Actually the debate started with...


As for your point regarding knowledge changing, this is unproblematic for me since I avoid absolutes. It's problematic for you who need absolutes to not only be true, but to know at least one of them.

Your point on beauty is irrelevant for my case, not yours. You are the one who needs abstract concepts to exist "an sich". My point works either way.

Lol. You can divine animal intentions and conscious states and consent, can you?

Well, you were the one who accused rocks of being atheists.

If it isn't rape, it's something else that you would call immoral if humans were to do it.

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and...e-giant-jerks/

I think you make a couple mistakes with this analogy. The first is that folding 72o has a higher ev in your example because you're assuming what the rules of the game are. If you were playing a game where everyone had to pay half their stacks to the guy who won the hand with 72o then your conclusion about folding 72o is false. It would then be in fact quite -ev to ever fold 72o. In the same vein, moral rules in your view would be entirely dependent upon the goals you have. If they exist not only beyond us(objective), but beyond our ends (distinction between moral and other oughts) then I can't see how they do exist unless there is some sort of enforcement upon us to follow them. Morality would devolve into 'do whatever suits your ends best and don't get caught.'

I'm not conflating objective morality with objective meaning or purpose, although I could potentially see the relationship. If we are merely determined brains, then we have no moral agency.


Clearly, or value is contingent on preference.


It would seem to me the world is definitively unjust if people are not punished/held accountable for breaking moral law.

They arent necessarily correlated but in practice they almost always are. Those things dont have any real value, true, but they are morally neutral only insofar as you follow or break the moral laws to achieve them.

Nonono. You seem to be conflating material goods with moral goods. There is no necessary relation between following the moral good and achieving material success in life. I'm not suggesting for a moment that moral laws set right materially what was taken advantage of in life or that they should. In fact I would say the opposite is more probably true. It's way more common for people of integrity and honesty to pay a personal and professional price for doing what they believe is 'right' than the opposite. Those material things value is only indifferent insofar as the moral law is abrogated to achieve them. For example, getting money isn't bad in and of itself, but if you break a moral law to get it then it becomes bad by association.

That's not what I'm saying at all and I actually believe the opposite is true. What I'm saying is that human beings, and especially strictly materialist ones, are valuing things in life that don't have any value instead of the things that really do (being moral, having purpose etc) and often go against what's really valuable (Morality, purpose, etc) in order to achieve ends that have no intrinsic value and thus their ends are corrupted by association.

No that's true but I think it's the best explanation.

This is really a matter of opinion. My opinion is it's the only reason.

It depends on what your opinion of moral degradation is I suppose.

What do you mean by well?



I don't know but I know two things for certain. We almost all have one and it's possible to erode it.

It's not purely biological. Behaviorist studies have proven it's social and due to upbringing as well. But that doesn't preclude that it's exclusively those things either.





Some do but in my experience most want to hold onto objective morality and still be determinist naturalists otherwise they wouldn't speak as they do.

That's situationally and end dependent. If humanity was facing an existential crisis then it could actually be considered morally obligatory to rape, depending on what your ends were (survival of the human race is paramount).

This is illustrative. There were very good, rational reasons for the death camp commandants to gas millions of Jews based on their beliefs and ends. There were very good and rational reasons for communist political officers to murder and starve millions of their own people, based on their beliefs and ends. Yet those things are only wrong in actuality if there are oughts that exist independent of our ends.

For me it's a properly basic belief. It's much the same as believing other minds exist or that the world is real. My experience tells me that morality does exist independently of me, and that there are ends I should strive for that are independent of my own. For some people ITT they agree and place these ends contingent upon society but that seems to be no different than subjective ends which gave rise to the communist/Nazi argument. Who's to say our society is right? For it to exist it must exist totally independently of humans and their social structures.

I don't see how moral oughts can exist independently of me, me being bound to them, and no enforcement being entailed. That seems non sequitur to me.

You're insinuating with this post they can be theists! Perhaps the definition is wrong?

You are making a jump from "objective morals exist" as a properly basic belief to "I am bound to objective morals" (which in some sense isn't true because you would presumably claim that you've violated the objective morals at some point in your life) and to "moral laws must be enforced after death". The latter cannot be considered "properly basic."

Do you have anything other than "imo" to justify your beliefs in the latter two statements?

Edit: It will help you in the clarity of your communication to switch to "mind independent morality" instead of "objective" since "objective" has multiple meanings that can cause problems for you.

Quite.

I was responding to your claim moral oughts entail moral accountability that must extend beyond death. I was pointing out an example where a prudential ought (to make money at no-limit, don't make -EV plays) makes sense, is not pointless, but yet doesn't guarantee accountability in the sense of matching results and the correctness of your decisions. Thus, your claim that that the conceptual nature of an ought claim implies justice (defined as ends matching means) is wrong.

Okay. You have stated that without an afterlife there is no moral accountability because people haven't been punished for their wrongdoing. What punishment are they supposed to receive for their wrongdoing that they have not yet received? Please give me an example. For instance, Joe cheated on his wife, but she never found out and they both died still happily married. Was he punished or not? If so, what was this punishment? If not, what punishment is he supposed to receive that requires an afterlife?

It seems to me you crave to be relieved of doubt, uncertainty, and a miasma of relativism.

Another approach is to accept and live with the fact that we cannot philosophize our way out of the modern condition.

For doubters, religion is a false sense of certainty anyway. After all, many Christians, even theologically minded, backed the Nazis.

Cast your anchor onto a new bottom.

"When your objections run out of steam, just bring up the Nazis!"

I don't crave to be relieved of anything. If there is no God, WOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO LET'S PARTYYYYYY

I'm not concerned with simply fulfilling my desires, I'm concerned with truth, and I believe there is an ultimate right and wrong that says following my own ends is not the proper way to live my life. What I can't abide is naturalists wanting their cake and eating it too though.

I mean clearly you're wrong about this. If the mathematical law of large numbers is influencing our decisions and you dont attempt to maximize ev for the long run, you suffer the consequences in the end. Similarly, a moral ought entails a moral "or else" otherwise it's no law at all. Since the "or else" is clearly not applied to all people in life, it must extend beyond life. Over one session you might not reap the consequences of poor decision making, but over an eternity of poker hands you realize exactly your ev.

You might say that well why doesn't the law of large numbers apply after death to which I would respond that moral laws are clearly not equivalent to mathematical ones. Math can tell us how to play poker well but it can't tell us why to play poker.

What in claiming is that inherent wiithin a moral law seems to be not only how to behave but why we should. If there is no why then it is no law. The why is not apparent in life, so if they exist it will be apparent after life.

I don't know. All I know is that if a moral law exists, so must entailed consequences for not following it, or it is no law.

If an atheist blasphemes in the forest and there's no god around to hear it, does it make an immoral?

So you don't know what the consequences are, and you have no way of determining whether or not they've been meted out, but you know that it must be "entailed" in an afterlife because presumably you've already determined that it hasn't been done in the present life.

As I said before, I'm sympathetic to your conclusion, but your argument is just terrible.

There are multiple issues discussed but the primary issue is the individual man's purported inability to bring the intellect and reason to an appreciation of the higher world(s) . this is best seen in the philosopher, Kant, who in this denial emblazoned nominalism to his fellow man.

The Scholastics, with Aquinas at the lead, brought thoughts and thinking to this highest level, but even they had to stop, not because of a plunge into disbelief but their thinking could ascertain the God of the Old Testament but were unable to approach the Christ being and the Trinity in this thinking and therefore fell back on tradition and faith.

Of course this is manifested into a nominalism in which a word became no more than a "tag" on the object of perception. To the nominalist there is no "universal cat" but only individual cats which look like their neighbors.

To the "realist"(Aquinas) the "cat" was an "idea" to which all cats are their earthly expression of and here we approach not only Plato and the ancient Greek philosophers, on the whole, even Goethe.

The ability of Plato, who could be called a "perceptive philosopher" to "see" and enter into the realm of "forms", a supersensible nature approached by thoughts and thinking speaks to a supersensible world which in our times, the times of nominalist science and disjointed revelatory religion is not evident.

Plato could see that realm in a perceptive sight and bring forth his philosophy (perceptive philosopher). Times move on and thoughts , which were alive during those days have become deadened due to our lack of perception; ergo we don't believe. It appears that our age won't "believe" unless they feel, touch and weigh it; the age of materialist science.

This science is important, not because it studies on the whole and will only accept sense bound activities but because it has stood by its thinking and thoughts in a structured manner, primarily through mathematics. Who can deny the truths to which mathematics has been applied and in this science is on a mathematical rock and harking back, this is the dream of Kant.

The religions on the contrary, know there is a supersensible world but it is only appreciated in a "dreamy" manner, not as clearly structured, but certainly as important and as real. Inside this type of dreamer he seeks an intellectual certainty which was appreciated by Plato and some of the early church Fathers but as noted previously mankind has changed.

I'd like to stop here and decide where to go in order to make some sense (no pun intended) of this but I guess one of the questions to be asked if Plato was as I've presented ; "has thinking lost its way, has it fallen, or has it died".

Are we living within a corpse of thinking, dead thoughts of our philosophers and science?

To be more precise. Your example of the law of large numbers not requiring accountability is not quite true. Sure someone can run above ev for their entire life of poker with no ultimate restitution but there are certain constraints. For example, if your true Winrate is 2bb/100 it would be essentially impossible to run at 50bb/100 for 1 million hands (or whatever number satisfies). Certainly not theoretically impossible, but essentially so. To maximise results you play as if the law of large numbers were binding on you immediately despite the fact you know you will never play enough poker in your life to reach the 'long term.' You also play as if you were to play forever. However, the law of large numbers is forcing your decisions to approach your results in real life too. There is pressure on your decisions to be accountable to the law, in life.

The law of morality might be the same. It seems clear that if it exists you should follow it as if you were to live forever. This is no way means that you will live forever, but what is the pressure put upon you in this life to follow it and bring your moral decisions accountable to it? Certainly we have extreme examples of moral wrongdoing not leading to any bad repercussions in any particular way that we wouldn't expect to find with the mathematical law of large numbers. Guys like Josef Stalin lusted for power, murdered the innocent in cold blood, stole resources that belonged to others to enrich himself, starved and gulagged millions of people to death and never suffered a pang of conscience or remorse for his actions (one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic). He even refused to prisoner trade his own son for a german captain ("Why would i trade a captain for a corporal?"). There is no apparent way in which the moral law is bringing his actions under it's accountability. What can we conclude about such a law? It either does not exist, does not contain moral oughts that apply to Josef Stalin, or that he will be brought into account under it at some future point. I believe it exists and that it contains moral oughts that Stalin broke and I know Stalin is dead, so my only conclusion is that it will be enforced in an afterlife.

It’s the fact that we can’t reliably be completely still (both physically and psychologically) while awake for even a handful of minutes without becoming agitated (what people call being “bored”). That is the pressure. It’s the ongoing lack of sustained fulfillment that is fundamental to our being.

We can’t escape or opt out of the moral game. We can deny or ignore it for a little while, but too long on that path leads to distortion/disconnection from reality, which leads nowhere good. There are very few people that have completely disassociated from morality to that degree though - usually having experienced serious trauma.

Even the most immoral people we think of have at least engaged the moral struggle to some degree but then later refuse to re-engage. The consequences of refusal to further participate are not only future judgment/accountability in the form of shame but the withholding of knowledge and higher sustained quality of life (truth). The only way toward truth is through judgment. That’s the rule.

I was responding to YOUR Nazi post, silly.

And nice job missing the point. Again.

The point being that theistic morality is as fraught as atheist's, and non-theistic morality is as solid as that of people of faith. Not that you'll suddenly engage.

I understand what you're getting at, but pretty obviously there are no consequences for being a complete immoral piece of trash in this life beyond say, the laws or social norms of a country (based on what we intuitively believe is at least some of the content that would exist in the moral law: don't murder, don't rape children, don't steal, don't bear false witness etc), so the only alternative in your view is that moral laws don't exist. Unless, of course, you can think of some way in which people are held accountable to them in life? I don't mean here I'm right if you can't think of one, but can you think of one?

Objective morality or the subjective, societal one based on consensus? Naturalists have zero basis for objective morality.

I'm going to rewrite this a bit because it's about 4 different ideas intertwined into a single sentence (with parenthetical commentary mixed in).

(1) If you do, then you will need to admit the underlying weakness of your claims. You clearly are trying to build up an argument despite your protestations to the contrary. Being able to admit that and be aware of both the strengths and weaknesses of your argument, especially avoiding saying that such-and-such is "obvious" when it's not the only necessary conclusion, will be extremely helpful in you having a more meaningful and intellectually accurate conversation.

(2) I don't think it's obvious at all that there are "no consequences" beyond "laws or social norms." You're trying to draw sharp lines and sharp dichotomies, but they're also done in completely arbitrary ways. That makes for a really poor argument.

(3) I'm not sure you know anything specific about my beliefs about the nature of morality, as I've made no declarative statements about it in this thread. However, I've directly stated that I'm sympathetic to your view, which should be a pretty clear sign of something if you were actually paying enough attention to realize it. What I do think is that we have a very different understanding of the meaning and consequences of something like a "moral law."

(4) I can grant you whatever you want in terms of the actual content of a "moral law" and it does nothing to help your argument. The underlying issue you're having is not that anyone is necessarily disagreeing with you on the content of your proposed concept of a "moral law" but rather that your proposed concept itself is problematic and flawed.

Given that you haven't even clarified your sense of being held "accountable" to laws relative to "consequences" of laws, I have no idea how one might even begin to answer your question. I'm still stuck on these exchanges:

(1)

(2)

Why could it not be the case that getting blown up is a form of accountability in the same way that falling to your death when jumping off a cliff a form of accountability?

It seems to me that given the way you're using words, there's literally no sensible way to parse what you mean by accountability. It's just a word you're throwing around without having a clear understanding of what you even mean by it. And so it's no wonder that you don't think anyone understands what you mean. It's because it's true! But that's mostly the outcome of you not using the word meaningfully in the first place.

Um, there must be, or objective morality is no more than social laws and norms, and by definition it exists beyond either of those.






You're held accountable in much the same way as any other law. For example, OrPs example of the law of large numbers. Eventually, your decisions approach your ev.


Does accidentally falling off the cliff break the same objective moral law, then?

By your definition, such things aren't even objective morality. This is exactly the type of conflation that I've been warning you about. You need to get consistent with your use of words, otherwise you really don't make sense.

I don't think you understand his example if that's what you're concluding from it. You also still have not clarified your view of accountability.

You tell me. I have no idea how to interpret your word usage and am seeking clarification by asking you questions. I'm proposing things to probe your understanding. I've never claimed that moral laws work the way you're proposing. You've also admitted that a failure on my part to provide an answer doesn't mean anything.