dk

dk: No reason for a teleological view? Sounds like denial.
dk: - I responded that all living creatures experience life and death, so experience is a necessary but insufficient condition of being human or cognizant.
dk: A creature that experiences death, also experienced life. It has nothing to do with thinking, perception, brain, nutrition, attitudes, opinions, equality or any other plausible event.
dk: From any perspective, sense, vector, rational or reality all biological creatures that experience life alive, and all forms that don’t experience life were never alive. The statement is irrefutable. Try as you may to separate the experience of life from life the supposition fails.
dk: - Try as you might, without self knowledge its impossible for any creature to act in its own self interest. To denial a creature any intrinsic quantum of self knowledge imposes a system of complete determinism that deconstructs free will, freedom and liberty to a misperception.
dk: - I have forthright answered your questions, you just don’t like the answer. Experience is a necessary condition of life, not cognizance.
dk: - To subscribe all motivation to the lowest common denominator (comfort) denies people the capacity to participate in their own destiny. The assertion denies people the capacity to participate in their own destiny, denies access to self knowledge and denies access to reason.
dk: - My sensibilities aren’t offended, I’m simply trying to point out the proposition is nonsense.
dk: - I’m saying that the parental relationships rightly (but not exclusively) protect the infant, baby, toddler, and child by imposing a moral environment to nurture self knowledge i.e. ordered suitably from human nature in conjecture with natural law. A parent has a moral obligation to protect their child from immoral or dangerous experiences and circumstances detrimental, offensive or unsuitable to the child’s intrinsic dignity. When a parent intentionally abdicates or betrays their nuclear family they violate themselves, spouse and children, but the violation is not limited to the immediate family. Parents that unintentionally abdicate or betray their families lack the self knowledge necessary to access reason, and without reason people act like animals (degenerates). People that live outside the requisite moral order are deprived. This is pretty straight forward, not rocket science.
dk: - Were that the case a child’s environment would determine their future. Clearly that is not the case.
dk: - You seem to be under the misconception that experience negates volition. No, reason orders experience in terms of right and wrong (moral truths) then volition (intellectually directed effort) shapes the future i.e. a person is an “end unto themselves”, not merely an object determined by a “means to an end”.
dk: Dogs don’t have access to reason, so you’re culpable for the actions of your dog.
dk: - I have demonstrated that its possible for people participate in their life by directing their actions with moral principles revealed by reason and self knowledge. You have argued that people are determined by experience alone. You seem afraid to consider the possibility of participating (not controlling) in your own life. Why?
dk: There is no physical evidence that concepts like points, lines, planes, dimensions etc… exists in the realm of the material universe, except in the human mind. Nobody can describe these ideas in a material sense, because they don’t exist in a material sense. We are limited to analogies using elementary physical units of time, mass and length (from which all other physical units are derived). Human volition through the directed actions of people has objectively shaped the world in ways unimaginable even 500 years ago, by describing the laws of the physical universe in terms of ideas.

Today people have the capacity and potential to destroy the planet. Now can I prove that objective morality exists? Well yes, if mankind blows the planet to smithereens then people participated in their own destiny, not in any reasonable sense, but because they of their own volition deprived themselves of reason and self-knowledge, and unintentionally destroyed the planet. It is by reconciling the placidity of human potential with {im}moral conduct that people shape the future for better/worse. People can deny objective morality, but in doing so they deprive themselves of reason and self-knowledge.
dk: It’s unreasonable to postulate people desire to blow the world up, yet its still quite possible people will blow the planet up. If the sun went nova tomorrow it would prove objective morality didn’t exist. That’s Pascal’s wager… If the sun goes nova morality is mute. But to deprive one’s self and progeny of reason and knowledge on an absurd bet the sun will go nova defines incomprehensible stupidity. Because there are factors beyond human control, doesn’t deprive people of their intrinsic abilities, liberties, rights and freedom.
dk: - The proposition of objective morality subscribes human conduct to inalienable human rights, obligations and liberties, not anybodies personal opinion. The proposition of personal morality subscribes human conduct to arbitrary intrusions and violations.

echidna

Hi there DRF7, now tell me you’ve just thrown this out there to reel me in. While I’m having a bit of trouble keeping pace with dk’s chain of thought which I find somewhat fractured (sorry, dk), I have to chip in to resume our usual topic of conversation (kinda like that chess game which progresses with a new move every month).

Not joking, but for me the dichotomy between learning and instinct is still far from clear. As you may recall, I’d separate into :

Learned behaviour
Instinctive behaviour
Instinctive predilection towards certain learned behaviour

Forgive my naivety, how do I scientifically categorise the human understanding of “down-ness”, preferably without performing experiments which would have us up on charges ?

echidna

From my own fractured thought patterns, I’d also add that since the materialists and reductionists here view all human functions in terms of objective material processes, then this would also include morality of course. So if morality is purely a function of objective material processes, then is it not logical to deduce that a degree of objectivity can be applied to morality as well ? After all, we are not all so unique that we do not share some objective commonality in at least brain function.

dk

dk: As I understand it there are three mainstream trains of rational thought, 1) materialism 2) idealism and 3) rationalism. I’m appealing to all three trains by simply postulating “Objective morality constructs language in terms right (good) and wrong (evil) from human nature to regulate conduct with reason”. Ethics is the science that applies moral principles to different situations and circumstances. You’ve caught my general drift, that morality is like a diet. People must eat to live, but may have great discretion over what and how much they eat. Applying the proposition to diet yields, “Morality constructs terms of good (diet) and bad (diet) from human nature (nutritional requirements) to regulate conduct (eating habits) with reason. While I’m free to ignore reason to eat compulsively or emotionally the behavior can deprive me of both reason and self-knowledge. A poor diet may lead to all kinds of deficiencies that manifested in every aspect of my being. I may balloon up to 500lbs or wane to 80lbs distorting myself. I still must eat to survive, but my reason for eating shapes or warps in terms of a good diet or bad diet. This is a good example of how immorality deprives a person of both self-knowledge and reason to explain a depraved person.

Hey, I agree with your fractured assessment, it wasn’t until I thought about your post that I recognized objective morality is a requisite of philosophical thought.

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

dk

I think I just got categorized in the school of reductionism. I assume everyone analyzes phenomena by breaking complex stuff into elementary components to reveal simple (or manageable) relationships. The problem with reductionism is oversimplification.

DRFseven

Hi, chid (get it? har, har)!

So would I. Well, ok, I'd call that third one an inborn capacity, and I'd add a fourth category; behavior in which the genetic expression has altered itself in response to environmental stimuli, but that could be contained in "learned."

Children aren't born knowing that objects fall down; they have to learn it by moving through their environment. Infants placed on a countertop where half the length of it is opaque black and the other half is clear, invisible glass, at first, will crawl right onto the clear part, which means they would crawl off a ledge. Older infants who have had a chance to become more adventuresome and have begun to experience tumbles and falls, will stop at the end of the solid black. It's the same with objects other than themselves; they learn that unbalanced blocks fall, that cups of milk spill down, never up. This becomes a part of their stockpile of "truth" from which they steer themselves through life. They will add piles and piles of "truth" from wherever they happen to find it. Some of the truth is information such as "dogs are scary" or "spinach is yukky", or "I'm clumsy" or "God loves me", which are perceptions that may differ from those of others, but will nevertheless become a part of the child's knowledge and will become a part of what is available for the child to think with. This is what I can't get across to dk, who thinks that, somehow, we can think without benefit of our thousands and thousands of experiences, as if there would be something to think about.

dk

dk: Most known civilizations lay extinct in ruins, for example Mayan, Aztec, Mali and Songhai, Polenisian, or Mesopotamian. I’m not sure about the percentage of civilizations that subscribed to the golden rule, but if that were the case then the golden rule is insufficient to sustain civilization.
dk: The conclusion is conflicted. The first order of principles are elementary, irreducible and self evident i.e. all other principles are derived from them. First Principles succeed by ordering human activity with essential human values. The principles of identity, non-contradiction, the excluded middle, causality and finality are immutable and inalienable. For example the priori proposition of the U.S. Declaration of Independence in the preamble states, “We hold these truths to be self evident that all people are created equal,,,” Lincoln affirmed the proposition at the Gettysburg Address, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. …” It was the proposition set forth in the Declaration that judged slavery unacceptable, and did so undeniably despite the rationalizations put forward by Jefferson the author of the Declaration. This demonstrates that “higher” PRINCIPLES judge men, not visa versa. People, institutions, religions and governments that put themselves above principle are an obstacle to liberty, not its agent. This has nothing to do with secular and sectarian values or activities.
dk: Your thoughts are expressed in the following syllogism
P1: believe in (g)God(s)(ess)(es) makes people immoral
P2: conservative religions believe in (g)God(s)(ess)(es)
C: conservative religious groups are immoral
Every know civilization grounds its identity on a metaphysical belief in (g)God(s)(ess)(es). The traditions of a civilization’s hierarchical order exist in communion with their identity else they degenerate under a tyranny of endless revolutions, counter-revolutions, and counter-counter-revolutions,,, . The miracle of the U.S. Revolution was that it wasn’t a revolution at all. Democracy in Ancient Greece bled itself to death waging endless petty wars between city states. To the extent a civilization’s identity (culture) reflects metaphysical believes defines conservatives as traditionalists, not moral people. The identity of an immoral civilization is manifested by immoral traditions like ritualized murder, genocide and aberrant sexual practices; and visa versa.

History offers an inestimable number of quotes from madmen. For example atheist Carl Marx wrote a much quoted rational doctrine that advocated a violent world revolution as the cure for material disparities and social inequalities. Atheistic Communist doctrine rationalized the atrocities committed by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. They slaughtered and oppressed 100s of millions of good citizens in the killing fields of a non-existent man made utopia. In fact Gorbachev became a liberal when he broke with the conservative wing of the Communist Party. It’s absurd to postulate that Gorbachev was a Jew, Christians or Muslims. The USSR’s identity was atheistic, so right wing conservatives of the Politburo were atheists. Gorbachev became a liberal because he tried to reform communism with free market principles, not because he was a religious cleric. In a psychopathic rationalization Marx’s Doctrine sacrificed 10s of millions of good peoples to forge a union with the great gods of utopia against the forces of capitalism, theism and natural law. In fact from the beginning Marx’s doctrine was conflicted; Marx never did reconcile the “pragmatic rigorous specialization demanded by industrialization” with “the proposition of an unfettered egalitarian workplace”. Communist choked to death on its own hypocrisy manifest a rigid bureaucratic command structures of Central Planning.

The moral to the story leaves little justification for a world revolution based on Marx’s Doctrine, and suggests that doctrines deposed of moral truths or principle are false. This discussion MAKES NO comment on religions, except to say religious people are bound by moral truths and principles that bind everybody else. Why many atheists and rational philosophers feel compelled to attack Christians, Moslems and Jews with tactics devoid of principle seems, to me , to be systemic to all unacceptable self-justifying people.

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

DRFseven

The physical structure provides only the capacity to go out and learn things, it doesn't provide the information being learned. So, yes, we can say that it is objectively true that external objects and events are received and translated into electrochemical action that is coded for association (which means that when it is cued, a similar transmission will occur). But what is learned from that input is what we happen to perceive of it (which is a function, in turn, of previous perception); it is not the object or event, itself, that lodges in our brains. In other words, the neural correlate of thinking is specialized neural activity, just as the rolling of a log describes activity of the log, not the log, itself.

But, anyway, it's a misconception to think that moral subjectivists fail to consider that objectivity plays a part in moral valuations. Once a subjective goal is specified, then specific behaviors can be evaluated and agreed upon (or not) as conducive (or not) to that goal. So if my goal that I have happened, though my unique biology and circumstances, to end up with is, say, for humans to flourish, then I can objectively say that murder would, then, be wrong because if everyone murdered on whim, we'd die out. So we need to think murder is wrong if we want to live.

echidna

OK, but when a baby doesn’t avoid falling, it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have an understanding of down-ness. This is also affected by their understanding of causality & the consequences of moving their limbs and the consequences of falling. I don’t think a baby immediately knows to link the full chain of events between, twitch this muscle and receive big pain on head, until they’ve actually fallen off a few times or learnt to associate that fall with other falls.

Further our ear structures are specifically evolved to be responsible for balance in a gravitational environment.

Note that deformities in ear structure will result in poor balance and a poor sense of down-ness. No matter how competent the learning process might be, the hardware can easily affect the end understanding.

One can learn down-ness, either by association with other things such as rain falls & trees grow up, or by actually feeling up and down. So as such I wouldn’t say it’s entirely learnt, but that we are born with a clear genetic advantage towards learning down-ness.

Similarly I think many of our other so-called learnt behaviours have strong genetic influences, which we often just take for granted from a humano-centric perspective. And some of them would even be strong enough to call instincts as well.

echidna

Surely within our tightly controlled genetic structure humans share a few common objective goals as well ?

So can I not conclude then, that within the bounds of human objective commonality, an objective morality (albeit small) exists ?

Golly, surely it’s not that easy.