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

[ZenGum]

That's some deep stuff there Coberst.

I'm going to think about that when i am not so tired.

[lumberjim]

you're talking a lot....but you're not saying anything.

trying to explain a gut feeling is like that, i guess.

[Undertoad]

Some of that is from Plato innit?

[smoothmoniker]

blah, blah, blah

[lumberjim]

yes....that is his M. O. has been from jump.

he's a giver.

[TheMercenary]

What would Freud think?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

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

This is the fundamental assumption of science, and every discipline within it. What point there is in calling it "Folk" escapes me. It seems almost some kind of parasitism by social science upon the natural sciences.

“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.”

Or so some would like to believe. But the religious would not, because thinking and acting in that very way is particularly good at inclining them to act for the good much more of the time than might otherwise be the case. The road to virtue is a surprisingly easy one to take the first steps upon.

What a lot of verbiage to describe the soul while sedulously avoiding the word. When this kind of verbal haze starts to blow in, you know some highly educated idiot is going to try making a case for being immoral -- and I don't mean being careless about what you rub your sexy bits up against.

I don't think this writer wants his readers walking the road of virtue, or understanding virtue clearly enough to perceive its path. I call that irresponsible.