Hans

DRFseven

The next logical step in the subjective view seems to be establishing why one should have the view that the actions should not be done.

I can think of a multitude of negative social repercussions if the actions are discovered by those that have the view that the actions should not be done, but are there any other reasons one should have this view?

tronvillain

Tom Piper:
You claim that your premises are true, so you are making the claim that there is a legitimate standard beyond what the individual who is acting happens to believe. If you want us to consider your argument anything more than a proof that the action is wrong from the perspective of most people, you are going to have to demonstrate such a standard.

Hans

Were getting our posts crossed!

Not that it isn't valid. Only that it is without an objective reference. Nor do I feel an objective reference is necessary.

tronvillain

The problem is that while premise two is objectively true (given a conventional definition of harm), premises one and two are not. They appear to be subjective opinions that most people happen to hold. To be sound your argument should really be:

1. The vast majority of people consider it is wrong to harm another human being unless one has good reason for doing so.

2. Raping, sodomizing, torturing, and then burying alive and leaving a six year-old child to die is harming the child.

3. The vast majority of people feel that there can generally be no good reason for doing these things to a six year-old child.
----
4. The vast majority of people consider raping, sodomizing, torturing, and then burying alive and leaving a six year-old child to die to be wrong.

DRFseven

Violating some my culture's moral rules would be likely to violate my own moral guidelines because I acquired my guidelines through the experience of living in my culture. However, even if I felt bad about it, a "should" never enters the big picture because why should I feel good or bad or exist at all? According to my own objectives, of course, I have my shoulds.

DRFseven

Yes, it's my fault; I'm sorry. You should see me on IM; it's all haywire. This will be the last crossed post!

Hans

I think I'm just trying to drag this objective thing back in. bd-from-kg has my curiosity peaked.

britinusa

In Robert Ingersoll's opinion, the question of good and evil can be easily explained. I don't have the exact quote readily available (and I'm too lazy at 1.30am to go look for it) so I'll paraphrase: "Good increases the sum happiness of humankind, evil decreases the sum happiness of humankind."
So lets apply this to Hans's hypothetical child rapist/murderer. He might argue (if he's a real sicko) that his overall happiness was increased. He enjoyed it, and will remember the event with fondness and satisfaction for the rest of his life. And although the girl obviously suffered terribly, she is now either in heaven (as most xians believe) or she has ceased to exist (as most atheists believe). Either way, she isn't unhappy anymore.
Of course, the girls' family will be griefstricken, a fact that more than offsets the murderer's happiness. Therefore, the sum happiness of humankind has decreased. But what if the girl had no family? Had no-one to grieve for her. What if no-one missed her or even discovered her body. In this scenario, we may be forced to conclude - however reluctantly - that the sum happiness of humankind has increased as a result of this terrible crime. It would seem that Ingersoll's theory has problems; either that or humankind's level of happiness has little to do with morality.
Here's another example: Let's say a 24 year old man is senselessly beaten to death. But the year is 1913, the place is Vienna, Austria, and the victim is a young man by the name of Adolf Hitler.
The murderer has unwitting saved millions of lives, but he killed Hitler just for the hell of it, for kicks.
He has prevented a massive decrease in the sum happiness of humankind with an immoral act.
A more recent (and real) case is Andrea Yates and her five children. If mainstream xians are right, the five children are now blissfully happy in heaven. And perhaps Andrea Yates was telling the truth about her motives. Perhaps those children would have lived as long as the Queen Mother, but so what? 101 years is practically nothing if we're talking about eternity in heaven (or hell).
Perhaps Andrea was worried that one or more of her kids would grow up to be (dare I say it) evil atheists. She condemned herself to an eternity in hell while ensuring her children would go to the other place. If Mrs. Yates is really telling the truth, then, well... I can't imagine anything more heroic. She deserves a congressional medal of honour and wealthy retirement, so that she may live her remaining years on earth as happily as possible, coz it ain't no picnic in hell (if xians are to be believed).
I don't know where this post is going. I've only recently began to take an interest in the moral, ethical and philosophical aspects of the theist/atheist debate (and I must say I'm getting hooked on it). So I apologize if I'm wasting everyone's time with my amateurish ramblings.
I believe there are laws against murder, rape, theft etc. because we don't want (and we don't want our loved ones) to be murdered, raped or stolen from. But this sounds so selfish, and it doesn't explain our ability to empathize with complete strangers. I'm sure we all feel sad when we look at a photo of JonBenet Ramsey. Xians will argue that we get this ability to empathize from god, but I don't see why.
I guess we just evolved that way.

tronvillain

So, you are proposing a definition of good and evil under which the hypothetical could objectively determined to be evil? It still amount to "most people consider the action wrong."

Tom Piper

Hans,

My post was, I answered your first response which was that the first premise and the conclusion were one and the same. Your comment is straight-forwardly and obviously false.

You then said, How is this a criticism of my efforts at the task you specified? You asked that it be shown that raping, sodomizing, torturing, ..., etc is wrong; you did not ask that it be shown that harming others without good reason is wrong. In other words, you asked for a demonstration of the proposition that is the conclusion of my argument, and then you complain that I have not offered a demonstraton of one of the premises in that argument. What is up here?

two points-

(i) If ,in order to prove some proposition P you think one must offer a sound argument for P, and then one must provide an sound argument for every premise of that sound argument, and then one must provide a sound argument for every premise of each of those arguments, and so on, you have set a condition on proof that can't be satisfied in any area. This 'proved-premise' principle is obviously absurd. I assume that you don't subscribe to it, but it is worth mentioning to emphaszie the consequences of a tendency to simply ask, when confronted with a proof, to supply a further proof for the premises of the proof. The ability to continue to phrase questions that are grammatically correct shows nothing and it can't be a condition on proof.

(ii) Explaining something why something is so by subsuming it under a general principle that is true is a perfectly legitimate way of accounting for the individual case. It is a common form of scientific explanation/justification and of moral explanation/justification. If this is not satisfactory form of justification, before we go further let me echo the request of 'bd-from-kg': 'What are you challenging your respondents to do?' Why don't you tell us instead of forcing us to play 'guess what is in the questioners head'.

You say, This is not the conclusion of my argument. It would be helpful if you would be a bit more careful in your expression of your responses to your respondents. When you make comments of this sort, I have no idea what to say, beyond saying once again, This is not the conlusion of the argument that I have offered The conclusion of the argument, which argument I restated above, is

4. Raping, sodomizing, torturing, and then burying alive and leaving a six year-old child to die is wrong.

You say, This is virtually incoherent as a critique of my argument because it is addressing an argument that I haven't made. My argument is not circular if by 'circular ' you mean that the conclusion is employed in/as one of the premises because this just isn't so, as a simple inspection will show. As I have stated above, the form of the argument is one of 'inferring' that a specific instance of certain phenomenon is of a specific kind via a true general principle linking such instances with such kinds. It simply isn't circular reasoning.

I will acknowledge that it does not show an inference of a moral wrong from non-moral premises, but that in itself is not a fault. Moreover, you did not ask for this in your specification of your mission. In addition, even if an inference of the latter sort cannot be provided, pointing this out would be merely an observation; it isn't a criticism with any force.

My claim stands. The argument is a sound argument: The premises are true and the argument is valid. Nothing that you have done shows that either of the premises is false. Nothing that you have done has shown that the argument is invalid. Note well that if I have to show that the premises are true in order to show that the argument is a sound argument (which task is not the same a producing a sound argument), then in order for you to show that the argument is unsound you must show that one or more of the premises is false or that the argument is invalid. You haven't even made an attempt to do this.

Tom

[ April 09, 2002: Message edited by: Tom Piper ]</p>