Gurdur

Then you're neither listening to Eric, nor replying to his OP point, since he feels he doesn't have that sense.

99Percent

Yes we have yet you still insist that morality, ie the good and the bad, must be somehow empiracally, scientifically proven which I already told you several times (I refuse to go into hyperbole using the word "million") CANNOT be done. Morality resides in the philosophical realm, not on the scientific, empirical one, because again, what is good or bad is a human value judgement, which science, logic, or the facts can never and will never tell you what it is!

99Percent

I reread his op and nowhere is the word "feel" or "sense" in it. He seems to be in a search for moral knowledge not gut instincts.

Gurdur

But you're simply not facing up to the issue that science does tell you there is no such thing as "objective morality" --- and why there isn't.
And using scientific observation, we can easily determine people have very different morals, many of them contradicting each other.

Shall we do this one all over again ?

Gurdur

Contrary to your ideological stance, that is exactly where many people draw their moral knowledge at first from - gut instincts.

managalar

LOL. It wasn't a joke. Being 100% objective, like my calculator, is hardly 'superior' to anything, though I'm not surprised you'd think that. I can get my calculator to print false statements, but if I have it calculate, 1Volt + 1Volt = 2Volts (analog computing is easier to visualise than digital though almost all modern calculators are digital).

I think it is important philosophically to realize the difference between semantic-semantic relations vs semantic-natural world descriptions. Describing a falling object with math is only a description and will NEVER be 100% preciese...however, saying 1+3 = 5-1 is absolutly true, it is self consistant and dependent on nothing...while gravity is dependent on all sorts of things we know little about.

While my calculator has definitions for symbols stored, so does my mind have definitions for human actions. I describe certian actions as immoral if they hurt people. Without my description (or some-one elses), its just stuff happening, stuff that may even lead to human extinction...as with most species that have lived on Earth, they come and go with the ages, and nature makes no judgements about 'morality'...just life and death.

VonEvilstein

Erm, I don't seem to have a spare lying around, but I can give you a quick three piece kit to build a cheap and simple one that should get you by for now (in my case, this cheap and simple one seems to be more or less all I need). Some of the parts might seem a little familiar... One does not need to believe the divinity (or existance) of the alleged speaker, to see the wisdom of his words.

- Treat other people how you'd like them to treat you.
- If it does no harm, there's no reason not to it.
- Choose the option that will result in the least amount of total suffering.

I have yet to run into a situation so horrible, that these three didn't allow me to resolve the ethics of it.

TomboyMom

Still enjoying this discussion greatly. I really liked VonEvilstein's 3 rules, although his name is suspicious.
RE: the fascinating and raging argument between gurder, managalar, and 99%: If you happened to agree with me that virtue is the science of happiness, then you might also think that there are general rules that we can derive from our own experience and that of others that would tend to help us know or at least take a good guess at how to do that better, which is kind of objective, not in an absolute or a priori way, but in an empirical way. (Man, I haven't talked this way since I was a philosophy major in 1974. )

VonEvilstein

The name, alas, is not my own creation... it's from an ancient boardgame of Fanstasy Football - Bloodbowl.

The first time I ever needed to choose a handle, it popped into my conscious thought, and I've been using it ever since - about 13 years now.

99Percent

Gurdur:But is that really being moral? Reacting with gut instincts? I think not. Being moral is thinking things over before acting, ie, being rational.

mangalar:Sure, but your calculator cannot tell what is true or false. Only you can and that is why your brain is superior.Yet the symbols 1, 5 or = only exist in your mind, despite of them being objectively true. Your calculator doesn't know any of this like you do. It just responds automatically by preprogrammed instructions.But the symbol stored in your calculator still require a human mind to interpretThat is why we are moral beings, because we make value judgements. In the absolute sense we can tell when something is true or false. We can tell when someone is lying or not, for example.

TomboyMom: Welcome to the discussion