How do you know murder is wrong?

[jts]

41 minutes ago, moralist said:

That's why I asked Jerry what his point was. He's sitting on both sides of the fence.

Greg

I didn't say intuition is mysticism. Peikoff said intuition is mysticism.

 

[anthony]

8 hours ago, jts said:

I did a quick Google search on <intuition definition> and got a bunch of definitions. Not one included 'without experience'.

 

 

Pretty irrelevant, no? Reasoning, is to reason about - something (an experience). Also, that the process of reason is an "experience", too. I'd think experience has to be considered implied. What comes first, jts? The concept or the word? I ask because it seems you've got married to the word, and any usage of it you accept at the user's face value. There is no getting away from it, as defined, intuition must be objectively viewed as mystical, equal to "innate knowledge" I guess.

[anthony]

9 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

What about what experience can do when it works at the subconscious level?

It is a good question. Still, the experience DID occur consciously, originally, it just got buried. We know that Rand advised to check one's premises, and one time in an TV interview I recall she specified that the premises were (sometimes, often, usually? I'm not certain) subconscious. (I am sure we all do it here and there, taking a thing for granted and unexamined until we're faced with an explicit error one day--and the premise has to be finally checked and corrected). She also explained a "sense of life" as "pre-conceptual and subconscious", formed in early years, and not easily changed when older. Appears then, she thought those subconscious effects of one's experiences were not to be taken lightly (though not always 'malevolent', or often neutral).

[anthony]

Eh, William, You love the data and data leaves me cold. Especially sociological/demographic data. On different tracks the two of us, going opposite directions. But don't fret about it, it's no -well - train smash.;)

[anthony]

On 2017/03/30 at 7:00 PM, moralist said:

...and to return to the original question of this thread.

How do you know murder is wrong?

Because you can see by virtue of your God given Conscience that it is wrong...

 

 

Greg

"Hell of a thing killing a man, you take all he's got and all he's ever gonna have". (Will Money - Munny? 'Unforgiven')

There's the Objectivist reason for you Greg, and it sits well Christians, I reckon.

[moralist]

15 hours ago, jts said:

I did not have a point. I asked a question. If conscience is not reason and not emotion, then maybe it's mysticism.

 

I noticed how you substituted "reason" for "thought", Jerry.

Why did you do that when I never said it? If you want to refute something with which you don't agree, what good is it to make something up that isn't real just to say it isn't real? Heck, I'd agree that your description is mysticism!

Is  every thought and emotion that you experience reason-able? Do you act on every thought and emotion?

Why not? It's all just you isn't it?

 

By the way, I'm enjoying our conversation, as this topic is of great interest to me personally because my life is an ongoing experiment concerning objective moral reality and the consequences of agreeing with it.

 

Greg

[moralist]

10 hours ago, jts said:

I didn't say intuition is mysticism. Peikoff said intuition is mysticism.

 

So do you agree or disagree with Peikoff?

And to draw a distinction... Conscience is moral intuition. There may be intuition about chess games and other non moral situations... but that's not what I'm talking about.

Greg

[moralist]

3 hours ago, anthony said:

"Hell of a thing killing a man, you take all he's got and all he's ever gonna have". (Will Money - Munny? 'Unforgiven')

There's the Objectivist reason for you Greg, and it sits well Christians, I reckon.

That's true. Killing a man is the ultimate in robbery. But begs the question of whether the act of killing a man is doing good or doing evil? Is it a just or an unjust act? for that is the sole criterion by which to judge every act. Is the world a better place for it? Are innocents protected by it? Are you a better person for doing it. Is it heroism of goodness... or the angry blame (unjust accusation) which precedes every evil act?

 The yardstick with which to measure even its contemplation had better be the objective moral reality of Conscience.

Greg

[william.scherk]

5 hours ago, anthony said:

Eh, William, You love the data and data leaves me cold. Especially sociological/demographic data.

Are you saying there is no data that supports your statements -- the statements I had questions about?

To be clear, I was hoping you would answer one or maybe two of the questions I gave. It seemed to me that discussion could advance once I knew for sure which societies you had in mind.

Please give those questions a once-over, if you would.  I was asking for data in the sense of identification. Who, how, who, which, which ...

1. Who is a 'skeptical secularist' in your view?
2. How  do you learn and demonstrate a person has a 'personal vacuum' where faith used to be?
3. Who are these 'secularists' in numbers?  
4. Which of them have supplied scorn for strong convictions, which have been 'soft' and which (in particular) European nations have been damaged (by them)?
5. Which countries with large formations of 'skeptical secularists' are the ones we will be discussing, Tony?

The underlying issue is interesting to me, since the 'data' may very well support your points. I am also interested in Good Arguments, the Principle of Charity, and working to expand a shared knowledge base.  

Or, how to better engage with my peers here. 

[moralist]

5 hours ago, anthony said:

Eh, William, You love the data and data leaves me cold. Especially sociological/demographic data. 

Same here Tony. I don't even bother to look at all that crap he trowels like plaster. 

"Studies either confirm what you already know by your own common sense...

...or they're wrong."

--Dennis Prager

But William can't help it. He's was educated by his government to be a bureaucrat.

Greg

[Peter]

I am glad I remembered to click unread content. This thread is interesting. Too bad it couldn’t have been highlighted as a new topic as it used to be done, Michael.

Greg wrote: God created objective reality, so both He and His creation are rational. The well ordered moral design of objective reality itself denotes sublime rationality. It takes a rational person to acknowledge that fact. end quote

Delete the first quoted sentence and you get “The well-ordered moral design of objective reality itself denotes sublime rationality. It takes a rational person to acknowledge that fact.”

Reality is kind of cool. We need to see it for what it is. To survive nature, nature must be obeyed. For humans to coexist they need to understand the importance of individual rights and moral interactions. All must agree on other human’s actions or at least go along with (or tolerate) them. That *sense* is so familiar to use we don’t look at it in wonder like we would upon first viewing The Grand Canyon.

Peter

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote: A dislike for killing a member of one's own family, clan or society generally provokes disapproval. That is almost a wired in response and it makes very good evolutionary sense. end quote

Captain's Log. Star date 450. I agree. The Twilight Zone dramatically illustrated groups of people developing morality in a maze or alternate universe when ‘more objective law and government’ had broken down. So does “Atlas Shrugged.” The Twilight Zone characters used that hard wired sense of fairness and family you speak of to coexist when everything else had changed. The Men of the Mind were of a higher order, as are the characters in Star Trek.

We have come so far, but just look across the pond and we see a resurgent Russia and China, quite ready to expropriate our wealth and freedom. That is not good. As a group we humans have learned little from countless wars and totalitarianism. But I am hopeful.

Peter

[Peter]

jts wrote: Dr. McCoy said Mr. Spock's guesses are better than most people's facts. The intuitions of a chess grandmaster might be better than most people's calculations. end quote

I do see enhanced capabilities in gamers like chess masters and even successful poker players. Advanced forms of succeeding might be to have cameras hooked up to a computer to monitor a competitor’s eyes, body movements, and breathing. Is it cheating if you use that data to win? Maybe, if the rules exclude such an advantage, but if we encounter an enemy or even an extraterrestrial someday you can bet we will be going over and over the “tape.”    

Peter

[anthony]

8 hours ago, moralist said:

That's true. Killing a man is the ultimate in robbery. But begs the question of whether the act of killing a man is doing good or doing evil? Is it a just or an unjust act? for that is the sole criterion by which to judge every act. Is the world a better place for it? Are innocents protected by it? Are you a better person for doing it. Is it heroism of goodness... or the angry blame (unjust accusation) which precedes every evil act?

 The yardstick with which to measure even its contemplation had better be the objective moral reality of Conscience.

Greg

What you ask gets at the heart of the matter, except to always start and think of each individual, first - before "the world"  - since each one is an indivisible, self-motivating and unique existent who must choose positively for the good, his life. The world follows from this.

We've assumed throughout that this is "murder", so there's no doubt about the moral injustice.

Evil is the chosen act by one person or done to one. Returning to the victim and his killer and why it's a "hell of a thing".

True, a "robbery", but not of physical goods and property he has, alone, that's far too prosaic, think of it from the Objectivist ~value~ pov. That is really one grand abstraction which encapsulates all the victim knows at that point and what he has yet to discover, what he is and the potential of what he would further become. (And will own). His top value in himself and his capacity *to* value and the source of future values to himself and others, all get wiped out. He has been cheated of every simple pleasure and high enjoyment in life. I imagine that if you take the Christian Soul as a stand point, you will better get this - except remember this guy's soul is mortal, gone for ever, and that is the objective reality...

[jts]

11 hours ago, anthony said:

Pretty irrelevant, no? Reasoning, is to reason about - something (an experience). Also, that the process of reason is an "experience", too. I'd think experience has to be considered implied. What comes first, jts? The concept or the word? I ask because it seems you've got married to the word, and any usage of it you accept at the user's face value. There is no getting away from it, as defined, intuition must be objectively viewed as mystical, equal to "innate knowledge" I guess.

If intuition is mysticism, then it seems mysticism works for chess grandmasters. But I do not believe intuition is mysticism. For me, intuition is a mystery.

 

[anthony]

1 hour ago, jts said:

If intuition is mysticism, then it seems mysticism works for chess grandmasters. But I do not believe intuition is mysticism. For me, intuition is a mystery.

 

More reasonable IMO to take the grandmasters (and others) wrongly-called "intuition", and call it what I think is true, "induction". In the chess scenario it means previously taking in and conceptualizing massive amounts of experiences and internally-contrived, imagined and projected 'experiences', from which to make a deduction of this one move, now. At the basic end of game play and move probability, I knew this when I played years of backgammon. I would mentally practice by running game positions (and rolling 'random dice') in my head, and then sometimes in real play would come to that very position or a very similar one, and know what to do without thought..

[jts]

6 hours ago, moralist said:

I noticed how you substituted "reason" for "thought", Jerry.

It is possible to have thoughts without reason but so far as I know, a rational person bases decisions on reason.

I do not see reason as automatic, or as you might say, compulsive. A case in point is smoking. Why do intelligent people start smoking? It's not because of lack of intelligence. It is because they did not engage brain before taking that first cigarette. The faculty of reason is not automatic like heart and stomach. It is volitional like arms and legs.

I see conscience as at least in part a product of moral education. Different people have a different conscience, depending on different moral education.

Conscience may be in part biological. Built in empathy. Sociopaths are abnormal cases who lack empathy. This built in biological empathy may be considered a biological morality and it has some resemblance to the golden rule.

A case in point is in the military, when the commanding officer gave the order to fire, only 15% of the soldiers pulled the trigger. The reason was most people have an aversion, perhaps biological, to do violence to other people. This was unacceptable and they had to go thru training to make killers out of them.

 

[jts]

7 hours ago, moralist said:

So do you agree or disagree with Peikoff?

And to draw a distinction... Conscience is moral intuition. There may be intuition about chess games and other non moral situations... but that's not what I'm talking about.

Greg

The way Kasparov describes intuition and the way Ayn Rand describes mysticism are so different that it is obvious they are not 2 words for the same thing. I think Peikoff is ignorant about intuition.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

28 minutes ago, jts said:

 

Conscience may be in part biological. Built in empathy. Sociopaths are abnormal cases who lack empathy. This built in biological empathy may be considered a biological morality and it has some resemblance to the golden rule.

reciprocal altruism.  The great apes (including humans)  have that built in.  That is the biological-psychological  origin of morality. 

[jts]

30 minutes ago, anthony said:

More reasonable IMO to take the grandmasters (and others) wrongly-called "intuition", and call it what I think is true, "induction". In the chess scenario it means previously taking in and conceptualizing massive amounts of experiences and internally-contrived, imagined and projected 'experiences', from which to make a deduction of this one move, now. At the basic end of game play and move probability, I knew this when I played years of backgammon. I would practice by running game positions (and rolling 'random dice') in my head, and then sometimes in real play would come to that very position and know what to do without thought..

That may be. I don't know what Kasparov would say to that.

There is such a thing as induction in chess. Steinitz's theory of chess strategy was based on the scientific method, at least according to Kasparov. Tarrasch and his emphasis on mobility. Nimzovich's "My System". And many other chess philosophers.

There is even such a thing in chess as inductive reasoning within a single move. Capablanca did a huge mass of calculations and concluded inductively that that his bishop was doing little and his opponent's knight was doing much, hence the exchange of bishop for knight.

Kasparov considered a sacrifice of a queen and found that he had a surprising amount of positional compensation for the queen, tho not enough. He based this evaluation, not on point count but on inductive reasoning based on calculation. Then -after- he asked himself where this positional strength is coming from. Then he concluded that the same could be accomplished by sacrificing the rook instead of the queen. Here again we have the theme of evaluating a position based on inductive reasoning based on calculation.

 

[moralist]

5 hours ago, Peter said:

I am glad I remembered to click unread content. This thread is interesting. Too bad it couldn’t have been highlighted as a new topic as it used to be done, Michael.

Greg wrote: God created objective reality, so both He and His creation are rational. The well ordered moral design of objective reality itself denotes sublime rationality. It takes a rational person to acknowledge that fact. end quote

Delete the first quoted sentence and you get “The well-ordered moral design of objective reality itself denotes sublime rationality. It takes a rational person to acknowledge that fact.”

Reality is kind of cool. We need to see it for what it is. To survive nature, nature must be obeyed. For humans to coexist they need to understand the importance of individual rights and moral interactions. All must agree on other human’s actions or at least go along with (or tolerate) them. That *sense* is so familiar to use we don’t look at it in wonder like we would upon first viewing The Grand Canyon.

Peter

No problem, Peter. The first sentence was only for me. It's superflous for everyone else because the end result of acting in harmony with objective moral reality is exactly the same regardless of where it came from.

 

Greg

[moralist]

1 hour ago, jts said:

It is possible to have thoughts without reason but so far as I know, a rational person bases decisions on reason.

I do not see reason as automatic, or as you might say, compulsive.

 Neither do I, Jerry.

And it is impossible to determine whether or not a thought is reasonable while you are immersed in it emoting to it. The only way to properly judge whether or not a thought is reasonable is from the viewpoint outside of it looking in as if you are someone else. Otherwise there is no possibility ot the rational choice of acting contrary (or not acting at all) on an unreasonable thought, as long as you are emotionally immersed in it as if it was the totality of your being. For if thought and emotion are all just you and there is nothing else, how could you possibly be able to choose to act against yourself?

 

Greg

[moralist]

2 hours ago, anthony said:

What you ask gets at the heart of the matter, except to always start and think of each individual, first - before the world  - since each one is an indivisible, self-motivating and unique existent who must choose positively for the good, his life. "The world" follows from this.

It is my experience that we already know what's morally right "for each invidividual" before we even think or emote about it... and that our thoughts and the emotions they spin into being are a reaction to that apriori objective knowing... either to subjectively agree or to disagree with it.

Leftists love to think of "the world" because it makes them feel right while actually being wrong from screwing over individuals.

 

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, moralist said:

It is my experience that we already know what's morally right "for each invidividual" before we even think or emote about it... and that our thoughts and the emotions they spin into being are a reaction to that apriori objective knowing... either to subjectively agree or to disagree with it.

Leftists love to think of "the world" because it makes them feel right while actually being wrong from screwing over individuals.

Greg

I agree with your objectification of morality. But how yougottheregetthere I dunno.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, moralist said:

 Neither do I, Jerry.

And it is impossible to determine whether or not a thought is reasonable while you are immersed in it emoting to it. The only way to properly judge whether or not a thought is reasonable is from the viewpoint outside of it looking in as if you are someone else. Otherwise there is no possibility ot the rational choice of acting contrary (or not acting at all) on an unreasonable thought, as long as you are emotionally immersed in it as if it was the totality of your being. For if thought and emotion are all just you and there is nothing else, how could you possibly be able to choose to act against yourself?

Greg

Stop thinking to consider your thinking. Epistemologically this is a contradiction. Your Zen state is, if valid, a difficult acquisition. Nature didn't consider it necessary or provide it. Why? What you are actually asking for is a second opinion. You might ask your significant other or best friends. Or write a short essay.

--Brant

try logic; try reason