JEWS AND YOU AND JEWS

[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.

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.

[moralist]

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

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.

[BaalChatzaf]

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

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.

[moralist]

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

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.

[BaalChatzaf]

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

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.

A law is a human made conventions. In what sense can a law be objective. It is a rule, and it is enforced, but it is still a human artifact and not a fact of Nature. The only objective things in the world are those things which are independent of human judgement or action.

[Brant Gaede]

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

What you wrote is not stamp collecting and "ain't science."

--Brant

having your philosophy and eating it too isn't an option and you have a philosophy as do we all

[Brant Gaede]

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

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.

A law is a human made conventions. In what sense can a law be objective. It is a rule, and it is enforced, but it is still a human artifact and not a fact of Nature. The only objective things in the world are those things which are independent of human judgement or action.

But you are objectifying the situation, or so you think--no?

--Brant

nature x-man is objective, nature plus man is subjective?

[BaalChatzaf]

But you are objectifying the situation, or so you think--no?

--Brant

nature x-man is objective, nature plus man is subjective?

You say I am mistaken? Then prove it either empirically or logically.

Otherwise we have a difference of opinion. We all our entitled to our opinions. No one is entitled to his very own facts.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Hell, this is easy.

Bob is not a man.

He is God.

Then it all makes sense.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

But you are objectifying the situation, or so you think--no?

--Brant

nature x-man is objective, nature plus man is subjective?

You say I am mistaken? Then prove it either empirically or logically.

Otherwise we have a difference of opinion. We all our entitled to our opinions. No one is entitled to his very own facts.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Approaching you with reason is like approaching the Rock of Gibraltar with a ship.

--Brant

"Reverse engines!--Hard to starboard!"

[Robert Baratheon]

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

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.

Here is but one example: I was shopping at a major grocery chain last month and running late to an important appointment. I noticed, due to my own error, that I had some perishable items in my cart that needed to be returned before checkout, but putting each back in its proper place would have made me very late for the appointment. Instead, I put them all on a shelf where they didn't belong - knowing it was immoral - and rushed through the checkout process. I still believe that what I did was immoral, but there is no question that I benefited from it, the negative consequences to the grocery chain were so small as to be practically nonexistent, and I no longer feel any guilt in relation to my actions because of the time that has elapsed. If moral laws were inviolable, I would either have stopped myself or there would have been some noticeable negative consequence to the store, myself, or both. None of this in fact occurred.

[BaalChatzaf]

Approaching you with reason is like approaching the Rock of Gibraltar with a ship.

--Brant

"Reverse engines!--Hard to starboard!"

I am a logic and fact machine. A Turing machine that bleeds if cut. What you call "reason" is the set of prejudices you acquired by reading a lot of Ayn Rand output.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

Nothing, BTW, is "objective in the world." "Objective" and "subjective" are epistemological constructs and something merely exists or it does not, is or isn't.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Approaching you with reason is like approaching the Rock of Gibraltar with a ship.

--Brant

"Reverse engines!--Hard to starboard!"

I am a logic and fact machine. A Turing machine that bleeds if cut. What you call "reason" is the set of prejudices you acquired by reading a lot of Ayn Rand output.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Uh, no. I read a lot of nonsense and identified it as such. That's why I read you.

--Brant

[moralist]

A law is a human made convention. In what sense can a law be objective. It is a rule, and it is enforced, but it is still a human artifact and not a fact of Nature.

The only objective things in the world are those things which are independent of human judgment or action.

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.

[ginny]

Lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering always make people more rotten.

Will lying to save my child's life make me more rotten?

Will stealing food to feed someone who is hungry (think Jean Valjean) make me more rotten?

Rearden cheated on his wife. Did that make him more rotten?

Always be careful when you use the word always.

[PDS]

Lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering always make people more rotten.

Will lying to save my child's life make me more rotten?

Will stealing food to feed someone who is hungry (think Jean Valjean) make me more rotten?

Rearden cheated on his wife. Did that make him more rotten?

Always be careful when you use the word always.

Appropos of your caution about using the word always, does a musical involving a Victor Hugo novel always have to suck?

My response: pretty much always.

[ginny]

Guess we have different tastes. No problem. I'm not sure how Hugo snuck in here, but you kind of ignored my questions.

[moralist]

Lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering always make people more rotten.

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.

Will stealing food to feed someone who is hungry (think Jean Valjean) make me more rotten?

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?

Rearden cheated on his wife. Did that make him more rotten?

In the real world... yes it would.

Always be careful when you use the word always.

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.

[moralist]

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

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.

Here is but one example: I was shopping at a major grocery chain last month and running late to an important appointment. I noticed, due to my own error, that I had some perishable items in my cart that needed to be returned before checkout, but putting each back in its proper place would have made me very late for the appointment. Instead, I put them all on a shelf where they didn't belong - knowing it was immoral - and rushed through the checkout process. I still believe that what I did was immoral, but there is no question that I benefited from it, the negative consequences to the grocery chain were so small as to be practically nonexistent, and I no longer feel any guilt in relation to my actions because of the time that has elapsed. If moral laws were inviolable, I would either have stopped myself or there would have been some noticeable negative consequence to the store, myself, or both. None of this in fact occurred.

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.

[Brant Gaede]

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

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

[BaalChatzaf]

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

Greg

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

[tmj]

either way there are 'those' that should be considederd as " JEWS "

[Robert Baratheon]

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.

Here is but one example: I was shopping at a major grocery chain last month and running late to an important appointment. I noticed, due to my own error, that I had some perishable items in my cart that needed to be returned before checkout, but putting each back in its proper place would have made me very late for the appointment. Instead, I put them all on a shelf where they didn't belong - knowing it was immoral - and rushed through the checkout process. I still believe that what I did was immoral, but there is no question that I benefited from it, the negative consequences to the grocery chain were so small as to be practically nonexistent, and I no longer feel any guilt in relation to my actions because of the time that has elapsed. If moral laws were inviolable, I would either have stopped myself or there would have been some noticeable negative consequence to the store, myself, or both. None of this in fact occurred.

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.

[Brant Gaede]

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.

"Laws"? How about "facts" ("of nature")? Facts of human nature imply morality for human nature for it's a fact that man is the free-willed animal needing a morality all objectified--that is congruent with same. If you say we don't know much about human nature you are saying knowing more is, ergo, the way to an objective morality but we just ain't there yet. Instead you repeat your standard mantra claiming truth but not truth from any law or fact of nature I can figure or imagine.

--Brant