What is Ethics?

[BaalChatzaf]

Yeah I saw his post count. All that says is that the people on this forum are really tolerant.

I am still waiting for him to say anything, much less something he knows about.

Shall we discuss mathematics?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Yeah I saw his post count. All that says is that the people on this forum are really tolerant.

F.,

I have a secret code reader. I look at subtext in addition to text.

I've tried a crystal ball, too, but I can't get the damn thing to work.

Bob is an Aspie with a heart the size of the USA, probably larger.

He just says stupid shit sometimes.

I suggest you get to know him, but it's your choice. I would definitely leave my kids in his care. I can't say that about many who make far less stupid statements.

We don't "tolerate" him here on OL. We've gotten used to him--he's grown on us like a wart.

(And I love to banter with him.)

Believe it or not, he no longer calls for wholesale genocide, killing off generations of bloodlines, flattening entire cities and bombing the rubble. This proves that moral improvement is possible in the unwilling.

Michael

[Serapis Bey]

I say that Ethics is doxa, not logos. now prove that I am mistaken.

I tend to agree with you, Robert. Although, I do make some allowances for a certain moral intuitionism born out of our evolutionary past. Apart from that, everything else is indeed "doxa", and is conditioned by the needs of a particular culture at a particular point in time. So where does that leave the individual in choosing a "proper" ethics? I think it ultimately comes down to aesthetics, and one's own personal psychological makeup finding something "beautiful" in some particular belief system or another that resonates. Even if there are holes in the theory. Why do you think I hang out here? Why do you? Rand did not bridge the is-ought gap...

However, as an aesthetic choice, it is subject to the same judgements as do all works of art. And some people have better taste than others...

All morality relies on the sense of smell - Hyatt

And I am certain there are people holding their noses after reading what I just wrote.

[Serapis Bey]

he greatest evil is to hold one's life as important; the second is the vanity of individual volition.

From the undeniable facts of reality and man's nature, we can deduce a rational ethics - I (humbly) call it rational altruism.

It's obvious.

No you can't

If you'd put your goldfish in a cage and your pet gerbil in an aquarium, would it be a. illogical? b. non-conformist?

Neither one - at first order of priority. It would be life-defeating. It would be antithetical to their existential nature.

Sure, if all you are concerned about is physical survival, then you can make that argument.

But we humans are animals in an intermediate stage of evolution. It's all the other concepts and goals we concern ourselves with, after our physical needs are met, where things get interesting.

[BaalChatzaf]

But we humans are animals in an intermediate stage of evolution. It's all the other concepts and goals we concern ourselves with, after our physical needs are met, where things get interesting.

All animals are in an intermediate stage of evolution. Midway between what their species was and what it is becoming.