A proponent of panpsychism argues moral truth is inherent in consciousness

[Laird]

I think he meant taught as a philosophical system, not the raising of children?

Who knows? It doesn't make any sense to me, at least as an isolated quotation. Is the "only" key? Is he saying that while the essence of ethics can be explained by means of a theory, it is something additional, and not the explained theory, that makes ethics valuable? That's about the best sense I can make of it given my own views.

Who knows? It doesn't make any sense to me, at least as an isolated quotation. Is the "only" key? Is he saying that while the essence of ethics can be explained by means of a theory, it is something additional, and not the explained theory, that makes ethics valuable? That's about the best sense I can make of it given my own views.

I think it just means that there's something ineffable that can't be taught directly. Is the ethical really passed down through direct education of right/wrong, or more a transference through myth like in our cartoons?

But here's another take inline w/ the OP ->

Non-Dualism in East and West: An Introduction

Peter Sas

This is why the difference between cosmic and acosmic forms of Non-Dualism is so utterly crucial! An activist ethics of universal solidarity is precisely what our suffering world needs, torn as it is by ever widening divisions – between the haves and have-nots, between different ethnic groups, between secular society and religious fundamentalism, between mass society and the isolated individual, between the dangerous lure of populism and the aloofness of the political elite, between the interests of economic growth (necessary to feed an ever-growing world population) and the interests of a defenseless nature choking in the mind-numbing garbage heap produced by economic growth. It is now, after all, generally acknowledged that environmental pollution is the driving cause behind catastrophic climate change and diminishment of biodiversity. This is a global problem, affecting our whole planet and everyone on it, requiring a global solution and thus global solidarity.

Here Cosmic Non-Dualism could just be the right stimulus triggering people into collective action...What, in the light of these challenges, could be more inspiring and motivating than to learn that you, a seemingly separate and isolated human being, are really not separate at all, that you and the other(s) are actually the same, the same suffering being which is suffering precisely because it hasn’t yet realized what it is, namely, a single being? What could be more conducive to global responsibility and solidarity than the knowledge that you are non-different from the world around you? The Non-Dualist teacher and therapist Jeff Foster puts this wonderfully well:

“It’s myself in Burma, it’s myself in the earthquake. It’s myself starving in Africa. People sometimes hear the message of non-duality and they think that it’s about sitting back and doing nothing. They think it’s about arrogantly sitting back and saying, “Oh, it’s just a dream, it’s just a story, there’s nobody there suffering so what’s the point in doing anything at all?”… Oneness recognises itself in the face of that starving child and can move to help itself, not out of pity, not because it needs to be a good person, that’s nothing to do with it. It doesn’t come from a set morality. But in seeing that it’s all One – and this is the mystery of the universe – somehow it moves to help itself.” (Jeff Foster in Conversations on Non-Duality, p.37)

[Laird]

I think it just means that there's something ineffable that can't be taught directly.

Well, now, aren't you adding in a qualification ("directly") that wasn't there in the original?

Is the ethical really passed down through direct education of right/wrong, or more a transference through myth like in our cartoons?

Presumably it's both; the latter supporting the former, with the former being accompanied by sound reasoning as to why this or that is right/wrong.

But here's another take inline w/ the OP ->

Forgive me, but I only skimmed the quotation you provided and barely looked at the rest of the post after clicking the link.

That said, it seems that an echo of my first words in this response applies: surely all of that is an attempt to teach something ethical, whether directly or not - though it seems more direct than not to me?!

Well, now, aren't you adding in a qualification ("directly") that wasn't there in the original?

Presumably it's both; the latter supporting the former, with the former being accompanied by sound reasoning as to why this or that is right/wrong.

We'd probably have to look at the quote in context, but I can agree it's both.

[Laird]

I can agree it's both.

I really do appreciate that despite our sometimes vehement disagreements, we agree on so much.

I really do appreciate that despite our sometimes vehement disagreements, we agree on so much.

Ah I wasn't too attached to Wittegenstein, it just expressed my feeling that morality has an ineffable component.

But I'd agree that a schooling in morality is done through what Aristotle calls habit-formation ->

'The things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing, for example men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or another from our very youth. It makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.'
-Aristotle

[Laird]

Fair enough. I'd only clarify that habit-formation is not necessarily (nor ideally, I'd suggest) mutually exclusive of explicitly being taught. Men become builders by building, true, but often enough (and rightly so) that is through an apprenticeship to a master builder who explicitly teaches them how to build (according to best practice).

Who knows? It doesn't make any sense to me, at least as an isolated quotation. Is the "only" key? Is he saying that while the essence of ethics can be explained by means of a theory, it is something additional, and not the explained theory, that makes ethics valuable? That's about the best sense I can make of it given my own views.

Perhaps he meant that just as life can only be understood by actually living it, there are times when one is faced with an ethical dilemma, which cannot be resolved by robotically following a programmed set of rules, but one must instead find the answer from inner experience and intuition? Maybe.

Perhaps he meant that just as life can only be understood by actually living it, there are times when one is faced with an ethical dilemma, which cannot be resolved by robotically following a programmed set of rules, but one must instead find the answer from inner experience and intuition? Maybe.

I should add that from personal experience I've used a combination of methods including prayer, dream-recording and study and observation of synchronicity as well as other techniques, together in combination. When I didn't like the clear answer which emerged out of these, I chose to do something different. My choice turned out to be wrong, the more intuitive methods had been wisdom. But I only discovered with hindsight, after a serious misstep.

Fair enough. I'd only clarify that habit-formation is not necessarily (nor ideally, I'd suggest) mutually exclusive of explicitly being taught. Men become builders by building, true, but often enough (and rightly so) that is through an apprenticeship to a master builder who explicitly teaches them how to build (according to best practice).

The target recipient of the instruction casts a wide net to this.  It could be an individual, local group or all of humanity.  A master builder can be a creative innovator, with long lasting effect.  The target can just be the greater informational environment.  The words or signs of a moral leader may not strike action in minds an hearts for thousands of years and then persist.  Yet, today's culture must grind out its morality day-by-day, like it ever was.  Moral state is tied to empathy and free-will in relation to the flows of cultural behavior.  Some will be old wisdom and other behaviors the latest trend.

Not being a dualist of the standard mind/matter type - it is easy to see a separate set of structuring factors of morality, as independent from matter, energy, information or objective meaning.  I would see the sectioning out the dynamics of ethics and morality as a positive assertion.  For morality to be delineated is confirmation that there are more levels of measurement than just physical and informational.