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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Wed, 15 Sep 1999 17:58:14 GMT
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1402 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John DiRienzo writes:
> This message is huge again!
> I wish I had as much free time at work as you, David. I still have an
> unfinished reply to one of your previous posts in a draft folder. Hopefully
> I can finish this one in one sitting...
I like my job :)
> Lets look at the dictionary anyway. If I had said I was using definition
> 1, I could easily have said that animals don't reason, and all their actions
> are instinctive (their actions just come about naturally, which basically is
> true, and hard to argue). But, I didn't use that shortcut, because I really
> don't think animals reason like people do. Covered that pretty well, too.
> So, I used definition 2, because its more about what instinct means. You
> knew what I meant though. Even if animals can reason to some extent (and I
> don't grant that to be fact by any means), they aren't anywhere near humans,
I'm gonna do the "remember this as you read my post" thing... "even if animals
can reason to some extent... they aren't anywhere near humans"
> so my original argument, saying we aren't (or shouldn't be) animals still
> stands. If a person only lives off of his instincts, which by your
> definition means the impulses and reflexes and a tiny bit of reason, then he
> still isn't fully human, and IMO a waste of space. But I digress.
>
> <monkey trick snipped>
> Monkeys are what man came from right? Maybe they are just men who act
> like animals
Again, remember!
> (because they are stupid and don't use their brains to make
> life easier and better). If monkeys evolved into people over 10,000 years
> ago, I am sure there quite a variety of monkeys around in different stages
> of evolution. I guess those scientists found one only a few thousand years
> away from being human (or something else?!). I think people are in a
> variety of stages of evolution, too, which is why some are smart, some are
> dumb, some are passive and some can't stay out of fights (or the army... or
> jail).(1)
> [Cut and past in footnote]
> (1) - this people in different stages of evolution gives us a lot to work
> with. You say that morals are relative and that one man's moral is better
> for him than another. So, when a guy is 10,000 years less evolved than you,
> it is OK for him to poke your eyes out and eat them because he was hungry,
> right? Morals aren't relative, the better the morals, the better the
> society, and right now, nobody even pays attention to morals because those
> morals that have been taught (forced) for so long are so obviously backwards
> that people don't want to hear the word moral.
Hmmm.... "people are in a variety of stages of evolution".. again, remember
> > Interesting point. "Choosing to think." Wouldn't the act of choosing be a
> > thought in and of itself?
>
> No. Its not a conscious thought - people don't decide they will stop
> thinking - but people do decide to continue thinking, to expand their
> knowledge and abilities. No reasoning goes into the former, as a decision
> was not made.
> ...
> > Let's go back to the earliest homo-sapiens.
>
> We just did - the monkey.
Well, my intent was something along the lines of the actual homo-sapiens, as in
the followups to cro-magnon man, etc, not really monkeys. As it turns out,
though, with the 'maybe monkeys are people who don't use their thoughts' idea
takes this a step in the direction I didn't expect you'd take anyway... I'll
explain more later...
> What is the encouragement now? What is the stimuli? Money. People can
> think but don't (not all, but many). The whole point of my morals is to
> reward those who do. Taking money (wealth transfer) from those who think
> and produce to give to those who don't is not very encouraging. Using a
> better sytem, those who think and produce will be rewarded more while those
> who don't think (whether lazy or stupid) won't receive as much reward. Its
> fair. Bill Gates (yes, I like him) has probably paid for all the roads that
> grunge idiots will use for the next 20 years, but he flies, doesn't use
> roads, right? Whats fair about that? Whats encouraging about that?
>
> <snipped questions about stupid people and retarded people>
>
> My grandmother used to say, "You can't fix stupid." Some people are just
> stupid. They'd probably be just as happy in a cave as a house if it meant
> they didn't have to think or work. Actually, I don't agree with that 100% -
> I think a lot of the people you are thinking of as stupid have just given
> up - don't see much use in it all. They may not have been born brilliant,
> but our system I am sure did not give them much encouragement. If our
> system actually encouraged people to think and believe in themselves, I
> doubt there would be nearly so many people that would be labeled stupid. Of
> course, I know Mensa people who aren't interested in becoming billionaires,
> but if they have the ability to change the world so much (for the better,
> hopefully) they should be highly rewarded, whereas a street cleaner does
> very little for the world, and if thats all he can do, thats unfortunate,
> but I am sure he'd get by.
> About retarded people. In our system they have it pretty bad. I think a
> system that rewards people for thinking would have a place for retarded
> people. There is a lot of prejudice towards retarded people in our world.
> In a society that encourages thought, there is less prejudice (because
> prejudice comes from ignorance and the fear it causes). These people would
> be more accepted. There would also be more people thinking about ways to
> improve their lives. Overall, I would not say retarded people are dumb, or
> choose not to think. Most I have met try their best, and find a smile or a
> pat on the back to be a sufficient reward. I would definitely not say they
> are inhuman because they aren't capable of doing things the most human of us
> can. Most humans can't do what Michael Jordan did - or Albert Einstein.
> However, I would be more compelled to call those who drink a six pack of
> beer every night a perform mindless jobs everyday inhuman.
Well, SOMEWHERE in there you skipped/snipped the big important issue. Where is
the line between those who are obliged to morality and those who aren't? I
rather expected you to say that monkeys had no obligation to morality, but you
seemed to suggest that they did? At least insofar as you had stated before that
those who choose not to think are immoral, and that monkeys were people that
chose not to think; thereby immoral?
Let's push it back further. Monkeys are evolved from essentially what?
According to science, some amoeba-like creature living hundreds of millions of
years ago. Does that single celled organism choose not to think? I'd say it
probably doesn't have any thought capabilities at all, save perhaps in some
ridiculous sense of the word. And they evolved into us, humans.. eventually.
Now your universal morality. When does that *first* appear? What creature was
the first to be capable of being judged as moral or immoral? Obviously, I'm not
asking for a specific answer, since we don't know what the mental capacities of
those animals were, and you want to base moral obligation on mental capacity
(or so it seems, correct me if I'm wrong). But how *would* we know when the
line was crossed? What specific capacity/thought/conclusion does the being need
to make in order to be judged by the ultimate moral code? What is it within
thought that we (as intelligent humans) posess that makes us obliged to be
moral? Maybe that is termed badly... not so much obliged, but judgeable on the
moral scale. I could choose not to be moral, hence I'm not obliged to think
morally, but according to the 'ultimate' moral code, I'm immoral. Hence, I'm
still judgeable. But the amoeba isn't (I think you'd claim). What is the
necessary step? I don't think you can say it's thought per se... you've already
acknowledge that animals can think to some extent, just not to the extent
humans can. But what you're implying is that somewhere in the middle, between
animal and human, there's a line to be crossed. If you say it's a gradual
obligation to morality as the thought level increases, then you're arguing for
me-- relative morality. Hence, you need a line. Where is it? And if you find a
line, does it hold for ALL humans? Can you envision a human that could be below
that line? (hence where I used retarded people in my example)
> We already covered this, too (I remember what I said more than what you
> said, and can see how, through all these long posts, you could forget). But
> I will go voer it again, maybe easier to understand this time, maybe not.
> My morals are based on the idea that man is a greater entity than animals
> because of his ability to reason. Rather than living like wild animals and
> doing every instinctive act we want, we have decided we must use the
> reasoning side of our mind to find a way for all of us to co-exist (exist,
> not subsist). We, like animals, have instincts so we, as individuals, can
> suvive. We must negate our instincts and use the only tool of survival
> remaining, our ability to reason, to survive. Morals are the fruit of our
> reasoning in this pursuit. We devise moral codes for this purpose (some are
> better than others, and I believe there is an ideal one out there somewhere;
> I don't believe morals are relative) - so we can all survive. The morals I
> have so far (and try to live by) recognize that all men must be treated
> equally and have the same rights. These rights consist of the right to own
> things and the right not to be "hurt" by other people (which can mean the
> man himself or anything that he owns). I think the term life affirming
> supports this, but doesn't encompass all of it. When you recognize and care
> about the rights of others, life affirming is pretty simple - you can ask
> yourself...
> Will this action be good for me?
> Will this action not hurt anyone else?
> The answer has to be yes to both to be life affirming (and moral - thus life
> affirming morals)).
> Also, when an action hurts another, it also hurts the person who did it, by
> potential consequences or knowledge of his act (guilt), so, like I tried to
> say before, there is only one question that need be asked to know if an act
> will be life affirming...
> Will this action be good for me?
> Of course, that person has to take these things seriously, and not try,
> like you do, to justify or weigh every act, or else he is cheating
> (everyone, including himself).
Ok, cool. This is kind of the vague picture I had of your morality, but I
hadn't seen you state it in this way before... I think you covered all the
bases here all at once. As far as the original connection to utilitarianism,
though, it doesn't QUITE match up... the only part you're missing from
utilitarianism is the acknowledgement of charity in the moral code. The only
objection I have is again, with the "man is a greater entity than animals
because of his ability to reason"... it's just the line issue again though...
And really, I don't deny that there COULD be a line, I just can't see one, and
I don't think that I would agree with the line. But I couldn't logically argue
it, just disagree with it. The way I see it, because the levels of thought vary
so greatly from one being to another, and even within a species, the moral
obligation is stronger with some as opposed to others. You can say that it
flips on like a switch once you've reached a certain level of thought, but you
need to define that level, try to explain why that level.
The idea of what the moral obligation *is*, though, is more or less solved (for
the purposes of this debate). I can't logically argue that all our
'deep-down-perfectly-thought-out' morals are all different, nor can you argue
that they're the same. We can just disagree on that one.
Anyway, laterz
DaveE
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