Am I understanding correctly that this idea of wholesomeness is purely definitory/axiomatic (like mathematics) containing no (extraordinary) claims at all, so it doesn't make sense to ask "Is this true?" but rather "Is it useful?", and whether "to act wholesomely is good" is just hypothesis you are even actually testing?
Because then I see its great advantage over religious moral systems, that do contain such claims that actually might be false, but people are demanded to believe them.
Wow, thanks for your willingness to test/falsify your statements, and I apologize for my rash judgment. Your idea just sounded to me to be too good to be true, so I wanted to be cautious.
And I would be glad to say I am completely satisfied with your answer. However, that is not the case yet, maybe just because the "mistakes" of the people trying to apply wholesomeness might still need a definition - a criterion according to which something is or is not a mistake.
However, if you provided such a definition, I might be another tester of this style of thinking.
Could someone, please, confirm or disprove my impression that this idea might be not falsifiable at all? And if it is not, could someone, please, explain to me what reasons to apply this idea are still there (I am skeptical and curious, not completely denying)?
However, I appreciate this attempt to offer such an interesting moral idea/hypothesis/theory like this.
Hello, my name is Peter and recently I read Basics of Rationalist Discourse and iteratively checked/updated the current post based on the points stated in those basics:
I (possibly falsely) feel that moral (i.e. "what should be") theories should be reducible because I see the analogy with the demand of "what is" theories to be reducible due to Occam's razor. I admit that my feeling might be false (and I know analogy might not be a sufficient reason), and I am ready to admit that it is. However, despite reading the whole Mere Goodness from RAZ I cannot remember any reasons (maybe they are there, and I don't blame the author (EY), if not), but many interesting statements (e.g. about becoming the pleasure brain center itself). And I remember there was such a long dialog there that might have explained this to me but I didn't comprehend its bottom line.
This post is not intended to have any conclusion more general than about my state of mind, and if there is such an impact, I don't mean it.
I find splitting the Great Idea a very useful tool to quantify its relevance ("For how many parts do I feel they are true?"), and this way, to apply falsification (for which I find "If your idea wasn't true, how would you find out? Because if you don't ask, it might be not true, but you didn't find out." to be the most logical and intuitive description. And so in case of splitting, you can say "I would admit my idea was incorrect, if not all its 12 parts felt correct separately. Easy.".).
I agree with both "emotion" and "pretend" hypotheses. It is (according to my world view) extremely difficult to pretend emotions you are not possessing. Thus, the easiest way to pretend your beliefs might be to manipulate your own emotions.
Wow, thanks very much. Your post boosted my usage of this handbook rapidly from that day, I intensely enjoy doing these exercises, and I find them extremely helpful and effective. Thanks once again.
"His own stupid" - the idea that if someone is stupid, he deserves all the bad consequences of being stupid.
Disproof:
Let's assume this is true. Then there would have been at least one voluntary action that turned him from wise to stupid. But why would someone voluntarily choose to be stupid? Only because he wouldn't have known what being stupid means, so he would be already stupid. Thus there would be no such first action. (Assumtion rejected.)
Very nicely written. A good example of this might be invention of genetic flaw correction, due to which morally controversial abortion could become less desired option.
I would like to ask whether there is a good reason for step 1 - outline your plan. I think it would be much easier to use, if we started with just a simple plan or even with no plan, and kept improving/extending it by those iterations.