Intersubjective Morality

Fair enough - I would define it as the belief that morality is a matter of how sentient (language-using) beings interact rather than one of an individual’s feelings (subjectivity) or of God(s) laws.

Since the OP discusses the primacy of dialogue inherent in intersubjectivity, suggesting that the idea can’t help answer “…whether it is morally good or bad to murder each other” - at least as well as objectivity or subjectivity can - seems a bit disingenuous.


“Objective” morality (having religion as its source) has always been able to get around its own laws against murder by obscuring peoples’ ideas of “murder” and “human” – War and other forms of killing have been acceptable for most creeds. A 2012 book, The Creation of Inequality

uses anthropology and archeology to trace how religion has been used to divide people, making it a duty to kill “the other” for the benefit of an elite.


The book also has some evidence that “elite” had meant light-skinned and male even in ancient Egypt.

As to the first, passages reveal ethnic stereotyping of the people of Nubia to sensitize the populace to the difference of skin tones between the ruling family and “outsiders,” and used these stereotypes to depict prisoners of war (p. 417); and the next chapter covers how very few women had been pharaohs and describes the need for one of them to depict herself and daughter as male - and this pharaoh’s subsequent erasure from their cultural memory. Of course, the Bible carried both these traditions down through history, the first in the story of Ham; the second – where do I start? - With punishing Eve more harshly than Adam, with not “suffer[ing] a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man,” with telling wives to obey their husbands…) Now, even so-called “modern” societies thus have many religious leaders who use these and other biblical passages to cultivate these same hatreds (as well as others, such as those against any alternative to cisgendered heterosexuality.)



As for “subjective” morality, as the OP says, Agency:


“...is strengthened or weakened to the extent we can or cannot resist temptations and distractions from [learning and growing] (or to "forget" what we have learned.) However, it also requires interacting with and supporting others who accept the constant need to learn and grow.”


It further shows how such interaction has been undermined by subjective morality, referencing the book, The Play of Political Culture, Emotion and Identity. To repeat the most relevant passage:


“‘Psychological 

man’ of the new ‘post-faith’ era had replaced the religious worship of gods with the ‘worship of the self,’ driven on by an illusive desire for freedom” (Scialabba, 2007.) In other words, Neoliberalism has taken the role of agency/dialogue-killing which was once the domain of religion.”

My concept of intersubjectivity does need more fleshing out - A recent post by Karl Askel, in another thread proposing that where there is no relevance where there is no context, and no context without different people with whom to converse, points in the direction I would like to go:

The bottom line of my approach is that we all have something to contribute – every authentic point of view adding to our conversation adds meaning to sentience and society, and extinguishing any voice (or emerging* voice) would subtract – this should make a reasonable foundation to arguments against murder. I will have more to say about this as I develop the idea, and authentic suggestions are welcome



* One thing I want to emphasize is that some inputs are harmful to earlier stages of development, but that is something else I need to work on.

It isn’t my job to connect every dot for you – if you read my OP and most recent response, you might figure it out. If not, there is little I can do for you but wish you well in your journey – We’ll have to agree to disagree.

Captainbryce’s thread on subjective vs. objective morality
 led me to reexamine my own thread on the topic. Intersubjective morality is not mentioned in that one, so I thought I would continue in this one. Moreover, the tone of the former, from the OP forward, has been inspired by anger (albeit justified) at a Christian trying to impose “objective” morality on the author. Such a tone, however, tends to impair productive dialogue.

Intersubjectivity, like subjectivity, recognizes how contingent our knowledge is on our own point of view. It also recognizes that there are other factors - including other subjectivities possessing sentience at greater or lesser development than our own. To bring this idea to the most universal level, imagine how boring absolute chaos would be to even the most primitive consciousness. Rather than the omnipotent and omniscient God of objective morality, intersubjectivity posits only such a primitive consciousness at the base of its metaphysics (For any coherent philosophical theory, consciousness as such would need to be considered as basic as substance, even if the former have such an ambivalence toward the latter.) Any system that formed from this primordial universe could have brought such consciousness a great deal of pleasure. Imagine, however, the trauma which could have occurred when that system broke down, leaving consciousness with nothing to experience but loneliness in addition to its previous boredom. Intersubjective morality would thus hold love and fascination as the universal positives to counter the afore-named negatives. Such a philosophy would therefore promote behaviors, such as growth and dialogue, which lead to these positives and discourage behaviors, such as sloth and cruelty, which would result in these negatives. I would therefore call the society which holds such a philosophy a “Growers” society.

Elaborating a bit on the positive behaviors, minds develop by interactivity with subjectivities which differ (at least in content, if not in form) from their own. In early stages, the subjectivities would be those of parents, siblings and perhaps animal companions (in the last case, having the duty to feed them would help build empathy and responsibility.) As we mature, our ability to process differences increases, and we continue to grow in proportion to greater divergences in subjectivities with whom we interact.

To offer such a perspective on recent board discussions, I noticed in another thread that someone compared what amounts to shunning based on gender with allowing those whose religion teaches them this xenophobic practice to raise children in this religious tradition
.

Such comparison ignores the complexities of intersubjectivity. While Growers would disapprove of the stagnation that raising a child in a religion which encourages such divisions will socially (and therefore intellectually) inflict on a child, they would recognize that religion is too deeply embedded in most psyches to simply deny parents the right to teach their children these beliefs. As Faustus5 implied elsewhere,
though, many people are able to overcome this hindrance with some exposure to ideas outside the home.

Other threads discuss birth control and abortion - perhaps the most contentious religious subject of our time (and one about which I have to contend with my own biases.) Bringing new sentience into the world, according to the standards that the aforementioned positives imply, would be one of a Growers society’s highest ideals, whether the child is born to it or outside it. However, as with the above issue, we must balance our love of potential with that of the actual.

I discussed sexuality and agency in my OP, so I’ll just quote the most relevant part, which says that our agency’s vulnerability to
A Growers society would therefore protect children from this danger. I believe psychologists know when the best time would be to let teens experiment with each other, and never having been a parent I will leave this judgment up to them.

Growers would cherish fertility, however, as a source of emerging voices to add to society and would consider assisting in the care and safety of parents (and would-be parents) and children as an honor. Raising strong children to fully develop their potentials and bring out the best in those around them should likewise be seen as an enormous achievement, and Growers would use all the most current relevant scientific knowledge and technology toward that end. In a later post to this thread I discussed attempts, since at least ancient Egypt, to impose “objective” morality to benefit an elite (i.e., light-skinned, male, heterosexual.) Such benefits have given these voices precedence to this day. A Grower’s society would want to overcome the inequalities that remain from this history. Such transcendence would require some correction in opportunities and responsibilities of those qualified to be parents. I have written on these qualifications in my “Conversation and Growth” thread on 9/23, so I’ll only quote the most relevant part:



I do want to correct an earlier idea that I had recorded a little further down in this quoted post. Ending a life that has already been conceived would be contrary to the ideals I have named. Given the knowledge, technology and care I have described that a Growers society would put toward assisting parent and child, the immanent voice would be of primary concern - only to be ended if it threatens the mother’s life. If the biological parent have not demonstrated readiness to partner in caring for and raising the child, they can, if they want, take a test (perhaps at half-year intervals) until they can demonstrate this readiness.

There are many issues, of course, that would need to be addressed in this system, but I hope I have outlined a way for a society to increase the overall amount of love and fascination in the world.

'Do unto others...' is in actuality a rule based on both subjective and objective perspectives.

Religious perspectives aside I don't think a completely objective morality does exist (nor needs to), for the social concept of a particular morality is built upon the subjective experiences and considerations. of the individuals in that society. I'm not sure of a reason, religious perspectives aside, that morality is required to be perceived as 100% objective, it has little bearing on whether a morality is empathetic or not.

Even altruistic 'self' sacrificing acts are ultimately subjective, "I couldn't live with myself if I had not done something to prevent X..."

I think now would be a good time to describe what I believe is the most likely process of intersubjective moral development. As I wrote earlier,



I would therefore posit a feedback loop between established laws and revised ones based on the standard - That which facilitates self-conscious dialogue and growth therefrom.

I elaborate above on what constitutes the facilitation of such growth:



I found a passage on the early work of moral and political philosopher John Rawls that seems to fit here:


- David Reidy

I also mentioned above that some exchanges can harm emerging voices at earlier stages of development. I think the standard I provide in this thread is the key to deciding which exchanges should be avoided/prevented at which stages – those who have attained higher levels of empathy, emotional management and critical thinking can be deemed ready to take part in more sophisticated interactions.

7/17/20 edit: I thought this scene from Vivre sa vie would work well as an illustration of the above principle: