What morality is:
28m: ". . . without God, what
is morality? So I think morality is just rational action independent of
desire. . . . There are times where the reason I ought to do something
is because it achieves some further end, but then there are cases, at
least if morality is real, where you ought to do something regardless of
whether you antecedently desire that end."
29m: "If you understand morality as something else, then okay that's fine, you're answering a different question from me. But I find myself in cases where I do various things just because I want to get what I want, and I wonder are cases where I should act a certain way even if it doesn't get me what I want in any respect. So if you're gonna tell me that I ought to do something, either you're telling me I can get what I want—and then I would say yeah, that's an important question, but it's not morality—or you might say I ought to do something regardless of what I want, and I would say okay yeah, I want to figure out what that is, that's what I call morality."
Florence goes on to accept a form of Kantianism. I reject Kantianism quite thoroughly, so it's no surprise that my value theory would differ from Florence's value theory as discussed in the next section.
I don't think there can be a categorical imperative, so the core questions of morality are different for me. People, including myself, tend to live their lives believing certain things about themselves, like that they are a good person, that their beliefs are true, and so on. Part of one's self-conception
is that these beliefs that one has about the world and oneself are not
totally, radically incorrect. Here's the problem: Your beliefs about the world and oneself are totally, radically incorrect. At least, they might be. Mormons, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, and naturalists cannot all be right. If naturalism is true, then the beliefs of Mormons, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims are profoundly false. There is an implicit desire present for all these people who go about believing that their beliefs about the world and about themselves are basically true: they don't want to hold profoundly false beliefs about the world and themselves. They want to believe what's true about the world and about themselves. That will include truths about the nature of morality and what it means to be a good person.
So many people, arguably all people, myself included, hold the following desire within themselves: "I want to believe what's true about morality. I want to believe what's true about right and wrong, so that I can do what's right and not do what's wrong. I want to desire what I ought to desire, and not desire what I ought not. I want to know what it means to be a good person so that I can become that kind of person."
This changes the framework quite a bit from the picture Florence paints. Morality is not about being rationally obligated to do something completely irrespective of what I want, but morality is, just like epistemology, about reconciling my beliefs to reality. If I believe rightly, I will desire and act rightly. Morality is not about acting against my desires for the sake of the greater good, but about adjusting my desires to be aligned with what the greater good actually is.
(Feel free to replace 'greater good' for something more deontic sounding like: for the sake of acting
from a good will, or promoting the kingdom of ends, or treating people as ends unto themselves, or acting freely, or fulfilling obligations, or
doing what I am rationally obligated to do, or doing what's right because it is right, or for the sake of moral goodness – basically, for the sake of right action broadly speaking.)
Grounding value in conscious states:
22m: "If we're going to assess the realist view that grounds [value] in the intrinsic goodness of states of consciousness, and I want to say no, [things are] only good because people prefer them, we'd want to look at a case where the two come apart. So, a case where a state of consciousness is good, but a person doesn't prefer it, or a state of consciousness is bad but a person doesn't disprefer it."
When Florence uses the term 'good' or 'bad', I don't know what these are supposed to mean. If these mean 'preferred' and 'dispreferred', then it's a tautology to say that good experiences are preferred experiences. Maybe the question is: Is there any analysis of good/bad on which a good experience can be dispreferred?
Yes. In the phenomenal analysis of good/bad where goodness/badness just are conscious states, there are cases where a state of consciousness is pro tanto good (good to a degree), but a person doesn't prefer that state because obtaining that state entails a cost that a different state doesn't.
There's always pro tanto desire for intrinsically good experiences, but there's also always pro tanto desire to avoid intrinsically bad experiences. There's also a pro tanto desire to obtain intrinsically better experiences; do I stay home and do something safe and comfortable, or do I go to the party and potentially have greater fun at the risk of greater discomfort?
So all of these calculations are warring within us, and this is why it's easy to make sense of avoidance behavior in response to something we know will feel good, and affective behavior in response to something we know will feel bad.
Avoidance behavior + intrinsic goodness: There are things we know will feel good but will make our lives worse in the long run. We see the intrinsic goodness and thus have a pro tanto desire for it, but we also see the cost and have a pro tanto desire to avoid that cost. Maybe this is eating junk food, procrastinating when we've got work to do, smoking a cigarette, cheating on a partner, or getting back with an ex. Despite whatever intrinsic goods these things will provide in the moment, we avoid them when we do because of the greater costs down the road.
Affective behavior + intrinsic badness: There are difficult conversations to be had with ourselves or with a loved one, and that pain motivates us to avoid the conversation, but we see how things will be better over all if we suck it up and push through it. Applies also to chores, self-improvement, working towards difficult and personally meaningful achievements, and undergoing medical procedures; these things can be greatly painful but we do them anyway because not doing them is even more painful in the long run.
Paradoxically then, I might prefer to have a difficult conversation than to eat junk food, because I know one is worth the pain while the other isn't worth the happiness. And yet the pain of having a difficult conversation is still intrinsically bad despite preferring it to eating junk food, and the happiness of eating junk food is still intrinsically good despite dispreferring it to having a difficult conversation.
Indeed, I don't see how to make sense of the concept of preference without first going through the intrinsic goodness / badness of experience. To prefer X over Y is to see how X is better than Y, and to see that X is better than Y is to see that X is more good than Y (however good Y happens to be). If goodness just is preference, then this is circular. But this definition of preference appears non-circular to me, which tells me that goodness isn't just preference.
If goodness is defined in terms of desirability, and to prefer X over Y is to have greater desire for X than Y, then I don't see how to make sense of the concept of desire without first going through the intrinsic goodness / badness of experience. To desire X is not to see X as desirable, as that's a circular definition, but to see X as good. Why do we desire? Because we experience intrinsic goodness and intrinsic badness, and we desire intrinsic goodness because of what it is, and we desire to avoid intrinsic badness because of what it is. It is only because intrinsic goodness / badness have the essences they do that explains how it could be that desire exists at all.
Returning to preference, I don't see how to explain why my preference would be what it is without intrinsic goodness and badness. Experiences happen first, then preferences later. So preference depends on experience. But preference also depends on what I see as good or bad. So preferences depend on my good and bad experiences.
You might try to say that my preferences depend on what I take to be my good or bad experiences, but this just kicks the can down the road a step. Why would I take something to be good or bad? Because of the intrinsic goodness or badness that this thing constitutes as or causes. There is a difference between experiencing badness and judging something to be bad. Experiences come first, and preferences and judgments come later based on experiences. Desires qua judgments of goodness come later, but desire as affective intending is simultaneous with intrinsically good experience; you can't have a good feeling without at the same time having an affective intentionality towards that feeling, meaning having a pro tanto desire for, like, conation, motivation for, or intending toward that feeling. As discussed here (https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2026/03/there-is-conceptual-connection-between.html), while affective behavior and intrinsically good experience can come apart, affective intentionality or intending toward is conceptually connected to intrinsic goodness. We intend to pursue happiness. Why? Because of what happiness is, and that intention begins the same moment the happiness is experienced.
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