Joseph_Knecht
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Joseph_Knecht has not written any posts yet.
Joseph_Knecht has not written any posts yet.
I've voiced my annoyance with the commenting system in the past, in particular that it is non-threaded and so often very difficult to figure out what someone is responding to if they don't include context (which they often don't), so I won't give details again.
On the topic of the 2 of 10 rule, if it's to prevent one person dominating a thread, shouldn't the rule be "no more than 2 of last 10 should be by the same person in the same thread" (so 3 posts by the same person would be fine as long as they are in 3 different threads)?
Optimistically, I would say that if the murderer perfectly knew all the relevant facts, including the victim's experience, ve wouldn't do it
The murderer may have all the facts, understand exactly what ve is doing and what the experience of the other will be, and just decide that ve doesn't care. Which fact is ve not aware of? Ve may understand all the pain and suffering it will cause, ve may understand that ve is wiping out a future for the other person and doing something that ve would prefer not to be on the receiving end of, may realize that it is behavior that if universalized would destroy society, may realize that... (read more)
But if I understand you, you are saying that human morality is human and does not apply to all sentient beings. However, as long as all we are talking about and all we really deal with is humans, then there is no difference in practice between a morality that is specific to humans and a universal morality applicable to all sentient beings, and so the argument about universality seems academic, of no import at least until First Contact is achieved.
What I am really saying is that the notion of "morality" is so hopelessly contaminated with notions of objective standards and criteria of morality above and beyond humanity that we would do good... (read 665 more words →)
Laura ABJ: To expand on the text you quoted, I think that killing babies is ugly, and therefore would not do it without sufficient reason, which I don't think the scenario provides. The ugliness of killing babies doesn't need a moral explanation, and the moral explanation just builds on (and adds nothing but a more convenient way of speaking about) the foundation of aversion, no matter how it's dressed up and made to look like something else.
The idea is not compelling to me and so would not haunt me forever, because like I said, I'm not yet convinced that some X number of refreshing breezes on a hot day is strictly equivalent... (read more)
Hal: as an amoralist, I wouldn't do it. If there is not enough time to explain to me why it is necessary and convince me that it is necessary, no deal. Even if I thought it probably would substantially increase the future happiness of humanity, I still wouldn't do it without a complete explanation. Not because I think there is a moral fabric to the universe that says killing babies is wrong, but because I am hardwired to have an extremely strong aversion to like killing babies. Even if I actually was convinced that it would increase happiness, I still might not do it, because I'm still undecided on the idea that... (read more)
Traditional notions of morality are confused, and observation of the way people act does show that they are poor explanations, so I think we are in perfect agreement there. (I do mean "notion" among thinkers, not among average people who haven't given much though to such things.) Your second paragraph isn't in conflict with my statement that morality is traditionally understood to be in some sense objectively true and objectively binding on us, and that it would be just as true and just as binding if we had evolved very differently.
It's a different topic altogether to consider to whom we have moral obligations (or who should be treated in ways constrained by... (read more)
Constant: I basically agree with the gist of your rephrasing it in terms of being relative to the species rather than independent of the species, but I would emphasize that what you end up with is not a "moral system" in anything like the traditional sense, since it is fundamental to traditional notions of morality that THE ONE TRUE WAY does not depend on human beings and the quirks of our evolutionary history and that it is privileged from the point of view of reality (because its edicts were written in stone by God or because the one true species-independent reason proves it must be so).
btw, you mean partial application rather than... (read more)
I agree with mtraven's last post that morality is an innate functionality of the human brain that can't be "disproved", and yet I have said again and again that I don't believe in morality, so let me explain.
Morality is just a certain innate functionality in our brains as it expresses itself based on our life experiences. This is entirely consistent with the assertion that what most people mean by morality -- an objective standard of conduct that is written into the fabric of reality itself -- does not exist: there is no such thing!
A lot of confusion in this thread is due to some people taking "there is no morality" to mean... (read more)
mtraven: many of the posters in this thread -- myself included -- have said that they don't believe in morality (meaning morality and not "values" or "motivation"), and yet I very highly doubt that many of us are clinically psychopaths.
Not believing in morality does not mean doing what those who believe in morality consider to be immoral. Psychopathy is not "not believing in morality": it entails certain kinds of behaviors, which naive analyses of attribute to "lack of morality", but which I would argue are a result of aberrant preferences that manifest as aberrant behavior and can be explained without recourse to the concept of morality.
"I want the pie" is something that nobody else is affected by and thus nobody else has an interest in. "I should get the pie" is something that anybody else interested in the pie has an interest in. In this sense, the moral preferences are those that other moral beings have a stake in, those that affect other moral beings. I think some kind of a distinction like this explains the different ways we talk about and argue these two... (read 662 more words →)