Objective Morality & Moral Psychology

"There is a little morality in all good psychological reasoning." 

Through the philosophy of psychology we learn that there are innate senses and emotional potentials in man, that become actuated by circumstances and events, and embedded into the mind's memory, forming the conscience or super-ego of individual moral agents.

Some pleasures and pains are subjective and personal but there are still those that are objective, normal, and as experience of all Human's: collectively. This collective morality becomes the global, national, states (tribal) "legal" power over the people, which it uses to condemn, imprison, and punish, those who infringe upon it. Economically, man is rewarded for his work and gains pleasure in his trade. 

Hedonic calculus is a way of measuring what is moral or immoral, and should assist us when we inquire into our own desires and will, asking ourselves the questions that are relevant at that time and place, for those sets of circumstances.

Through the historical examination of ethical philosophy, we encounter a fiber of truth, that runs through the entire fabric of moral and psychological philosophy. It is in this history and in these philosophical terms that man can be lead to a more objective sense of morality. From the readings of Protagoras to the readings of the Utilitarians (to what was not covered in this blog: Positive Psychology); what you can learn from these philosophers is that morality is a common science, not a common myth. And that psychology is ever endowed with a mission to lead man to his best state, to find his own pleasures, and happiness in the world which he lives in and the world which he manipulates through his own agency.

The moral philosophy in the whole of this blog is insufficient. We now have access to the valuing of behaviors based on the impact of our decisions on the ecosystem, on economic factors, on the health of the body or preventing human illness, on defending scientific truth, on the national and global rights of human beings and other living organisms.

Bentham's Hedonistic Moral Psychology

The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1747–1832) for calculating the degree or amount of pleasure that a specific action is likely to cause. Bentham, an ethical hedonist, believed the moral rightness or wrongness of an action to be a function of the amount of pleasure or pain that it produced. The felicific calculus could, in principle at least, determine the moral status of any considered act. The algorithm is also known as the utility calculus, the hedonistic calculus and the hedonic calculus.

To be included in this calculation are several variables (or vectors), which Bentham called "circumstances". These are:

1. Intensity: How strong is the pleasure?
2. Duration: How long will the pleasure last?
3. Certainty or uncertainty: How likely or unlikely is it that the pleasure will occur?
4. Propinquity or remoteness: How soon will the pleasure occur?
5. Fecundity: The probability that the action will be followed by sensations of the same kind.
6. Purity: The probability that it will not be followed by sensations of the opposite kind.
7. Extent: How many people will be affected? (1)

Jeremy Bentham, jurist and political reformer, is the philosopher whose name is most closely associated with the foundational era of the modern utilitarian tradition. Earlier moralists had enunciated several of the core ideas and characteristic terminology of utilitarian philosophy, most notably John Gay, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Claude-Adrien Helvétius and Cesare Beccaria, but it was Bentham who rendered the theory in its recognisably secular and systematic form and made it a critical tool of moral and legal philosophy and political and social improvement. 

In 1776, he first announced himself to the world as a proponent of utility as the guiding principle of conduct and law in A Fragment on Government. In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (printed 1780, published 1789), as a preliminary to developing a theory of penal law he detailed the basic elements of classical utilitarian theory. The penal code was to be the first in a collection of codes that would constitute the utilitarian pannomion, a complete body of law based on the utility principle, the development of which was to engage Bentham in a lifetime’s work and was to include civil, procedural, and constitutional law.

 As a by-product, and in the interstices between the sub-codes of this vast legislative edifice, Bentham’s writings ranged across ethics, ontology, logic, political economy, judicial administration, poor law, prison reform, international law, education, religious beliefs and institutions, democratic theory, government, and administration. In all these areas he made major contributions that continue to feature in discussions of utilitarianism, notably its moral, legal, economic and political forms. Upon this rests Bentham’s reputation as one of the great thinkers in modern philosophy.(2)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicific_calculus

2, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bentham/

J.S. Mill's Psychology

John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873), usually cited as J. S. Mill, was a British philosopher, political economist, and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. (wiki)

Was in the class of psychological philosophy known as associationism. He regard the mind as a natural thing, governed alike to the world by deterministic laws. Our actions are causally determined, but nevertheless, Mill maintains, we are free (Ryan 1987: 103–131).

Thoughts are considered to be, "spontaneous" yet, "representational."

His best known work is On Liberty, published in 1859.  His most important work as far as science and psychology are concerned is A System of Logic, first printed in 1843 and going through many more editions through the rest of the 1800's.

He began with the basics established by Hume, his father James Mill, and others:

1.  A sensory impression leaves a mental representation (idea or image);
2.  If two stimuli are presented together repeated, they create an association in the mind;
3.  The intensity of such a pairing can serve the same function as repetition.


But he adds that associations can be more than the simple sum of their parts.  They can have attributes or qualities different from the parts in the same way that water has different qualities than the hydrogen and oxygen that compose it.  So J. S. Mill's associationism is more like "mental chemistry" than mental addition.

On his father's view, a complex idea produced by association is simply a collection is its associated parts. Thus, the idea of a house consists literally of the ideas of bricks, mortar, windows, etc., and the idea of everything consists of the ideas of every thing. This is surely a case of theory over-riding our clear experience. So it seemed to the younger Mill. On the latter's view, as he explained both in the Logic and his introductory notes to the second edition of his father's Analysis of the Phaenomena of the Human Mind, there is a sort of mental chemistry in which the parts fuse, as it were, into a new sort of mental whole.

The causation is like that of chemistry, where, for example, water is the product of the fusion of oxygen and hydrogen, and unlike the mechanical causation of mechanics, where (as Mill saw it — not quite) the product of several causes is merely the additive sum of the effects of those causes taken separately. These new sorts of mental unity emerge from associational processes and have properties which are not among the properties that appear in the genetic antecedents. Analysis of ideas is still possible, but it is not the simplistic sort of thing, a literal taking apart, that his father would have it be.

As Mill explained in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, the genetic antecedents are not integrates or real parts, as his father supposed, but only (as he put it) metaphysical parts; as metaphysical parts, they are present but only disposition-ally. They can, however, through association (under the appropriate analytic set) be recovered, and brought to consciousness.

Mill came to see that there are qualitative distinctions among pleasures: the "higher" pleasures do result from association but they are different in kind from the "lower" pleasures out of which they arise, and as a matter of fact turn out to be more satisfying forms of pleasure. (2)

 What is directly present to the mind are not external objects, but only “a set of appearances” (System, VIII: 783). We have unmediated access only to the impression that are generated in us—we are directly aware only of our own mental content.

We know of objects in the world only to the extent that they affect us and give rise to conscious impressions—and such impressions will only ever be presented by way of the mediating sense faculties. Mill claims that we cannot know anything of objects in themselves, but only as they appear to us, and terms this position the “Relativity of Human Knowledge” (Examination, IX: 4).

[A]ll the attributes which we ascribe to objects, consist in their having the power of exciting one or another variety of sensation in our mind […] our knowledge of objects […] consist[s] of nothing but the sensations which they excite. (Examination, IX: 6)

Cognition, in any sentient creature must be mediated by some method of cognising—and if even if we came to possess new ways of cognizing the world, “[w]e should not, any more than at present, know things as they are in themselves” (Examination, IX: 8, my emphasis).(1)

Mill distinguishes between the a posteriori and a priori schools of psychology. The former “resolves the whole contents of the mind into experience.” (CW, XI.341). The latter emphasizes that “in every act of thought, down to the most elementary, there is an ingredient which is not given to the mind, but contributed by the mind in virtue of its inherent powers.” (CW, XI.344).

Mill, as many other psychological and moral philosophers, defines happiness as “intended pleasure, and the absence of pain” (Mill 55). This Is a hedonistic theory. Every person desires his own happiness; but since everyone does desire his own happiness, the general happiness is desirable (Mill 81). The good life provides the maximum amount of happiness, but the test for how one should act is whatever creates the maximum amount of happiness for the most people.

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#MindWorlPsycEthoFree
2. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/spr2008/entries/mill/#SciPsyAss

James Mill's Psychology

James Mill (6 April 1773 – 23 June 1836) was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He is counted among the founders of the Ricardian school of economics. (wiki)

I write this article having read in full the work of James Mill, known as "Analysis of the phenomena of the human mind".

Mill distinguished between three cogntive factors, sensation, ideas, and trains of thought (later called the stream of consciousness by William James). He classified thought of things and there causes and effects, their ontology and their teleology. Ideas have resemblance or contraity to other ideas or sensations (like or unlike), and these things each have cause and results.

(To borrow from the correspondence theory of Truth) There are concrete ideas, those having direct correspondence to external things, and abstract ideas, those ideas NOT having direct correspondence to an external thing. "External   Objects" are "From which sensation is derived." Inwardly or outwardly, as of ideas or sensations, they either are like or unlike particularly in their Qualities.

He thought in the same way as many ethical philosophers have, that we are equipped with pleasure and pain, desire and aversion, and that these direct our conduct. There are. "all sorts of pleasures and pains" which he goes on to define within the context of past, present, and future sensations.

"Will" is "the part of feeling of motion" also "the idea of action." Pleasure as Motive: "Pleasure is contemplated as the consequent of an action of one's own and not capable otherwise existing; a peculiar state of mind is generated which, as it is a tendency to action, is properly denominated Motive." This is changeable.

"Disposition," as "a readiness to obey one's motives." As pleasures, motives take on classes of their own such as written on as: Money, Power, Love, Beauty, Knowledge. Ideas of a cause of pleasurable or painful sensations and its effects, is called an Affection.  Likewise, we each have an idea of happiness, and to some extent know how to cause the effect of it. These also might be called by him, "objects of volition."  When ideas become operative they are said to be "the will." Compare this to declartive and procedural ideas in modern psychology.

"Man ought to be the cause of good for himself and the good for his species."

The will takes on an "ease" of acting because of "repetition." This idea was presented by some of the first behaviorists.

Defined "Power" as something economic, the extent to which one can buy commodities or services of other Men.

"Extensions" are "Lines in every direction."

"Things contain other things," and we can unite and divide wholes and parts.

Kant, On Knowledge and Consciousness

Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was an influential Prussian German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment.

In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, he argued that space, time, and causation are mere sensibilities; "things-in-themselves" exist, but their nature is unknowable.In his view, the mind shapes and structures experience, with all human experience sharing certain structural features.

He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposition that worldly objects can be intuited a priori ('beforehand'), and that intuition is therefore independent from objective reality.

Kant believed that reason is the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics. (4)

Inner sense is, according to Kant, the means by which we are aware of alterations in our own state. Hence all moods, feelings, and sensations, including such basic alterations as pleasure and pain, are the proper subject matter of inner sense.

Self Consciousnesss - First, he treats inner sense: When we know ourselves as the object of a representation in inner sense, we “know even ourselves only .. as appearance …” (A278).
Inner sense … represents to consciousness even our own selves only as we appear to ourselves, not as we are in ourselves. For we intuit ourselves only as we are inwardly affected [by ourselves] (B153)? (1)

This transcendental designation, i.e., referring to oneself using ‘I’ without ‘noting any quality’ in oneself, has some unusual features. One can refer to oneself in a variety of ways, of course: as the person in the mirror, as the person born on such and such a date in such and such a place, as the first person to do X, and so on, but one way of referring to oneself is special: it does not require identifying or indeed any ascription to oneself. So Kant tells us... Transcendental apperception is the uniting and building of coherent consciousness out of different elementary inner experiences (differing in both time and topic, but all belonging to self-consciousness). (1) Prior syntheses are made possible by the categories. Categories allow us to synthesize the self and the objects. (3)

To begin with, Kant's distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. If we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge is always subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it for anyone at any time, not just the perceiving subject in its current condition. What else is equivalent to objective knowledge besides the a priori, (universal and necessary knowledge)? Before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of understanding.

For example, if a subject says, "The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm," all he perceives are phenomena. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says, "The sunshine causes the stone to warm," he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.

To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of objects in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category of subsistence, that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the sensory manifold into intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most abstract things one can say of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori cognition of the totality of all objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so, Kant formulates another transcendental deduction.

Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so all possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is engaged in constructing judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily. Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories. (Compare this to Titchner's theory of introspective psychology).

One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the possible propositions within Aristotle's syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible judgments, and that all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the moments of the understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle's system in four groups of three: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodeictic). The parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).

The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in place. First there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there is the understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume them under categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject's current state of consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing universally necessary knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so any intuition thought within a category in one mind is necessarily subsumed and understood identically in any mind. In other words, we filter what we see and hear. (4)

In psychology we investigate ourselves according to our perceptions of the inner sense; but in logic we make the investigation on the grounds of what the intellectual consciousness supplies us with. Here the self appears to us as twofold (which would be contradictory): (1) the self, as the subject of thinking (in logic), which means pure apperception (the merely reflecting self) of which nothing more can be said, except that it is entirely simple perception. (2) The self, as the object of the perception, consequently also part of the inner sense, contains a multiplicity of definitions which make inner experience possible. To ask whether or not a man conscious of different inner mental changes (either of his thoughts or of fundamental principles assumed by him) can say that he is the selfsame man, is an absurd question. For he can be conscious of these changes in the first place only on condition that he represents himself, in the different situations, as one and the same subject. The human ego is indeed twofold as regards its form (manner of representation), but not with respect to its matter (content).’ (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, footnote to p.18). (2)

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental/#AppUni
2. http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpkantcogito.htm

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_apperception
4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant#Categories_of_the_Faculty_of_Understanding

Notes on Hume's Psychology

David Hume (7 May 1711– 25 August 1776) was an Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism (wiki.org).

I write this article by putting together a bunch of ideas gathered from reading Hume's work "A Treatise of Human Nature." I look to post this article in an incomplete form, as my readings of Hume are potentially progressive.

Hume seeks to explain our understanding of the world rather than try to justify our beliefs or prove anything.(1)

Hume attempts to distinguish between vice and virtue, arguing that such moral distinctions are in fact impressions rather than ideas. He then describes how to distinguish these impressions from other common impressions, such as sounds and colors. First, the impression of vice is pain, while that of virtue is pleasure. (1)

"It must be established as an undoubted maxim, that no action can be virtuous or morally goood, unless there be in human nature some motive to produce it, distinct from the sense itself." - Suggestive of an innate moral nature.

He asks, " Whether moral distinction can be founded on natural and original principles, or do they arise from interest and education?"

Hume thought, that "nature fitted us to produce emotion." There is, as he says, "an original quality" that is the "passions". The passions are considered to be, "Primary impulses." Without which, they "could never exert themselves." He thought of passions as a "guide" to the will.  "Power" is to "convert power into action, by exertion of the will (i.e. passions and reason)."

What are the passions? "All morality is founded on pain and pleasure." All pain and pleasure has its objects. These are the self, others, and objects of the world. Action is either "Virtuous or vicious." "Vice and virtue" are, "Blamable or praiseworthy." In other words, pain and pleasure are related to the self in its blame and praise of character.

"Passions are connected with their objects and with one another; no less than external bodies are connected together.  The same relation, of cause and effect which belongs to one, must be common to all." This gives us a universality of cause and effect, being such, as it were in mind, body, and world.

"Though ... external advantages be in themselves widely distant from thought or a person they considerably influence even a passion, which was directed to that as its ultimate object."

There is a distinction made between, "the transition of ideas," and "the transition of affections."

  Fundamentally, Hume's thesis is "Our impressions are converted into our ideas." "All ideas are copied from our impressions." Sense is the cause of impression, impression the cause of ideas. This is a direct indication of empiricism.

   Since the objects of experience become impressions, so too must the objects give rise to emotion, or emotion must be associated with their objects. He called this, ""Actuated emotion." Objects where a "production of the ends of emotions."

 "Like other philosophers, Hume distinguishes between dependent sensory perceptions and independent external objects… . This is the theory of the 'double existence of perceptions and objects' adopted by philosophers". (2)

Some other interesting Humean psychological ideas:

"Actions of the mind". As in "thinking," or "cognition," or the "succession of ideas or affections."

Memory as, "Preserving the idea."

Time as, "The idea of duration is always derived from the succession of changeable objects."

Hume also noted, as precursor to Behaviorism, "For after a frequent repetition, I find hat upon the appearance of one of the objects the mind is determined by custom to consider its usual attendent."

References:
1. https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hume/section3/
2. https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/hume-s-a-treatise-of-human-nature-an-introduction/