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Get as many people on an opium drip as society can sustain, then. Good luck with selling that as the definitive answer to human morality.

Morality is context-independent to the deontologist.

“That baby ought not have been born so” isn’t a prudential ought. How can one be prudent about such things?

I don’t believe you do. Ah well.

Though seriously, minor quibbles like morality aside, good balsamic vinegar on vanilla ice cream is good.

But she already thinks that, in fact, it is wicked; and for any number of reasons.

So, sure, that she has reasons is an objective fact. That they are good reasons is a matter of opinion. She may be a socialist convinced that capitalism has turned the world into a moral cesspool.

That’s a reason. Is it a fact about the world? Some say yes and others say no. And they can all give you reasons. Lots of them. How then does science or philosophy determine if they are good reasons. At best you can go down the escape hatch: “someday we will know this for sure but it’s hard to be certain now because these things are complex.”

All I’m looking for is an argument able to convince me that “capitalism = a wicked world” or “capitalism = a virtuous world” is an argument that might possibly be made objectively. I am not suggesting that it can’t be, only that you have not convinced me that it can. This is my escape hatch: that, in a world sans God, these things [i.e. value judgments] can’t be known. Not wholly. Not objectively.

But, as an ironist, I accept that my own point of view here is just that: a personal prejudice.

Like yours is.

Yes, so again, maybe something’s left out—I’d be glad to hear what you think it is.

That’s wonderful for a deontologist.

Begging the question again. I haven’t made the distinction, so to say it’s prudent but not moral, or moral but not prudent, is to beg the question of what you mean by the distinction.

What are her reasons? Why are those her reasons? What are her reasons?

You do that, you do philosophy. Period.

Logic and empirical fact.

I’ve already explained why Math is subjective, because it is language, but how it refers to the objective, often. That Math exists or is used is an objective fact, mathematical equations can be Empirically experienced. I’ve also determined that the goal of scientific inquiry is to determine what is objectively true, so you’re just repeating what I said there.

The subjectivity, or lack thereof, of Math and Science have nothing to do with reasons.

I’m not going to answer all of those questions in the second paragraph as they should really be reserved for different threads. Besides, I would just be answering with reasons which would lead to more questions. I agree that my reasons are certainly refutable, but I’m not sure that a morally based reason can strictly be, “Wrong,” certainly some are more unusual than others…

I will answer to the negative emotional impact. It is a matter of my opinion, unless I know that an individual has a decent enough relationship with his family. He may have no family alive. His family may hate him. Unless I know him, then I don’t really know.

beg the question - to use an argument that assumes as proved the very thing one is trying to prove

Thank you. If Only_Humean was wondering, that should show him.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1S8Wqnvuao[/youtube]

I think this thread is pretty much done. I wouldn’t say I’m totally dusting off my hands, after a job well-done… but something close to that. A few honorable mentions are worth making. Dan~, for one, was a beacon of reasonableness when reasonableness came at a premium, and the dark mist of obscurantism overhung ILP. JSSaint made some nice comments. Ambigui asked the right questions—it’s just a matter now of how badly he wants to be the King. I have confidence, regardless. If there was a “most improved” award, it’d go to phyllo. Big progress there… asking the tough questions. Pav and Faust were like Bert and Ernie… siding with the contract business, citing each other’s refuted posts as refutation of other’s. Everybody knows how the contract business ended up. You can draw up the most ridiculous contract imaginable, and the contract will still be ridiculous… it doesn’t justify or underwrite anything to do with morality, but is only worthy if it captures what has to do with morality itself. Most people here are consequentialists now, I think, broadly speaking. Ambigui gets it now. And that’s pretty much it. Good night and good luck.

I knew we were bound to agree on something.

Yes, but, again, Socrates and the philosophic “method” you employ here has a transcending Truth that one can rely on outside the cave. Or however this is understood philosophically by realists. You ask enough questions and eventually you reach a mythical formal morality and the merely existential points of view rooted in dasein become…inadequate?

But all I propose here are particular worlds understood by particular daseins. And particular daseins have reasons to embrace capitalism and reasons to eschew it. And, with no equivalent of the Platonic entity able to parcel out more Formal truths down here “on earth”, we are forced to rely on the extent to which we have come to believe our own existential prejudices reflect a “greater” good.

You have no God though. So, instead, you must reconstruct objectivity out of Reason. But the variables here are so complex [think “mind” alone!] there are any number of ways to define the words used in the analysis to make this “true”.

And then around and around we go speculating as to whether the meaning you have ascribed to them [producing, tautologically, a particular sequence of ideas deemed “logical”] is the meaning everyone should assign them—commensurable, of course, with how we each then relate this to “universality”.

Then we have to reconfigure these words so that somehow they are – theoretically? – in alignment with what we construe to be true empirically about the world around us. And “I” in it.

Then one day we are all dead and gone and the next generation takes up this seemingly Sisyphusian task.

Are we dismissed, your majesty?

You’re proposing scientific measures of morality in terms of neurological activity, not me. I think the project’s far wide of the mark.

So you’re giving up on this line? As you wish.

I’m not begging any question. I said the statement is not a moral one, you bring in prudence, I say it’s not prudential either. Whether they’re the same or not.

It seems you’re not interested in following the arguments, or maybe that there are too many going on in the thread and you’re confusing my points with others’. In any case, it’s a good time to let it rest.

Give me a single reason to think it’s off the mark. That’s what I’ve been asking you for, and you haven’t given a single one. Let’s be honest, whatever points you brought up earlier have been dealth with in such a way that you are now making yourself look to me like the Black Knight blocking the path forward without your arms and legs.

What line? Clearly morality is not context independent, as we both have agreed. Do you now want to give me a reason to think I should have to defend some deontological point?

Then explain what kind of ‘ought’ it is. Why should I have to help you explain yourself when I haven’t an idea what you’re referring to…?

Many years ago I read a book by [I believe] Michael Parenti. He [or whoever it was] bifurcated the world intellectually into two kinds of thinkers—those who practice “the politics of conviction” and those who practice “the politics of convenience”.

The conviction folks construed the world of human interaction as reflecting either good or bad behavior. You did the right thing or you did the wrong thing. Sometimes this was predicated on theological renditions of one or another God, sometimes on secular and philosophical renditions of one or another Reason. Either way they were driven by a doctrinaire commitment to The Objective Truth.

More often than not, their own.

But, even more often than that, they rationalized a vast assortment of means in order to achieve the particular “kingdom of ends” they fancied.

The convenience folks, on the other hand, eschewed these dogmatic, catechismic cinder blocks and, instead, embraced pragmatism [or one or another rendering of Bismark’s “realpolitik”].

Indeed, sometimes with the best of intentions as enlightened Humanists.

Others, however, represented themselves as purveyors of moral or political or philosophical conviction but actually strove to mold and manipulate those around them in an endless pursuit of what they construed to be their own selfish, Machiaveillian interests.

These Bilderberg types [exemplified by, say, Henry Kissinger or the government in China] are the most powerful people in the world. They own and they operate the global ecxonomy.

And that is the way the world works today.

Or so it seems to me.

In my own estimation – and that is all it is, my own opinion – this translates as:

“Give me a single reason that I will agree with to think it’s off the mark. That’s what I’ve been asking you for, and you haven’t given me a single one that I agreed with. Let’s be honest, whatever points you brought up earlier I have already dealth with objectively such that you are now making yourself look to me like the Black Knight blocking the path forward without your arms and legs.”

So then every single context has its own objective reality? And it is just that, regarding some contexts, it is harder to figure out what this is because they are more complex?

Is that your argument?

Sure.

And I have to agree with this or I am wrong?

It is possible to deny reality. If you disagree with that statement, then you disagree with me. Not just in the science case, but in the normative case as well.

Look at the dog, for instance. Ought that culture to invite animal abuse? The answer is discovered by investigating the actual world. You can get your reasons just by looking at the actual dog… from the world itself.

Someone might disagree… and claim to be a dasein and other bullshit. He is denying reality just as if he claimed he was the King of France, or that God made the world in 7 literal days.

Wait, so you can’t think of a way to scientifically measure morality yet claim that it can be done, and the burden of proof is then on me to show you that it’s not possible at all? That’s not how it works. You’re making the claim for objective existence, it’s your burden. Just like the burden of proof is on the theist to prove the existence of God, or on the physicist to prove the existence of new particles.

So, my single reason, as requested, would be that the best criteria you could come up with so far barely took any effort to contradict. What more reason would you like not to believe in the existence of something?

What line? Clearly morality is not context independent, as we both have agreed. Do you now want to give me a reason to think I should have to defend some deontological point?
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You’re… not following this discussion at all, are you? Let’s drop it, then.

It’s a purely emotive expression. It may be sympathy with the family of the baby, for instance. Now your turn: in what way is it possibly normative? What prudential/moral lessons can we learn from something completely out of our control?

I don’t know where this comment comes from. Gauging the consequences of actions is often easy. It’s often obvious. We use second order concepts to characterize it. There’s no complex mathmatical or scientific technique needed. It’s a way of approaching moral problems. I’m not doing a scientific investigation, I’m doing a conceptual one. And if you are denying that sometimes people fare worse, and sometimes people fare better, then you’re insane. If you have a problem with characterizing ‘faring better’ and ‘faring worse’ with pleasure and pain, then propose something it leaves out. That’s the question I asked you. Get it straight.

What are you denying the existence of? Suffering? Pain? What?

It would be better for the baby not to be horribly deformed. It ought not have been that way. No one is to blame. But obviously some ‘oughts’ have nothing to do with blame. And no one is to be praised, but obviously some ‘oughts’ have nothing to do with praise. This is clear.