Where are you making your pronouncements from? Because there’s no such perspective where “anything and everything can be morally justified” —which is what you’ve said. Contradictions everywhere.
The important point: Your perspective is not different—in the ways that matter to morality—from anyone else’s. You are human. Your needs, desires, pains, and joys may take slightly different forms—but they are fundamentally the same. You are human. And nobody said that doing ethics was easy—only that it was possible.
iam - I’m going to respond t your post “backwards”
No, we don’t. Kant and and God, maybe, but not ethics.
Okay - I didn’t find that. Let’s talk. You don’t find those who disagree unreasonable. Okay. I’ll resist the temptation to say “so what?” or maybe I won’t. Reasonableness is simply not the only criterion about which we disagree. Again, you are here hypnotised by “reason”.
This takes a while - because you really have to go to the root of morality, to what it is and what it means. The short of it, and part of the rationale that the USSC used, is the question of “personhood”. You have to ask the question - “To whom does morality apply?” This is a hot topic nowadays, as many writers wish to extend the scope of morality to other species. That is, they wish to include other species a moral agents. I’ll leave their arguments aside, for now, but even the religious most often accept the notion of moral agency - by their very notion of “fault” which you cited. It is possible to find an inconsistency in their arguments if they rely on “fault”. That’s another thread, but my point is that I suspect that you haven’t found them unreasonable because you haven’t tried very hard. And trying hard means examining morality as a whole (sound familiar?). Here, you are meeting them on the battlefield of reason. There are other ways.
What are the issues where wealth and power do not prevail? This is a little vague.
You’re buying into the propaganda. It’s not abut the size of the budget - it’s about who gets what.
It is about their own point of view. Look - Plato was essentially a rationalist - who just happened to think that philosophers should be kings. Well, lah-dee-dah - what a coincidence. Kant was wrong! Okaaaaay! There are many answers to your question. But I can’t do all this reading for you. Restricting yourself only to coherent systems, you can toss out “universality”. Why the fuck are you so stuck on that? A workable system for a given group is the best you’re going to do. You’re shooting unrealistically high, and then claiming that it’s unrealistic to expect results.
yes, you have made that point. I don’t disagree, and this is not a response to my point.
Existentialists are the biggest whiners of them all. They are poisoning your mind. Read Nietzsche, James, Dewey. Ayer, Rawls, Gauthier - and especially Kierkegaard. The historians have grafted him onto the existentialists - whatever. Just get away from the Ex-Men. They have no positive agenda. Nor do you - and I can see why. Fuge, iambiguous. Fuge.
I am making my “pronouncements” here as a white male born and raised in 20th century America. And, subsequently, all this implies for seeing the world in a way that, say, a black female born and raised in 10th century Europe would not. In a way that a yellow woman born and raised in China in the 10th century BC would not.
What you are suggesting [at least to me] is that, regarding moral and immoral behavior, it matters not when or where you were born and raised. That, instead, using the proper tools of [Western?] philosophy, all that matters is logically denoting or not denoting the most rational behaviors. Even if this can be difficult at times.
And my point is not that there has been a time and a place where any and all behaviors were justified but that over the course of human history you can find human communities that rationalized virtually every behavior imaginable.
What you then do is create the myth of an Enlightened Progress. We have transcended the savages of old and, with the invention of philosophy, have discovered a way to know precisely what our moral duty is.
I believe in a situational ethics derived from daseins rooted in human biology, history, culture and personal experience. I believe in human interation rooted in contingency, chance and change. I believe philosophical language is limited regarding what it can tell us about right and wrong human behavior—sans God.
And that is quite different from how other philosophers view these things.
But all I can do here is try to explain to others why I believe this and then defend my arguments against what I will readily admit may well be more reasonable arguments still.
After all, over the years I have changed my mind about many things—philosophical and otherwise.
Nope. Just that we make progress over the past. --If you deny that, I’ve won via reductio.
I’ve also won by showing you how an utterly non-perspectival pronouncement like “anything and everything can be morally justified” contradicts your dasein crap. There’s no such perspective from which everything and anything can be morally justified. So you’re declaring that it can makes you sound like a paradigm Objectivist—that is, as if speaking from some transcendent perspective.
We just use different words to say [pretty much] the same thing about Kant, God and ethics.
Regarding morality, what is important to me philosophically are arguments that revolve around objectivity. Using the tools of philosophy, can we arrive at an objective morality? No, I do not believe we can. Nor, it seems, do you. I arrived at that conclusion through existentialism and my own understanding of human values as the embodiment of human identity as the embodiment of daseins situated historically, culturally and existentially; and in ever interacting in a tumbling flow of contingency, chance and change. You by a different route.
When we come into conflict with others regarding issues like abortion, reason is all we really have in the end in attempting reconciliations. We propound arguments that make the most sense to us. My aim is only to provoke folks into thinking about how we come to acquire the arguments we do—in my view, as daseins interacting existentially with others over time—and to suggest there are important limitations beyond which we cannot go in “being reasonable”.
Aside fron reason, what addtional variables do you focus on when confronting someone who does not share your own moral and political values?
You say:
The “root” of morality in my opinion is simple enough: The inherent need for it. In other words, because it may not exist noumenally we are compelled to invent a phenomenological facsimile.
To wit:
When human beings aggregate in one or another rendition of political economy there are going to be conflicts. And when there are conflicts there is a need for rules. Morality, however, is a word invented to make it seem this is not the case at all. Instead, some cling to the Platonic, Kantian, Randian etc. illusion that the mind of man is able somehow to transcend the merely phenomenal and put us in touch not just with reason but with Logic itself. We can know what is right and what is wrong. We can make ought and is just another either/or. With or without God.
Now, strange as it might seem to some, I actually tend to embrace Schopenhaurer’s notion that will is the master and intellect the slave. So, on that note alone I recognize the futility of embracing reason as the crucial ingredient in grasping [and then grappling with] human moral conflict. But, when push comes to shove, “having reasons” for doing something is what we finally offer to others to explain our behaviors. It is just a matter of recognizing the limitations of reason here. The “moral agent” can be for or against aborting the unborn. But he or she still has to tell us why they are, right? And, sans God [“because the Bible says so”] we can only try to be as reasonable as we possibly can in explaining our values to others.
The bottom line I suppose then is this: I still don’t see what you are ultimately “getting at” when grappling with the reasons you give to explain your ideas about morality.
You say:
Let’s suppose Joe argues that, “abortion is immoral because killing a human being is immoral; and the unborn are human beings.” Now, suppose hypothetically Joe does not base this on God. Instead, he argues the Golden Rule. Do not do unto others unless you would want them to do the same thing unto you.
What other ways are there to evaluate this argument?
And here you seem to be focusing on reasonableness in turn. You say I’m not trying hard enough to spot the “inconsistency” in their argument. But my point is this: The argument, “the unborn are human beings and therefore must not be killed”, is consistent or inconsistent depending on the extent to which this can be determined objectively. The paradox [for me] then being this: I do believe they are human beings; but I also believe that aborting them is reasonable because forcing women to give birth is not reasonable.
I don’t think you see the implications of this paradox as I do. I’m saying two sets of reasonable premises yield two reasonable conclusions that contradict each other. A = B as it were. The law of non-contradiction is moot in moral discourse. Why? Because we can’t use philosophy to either determine or to demonstrate why one conclusion is necessarily more rational than the other. In other words, the conflicting premises can only be the existential assumptions of daseins. Neither Plato nor Kant nor Rand [nor any other philosopher] can offer arguments confuting this without making assumptions that rely on either a noumenal God or a phenomenological Reason.
Let’s consider the issue of gun control. Is it moral for private citizens to own firearms? Some say yes and others say no. But it does go on and, yes, the wealth and power of the firearms industry plays no small part in the legislation we see on the books. But this is still an issue that in many important respects transcends mere dollars and cents. The arguments from both sides are rooted deeper in constitutional law [i.e. political philosophy] and in profoundly conflicting views about the relationship between a government and its citizens.
In other words, when push comes to shove, this is about the very relationship between “I” and “we” and all that we perceive to be “other”. To wit: The enormously complex and convoluted entanglment of mental, emotional and psychological variables here is nothing short of, well, inextricable. And thus ultimately inexpressible through philosophy.
But I can no more confirm this than another can refute it. Not ultimately. It just seems reasonable to me here and now.
And thus out in the real world we find an ebb and flow of moderation, negociation and compromise prevailing in the legislatures and in the courts. At least in democracies. Why? Because there are no philosopher-kings out there who can tell us—logically—what the optimal argument is.
And where are the dollars and cents regarding moral conflagrations that revolve around abortion or capital punishment or affirmative action or gay marriage or countless other “values voter” or “social” issues? But, sure, it’s never completely absent, I agree.
How are they whiners? In what sense? And the folks you mention all made their own individual leap to one or another existential narrative. After all, once Nietzsche whacked God all that was left was the individual and his leap. And some like Kierkegaard and Buber still managed to reconfigure God into their own personal leaps of faith.
Will, pragmatism, utility. They flow from a world where mankind is on its own. Where each of us individually is on his or her own. I merely suggest a pragmatism that revolves around moderation, negociation and compromise.
No more I/Thou. No more I/Reason. Just individual daseins situated out in the actual world of historical, cultural and experiential contexts—and ever grappling with new existential varibles that never, ever stop tampering with the manner in which the old ones were put together.
Just as genes mutate and species evolve so too do experiences, relationships and fonts of information. They mutate and indivduals evolve.
Thus, in my view, Morality becomes a way for some philosophers to stop that dead in its tracks.
And this, as Kierkegaard wisely intimated, has as much to do with human psycholgy as it does with the logic of philosophy.
You’re confusing reason, or logic, as a method of argumentation for a position, with an appeal to reason to reach that position in the first place. We may certainly argue rationally. That does not mean that the avenue we use to arrive at the position we are arguing for need be based on reason. I think here you even have the Existentialists wrong.
The Ten Commandments are purportedly not arrived at through reason - they were dictated by God. I can still make a rational argument for following them.
I have made cases that are purely evidentiary - that is to say, inductive. However, since most arguments I have encountered are self-contradictory, it’s my practice to attack the argument and not the position argued for. I’m not much interested in politics. Most people’s moral and political positions are almost pure emotion. Politically, it’s usually about some group they hate. It’s not difficult to defeat most people in politics. Not that it ever matters - it’s not about reason at all. You just have to listen to campaign speeches to know that. Politics is about fear.
I wasn’t talking about you - I was talking about those you disagree with in the morality of abortion. You just went “meta” with a specific moral question. This really makes me suspicious about your motives. You seem to avoid a solution at any cost.
Yeah. So what. I get it. Those three. it’s easy to be a critic. Especially of those three. I haven’t heard a positive view from you yet.
The philosopher’s job is not to live everyone’s life for them. It’s to examine and formulate arguments. The reason I may explain is that it’s the argument that counts to a philosopher. I’m not trying to convert anyone - not even you. I’m trying to get you to give a better argument.
The Golden Rule is easily defeasible. I wish I had time right now. The short route is to get Joe to commit to complete pacifism - war, capital punishment, self-defense, the defense of another, police with pistols, etc. You’ll find one in a million who can commit to “killing a human is wrong”. Even if you do, you need only to ask why killing a human is wrong. Joe would need to be a vegan to succeed in his argument. Maybe in a couple of days we can do a role-play thread. You be Joe. I’ll crush you - um, I mean Joe.
No, it’s not. I’m talking about internal consistency. Simple logic. Do the roleplay, and I’ll show you.
Yeah, I do too. I also believe that humans regularly kill. It’s more complicated than you are making it.
No. it’s not the conclusion that’s “rational” - it’s the argument. It’s how the various conclusions to our various moral positions line up with each other. Your last sentence is pure crap, if I may say. reason is not a position - it’s a method.
That’s crap - I have to go in a minute. It’s an emotional issue, and a political one. We own guns because we like to. I own guns - no big gun company helped me to want to. The argument is that I want them and some people don’ want me to.
To me this is just more semantics, connotation, glossology. Two people argue over whether it is reasonable to abort a perfectly healthy fetus. Now, if they decide it is unreasonable does that make it unethical in turn? How do they [you, me, anyone] decide this?
From an existential perspective the abortion can be seen as either reasonable or not reasonable. Depending on your assumptions, your premises, your point of view. And if it can reasonably be argued either way then it can be argued either way that it is ethical or not ethical.
The bottom line [for me] is our inabilty to determine once and for all [using the tools of philosophy] whether it is reasonable and/or ethical to abort a human fetus. Everything else is just the yada yada of logic chopping.
I agree that evidence will be produced and that by and large many arguments are predicated on emotional and psychological reactions. But nothing changes though. In the end we still need to propound what we construe to be reasonable arguments to justify our behaviors. The evidence will be used to back those reasons up and emotion is just icing on the cake for most folks.
Therefore, without whatever it is we deem to be “logical arguments”, how else would we decide what to either prescribe or proscribe in human social, political and economic interaction? And politics is about power. But it’s not only about that. It’s also about convincing others that our reasons for doing this instead of that make the most sense. I just point out that, regarding the moral and political conflicts that most rend us, all sides are capable of making sense. And no side is capable of demonstrating that they make the most sense sense. And, of course, that all “sides” here are basically existential manifestations of dasein.
Not really sure what you mean by my going “meta” here. Regarding any specific moral question, I embrace moderation, negociation and compromise. At least until you get into really extreme behaviors like raping children. Not much room for compromise here, right? At least not for most of us. And this gets us into the arguments swatted back and forth between monooq and myself.
But I do avoid embracing solutions regarding the overwhelming preponderance of moral/political conflicts. And that’s because I don’t believe there are any.
And given the inherent danger of living in a world where moral and political extremists wish to foist their own religious or ideological “solutions” on the rest of us, my “positive” view/contribution here revolves precisely around championing moderation, negociation and compromise. The tenets of Karl Popper’s The Open Society. In other words, democracy and the rule of law. And here we can invite in any number of contributions from the Enlightenment folks. As long as we steer clear of alleged “natural rights”. I don’t believe there are any.
Yes, but examining and formulating arguments regarding what? That’s my interest. Particular arguments relating to particular moral and political conflicts. What are the limits of logic here? You seem to be arguing that those on either side of the abortion issue can employ a philosopher to teach them how to make better arguments. So, they both become masters at arguing conflicting points of view. But what then really changes substantively when a particular woman is agonizing over what to do regarding a particular unwanted fetus?
Basically, what you are arguing here [if I understand you—and I probably don’t] is that the Golden Rule is meaningless unless it is situated existentially out in the world. And that’s what I argue. For example, the folks in Tripoli right now are not getting into heated philosophical discussions about it. Instead, if you ask these folks whether it is “wrong to kill a human” it will depend entirely on what particular context you raise the question in. And who you raise it with. Some will say, “here, yes, but there, no”. And others will say, “here, no, but there, yes”. But I suspect that very, very, very few will say, “yes, always.”
And moral, political and ethical philosophers are impotent to intervene in order to “settle it”.
iambiguous wrote:
I’m saying two sets of reasonable premises yield two reasonable conclusions that contradict each other. A = B as it were. The law of non-contradiction is moot in moral discourse. Why? Because we can’t use philosophy to either determine or to demonstrate why one conclusion is necessarily more rational than the other. In other words, the conflicting premises can only be the existential assumptions of daseins. Neither Plato nor Kant nor Rand [nor any other philosopher] can offer arguments confuting this without making assumptions that rely on either a noumenal God or a phenomenological Reason.
Syntactically, reason can be construed as a noun, an adjective, a verb or an adverb. Depending on the context. John can be said to use reason in his argument. Or he can be said to have a reasonable argument. Or it can be said he reasons admirably. Or that he reasonably speaks his mind.
But all this can be said using the word unreasonable as well. And my point is precisely that reason and unreason are merely points of view depending on the circumstances and the moral and political prejudices espoused.
As I basically noted with respect to the gun control issue:
[i]Is it moral for private citizens to own firearms? Some say yes and others say no. But it does go on and, yes, the wealth and power of the firearms industry plays no small part in the legislation we see on the books. But this is still an issue that in many important respects transcends mere dollars and cents. The arguments from both sides are rooted deeper in constitutional law and in profoundly conflicting views about the relationship between a government and its citizens.
Someone can ask, “what’s the reason you believe the government should have no say in whether a private citizen buys a tank?” Reason is both the position taken and the method [the tool] used to arrive at it. But both sides have access to reasonable arguments. And both sides can be said to have arrived at them reasonably. But, again, nothing ever gets resolved. And that is because, in my view, nothing ever can be resolved.
That’s your own prejudice showing. They argue whether it is right. if we’re talking morality, then they are arguing as to whether it is right. If you think that has to be “reasonable”, then that is, again, your prejudice.
People can have a moral position without ever formulating an argument for it. “Because God said so” is not an argument. “Because that’s the way i feel about it” is not an argument. Reason can be applied to anything - it is not intimately connected to morality. They are just two different things. “We” can determine the difference by looking in a dictionary. That is not “semantics” - it’s just a fact.
This is just one big strawman. The act’s “reasonableness” is not the primary issue - it’s rightness is. You set up reason as the prerequisite of morality so that you can render morality useless. But you are putting the cart before the horse. You don’t make a morality for an argument, you make an argument for a morality. If you don’t, you get Kant, yes. KANT WAS WRONG!
It’s true, Virginia - there is no certainty. It’s probably time to get over it.
You clearly don’t know what is meant by an “evidentiary argument”, then. The evidence is the argument.
I am not rent about anything. And politics is not about making sense. It’s about appealing to fear, as I have said.
Ahhh - so raping a child is an easy case, and killing one in the womb is not. There must be some difference between the two cases. And it’s not a moral one?
I’d like to see you defend this.
Boo-hoo. Every time you vote, you’re trying to “foist” something on someone else.
Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, Logic, Morality, ontology - look it up. Whatever they’re talking about at a given time.
Of course they can. Caveat emptor, though.
She might be able to sort out her conflicting moral sentiments (most people have them) and come to a decision she can feel comfortable calling the best she can come up with. That’s the way life is, dude - you just do the best you can.
No. I’m saying that it’s a stupid rule. Okay for beginners, but not high-level philosophical stuff.
Are you taking a vote?
Look - the reason to do philosophy is not to be popular or to get everyone to agree with you. For an existentialist, you are very, very outer-directed. You do philosophy for you.
No. A contradiction is a contradiction. If you can’t tell the difference between consistency and contradiction then you have no business commenting on the reasonableness of any argument. It’s whatever you want it to be. Which is cool. But if you can say that “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal.” is a mere point of view, then I have no reason to even try to follow your argument here, much less to agree with it.
I sincerely feel sorry for you, my friend. I have read thousands of anxiety-ridden words from you. This is not really a philosophical issue, at bottom.
What then is the better argument regarding the aborting of a human fetus? And after you make this distinction you can be sure of one thing: That those who don’t agree will insist it is the worse argument.
In relationship to empirical facts a proposition of this sort may be true. An argument about pregnancy, abortion and giving birth has to correspond with human biology for example. But someone can argue that aborting a zygote is more reasonable than aborting an embryo is more reasonable than aborting a non-viable fetus is more reasonable than aborting a viable fetus.
But another can argue that human life is human life and making such distinctions is unreasonable—and a moral abomination.
Is that a more or a less reasonable argument?
iambiguous wrote:
Will, pragmatism, utility. They flow from a world where mankind is on its own. Where each of us individually is on his or her own. I merely suggest a pragmatism that revolves around moderation, negociation and compromise.
I have pointed out how democratic republics around the world use this approach in passing legislation. They may not call it what I call it but for all practical purposes it amounts to the same thing. The extremists, the ideologues, the moral absolutists don’t prevail.
What I notice is hat you ignore my challenge: “Ahhh - so raping a child is an easy case, and killing one in the womb is not. There must be some difference between the two cases. And it’s not a moral one?
I’d like to see you defend this.”
Bad faith, my friend. You gotta be clownin’, dawg.