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“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.

I surely may have misconstrued your point to Mo, but I suspected you were chagrined that Mo would lump you in with all the rest of us. That, while we may have deserved his rebukes, you surely did not.

If this was not your point at all, I apologize.

No problem. Yes, that wasn’t my point at all.

Posting here is not imprudent, nor is it immoral (whatever you think the distinction is). If you can’t control your language, then posting here is both imprudent and immoral—i.e., something you ought not do. If you get into a conversation knowing you can’t always control your language, then posting here is both imprudent and immoral. You haven’t explained whatever you take the distinction to be. I’ve feigned that there is a distinction in what I just wrote—but there actually is none to be had, at least not one that you’ve made clear.

Your example is a bad one. And if you had spent some time reading past posts, you’d have realized that I’ve already dealt with bad examples. Perhaps you could just say what you think the distinction is…

Let me repeat what I’ve already said, for you:

Being prudent is never immoral, and being immoral is never prudent. They are not just conceptually linked, they are two concepts for the same thing (i.e., what you ‘ought’ to do). Your intelligence has been bewitched and confused by means of an error in language. I can tell you how it happened, if you want. The error, at least, reached prominence when Kant divorced empirical self-interest (‘happiness’) from morality, in order to find a non-contingent, universal ground of morality. He rendered the concept unintelligible when he placed its necessary postulates in the unintelligible realm—the noumenal realm. When he tried to solve the problem of motivation (i.e., “Why be moral?”), that answer, too, was likewise placed in the unanswerable category. This is all fundamentally religious thinking. You can separate prudence from morality if you say “prudence is this-worldly self-interest”, and “morality is other-worldly self-interest” (i.e., getting into heaven, and not hell)… but there is no other-world. I don’t make a fiction and a show of my concepts, and neither should you. You can always uphold a distinction when you render one half of it meaningless—but it’ll be a meaningless distinction.

Thus I’m in the tradition of the philosophical greats… Socrates, Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Dan~

Another thing you’ll surely be tempted to do (as others have), is to say things like, “So brushing your teeth is something moral”? And my answer is clearly yes. You ought to take care of yourself. But don’t mistake degrees of importance (e.g., brushing your teeth vs. saving a life) with a fundamental difference in concepts.

This is the idea that each person ‘creates’ their own morality. Mo has been criticizing you for having this position. I think that morality is set by the group. An individual may act morally or immorally with respect to the group standard. The Prince is not ignorant of morality but merely uses it to attain his own goals. Success is based on prudent action which may be saintly piety or ruthless brutality.

ROFL

But if my post here is morally positive, then how could you say it is morally wrong? You can’t. What is wrong about it? Should I always assume I won’t be able to handle myself appropriately in some particular person’s presence? How do you ever know, if you don’t try? In fact, you may have to be imprudent in order to cultivate moral character. You’ve got to be daring, and do something positive in the world.

If you can’t distinguish different kinds of actions because you insist on their connections to each other, then you can’t talk about anything at all, let alone morality or prudence. You can’t talk about what you ought to do, at all. You can’t talk about necks, and you can’t talk about heads.

Anyway, let’s stick with this concept you just brought up - “degrees of importance”. So there is a spectrum, and prudence is to the left, while morality is to the right. It’s all the same thing, but it’s a matter of degree of “oughtness”. Just like the difference between the neck and the head, in Loki’s case. Where is the line drawn? Inability to draw a clear line doesn’t mean there is no difference between “neck” and “head”. Same with prudence and morality, given your own definitions.

I can, and just did. If you do something that does not seem morally wrong, but you know it’ll lead to something morally wrong (or at least that likelihood), then what you did initially is in fact morally wrong. That’s clear. Buying a gun is not morally wrong, but buying a gun when I know I have an uncontrollable temper makes buying the gun morally wrong. It’s something I ought not do.

Your example simply begs the question of what you think the distinction is. You should just state it. Because your example itself shows no distinction.

Wrong.

There is a spectrum of the force that an ‘ought’ claim has. On one end, you really really ought to do that. On the other end, yea, you sort of ought to do it. Perhaps on one end is brushing your teeth, and on the other end is saving a life. Neither side is prudence or morality, one and not the other. I’ve already told you there is no distinction there. If you think there is, it is incumbent on you to FOR ONCE EXPLAIN THE DISTINCTION.

Otherwise, you should more or less agree with me. Prudence and morality are linked. As with many philosophical puzzles and problems, the problem itself is with language and the way the problem is stated. I’m clarifying it. The distinction above is a relic of old religious thinking, which no longer makes sense… just as it didn’t make sense pre-middle ages, to the Greeks. I am a Greek in spirit. Ironically, Ambigui, Faust and phyllo represent the Kantian priesthood.

My point is this: We only have so much understanding of and control over all the myriad variables that come together – and then evolve over the years – as or into “I”. Likewise the “group” is always situated problematically out in a particular historical and cultural context.

Mo is perturbed mostly by the suggestion that particular behaviors are rooted inextricably and inexplicably in dasein. And, thus, in the enormously complex labyrinths that are contingency, chance and change. He refuses to accept there is no way for philosophers to yank Virtue objectively out of all the many, many, many social, political and economic permutations possible “out in the world” of actual human interaction.

So he does it “in his head” instead. He creates an argument [a world of words] that is true only because he claims the meaning he gives to all the words in the argument are true. Morality and prudence are what he says they are. Basically, the same thing.

And, if you insist on being the sole arbiter regarding what either does or does not contribute “scientifically” to the “well-being” of the human race, I suppose they are just different facets of the same thing.

Is this in fact true though? I don’t think so. But, more to the point, I don’t think we can know for sure because facts pertaining to the behaviors precipitated by conflicting value judgments can distinguish what did from what did not happen but not what should from what should not happen.

And calling yourself “a river” instead of a “philosopher-king” here doesn’t change that.

To paraphrase myself, “A prudent and objective morality isn’t true or false unless you believe it is.”

For, among other things, all practical purposes.

How can they be linked if they’re the same thing?

Game over.

By the way, according to your logic the only proper moral decision is to not engage with others at all. Absolute prudence. 'Cause I might fuck up.

I’m not the least bit Kantian. :unamused:

Correct. They differ only in letters.

You’re welcome, btw.

You should probably hide yourself away if you know you’re going to end up behaving like I usually see you do. I don’t have that problem though.

If I stop posting it’s not because I’m hiding. It’s because I can’t find a single interesting thread to engage in recently.

Apologies, I’ve missed a couple of days due to real life popping up unexpectedly.

Time to lock this thread, as it’s going nowhere fast. This post gets Monooq a warning.

deleted.

Let me a take a different tack here.

It seems to me an assumption in your position, Mo, is that, really, with some quantitative variation, we are all the same. Culture and ignorance can make it seem like we are vastly more different than each other, but at root we really want the same things, and thus we can come up with a morality based on pain and other measurable neurological reactions, a morality that works for everyone, in fact, even if their culture and ignorace of cause and effect, make it hard for them to realize.

I used to think something like this. In any case that we are all, really, pretty much the same.

It doesn’t really fit my experience.

There seem to be a lot of people who like to be under authority. Who may like the idea of freedom in the abstract, but seek to place themselves under authority as much as possible and do seem happier there than I ever would. They made the transition from royalty based governments to republics and democracies without really granting themselves or seeming to be very attracted to utilizing freedoms I like to and would like to. They conform because it is normal. And they dislike the not normal because it is not normal. They may at times weigh in with arguments about why normal is better, but often, in fact, they can come right out and say the issue is simply that being normal is good, period.

I can think, oh, I know how they really would like to live. If I could teach them critical thinking, and perhaps undo some of the judgments and fear that lock them into these places. If they could be encouraged to experience freedom, creativity, individuality - rather than thinking that Nike and Chanel will give them individuality - they would realize they are like me, not in specifics, but in the general urges.

How…presumptuous.

What if there are people who simply do not thrive in the same ways? They are not really at root like you, Mo. It seems clear to me that some people actually want there to be strife, war, conflict, dog eat god environments, harsh interpersonal dynamics. (this is not necessarily at all the same group as the conformists I mentioned above) It is not an us them, I see a number of groups out there.

I spent a long time thinking, really, they differed with me over what was a necessary evil. Or they did not know there might be ways to mitigate some of this. Or that their upbringing distorted their real selves.

I don’t buy that at all, now.

It seems to me your sense of morality is based on this general unity of humankind. (if that does not seem like the case to you, then we need to focus there and perhaps I am wrong about this implication)

Yes, I think this is fair. Culture is a surface phenomenon—a way of expressing the sort of impulses that all creatures of our type hold in common. They get expressed in different ways, through culture… but at a deeper level, it’s possible to judge culture because at the deeper level there are commonalities.

What is the problem here? I am one of those people.

That would be surprising indeed. Are they from an alien planet? Do they not share hundreds of thousands of years of the same forging as me? Are we not from the same place, in Africa? Are we not virtual genetic identicals? I’d say, let them thrive as they see fit. At this point, you might want to say that torturing and slavery are thriving, and ask what my response is. It’s clear, while there may be many different ways of thriving and flourishing, there are at least some ways of getting it wrong. I know that because I am from the same place as you, and your virtual genetic identical. There are surface variations. You want love, and that urge expresses itself in different ways. Why should I care? You want to avoid pain, and that urge expresses itself in different ways. Why should I care? You want pleasure, and that urge expresses itself in different ways. Why should I care? There can be different ways of expressing yourself, but there are clearly some ways of getting it wrong.

No there isn’t. People only fight for a reason. People only have conflict in order to settle something. People only hurt to get something. Nobody does these things for no reason. These things aren’t inherently good, they’re means.