How do you know murder is wrong?

[anthony]

14 hours ago, moralist said:

 

And even worse, there are tens of millions of people who were indoctrinated by the state ... His blind worship of bureaucracy uber alles is a direct result of his parasitic relationship to it.

 

Greg

Greg, In order for one to make a choice about what one's going to do, a person will and has to think, to pre-conceptualize the act according to reality and his value-system. Will the action or outcome be towards my good; will it advance - or sacrifice - my values, or otherwise sacrifice anyone else's? That's morality. "Man's life is the standard of value--and his own life ..the ethical purpose of every individual man". Just to grasp those abstractions requires conceptualism.

In total contrast, what empiricists like Hume have done, is to downgrade the conceptual mind, then dismiss the idea of value. What he leaves in their place is a kind of 'judgment by emotions'. (His sentimentalism). These are, he says in effect, nature's moral guide. (And for a philosopher who rejects "the innate", a telling self-contradiction I think).

[A reminder of that previous article, to drive home Hume's total skepticism of the mind and morality: "Reason deals with facts and draws conclusions from them, but all else being equal, it could not lead us to choose one option over the other; only our sentiments can do this, according to Hume"].

Reason can't choose one option over another....from a philosopher.

But the way emotions actually operate in reality, you can't actually know until after the fact what exact emotion you are going to feel. Emotions are fast, automated responses and effects (of our individual value-system), not causes. Taken to a ridiculous extreme, one won't assess if murdering someone is good or evil until one has murdered them! So that's useless, potentially dangerous nonsense. Failing that, the only other 'moral guide' I can see which one can have as skeptic, is a). what other people and society have prescribed and b).what the Law forbids you to do. Which come down to the same thing - non-independent obedience to an arbitrary 'moral' authority.

For an objective, rational and sovereign individual, here is Aristotle - "I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law".

[moralist]

3 hours ago, anthony said:

Greg, In order for one to make a choice about what one's going to do, a person will and has to think, to pre-conceptualize the act according to reality and his value-system. Will the action or outcome be towards my good; will it advance - or sacrifice - my values, or otherwise sacrifice anyone else's? That's morality. "Man's life is the standard of value--and his own life ..the ethical purpose of every individual man". Just to grasp those abstractions requires conceptualism.

In total contrast, what empiricists like Hume have done, is to downgrade the conceptual mind, then dismiss the idea of value. What he leaves in their place is a kind of 'judgment by emotions'. (His sentimentalism). These are, he says in effect, nature's moral guide. (And for a philosopher who rejects "the innate", a telling self-contradiction I think).

[A reminder of that previous article, to drive home Hume's total skepticism of the mind and morality: "Reason deals with facts and draws conclusions from them, but all else being equal, it could not lead us to choose one option over the other; only our sentiments can do this, according to Hume"].

Reason can't choose one option over another....from a philosopher.

But the way emotions actually operate in reality, you can't actually know until after the fact what exact emotion you are going to feel. Emotions are fast, automated responses and effects (of our individual value-system), not causes. Taken to a ridiculous extreme, one won't assess if murdering someone is good or evil until one has murdered them! So that's useless, potentially dangerous nonsense. Failing that, the only other 'moral guide' I can see which one can have as skeptic, is a). what other people and society have prescribed and b).what the Law forbids you to do. Which come down to the same thing - non-independent obedience to an arbitrary 'moral' authority.

For an objective, rational and sovereign individual, here is Aristotle - "I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law".

Tony, something else happens before the process you just described. It is seeing... an instantaneous knowing... a flash of moral insight which precedes intellectual and emotional activity. Whoever loyally acts upon that moral direction will never do anything wrong.

Now how can you tell you are going to do wrong? By watching your thoughts and emotions. Watch how your devious intellect tries to convice you with clever deceitful words that the wrong you are doing is right. Also watch your emotions. Every evil act on this earth is always preceded by the angry offended hateful envious covetous jealous emotional blame...

...the unjust accusation of others.

This is why in ancient religious writings, Satan is referred to as "The Accuser". Every evil act is always preceded by an angry false accusation of others.

Is a mistake to derive the direction of your actions from intellect and emotion. They cannot be relied upon to give you accurate moral intel. Only what you first see before they even begin to appear can be trusted to be the truth.

Acting on what you see is a learned behavior... as is learning to trust in what you see. You can always think and feel about it later. As you experience the just and deserved consequences of acting on what you see, you will learn how to love what is morally right by your own direct personal experience.

I cannot fully describe what this way of being spins into motion. It's enough to say that you can literally live in Paradise on this Earth...

...even exactly the way it is right now.

 

Greg

 

 

 

[moralist]

...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...

...regardless of what your thoughts and emotions tell you.

 

Greg

[anthony]

3 hours ago, moralist said:

Tony, something else happens before the process you just described. It is seeing... an instantaneous knowing... a flash of moral insight which precedes intellectual and emotional activity. Whoever loyally acts upon that moral direction will never do anything wrong.

Now how can you tell you are going to do wrong? By watching your thoughts and emotions. Watch how your devious intellect tries to convice you with clever deceitful words that the wrong you are doing is right. Also watch your emotions. Every evil act on this earth is always preceded by the angry offended hateful envious covetous jealous emotional blame...

...the unjust accusation of others.

This is why in ancient religious writings, Satan is referred to as "The Accuser". Every evil act is always preceded by an angry false accusation of others.

Is a mistake to derive the direction of your actions from intellect and emotion. They cannot be relied upon to give you accurate moral intel. Only what you first see before they even begin to appear can be trusted to be the truth.

Acting on what you see is a learned behavior... as is learning to trust in what you see. You can always think and feel about it later. As you experience the just and deserved consequences of acting on what you see, you will learn how to love what is morally right by your own direct personal experience.

I cannot fully describe what this way of being spins into motion. It's enough to say that you can literally live in Paradise on this Earth...

...even exactly the way it is right now.

 

Greg

 

 

 

Greg,

That brief ... "...seeing - an instantaneous knowing - a flash of moral insight which precedes intellectual and emotional activity"-

-this, many Objectivists and I will CALL "intellectual and emotional" actions. How it happens: All in an instant, one's senses take some thing in, one identifies it, one assesses good or bad for you and one has an emotional response...then and later, one fits it into one's body of conceptual knowledge, like with like, etc.. But realise, that at that first vision and an identification, cognition begins. Not some delayed reaction

And quite - one can "watch" (oversee) one's own thought processes and emotions.

However, you have constantly lumped together thought+emotion, as an inseparable combination which can lead one astray, while you as watcher calmly looks on.. You say that one's "devious intellect" and deceitful words" will take you away from a moral path. Well, whose intellect is it? Who selects the words? Who must take responsibility but oneself?

Of course I dismiss any divisions of consciousness. Thought is all we have to make moral and rational judgments - while feelings ~can~ lead many people astray, but it's because they take them as an unquestionable authority, the primacy of emotions. Thought and emotion are not the same thing. Emotions can be integrated with attention and effort, though.

[moralist]

6 hours ago, anthony said:

Greg,

That brief ... "...seeing - an instantaneous knowing - a flash of moral insight which precedes intellectual and emotional activity"-

-this, many Objectivists and I will CALL "intellectual and emotional" actions.

I understand why you see it that way, Tony.

It was only after years of meditation that I became aware of the istantaneous spontaneous silent flash of moral insight from Conscience which precedes thought processing and the consequential emoting to processed thought. It's fine if you want to lump everything together for we each still arrive at the same basic moral conclusions.

It's shared moral values which span all doctrinal chasms.

Quote

Thought is all we have to make moral and rational judgments...

In my view, thought, as well as the consequent emotion which always arrives in its wake, are the resultant reactions to what we  had already seen in the moment.

 

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

If you think something through thoroughly and agree with your conclusion(s), then in the future you can know in a "flash" if the conclusion is in play and is in danger of violation.

--Brant

[moralist]

4 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

If you think something through thoroughly and agree with your conclusion(s), then in the future you can know in a "flash" if the conclusion is in play and is in danger of violation.

--Brant

While what you describe can be true, Brant...

...nevertheless there is instantaneous moral information which is made available to us in the present moment which is independent of previous experience.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

1 minute ago, moralist said:

While what you describe can be true, Brant...

...nevertheless there is instantaneous moral information which is made available to us in the present moment which is independent of previous experience.

Greg

That's impossible to know save by introspection.

--Brant

[jts]

9 hours ago, 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...

...regardless of what your thoughts and emotions tell you.

 

Greg

What is the difference between that and what Ayn Rand calls mysticism?

 

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, jts said:

What is the difference between that and what Ayn Rand calls mysticism?

Nothing, but Rand painted with a broad brush.

--Brant

[moralist]

4 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

That's impossible to know save by introspection.

--Brant

Yes it is, Brant.

Personal experience is purely anecdotal and non transferrable. It's completely powerless to convince anyone of anything.

However, I can suggest something. Next time you face a moral situation, if you watch your thoughts and emotions closely enough, you will have the opportunity to see for yourself that they are reactions to something else which occurred before they appeared in your mind.

 

Greg

 

 

[moralist]

4 hours ago, jts said:

What is the difference between that and what Ayn Rand calls mysticism?

 

(shrug...) Since you already denied you have a Conscience you can call it whatever you want. It has nothing to do with me or how I live.

Greg

[jts]

6 hours ago, moralist said:

(shrug...) Since you already denied you have a Conscience you can call it whatever you want. It has nothing to do with me or how I live.

Greg

from Jeremy Bentham

Quote

 

1. One man says, he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong; and that is called a `moral sense': and then he goes to work at his ease, and says, such a thing is right, and such a thing is wrong. Why? `Because my moral sense tells me it is.'

2. Another man comes and alters the phrase: leaving out moral, and putting in common in the room of it. He then tells you that his common sense tells him what is right and wrong, as surely as the other's moral sense did; meaning by common sense a sense of some kind or other, which, he says, is possessed by all mankind: the sense of those whose sense is not the same as the author's being struck out as not worth taking. This contrivance does better than the other; for a moral sense being a new thing, a man may feel about him a good while without being able to find it out: but common sense is as old as the creation; and there is no man but would be ashamed to be thought not to have as much of it as his neighbours. It has another great advantage: by appearing to share power, it lessens envy; for when a man gets up upon this ground, in order to anathematize those who differ from him, it is not by a sic volo sic jubeo, but by a velitis jubeatis.

3. Another man comes, and says, that as to a moral sense indeed, he cannot find that he has any such thing: that, however, he has an understanding, which will do quite as well. This understanding, he says, is the standard of right and wrong: it tells him so and so. All good and wise men understand as he does: if other men's understandings differ in any part from his, so much the worse for them: it is a sure sign they are either defective or corrupt.

4. Another man says, that there is an eternal and immutable rule of right: that the rule of right dictates so and so: and then he begins giving you his sentiments upon anything that comes uppermost: and these sentiments (you are to take for granted) are so many branches of the eternal rule of right.

5. Another man, or perhaps the same man (it is no matter), says that there are certain practices conformable and others repugnant, to the fitness of things; and then he tells you, at his leisure, what practices are conformable, and what repugnant; just as he happens to like a practice or dislike it.

6. A great multitude of people are continually talking of the law of nature; and then they go on giving you their sentiments about what is right and what is wrong: and these sentiments, you are to understand, are so many chapters and sections of the law of nature.

7. Instead of the phrase, law of nature, you have sometimes law of reason, right reason, natural justice, natural equity, good order. Any of them will do equally well. This latter is most used in politics. The three last are much more tolerable than the others, because they do not very explicitly claim to be anything more than phrases: they insist but feebly upon their being looked upon as so many positive standards of themselves, and seem content to be taken, upon occasion, for phrases expressive of the conformity of the thing in question to the proper standards, whatever that may be. On most occasions, however, it will be better to say utility: utility is clearer as referring more explicitly to pain and pleasure.

8. We have one philosopher, who says, there is no harm in anything in the world but in telling a lie; and that if, for example, you were to murder your own father, this would only be a particular way of saying, he was not your father. Of course when this philosopher sees anything that he does not like, he says, it is a particular way of telling a lie. It is saying, that the act ought to be done, or may be done, when, in truth, it ought not be done.

9. The fairest and openest of them all is that sort of man who speaks out, and says, I am of the number of the elect: now God himself takes care to inform the elect what is right: and that with so good effect, and let them strive ever so, they cannot help not only knowing it but practising it. If therefore a man wants to know what is right and what is wrong, he has nothing to do but to come to me.

 

 

[anthony]

23 hours ago, jts said:

What is the difference between that and what Ayn Rand calls mysticism?

 

If one has a mind to, many or all things one can 'make mystical'. The easy part (for atheists) is recognizing religions and religious things, scriptures, ceremonies, people in church, etc etc. as - broadly - "mysticism". Much harder to see and answer to, is implicit mysticism, neo-mysticism, since it comes in so many guises. Outside of formal religions, many others are prone to mystify, or attribute a Super Nature to anything, as they subjectively feel like it. Like I knew an educated journalist, calling herself agnostic, who 'knew' she had a personal guardian angel, as do we all. One may perceive the mystical in a tree, a cloud, a starry night, and so on. Many, observably, deify the State, the Nation, the Earth - even art, science and technology are given mystical undertones. Simply what they're doing is neglecting the knowledge that all things have an identity (and causation), which is either man made or metaphysically given, and because they didn't conceptualize complex existents, or identify their properties and their causality, they lend to them a mystical abstraction.

Jts, "Conscience" I think closely relates to your "intuition". I think there's a perfectly sound explanation for a conscience, too. Once more, it is not mystical Revelation, 'revealed knowledge' unless one wishes to believe it so. If one looks back to all the influences, observations, teaching and experiences from infancy which shaped one's earliest outlook on life, mostly forgotten, the accumulation of all of them would form a subconscious ( may be, semi-conscious?), human system for interacting with others - a basic morality . If the influences were predominantly good and humane, something like considering harming another person would be 'instinctively' repulsive to one. But that is not instinct and not "intuition" (unless you take that as "in-teaching", literally, which suits me), and that's where the Rationalist philosophers and their arguments for the "innate" were wrong. (Also for the Naturalists who put morality down to the sentimentalist instinct designed by Nature).

Man starts life with the ~capacity~ to gain knowledge, his conscious mind, not with knowledge itself. When one bears in mind that everything in the consciousness (and subconscious) arrived solely through the senses, everything fits logically. 

[moralist]

5 hours ago, jts said:

from Jeremy Bentham

 

Very funny, Jerry! Those are all false absurd cartoonish charicatures.

I've only said that there is an objective moral reality and every morally accountable adult already knows what it is...

...and those who ignore what they already know will find out what it is anyway through the objective reality of the just and deserved consequences of their actions.

Greg

[moralist]

5 hours ago, anthony said:

Jts, "Conscience" I think closely relates to your "intuition".. 

Yes. Jerry calls it mystical and that's his honest view. Becoming aware of Conscience requires developing self awareness... the ability to observe thought and emotion as if you were another person who is not involved with them. This is the only way to see yourself as you truly are. And already built into that insight is an objective moral frame of reference... Conscience.

It is impossible to alter the objective moral reality of Conscience. You only have the free choice to either subjectively agree or to disagree with it.

 

...and just to be clear...

It doesn't matter whether a person acknowledges or denies the existence of the objective moral reality of Conscience. It only matters whether or not they subjectively agree with it in their behavior. For the end result of agreeing with objective moral reality by our actions to become a better person and to make a better world is exactly the same.

 

Greg

[jts]

5 hours ago, moralist said:

Yes. Jerry calls it mystical and that's his honest view.

Not so. Kasparov's description of intuition makes it not mystical. It is based on experience, experience being not merely what happens to you but what you do with what happens to you. And you seek opportunities to gain experience. Acquiring intuition can take years or even decades of hard work. It is not knowledge without effort.

Maybe in Objectivism, intuition is mystical. But in chess and many other things, intuition is not mystical.

 

[william.scherk]

I know that a great discussion is around the next bend.

On 3/29/2017 at 9:01 AM, anthony said:

On 3/28/2017 at 10:48 AM, william.scherk said:

On 3/27/2017 at 7:18 PM, anthony said:

I'm a relaxed atheist, for so long I have quite forgotten the fact, and have not much time for [...]  skeptical secularists who have found little to fill the personal vacuum left behind by faith.

I like the notion of 'relaxed atheist,' if I understand it. But two other things stand out in your phrase: "skeptical secularists"   and "personal vacuum left behind by faith."

Who is a 'skeptical secularist' in your view?

William: What was your question/criticism, again? I am never quite sure.

Q. 1 & 2

On 3/28/2017 at 10:48 AM, william.scherk said:

Who is a 'skeptical secularist' in your view?

How  do you learn and demonstrate a person has a 'personal vacuum' where faith used to be?

Q. 3 & 4

On 3/28/2017 at 10:48 AM, william.scherk said:

Quote

Those secularists in numbers and their disparaging scorn for any strong convictions - at all - while being soft on the most radical religion, paradoxically - have proven damaging for European nations (in particular).

These are strong, sweeping statements, and so I think they must have actual references in the real world.  Who are these 'secularists' in numbers?  Which of them have supplied scorn for strong convictions, which have been 'soft' and which (in particular) European nations have been damaged (by them)?

And the last straggler, Q. 5

On 3/28/2017 at 10:48 AM, william.scherk said:

Which countries with large formations of 'skeptical secularists' are the ones we will be discussing, Tony?

You do answer -- interestingly -- a question I didn't ask.

On 3/29/2017 at 9:01 AM, anthony said:

And the source of skepticism? Rand on that false dichotomy of empiricism with rationalism:

" ...and those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts (the Empiricists) ... [who are] those who cling to reality by abandoning their mind".

 

And then there is this.

On 3/29/2017 at 9:01 AM, anthony said:

I gather you want me to 'prove' my conclusions (of a general decline by Europeans into skepticism).

Spoiler

 

It was fun to Oddio-ize the written to-and-fro exchange of Tony and William, and to put it on a serene Stockholm rail. But I haven't really successfully got to what I hoped to discuss.  

It's neat how a forum exchange sometimes differs from a conversation. Like trains passing, we can sometimes merely sound our bells as the other rolls by.

Before age and death takes the remaining old-timers here from our posts, I'd love to do an 'interview' type thing, where a person records a few answers to an AMA-style list of submitted questions.  The closest I get to conversations are backstage, and in my podcast recordings with Reb! and Robert C.  Pure live radio.

Anyway, am going to imagine me and Tony, same track, same train, same row, same windows on the self-same phenomenon, engaged in philosophical trade.  

I figure the key is identifying-defining a secular skeptic into existence and then applying that criteria to European locality. I'll try to ask my questions again, and this time supply answers ... if the key is in the loss of faith and vacuum, we will find key findings of damage in UK, France, Sweden, for a start.

The lack of effective assimilation is how I roughly reckon damage -- in that forced-segregation has negative effects on those so segregated as does self-segregation within.  

It is almost as if a perpetual second-best, not-quite-us, don't-have-our-accent, keep-to-themselves cohort grows out of apartness.  A damaged class grows in the actual separation from surrounding localities. It does not mix at school, socially, or in most non-racialized local business. Entire sectors are given over to one single brown ethno-religious cohort, row of streets after row of streets.

In relation to the social mobility such apartness can crimp, any fences of poverty and low engagement with the economy and segregated institutions of community and education all add up as disadvantages in the game of life. You don't get far from an unemployment-wracked hole of a neighbourhood, not without will and personal determination. You can escape the fences of family, faith, ethnic and language and food group ... and you should be able to escape No Jobs Valley and Brownfield Vacancy ridge.

A kind of under- or damaged-class is seen in Canada, especially in urban aboriginal communities, where segregated treatment historically shows low achievement and nightmarish levels of addiction and other ills. The problem is effective mobility.  The norm would be an urban, educated native who belongs to the Musqueam nation, who lives a middle-class or upper-class life, went to the best schools, have friends with horses, and so on.  They are not self-segregating, yet will still bear the burden of the cohort they are sometimes viewed as, an exceptional outlier.

Luckily, the USA and Canada show productive ways to assimilate, with variations on multiculturalism built on strongly secular freedoms. The keys are effective integration, cross-fertilization, social and economic mobility. Here Canada has a slight advantage inbuilt to citizenship, because of the universality and portability of social contract. People tend to move where they want and need to move. There ultimately are no religious or ethnic barriers or regional barriers to being in among "The Top."  

Our version of multiculturalism is better named "De-Racialization" ... it ultimately drives home the deal that individual rights trump collective or 'religious' rights or demands.  We did a deal among the 'founding nations' which allows French and English to embrace with minimum rancour. Newcomers essentially choose their version of Canada, which comes in two delicious flavours.

Thus ends the rambling Friday monologue, with ultra-boring Canadian references.  Of all the largely secular places on earth, where Islam has made a 'beachhead,'  where people self-segregate by ethno-religion, I am most familiar with England.

England! 

26

 

 

 

Edited March 31, 2017 by william.scherk

[moralist]

3 hours ago, jts said:

Not so. Kasparov's description of intuition makes it not mystical. It is based on experience, experience being not merely what happens to you but what you do with what happens to you. And you seek opportunities to gain experience. Acquiring intuition can take years or even decades of hard work. It is not knowledge without effort.

Maybe in Objectivism, intuition is mystical. But in chess and many other things, intuition is not mystical.

 

 

 

Quote

Jerry wrote:

"What is the difference between that [Conscience] and what Ayn Rand calls mysticism?"

You had also said that there is "no such animal" as Conscience.

So what was your point?.

Greg

[jts]

4 minutes ago, moralist said:

 

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

 

[anthony]

6 hours ago, jts said:

Not so. Kasparov's description of intuition makes it not mystical. It is based on experience, experience being not merely what happens to you but what you do with what happens to you. And you seek opportunities to gain experience. Acquiring intuition can take years or even decades of hard work. It is not knowledge without effort.

Maybe in Objectivism, intuition is mystical. But in chess and many other things, intuition is not mystical.

 

"Kasparov's description of intuition makes it not mystical". You're being ambivalent. "Intuition" has an accepted definition, philosophically it's (claimed)knowledge without prior reasoning or experience, roughly. "Intuitionism"

Either experience - or intuition - you can't have it both ways.

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

"Kasparov's description of intuition makes it not mystical". You're being ambivalent. "Intuition" has an accepted definition, philosophically it's (claimed)knowledge without prior reasoning or experience I believe. "Intuitionism"

Either experience - or intuition - you can't have it both ways.

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

[jts]

2 hours ago, anthony said:

"Kasparov's description of intuition makes it not mystical". You're being ambivalent. "Intuition" has an accepted definition, philosophically it's (claimed)knowledge without prior reasoning or experience, roughly. "Intuitionism"

Either experience - or intuition - you can't have it both ways.

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

In any case, Kasparov did write in his chapter on intuition that in his opinion it is not possible for a beginner in chess to have intuition in chess, because intuition requires experience.

Perhaps intuition is not strictly knowledge. Magnus Carlsen said he usually has a good idea of what the best move is immediately but he spends several minutes calculating to confirm it, but it's usually a waste of time because it's the same conclusion.

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.

 

[moralist]

4 hours ago, anthony said:

 You're being ambivalent.

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

Greg

[moralist]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

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

For you everything is on an unconscious level, Bob.

 

Greg