yguy

Obviously you don't understand - but that's OK by me.

Bill Snedden

And the band played on...


Not a very substantive response. What I wrote is at least as clear as that to which I responded. If you had spelled out exactly what you didn't understand, as I took pains to do myself, perhaps I could have enlightened you.

I meant that your response to what I originally posted did not rebut or contradict it and in fact supported it.

Now, let's examine the line of reasoning that led us to this point.

In a previous post, you said: dk: Obviously it is unethical to knowingly act to put another person’s life in grave danger, it is ethical to avoid acts that put others in danger.

My response to this was: Bill: People who drive assume the risk (or should). They get into their cars and onto the road knowing that there is a minute possibility that something could go wrong. However, they take every precaution (or should) to ensure that nothing will. And other drivers depend upon this being the case. IOW, they consent to a level of danger to their own lives based upon the reasonable assumption that you will behave in a responsible manner.

Thus making the point that it is not always unethical to knowingly act to put another person's life in danger. Driving a car involves the necessary knowledge that another person's life (my passengers, or other drivers) may be in danger. This is so because while I'm driving, I'm not in complete control of everything that happens (engine failure, heart attack, potholes, etc).

Your response, that I quoted far above, was: dk: I’ll parse this if you want, but essentially unethical acts require knowledge and an act of judgment by the active intellect (commitment). If I drive an unsafe vehicle, drive recklessly/drunk etc… or intentionally ram a car in a fit of road rage then I have acted unethically. Otherwise I had a car accident beyond any reasonable expectation of good judgment or knowledge.

Now, with the entire chain laid out, can you see any point at which anything you wrote contradicts anything I said? Can you see now that in fact what you wrote was essentially the same point I was making?

The rest of this section of your post consists of several other misunderstandings of the same type. You say "no, you're wrong" and then proceed to make the same point to which you're allegedly responding. I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of those. You can go back and read the chain of responses just as easily as I.

We'll continue here:

You contradict yourself. If you'll recall, I made an example of a military general who orders his troops to war, with full knowledge that some will die. Your response was: dk: Soldiers will die in combat no matter what the general orders. The general’s only ethical course is to order the men into combat to win the war by any and all ethical means at his command.

Which, quite strangely under normal circumstances, but apparently quite common in discussions with you, is in consonance with my statement that you apparently consider yourself to be rebutting!

You've clearly said here that there is no negative ethical status attaching to the general for ordering his men to certain death. How do you then turn around and and declare that putting someone at "grave risk" is unethical?

"The Marital Act" is a particular monogamous heterosexual practice. If you weren't referring to the monogamous nature of that practice, whatever else did you mean?

I'm not biting on the distraction. What's the connection here to homosexuality?

Arbitrary and irrelevant. I could just as easily say, "human sexual practice is a form composed of two human beings, the union between two individual entities. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are both concepts with multiple forms: 1) male-female, 2) male-male, 3) female-female. Number one is necessary for procreation, but marriage isn't essential to procretion."

You appear to base your approach to human sexuality based strictly on biological necessities (procreation). Needless to say, this is hopelessly inadequate given the exceedingly complex nature of human psychology and sexual behavior. Not to mention the fact that biology is a poor standard to use to determine morality. We could just as easily make arguments using observed instances of homosexual behavior, including lifetime mating, that occurs among non-human animals to demonstrate that your sacrosanct "Marital Act" is nothing more than a human convention, with no necessary relation to biology and thus none to morality.

I hope that you can take some time to consider the manner in which you've pursued this topic. If you have a substantive contribution to make (i.e., on topic), I'm sure that we'd be happy to hear it. However, future attempts to distract from the actual topic will merely be noted as such.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

dk

Perhaps, but did you ever stop to think...
The Essence of Freud
“Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things, which a man is afraid to yell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from the Underground

And Freud coined the term Homosexual.

Bill Snedden

I like chocolate, you like vanilla. What's the common good?

Your response only serves to further reveal how little you appear to know about moral philosophy. Some reading can be suggested if you're interested.

Sure. How do you know you're not morally insane?

Pardon me, but that is a theory. It's called the "I know it when I see it" theory and most, if not all, moral philosophers will tell you that it's simply a non-starter.

Above, you mentioned the impossibility of constructing a society based on your strawman of ethical egoism. Can you imagine that it would possibly be any better under the "I know it when I see it" theory? How could you raise your children in an environment where everyone had their own idea of what was and what wasn't moral and had no possible way of communicating their ideas or developing agreements? It's amusing that you call your "morality" objective, when it's probably the worst form of relativism that exists...

I submit that you don't know what you're talking about. How would you have any earthly idea what my conscience tells me?

I assure you that my conscience tells me that homosexuality is no more wrong than heterosexuality.

As your ability to delude yourself might drown yours out as well.

Ah. Circular reasoning. Nice.

Faulty reasoning. Much more likely that the little girl had been punished before and had developed an understanding of "punishment" and when it normally happened. It's easy to get from there to the end of your story. If you have children yourself, or have been around them, you'll know that a small child cries when it's punished regardless of its guilt or innocence. Does this necessarily mean that young children consider themselves innocent regardless of the actual circumstances?

The bottom line is that you are, of course, perfectly free to hold whatever bizarre beliefs you like. However, you simply can't expect anyone to take you seriously when your only defense to questioning is "is too!" That's indicative of the moral development of a small child, not an adult.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

yguy

We both like food. Therefore we can have an economic foundation, a basis for trade in which both parties prosper. If you're an ice cream maker, you can trade with both those who like chocolate and those who like vanilla.

What does my knowledge of what other people think about philosophy have to do with the topic at hand?

So far, you haven't given me reason to BE interested.

How do you know you're not asleep? If you can tell the difference between sleeping and waking, likewise I can tell that I'm not morally insane.

And I should care what philosophers think because...?

That wasn't my strawman, but that of the nincompoop who dreamed it up. I didn't have to make it into one.

Sure - because those who know when they're right also know when they're wrong. Anyone who thinks he can have the first without the second is kidding himself.

And how would that be?

I doubt you even know what conscience is. Some people's "conscience" tells them to send money to Greenpeace, or to Robert Tilton. It's the effect of brainwashing, not conscience.

Not in the least. There is a single source for both pieces of information. That's the point.

To be sure, children have egos which can feel hard done by without good reason...but when a child is punished unjustly, it doesn't JUST cry, it hates - because it knows what justice is. If you can't see that, perhaps you've forgotten where you came from.

Bill Snedden

You miss the point. I don't want "food". I want chocolate. You don't want "food". You want vanilla. What's the common good between chocolate and vanilla?

If you'll reread what I wrote, you'll notice that it is your general ignorance of moral philosophy that I'm referencing. Although it appears to matter little to you, other people do often have interesting and thought provoking things to say. You should try reading once in a while, you might find that you like it!

Why should I need to give you a reason to be interested in educating yourself?

I'm not snoring and my wife's not kicking me.

From your remark, I can only conclude that, in fact, you are morally insane.

The same reason that you should care what anyone thinks about any topic: you might learn something. If not, what have you lost? You certainly don't have to agree with or believe everything you read, but from your current state, some education certainly couldn't hurt.

A perfect example. You don't understand ethical egoism so you simply mock it. If you actually took the time to read about it, then you might just find a better way to attack it than creating strawmen.

How deep.

Well, at the least, I can explain why I believe the things I do. You seem unable to differentiate a stomachache from a moral judgement. And you wonder if I know what a conscience is? How utterly surreal...

The original question was "how do you know your conscience is working properly?" You said, "same way I know murder is wrong." Didn't you previously indicate that it was your conscience that told you murder was wrong? How can your conscience tell you that your conscience is working properly?

That is circular reasoning.

You're actually claiming that an infant punished unjustly "hates"? And your evidence for this would be??? Oh, wait, it's "self-evident", right?

:banghead:

I think I must have been taking the wrong tack in attempting to have a discussion with you. This is Candid Camera, right? Where's that host guy? Is the camera hidden on my desk somewhere? Where's the mic?

At any rate, this has gone really off-topic. If you're interested in discussing foundations for moral systems, I suggest starting a new topic. Maybe you can find someone who shares the "I know it when I see it" moral theory and the two of you can argue away about what you both see and no one else does.

Any further posts to this thread should be confined to the subject being discussed. And as you apparently have nothing further to share on that topic, having already delivered yourself of your unwavering, "self-evident", moral pronouncement, I trust this is the last we'll see of you here. Au revoir.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

dk

dk: I’m not trying to blow you off, but you raised 4 distinct issues that were scattered across a wide spectrum. I don’t know what points you want to drop or discuss further. Right up front I asked you “Why should I be concerned with Ethics” and you blew me off. I don’t know where you’re coming from and still don’t have a read. If you’re looking for a meaningless discussion of propositional logic under some ambiguous cloud of ethics?… I’m the wrong guy. Homosexuality lacks a necessary form, so I pick gays. I get to pick because the ethics of homosexuality presumes upon any form it might take.
dk: I don’ know what you mean there’s no contradiction. I don’t know what you said because you clipped it. But it really doesn’t matter because we get into it below.

Bill Snedden: Now, let's examine the line of reasoning that led us to this point.
dk: ok…
In a previous post, you said:
dk: Obviously it is unethical to knowingly act to put another person’s life in grave danger, it is ethical to avoid acts that put others in danger.
Bill: People who drive assume the risk (or should).
Bill Snedden: My response to this was: They get into their cars and onto the road knowing that there is a minute possibility that something could go wrong. However, they take every precaution (or should) to ensure that nothing will. And other drivers depend upon this being the case. IOW, they consent to a level of danger to their own lives based upon the reasonable assumption that you will behave in a responsible manner.
dk: Reasonable expectation, Ok fine.
Bill Snedden: Thus making the point that it is not always unethical to knowingly act to put another person's life in danger. Driving a car involves the necessary knowledge that another person's life (my passengers, or other drivers) may be in danger. This is so because while I'm driving, I'm not in complete control of everything that happens (engine failure, heart attack, potholes, etc).
dk: That’s a straightforward rationalization… because stuff happens outside of our control,,, doesn’t justify unethical conduct within the boundaries of reasonable expectation. You’re not a zombie automaton, and neither is anyone else, so its unethical to risk other people’s lives on the zombie premise.

Bill Snedden: Your response, that I quoted far above, was: dk: I’ll parse this if you want, but essentially unethical acts require knowledge and an act of judgment by the active intellect (commitment). If I drive an unsafe vehicle, drive recklessly/drunk etc… or intentionally ram a car in a fit of road rage then I have acted unethically. Otherwise I had a car accident beyond any reasonable expectation of good judgment or knowledge. Now, with the entire chain laid out, can you see any point at which anything you wrote contradicts anything I said? Can you see now that in fact what you wrote was essentially the same point I was making?
dk: Yeh, you presumed yourself and other to be zombies. The premise dehumanizes everyone because the premise is false.

Bill Snedden: The rest of this section of your post consists of several other misunderstandings of the same type. You say "no, you're wrong" and then proceed to make the same point to which you're allegedly responding. I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of those. You can go back and read the chain of responses just as easily as I.
dk: So our basic disagreement is whether its ethical or not to treat people like zombies. I say no… dehumanizing people imposes upon human dignity.

Quote:

Bill Snedden: It is unethical to knowingly put another person's life in grave danger without their knowledge or consent and it is ethical to avoid acts that put others in danger without their knowledge or consent. dk: You’re wrong. In fact I submit war is in and of itself the product of ethical confusion, that stems from immorality, and immorality can lead people into such a degenerative state that war becomes the last vestige of hope. Morality is derived from of 1st Principles that rest upon human nature (free will), knowledge and intelligence. Ethics is the science that applies the principles in a variety of different situations and circumstances. Bill Snedden: You say that I'm wrong, but then the rest of this statement does nothing to demonstrate my error. I can only assume that you either misspoke or you misunderstand. dk: You said, “without knowledge and consent”. Its unethical to put someone’s life in grave danger, whether they consent or not

Bill Snedden: You contradict yourself. If you'll recall, I made an example of a military general who orders his troops to war, with full knowledge that some will die. Your response was: dk: Soldiers will die in combat no matter what the general orders. The general’s only ethical course is to order the men into combat to win the war by any and all ethical means at his command.
dk: And if you recall I presumed upon the “Just theory of War” to place the Commanding Officer in a time and place beyond his control, or any reasonable possibility of control.
Bill Snedden: Which, quite strangely under normal circumstances, but apparently quite common in discussions with you, is in consonance with my statement that you apparently consider yourself to be rebutting!
dk: You lost me again. You seem to be under the impression people are zombies incapable of discernment, from moment to moment. Ethics doesn’t govern the conduct of zombies, because people are not zombies. Ethics is practical not theoretical, though I’ll grant you in a theoretical universe zombies are useful constructs.

Bill Snedden: You've clearly said here that there is no negative ethical status attaching to the general for ordering his men to certain death. How do you then turn around and declare that putting someone at "grave risk" is unethical?
dk: Certain death?… you must be talking about somebody else, I didn’t say certain death, though in time death is a certain reality for us all.

Quote:

dk: The Marital Act is {immune from the same line of reasoning dk uses to "condemn" SS behavior}, that’s why the only ethical sex consummates and celebrates a marriage. Bill Snedden: I'm sorry, but this is fallacious. There is no necessary connection between a monogamous relationship and heterosexuality.

Bill Snedden: "The Marital Act" is a particular monogamous heterosexual practice. If you weren't referring to the monogamous nature of that practice, whatever else did you mean?
dk: I meant the Marital Act couched within the context of marriage vows, You know to honor cherish, protect, love, serve etc… in sickness and health till death do us part.
dk: None, homosexuals can’t have spouses, because homosexuality is a concept. Concepts rise/fall with the fortune of the individuals, civilizations, nations, and institutions they describe. For example the concept of family has sunk with the rise of divorce, domestic violence, abortion and unwed mothers i.e. the fortune of the institution it describes.

Quote:

Bill Snedden: Up to this point, your entire moral schema seems to be nothing more than a set of ad-hoc rationalizations designed to condemn a behavior that you find distasteful. I'll ask you the same question I asked yguy: Why is homosexuality immoral? You've provided no non-question begging reasons here; do you have any suggestions for moral standards against which this question can be decided? dk: Heterosexuality and Homosexuality are apples and oranges. Hetero (man and woman) is a form composed of a man and women, a union of two distinct entities. Homosexuality is a concept (sexual orientation) with two forms 1) gays and 1) lesbians. Heterosexuality is necessary for procreation, and the Marital Act suits the form. This isn’t a polemic, but rational and necessary statement of concepts and forms

Bill Snedden: Arbitrary and irrelevant. I could just as easily say, "human sexual practice is a form composed of two human beings, the union between two individual entities. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are both concepts with multiple forms: 1) male-female, 2) male-male, 3) female-female. Number one is necessary for procreation, but marriage isn't essential to procreation."
dk: The family unit is the universal building block of civilization, well perhaps not all civilizations but all living civilizations. How long it takes a living civilization to die seems to vary. I see little or no evidence that the Great Society educracy, social services, foster care, or orphanages are better suited to raise children that the nuclear family, and there’s a plethora of evidence that government institutionalized child care costs more and does an inadequate job. I think its fair to say every civilization that ever existed is only 2 generations away from being dead (50 years). In this sense Western and Eastern Civilizations are a remarkable achievement.

Bill Snedden: You appear to base your approach to human sexuality based strictly on biological necessities (procreation). Needless to say, this is hopelessly inadequate given the exceedingly complex nature of human psychology and sexual behavior. Not to mention the fact that biology is a poor standard to use to determine morality. We could just as easily make arguments using observed instances of homosexual behavior, including lifetime mating, that occurs among non-human animals to demonstrate that your sacrosanct "Marital Act" is nothing more than a human convention, with no necessary relation to biology and thus none to morality.
dk: Actually I base my opinion on the premise that civilization (nations) suit people, but require a lot of overhead (armies, police, courts, infrastructure… ,etc.). Civilizations grow and prosper by solving problems presented by time to challenge them. When a civilization encounters an insolvable problem it bleeds until they triumph or become ruined. As a practical matter I agree with Aquinas and Aristotle, that morality perfects individuals, families, communities and nations for happiness by grounding them in causes that are material, essential, formal and final.

Bill Snedden: I hope that you can take some time to consider the manner in which you've pursued this topic. If you have a substantive contribution to make (i.e., on topic), I'm sure that we'd be happy to hear it. However, future attempts to distract from the actual topic will merely be noted as such.
dk: Bill I appreciate your help, criticism and help, thank you. This isn’t an easy topic.

yguy

So am I. You're just putting a more superficially erudite label on what amounts to what a bunch of guys hailed as philosophers think.

Fine. Get one of these hotshots on this board, and I'll show him that he - just like you - doesn't know why he believes what he believes.

You are in the same position as a Christian peddling the Bible. No way in the world would I be interested in the Bible if the guy shilling for it were an obvious idiot. Likewise, if reading all this stuff is gonna make me think like you, I am like WAAAAY not interested.

I'll bet the logical process by which you came to that conclusion is demonstrably flawless...so go ahead. Demonstrate away.

I might learn something reading books about astrology too.

Time.

Education is not always benign, as demonstrated by the likes of Martin Seligman, Peter Singer, and other educated idiots.

Yeah, guys like you would just LOVE to sucker me into entangling Gordian knots. I'm not nearly that stupid.

Really? I must have missed your explanation of why you believe murder is wrong.

Look: conscience never "works improperly" in humans - it just isn't listened to.

As for people without consciences, they aren't human.

I've experienced it myself. So has the woman I told you about. So have abused children from the beginning of the human race. If your brain weren't filled with all that mindless esoterica, maybe you could see the obvious truth of that.

It is impossible to discuss the subject intelligently without bringing the basis of morality into the picture; so unless the mods decide to be heavy handed or people stop responding to me, I'm not going anywhere.

Fr.Andrew

(dk): Jacob was mama's favorite, he seldom left the tent or his mother skirts (not that they wore skirts back then). Esau was Isaac's favorite, a boy after a father's heart, that needs a father's nurture and example. Jacob was home cooking one day when Esau came home famished from the hunt, and tricked Esau into trading away his blessing for a hot meal. In today's world Jacob would fit the stereotype commonly called a moma’s boy, and more scientifically called a boy with a confused gender identity. In today' post modernist world its unlikely Jacob would have fit into competitive boys play, and surely would have been isolated and teased as a moma's boy, perhaps even recruited by a gay councilor that runs the local gay boys club.
(Fr Andrew): I must say, dk...discussing something with you is rather like trying to ride the greased pig at the county fair.
What happened to Mike Tyson and the hairy arms?

(dk): What do you think?
(Fr Andrew): I think that you're a fountain of nonsense and misinformation.
Thanks for the chat.

dk

I think you're nice, and I love you Fr.Andrew