Subject:
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Re: 22/7 & infinities (was: Re: The nature of the JC god, good or evil?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 9 Sep 1999 15:10:48 GMT
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Viewed:
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1646 times
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Warning: LONG MESSAGE!
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John DiRienzo writes:
> Actually, the original posts were about what is a life affirming set of
> morals (the one Larry accepted when it was presented to him). It took me
> awhile to explain it to you, and if you can keep everything together that I
> have said, or if I can shorten it, you might get it.
Yep. As I said before, I was curious as to whether or not this was more a
straight consequentialist argument or one of both consequence and underlying
morality. I didn't see the morality put forth directly, just kind of hidden in
the background. I wanted to see if it was there. So, I tried to take away the
consequences via example to see if there was some underlying morality behind
your judgment calls. Ex: If someone steals something and there's no
consequences, is it wrong? First you argued that there are ALWAYS consequences,
so I tried refining again, until you finally said that stealing is wrong out of
principle-- it violates someone's rights. I have achieved an answer: you do
include rights in the 'life-affirming' philosophy.
> Anyway, below, in this
> post you show surprise that I include rights. When our argument first began
> and you made a bunch of examples, my first retort was that each was an
> example of the infringement on anothers rights. That was the reason each
> action was not life arffirming - but you wanted, or I thought you wanted, a
> big definition of life affirming as well as a bunch of other things (like
> consequences). Maybe I am just not a good debater or writer, but we came up
> with a gaggle of sub-debates from there, which were for the most part
> interesting. If I omited rights somewhere long the way, I can only say I
> did so because I take them as a given. Our universal desire is to live in a
> good society. Recognizing others rights is a logical imperative, without
> rights, we can only have chaos.
Well, as for being philosophical...
Thinking philosophically:
A: Derive a therory
B: Try and figure out examples of all potential problems with the theory.
C: Solve the problems:
- if problem cannot be solved, go back to step A
- if problem is an assumption, acknowledge it
- if problem is excusable, explain why.
Writing Philosophy
A. List current theories
B. Show problems with existing theories
C. Propose your theory:
- state all assumptions
- state the theory
- show any remaing problems with your theory, and excuse them. If you can't
excuse them, acknowledge that your theory may fail if the problems are
regarded as valid
Anyway, include all your assumptions, no matter how small. Some of the best
theories have pathetic assumptions and are easily disprovable therein. If you
don't state your base, people will try and derive it for you, and if they're
arguing against you, they'll probably try and misinterpret you badly for two
reasons: A, to get your theory to fail, and B, to get you to state your
philosophical base so they can argue it. You can't argue with someone if you
don't show them what you're thinking. It's a good way to avoid arguments-- I've
argued with religious people that do this. I start to derive my own ideas
logically, and ask the same of them, and they refuse to play the game. They
don't want to provide a logical base; either because they don't have one (they
want philosophy/religion to be derived, they want it to be an emotional
connection to God) or they don't want to expose thier base, because they're
worried that it is faulty. Anyway... for future reference, state your base. If
you think rights are involved in addition to consequences, say so.
> How does it? My opinion is that making charity a moral issue weakens the
> moral code. You say you disagree, but how can it improve the moral code by
> adding charity. How can you add charity? If a moral code is only a matter
> of personal opinion, then it serves no purpose. In that case, I am forced
> to agree that there is no need for morals at all, as Nietzsche thought.
I say it just does. I think that the initial emotional *want* for other
people's well-being encourages charity. In point of fact, charity is rather the
opposite side of morality. Justice has to do with pain, charity with happiness.
We don't care about justice until we feel it's been violated. As soon as
someone feels pain, we can judge that pain based on justice. Rights (justice)
have to do with people being deprived of them. Justice has nothing to judge if
there aren't any rights being violated. Charity has to do with making people
happier. The moral of charity is to help people, the moral of justice is to
stop hurting people. Hence, I see them as both integral parts of morality. I'll
explain more later, when I expound on Hegel.
> You are right, I am not a consequentialist. I was trying to give reasons
> why the previous examples were not life affirming. It can be shown that
> there are consequences for all of those examples, and thus none of the
> actions are life affirming. That was a simple test to see if an action was
> moral or not, but you tried to say it was not so simple.
But wait a second: "It can be shown that there are consequences for all of
those examples, and thus none of the actions are life-affirming." You have to
acknowledge rights again, presuming that they are in your theory, otherwise you
sound consequentialist again. The action isn't bad solely because the
consequences are bad, the action is bad ALSO because rights are violated.
That's why I was prying further. Your initial response was something like "X,Y,
or Z, can happen as a result, thereby it's not life-affirming". I tried to
rephrase, to get you to acknowledge or deny the presence of rights by doing
away with consequences. Your response was something like "Well, there are
ALWAYS consequences." You still didn't acknowledge rights. WAY back in the
early posts you said basically that 'stealing is wrong regardless of the
consequences' I was content to leave it there without you explicitly stating
rights, because here *I* went ahead and assumed that you assumed rights (very
bad of me), but you brought up something else, and the argument continued.
> Not saying it because it is so obvious. Sorry if it was not obvious to
> you.
Obvious is an interesting term. Before the law of gravity was discovered,
people still knew that objects fell to earth; it's not like Newton suddenly
figured that out, he was just the first to state the law in a real way. Is it
obvious to me? Yes, insofar as the pre-Newtonian ideas of gravity. But only by
stating the obvious can we enter into a logical debate. Discovering the obvious
is what you learn to do when you study philosophy. Descartes did a marvellous
job of that (although he didn't get very far, really) when he did away with
EVERYTHING and said the only conclusion that was definite was "I think
therefore I am." To everyone else in the world, that was already painfully
obvious that they existed. It just took Descartes to bring it out in the open
as an assumption; and hence, logic could progress.
> > Again, AHA! "Necessary for the common 'good'"!
>
> I knew that would get twisted.
Hmm... twisted? I didn't think I was really twisting your words, I think I was
emphasizing your assumption. Anyway, if you think your words can get twisted,
either re-word it, or explain how your words COULD get twisted and why the
twisted form ISN'T what you're saying.
> > Remember this quote!
>
> Why? You never came back to it.
Well, It's more or less like the last one... I didn't make a specific
reference, but it ties in with what I say later. In effect I was saying "keep
this in mind when you keep reading my reply."
> > (One more time for emphasis) AHA! "desire"!
>
> Yeah, whats your point?
Again, "remember that you said this as you read my post"
> Yeah, I did, I read down, and came back up and said we are saying about
> the same thing. We aren't though. You still contend that morals are
> (because of this single universal desire?!) relative and can vary and still
> be correct. I say thats hogwash - that morals are useless if they have
> variance. According to you, it is acceptable to choose any morals you like
> and live by them and they will be correct - that could make for a very short
> life.
True. See my reply to John Neal's comments. I said it a bit before, but I
didn't give a whole spiel. I don't think I have yet still, but maybe that'll
give you my defense. At any rate, my point that we were saying the same thing
is that we (as humans) start off with the same fundamental belief, and as our
life progresses, we take up different ones. You say that these are borrowed
from religion, parents, society, whatever, and stray from the one universal
morality. I say that the morals one acquires are still valid, even though they
differ from one to another.
> > Perhaps I will expound later on why I think this, but I'm not really
> > inclined to now. That starts to blend philosophy and psychology... Not to
> > bring another author into it, but M.M. Ponty (Maurice Merlou Ponty I
> > think?) said a lot about it (see _The_Primacy_of_Perception_). I agree with
> > him on what he said on this.
>
> You probably better expound; I hope you won't stop already.
This will be tricky (and LONG). I'm not as solid on psychology as I am about
things like reality, and philosophy in general. No-one really is because they
can't go back and examine the minds of infants as easily as they can examine
their own mind. Infant's minds can be tested for some things, but we can't ask
things like "do you acknowledge my existence as another form of you (another
human)? do you acknowledge my consciousness and my moral rights?" Babies'll
just sit there. By the time they can answer, the question is irrelevant; we
wanted to know what they thought when they were an infant.
Anyway-- let me give you a brief highlighted history of philosophy of the
development of the mind:
One of the first accepted ideas about human thought development was the idea of
a 'tabula rasa' (blank slate). I forget who proposed the idea. The idea was
that as you develop, the slate gets filled with your experience, and builds
your person.
Immanuel Kant refined it a bit. He said that it's not really a blank slate,
more of a blank form. The mind already knows how to classify things according
to quality, quantity, emotion, etc. Our different categories of experiences are
categorized in our mind. Having a blank slate kind of resembles a jumble,
whereas our minds seem to be more organized into these ideas.
Hegel went further. He said that we aren't born with any sort of 'form' in our
minds. That form, along with our experience, gets built. We start off more or
less blank, and as we experience things, we develop new categories to classify
experience, and our skills at logic improve as we gain experience categorizing
these events.
Each of these ideas have more or less become the respective norms in their
times. Almost everyone in the philosophical community pretty much accepted the
most recent ideas of these philosophers (on this matter) at the time they were
presented. Almost all philosophers today will agree with the base Hegel put
forth, and are sufficiently convinced that the preceeding ideas are faulty in
certain areas.
Anyway. Development of the mind, w/ respect to morality.
The 1st real desire, by humans (and probably most/all animals) is the want to
be happy. That's not saying much ("we want what we want") but it's fundamental.
The infant (probably still in the womb, even) experiences both pleasureable and
unpleasureable experiences. It realizes that it wants pleasure. However, even
at this stage, what makes one infant happy differs from what makes another one
happy. One is content to be left alone, one requires constant attention. This
is probably linked to genetics, I'd guess.
The next step towards a higher morality that the infant makes is more or less a
logical one. It sees itself in the mirror, or it sees its own body, sees other
bodies, and begins to conclude that maybe these other things around it are
other selves-- other living beings with their own consciousness. Again, with
reflection back to Hegel, it's not an immediate jump. The developing mind
doesn't suddenly leap to the conclusion that there are other beings with
consciousness.
The next jump towards morality is again an emotional one. I'd guess it stems
from human/animal nature, but I can't say, really. That is a desire for other
beings to achieve their own wants. People enjoy other beings experiencing
happiness. You might counter with the example of power hungry people who want
to see other people suffer, but I'd say that these people are stuck back at
self-concern. They have a want for power. Some people want to make other people
suffer because they want to exercise their control. It makes them happy to be
in control. They've missed a step I haven't gotten to yet, actually, that of
equality.
This next step, equality, is the slowest of all to develop. (That's what I
admire about the idea of Jesus-- I tend to think of him having a very hightened
sense of equality.. more so than anyone _I've_ ever met) As a child learns that
other people are people, just like him/her, s/he begins to realize that the
good of another person achieving their wants is equal to s/he achieving his/her
wants. I think that this is really where justice starts. The child realizes
when it hurts someone else, that the other person is feeling pain; an equal
pain to the pain it feels when it is hurt. Hence the idea of rights. Take the
right of property. People usually like property. The child likes having its own
room that it knows will always be constant, and that it has control over. It
takes pleasure in having a favorite stuffed animal that the child can count on
always being there, and on being in one piece, in the same condition it left
the toy. By acknowledging a right to property, we essentially have a social
agreement. "I won't take your things, but you can't take mine." This limits the
child from taking/destroying/whatever other people's property (a slight loss);
but prevents others from doing the same to his/her property (a bigger gain, I
would argue).
The next step is one towards charity. When one realizes that by depriving
him/herself of something, they give happiness to others. Of course, by
equality, this only works when the happiness that results outweighs the loss by
you (and by others, in some situations). Again, this is where Jesus wins big.
Extreme sense of charity that I've never seen the likes of anywhere. A fine
ideal, even if I don't think it's possible.
Anyway, that's pretty much it for how the mind develops and arrives at morality
(the way I see it) To achieve the final morality, it requires both logic and
emotion, but is rooted in emotion. Now. The problem is that because there are
so many steps along the way that involve emotion and development, people
achieve different wants. Let's take the example of the right of property.
Hypothetically, let's imagine someone who doesn't care about having property.
They won't have any reason not to take something that's just sitting there,
even if it hurts someone else. Because they don't care about their own
property, they don't have any reason to appreciate the value that the other
person places on their property. But that's an extreme. For the most part,
people's ideas on the strength of the bond of the right of property are what
differ. And here is where morality begins to take a new step. By putting forth
a 'right' of property, we assume that everyone is made happy by possessing
things. In a society where people didn't care about possession, this right of
property would be more harmful than helpful. It's kind of a pitiful picutre,
but I imagine a bunch of people standing around, all sad that they can't get
what the other people have, and don't care about their own things. But because
of the right of property dictated in an ultimate ethic (which they presumably
follow) they can't have what the other people have. You can get around this
example by saying "well why don't they just switch things? duh!" But then the
objects are no longer property. If you say that they can just trade them at
will, depending on when they want to trade, etc, then the objects were never
really *theirs* in the first place. I don't think that the right of property
would be good in such a society. HENCE... I think that there is no ultimate
ethic. We may be able to define a tremendously good set of guidelines for
ethical behavior in OUR society AT PRESENT, but even those guidelines may bend
eventually.
Wow. that was rather long. Sorry 'bout that...
> I still disagree. Simply because someone has formed a moral code that he
> can live by does not mean that it is the correct or best code for him to be
> living by.
See my arguments later on universal morality.
> Not the only choice, I showed you how the other choice (logic) worked.
Sigh. No, you even acknowledged your base in emotion. You showed exactly what I
showed later. That emotion gives rise to the fundamental base of morality, and
that logic is used on these emotional reactions to give rise to a more elevated
morality. They are used in combination. But the BASE is in emotion. Without
that step, you can't achieve morality. Without logic you can achieve a
morality, but it only goes as far as "I should get what I want". You don't
achieve the idea of rights or justice or whatever, until you work in logic.
Hence, morality REQUIRES emotion, it doesn't (although it almost always does in
humans) require logic.
> > I'd go with budhism here... emotion is stemmed from desire. Again, "STEMMED
> > from"! The base may be only in desire for an instant, but it's still there!
>
> So what? We have lots of desires, we each have different desires. One we
> all share is to live happily. Since we all share that same desire, we must
> work together so that we can fulfill it. Those who don't share it are
> flawed, and don't have to participate. Those who do need to devise a way to
> make it workable. So, we created morals. Morals are evolving, and to live
> in an ideal society they must fully evolve. Ideally, once the perfect moral
> code is found, one that will work for everybody, we all will live by that
> same code. If we live by various morals, then things get messy. I think
> the moral code Larry uses is beautiful, and the closest thing to perfect
> ever devised. He has more experience at conveying it than I, but its
> simple, not infinite. If we all lived by it, we would have a lot less to
> gripe about and almost all of us would be a lot happier.
Umm... How does that refute my above point? I don't see a connection. I was
responding to your potential claim (that you weren't making anyway) about "No,
emotion is not desire". I was maintaining that emotion is (in essence) desire.
As far as what you say, we just disagree.
> Well, you are talking about laws or rules - a moral code can be as simple
> as the golden rule. You want a book that says what is morally correct in
> any hypothetical situation, which would be a waste of paper. Anybody whose
> morals aren't flawed can deduce what is right in any situation. I trust my
> own judgment.
THAT's the problem. "I trust my own judgment." Aren't you just saying that
you'll follow your own judgment as the ultimate guide? If you are the
interpreter of the 'ultimate' rulebook, why does that differ from what I'm
saying? If you want an ultimate morality, it can't be self-derived. You can't
have any say in it. If you make a list of "ultimate" morals, there are going to
be situations that arise when people will argue about the interpretation of the
rule. *Their*own*judgment*will*tell*them*different*things*! Each person may
have a different idea of what the ultimate code is telling them. And they will
each believe whole-heartedly that they are right, and the other person is
wrong. Hence, in order to be perfect, you have to account for the specific
case-- the infintesimal specific case. You can make a set of guidelines... you
can even make a *WONDERFUL* set of guidelines. But they're still just
guidelines. There will always be disputes about the specifics, even if they're
ridiculously minor. I think that you're of the vain that would argue that
whatever people believe (as I say:) "whole-heartedly" IS the ultimate truth.
Religious people (I think) argue that God dictates that inner conscience, hence
the link to God. Anyway, the idea is that you can't involve your own judgment
in any "ultimate" morality because by doing so, you allow others to do the
same-- and then you have varying opinions of the same moral code.
> I would like to trust the judgement of others, but how can I
> when they believe in things that they can not prove exist, or try to tell me
> it is OK for them to violate my rights (often the two go hand in hand). I
> don't take that first reaosn as an automatic reason to distrust someone but
> I certaily am wary if they advocate the second. However, I do trust the
> judgment of those who stand where I stand.
More of a side note- do you trust ALL those who stand where you stand? That'd
be a tough claim to make, I'd be willing to be that there could be people where
you stand that you wouldn't agree with. Then maybe you'd say they didn't stand
where you stand. I think eventually, this would lead you to an isolated stand.
I don't think anyone would have EXACTLY the same ideas about everything that
you do. And if your stand is isolated, then what you're saying has no meaing
other than "I trust no-one". And if you DON'T trust ALL those who stand where
you stand, then what's the other criterion for trust? What is required of
someone before you'll trust them? Isn't the idea that *because* you believe the
same things about morality, etc, that you'll trust them? If there is another
aspect to trust, what is it? And why isn't that part of your philosophy?
Anyway, this has been fun. I think I know pretty much where you stand now. I
don't agree with you on everything, but I think I know where you stand. If you
think I don't get it, give it another go.
Laterz,
DaveE
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