JEWS AND YOU AND JEWS

[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

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.

[BaalChatzaf]

"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

baseball is a fact and it is all made up by people. It does not flow logically from the laws of physics. Like anything else that is possible or actual, it does not contradict the laws of physics either. The laws of nature/physics constrain human artifacts. It is impossible for a human artifact to contradict the laws of nature/physics.

Morality is like baseball. It is all made up.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[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

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.

So, Eichmann gets hanged anyway.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

"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

baseball is a fact and it is all made up by people. It does not flow logically from the laws of physics. Like anything else that is possible or actual, it does not contradict the laws of physics either. The laws of nature/physics constrain human artifacts. It is impossible for a human artifact to contradict the laws of nature/physics.

Morality is like baseball. It is all made up.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Individual rights are made up, morality is made up, philosophy* is made up, science is made up. All are human creations. They reference the human animal and its human nature. They reference reality.

--Brant

*Objectivism

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Individual rights are made up, morality is made up, philosophy* is made up, science is made up. All are human creations. They reference the human animal and its human nature. They reference reality.

--Brant

*Objectivism

Brant,

Ditto for math.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Brant,

Ditto for math.

Michael

Absolutely! Plato was dead wrong.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

Ditto for math.

Michael

Absolutely! Plato was dead wrong.

Ba'al Chatzaf

It seems to be in math that you can truly get a complicated and rigorous "proof."

--Brant

but not in any competence of mine

[moralist]

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

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.

[moralist]

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.

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.

[BaalChatzaf]

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

[Robert Baratheon]

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.

Would you enlighten us as to what those consequences will be? Because I'm not seeing any, and, at this point, I have no reason to believe there will be any.

[ginny]

Moralist, you sound like a vengeful god from the old testament on crack. People do thoughtless stuff like tossing something back on a shelf. Momentarily stupid for a specific reason is a far cry from immoral. Just a generalization - people who seek out sin usually are hughe sinners themselves.

Who died and made you Elvis?

[BaalChatzaf]

Moralist, you sound like a vengeful god from the old testament on crack. People do thoughtless stuff like tossing something back on a shelf. Momentarily stupid for a specific reason is a far cry from immoral. Just a generalization - people who seek out sin usually are hughe sinners themselves.

Who died and made you Elvis?

My guess is that normal folks are mentally not concentrated for a considerable portion of their waking hours. We let our minds wander quite a bit.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[ginny]

It's not concentration. It's making proper choices. If the choice is getting a job I desperately need or, with proper regret, leaving ice cream to melt in a cart, I'd hightail out of the store. To me, it's common sense. Were I an objectivist, I would say its putting my values in the propre hierachical order.

By the way, there are more than two choices here. How about going back the next day, new job on the horizon, apologize to the manager and offer payment. For god sakes, let's think out of the box instead of being obsessed with immorality.

Go forth and sin no more.

[moralist]

Moralist, you sound like a vengeful god from the old testament on crack. People do thoughtless stuff like tossing something back on a shelf. Momentarily stupid for a specific reason is a far cry from immoral. Just a generalization - people who seek out sin usually are hughe sinners themselves.

Who died and made you Elvis?

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.

[moralist]

It's not concentration. It's making proper choices. If the choice is getting a job I desperately need or, with proper regret, leaving ice cream to melt in a cart, I'd hightail out of the store. To me, it's common sense. Were I an objectivist, I would say its putting my values in the proper hierarchical order.

By the way, there are more than two choices here.

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.

[BaalChatzaf]

Here is my favorite test questions to strong moralists.

If a person is forced to live in total isolation on a desert island where he has no other humans with which to interact, is his survival in anywise dependent on moral judgements, as opposed to prudential judgement such as how to get the next meal or figuring out what is dangerous and what is safe.

My experience is that strong Objectivists tend to make a moral issue out of just about everything from deciding to live or not to choosing between two flavors of ice cream.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

It's not concentration. It's making proper choices. If the choice is getting a job I desperately need or, with proper regret, leaving ice cream to melt in a cart, I'd hightail out of the store. To me, it's common sense. Were I an objectivist, I would say its putting my values in the propre hierachical order.

By the way, there are more than two choices here. How about going back the next day, new job on the horizon, apologize to the manager and offer payment. For god sakes, let's think out of the box instead of being obsessed with immorality.

Go forth and sin no more.

There tend to be many more small import choices than big ones, but making bad small choices can lead to habits that corrupt the big ones. The small choice victims may not even note the loss, but grate on the perpetrator with any kind of conscience.

--Brant

[ginny]

Brant, yes, small choices lead to big choices yada yada ... but as presented, the scenario was about a one-time shot when someone had a job interview and had ice cream in the cart. You don't usually change in midstream, Brant. A habit is very different from an emergency. However, that being said, if a person is habitually forgetting appointments or running late, it's damn annoying, but I still can't call it immoral.

[moralist]

Here is my favorite test questions to strong moralists.

If a person is forced to live in total isolation on a desert island where he has no other humans with which to interact, is his survival in anywise dependent on moral judgements, as opposed to prudential judgement such as how to get the next meal or figuring out what is dangerous and what is safe.

My experience is that strong Objectivists tend to make a moral issue out of just about everything from deciding to live or not to choosing between two flavors of ice cream.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Here is my favorite test questions to strong moralists.

If a person is forced to live in total isolation on a desert island where he has no other humans with which to interact, is his survival in anywise dependent on moral judgements, as opposed to prudential judgement such as how to get the next meal or figuring out what is dangerous and what is safe.

My experience is that strong Objectivists tend to make a moral issue out of just about everything from deciding to live or not to choosing between two flavors of ice cream.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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.

That sure isn't what Rand thought. Prudential judgment - for or against the life of "man" (by which she meant volitionally activated rational actor) - IS moral judgment according to her.

"It is on a desert island that he needs it [morality] most." (Quoting from memory.)

Ellen

[ginny]

"My experience is that strong Objectivists tend to make a moral issue out of just about everything from deciding to live or not to choosing between two flavors of ice cream."

Baal, you must have read the thread on OO where for weeks they debated the morality of vanilla v. chocolate ice cream. Too funny. But they got it all wrong. If it's not coffee ice cream, it's going straight to hell.

[BaalChatzaf]

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.

My position, precisely

[Brant Gaede]

If you're on that island and spend time thinking about this, you're nuts.

--Brant

go gather some

[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