my blog a long time ago. The main way I would do so would be to shorten the version of Dr Michael Huemer, Bryan Caplan or Dr John Searle. This would be in two steps one would be to show universals exist. Then to show moral principles are universals. Next to show they are known or can be known by reason. I never know when I am about to be interrupted so I am nervous about how long this letter can be.  God willing I will write a short defense.  Yellow is a universal. Yellow is a color. It is not an idea. It is something yellow things have in common. It does exist. for the sentence "Yellow is a color" to be true, yellow must exist. Therefore universals exist. There are many kinds of universals. Moral principles are an example of universals. To know the existence of  a universal you do not need a reason. You can recognize its truth prima facie. I will expand on this in a minute  bli neder.
Part of the problem comes from Hume. It is possible to sum up David Hume's vital

assumptions about reasoning in a single proposition: Reason does NOTHING except locate the presence or absence of contradictions. Whenever Hume wants to show that reasoning cannot support something, he uses the same argument: the alternative is not a  

contradiction.  An Alternative Conception of Reason. Consider the claim: Circular arguments are invalid.  Think about it for a while.  You can see that it is true -- but how?  Even  

though Hume himself uses this principle in his argument, we could never justify it on his principles.  The denial is not a contradiction. We can at least conceive that "Some circular arguments are valid" is true. At this point it will be useful to summon Kelley Ross's argument for different levels or modes of necessity. But I am trying to be short here. I am not sure which steps I can skip in order to present a whole argument.

So what we have is we know things that are not known by observation nor by induction nor deduction. But we know them to be true. That is by reason. Hume made a terrible mistake that has eroded the foundations of morality. For the way we know morality is by reason.

Hume wants to show only we can have only empirical knowledge. But that is false. There are well known counter examples and he gives some himself. One example is nothing can be yellow and blue in the same place at the same time. There are many examples. But then he resorts to a trick to claim a priori knowledge is meaningless unless it is the kind he claims.

What I am saying here is that there are degrees of necessity known by reason. "Ought" can not be derived from an "is" but it is a universal and is one mode of necessity. Kelley Ross has eight in all. 

For the people that this jargon might make sense: what I am saying is non intuitive immediate knowledge recognizes modes of necessity. 

I am calling this "reason" which Kelley Ross would not do because as he puts it "we realize that we are dealing with processes that cannot possibly belong to consciousness." when referring to Kant's idea of synthesis. And he goes into the reasons in chapter 3 of his PhD thesis sec 4. But I think is is there mainly going into the reasons for treating this kind of reason as something not thought nor sensed but known. "Kant thus says that we possess "sensible intuition" rather than the active intellectual [non sensuous] intuition ." This point became the center of a   debate between Kant and Fichte.  by Marcus Willaschek

See this link by Michael Kolkman

In spite of this point being central to Kant it does not effect my argument. How reason perceives universals is not the issue. The point is: it does.

The last paragraph. What I am saying is certain universals are given to be taken up by the mind to make synthesis. This is the basic idea of Kant. The universals have to come fro outside. Objects of cognition is I think how he would put it. 

Appendix:
(1) I have to apologize for this essay. It would not even have occurred to me to write it if not for the fact that in most USA universities they teach the opposite to freshmen, people not really prepared well to defend traditional Torah values from  onslaught and attack.
(2) Kant is along the lines that morality should have formal rules. That it is suggestive that he uses the idea of a universal rule. He is trying to capture the essence of a universal and apply it to morality. Morality is the same as the laws of physics but you just replace the = sign with "ought."
But formal rules miss something about content.
Schopenhauer  wants to lose the formal aspect of it and get down to essence.
The Rambam has both these areas interacting.

[That is to say: universals have a problem that they are content free. And pure content has another problem that it is individual, not a universal. The Rambam links the two. The rules flow from the content.]

Morality is rules  but rules that flow from an area not open to human cognition.

________________________________________________________________________________

It is possible to defend objective morality.  This would be in two steps. One would be to show universals exist. Then to show moral principles are universals. Next to show they are known or can be known by reason.  Yellow is a universal. Yellow is a color. It is not an idea. It is something yellow things have in common. It does exist. For the sentence "Yellow is a color" to be true, yellow must exist. Therefore universals exist. There are many kinds of universals. Moral principles are an example of universals. To know the existence of  a universal you do not need a reason. You can recognize its truth prima facie. 


Part of the problem comes from Hume. It is possible to sum up David Hume's vital

assumptions about reasoning in a single proposition: Reason does nothing except locate the presence or absence of contradictions. Whenever Hume wants to show that reasoning cannot support something, he uses the same argument: the alternative is not a  

contradiction.  An Alternative Conception of Reason. Consider the claim: Circular arguments are invalid.  Think about it for a while.  You can see that it is true, but how?  Even  

though Hume himself uses this principle in his argument, we could never justify it on his principles.  The denial is not a contradiction. We can at least conceive that "Some circular arguments are valid" is true. At this point it will be useful to summon  different levels or modes of necessity. 

So what we have is we know things that are not known by observation nor by induction nor deduction. But we know them to be true. That is by reason. Hume made a terrible mistake that has eroded the foundations of morality. For the way we know morality is by reason.

Hume wants to show only we can have only empirical knowledge. But that is false. There are well known counter examples and he gives some himself. One example is nothing can be yellow and blue in the same place at the same time. There are many examples. But then he resorts to a trick to claim a priori knowledge is meaningless unless it is the kind he claims.

What I am saying here is that there are degrees of necessity known by reason. "Ought" can not be derived from an "is" but it is a universal and is one mode of necessity. Kelley Ross has eight in all. 

For the people that this jargon might make sense: what I am saying is non intuitive immediate knowledge recognizes modes of necessity. 

I am calling this "reason" which Kelley Ross would not do because as he puts it "we realize that we are dealing with processes that cannot possibly belong to consciousness." when referring to Kant's idea of synthesis. And he goes into the reasons in chapter 3 of his PhD thesis sec 4. But I think is is there mainly going into the reasons for treating this kind of reason as something not thought nor sensed but known. "Kant thus says that we possess "sensible intuition" rather than the active intellectual [non sensuous] intuition ." This point became the center of a   debate between Kant and Fichte.  by Marcus Willaschek

See this link by Michael Kolkman

In spite of this point being central to Kant it does not effect my argument. How reason perceives universals is not the issue. The point is: it does.

The last paragraph. What I am saying is certain universals are given to be taken up by the mind to make synthesis. This is the basic idea of Kant. The universals have to come fro outside. Objects of cognition is I think how he would put it. 

Appendix:
 I have to apologize for this essay. It would not even have occurred to me to write it if not for the fact that in most USA universities they teach the opposite to freshmen, people not really prepared well to defend traditional Torah or Christian values from  onslaught and attack.
(2) Kant  wants that morality should have formal rules. That it is suggestive that he uses the idea of a universal rule. He is trying to capture the essence of a universal and apply it to morality. Morality is the same as the laws of physics but you just replace the "equals" sign with "ought."
But formal rules miss something about content.
Schopenhauer  wants to lose the formal aspect of it and get down to essence.
The רמב''ם has both these areas interacting.

That is to say: universals have a problem that they are content free. And pure content has another problem that it is individual, not a universal. The רמב''ם links the two. The rules flow from the content.

Morality is rules  but rules that flow from an area not open to human cognition.

After the fall of the USSR,  most young people went for business degrees and basically got worthless pieces of paper. To my mind real world skills are all that matters. Computers, Engineering, Mathematics Physics.

One friend a Serge here went to work for a company in Canada and all they do is find talent for engineering companies. What  matters most are hard core skills that people will pay hard cold cash for. 

The main thing with Reb Israel Salanter is his disciples. He did not write much but the Igeret HaMusar and letters he sent to his disciples. The main thing is the books of his direct disciples.

The basic idea of Reb Israel is divided into two parts, one was midot (to work on having good character traits) and the other was fear of God. But in each one of his disciples some other basic aspect of Musar becomes apparent.
To me it seem that the whole set should be taken as one whole set. That would be the two book by Isaac Blazzer the Light of Israel and the other one just printed recently. The Madragat HaAdam, Or Zfun by the Altar of Slobodka, the letters of Simcha Zisel from Kelm. [I myself did not get through it all. The letters of Reb Simcha Zisel I found incomprehensible. The later books of the Musar movement seemed to get off track however. They became "frum" and crazy eyed fanatic.] So to get to the idea of Reb Israel of fulfilling the ideal of the Torah it is not possible except on an individual basis or being part of one of the few authentic Litvak Yeshivas like Ponovitch or Brisk.  

the Left will do everything possible to keep power

I have believed for a long time and that the Left will do everything possible to keep power. They will rig the machines so that every vote for Trump will register as for Hillary. They will stop at nothing. The reason is sad and simple. To the Right things like personal responsibility and paying bills matter. That is personal life and morality matters. That is why they are right wing. To the Left only one thing matters: Power. It is deeper and more intense than anything else in their lives. And they will stop at nothing in order to get it.

I had some explanation for this a while back but I forget it. Mainly it is that the Left's two gods are the "State" and Power. The main explanation from what I recall were that the Left's ideology is based on Rousseau. [But it is a ideology that also has elements from Marx, Hegel, Sartre, and ironically enough Nietzsche.] That is to say the Left is not secular. Rather they have endowed the State with all the significance of what God used to mean to people. Nowadays the God himself means little to most people---even believers.  But the State and power means everything.

r75 mp3 r75 midi  r75 nwc

My comment on Dalrock:

My impression is that when a woman says, “It is over,” there is nothing more one can do.

And his response:

This is nearly always the case. The exception that comes to mind (and proves the rule) is if the woman decides divorce would be harmful to her personally. One of the patterns my wife has commented on is she has never caused a divorcing woman to reconsider by explaining how much this will harm her children. However, if the woman becomes convinced that divorce will harm her personally, suddenly she will have a change of heart “for the children”.

But the husband is in a poor position to deliver the message that divorce will harm the woman. Another relative might be able to, as might another woman. The most effective focus is generally on the woman’s realistic dating/remarriage prospects. This is most easily framed as “You know how men are. They are too selfish to commit to an older woman/woman with children!” This, along with pointing out the real life results of the divorcées the woman knows (not the marketing job, but the details of the real replacement man).

There seems to be a kind of contradiction in the Rambam. How much of the Law of Moses is natural Law and how much is only because of revelation? In the Guide you see two different things. One is that the laws of the ancient Greeks natural law [as known by Abraham the patriarch] was necessary step towards Matan Torah [giving of the Torah]. So they are different in essence. Yet the Rambam also gives natural reasons for the laws. Maybe he thought the reasons were a necessary, but not sufficient condition?
That is reason that would create conditions for the mitzvot but not the entire cause.