moralist

Perhaps you missed it, Baal, but I had previously agreed with your point of morality not arising from the physical laws of nature. It only governs human nature. Good! We have struck the balance. Ba'al Chatzaf Next time I'll pay more attention to what you actually said instead of what I thought you said. Greg

That's a simple one, Baal. There is no morality on that island because morality can only apply when there are other people with whom to interact.

There are... there's always the choice to budget your time properly in the first place. That precludes entirely having to make any of the other less desirable choices you described.

Why respond as if comments had been addressed to you personally when they were only an opinion offered concerning an impersonal hypothetical situation? Of course people act thoughtlessly when their attention isn't where it should be, most of the time the price paid is small. While a lack of awareness is usually harmless in a supermarket, it can be truly deadly out on the road.

Referring to this hypothetical example: This is a person who does not manage their time properly. And they even lack the awareness to recognize it and to make allowances for it. So they leave food belonging to the store out to perish on the wrong shelf just because they failed to order their own life properly. Sure, it's just a miniscule wrong... like petty theft. I use inviolable to mean that no one is exempt from consequences of our actions. perhaps "not able to be invalidated" would be a better descriptor. Similar to the law of gravity. The person who wisely stands safely on the ground and the person who foolishly jumps off of a cliff are both obeying the same law of gravity. The one who jumps has the ~feeling~ that they have avoided the consequences... but only for as long as they are falling. Neither standing nor falling has the power to void the law. No matter which choice is made, both can only confirm its existence. It's not rationalization to which I am referring. In my example, I understood fully that what I was doing was wrong. Budgeting time is not the issue either. You are missing the point. You're blindly asserting that there will be some negative consequence to the action months out, after it's long over and done with. But what is this consequence? As I earlier stated, this is religion dressed up as philosophy. Circular logic grounded in faith-based assumptions. I understand, Robert. Rationalization was my own observation derived from your example, as well as the failure to properly budget time which was the initial cause of the behavior. Failing to account for the seeds from which events grow insures the same ones will continue to sprout over and over again. It's not a blind assertion, but rather a statement drawn from the direct personal experience of the consequences of my own actions as well as witnessing the consequences of the actions of others. I believe that I had made no reference to a time frame of those consequences. That is solely determined by the length of the fall before hitting the ground.

We are talking past each other. I am saying morality cannot be derived from physical laws of nature. I am not advocating doing wrong things. My ethical heuristic is not to do to other people what I would not want done to me by others. It is a practical heuristic and it no way follows from the basic laws of nature. Ba'al Chatzaf Perhaps you missed it, Baal, but I had previously agreed with your point of morality not arising from the physical laws of nature. It only governs human nature.

You are on to something but too close to circular reasoning here for my taste, and the bad consequences won't necessarily follow if you think your bad actions are someone else's responsibility as in just following orders. You're assuming hard-core individualism and tremendous personal integrity. Rationalization can buffer bad actors. --Brant Ah, you've also referenced the behavior which accompanies every evil act... wordy intellectual rationalization However, the consequences of our actions set into motion remain unaffected by mere virtual mental justifications like "our bad actions are someone else's responsibility because we are just following orders.". Yes. I do frequently reference "hard core individualism and tremendous personal integrity" as they are ideals worthy of aspiration.

A thought provoking topic... Encryption could be running up a red flag that there is something there to hide. Knowing your location is rendered moot when you don't have a cell phone. I regard everything I do on the internet as already being in the public domain. Like Baal said... simply hide in plain sight.

This is complete hogwash. I've done things I knew were morally wrong at the time simply because I knew the guilt I felt would dissipate while the benefits would be longer-lasting. There are countless situations in our lives where pragmatism wins out over idealism in this way, even when we don't take affirmative steps to rationalize the behavior, and often there are no noticeable negative consequences to our immoral actions. One cannot choose to ignore a physical law, such as gravity, the same way one can choose to ignore a moral code. I'm glad I checked back to see who was posting, because you were sounding like Baal... You just perfectly described the benchmark approach for having done something morally wrong: Wordy intellectual justification. Only what is immorally irrational needs rationalization to give it a veneer of rational morality to cover what it really is. But then that self deceiving process in itself is lying, which needs even more wordy intellectual rationalizing. It's suprising how much of the mind can become occupied with rationalizing our behavior. We can become so submerged in that clever complex convoluted monologue so as to miss the subtle nuances of valuable insights which pass by unnoticed. When you do what's morally right, the mind is usually quite still and you are fully lucid because there is nothing that needs wordy justifications. Referring to this hypothetical example: This is a person who does not manage their time properly. And they even lack the awareness to recognize it and to make allowances for it. So they leave food belonging to the store out to perish on the wrong shelf just because they failed to order their own life properly. Sure, it's just a miniscule wrong... like petty theft. I use inviolable to mean that no one is exempt from consequences of our actions. perhaps "not able to be invalidated" would be a better descriptor. Similar to the law of gravity. The person who wisely stands safely on the ground and the person who foolishly jumps off of a cliff are both obeying the same law of gravity. The one who jumps has the ~feeling~ that they have avoided the consequences... but only for as long as they are falling. Neither standing nor falling has the power to void the law. No matter which choice is made, both can only confirm its existence.

Will lying to save my child's life make me more rotten? Do you mean lying to evil people who want to kill your child? No. That is a rare once in a lifetime extra ordinary circumstance and does not negate the overwhelming majority of lies that make people more rotten. An exception to a generality does not invalidate that generality. Do you realize that we live in America, and not in a musical? Do you believe that if you can find one exception that all of the rest of the stealing doesn't make people rotten? In the real world... yes it would. I'll gladly accept your point, ginny... because it doesn't negate what I said about lying cheating stealing and murdering making people more rotten.

Laws are most certainly human made conventions as they are our subjective reactions to objective moral law which either agree or disagree with it. I also agree that objective moral law is not derived from the natural world. It uniquely governs human nature. Objective moral law is independent of our subjective judgments and actions. What we do does not change it. What we do only changes our relation to it, and our relation to it is what changes us. Lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering always make people more rotten.

On that we agree, Baal... The difference between us is that in my view what we call morality is only our subjective reactions to objective moral law. And how right or wrong we are can be determined by how well what we subjectively call morality works in our own lives. And the proof of how well it works can be found in the consequences of our own actions as well in our own being. Oscar Wilde once said "No good deed shall go unpunished". Unfortunately he is right more often than either of us would like. He was wrong.

On that we agree, Baal... The difference between us is that in my view what we call morality is only our subjective reactions to objective moral law. And how right or wrong we are can be determined by how well what we subjectively call morality works in our own lives. And the proof of how well it works can be found in the consequences of our own actions as well in our own being.

Remove the scales from your eyes and see what I wrote. I wrote that the laws of morality canNOT be derived from the laws of physics. Morality is artificial and man made, not nature made. That as why there are so many ethical and moral systems. If you think you can derive the laws of morality from physical laws then DO IT. Let see what you come up with. Ba'al Chatzaf Sorry about that, Baal. I misunderstood your point. I agree with you that morality doesn't come from physical laws. However, in my view morality operates in a very similar manner as physical laws in that every action has consequences. There are objective moral laws as to what's wrong... like murdering, lying, cheating, and stealing. But there many different subjective cultural reactions to those objective moral laws, as not all are universally accepted by every society. On the contrary, every lasting moral culture has found those laws to be crucial for its longevity. Don't murder, steal, etc. is the dead easy, self-evident bit: i.e. What should men NOT do to other men. Comes to how men should live, is a whole different story. You don't get there until you define what existence is, and what man IS. Until that, it is all relativism and pragmatism. You can measure the durability of a culture by how closely it's subjective moral response is to objective moral principles. I don't see defining what man is and his existence as being a collective group task. That's more of an internal matter for each of us to deal with for ourselves. The "internal matter for each of us to deal with" is way, way down the line, where rational selfishness then enters. Metaphysics isn't "a collective group task", if that's your odd meaning. We have to begin with man is animal; man is rational animal; man is an autonomous being; man is a being of volitional consciousness, etc etc etc. - before we get to the differentia of an individual man. It's seems like you're posing an unsupported, unjustified type of egoism. Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Metaphysics is not a collective task, but is for each individual to freely choose how to work it out for themselves. The only thing that matters to the world is our behavior, not our intentions or even our motivations. Only what we actually do makes the world what it is and what we are... not our thoughts or emotions. Those are only unrealized potentials when we choose not to act on them.

Don't murder, steal, etc. is the dead easy, self-evident bit: i.e. What should men NOT do to other men. Comes to how men should live, is a whole different story. You don't get there until you define what existence is, and what man IS. Until that, it is all relativism and pragmatism. The history of humankind is an exercise in relativism and pragmatism. It has been going on for a quarter of a million years (by the best scientific estimates)... We are a species that has muddled through. If you expect much more than that you are doomed to disappointment. The Golden Rule to which you allude is a heuristic, not self evident axiomatic truth. Other species do not practice the golden rule and they survive just fine. Ba'al Chatzaf That's because we are wholly subjective beings... so we can only react subjectively. But our subjective reactions do not negate the existence of objective moral values. In fact, they only affirm those objective values by the mixed results we get which match how far off the mark from the objective moral principles we are.

Remove the scales from your eyes and see what I wrote. I wrote that the laws of morality canNOT be derived from the laws of physics. Morality is artificial and man made, not nature made. That as why there are so many ethical and moral systems. If you think you can derive the laws of morality from physical laws then DO IT. Let see what you come up with. Ba'al Chatzaf Sorry about that, Baal. I misunderstood your point. I agree with you that morality doesn't come from physical laws. However, in my view morality operates in a very similar manner as physical laws in that every action has consequences. There are objective moral laws as to what's wrong... like murdering, lying, cheating, and stealing. But there many different subjective cultural reactions to those objective moral laws, as not all are universally accepted by every society. On the contrary, every lasting moral culture has found those laws to be crucial for its longevity. Don't murder, steal, etc. is the dead easy, self-evident bit: i.e. What should men NOT do to other men. Comes to how men should live, is a whole different story. You don't get there until you define what existence is, and what man IS. Until that, it is all relativism and pragmatism. You can measure the durability of a culture by how closely it's subjective moral response is to objective moral principles. I don't see defining what man is and his existence as being a collective group task. That's more of an internal matter for each of us to deal with for ourselves.

Remove the scales from your eyes and see what I wrote. I wrote that the laws of morality canNOT be derived from the laws of physics. Morality is artificial and man made, not nature made. That as why there are so many ethical and moral systems. If you think you can derive the laws of morality from physical laws then DO IT. Let see what you come up with. Ba'al Chatzaf Sorry about that, Baal. I misunderstood your point. I agree with you that morality doesn't come from physical laws. However, in my view morality operates in a very similar manner as physical laws in that every action has consequences. There are objective moral laws as to what's wrong... like murdering, lying, cheating, and stealing. But there many different subjective cultural reactions to those objective moral laws, as not all are universally accepted by every society.

Nonsense. Physical nature is what it is and the laws of physical nature which are empirically correct descriptions of how nature actually is have the property of being objectively true (once properly verified). Moral laws are -made up- from the git go. Moral law is no more factual than religious dogma. It is made up, a pure human creation. There are NO moral facts. Only moral judgements and opinions. That is why there are thousands of moral "laws" and codes and only a handful of empirically vetted physical laws. Ba'al Chatzaf You can very easily prove the existence of objective moral law for yourself. It is as utterly absolute and as inviolable as the physical law of gravity. Simply do something which you know is wrong, and then observe the consequences that you have set into motion by your own actions, and also observe what happens inside of yourself. So give it a try, Baal... and then get back to me on how doing wrong makes you a better person. Greg

Greg, Ditto for the contrary. And even stepping outside the dichotomy, ditto for the looters and those who fight them, like in hurricane disasters. Michael Yes. Times of trouble don't only bring out the evil in people, they also inspire the goodness to meet it.

Good pun, Michael... And no one can guarantee that all of those who are expected to bear arms in the name of the government will actually be on the side of the government.

The reality is that the majority who seek to enslave are slaves... and only an "outside the box" minority are free. "If you closely examine your chains, you will discover they were forged by your own hand." --Greg

Rather than being withdrawn like you are assuming, I'm just not emotionally upset because I realize that how I live is what determines my own personal experience of getting the government I deserve. What others choose to do is up to them.This is why I'm not afraid of government, because government answers to the same moral law that I do. But the Government has more guns and ammunition than you do. Ba'a; Chatzaf They're supposed to have more... and I'm ok with that, because the government is no more above the law than I am. Greg A completely naive statement. --Brant I was, of course, referring to moral law and not legalities, although good laws do serve morality. Moral law is like the law of gravity. It's inviolable, and no one is exempt.

Rather than being withdrawn like you are assuming, I'm just not emotionally upset because I realize that how I live is what determines my own personal experience of getting the government I deserve. What others choose to do is up to them.This is why I'm not afraid of government, because government answers to the same moral law that I do. But the Government has more guns and ammunition than you do. Ba'a; Chatzaf They're supposed to have more... and I'm ok with that, because the government is no more above the law than I am. Greg

Well kudos for taking that responsibility. I'm not sure how you reconcile that political activity with your assertions alongside President Obama that, basically, the government is us and we have nothing to fear from it. Why fight for reform if everyone is simply getting their just deserts under the current system? But regardless, I am glad you are doing so, and I find that to be a much more coherent morality than the agorist withdrawal you were preaching here earlier. Rather than being withdrawn like you are assuming, I'm just not emotionally upset because I realize that how I live is what determines my own personal experience of getting the government I deserve. What others choose to do is up to them.This is why I'm not afraid of government, because government answers to the same moral law that I do. Why fight for reform if everyone is getting what they deserve under the present system? Because everyone has to go through that process in order to realize that only they have the power to change the government they deserve by first reforming their own lives. Personally, I have no problem with my own direct personal experience of getting the government I deserve, even under the present system. because the government answers to the moral values by which I live. So as long as I'm not corrupted by the system, the government has no other choice than to do right by me. See? I'm the one with the real power... not the government. The government's only power is opportunism, and cannot oppress me without me first granting it my sanction to become a victim of its oppression. How each of us lives is what either grants or withholds our sanction to become victims of government oppression. The only reason the government is the way it is, is because not enough people are living right. When enough people are, the government will graciously acquiesce to the overwhelming strength of their morality. There will be an opportunity to describe exactly how people have become slaves of the government they deserve... but that's for some other thread. Take an extreme example of two people each with two completely different experiences of the same government. A mass murderer experiences a government that tracks him down to kill him for his evil acts... while a law abiding person is free to go wherever he wants without seeing any government. I'm involved politically to do my part to help others understand their own personal responsibility. It is impossible to help others to free themselves if you have not first freed yourself. Take the example of John Galt. He freed himself first. Then he was able to help others free themselves. This is how it is with everyone.

If wars made nations safer, Somalia must be the safest place on Earth at the moment. I believe his Spartans comment was a metaphor for the political activity you consider beneath you. I'm actually quite politically active, and am the President of our local Tea Party Patriots. But that is not for me, it's for the sake of others. I just understand that I'm the only one who is personally responsible for my own freedom by living a life deserving of it. Greg