Do you realize your position is identical to that of a pro lifers?

You decide what has intrinsic value and you want to control other people behaviour with the threat of government violence on your side if they disagree.

If they object, "they are just plain wrong" becase for you that intrinsic value is "self evident" and people who can't see it are "clearly evil".

This is step by step exactly the same thing that the totalitarian right does.

You just differ on the content, but the method is identical.

You have a value scale, everybody who disagrees is evil, and you are willing to use force agaisnt people who disagree to have them behave the way you want.

I know you cant hear me anymore so hopefully someone can quote so the pen....oh wait who am I kidding.

Anyway all decisions on value are a decision, human life has value because we decide it does, and thus we use the force of the government to defend such, cliffs is, the basis of that decision, the moral and ethical philosophical system it is based on, also applies to some degree to animals. Humans are animals btw.

How you cant see this is simply amazing.

This

There's also nothing objective about giving primacy to human interests - it's something we do primarily out of self interest. And then we come up with all sorts of bizarre justifications for why human beings are holy and sacred clusters of cells anointed by god.

We have the power to give ourselves supreme dominion over anything non-human - that doesn't make it an externally valid system of morality. To believe that there even exists a system of morality that's based on anything objective is a religious position.



All you've demonstrated is that democracy is a lousy social choice mechanism.

Valuing animal suffering doesn't have to be a slippery slope into a world where a police officer can write you a ticket for stepping on an ant. There're a lot of ways to value the suffering.

This kind of goes back to the point you neglected to respond to earlier - was their a point in our evolutionary past where we went from being something of zero value to being the only thing of value? Or is the "objective" value of life in a state of flux based on whoever is in a position of power?

Lucion, there's so many different things going on that I cant address them all. Here's starting somewhere

This a real threat of democracy. It's tragically not, for example, remotely difficult to imagine a countries population being so extreme that it willingly votes for a government that has a policy of treating some racial group as 2nd class. The counter to that is that it's no better (and most likely much worse) if you remove the democracy and that, at least, democracy seems capable of progressing.

The other side of the coin is that people are better than that and in a healthy democracy people's desire for justice, equality, decency etc is the stronger force.

There's no magic answer to these problems. The real question is where do we want to have the political battle - among the people via democracy is the front runner by a fair way imo. It can't be argued against because it has some serious flaws/risks - the counter has to be that something else would be better.


'pain' isn't quite right, it's about what matters to us. That's not arbitrary.

Aren't you being arbitrary by saying that somethings that matter to people, don't matter? I'd simply say that everything that matters to people, matters - by definition.


An interesting topic but a bit philosophical than politcal

Morality is a human construct, there is no "external check" in any sense of that word. But that doesn't mean complete moral relativism makes any sense at all. Morality works if a society sharing that moral works. And a society works if people don't kill each other in great number too often. There are then other ways to measure how well a society is working but let's say that avoiding mass deadly conflict comes before most other things.

So there can be objectivity in morals if you understand that morals are nothing less and nothing more that a set of internalized values. And these values affect individual behaviour which in aggregate affects society.

And personal and societal outcomes are rankable in an objective, human-life quality sense, so anything that influences them is rankable too.

You can go full-relativist in what's good for society or the individual too in which case well GL to you if you want to defend the position that every society is absolutely identical to any other and in no way rankable in an objective way so no1 can say that a society where (for ex) women are men's property is worse than a society where they are not.

IF you accept that societal outcomes are in any way rankable in an objective sense (it's not necessary for you to admit that every outcome is rankable, just that at least a few outcomes are rankable), then whatever influences societal outcomes, is rankable as well, in an objective sense.

The humanist liberal position is what allows for an open society to exist. You can have the freaking value scale you want, but you can't impose it on others, the only value scale we impose on other is that which society literally can't exist peacefully without, giving all human beings intrisic value and writing laws according to that.

If you go and check most violence and war in affluent society, it's all cultural wars. Value scale wars. People with value scale X detesting people with a different value scale so much they feel like killing them is the best option.

Because they feel like imposing their own value scale is the only way to live (=totalitarism) and so every value scale that differs enough from yours is a direct threat to your survival.

Only a position tolerant of all and every value scale that is compatible with co-abitation is strictly superior and can avoid conflict.

So the dominant (in the sense of objectively better for society, if generalized) moral strategy is to never try to impose your value scale and only fight (with unlimited force) value scales that want to impose themselves (no matter the content!) [that's the paradox of tolerance], while keeping alive the bare, naked minimum of values that are absolutely indispensable for society .survival (human intrisic value, and nothing else).

The "no matter the content" is why you need to go after something that on surface, and even a little beyond the surface, seems to clear and obvious "torturing animals is bad, let's ban that!".

Model what happens in whatever society, if a "normal", totalitarian value scale gets to a majority. You have 35-40-45% of people being destroyed. Their identities, their value scale, their behaviour being defined as incompatible with society. You have constant threat of violence.

Model what happens in whatever society has a majority of humanist liberals. All the moral minorities are pretty free. The only freedom they don't have is to impose their own value scales on others. They can still act on their values often, without a threat of violence. They are not defined as incompatible with society, and they are not a target.

"Everything that matter to people, matters", doesn't justify controlling behaviour in every case it matters to enough people. That's exactly what brings about violence in society!

So the misoginist "dislikes women being out of the kitchen", the omophobe " men painting their nails", the racists "blacks drinking from the same fountain i drink from". Do you understand that this is exactly whan brings about violence and oppression?

It can't be ever enough for you to dislike that something happens, as a justification then to ban that thing from happening!

The "most people think that way" doesn't work too, because that was the reason jim crows laws existed.

But if you are saying here that animal torture must be illegal because most people dislike the idea of animal torture, and that by itself is enough to justify banning a behaviour, and not only justifiy it, but making the ban morally right because it represents the will of the majority, then jim crows laws were not only reasonable, but morally unassailable. The majority value scale said so, and that makes it true.

And it's not only about jim crow, it's more general. The value scale of the majority should basically never enter the picture of what behaviour can be banned. How to avoid the majority to implement a ban anyway is another matter btw.

It's not arbitrary to say that, because what we know is that when that happens, when value scales are forced down the throat of unwilling people and they are not absolutely indispensable for society survival, bad things happen. A lot of bad things. Really like, most bad things that happened to humanity happened because of that (except diseases perhaps).

Given that animal rights are pushed by people whose ideas already, many many times in recent history have shown no remorse in limiting everybody freedom as much as they could, it's not a slippery slope, its something we already know would necessary happen, and we have plenty of proof for that.

Some leftists even reached the point of being willing to kill humans in order to free caged animals, in the recent past. If that is not proof enough of the danger of those people and those ideas i really don't know what has to happen in order to admit that the radical left ideas , or any idea for that matter, is dangerous.

chezlaw btw with regards to "how do we limit the tiranny of the majority value scale", a simple proposal would be to put every law that limits human behaviour in any way as hard to pass as a constitutional amendment, while the repeal of the same requiring simple majority.

And/or, any law that limits human behaviour in any way decays in 5-10 years and has to be voted again every time.

(this for laws that don't deal with behaviour that affects other human beings directly).

Again, your basis for not giving animals even a degree of the rights that our social. moral and ethical values insist on and is a universal social consensus (your basis for morality) is down to your personal political position, nothing to do with any kind of moral or ethical position.

Yes we could be consistent in our treatment of animals, but leftists, so I will create a totally arbitrary point of debark were humans gain all power over any animal agency. I will negate all agency, which our whole ethical and moral system is built on. I dont like sadists, but god I hate leftists even moah.

Yes some people are extremists and in this case so are you, that you are willing to allow infinite animal suffering which is against the shared moral works and is an extreme position just as extreme and outlier as those willing to murder in the name of animal rights, you are simply the yin to the their yang.

Also your call on history is laughably bad. Over time the world has become less conservative, less embedded with the traditional values of the right, there are more sexual freedoms, more gender freedoms, less racial pathology more freedom than ever before, and this is down to the social agenda of the left.

This wont mean anything to you because you have shown yourself incapable of anything other than utterly hysterical and irrational reaction when ever the word left is used.

Thankfully the world works nothing like you say it does.

Any actual existent political force in the west trying to implement your ideas on animal rights and treatment would never gain the position to do so as long as any democratic process is involved. Ironically it could only happen under dictatorship or the like.

Is it? in the USA you have SCOTUS deciding a lot of stuff. Really important stuff. I don't see how any leftist could have preferred all those things needing a normal political vote to become federal mandates. And being at risk of repeal every time the other party is in power.

The fed decides rates (and occasionally other relevant things) and i think it's not hard to say that having the rate being decided either by referendum or by congressional vote would be far worse for society.

And mind, the rates decision is of vital importance for society more than most legislative actions.

It seems like technocracy (top experts distinct and separeted from the political process, and only notionally linked to it) works pretty well and often better than democracy, even inside democracies, even right now, not in an hypothetical society.

Then, even in democracy, you can put higher thresolds.

Higher thresolds to vote (which ok i know, are a bad topic in the US, so let's move on).

Higher thresolds for political appointees. You already have that (informally) for federal judges right? let's do it for any slot of government.

Higher votes thresolds to pass legislation. You had it, and it worked wonders for many years. The filibuster was a genius rule that required compromise and limited the tirannical majority powers incredibly well.

Imagine the brexit referendum requiring the thresold that most countries need to change their own constitution. Either 2/3 of voters, or a majority of the adult population (not of the voters).

working backwards from your last post
This is a form of democracy that has laws that limit human behavior (that's all laws isn't it?) so if that's your plan then we agree about democracy and are just arguing about the best implementation?

Luciom the wimp has banned me,

But as far as democracy goes, please dont let him off the hook.

His position as regards the specific issue we are discussing = legal animal torture, would not happen under democratic conditions, however implemented.

Also please dont let him off the hook on the fact that his position is not one shared by the moral construct of society, he is the extremist, his position is the outlier, even the most a-political middle ground vanilla citizens would be utterly appalled by the idea of legal animal torture.

Note this is not just a preference issue, we cant just say oh they want to impose their whims on the whims of animal tortures no fair, because:

(this for laws that don't deal with behaviour that affects other human beings directly).

The second bolded clause is a vital definition and one internalised by most people in our ethical and moral system, given animals have being, we extend to them some of the privileges of being created by said system.

Thus saying we dont want animal torture is ultimately an issue of preference, but we arrive at the preference via the same route we dont want human torture, or "being" being "affected" as a consequence of another beings actions.

Its all preference at the end of the day, but our system of preference, of preserving being from infringement from other being, also extends beyond the human horizon. That is the shared moral and ethical work of our civilisation.

Anyone who wants to negate this is an extremist by definition.

Democracy clearly is the "less bad option" available currently, but it has more leeway internally than what "democratic universalists" would like to admit.

The smart left for example knows that and somewhat silently gave much more power to federal agencies (that's a form of technocracy).

There is a leftist movement toward eliminating judge elections , especially for state supreme courts.

And so on.

EDIT: the strong reason why democracy is better than the alternatives, similarly to capitalism, is the inherent structure that goes against concentration of power (at least, it goes against it more than other organizational forms). It is NOT about people feeling part of society, as we clearly see now in many democracies many people don't feel their voice is being heard. It is NOT about some "right" to give your opinion and it having the same weight as everybody else opinion (which is like the dumbest way to come to a conclusion in general, given that people have objectively different decision making skills).
It is about liberal democracies having a fragmentation of power structure.
Without that, democracy is as bad as a tiranny, can be worse can be better depending on the population , or on the tyrant, but absolute power in the hand of the voting population isn't much better than absolute power in the hand of a few, given how easy it is for a few to get the majority of votes, unless other powers can block that from happening (of from having totalitarian consequences).
That's why the world is calling recent developments in hungary, poland and turkey anti-democratic even if what's going on there is putting MORE POWERS under direct political control, in countries where the political leaders are elected by the whole adult population.
So let's be very careful with what we mean with democracy. We should be meaning liberal modern democracy with fragmentation of power structures, in several cases independent from political power.
/

No it's not "all laws" that limit human behaviour! some laws expand it! or manage resources. You are so accostumed to totalitarism that you see congress as mainly a freedom-killer enterprise.

Like, taxation is one thing, what you do with the money, is another thing right? taxation is a form of sequester that limits human behaviour so that's where you would have the strong limit to increases (not to any tax cut). But then laws governing how you spend that money, those don't require special limits.

Thread solved.

That’s just clearly not true, and you can pile on with thousands of words to bore people into submission, but i think you must realize on some level that you’re being intellectually dishonest and that if someone was so inclined they could break each statement down to abstract logical arguments that are objectively not valid.

But you aren’t tolerating every value scale, unless part of your value system is the proposition to be indifferent to human beings outside your politic. If you actually believed your value system was superior and the kernel of value was human welfare (or Christianity, or Islam, or any moral framework) you’d probably be inclined to accept some collateral damage (ie: war) in the name of liberating the people of those inferior moral systems. It just becomes a cost benefit analysis. And clearly USA#1 has felt on those grounds that it’s justifiable to do exactly that in the name of their liberty centric ethos.

I’m not suggesting thst I don’t prefer a human centric ethos to one based around archaic scripture, just that it’s not rooted in objective morality - it’s basically just self interest expanded to encompass organisms that meet some arbitrary measure of genetic relatedness.

If you go down that path it’s just about 100,000 years of evolution removed from a moral justification for ethnic cleansing.

I'll leave aside the "crusading" aspect of a moral system because the topic is already extremely complicated as such while discussing the domestic effect of a moral system. We can go to that later if you want if we managed to fix the earlier part. Because it seems you are saying stuff which is very similar to what i am saying only you think it is not.

Sorry but i spent many words defining my use of the term "objectivity". And saying it is "just" self interest, in the sense of "simply something that works better than all the alternatives we ever tried", is saying it is objectively superior.

If you dislike objectivity, let's use "functionally better"?

You didn't comment on the matter of ranking moral systems based on the results they produce for the societies that share them.

Btw some morals can make sense in some world state and not in other world state, following that premise. Ethnic cleansing could make a lot of sense in an overpopulated zone of the world with extreme food scarcity when it's either 1 group or the other, or a portion of both that needs to die.

If a group shares that morality and the other doesn't, the group sharing a deep hatred for the other is capable to organize for the other group destruction (hatred is a powerful motivational tool, as it is fear of death, and they are connected, as we tend to hate what we fear could kill us). A morality that allows for survival when another set of moral values brings about annihilation, is superior as per the "fuctional" definition.

We went beyond ethnic cleansing because we solved food scarcity, not because we are "better" or "good" or "more humane", or "more on the left".

Also because at the same time a set of morals that allows for deep cooperation with strangers is +ev in survival terms everytime the benefits of cooperation are bigger than the threat to survival posed by the other groups.

So with regards to closeness/openness toward others the best moral depends on material circumstances (in a way , this is basically the only useful insight of marxian thought: that material circumstances, ie "the economy", determine history)

What often happens is that we develop as a group a set of morals, those stand the test of time during long periods in which they are superior to the alternatives, then material circumstances change and we are slow to change moral values according to the new circumstances.

We still have to wear off some (today) silly morals of agricultura society that were very effective in those societies but are terribly outdated nowadays.

abbaddabba, i'll give you an example of this with regards to "objectivity". In some very important religions lending money at interest was a sin. As with every value of that kind it could be a totally random relic without any merit. But there are strong elements in favour of the idea that in a static agrarian society, with gdp barely growing at less than 0.1% per year, no serious capital accumulation for investiment in productivity as ownership rights were very weak, lending money at interest can basically only be predatory and destroys the social fabric. In those settings private people basically borrow only for survival, and at a time when food prices shoot up (caresty and so on).

Islam was even smarter than that and banned lending at interest without banning equity shares in enterprises (and economically islamic society has been better than the european one for centuries).

So it's possible that a moral value against lending at interest was objectively superior than the opposite at those times ( in medieaval europe pre-1300 roughly). In the functional sense of societal survival.

Of course that same moral value is bad in a merchantilistic economy, and terribad in a capitalist economy.

And the areas of europe where that moral value changed sooner became richer (Siena, florence, some dutch and german cities too), once merchantilistic dynamics were back to the game.

That there is no way objectively, in a vacuum, to say wether being in favour or against lending at interest is "more good" , we agree on!

But there is a way given circumstances to say wether a specific society being in favour or against that is +ev or -ev for that society, in terms of wealth production, median resident quality of life and so on.

And in that sense, and only in that sense, i can talk about objective morality for present societies too.

Functionally better in the terms that you're defining on a scale that isn't chosen objectively.

If you decide that the sole thing of value is the lives of a certain group of organisms, then yes, you can rank a political system on the basis of how well it serves those organisms.

If your value system is a blend of primarily human interests and also to assign some lesser but non-trivial value assigned to animal suffering then obviously you're not going to rank them in the same way.

The question is on what basis are you ranking them.

You could also rank value systems that assigns value to animal suffering. You could contrast the biblical approach of requiring that animals be slaughtered in a particular way to a modern secular approach, both by the amount of suffering endured by the animals and the effective costs to accomplish it. Then you figure out what suffering is actually valued at in terms of human interests, and you decide how far you want to go. Within a value system like that, obviously a set of laws took no steps to limit (or disincentivize) animal suffering, all else equal, be inferior.



That's one on a long list of reasons you could do it. You could also just want whatever it is they have, and if you assign them zero "objective" value, their lives are worthless and the only cost in your cost/benefit analysis is how much manpower it takes to eliminate them.



Maintaining standards for how to slaughter an animal doesn't inevitably lead to starvation. It leads to moderation of consumption and/or incrementally higher labor costs.

You're missing all perspective of proportionality in assuming that assigning any value to animal suffering implies a value system where we have to abstain at all costs from any act that leads to any level of animal distress.


Or what may have been the case is that it was a good basic rule to protect people from predatory lenders, but that it came at the expense of informed, rational borrowers and lenders who wouldn't lend without a profit motive. Our system offers protections against predatory lending while still allowing rational borrowers with a time preference to borrow from lenders with a profit motive.

If you want to evaluate them on the basis of how they serve human interests ours is likely superior, and i think that's a reasonable metric since no one / nothing is impacted by loans being granted besides the parties involved.

That isn't analogous to the issue of animal suffering.

Is he really confusing "objective" and "subjective" truths?

The issue is more analogous to something like abortion.

You could set an arbitrary cutoff where non-life becomes life, in which case if you choose birth to be that cutoff point, then anything that limits peoples freedom to do it is immoral. Or you could set it conception in which case anything that permits it is immoral. Or alternatively, as was implicit in previous religious standards that discouraged contraception, that life in some way begins before conception.

But i'd argue that a better standard would be not to choose an arbitrary cutoff and instead have a graduated scale of value, where terminating any pregnancy is considered undesirable, but not equivalent. And you can impose taxes in proportion to how much harm is being done to try and oblige people to internalize the harm (cost) being done.

The Venn diagram of ACists and rACists is a circle.

Nested circles, bro