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| Thread: Morals; Ethics; Philosophy; Religion, Science, Law, Organisms, and Rights |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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Stevie
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posted October 17, 2014 11:35 PM |
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Edited by Stevie at 23:53, 17 Oct 2014.
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@artu, you're mixing it big time. Even JJ tried to explain it to you.
Last shot in the dark"
I BELIEVE OBJECTIVELY: That my morality is equal to any other person's morality.
I BELIEVE SUBJECTIVELY: That there is a God that created us and has ownership upon us and what He decides to be moral, is moral absolutely.
I can debate the first because it is objective and we can find agreement without approaching belief.
I cannot debate the second one because we can not find common ground in my subjective beliefs.
YOU YOURSELF QUOTED ME ON MY OBJECTIVE ARGUMENT. If you want to debate it's validity without resorting to belief then let's do that. If you want to debate me on my subjective belief then let's just part ways because we cannot find common ground.
It's that simple. Either you approach my objective argument which you yourself quoted, or you stop derailing the discussion. Just shutting up will suffice.
@mvass
Let me just say that I read it thrice and I'm not sure if I understood correctly. But if I did: There's no question of God at stake, it's irrelevant, my position stands either if there is a God or there isn't. And that is - my morality (what I perceive as being right or wrong) is equal to any other person's morality. In which case I can consider that a thing is right while someone else might think it's wrong. If the source for something being moral or not is human, then there can't be a differentiation.
NOW ME SUBJECTIVELY: I think that God changes that because I believe he has the authority and the right over His creation to establish what is right and what is wrong.
Did I answer your question?
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Neraus
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Pain relief cream seller
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posted October 17, 2014 11:38 PM |
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Edited by Neraus at 23:39, 17 Oct 2014.
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artu said:
So, all this talk about killing people if it makes you happy etc are just random examples? C'mon JJ...
I find myself with JJ, it says simply that with only human morality one may simply think that he is entitled to do whatever he wants.
Anyway if I have time we'll talk about it tomorrow.
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Noli offendere Patriam Agathae quia ultrix iniuriarum est.
ANTUDO
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fred79
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posted October 17, 2014 11:40 PM |
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artu
Promising
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted October 17, 2014 11:57 PM |
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Stevie, you hijacked JJ's argument because the insufficiency of your was presented from the first post of mine. You know it's a dead argument. But your tone and the examples you pick clearly indicated that you DO believe without God, there is no way to suggest the concept of morality ITSELF can be VALID. When JJ talks about subjectivity he does not drag it to an absolute level of "all secular moral constructions are in vain" and since while he posts asking me about stuff, not you, you are not in a position to tell me to shut up. Actually, you are never in a position to tell me to shut up. Learn to behave or go back to having pissing contests with teenaqers.
Nearus:
Quote:
I find myself with JJ, it says simply that with only human morality one may simply think that he is entitled to do whatever he wants. Anyway if I have time we'll talk about it tomorrow.
But that's not what he says, even if you only read THIS thread from the beginning. I had like 10 pages of discussion about ethics with JJ and although with different angles, we both agree that morality is mostly based on historical context with subjective tones of individuality. That's why he automatically set things in comparison of social/individual as opposed to individual/divine. But that's got nothing to do with my objection.
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Stevie
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posted October 18, 2014 12:09 AM |
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Edited by Stevie at 00:09, 18 Oct 2014.
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I don't think people need a turkish translator to translate what I say, especially when that translator is the only one that doesn't get it. You keep ranting about God when I told you that it's a subjective opinion that I don't expect you to share.
I'm not attacking the validity of the concept of Morality, that's totally besides the point. What I say is that my morality is equal to yours regardless if it's valid or not.
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted October 18, 2014 12:43 AM |
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Yes, we don't need a translator to understand the sentence "inside a world where there's only human morality, my morality is not any lower or any higher than yours or anyone else's." coming from someone who was talking about the divine a second ago before that sentence, and who then, explained how ANY morality would be equal including someone's who kill just because it makes him happy was arriving at the notion that without God morality cant be valid because it would be absolutely subjective. If something can mean anything, it means nothing, if all morality, including a psychopaths is equally acceptable, then there is no morality.
Yet, we have more than enough non-theistic groups of people and societies to observe and in all of them, psychopaths are morally condemned, I wonder why that is, maybe the source of these social patterns is something other than the super-natural or directly individual rationalization. Maybe, morality is an achievement social, intelligent species are capable of and have a tendency to execute. Since, not all of them came up with similar patterns individually by themselves... What a wonder!
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mvassilev
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posted October 18, 2014 01:19 AM |
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Stevie said:
my morality (what I perceive as being right or wrong) is equal to any other person's morality. In which case I can consider that a thing is right while someone else might think it's wrong. If the source for something being moral or not is human, then there can't be a differentiation.
You mostly restated your claim in different words. What I'd particularly like is a justification of the part in bold. Why can't there be a differentiation? Why can't one person be right and the other wrong?
____________
Eccentric Opinion
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Stevie
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posted October 18, 2014 01:35 AM |
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Edited by Stevie at 01:50, 18 Oct 2014.
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It's not a question of "why can't one be right and another wrong". I'm stating that regardless if someone IS right or wrong you have no way of determining that if the standard by which you decide that is ultimately human. The value of my right is equal to the value of another person's right even if the definitions that we give to what right means contradict each other. This is based on the principle of equality.
Let's say that incidentally, one of the two IS actually right. By what measure do you determine that? By what measure they can determine that beyond "that's what I think"?
@artu, Ignored.
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mvassilev
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posted October 18, 2014 01:55 AM |
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Stevie said:
Let's say that incidentally, one of the two IS actually right. By what measure do you determine that? By what measure they can determine that beyond "that's what I think"?
Good questions, though I've already answered them in this very thread, here.
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Eccentric Opinion
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted October 18, 2014 02:04 AM |
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There is nothing else you can do but to ignore, Stevie. But my point and intent is not to get through to you anyway, you presented a shallow argument and it needed to be answered.
And the measure you can use to decide if one person or the other is right is dependent on factors such as harmfulness, selfishness and overall consaquances of the act which is only subjective to a degree. That is, where as raising your voice to your mother can be considered morally wrong in one society and completely casual in another, killing neighbor's children just to eat their livers will be considered wrong in all of them. Sex out of wedlock will be considered wrong almost everywhere in feudal times where there's no birth control or DNA test, yet once these become available it will cease to be a taboo almost everywhere accordingly and even religious people wont care about it much anymore, start to let it slide. Barbaric societies living on plunder will have no problem with killing strangers, they will even praise it as skills of a warrior, yet once that way of living stops, the praise will also stop.
Each society will have some notion of common sense that they are basing their moral ground on, shaped by the way they live and that will not be absolutely subjective. And if you can manage to violate these rules because you don't care for them, "being able to get away" with a crime and the subjectivity of that crime mean something else entirely, if a psychopath can get away with killing for fun, it certainly does not mean that society as a whole sees killing for fun as a subjective matter. And any individual's personality is strongly linked to his social upbringing whether he is aware of it or not.
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Stevie
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posted October 18, 2014 02:28 AM |
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Edited by Stevie at 02:29, 18 Oct 2014.
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mvassilev said:
Good questions, though I've already answered them in this very thread, here.
Interesting post on your perception about morality. But I must disagree in some aspects.
Quote:
For example, someone who thinks murder will make them happy is either wrong or a psychopath
And by which measure that is outside of yourself did you judged that? Because genuine happiness can be extracted out of the excitement of killing someone. That's what motivates serial killers, "the game". Are you saying that they are not happy when they do that? But it doesn't even have to be happiness in the form of excitement, it can as well be only a state of being content as in getting rid of a problem. That is also a form of happiness, even if not as "explosive" in form.
What I'm trying to say here is, that you judged that behavior on an internal standard of what you perceive as being right or wrong. You arbitrarily excluded murder as being wrong. By what measure that is not "That's what I think"?
artu said:
There is nothing else you can do but to ignore, Stevie. But my point and intent is not to get through to you anyway, you presented a shallow argument and it needed to be answered.
And the measure you can use to decide if one person or the other is right is dependent on factors such as harmfulness, selfishness and overall consaquances of the act which is only subjective to a degree. That is, where as raising your voice to your mother can be considered morally wrong in one society and completely casual in another, killing neighbor's children just to eat their livers will be considered wrong in all of them. Sex out of wedlock will be considered wrong almost everywhere in feudal times where there's no birth control or DNA test, yet once these become available it will cease to be a taboo almost everywhere accordingly and even religious people wont care about it much anymore, start to let it slide. Barbaric societies living on plunder will have no problem with killing strangers, they will even praise it as skills of a warrior, yet once that way of living stops, the praise will also stop.
Each society will have some notion of common sense that they are basing their moral ground on, shaped by the way they live and that will not be absolutely subjective. And if you can manage to violate these rules because you don't care for them, "being able to get away" with a crime and the subjectivity of that crime mean something else entirely, if a psychopath can get away with killing for fun, it certainly does not mean that society as a whole sees killing for fun as a subjective matter. And any individual's personality is strongly linked to his social upbringing whether he is aware of it or not.
Ignored.
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted October 18, 2014 02:38 AM |
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Edited by artu at 03:50, 18 Oct 2014.
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You shouldn't ask questions that you cant handle the answers to and turn a good thread into the playground of your juvenile attitude. I don't mind your declaration of ignorance because it is a result of your ignorance in general. Not being able to address any of the points and then pretending you don't even bother to, wont fly. I would correct you even if you said something as unimportant as the world is 6000 years old, it is just a habit of mine independent of how you would react to it.
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mvassilev
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posted October 18, 2014 02:46 AM |
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Stevie said:
And by which measure that is outside of yourself did you judged that? Because genuine happiness can be extracted out of the excitement of killing someone. That's what motivates serial killers, "the game". Are you saying that they are not happy when they do that?
My claim here has three parts. First, if the murderer is mentally healthy, he'd be happier living a virtuous life, which means no murdering. Second, if the murderer isn't mentally healthy, he should seek out treatment to make himself sane. Third and most importantly (though I think I didn't go into this in my link), it is rational for him to agree to a societal rule of "murder is wrong", because a society with such a rule will be better according to his own preferences than a society without it.
More broadly, I take morality to be a subset of the conclusions of instrumental rationality, which are objective. Supposing that there is some extremely powerful alien Caligula who enjoys torturing people, the right thing for him to do would be to torture. We may not like it if he tortured us, but we would be wrong if we said that he shouldn't do so.
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Eccentric Opinion
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kayna
Supreme Hero
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posted October 18, 2014 03:20 AM |
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My basic question: Do all living things have rights? If so, what is the origin of and what are some limitations of those rights.
-- Rights are an invention by humans tired of being treated like snow. It takes might to enforce such rights, so at the base, what truly rules are the laws of nature. After strength is established, those with power can enforce a certain justice if they want to.
1) Do rights originate from the government? That is, apart from the laws established by your government rights do not exist?
-- Most of them do originate from governments, because they are the people with the most power in this day and age. Well, depending on where you live I guess.
2) Do "human rights exist?" That is, do humans have innate rights that exist apart from laws established by your government?
-- No. See my first answer above.
3) If you believe in human rights:
a) Do you believe all humans have the same rights or are there categories of humans who have fewer rights or categories of humans who have more rights?
-- Question needs clarification. How it should be or how it is in reality? We should all be equal but in reality we don't all have the same rights.
b) If you believe in government-granted rights do you think all humans should have the same rights or should there be special classes of humans who have more rights or lesser rights?
-- No I don't believe in government granted rights, but your question is more political than you seem to realize ; all governments are corrupt to an extend lol. How can I believe in government granted rights?
4) Do you believe animals have innate rights? If so, do they have the same innate rights as humans?
-- Yes, they should have similar rights. Anything else would be human arrogance. But if we did give them the same rights, should we also stop taking their land as we grow in population? Should we avoid stepping on ants all the time? Your question only proves how rights are made by humans and for humans.
5) If you believe in government granted rights, should your government grant animals rights and if so, what rights?
-- Meh, your questions are giving me a headache! Back to square one for simplification ; whoever has the might create rights. Period.
6) How about plants? Do plants have innate rights?
-- Copy paste time! whoever has the might create rights. Period.
7) If you believe in government granted rights, should your government grant plants rights and if so, what rights?
-- Whoever has the might create rights. When affordable, plenty of rights will be given. When in hard times, those rights will be retracted. Who cares about plants? How do you want me to answer your question, ok I think I got a good one ; Plants can't show up to court to explain themselves, so they automatically lose!
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted October 18, 2014 03:26 AM |
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Edited by artu at 03:40, 18 Oct 2014.
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Part of what constitutes morality is indeed instrumental rationality and the very basic notion of "dont do to others, what you don't want for yourself" yet, studies also show that it exists the way it does because we are capable of affection and empathy. That's the part sociopaths lack, not intelligence or rationality and that's why they are the ones who start their behavioral pattern by torturing animals as kids. And even if that wasn't so, a completely objective set of moral rules would only be possible if happiness was completely objectifiable, we were omniscient and the conditions we lived in were never ever changing. Rationality develops according to the conditions.
@kayna
The question about rights and if they are innate is what started this thread and all of us elaborated on it in the early pages. I'd say animals can have legal protection rather than rights because they wont be able to comprehend any rights they posses. And yes, if things go downhill and chaotic, most rights will be canceled, it's called martial law. However, societies with regimes that recognize certain rights, at least when conditions are normal and peaceful, prove to be much more prosperous, wealthier and also stronger, since they attract brain power and they develop better technologies, better production with better motivated work force. So even only on a pragmatical basis, rights are good.
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Stevie
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posted October 18, 2014 10:19 AM |
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Edited by Stevie at 10:20, 18 Oct 2014.
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mvassilev said:
My claim here has three parts. First, if the murderer is mentally healthy, he'd be happier living a virtuous life, which means no murdering. Second, if the murderer isn't mentally healthy, he should seek out treatment to make himself sane. Third and most importantly (though I think I didn't go into this in my link), it is rational for him to agree to a societal rule of "murder is wrong", because a society with such a rule will be better according to his own preferences than a society without it.
Which again, does not go beyond "that's what I think". How did you judged that a murderer would be happier not murdering but rather living a virtuous life? Aren't you simply imposing your moral system here? Why should someone who finds happiness in killing listen to your own system of morality when that will restrict his happiness? On what objective basis to which one can relate do you deny a person the behavior that brings him happiness? A society in which the individual cannot exercise his freedom to achieve happiness is undoubtedly not a better society for that individual.
artu said:
You shouldn't ask questions that you cant handle the answers to and turn a good thread into the playground of your juvenile attitude. I don't mind your declaration of ignorance because it is a result of your ignorance in general. Not being able to address any of the points and then pretending you don't even bother to, wont fly. I would correct you even if you said something as unimportant as the world is 6000 years old, it is just a habit of mine independent of how you would react to it.
artu said:
Part of what constitutes morality is indeed instrumental rationality and the very basic notion of "dont do to others, what you don't want for yourself" yet, studies also show that it exists the way it does because we are capable of affection and empathy. That's the part sociopaths lack, not intelligence or rationality and that's why they are the ones who start their behavioral pattern by torturing animals as kids. And even if that wasn't so, a completely objective set of moral rules would only be possible if happiness was completely objectifiable, we were omniscient and the conditions we lived in were never ever changing. Rationality develops according to the conditions.
@kayna
The question about rights and if they are innate is what started this thread and all of us elaborated on it in the early pages. I'd say animals can have legal protection rather than rights because they wont be able to comprehend any rights they posses. And yes, if things go downhill and chaotic, most rights will be canceled, it's called martial law. However, societies with regimes that recognize certain rights, at least when conditions are normal and peaceful, prove to be much more prosperous, wealthier and also stronger, since they attract brain power and they develop better technologies, better production with better motivated work force. So even only on a pragmatical basis, rights are good.
Ignored.
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mvassilev
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posted October 18, 2014 10:36 AM |
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Stevie said:
Which again, does not go beyond "that's what I think". How did you judged that a murderer would be happier not murdering but rather living a virtuous life? Aren't you simply imposing your moral system here?
I'm making a disprovable a posteriori claim about human nature and what makes people happy. It's possible that I'm wrong, though obviously I don't think I am. What's important is that this isn't a matter of opinion or bare assertion: either being virtuous makes them happier, or not. Making these kinds of claims is not an imposition of anything.
____________
Eccentric Opinion
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Stevie
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posted October 18, 2014 10:46 AM |
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Edited by Stevie at 11:35, 18 Oct 2014.
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Your statement was this: "First, if the murderer is mentally healthy, he'd be happier living a virtuous life, which means no murdering.", which is very different from this: "either being virtuous makes them happier, or not.". I do not question the latter because it is not an argument that supports your case, but I do the former. Happiness does not necessarily follow from virtuousness, but from individual fulfillment. And that fulfillment can well be in murder which is not virtuous by definition.
We can always talk about human nature and that but that is way more general than what I approached. I approached individual happiness based on what one feels that brings happiness.
So answer me this question: Why is murder morally wrong to an individual when that brings him happiness? And defend your position that a murderer would be happier living virtuously and not murdering.
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artu
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posted October 18, 2014 10:53 AM |
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Edited by artu at 10:57, 18 Oct 2014.
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Stevie, this is not your personal message board and I don't write what I write for your eyes, just because I also address your -not very sophisticated- question of "according to who?"
Do not pollute the thread with crossing long lines of text, you ignoring me or anybody else is not something of substance, it does not deserve a ceremony.
All you had done so far is completely dodging every socio-biological, historical and rational explanation of moral patterns with an argument as useless as "I objectively know trusting Chef Pierre's book is subjective but without trusting Chef Pierre's book all taste is subjective, so who's to say human piss tastes worse than orange juice."
Which, in practicality, is saying nothing. If you admit your faith is subjective, any further claim of a categorical differentiation is automatically nullified, anyway.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted October 18, 2014 03:11 PM |
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@Stevie
You are free to ignore artu's posts, but quoting them and striking them out is unnecessarily provocative, in addition to being an eyesore. Please refrain from doing it.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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