Mistaken ideas about being wrong

Nobody can be wrong. Nobody can be right. You can have beliefs and thoughts that can get evaluated as right or wrong, but you are not equivalent to the beliefs and thoughts that you have. Yet in some arguments people get treated as if they were the living embodiment of the belief or thought that they are currently supporting. “You are wrong!” As if wrongness could a person’s existential status. Nobody is wrong and nobody is right.

Avoid confusing your being with the thoughts and beliefs that are part of your doing.

Believing and thinking are actions. They may be habituated to the point where it takes no discernible effort to do them but they are still a form of doing. We can usually change what we are doing.

People cannot be wrong they can only do wrong.

Mostly its just a matter of unworded implication, this happens allot in language. :slight_smile:

If no one is right or wrong then why bother? I cant agree with you because your neither right or wrong in your assumption.

Right. Good call, Xanderman.

People say things that are right or wrong, relative to a certain set of evaluative criteria. But, of course, nobody ‘is’ right, just as nobody ‘is’ good or bad.

This is a great post because one can take the consequences of this line of reasoning pretty far. Evolution itself, for example, is neither good nor bad. Just so, no particular social adaption or change in and of itself is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’

In fact, we cannot assert an ‘absolute’ moral or epistemological status to any action at all – and therefore, any affect of any action. This is the deep reason why the utilitarians are in bad faith: there’s more to things than just how they can be used, what they produce.

We ought to ask “How does this process work?” rather than “What does this process produce?” or, even worse, “What does this event mean?”

Wow… :laughing: This is the really simple stuff…

So by “right” or “wrong” you mean “moral” or “immoral”?

Can we agree that, whatever smokescreen you’re using about the other sense of the word, that it’s possible for a claim to be “correct” or “incorrect”?

And that the term “right” can apply equally to the sense correct as it can to “moral”, as can “wrong” to “incorrect” as well as to “immoral”?

Some might even say it’s a better fit and a more appropriate invocation of the language…

This thread confuses me. Is it a claim about relativism for everything, or for moral claims with a little bit of deliberately deceptive wordplay?

EVERYTHING has to be put into context. :angry:

Evolution IS right if you want to survive as a species, if you don’t(besides that not being your choice) it isn’t, it’s wrong. If you don’t care either way then it’s neither.

But it cannot be stressed enough that it depends on context(as does everything).

Oh sure. Niether right nor wrong works well until your life is in the balance.

YOU are WRONG!!!

Are you saying that someone who jumps off a ten-story building believing he can fly and consequently splattering his skull on the pavement is actually…right?
Fascinating.

Hey, if nobody is right and nobody is wrong, what constitutes success and why have an opinion at all?
Why evolve intelligence?
Why think? A gnat is just as right as anyone with a PH.D.

Why is it that those proposing these ideas about the irrelevance of right/wrong are the ones least able to defend them?
Could it be that they hold absurd ideas which they can neither explain nor justify and are looking for an excuse to continue believing in them…because they feel ‘right’?

I agree with X. People are not right or wrong, evil or good. People are just people who hold true or false beliefs; who commit good or evil acts. Only a person’s beliefs can be evaluated as right (or true) or wrong (or false); only a person’s actions can be evaluated as evil or good.

Ah yes, the mind/body dichotomy.
Such a saving grace.

The opinion says nothing about the opinion holder.
The appearance is superficial, the essence remains uncorrupted and equal.

In this way, anyone can remain as obtuse as they like, while claiming to be no different than anyone else; the weak finding a way out of natural selection and the roll of the evolutionary dice.

Let’s see, using my previous analogy:
If a mind becomes convinced he can jump off a building and fly, this does not reflect badly on its qualities or its gullibility, or its ability to reason or its psychology, but is only a product of erroneous training.

And so the retard and the genius join hands in the great ocean of humanity, as one.
What separates the two?
Opportunity, luck, education.

Nurture, becomes paramount as nature is diminished in importance.
And all men are created equal.

But then why not all species?

I don’t see this as being part of the mind/body problem.

Of course it says something about the opinion holder. It says that the particular belief that the opinion holder holds is either correct or mistaken.

False. Some beliefs are more accurate than are others.

If someone believes that he can fly, then his belief is delusional. If someone believes that the earth is flat, then his belief reflects ignorance of the fact that it isn’t. If someone believes that the Red Sox are a better baseball team than are the Yankees, then his belief is merely mistaken. :wink:

If you define ‘luck’ as random events that affect us over which we have no direct control, then yeah, I pretty much agree with that – but what’s it got to do with this thread?

All men are men, yes.

Because not all species are men.

Relativism.

Calm your waters.

Now any belief when acted upon has consequences. We will all experience the consequences of our actions. A belief on its own cannot protect you from the consequences of your actions.

What I want to do here is to point out that individuals are not equivalent to their beliefs.

I am not my beliefs. I am something more. I have the capacity to hold beliefs. I am not the same as the beliefs that I hold. The same principle applies to everyone.

Any particular belief is not intrinsically linked to any person. An individual has the capacity to drop old beliefs and pick up new ones.

Focus on the verb be/are/is. I judge “You are wrong” as a piece of weak poetry. That metaphor confuses more than it clarifies.

We can hit our target better when we say something like: “Your thought is wrong.” Or “Your belief is wrong.” Or “Your idea is wrong.” Then I would hope that would be followed by an explanation of how or why the thought/idea/belief is judged to be wrong.

I am my beliefs. Why would I choose to throw away my beliefs? Sometimes beliefs are a way of life. They are not separated.

Please allow me to ask how can you be your beliefs?

Beliefs do inform our ways of living. Beyond that you can continue to live while sequentially or even simultaneously practicing many different ways of living. The practice is not the practitioner. The belief is not the believer. You might stop holding one belief so as to pick up another belief that you judge as better than the previously held belief.

You can have great admiration and devotion to your beliefs and that will give them greater impact on what actions you choose to take. Still you could have a tremendous experience tomorrow that would influence you to re-evaluate all of the beliefs you had previously considered vital.

As an example having a child can radically alter a mother’s sense of her place in the world and what matters most in life.

Do you have many of the same beliefs that you had when you were five years old or ten or even fifteen? If the beliefs that you have now are different from the beliefs you had at those times then ask yourself this: Were you a different person at each of those times, or were you the same person whose collections of beliefs has changed as you have grown more and more?

Xander,

To accept your statement one must assume static beliefs emanating from a static entity, neither of which is the case. You make the case for processual evolvement of beliefs, but tack it to a static entity. I would deny your statement only because whatever is ‘me’ at the time I hold specific beliefs are one and the same. This is true at any point of development and maturation of any individual. And so your construct is wrong. We are our beliefs at any point in time.

I am my beliefs because as you asked I have been this way…very same way since actually yes…15. I questioned one day and I have never questioned again.

Many of my ‘beliefs’ are the same that have been handed down and this is who I am. it is not a religion…it is a way of life. Does it mean I do not like to know what others think, course not. However I respect each for his own. I do not try to push or sway anyone for that is not as I see it. I will discuss till dawn to be able to see how others are.

I am always humbled by that which has been behind me as well as what is before me.

Glad ya asked? :stuck_out_tongue:

I agree that in large part our beliefs are us (although we are more than just our beliefs).

Still, since some of our beliefs are true, correct, right – however you choose to phrase it – and some of them are mistaken, how does that fact make us correct or mistaken rather than to make some individual belief that we may hold right or mistaken?

Why would you say to me “You’re wrong” unless you mean it as shorthand for “Your belief is wrong”? After all, you just said that I am ALL my beliefs not just one of them. Since you would probably agree that I hold many times more true beliefs than mistaken ones, it makes no sense to call me wrong unless you are referring to a specific belief that I hold.

How about there is no tangible right or wrong until you make a decision that you know could cause harm. Harm is the only solid reason for the distinction anyway.

If you don’t know that it could cause harm and do it, then, it is not wrong until harm is caused then you know you did wrong.

Ok nit pickers have at it :laughing: