Hume was an idiot

Yep, that’s called water poisoning.

MM - thank you, I hope I will continue to make as much sense.

Yes, there is automatic morality and deliberate morality. Let’s look at these through the lens of Nietzsche, who laid the groundwork for morality be understood in terms of its components, “drives”.

The task as you outline it means: to disentangle the drives that make up the “Humean” morality , and see them in light of “good and bad” or “weak/diseased and strong/vital”. This is deriving an “is” from an “ought”. We can define, as Nietzsche would do, the typical Northern European Christian in terms of what he believes and how he acts in response to his beliefs.

For example, what distinguishes a (Nietzschean) strong man from a weak man within the bounds of European Protestantism (I keep the context limited to avoid contradictions where possible) is that the strong man will necessarily be a sinner, and, if he is a Christian, be troubled by that. In this Christianity, strength equals unhappiness. Its slightly less forbidding in Catholicism, the Church arranged for that with confession, intoxication, celebration, etc.

So Humean morality here would be simply very confused. It would not be able to distinguish the person from his context, thus it would not be able to see the two different drives (vital strength and Christian conviction) as different origins, different “is”'s. But to create morality from the given conditions, which is what we’re “planning” here, we can disregard the Christian conviction itself, and work with the strength with which the conviction is held instead. So then we have a) vital strength and b) strength of conviction. We have these two components of a man, without having an ought. Now we can produce an ought for these two strengths to attain to, strictly to maximize the value of these strength to the one who has it.

Now to draw to this logic to our own situation, to situation of a present-day human, and for this experiment we need a strong one. In order to derive a greater is from a lesser using an ought, we have to observe the lesser is, the present. What we need to do for that is to distinguish the drives of which he is composed, disentangle them, establish what shall(/can) be the top-drive, and then interpret all these other drives in terms of their value to the top drive.

For this, the top drive has to be “symbolized”, made Signifier of a logos.
In the case of the strong Protestant/sinner, this is precisely what Nietzsche did.
The method is sufficiently given by Nietzsche, but only in the form of his application of it, which departs from a very specific context - the Northern European man defined to himself in terms of protestantism. It still holds value extrapolated as Man defined in terms Christianity, but is already less potent there. He did not perceive the drive-structure of an Italian as well as he perceived his own.

So what matters to us here is not Christianity or Anti-Christianity at all, that is Nietzsche’s problem. Our directive is to dissect our own drive-structure, identify these drives not by their actual objects, but by the type of objects to which they may pertain.

Something else; you mentioned consciousness as a 5th dimension perspective. Could you explain this?

Consciousness is a perspective on and of 4-dimensional material relations, such relations being 3-dimensional material structures “vectoring” through time. Time is only a “dimension” with respect to whatever is able to constitute itself as a consequence of being an entity that has temporal structures and experiences-- basically, memory and then later projection-imagination. So to view the body as this kind of 4-dimensional structure lets us view consciousness as the “5th dimension” through which the body as 4-dimensional coheres and organizes itself even more essentially. If the body is a kind of perspective upon 3-dimensional existence modeled in a 4th dimension, then consciousness seems to be a kind of perspective upon 4-dimensional existence modeled in a 5th dimension. The “time of time”, or t^2.

The word ‘poison’ is commonly used as a wrapper around a set of substances which, when ingested, usually cause physical harm. The way that you are using it seems to be tied to the result of ingesting the substance. The fact that the result is unknown ahead of time and the variability of results makes it difficult to use the word correctly.
For example:
A: Did you put poison into his wine?
B: Yes I did.
A: Is he dead or sick?
B: No
A: Then you did not put poison into his wine.
B: Err

Or
A: Put poison into his wine.
B: What is poison in this case?
A: Something which causes him harm and makes him die.
B: I don’t know what will harm him until he ingests it and reacts. Poison is only poison in hindsight.

Right.
Now, in order to begin creating a morality, we would have to map this consciousness.
whereas philosophy until Nietzsche has been an exploration of consciousness from within, culminating in Kant who established the limits of consciousness as objective a priori considerations, the philosopher has now become aware that he needs to step out of his consciousness if he is to judge its validity. That means that philosophy has become fully experiential - the perspective on consciousness can only be verified by applying this consciousness in a higher order, including more consciousnesses.

In a sense this would mean to step out of the 5th dimension into the 6th. I propose that this dimension be viewed as vision of power, or consciousness of power.

There is also rational morality. :sunglasses:

The good thing about rational morality is that you can actually KNOW it, not just guess at it.

Which you still have to implement deliberately.
By deliberate morality I mean a system of behavior that is consciously adopted in order to attain a certain goal.
Automatic morality is unconsciously implemented to attain no specific goal but to be acceptable to the people from who this morality was adopted.

What I see as a deliberate morality is a morality specifically designed to attain a goal. This morality must be rational in order to attain that goal.

In short, what is a rational morality to you?
Can you explain the reason why this morality is rational?

Then, can you explain it without basing the explanation on the purpose it is meant to fulfill?
I would think that you can’t, that for a morality to be rational, there must be a purpose to it.

Setting aside the is-ought problem, which has received attention here, it’s unclear to me what you see in some of Hume’s other positions that qualifies him as an “idiot.” For instance:

Are you saying that Hume claimed that there is a gap between cause and effect, and that he was an idiot for claiming so? If that’s what you mean, where does Hume make that claim? It seems to me that you have misunderstood his basic position.

And in this:

You’re implying that Hume’s position is this: “Induction is problematic.” But you haven’t really said why. In what follows, you say:

Are you suggesting that Hume was not armed with the philosophical knowledge of the difference between the two? Of course he knew the difference between induction and deduction. And finally:

You seem to be implying that what Hume thought was problematic about induction can be solved by means of the correct application of it (as a kind of inference, perhaps?), but where does Hume, in discussing induction, “do it” incorrectly? In each of these cases, you seem to me to have basic misunderstandings of Hume’s positions. On what grounds, then, can you call him an idiot?

I actually like Hume, I was being deliberately provocative. As for induction, causality and is-ought, these are problems for Hume, although not fatal ones of course. My point was to refine these a bit, but being new here (and this subject has been beaten to death so many times) a new sort of approach is needed, or at least I thought so.

In effect, Hume introduces two voids, one between induction and deduction, and the other between is and ought statements. My point was essentially that both of these voids are somewhat “lazy” thinking and, while reflecting accurate issues are by no means the final word concerning them; each void can be more properly viewed as the necessary result of a particular lack, a lack of perspective/consciousness capacity.

In the case of the first void, deduction and induction diverge from the common ancestor… consciousness itself. Consciousness IS the unity of both, and the proper relation of each to the other in a larger synthetic system. It is not a “problem” that induction is not deductive, just as it is not a problem that deduction is not inductive. As Hume notes correctly, people will claim deductive certainty from inductive observations, which obviously is false certainty. However this is merely another problem of incomplete perspective, and not a reflection on induction and deduction themselves. Proper thinking and perceiving requires the use of both, and each limits and conditions the other.

In the case of the second void, is and ought are not statements about essentially different kinds of things/facts; ought always reduces to is (either correctly or incorrectly). Ought is the application of certain “is” to other “is”, the one modeling or reflecting the other to produce a “value”. Values are the basis of oughts, usually implicitly and often naively. Hume’s guillotine does not demonstrate the irrationality of “ought” (normative) claims, rather it mistakes from where normative claims come and what they truly are.

I’m having an especially difficult time comprehending the following sentence:

Do you mean to say:

If so, I must confess: I have absolutely no idea what any of that means.

Here’s something much more interesting: the “problem” of induction was not “introduced” by Hume (if that’s what you are referring to when you refer to “gaps” and “voids”). It was stated in almost the same language as Hume stated it, earlier by Leibniz. And furthermore: the “problem” goes at least as far back as Sextus Empiricus. Much more interesting than trying to assign laziness to Hume’s thinking: why do you think he revived it?

Consciousness implies subjective and objective processes, and these bleed into and through each other. Consciousness is a complex system of iterations of sensations, across multiple hierarchies and ‘tiers’ of processing (instinct, destruction) and projection (imaging, building). In terms of induction and deduction: induction is the process whereby consciousness RECOGNIZES via “destruction” and instinct (ex post facto sorting of data) while deduction is the process whereby consciousness CREATES or IMAGES (imagines, projects) via looping or self-referential, multi-dimensional (“linguistic”) models and LOGIC (ex ante sorting of data).

The essence of what I am saying is: induction and deduction form parts of the same process, technically they are region-points upon the continuum of consciousness (causality-to emergences of forms and contents to experience or motive-force) separated by “time” (by distance, serial causality)… Well anyway it’s hard to put all this into words in a few sentences… words are a barrier here, somewhat, unless two people already share a good understanding and prior development.

Basically it is a mistake to introduce the void between induction and deduction, as this operation obfuscates the common reality from which these come (the “ontological” situation), and the common ends-processes in which they synthetically combine (the “epistemological” situation).

I don’t know why he did, but I would imagine it is for the same reason most people do things, because they could see no better way forward. If Hume merely revived an older idea then he is quite a bit lazier than I had imagined.

I would also suspect that his tendency toward empiricism gave him incentives toward less “risky” thought than he might otherwise have engaged in. But to be frank, I don’t know anything about the guy’s motives. Do you?

Is, is what reality is, regardless of what we think it ought be. Ought is an idea of what it could be, that is better than what it is. So people say, this is what is should be, and thus this is what it really is, somehow projecting their ideals and making them into what reality actually is. But all of this doesn’t change that what people think reality ought be is not really what it is, unless they think reality ought to be exactly the way it is and no other way. It seems the only way you can argue that an ought is an is, is to argue that reality should be exactly the way it is.

Ought is a statement about an is, with respect to some other is statements. There is nothing else that an ought can be, than this.

“Morality” is not somehow essentially separate from or different than other kinds of statements, as if it exists in some kind of vacuum or alternate reality.

WHAT and HOW we value reduces to WHAT and HOW we are, as particular kinds of beings with particular needs and capacities/possibilities.

MM, you could save yourself a lot of time and energy if you’d just go and say that you didn’t entirely understand Hume’s position, and that your OP was a result of that. What’s more important… believing you’re allways right about everything, or realising the mistakes you make and actually learning something?

Please point out where I have misunderstood Hume. In fact I believe I have understood him quite well.

Why place the burden on us? Here’s an exercise for the industrious:

  1. Try to state Hume’s position regarding induction (or cause and effect, etc.) in, say, a sentence or two. 2. Quote the text from which you derive that sentence or two.

I suspect that your belief about how quite well you understand him will be shattered.

Ought is a should. In the absence of a goal, as was stated earlier in the thread, ought is meaningless. But to truly make an ought into an is, you need to prove that the goal is a should. Part of the problem with this is that you need to first prove that existence is a should. “the universe SHOULD exist”

Hm, no. I am not beholden to prove my understanding beyond what I have already done. This is not a course in which I must produce homework assignments. But nice try.

I would imagine there is no substance to your accusation, and that it derives from some manner of instinct to attack me, for whatever reason I can only imagine. Your attempt has been noted.

But you never answered this…