back to the beginning: morality

Exactly.

And here I make the distinction between a God world and a No God world.

In a God world [as most construe God], we have both an omniscient and omnipotent entity. God knows all so there is no question of aborting the unborn, punching a baby or cooking and eating another human being and it not being known. And if God calls such behaviors Sins and has the power to punish those who commit them, there is no question of getting away with it.

But in a No God world, who or what is judging you on this side of the grave? It’s not for nothing some argue that “in the absence of God, all things are permitted”. Why? Because for any number of personal reasons rooted [in my view] in dasein, everything can be rationalized. And, given human history to date, not much hasn’t been.

Exactly.

But the moral and political objectivists among us insist that not only are there definitive answers in regard to conflicting goods, there must be. Why? Because they have already invented or discovered them. And some are philosophers who connect the dots between morality and reason. The deontologists among us. Some re God like Kant and others re No God like Ayn Rand.

I agree. I merely note at this point that even with science that functions in the either/or world, the either/or world itself is still a profoundly mysterious thing. This part:

“It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.” nasa

And then “the gap”. The enormous chasm between what any of us as “infinitesimally tiny and insignificant specks of existence in the context of all there is” can know about human morality and how human morality itself factors into a comprehensive understanding of existence itself.

As for this…

…okay, let’s take whatever epistemic conclusions one has arrived at here out into the world of actual human interactions in which conflicting goods produce, among other things, newspaper headlines. The ones here in American for example where some suggest it is only a matter of time now before the Supremes make abortion illegal. Or to the abortion clinic where others argue that the reason abortions should be illegal is because they are immoral. Re God or No God.

Okay, but my main aim still revolves more around taking conclusions one arrives at in regard to “real philosophical discussions” out into the world where some, in regard to abortion, argue it must revolve around the rights of the unborn and others insist that, on the contrary, it must revolve around the rights of the pregnant woman.

Then the part where I root this in dasein and, as such, I eventually come around to this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

What’s that supposed to mean?

That we should shift the discussion to what philosophy really is in discussing morality? In fact, over the years, many of the arguments raised above come from articles written in Philosophy Now Magazine. I am merely reacting to them given the arguments I make in my signature threads here.

Some truths are necessary (must be the way that they are) and others are contingent (could have been otherwise). Some truths may be necessary but we don’t know that they are. It is the nature of such unknown truths, however, that if they turn out to be false, they are necessarily false. They can never be contingent truths. (Obviously, there are also unknown contingent truths, but things like Goldbach’s Conjecture are not among them.)

But there are also truths observed to universally hold, such as the nature of gravity. So far as we can tell, gravity behaves the same everywhere and has always done so. Does this make gravity a necessary truth about the world?

No, because the test, again, is if I can conceive a world in which gravity fails to hold without bringing about a logical contradiction. I can. Therefore, the behavior of gravity, its properties, do not constitute a necessary truth about the world. As a matter of fact, it has been demonstrated that if the universe had four spatial dimensions instead of three, gravity would be different — it would be described by an inverse-cube rather than an inverse square. In such a world, interestingly, there would be no solution to the two-body problem, which means that there could be no stable orbits and life as we know it would not exist.

From this it follows that while all necessary truths are universal (true in this world and at all possible worlds), not all universal truths are necessary. A universal contingent truth is true at this world but is false at other possible worlds.

Where does morality fit in to this scheme?

Is morality a necessary truth about the world? No. I can easily conceive worlds lacking morality, and do so without bringing about a logical contradiction.

Is, nonetheless, morality a universal, objectively observed to be the same everywhere, in the way that gravity is? Can morality, like gravity, be objectively and universally true, without being necessarily true?

No. In fact, obviously not! Were morality like gravity, we would observe all people behaving the same everywhere and at all times. This is so far the case from what we find that the point is hardly worth laboring. Think of the vast gulf between the moral values of secular humanism and the Taliban, for instance.

From all of this it follows that morality, or moral behavior, is neither necessary, or necessarily true depending on how the question is phrased, nor is it objectively true or universally true. The upshot is that the search for a necessary or at least universal morality is forlorn. To that extent, moral nihilism follows.

More later.

The Death of Morality
Moral Fictionalism
Richard Joyce on what happens when falsehoods are too useful to throw out.

Here of course it depends on how “technical” you insist on being in regard to how morality is defined. Is there a disciplined philosophical meaning that we should arrive at first? Were our ancestors prior to, say, the pre-Socratics in the West and their equivalent in the East not “sophisticated” or “civilized” enough to pin this down as we in the “modern world”.

On the other hand, there is the “post-modern” take on morality as well.

Me, I always start with this assumption…

If you are alone, isolated from all others [by choice or not] morality would seem to revolve around your relationship either with nature or with a belief in God. But let another human being come into your life [for whatever reason] and suddenly your wants and needs can be contested.

Right?

So, when that happens when do the “rules of behavior” between you officially become Morality?

Instead, in whatever manner you wish to call it, these rules will revolve “for all practical purposes” around one or another intertwining of might makes right, right makes might or moderation, negotiation and compromise.

Then all we need is the particular purpose and the context.

Then the part where human beings did come together to form extant communities:

Clearly, to the extent that you come to an agreement regarding the right and the wrong things to do in any particular community is the extent to which some behaviors will be rewarded and others punished. Call it morality, call it something else. My point is that this will ever always be a complex intertwining of genes and memes such that any actual individual will come to embody a set of value judgments rooted largely in dasein rather than in what philosophers or ethicists come up with in the way of so-called moral obligations. Then the part where “I” here becomes more or less fractured and fragmented.

Here though what exactly is meant by morality? It’s just a name game to some. In the modern world, choosing to be kind, refraining from harming others, paying our debts etc., is certainly within the general vicinity of what most would call morality. But what exactly has changed with the advent of philosophy itself?

Well, most of all what has changed is the advent of capitalism and the at times far more problematic interaction of “I” and “we”. Doing the right thing or getting ahead. The bottom line or the public good. Morality and political economy.

And then in our post-modern world, what about the sociopaths and the moral nihilists? Doesn’t it really come down to how each individual, given his or her own accumulation of personal experiences out in what can be any number of very different “particular worlds”, comes to think about what living in an “amoral society” potentially can mean?

I’d merely expand that to include moral objectivism of all kinds. “One of us” vs. “one of them” might revolve around God, sure. Or it might revolve around any other spiritual path. Or around a political ideology. Or around a “metaphysical”, deontological philosophy…from Immanuel Kant to Ayn Rand.

Or [and here’s where reams and reams of irony come into play] around one or another sacrosanct Scripture relating to the understanding of Nature itself. Though here some allow everyone to be on their own personal One True Path while others insist that there can be but a single solitary One True Path. And it is – gasp! – their own.

So, which path are you on?

How about defending it here on this thread?

I will return to my multi-part bit on morality upthread, but first just to drop in these, to pick up on the Arthur C. Clarke quote:

Satyr brings morality “down to earth”:

And:

Okay, so what of those who minimize or eliminate the biological consequences, and engage in these sex acts such that physical, biological pleasure is their sole motivation? Their sole objective?

And what of those who rationalize their behaviors in forcing these sex acts on others by convincing themselves that their own self-gratification is what Nature intends morality to be in a No God world.

Or those who make their objective one or another rendition of the Final Solution.

Or those who insist that only their own assessment of race and gender and sexual orientation are truly in sync with Nature understood objectively.

Bottom line: you either toe Satyr’s line there or you are greeted with this:

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Well, with certain exceptions of course.

Below is satyr’s preposterous argument to the points I raised in the post above:

Yeah, sure, if a society emerged that made pedophilia and incest and bestiality moral and actually forbade heterosexual copulation for the purpose of reproducing the community, the consequences for that community would be terrible.

As though there is a snowball’s chance in hell of that actually happening!!!

Instead, this la la land dystopia is just his way of avoiding altogether the points I do raise above.

And he avoids this because he has no rational argument to offer us other than his own preposterous assumptions. His own subjective political prejudices rooted not in nature but in dasein.

And if he wasn’t Mr. Chickenshit, he would come here and demonstrate to us why I am an imbecile in regard to the points I made above.

The wacko is very confused. He confuses individual morality with collective ethics and norms and then forgets to think about what happens despite of them and their demands and then adds his own moronic elaborations about his insane idea that what survives is moral. Why is homosexuality so immoral in this morons mind???because it does not lead TO INDIVIDUAL PROCREATION…ok…but human species is, obviously, not limited to individual survival and the altruistic impulses and social cooperation(as this moron himself admits…)are just as important as selfish drives…so why is homosexuality so immoral again???because it greatly reduces the chances of the homosexual passing off his genes…ok…so do many altruistic acts taken by non-homosexuals for the sake of the wellbeing of the community which also greatly reduce their chances of passing on their genes and prospering as an individual within the said society…so are the young soldiers fighting for a nation or firefighters putting out fires as despicable and immoral as homosexuals in this retards mind now??? where is the proof that a homosexual cannot be useful to the collective, that he must be written of as immoral by default based on his sexuality and that he cant have children??? there is a difference between the average and the individual…nobody gives you a fucking right to write off whole classes of people you cunts…as I said…there are more sub-80 IQ whites than blacks in America…eat shit racist neo-nazi twerps and explain that to me…
I will tell you what is immoral…running on your young children you did not even want to have with a woman you yourself admitted to be a trashbag shitty wife and mother in a country you claim is a degenerate den run by a nihilistic, terrorist Jew racket…fucking idiot…to think such twerps sit in the politics and business boards and have power and voice their smart opinions…JESUS FUCKING CHRIST…

Survival is not that simple…half the time, its not even so obvious what is needed to survive…and survival is not perfectly aligned with procreation and passing your genes…and just because you impregnated a woman does not automatically mean your children will arrive…and when they arrive that they will survive…and when they survive that they will thrive…do you need to attempt to thrive to survive???and why is survival automatically desirable???cockroaches are expertly adapted to survival…you see a man drowning…how do you decide if to risk your own neck and help him???ask the autistic idiots what they would do…everybody knows where this sick utilitarian and bizarre selfish morality comes from…its an articulation of ill and paranoid minds of their own convictions about what is moral and how they will act…autistic sicko has no empathy…all me, me, me…a paranoid kook thinks the same for a different reason…for him, everybody is a potential enemy and the only way to act is to act as if everybody is your enemy already…so not much empathy there too…all me, me, me…sickos…these idiots think selfless acts of bravery and initiative are pathetic and a result of mental ilness…a man seeing a grandmother beaten by 6 gangbangers in a parking lot and rushing in to save her heroically is a mentally ill kook and an inferior thrashbag to them… tread lightly…and keep barking…if i ever see your mother raped by a man with a knife I will simply call the police and then watch her until the police arrive…maybe i will even take out a camera and encourage the rapist to pump her harder so as to not annoy him and increase my chances of survival and morally accomplishing my objectives…then, maybe, i will have a second think about what my objectives are and cut my ballsack off to stay true to my new morality which I thought up to be an objective of never becoming a rapist…morality is what your objectives are…remmember kids…you can change your objectives from a minute to minute, so you can also change your morality as you please…its enough to think your new morality into being…but remember,morality is OBJECTIVE…

Once again, he creates the same ridiculous “what if” imaginary culture, and asks us to imagine the consequences of it. All the while completely avoiding the points I raised above.

Another typical [but strange] thing.

Every time I quote something from him on one of his threads there, he will often deluge his KT clique/claque with new posts. Why? Because he’s hoping that I will quote still more from him. Why? Because that brings his turgid intellectual contraptions/reactionary political prejudices here…to a “wider audience”.

And yet as lorikeet here he can respond to my points anytime. He can expose to this “wider audience” why I am a retardimbecilemoron.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he configures into Mr. Chickenshit. Why? Because he knows that as a fulminating fanatic objectivist I will make a complete fool out of him here as I once did there. That’s why he “disappeared” me entirely from KT.

On the other hand, it is only 3 months until next Christmas.

Polishyouth?

Is this you?!!!

you two are a perfect fit for eachother…two rabid dogs chasing their tails. maybe offer him to mount you from the back so you can chase one tail together instead??? he is right and so are you…no need to show it…we all know and you know it too. arguing means talking to people you agree with only and telling everybody else they are simply wrong.

no…i am actually a parrot and i have multiple autistic owners

He means a rabid parrot of course. [-o<

stop telling people what they mean to say like you know what they mean by what they say better than they do you kook

I believe it is him.

of course it is me. are you scared? what happened to the discord group you invited me to out of blue? if we gonna be buddies we have to treat eachother like ones.

Mr. Chickenshit on steroids!!!

Again, all I can do is note the points I raise that he absolutely refuses to address:

Instead, he has to create this hypothetical boogeyman culture where pedophilia and incest and bestiality are now embraced by the Liberal State and humanity itself is on the brink of extinction.

A suggestion: It’s time he brought Lyssa back to at least rein himself in.

Unless, of course, Maia succeeds.

Again, it’s not what he posts about me that is nearly as interesting as why he goes off the deep end in his reaction to me. As with Sculptor and Pood and Karpel Tunnel here at ILP, I suspect there is at least a part of him that recognizes I am making inroads in chipping away at his own value judgment dogmas. His own precious, arrogant is/ought Self. He’s getting closer himself to a fractured and fragmented “I”…and reacts to the one bringing this about as he does.

Are you saying the only reason humans in human societies deem and treat and view pedophilia, necrophilia, and homosexuality differently than they view heterosexuality is that they have been indoctrinated ideologically by a system of value judgments, ie. ideology???