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On May 13 2011 09:18 Suisen wrote:
If you ask me both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky only tried to deliberately distort the debate on this issue. Both were fiction writers are nothing more. Modern philosophers shouldn't generally be respected, but by acting either of them were philosophers you give them way too much credit.
As for the Harris and Craig debate. There is no universal disputable definition of what morality is. Defining what morality is already answers what is moral and what is immoral. The question is what morality is.
Harris his answer is in terms of well-being of conscious entities.
Craig his answer is that good is what god wants and bad is what god doesn't want and that what is free from free will happens because it is part of god's plan and therefore good.
Sava Fischer, as for your argument, why do you think future events are more important than past events when it comes to morality. You believe suffering that has happened in the past becomes 'unsuffered' when time passes on? This is silly. We think we know the universe will expand into complete nothingness. The works of Bach will one day be gone. But you really think they have no value? You really think that it matters how much we value let's say the fugues of Bach depending on if dark energy beats out gravity 5 billion years from now?
Suffering is real no matter if there is evidence left for it at the end. If you truly believe this line of argument then when you can wipe out all evidence of a murder, it is no longer immoral because retrospectively the suffering of the victim and violation of human rights no longer happened.
I never said nor do I believe that suffering that has happened in the past becomes "unsuffered." It simply doesn't matter anymore. The only beings it mattered to will be gone and with the them the feelings and thoughts they associated with the sufferings of themselves and other. If indeed beings who appreciate Bach's music become extinct, they will no longer have value. Because no one would be ascribing any value to them. What does a carbon atom care for Bach? Nothing. You are misunderstanding my point. What is a violation of a human right? What is a human right? Is it like gravity? Or is it a mass of opinions held by people who exist in certain times and places who desire people be treated in certain ways? The authority of morality and human rights exists only insofar as beings can enforce them (unless you want to talk about a platonic/Christian sense of morality in which evil is a privation of being).
I 100% agree that suffering is real whether or not people know about it. I never said it isn't real. It simply isn't important if no one exists to care about it. If the person who suffered is dead and so is everyone who could potentially care for the well-being of another human are dead, no one would care so it wouldn't be important.
If you want my personal belief, I think people will continue to exist in a meaningful sense so Bach's music and the suffering of others will forever be important or matter.
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Also calling Nietzsche and Dostoevsky "only fiction writers nothing more" is one of the best ways to communicate to people two things:
1. That you have never seriously read either of them.
2. You are self-important and not very smart (Nietzsche didn't even write fiction, he was a philologist (classicist).
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On May 13 2011 09:18 Suisen wrote:
If you ask me both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky only tried to deliberately distort the debate on this issue. Both were fiction writers are nothing more. Modern philosophers shouldn't generally be respected, but by acting either of them were philosophers you give them way too much credit.
As for the Harris and Craig debate. There is no universal disputable definition of what morality is. Defining what morality is already answers what is moral and what is immoral. The question is what morality is.
Harris his answer is in terms of well-being of conscious entities.
Craig his answer is that good is what god wants and bad is what god doesn't want and that what is free from free will happens because it is part of god's plan and therefore good.
Sava Fischer, as for your argument, why do you think future events are more important than past events when it comes to morality. You believe suffering that has happened in the past becomes 'unsuffered' when time passes on? This is silly. We think we know the universe will expand into complete nothingness. The works of Bach will one day be gone. But you really think they have no value? You really think that it matters how much we value let's say the fugues of Bach depending on if dark energy beats out gravity 5 billion years from now?
Suffering is real no matter if there is evidence left for it at the end. If you truly believe this line of argument then when you can wipe out all evidence of a murder, it is no longer immoral because retrospectively the suffering of the victim and violation of human rights no longer happened.
Sava's point is more of why suffering is wrong/morality in general.
He's making the point that if there is no consciousness, there is no meaning for morality.
The Judeo-Christian view then is that conscious grounding of morality is in God/immortal humans, allowing it to be significant regardless of the time that passes.
However, there are other points. Morality can be objective, like the Earth-Sun distance, but still change with time, or have no impact on you.
The big problem with objective morality is how it impacts our lives.
In a purely naturalistic explanation of the universe, "morality" can only be 'those set of social rules most likely to be followed by a species that continues to exist'. Which means there is no Reason to follow it. You probably will follow it, because that "morality" will probably be forced on you thrrough social and genetic programming. And it is objective, but it is not "good" it is only "what is" ie might makes right.
In any of the in any part non-naturalistic explanations of the universe, something like consciousness has an independent identity, and can therefore things like purpose/should/good have real meanings. And that morality then has a potential way to impact you.
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Let me ask you this. In a purely naturalistic world view, can universal objective and transcendental laws of logic exist? Are they more than just human concepts? Do they exist without humans?
If your answer is 'yes', why is morality different? If your answer is 'no', how can you have naturalism without logical principles you can trust?
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On May 13 2011 10:01 Suisen wrote:
Let me ask you this. In a purely naturalistic world view, can universal objective and transcendental laws of logic exist? Are they more than just human concepts? Do they exist without humans?
If your answer is 'yes', why is morality different? If your answer is 'no', how can you have naturalism without logical principles you can trust?
"laws of logic" are how we Understand things.
the "Law of gravity" does not keep the planets orbiting, because the "law of gravity" is just a human concept
various bits of matter alter space-time or emit gravitons or something (we don't know for sure yet) happens and we describe the result using Our "law of gravity".
So in a purely naturalistic system "morality" does not exist. "Morals" are just our way to describe describe our own reactions to other humans interactions. Our interactions, disgust, shunning punishment, praise, reward, etc. are what is actually happening.
If We are purely naturalistic, then the "Law of gravity" "freedom" "morality" "algebra" "French grammar" is just an association of neural impulses. Now those associations of neural impulses have big effects on our own associations of neural impulses. But the interaction is all the "reality" those things have.
So a purely naturalistic system is definitely possible without "logic". (of course a purely naturalistic system might also cease to exist, just because it did)
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I am confused why you switched the argument to gravity because then in my view it destroys my argument and turns it into a straw man.
Do you really believe logic is a physical force that operates on objects like like gravity does? Because I don't think logic and gravity are the same. I think logic and morality are the same. The law of gravity is physical and part of the universe. The laws of logic is not physical and not constrained by the universe.
Also, morality is not how we respond to human interactions. Morality is what is good and what is bad.
The question is if a judgment on what is good and bad is purely a personal opinion that has no objective value or if there are universal principles we all agree on exactly because they are universal. If morality is subjective there is no basis to dispute someone else's ethical behavior because then each ethical system is just as good as any other.
Sava Fischer, do you really believe humans are immortal? I assumed it was an argument ad absurdum. It ought to be.
Nietzsche did write fiction. Maybe you didn't read them. Also, I never said their works are meritless. I said that both distorted a honest debate about morality. And both probably did deliberately. Both were mentally ill. I don't think we should look up to mentally ill people to authorities of morality because we know that one trait of mentally ill people is that their sense of morality is distorted.
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The fact that this is an arguement proves that morality is subjective in that were morality objective, you would be able to prove it irrevocably.
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On May 13 2011 10:27 Bidu wrote:
The fact that this is an arguement proves that morality is subjective in that were morality objective, you would be able to prove it irrevocably.
You want to apply this to everything or just to morality? If you want to apply it to just morality, why?
If you want to apply it to everything, why don't you see the absurdity of that?
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Suisen,
Suisen,
The laws of logic are contingent upon the existence of grammar. Gravity's existence is contingent upon the existence of matter. Grammar goes away once humans do, so will morality. Without moral beings, morality is pointless. It seems matter will be here much longer than humans.
I am curious to know your opinion of something. Why should anyone care, in your opinion, if an action they commit is good or bad? What are the consequences?
Also niether Nietzsche or Dostoevsky were mentally ill when they wrote their major works and as far as I know Dostoevsky was never mentally ill...I'd like to see a legitimate reference before conceding that.
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If you believe logic is contingent on grammar, we are lost and further debate seems pointless. I think very very few people believe this and if it is true logic is useless and all benefits we get from it ought not to be real.
I have never said anyone should care especially because of actions 'they', whoever they are, commit is good or bad.
I don't know if Nietzsche was not mentally ill when he wrote some of his works. I just know he was at some point. But you can't separate Nietzsche's personality with his eventual mental illness.
As for Dostoevsky he had hallucinations and probably Temporal Lobe Epilepsy is the diagnosis, though one can never make that diagnosis..
In his case his mental state surely deeply and profoundly influenced his works.
He describes his attacks in his novels and this form of mental illness is even informally named after him.
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Brazil3567 Posts
imho you 2 are getting lost in your own analogies 
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Why would further debate be pointless?
The laws of logic are not found anywhere apart from language. They do not manifest themselves in any other way or medium. That doesn't mean they can't be applied to many things quite well, but you will not find a syllogism except metaphorically in nature. Mathematics is the same way. It is a system you can apply to nature, however imperfectly (physics), but it is a human system. Morality makes no sense without human beings.
I have no idea why you wouldn't be able to seperate someones mental illness from their works if you think you can seperate morality from human beings. =P But in all seriousness you are committing a logical fallacy trying to invalidate an arguments by attacking their sources. You can learn a lot from them even if they are extreme.
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I don't know how to argue without logic.
But you seem to be confused and not meaning what you said.
The application of logic only exists in thought and through language. But if we take the law of identity for example, a tree is a tree and not not a tree. This is true even if language doesn't exist. If you remove language and people, something can't suddenly be in contradiction with itself.
This simple examples shows that at least some principles of logic have to transcend the material universe.
This line of argument is exactly what people didn't want to accept for morality. So it's not surprising that somehow a way of escape is to be found when presented with this argument. But rather maybe one should be convinced by the argument.
If Dostoevsky was a deeply areligious person, would he have written the exact same works?
If you don't think so, why do you fault me for not accepting views on morality that were directly induced by mental illness and would not have been expressed without it?
Nietzsche is more tricky, but my comment was in the same spirit as yours; a bit over the top.
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I do mean what I said. I never said you can argue without logic. When did I say that? I am not confused.
You are correct that a tree is a tree and it is not not a tree. You are wrong if you think anyone will ever formulate that rule, that sentence, that thought, or that care without existing.
1+1 still equals 2 without human beings. It simply doesn't exist. There is no platonic realm where equations and laws of logic float around and its not like they are inscribed in some sort of DNA for every object that can be identified. They are the products of human systems of thought.
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Why does it have to be formulated for it to be true? How can something that doesn't exist be true? You say yourself the law of identity would still be true without humans. So you accept this logical principle exists but aren't physical. They don't float around somewhere, but they are still true even without conscious being conceiving them? So will you now also accept that in the same way moral principles could exist?
If logic is a product of language it is arbitrary or at least subjective and quite useless. But you don't actually seem to have meant this, so let's ignore it.
btw, 1+1=2 is different. It is only true by definition and only exists and is true after you have said so. It is axiomatic.
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On May 13 2011 09:53 Sava Fischer wrote:
Also calling Nietzsche and Dostoevsky "only fiction writers nothing more" is one of the best ways to communicate to people two things:
1. That you have never seriously read either of them.
2. You are self-important and not very smart (Nietzsche didn't even write fiction, he was a philologist (classicist).
Thus spoke Zarathustra is fiction dude. But yeah most of his stuff is essays, aphorisms and such.
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On May 11 2011 15:52 VIB wrote:
At the end of the day. Morals are not an absolute truth. They are a consequence of economy and politics. And change through history as the need for new morals arise.
A few centuries ago. Slavery was moral. Because there were economical-political reasons for it. As the economy changed, nowadays slavery is immoral. Likewise, nowadays assigning monopoly property laws to intellectual material is moral, because theres economic interest. As that economic interest is changing. In the future, copyright laws that forbid sharing of creative work will be immoral. Morals will always change to adjust to economics and politics.
Morals is just an illusion invented by men.
I'm with this 100% until the last sentence. Wonderful explanation of the fundamental basis for morality.
I would say it is not just an "illusion," but I hope I'm not merely reducing this to semantics.
What you have clearly demonstrated is that morality definitely has an objective foundation in the functioning of society - there's nothing illusory about that whatsoever.
However, I could understand your final sentence if it was meant to convey the idea that "the morals of the day are the best and highest" as they have been purported to be by the rulers of essentially every civilization throughout human history, since classes came into existence.
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On May 13 2011 11:03 Suisen wrote:
If you believe logic is contingent on grammar, we are lost and further debate seems pointless. I think very very few people believe this and if it is true logic is useless and all benefits we get from it ought not to be real.
I have never said anyone should care especially because of actions 'they', whoever they are, commit is good or bad.
I don't know if Nietzsche was not mentally ill when he wrote some of his works. I just know he was at some point. But you can't separate Nietzsche's personality with his eventual mental illness.
As for Dostoevsky he had hallucinations and probably Temporal Lobe Epilepsy is the diagnosis, though one can never make that diagnosis..
In his case his mental state surely deeply and profoundly influenced his works.
He describes his attacks in his novels and this form of mental illness is even informally named after him.
Nietzsche was sick most of his life. He also did hard drugs.
( but rejecting someone's thoughts based on their state of health is a logical fallacy, no doubt about that, you're being quite ridiculous suisen)
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Suisen,
You keep implying I have said things that I haven't. It doesn't have to be formulated for it to be true.
Just because something is arbitrary doesn't make it useless. Doe you believe mathematics is arbitrary and subjective and useless? Logic principles are ultimately descriptions of reality and the most fundamental metaphors we can create. Logic is the cornerstone on which coherent descriptions of reality are made. This is why and how it exists. It doesn't exist apart from that. I don't see what is controversial about that.
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EPT
