JEWS AND YOU AND JEWS

[tmj]

ok here is the mose naive statement , there would have to be at least a slight majority of the population to enforce the imprisonmnet of the resultant minority of the population, yes?

[Brant Gaede]

Uh, no.

--Brant

[moralist]

Rather than being withdrawn like you are assuming, I'm just not emotionally upset because I realize that how I live is what determines my own personal experience of getting the government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.

[moralist]

ok here is the mose naive statement , there would have to be at least a slight majority of the population to enforce the imprisonmnet of the resultant minority of the population, yes?

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

[moralist]

Brant,

Not totally naive so long as checks and balances operates relatively well.

The moment that goes down the crapper, then that imbalance of guns will be a real problem for society. That is if people want freedom.

Until then, the system of checks and balances isn't perfect, but it does give folks eventual redress against abuses, or at least a decent shot at it.

Michael

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.

[BaalChatzaf]

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.

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

[Brant Gaede]

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.

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

Morality can be objectified or there is no Objectivist philosophy. It's done by observation and evaluation of the physical, acting human organism. That's the science. The logical moral and legal derivatives are not science but they come off that base just as the philosophy does. To deny this is merely to state all your own statements that are not scientific as such are only your opinions and cannot be described as "true" or "false," even "There are NO moral facts." Is that a fact? No. That means there is a contradicting (moral) fact. Every negative statement needs a positive, if only implicit, one--a truth--or it's not a valid statement. "Existence does not exist," for instance, is false on its logical face.

--Brant

science has no monopoly on logic, reason, truth and facts

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

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.

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

[moralist]

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.

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.

[moralist]

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.

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

[BaalChatzaf]

So give it a try, Baal... and then get back to me on how doing wrong makes you a better person.

Greg

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

[Brant Gaede]

So give it a try, Baal... and then get back to me on how doing wrong makes you a better person.

Greg

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

Ah. May I assume that posts you ignore--like my #132--you cannot answer?

--Brant

since you are on an Objectivist site, can you tell us about the Objectivist Ethics and how they are wrong by your lights?

[BaalChatzaf]

So give it a try, Baal... and then get back to me on how doing wrong makes you a better person.

Greg

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

Ah. May I assume that posts you ignore--like my #132--you cannot answer?

--Brant

since you are on an Objectivist site, can you tell us about the Objectivist Ethics and how they are wrong by your lights?

Can you derive morality from physics or can't you. Show the proof. Show the math. Otherwise you are wasting my time.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

So give it a try, Baal... and then get back to me on how doing wrong makes you a better person.

Greg

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

Ah. May I assume that posts you ignore--like my #132--you cannot answer?

--Brant

since you are on an Objectivist site, can you tell us about the Objectivist Ethics and how they are wrong by your lights?

Can you derive morality from physics or can't you. Show the proof. Show the math. Otherwise you are wasting my time.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I have no problem "wasting" your time. Where do you get this silly idea that morality cannot be objectified by determining what the nature of human nature is--that there is no science in that? Yet you turn right around and tell one and all that you have figured out that all moralities are arbitrary, subjective, only opinions and artificial. There then must be a morality that is not so even if not yet discovered, but you have confessed only your own inability to discover it and with a complete lack of grace using science as a default that might as well be called argumentum ad science as in a fallacy. That science is most accurately reduced to numbers and experiment as in the hard sciences doesn't exclude other perhaps more tentative scientific truth. And if hard science states the atom can't be split it only demonstrates the difficulty of obtaining absolute truth even in your bailiwick, "proof" and all that.

--Brant

edit: "proof" is for a mathematical proposition and logical constructs--science is much more expansive than that, taking in much empirical data validated insofar as can be by scientific methodology, but not by a proof although there may be proofs within a theory that help validate it, for if a theory as such could be proved it wouldn't be a theory any longer but an absolute truth, so to ask for a "proof" for an objectively valid morality is a complete misuse of the term for even for Relativity there are only proofs, not a proof, and those proofs are passively waiting to be used elsewhere if the over-arching theory is ever invalidated by a repeatable experiment

Edited June 16, 2013 by Brant Gaede

[moralist]

So give it a try, Baal... and then get back to me on how doing wrong makes you a better person.

Greg

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.

Morality is artificial and man made, not nature made. That as why there are so many ethical and moral systems.

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.

[anthony]

So give it a try, Baal... and then get back to me on how doing wrong makes you a better person.

Greg

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.

Morality is artificial and man made, not nature made. That as why there are so many ethical and moral systems.

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.

[BaalChatzaf]

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

[moralist]

So give it a try, Baal... and then get back to me on how doing wrong makes you a better person.

Greg

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.

Morality is artificial and man made, not nature made. That as why there are so many ethical and moral systems.

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.

[moralist]

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.

[anthony]

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

The "muddling through" is precisely a result of the lack of a real morality, grounded in reality (the nature of man and existence.).

So, it is a circular argument to maintain that to get where we are, relativism and pragmatism must have worked, will always work - and "had to be".

One needs to discriminate the man-made from the metaphysical given.

(Where did you get the idea I raised The Golden Rule? That's way off).

[BaalChatzaf]

The "muddling through" is precisely a result of the lack of a real morality, grounded in reality (the nature of man and existence.).

So, it is a circular argument to maintain that to get where we are, relativism and pragmatism must have worked, will always work - and "had to be".

One needs to discriminate the man-made from the metaphysical given.

(Where did you get the idea I raised The Golden Rule? That's way off).

1. We do not have a full empirically grounded notion of what Man is. We do not know thoroughly how our brains and bodies work. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of that question.

2. Our best knowledge of existence is the knowledge of the physical world which tells us little or nothing about morality and ethics (that is my main point by the way). Our moral and ethical ideas are conventions and do not flow inexorably from the nature of the physical world.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anthony]

So give it a try, Baal... and then get back to me on how doing wrong makes you a better person.

Greg

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.

Morality is artificial and man made, not nature made. That as why there are so many ethical and moral systems.

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.

[BaalChatzaf]

What "objective" moral principles. Morality is convention and opinion, not fact. Morality does not emerge from physical laws. What is its "objective" basis? And do not tell me that it is the Nature of Man. We do not yet know the Nature of Man. What we have are stories, myths and legends from the past and damn little solid science to ground "the Nature of Man"

If it ain't science then it is either stamp collecting or nonsense.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anthony]

What "objective" moral principles. Morality is convention and opinion, not fact.

Ba'al Chatzaf

That's still "It has always been this way, so it must always be this way."

Objective moral principles define how a man should act - for his own sake.

You're confusing all traditional morality with this, of how man must act - for the sake of others.

[BaalChatzaf]

What "objective" moral principles. Morality is convention and opinion, not fact.

Ba'al Chatzaf

That's still "It has always been this way, so it must always be this way."

Objective moral principles define how a man should act - for his own sake.

You're confusing all traditional morality with this, of how man must act - for the sake of others.

Fine. Find a rock solid basis for morality in the existence of the natural world. If you can derive morality from physical laws you have made an important advance. Can you do it?

As for "my sake vs your sake" or some such, R. Hillel had a clever thing to say;

R. Hillel used to say.

If I am not for myself, who is for me?

If I am only for myself, what am I?

If not now, then when?

From Perke Avot, a good collection of wise sayings from the Jewish sages.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf