What is Moral Folk Theory?

[coberst]

What is Moral Folk Theory?

The attempt to seek knowledge presupposes that the world unfolds in a systematic pattern and that we can gain knowledge of that unfolding. Cognitive science identifies several ideas that seem to come naturally to us and labels such ideas as “Folk Theories”.

The Folk Theory of the Intelligibility of the World

The world makes systematic sense, and we can gain knowledge of it.

The Folk Theory of General Kinds

Every particular thing is a kind of thing.

The Folk Theory of Essences

Every entity has an “essence” or “nature,” that is, a collection of properties that makes it the kind of thing it is and that is the causal source of its natural behavior.

The consequences of the two theories of kinds and essences are:

The Foundational Assumption of Metaphysics

Kinds exist and are defined by essences.

We may not want our friends to know this fact but we are all metaphysicians. We, in fact, assume that things have a nature thereby we are led by the metaphysical impulse to seek knowledge at various levels of reality.

Cognitive science has uncovered these ideas they have labeled as Folk Theories. Such theories when compared to sophisticated philosophical theories are like comparing mountain music with classical music. Such theories seem to come naturally to human consciousness.

What is Moral Law Folk Theory?

Moral Law Folk Theory, encoded within objectivist philosophy, holds “that there are absolute moral laws, that they can be discovered by reason, and that they can be applied directly and objectively to real situations.”

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) claims and I agree that “it is morally irresponsible to think and act as though we possess a universal, disembodied reason that generates absolute rules, decision-making procedures, and universal or categorical laws by which we can tell right from wrong in any situation we encounter.”

Folk Theories are based upon the book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Philosophy in the Flesh

Moral Law Folk Theory is based upon the book by Mark Johnson Moral Imagination

[Bruv]

What is Moral Folk Theory?

I Googled......and got a guy called Coberst posing the same question, on several other forums, with no answers.

So it is either unanswerable, or nobody likes him.

Discuss.



Not you is it ?

[ZAP]

GCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) claims and I agree that “it is morally irresponsible to think and act as though we possess a universal, disembodied reason that generates absolute rules, decision-making procedures, and universal or categorical laws by which we can tell right from wrong in any situation we encounter.”

What does this mean to you?

[Bruv]

That ....There are more questions than answers ?

That black and white are not necessarily always black and white......figuratively speaking ?

[ZAP]

To me, that paragraph means that we have a moral compass within us to differentiate between right and wrong and that it's morally irresponsible to listen to dictates that are outside of our 'self', whether it be peer pressure, governmental or whatever, if it conflicts with our moral convictions. I may be all wet but if I am, tell me why.

[coberst]

Bruv;1213133 wrote: What is Moral Folk Theory?

I Googled......and got a guy called Coberst posing the same question, on several other forums, with no answers.

So it is either unanswerable, or nobody likes him.

Discuss.



Not you is it ?


It is me unless someone is trying to advantage him or her self by riding on my fame.

Moral Law Folk Theory, encoded within objectivist philosophy, holds “that there are absolute moral laws, that they can be discovered by reason, and that they can be applied directly and objectively to real situations.”

[Bruv]

And I thought it meant

“that there are NO absolute moral laws, but they can be discovered by reason, and that they can be applied directly and objectively to real situations. Although no one moral law is definitive”



I came into this thread as a laugh......now you have drawn me in.

[coberst]

Zapata;1213137 wrote: GCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) claims and I agree that “it is morally irresponsible to think and act as though we possess a universal, disembodied reason that generates absolute rules, decision-making procedures, and universal or categorical laws by which we can tell right from wrong in any situation we encounter.”

What does this mean to you?




The underlying foundation of American culture is the mind/body dichotomy. This philosophical view permeates most if not all of our comprehension of our world and of our self. This fundamental philosophical view is called objectivism.

“It is our organic flesh and blood, our structural bones, the ancient rhythms of our internal organs, and the pulsating flow of our emotions that give us whatever meaning we can find and that shape our very thinking.”

Our Western philosophical culture and our Christian religion deny this very obvious fact. We try desperately to think of our selves as gods with minds that float above our body with its nasty old anus.

Descartes, one of the first philosophers that the young philosophy student learns about, informs us that “my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking being…I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing.”

Our Christian culture, our Western philosophical tradition, and our naïve common sense perceptions all seem to work in concert to instill this erroneous mind/body dichotomy upon our comprehension of reality. All of these factors lead us to place a positive evaluation upon freeing our self from our body. When we die and our mind/soul/spirit goes to heaven our body decays into dust where it came from. And we are forever free of its unpleasant burden.

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) challenges this traditional and common sense inherited duality of mind/body. This new paradigm for cognitive science targets the disembodied view of meaning that results from our objectivist philosophy.

Traditionally, meaning is associated with words and sentences. Meaning in this traditional sense is about propositions and words, but SGCS considers this a very limited view of meaning; this disembodied view is far too narrow. “Meaning traffics in patterns, images, qualities, feelings, and eventually concepts and propositions.”

Objectivist philosophy recognizes two fundamentally different kinds of meaning: descriptive and emotive meaning. This is an illusory demarcation that led certain philosophers of language to retain focus upon the conceptual/propositional as the only meaning that mattered and that emotive meaning had no meaning in rigorous testable modes of knowing.

This dream of “freeing oneself from the body” reinforces the erroneous idea that is buried deeply within our psyche by our Western Christian philosophical inheritance the dangerous idea that a person’s “true” self is not of this world but abides in some transcendent kingdom. These kinds of ideas lead us into ignoring our situation on this planet because it is of small consequence when we spend eternity in some heavenly bliss. Such thoughts make it possible for people to strap bombs upon their person and go strolling in the mall on the way to heaven.

SGCS argues “for the central role of emotion in how we make sense of our world. There is no cognition without emotion, even though we are often unaware of the emotional aspects of our thinking.”

Quotes from The Meaning of the Body by Mark Johnson