dfsdf

If you look in a dictionary, you will find a significant difference in the meanings of the words ‘prudent’ and ‘moral’. It’s easy to think of actions where prudence and morality are not aligned. It’s also easy to think of prudent actions which do not even raise the issue of morality.
You should try it. It’s lots of fun. :banana-dance:

Ruh-roh.

phyllo,

You are eating peanuts on the shit end of a sinking dingy going nowhere. I am making it rain. Faust is rethinking Kant and prepping your life-preservers. I am captaining a comfortable ship cruising past. Here’s a wave. The rivers going where I want, because I am the river.

Go ahead, holler at your last two friends, Merriam and Webster. They can’t hear you, and if they could, they’d tell you you’re wrong.

Kind regards,

Mo

Would you also say there’s no difference between your neck and your head?

Mo,
Of course you are comfortable, you’re out of touch with reality. You have redefined the meanings of words until they no longer match common usage. Your definitions are either outright wrong or just trivial. It’s impossible to have a discussion with you because you are using a different language than everyone else on this forum.

You are all wet.

Trivial is the word, phyllo. According to Mo’s thesis, every decision is a moral decision. Firstly, no one would live that way. Second, it robs meaning from morality. Which finger shall i pick my nose with? Well, if someone can say “You ought to use the most effective one,” then I guess, since they used the word “ought”, it must be a moral decision.

What stooges.

You have no idea what the fucking difference is, and if you did, you would have straightforwardly said what it is by now.

YOU HAVEN’T.

My view is clear. It’s the tradition in philosophy. Since Plato, Nietzsche, Hobbes, and others. You anon, phyllo, Faust, do not have a fucking clue what you mean by ‘moral’. You use it in a meaningless way. An empty term. That’s because you’re following the hard left the tradition took after Kant, and you don’t even realize it. Kant thought that prudence was your empirical/phenomenal self-interest. But you were also a noumenal being. Problem is, nothing in the noumenal realm can be known. And neither can your use of the term ‘moral’. So much the worse for you. I use fucking English, ORDINARY ENGLISH.

It’s a shame that you have nothing but insults to offer----and if they came after anything that wasn’t utterly ignorant, I would be insulted.

I can only allow those following this exchange to judge for themselves the extent to which Mo has accurately conveyed, oh, never mind…

prudent - 1. capable of exercising sound judgement in practical matters, especially as concerns one’s own interests
(from the Latin ‘prudens’, to fore-see)
moral - 1. relating to, dealing with, or capable of making the distinction between right and wrong in conduct
(from the Latin ‘moralis’, of manners or customs used by Cicero as translation of the Greek ‘ethikos’)

Morality deals with relationships with other people. Prudence exists without these relationships but may be also be applied to relationships.

It may be prudent to cooperate with a psychotic killer although it involves doing something immoral.

Alone on a deserted island, prudence still exists but morality does not. It is prudent to build a shelter, but there is no morality associated with such an action. Same with brushing your teeth.

Hope this helps. :slight_smile:

Or, to paraphrase Lewis Carroll:

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘morality,’ ” Iambiguous said.

 Mo smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you." 

 “But how do square objectivity here with William Barrett's conjecture that value judgments often revolve around conflicting -- but eminently reasonable -- points of view?" Iambiguous objected.

 “When I use words,” Mo said, in rather a scornful tone, “they mean just what I choose them to mean—neither more nor less.”

 "But what if they mean something different to me?"  Iambiguous protested.

 "Then you are wrong!", trumpeted Mo.

There’s no difference here. ‘Right and wrong in conduct’ = ‘sound judgment in practical matters’.

What? Are you claiming that’s all there is to it? If so, you are dead wrong. What moral theory are you talking about? Is it virtue theory? —because then obviously you’re wrong. Is it consequentialism? —because if so, you’re wrong again. Is it Kantianism? —because there you’d be wrong too. Those are the three main moral theories in the history of philosophy. Which one do you want to be wrong about?

It is not prudent to do something immoral because a psychotic killer said to. What a ridiculous and indefensible example.

Utterly false. You ought to build a shelter. You ought to take care of yourself. You ought to care for your health. That’s all there is to say about it. There’s no sense in applying your non-existent distinction.

On the other hand, Mo’s point here is not unreasonable. You can clearly see the direction in which he is going in melding the meaning of the word moral with the meaning of the word prudential.

Still, it is “out in the world” when you are forced to apply the meaning you assign to these words to particular behaviors that you are only able to garner a greater or a lesser consensus.

Mo merely insist if you are not on his side of the lines being drawn then you are wrong.

By definition, in other words.

His own.

Always.

You know, Mo, I sometimes agree with you. And sometimes I don’t. It’s odd that you accuse me of insulting you, when I’ve tried to simply make a point by asking you a question. But I can’t make points if you don’t engage in conversations.

The good news is I’m so used to your vitriol that I’m not insulted by it like I once was.

If you simply don’t have time to deal with me, and would like to stick to “debating” the usual suspects - then just say so. I don’t have tons of time on my hands either, and would completely understand.

Anyway, my post was about Loki’s Wager.

Here’s the point from your last two posts:

Was that your question? Because if it was, you know where you shove it.

You mean about my head and my neck? Guess what I’m going to say?

I see no reason why these people are distinguishing between prudence and morality. I see no reason to do so in the entire history of philosophy. I see no reason in phyllo’s favorite dictionary. They still want to. So, please, if you think they’re right… EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE.

Are you then equally contemptuous of those who refuse to engage philosophically in “conversations” here? And do you also believe that, in order to ask the right questions, you must first be privy to the right answers?

That often seems to be Mo’s bent here. Unless, of course, this really is just an exercise in irony.

Machiavelli’s Prince is prudent but not moral.

I don’t know how many examples you need, in order to see a clear distinction between prudence and morality.

Your entire theory of morality seems to hinge on this word ‘ought’ which you continue to misuse.

I tried. I am a Webster’s Dictionary to my people.

To your satisfaction?

“I ought to know better than to post here, even occasionally” is a matter of prudence. Let’s say uncontrolled harsh language is morally wrong. Let’s assume that I have trouble controlling my language when I speak with you. So I wonder whether I can fruitfully take part in a conversation with you, in this thread, without doing something morally wrong. I’m feeling good, and in control, so I post something nice and straightforward. I’ve just done something morally right, but imprudent. Because I’ve misjudged my abilities and the first time you say to me “you know where you can shove it”, I lose control and rage against you.

That is a difference between prudence and morality. And the example is purely hypothetical. :-"

What?

But, again, to me, this depends entirely on what you construe the basis of morality to be.

The Prince might embrace self-gratification as a moral font. And, so, he has to be prudent always in deceiving others in order to, at times, convince them otherwise? Think, say, a few prominent folks from the Showtime series The Borgias.

Once you embrace expediency – rooted often in fortiuity, and always in contingency, chance and change – you acknowledge that value judgments are invariably rooted in dasein. And dasein is situated out in a particular world understood in a particular manner.

Sans God, there is no way for mere mortals to go here except to – existentially, subjunctively – make things up as they go along. Mo, however, lives in his “world of words” instead. In the world of Reason. And words here mean precisely what he says they do. Or, in other words, precisely what he wants and needs them to. Thus, he is ruled by his own psychological bent to embrace certainty here.

In my view.

Unless, of course, I’m wrong.