The Responsibility of Man

[Seditious]

yet once again you bring nothing to the table

nor do I mean to.

you think you have some moral authority, let's hear it.

you present something, I sweep it from the table as a fallacious argument.

I'm just sitting here waiting for you to bring something to the table, since you think you can. The burden of proof is on you.

 

[Blowtus]

that ever since Aristotle first said it there has been no argument against it which has stood up against it. it's a default.

Apparently you reject morality because there is nothing to show it as valid - yet happiness is valid because there is nothing to show it is not?

 

[Seditious]

Sounds like a cop out to me. Review of history or examination of cultures will indicate the more primitive the culture the lower the level of thought put into it.

so if Hitler put more thought into his racism, it's more valid than the racism of some backwater hick? coincidences aren't arguments, and it's a non sequiter that this is a trend that will continue. The more thought I've put into it the less valid the present morality is. Most people don't put a lot of thought into it, and just toe the line. Moreover, what is politically expedient is not necessarily the most well thought out position---evolution is the scientific consensus, the view backed with the 'highest level of thought', yet American politicians deny it, but their denial of it for their own popularity has nothing to do with the accuracy of their truth claims. Again, you might want to google non sequiter, and in future fill in the gaps between your assumptions with arguments.

Dont know where democracy=truth came from, might be a fallacy in logic.

you speak as if thinking 'most people think this morality is better, therefore it is'. Again, you might want to google your fallacy, argumentum ad populum.

There is only one truth... did I, will I effect another persons life in a negative way ? Yes or No... only one answer, only one truth.

so what if you did?
did I, will I effect another cow's life in a negative way ? Yes or No... only one answer, only one truth.

that's you, as a vegan.

did I, will I effect another white person's life in a negative way ? Yes or No... only one answer, only one truth.

that's you, as a neonazi.

you seem not to understand that this forum is for people willing to explain why they distinguish themselves as they do... why, in this instance, you're not a vegan or a neonazi, but a speciesist.

Speaking of fallacies, theres no way the "fuck with me and Ill fuck with you" ideal had anything to do with the evolvement of morals, so we should revert back to this,

give yourself some credit, there's only one fallacy there: a non sequiter.
The first statement is merely an unsupported assertion, to which I can make an equally strong case with: "theres no way the "fuck with me and Ill fuck with you" ideal didn't have anything to do with the evolvement of morals".

until the eye for eye rule has rendered us all blind and we become concerned and begin creating morals and ethics again...... so long as its not done "in the name of God" maybe it will be accepted.

and now that terrorism has made us concerned about torturing people again, maybe now it will finally be accepted.

you're missing the point - you've put forward no case in support of these little trends having anything to do with valid moral authority.

 

[Seditious]

Apparently you reject morality because there is nothing to show it as valid - yet happiness is valid because there is nothing to show it is not?

nothing to show that it's not, while it remains the end of every claim to action taken to its logical conclusion... it's not that there's nothing to show that it's not, period, as if there's nothing to show I'm not riding a flying unicorn right now, but that there's everything to show that it is, and from the examples of...everything you can imagine...just try to come up with one that contradicts it, that shouldn't be too hard given the bounty of opportunities for it to be wrong if it is.

why did I write this sentence? can you explain it in any other way than in terms of self-satisfaction of some cognitive unease? (fuck that reminds me of a nice quote, wonder if I can find it)

found it:
"No one is moved to act, or resolved to speak a single word, who does not hope by means of this action or word to release anxiety from his spirit."
-Ali ibn-Hazm

 

[Seditious]

I always viewed morals as being social constructs for a more peaceful co existence among the populous

A nice succinct phrasing of it.

nice one.

 

[razoredge]

before I continue with this I need to undertand something. Is the idea that morals dont exist or are worthless... whatever and that abandoning the evolution of morals is the way to go... does this mean we also forget about having laws, guidelines, rules, regulations, stuff like that ? This is a serious question, its the impression Im getting but am unsure that I might be missing something.

 

[Seditious]

before I continue with this I need to undertand something. Is the idea that morals dont exist or are worthless... whatever and that abandoning the evolution of morals is the way to go... does this mean we also forget about having laws, guidelines, rules, regulations, stuff like that ? This is a serious question, its the impression Im getting but am unsure that I might be missing something.

no @ nullifying the concept of law.

it means little more than that we drop the pretense that we're the good guys, doing the right thing, doing it because it's right, not because we want to

...like when a mother goes mental and kills her children because God said to do it, she didn't -want- to, but valid morality (telepathic divine commandment) has nothing to do with what you want, you obey it despite your wishes because you know there is something more valid than what satisfies you.

look up "moral relativism" if you're interested in a bit of background.

 

[Blowtus]

I think you're missing something Razoredge
I believe the idea is that 'morality' is not a necessary consideration for someone sufficiently educated and competent, in their decision making process. Laws are a useful tool for altering decision making processes for greater efficiency / general happiness etc. I can be good to my neighbour because he is more likely to be good back to me, I do not need 'morality' to tell me this.

 

[razoredge]

Originally Posted by Silver Incubus
I always viewed morals as being social constructs for a more peaceful co existence among the populous

A nice succinct phrasing of it.

nice one.

Yes it is, because if you had of said the same thing in greater detail, useing different resources... it woulda had to been swept from the table.....

apparently only a limited few are qualified and allowed to take a single word, spin it in circles until its surrounded by a slurry of curious profoundness... when it simply could have been said "there are variables"... but then that would appear elementary and lift the veil of profoundness.

 

[Blowtus]

nothing to show that it's not, while it remains the end of every claim to action taken to its logical conclusion... it's not that there's nothing to show that it's not, period, as if there's nothing to show I'm not riding a flying unicorn right now, but that there's everything to show that it is, and from the examples of...everything you can imagine...just try to come up with one that contradicts it, that shouldn't be too hard given the bounty of opportunities for it to be wrong if it is.



why did I write this sentence? can you explain it in any other way than in terms of self-satisfaction of some cognitive unease? (fuck that reminds me of a nice quote, wonder if I can find it)

found it:
"No one is moved to act, or resolved to speak a single word, who does not hope by means of this action or word to release anxiety from his spirit."
-Ali ibn-Hazm

I kind of struggled with the sentence actually
The distinction is really just that you view happiness as the only end and morality one of many relatively ineffective means, is that right? I guess the issue for me is I can't intellectually accept happiness as the *necessary* end, even though it may be as far as I can 'feel' an end.

 

[Blowtus]

Yes it is, because if you had of said the same thing in greater detail, useing different resources... it woulda had to been swept from the table.....

Isn't your sentiment along the lines that they are social constructs which are *necessary* for a peaceful co-existence? It is the necessity which is at issue, and which Silver Incubus said nothing of.

 

[Seditious]

I kind of struggled with the sentence actually
The distinction is really just that you view happiness as the only end and morality one of many relatively ineffective means, is that right?

morality may be a very effective means, depending on the culture and the morality. That's just besides the point. However effective it is in achieving our ends, it has not itself been argued successfully to be a valid end.

I guess the issue for me is I can't intellectually accept happiness as the *necessary* end, even though it may be as far as I can 'feel' an end.

I'm certainly not saying 'we should do what makes us happy' or anything, I'm not saying we should necessarily differ to it or anything, but yes, in terms of contingent and necessary, it does seem to be the necessary end. I THINK, if I remember rightly, this is about the point we've gotten to before, like last year or sumn, where I refused to explain further. I have an evolutionary account of why this indeed would be the condition that exists, though I've always been unwilling to share it, and still it appears that while it would be useful for argument sake to do so, I'm content to just draw the battle lines here and look for an alternative to be presented, rather than detailing why I'm extremely skeptical that it could be.


fuck, got an appointment I'm nearly late for. catchya later mate.

 

[Seditious]

Isn't your sentiment along the lines that they are social constructs which are *necessary* for a peaceful co-existence? It is the necessity which is at issue, and which Silver Incubus said nothing of.

to throw my two-cents in. Razot having earlier emphasized that 'authority' not 'necessity' is the argument for him at issue, I think we can dismiss the idea of 'necessity', just as 'we need god to be good' is a useless argument, if god doesn't exist, he doesn't exist, even if we need the fiction to maintain a lifestyle good in terms of god-believers.

something being necessary doesn't validate it's authority. so we need to at least acknowledge which we're defending at any given time here.

 

[razoredge]

no @ nullifying the concept of law.

it means little more than that we drop the pretense that we're the good guys, doing the right thing, doing it because it's right, not because we want to

...like when a mother goes mental and kills her children because God said to do it, she didn't -want- to, but valid morality (telepathic divine commandment) has nothing to do with what you want, you obey it despite your wishes because you know there is something more valid than what satisfies you.

look up "moral relativism" if you're interested in a bit of background.

but laws are based on morality... sorry but it all seems to me some are so rebellious and/or hateful of certain "words" or concepts or values that they go out of their way to try to change these but in the end come back to the same place.

A woman that kills her children... regardless the example of her claim is just a flat out wack job, be it chemical inbalance, tramatic experience, ______ name the excuse. I dont care how you want to paint it, I will draw that in BLACK AND WHITE so I fail to see what that has to do with morals, I dont expect a wack job to have morals or much of anything for that matter, just as your example of Hitler... I dont see the point... seems like a distraction to me.

I will look up moral relativism as I did what ever that other term was... it was OK and understandable if one wants to be dismissive.

I would suggest others look up "golden rule" perhaps not yourself but others and see how wide spred it was in many cultures and beliefs that had little connection with each other aside from early migration. These cultures and beliefs had their share of scholars and philosophers. I point toward this "golden rule" due to the fact that Im sick and tired of this anti "Christian" anti "American" anti "White" self proclaimed trump card being pulled all the time. This higher standard of values was prevelent in many if not most of the more advanced cultures.

 

[OldScratch]

can you clarify what you meant by sensible? sounds like you're referring to something moralistic.

I mean, say someone beats people up because it makes him feel tough, or he rapes women because he gets off on it, those are perfectly intelligible---if that's what you mean by 'sensible'---and how rational such acts are have the same questionable status as people who eat too many cheeseburgers. Are you positing something which distinguishes the former from the later case in some relevant sense (i.e., as opposed to merely being more complicated)?

Sorry - delayed response. Not moralistic at all - or not intended to be. By "sensible" I meant only for a particular reason - not that the reason or rationale was 'valid' or not - but simply that one existed. As opposed say to simply attacking for the sake of attacking, etc. Mine wasn't intended to be an assessment of whether such actions were valid, "moral" or what have you - just that in response to the question posed to me, I wasn't advocating(in an earlier post) that harming others was or should be universally sanctioned, simply because I rejected the idea of some cosmic morality that allegedly dictates the "right and wrongs" of such behavior.

 

[razoredge]

Isn't your sentiment along the lines that they are social constructs which are *necessary* for a peaceful co-existence? It is the necessity which is at issue, and which Silver Incubus said nothing of.

I see, but what I think is not being understood is I dont believe they were "just made up" for the self serving (authority), while I realize history is laden with it (self servence) and personal application of morals or their twisted loop holes, I honestly feel these evolved as man saw the conclusions of their ??? discrepencies. As if morals are a compromise between the fair and the unruly.

Back to the "dont fuck with me and I wont fuck with you" Ok... sounds fair enough right? This in itself gets drowningly deep, the eye for an eye thing, vengence, vendetta... next thing you know everyone is blind and/or dead. You kill my father... prepare to die"... "but he raped my mother". This is where myself personally I have problems with "laws" more than morals. Someone just fucked with my life, my family... I really want to teach them a lesson, yet by law if I do, Im a criminal, to an unknowing bystander Im a wack job, even by religion or the golden rule, I am weak and let it get to me and didnt turn the other cheek... "thank you very much... may I have another". Yet turn back too page one and if individual #1 didnt violate the basic moral codes, this scenerio would never take place.

I've always refered to these as unwritten laws, unspoken laws or ancient higher laws, which is untrue because surely much has been written and said about them... but I use those terms due to them have been swept under the carpet by the modern walls of law books.

It takes a very optimistic person or disregarding person or one hiding behind that wall of modern law books to assume deleting basic moral codes would result in a better planet.... even though it may reduce the surface population or at least hold it in check for a few thousand years.

 

[Seditious]

Sorry - delayed response.

sweet as, that's the beauty of a forum; reply at your own convenience.

Mine wasn't intended to be an assessment of whether such actions were valid, "moral" or what have you - just that in response to the question posed to me, I wasn't advocating(in an earlier post) that harming others was or should be universally sanctioned, simply because I rejected the idea of some cosmic morality that allegedly dictates the "right and wrongs" of such behavior.

cheers for that.

 

[razoredge]

thing is its not cosmic, people just keep letting themselves get distracted by religion, one way or the other, one side or the other, then become blind to the larger picture

 

[Seditious]

but laws are based on morality.

hehehe, yea ok. the most prominent examples are hemp being outlawed for forestry interests, and alcohol prohibition as a manoevre against immigrants, but if you look into the laws we have in general you'll find that there are plenty enough which aren't based in moral concerns to sufficiently debunk the notion that morality is why law exists, rather than merely that many laws satisfy the popular morality of the culture (here it's being cautious about the argument fallacy of confusing correlation with causation)

let's start though with the morality on which is based the law against riding a bicycle without a helmet. We can get to things like the right to wear no clothes at sandy ocean-side locations (the immorality of being the way god/nature made us) afterwards, if your premise applies sufficiently in the first place.

I would suggest others look up "golden rule".

I can assure you that most people here are familiar with the golden rule, as well as its earlier variation ('do not do unto others as you'd not have them do unto you'), as well as the basic moral theories of Hobbes/Hume/Kant/Locke/etc. (those most relevant to this discussion)

perhaps not yourself but others and see how wide spred it was in many cultures and beliefs that had little connection with each other aside from early migration.

again I urge you to look for something more substantive than 'popularity' to back up the validity of a practice, as there is surely something you deny which is popular -- the morality of circumcising infants, the morality of sacrificing animals to the gods, belief in a cosmic creator... cultural trends, Occam's razor would suggest, demonstrate little more than what is good for a culture, and what is good for many cultures may reflect what is good for the survival of the species, but this itself, our survival as a species, is not necessarily a good thing, nor necessarily something we should aspire to contribute to, and so we can't use such things as arguments to preserve morality on its necessity. and of course it's necessity or utility, like that of Santa, to keep children in line, says nothing of its reality. We can 'grant for sake of argument' the popularity you're speaking of, merely to ask 'why are we to think this correlation is something other than advantageous behavior'. Consider, in this light, (may need to read this sentence twice, it's not the most coherent, I admit) yourself as a vegan: you will say 'more and more today---as we get more intelligent and sophisticated--veganism is growing in popularity, and its morality being supported as right', but you not being a vegan might recognise 'emo kids with a cause to make themselves feel special and useful and unique is indeed popular, but so what?'. You might argue 'eating animals is a popular practice, and always has been, it's as foundational in culture as the golden rule', but your vegan self would say 'does that mean we can't improve; that change must be regression to something worse?'

If you're able to allow for the possibility veganism is a broadening of morality, being moral in a wider and wider context, then you also have to be open to the idea that other contradictions to cultural standards popular throughout history may be right, even if they're a shrinking of the moral context.

 

[Seditious]

I see, but what I think is not being understood is I dont believe they were "just made up" for the self serving (authority), while I realize history is laden with it (self servence) and personal application of morals or their twisted loop holes, I honestly feel these evolved as man saw the conclusions of their ??? discrepencies. As if morals are a compromise between the fair and the unruly.

there is a law in America against 20 year olds buying alcohol.
here it's 18+
here they raised the concept of lowering the voting age to 16 (a horrible idea that, thankfully, never got off the ground)

are what we come to decide on as the law to enact accurate insights into moral authority? if so...what happens when the law changes?

is my nation presently being immoral, or will America perhaps soon admit to being immoral, and allow 19 year olds to buy alcohol?

If law is based on morality and no one can agree on what is moral, and we simply decide 'slavery is moral, so it's legal. ok, now it's not moral we realize, so its no longer legal', what's to make us think at any given moment in history that the laws we have at present are not any less suscepible to error than those of the past?---if morality is indistinguisible from immorality, merely measured by what is made law at present, what good is using any word but 'legal'?

I tend not to like C.S. Lewis, but he did offer one note of caution rightly, "A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process."

It takes a very optimistic person or disregarding person or one hiding behind that wall of modern law books to assume deleting basic moral codes would result in a better planet.... even though it may reduce the surface population or at least hold it in check for a few thousand years.

I would never say that the pathetic majority we suffer today is virtuous enough to operate based on reason; without delusions about morality to constrain their actions.

but it sounds here like you're alluding to making the argument from adverse consequences logical fallacy. consider the Christians again---'if god doesn't exist my life is meaningless, therefore god must exist...cos I'm scared of the alternative'. Whatever the result of accepting the truth of the absence of moral authority would be, that result does not give us any logical warrant to say therefore it must not be so. again 'if there is no soul then we actually -die- when we die. do you know how people would behave if they thought they had no souls?--badly!' one cannot say 'this then is evidence in favor of humans having souls'.