tronvillain

99Percent:
Why? This appears to be nothing more than another unsupported assertion about what is reasonable on your part. Besides, I would consider the moral agents involved in my decision.

What is this gibberish supposed to mean?

Pomp

daemon,

I haven't been following this thread too closely, but your description of the metagame logic behind Illuminati seems to perfectly model the answer to the question "Why be moral?"

Beyond that, I've read a lot about the metagame concepts involved with cheating and encouraging it. If you get caught cheating too much, people won't trust you, while if you don't cheat, you risk losing to the people who do and aren't getting caught. Developing a reputation for scupulous behavior also has plusses and minusses; people will trust you more, but the people who do cheat would probably prefer to cheat you, since they know you won't backstab them.

daemon

This wasn't actually Illuminati specific, but I quite agree; games often do model societal interaction very well.

dk

dk: I agree mental processes are contingent upon physical structures of the mind, but this hardly suffices as an empirical explanation. The nature of higher brain function remains a mystery.
dk: Good science speculates about mysteries to form testable hypothesis. Bad science narcissistically subjugates mysteries with ill defined pseudo scientific terms, indirection and spurious epicycles to support a pet doctrine or ideology. There is no practical (empirical) definition or explanation of consciousness much less empirical evidence to describe the contingent component parts.
dk: - Because it’s logical to presume a person’s (individual’s) life begins at the start of the species life cycle and continues until death.
dk: - Either you refused to rebut Singer, or you rebutted him, but I did stray off on a tangent, sorry.
dk: - Above I said, “it’s logical to presume a person’s (individual’s) life begins at the start of the species life cycle and continues until death.” Abortion wantonly destroys a human life on the whim of the mother. Under the rule of Law a person’s liberty to act (wield power) is limited by the principle, “All people are created equal under the Law”. This raises a crude contradiction….
“ Clearly to protect the “right to life” is fundamental principle that justifies men to form a government. How can everyone be created equal when one human being is at liberty to wantonly destroy another?” In Roe v. Wade Justice Blackmun skirted the issue of when life began, he wrote for the majority in the dicision, “Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”. That was true 40 years ago. Today the advances in pre-natal care paint a vivid picture that horrifies most people. While one surgeon operates on a live fetus in the womb to save the babies life, another doctors suck the brains out of a viable fetus in the birth canal after inducing birth. The reality defies a reasonable explanation. I’m going to stop at this example, but can proved several more that set the Law against the principle of law, i.e. force people under the law to live lawlessly.
dk: In every sense NAZIS Germany turned concentration camps like Auschwitz into factories that turned people into corpses. Following this analogy, in every sense a person is a omnivorous biological factory that turns food into shit. Are you saying its natural for factories turn Jews into corpses; and to understand people as shit factories. I know this isn’t what you mean, but I have no idea what question you’re trying to answer.
dk: The only difference? That’s a huge difference. Before you can say something makes no difference please explain how one thing differs from another. Kant said, “Thus Spinoza assumed that everything existing could be found in God (monism). But by making this assumption he fell into crude contradictions. For if only a single substance exists, then either I must be this substance, and consequently I must be God (but this contradicts my dependency); or else I am an accident (but this contradicts the concept of my ego, in which I think myself as an ultimate subject which is not the predicate of any other being.” The same criticism applies to the structural definitions you offered.
dk: It seemed to me that structured definitions (as proposed above) use allegory to animate perception as knowledge, hence they are wrought with crude contradictions. Better… The 5 senses stream sensory inputs into the brain. The brain parses, interprets, categorize and interprets the input streams as memories (knowledge) that represent reality. Still its intellect that explains reality in memories and imbues memory with meaning. Therefore its reason that makes morality necessary and good. It is human intellect that imbues sense perceptions (right or wrong) with emotions, feelings, and reason to construct reality into ordered structures. Morality is simply the right order of human conduct to construct reason in terms of .
-good v bad or
-right v wrong
-virtue v vice
-thesis v anti-thesis
-synthesis v mystery.
-justice v injustice. Etc…
A car (or buggy or factory) is a man made machine that demonstrates the creative potential and directed efforts of people. From a purely human perspective a car serves a purely human purpose of transportation, status symbol, etc., and that’s good. But from an environmental perspective cars are big time pollutants and that’s bad. Morality requires good people to employ reasonable means to weight the good of cars, against the bad of pollution to consider both human and natural needs. While a domestic cat might find the trunk of a car a good den, the purpose of cars remains a human perception. A horse on the other hand isn’t contingent upon human beings, but is assumed good by its own natural and nature’s purposes purposes. Human beings participate in their destiny reasonably working as caretakers by their relationships, work, innovation, inspiration, and creativity . Its clear people animate what exists to suit their fancy, and in doing so participate in human destiny, but morality dictates people act with discernment and consideration of nature. This world isn’t the product of human creativity or design, people are custodians. As people gain dominion over the world through technology, morality engages ethics to consider the possibilities reasonably. When people act on their own whims, without reasonable consideration they become behave immorally. Its morality that obliges people to consider the purpose of nature in light of higher purposes. In my opinion this is the fundamental flaw with radical empiricalism and radical idealism, it touts idealism or materialism as a means to an ends, without consideration for the consequences. When people distort reality for purely human purposes, to suit short term human ambitions; power, comfort we become immoral (or erroneous, evil, flawed, unreliable,,, etc.) and evil creatures. In this sense a factory, buggy or car are ethical as they serve human intentions but are limited by moral considerations that define people as reasonable creatures. Nature is not a machine so animals are not machines, there is a distinction between natural mechanisms that exist on their own merits, and people’s machines that that serve human purposes. Its reasonable to assume people participate in their destiny by interacting with Natural Law to sustain the good order so evident in nature. When people conduct themselves contrary to the Natural Law people suffer unreasonably, or illegitimately.
[quote]dk: I assume you mean a car parked, with the motor left idling. A parked car doesn’t dream, heal, grow, rest, etc… a parked car doesn’t do much of anything except burn fuel, deteriorate and get older. dk: A parked car may appear to be doing nothing, but it’s actually rusting, rotting, emitting radiation, absorbing light etc…
-Personhood is a legal definition used to delineate and force upon people rights, liberties, freedoms and obligations under the “Rule of Law”. Governments are formed so to ensure the rights, liberties, freedoms and obligations forced upon people are suitable to human nature.
-My comments on “structural definitions” are related to abortion in a secular sense because they force us (you and me) to consider the fundamental nature and relationship between government and constituents in a purely secular sense. I submit abortion is wrong because it mistakes wanton destruction of human life for a liberty, hence deprives people of the right to participate in their own destiny. This explains why abortion remains a continuous divisive issue that defies any reasonable resolution. Absent reason the law becomes a weapon used by Class A to oppress Class Banother. If a women’s right to privacy supersedes a fetus’s right to life then the wonton destruction of human life is moral, and there is a big difference between -the wanton destruction of human life- and -justifiable homicide-. When a women wantonly terminates a pregnancy she destroys a human life, and perhaps if she had delayed a day, week or month she would have changed here mind. Clearly when a women takes the liberty to wantonly destroy a fetus she violates a human life she can’t possible evaluate, she makes a life altering decision for no reason at all.
- In summary. Governments are formed to enforce freedom and liberty upon their constituents. Why? Because freedoms and liberties are inalienable human rights suitable to human nature. Freedom and liberty are the fertile ground that nurtures individuals, families, communities, cultures and societies. A person in the same sense at the same time can not value freedom and destroy their progeny. Why? Because the arbitrary destruction of any human life defies reason, friendship and the sanctity of human life.
- Liberty is the right to wield one’s power unfettered but liberty becomes a threat when exercised to wantonly destroy human life. It’s not “absolute power that corrupts absolutely”, it’s the power governments, institutions and people wield for no good reason. When people exercise their power unreasonably against their neighbor they degenerate into animals, and become enemies full of hatred, envy and malevolence. Such an New Order (immorality) corrupts people turning them into degenerates that enslave reason to their own ends. The “means doesn’t always justify the ends” because every living human being is an unfinished book, with an inalienable right to pen even the last period. While it’s impractical and unreasonable to expect everyone to act in accordance with mankind’s higher nature, its inhuman to caste one’s treasure (progeny) before swine by saying “give me liberty or give me death”. Liberty and freedom are a lie unchecked by moral truths that bind people in friendship.

[ April 17, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

DRFseven

Yes; not only because it forms the emotional foundation (the jabs of the conscience), but because we are actually learning some "moral facts" we will keep for the rest of our lives, i.e., killing is wrong (or not), cheating is wrong (or not), we should help others (or need not), etc. As we mature, we measure individual situations against those criteria by using reason, a process that is heavily linked with emotion; "Hmmm, if not reporting income is cheating, I probably should report it because it's wrong to cheat. Hey, maybe it's not really cheating!"

dk

Its seems to me integrity and communication are only possible when people align their feelings and emotions with moral precepts. We aren't responsible for most tragedies or trespasses that befall us, but we are responsible for the lesson we take away. Envy, hatred, friendship and love are all lessons we deduce from our experences, especially tramatic experiences. .

[ April 17, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

DRFseven

I don't understand why you say that; it's more like we are recipients of whatever lesson we take away. We certainly don't choose what we learn from life's lessons, as in "If I ever get attacked by a shark I think I'll choose to continue not to worry about sharks while swimming in the ocean." We learn whatever we happen to learn, based on a host of other learning experiences and physiological responses.

I'm a little confused, though, as to how you were relating your response to my post to the question I was answering about social conditioning/morality development.

dk

dk:
-1) Morality constructs the right order of human conduct to regulate free actions to perfect the rational nature of humankind. Fascists, pacifists, libertarians and egalitarians fundamentally disagree on the rational nature of humankind.
- 2) Social conditioning elicits specific responses to teach the fundamental values of the institution. Social conditioning may conform or violate the moral law. For example, in boot camp solders are conditioned to obey the military command structure and traditions without question, etc… whereas on a university campus students are socially conditioned to conform to campus rules and [in]formal traditions.

A military bases and campuses are artificial environments constructed to teach values by systematically eliciting responses. I was pointing out that social conditioning is subject to moral law (principles) independent of the institution’s goals and functions. .

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>