Killing: When/If It's Ok?

[Cortes]

[quote]TigerTime wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

Rape could only be an universal rule if everyone agreed to be raped. Which is absurd. [/quote]

Nor would it be, like, rape.

Nor would murder under similar circumstances be properly called murder.

Nor robbery, robbery. Nor abuse. Nor false witness. Nor adultery.

And on and on.

And the bottom line, TT, is that, no matter how idealistic your beliefs, YOU still believe in absolutes.

Hell, you said so yourself, when you claimed not to have a price. [/quote]

I also admitted it’s easy for me to make such a declaration. I have no price now, but I also have no motivation, so my ‘lack of price’ means nothing.

The only absolute I’ve been able to find is that I have awareness of existence, and I’m not all too sure about the “I” part.[/quote]

Well of course you would leave yourself an out, as you know how ridiculous your claims are when you really try and boil thyem down to a practical philosophy. That’s not what I meant when I said “You said so yourself, when you claimed not to have a price.” I was referring to your acknowledgment of the existence of a “price” in the first place, which you most certainly did imply.

Sure, almost everyone has a price beyond which they would engage in acts that they would normally never engage in. A blessed few others can never be bought.

However, consider this: Let’s say I could somehow convince you to defy your better urges and, say, sell your mother to slavery, or betray your best friend to an enemy soldier, or whatever, use any example of something you believe you would never do. Rape a toddler, if you absolutely must. In the end, it doesn’t matter.

Indeed, neither the method I used to convince or coerce you, nor the act you engaged in, would matter. No matter what, you would feel guilt at having acted in defiance of some standard you hold “ought” be inviolable.

That’s an absolute, my friend.

There are three possibilities:

If you felt no guilt, then any claims as to the existence of price would be moot, as there would have been no moral struggle in committing or not committing the act in the first place. That’s fine, but it isn’t how normal humans, the vast, vast, vast majority of them, work. I do not believe you reside in that tiny little wedge of the bell curve that houses such pure sociopaths, but even if you did, it would have no bearing upon whether or not morality itself existed. Only the fact that you, personally, are indifferent to it.

If you did feel guilt, then you must admit that you hold certain acts as inviolable. You do have a price, and both the price and the moral absolute are now revealed to you upon your betrayal of the latter.

Or, if you refused to give in, then you must admit that you hold certain acts as inviolable. You do not have a price, because you acknowledge the existence of moral absolutes, and you refuse to betray them.

[pat]

[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:

I don’t think we decide what’s moral and immoral. Only that we make discoveries in morality in a somewhat similar way we make discoveries about the natural world.
[/quote]

This is correct, as with all metaphysical entities, it’s something that already, independently exists. Hence it cannot be created or changed. It can be discovered or ignored, it cannot be changed.

Like BC so correctly said, metaphysics is the key to everything. Once you understand metaphysics, Everything becomes much more clear. If you do not understand metaphysics, everything is muddled and confused. You cannot tell where one thing ends and another begins.

[TigerTime]

[quote]kamui wrote:
I already gave you
-a way to know what we don’t ought to do (ie : what is amoral, at best)
here :

the command “Rape !” can not become an universal rule.

-a way to know what we ought to not do. (ie : what is immoral)
here

[quote]
the command “Rape !” would destroy the very possibility of an universal rule.
[/quote] [/quote]

All right, you’re starting to annoy me now. I don’t know if you’re intentionally being cryptic, but what I’ve gathered so far is – a moral act is acting upon a universal rule. A universal rule is anything that is not immoral, with immoral acts being defined as what we ought not to do and what we ought not to do is anything that destroys the possibility of as universal rule… you keep telling me what morality is used for (knowing what we ought to do/not to do), but you’ve yet to tell me how.

This is circular gibberish thus far. I hope the rest of this post contains more substance.

[quote]
Now, if you want to know what we positively ought to do, you just need to translate this in positive terms.
Which leave you with the “golden rule” in its positive form : “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.” [/quote]

Translate into positive terms? Translate what? That what we ought not to do is that which destroys the possibility of a universal rule (whatever that is)? Wouldn’t the inverse of that be “we ought to do that which is a universal rule”? Am I to understand that a universal rule is based on treating others the way you want to be treated?

That’s not very objective then, is it? Because now your system is, admittedly, based on personal preference, since the way people want to be treated varies from person to person. This also means that your universal rule isn’t very universal for the same reason. I suppose you could say it’s universal in that everyone wants to be treated the way they want to be treated, but it would still be subjective and all you’ve done is remove any profoundness to it by degrading it into a tautology.

Furthermore, the golden rule is an altruistic form of morality. From what are you concluding that morality is/should be based on altruism instead of, say, ethical egoism?

no, you said “who are you to …”. My answer is “i’m only someone who understand the word”.
Perfectly adequate answer.

That may be, had that been what you said…

[quote]
You say that there is no objective standard for morality.
The only logical consequence of this position is that there is no “oughts”. Only “wants”.
Maybe YOU don’t know what you’re saying. [/quote]

Or that “oughts” come down to the individual… you know, the alternative option to “oughts” being universal. -_-

You can’t say that “morality is subjective”. Saying this is only a convoluted way to say that it doesn’t exist at all.

That’s actually exactly what I’m saying. Why are you acting like this is a point against me? In the very comment you’re responding to I said that the term “moral” is pointless. Morality doesn’t exist any more than numbers do – the difference there being that morality loses its practical purpose after one reaches the age of critical thinking skills.

Morality is objective OR it doesn’t exist.

I agree. what I don’t see is the de facto necessity for objective morality, which objective morality must have to actually be objective. An objective morality would have to be rooted in reality and not in our ideas, the later being subjective morality.

[quote] Let’s say you’re playing chess.
The other player do a forbidden move with his queen.
You remind him about the rules.
Can he say that you’re doing “an egotistical attempt at having your personal preferences imposed on others as objective rules” ?
Nope.
It’s the rule of chess. Period.
Even if the rule is “man made”, it’s not “subjective”. it’s not arbitrary.
Because it’s a rule.
If you don’t follow it, you’re either cheating or playing another game. [/quote]

Actually it is entirely subjective. There is no objective obligation to play chess by these particular rules, or any rules for that matter. It’s two people agreeing to play a game by a certain set of rules, the rules being based on the player’s subjective preference to have an evenly matched game.

I don’t think you understand the difference between objective and subjective. The pieces are objective and the board are objective because they are objects. The rules of the game are ideas, not objects. They are subjective by definition. Maybe the rules are perfectly consistent, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are subjective. So too in life is it irrelevant how consistent ones moral code is. So long as your moral code stays rooted in ideas and not objective reality, it will remain subjective by definition.

It’s the same thing with morality, at another, universal, scale.
If you don’t follow it, you’re either cheating (being immoral) or playing another game (being amoral).

Nothing about objectivity here.

[TigerTime]

[quote]Cortes wrote:

Well of course you would leave yourself an out… [/quote]

Honesty’s a bitch, ain’t it?

Sure, almost everyone has a price beyond which they would engage in acts that they would normally never engage in. A blessed few others can never be bought.

However, consider this: Let’s say I could somehow convince you to defy your better urges and, say, sell your mother to slavery, or betray your best friend to an enemy soldier, or whatever, use any example of something you believe you would never do. Rape a toddler, if you absolutely must. In the end, it doesn’t matter.

Indeed, neither the method I used to convince or coerce you, nor the act you engaged in, would matter. No matter what, you would feel guilt at having acted in defiance of some standard you hold “ought” be inviolable.

That’s an absolute, my friend.

There are three possibilities:

If you felt no guilt, then any claims as to the existence of price would be moot, as there would have been no moral struggle in committing or not committing the act in the first place. That’s fine, but it isn’t how normal humans, the vast, vast, vast majority of them, work. I do not believe you reside in that tiny little wedge of the bell curve that houses such pure sociopaths, but even if you did, it would have no bearing upon whether or not morality itself existed. Only the fact that you, personally, are indifferent to it.

If you did feel guilt, then you must admit that you hold certain acts as inviolable. You do have a price, and both the price and the moral absolute are now revealed to you upon your betrayal of the latter.

Or, if you refused to give in, then you must admit that you hold certain acts as inviolable. You do not have a price, because you acknowledge the existence of moral absolutes, and you refuse to betray them.

Feeling bad for others doesn’t require a moral code, nor would it make that moral code objective.

[TigerTime]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]TigerTime wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]TigerTime wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]TigerTime wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
If it’s my personal preference to rape somebody, that’s still an immoral act. [/quote]

Well, to you. The rapist doesn’t see a problem in it. Casting your opinion on objective things doesn’t make your opinion objective. It’s still your personal preference to live in a society where people don’t rape each other. [/quote]

Are you serious trying to argue that rape is ok as long as the rapist is cool with it? You don’t see the fail in that?[/quote]

You miss my point. The rapist has his own idea of morality. It just so happens that, to him, rape is okay (at least when he does it).

What makes your morality more legitimate? You say your morality is based on what causes ‘harm’, but who are you to say that harm is the foundation of objective morality? I don’t see what’s objective about it. [/quote]

I don’t own a morality, I am subject to it just like everybody else. And to say that one person’s opinion is as good as another when it comes to morality is patently false. Does rape cause harm to another being? Yes. Is it a willful act? Yes.
If you have a victim who was grievously harmed, then that act was evil. To try and mock up some justification to support a failing paradigm and some sort of intellectual exercise is utter horseshit.
In that world, it doesn’t matter what you do or whom you do it to, it’s all permissible. It’s a great stance if your trying to justify assholes like Stalin. Stalin sure didn’t mind killing all those people, didn’t bother him one bit. Must have been moral then.
[/quote]

I missed the part where you logically proved harm is the objective standard for morality. [/quote]

Yes you did.[/quote]

But only because you haven’t actually done it yet.

[TigerTime]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]TigerTime wrote:

Also, why does anything need to be labelled as either moral or immoral? People don’t like being raped; Is that not enough to oppose rape? [/quote]

Because with out it, all action is valid. Simply not liking something is not a basis for morality. It’s not morality at all. It’s likes and dislikes and nothing more.
Some people don’t like load music? Should, therefore load music be labeled immoral? People don’t like mosquitoes, are they immoral?

Your slippery-slope leads to a cesspool. [/quote]

Objectively speaking, all actions are valid. At least, all physically possible actions are valid. Any action limitation we impose on ourselves that’s not restricted by reality is inherently a subjective limitation.

Of course it’s not a basis for morality. My position is moral nihilism, if you’ll remember. You already know this, so why did you bother saying this? These aren’t arguments against me.

[Cortes]

[quote]TigerTime wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

Well of course you would leave yourself an out… [/quote]

Honesty’s a bitch, ain’t it?

Sure, almost everyone has a price beyond which they would engage in acts that they would normally never engage in. A blessed few others can never be bought.

However, consider this: Let’s say I could somehow convince you to defy your better urges and, say, sell your mother to slavery, or betray your best friend to an enemy soldier, or whatever, use any example of something you believe you would never do. Rape a toddler, if you absolutely must. In the end, it doesn’t matter.

Indeed, neither the method I used to convince or coerce you, nor the act you engaged in, would matter. No matter what, you would feel guilt at having acted in defiance of some standard you hold “ought” be inviolable.

That’s an absolute, my friend.

There are three possibilities:

If you felt no guilt, then any claims as to the existence of price would be moot, as there would have been no moral struggle in committing or not committing the act in the first place. That’s fine, but it isn’t how normal humans, the vast, vast, vast majority of them, work. I do not believe you reside in that tiny little wedge of the bell curve that houses such pure sociopaths, but even if you did, it would have no bearing upon whether or not morality itself existed. Only the fact that you, personally, are indifferent to it.

If you did feel guilt, then you must admit that you hold certain acts as inviolable. You do have a price, and both the price and the moral absolute are now revealed to you upon your betrayal of the latter.

Or, if you refused to give in, then you must admit that you hold certain acts as inviolable. You do not have a price, because you acknowledge the existence of moral absolutes, and you refuse to betray them.

Feeling bad for others doesn’t require a moral code, nor would it make that moral code objective.

[/quote]

Feeling guilt at your own actions, though, most certainly does imply both a moral code and the belief in absolutes.

[maverick88]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]TigerTime wrote:

Also, why does anything need to be labelled as either moral or immoral? People don’t like being raped; Is that not enough to oppose rape? [/quote]

Because with out it, all action is valid. Simply not liking something is not a basis for morality. It’s not morality at all. It’s likes and dislikes and nothing more.
Some people don’t like load music? Should, therefore load music be labeled immoral? People don’t like mosquitoes, are they immoral?

Your slippery-slope leads to a cesspool. [/quote]

Some people like being raped?

[kamui]

That’s actually exactly what I’m saying. Why are you acting like this is a point against me? In the very comment you’re responding to I said that the term “moral” is pointless. Morality doesn’t exist any more than numbers do – the difference there being that morality loses its practical purpose after one reaches the age of critical thinking skills.

Oops. I had forgotten you were a “moral nihilist”.
As a result, I almost took you seriously for a short while.
My apologies.

[TigerTime]

[quote]kamui wrote:

That’s actually exactly what I’m saying. Why are you acting like this is a point against me? In the very comment you’re responding to I said that the term “moral” is pointless. Morality doesn’t exist any more than numbers do – the difference there being that morality loses its practical purpose after one reaches the age of critical thinking skills.

Oops. I had forgotten you were a “moral nihilist”.
As a result, I almost took you seriously for a short while.
My apologies. [/quote]

I like how you ignored all my criticisms of your moral code and instead stooped to an ad-hominem.

I guess I, too, made the mistake of almost taking you seriously.

[TigerTime]

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]TigerTime wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

Well of course you would leave yourself an out… [/quote]

Honesty’s a bitch, ain’t it?

Sure, almost everyone has a price beyond which they would engage in acts that they would normally never engage in. A blessed few others can never be bought.

However, consider this: Let’s say I could somehow convince you to defy your better urges and, say, sell your mother to slavery, or betray your best friend to an enemy soldier, or whatever, use any example of something you believe you would never do. Rape a toddler, if you absolutely must. In the end, it doesn’t matter.

Indeed, neither the method I used to convince or coerce you, nor the act you engaged in, would matter. No matter what, you would feel guilt at having acted in defiance of some standard you hold “ought” be inviolable.

That’s an absolute, my friend.

There are three possibilities:

If you felt no guilt, then any claims as to the existence of price would be moot, as there would have been no moral struggle in committing or not committing the act in the first place. That’s fine, but it isn’t how normal humans, the vast, vast, vast majority of them, work. I do not believe you reside in that tiny little wedge of the bell curve that houses such pure sociopaths, but even if you did, it would have no bearing upon whether or not morality itself existed. Only the fact that you, personally, are indifferent to it.

If you did feel guilt, then you must admit that you hold certain acts as inviolable. You do have a price, and both the price and the moral absolute are now revealed to you upon your betrayal of the latter.

Or, if you refused to give in, then you must admit that you hold certain acts as inviolable. You do not have a price, because you acknowledge the existence of moral absolutes, and you refuse to betray them.

Feeling bad for others doesn’t require a moral code, nor would it make that moral code objective.

[/quote]

Feeling guilt at your own actions, though, most certainly does imply both a moral code and the belief in absolutes.
[/quote]

How so?

[kamui]

[quote]
I don’t think you understand the difference between objective and subjective. The pieces are objective and the board are objective because they are objects. The rules of the game are ideas, not objects. They are subjective by definition. Maybe the rules are perfectly consistent, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are subjective. So too in life is it irrelevant how consistent ones moral code is. So long as your moral code stays rooted in ideas and not objective reality, it will remain subjective by definition.[/quote]

You confuse the difference between objective and subjective and the difference between material and ideal.
Many things that exists only in our minds are objective, because they doesn’t depend on our subjectivity.
The unconscious structure of the mind, the laws of logic, the rules of morality, most mathematical objects, the rules of Wittgenstein’s “language games”, etc.

Subjectivity and “the mind” are not the same thing. Subjectivity is only the idiosyncratic part of the mind.

[TigerTime]

Okay I see now you’re splitting the points into separate comments (for some reason). Just let me know when you’re done.

[kamui]

[quote]TigerTime wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

That’s actually exactly what I’m saying. Why are you acting like this is a point against me? In the very comment you’re responding to I said that the term “moral” is pointless. Morality doesn’t exist any more than numbers do – the difference there being that morality loses its practical purpose after one reaches the age of critical thinking skills.

Oops. I had forgotten you were a “moral nihilist”.
As a result, I almost took you seriously for a short while.
My apologies. [/quote]

I like how you ignored all my criticisms of your moral code and instead stooped to an ad-hominem.

I guess I, too, made the mistake of almost taking you seriously.

[/quote]

I can’t take such a position seriously because i never met a “moral nihilism” that had the balls and the consistency to act amorally in real life.

Also, it’s obviously pointless to discuss about morality wiht someone that already decided that the whole topic was “pointless”.

[kamui]

[quote]TigerTime wrote:
Okay I see now you’re splitting the points into separate comments (for some reason). Just let me know when you’re done.[/quote]

It’s pointless to discuss about morality with you. It may not be totally pointless to discuss about objectivity/subjectivity.
Hence the “separate comment”. I simply extracted the “non-pointless” part of your answer.

You’re (quite strategically) moving the goal post with your definition of objectivity. Actually, once defined in those terms, nothing is objective, not even the pieces of a chess game.

[TigerTime]

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]TigerTime wrote:
Okay I see now you’re splitting the points into separate comments (for some reason). Just let me know when you’re done.[/quote]

It’s pointless to discuss about morality with you. It may not be totally pointless to discuss about objectivity/subjectivity.
Hence the “separate comment”. I simply extracted the “non-pointless” part of your answer. [/quote]

Alrighty I guess it’s my turn then.

[TigerTime]

[quote]kamui wrote:

I don’t think you understand the difference between objective and subjective. The pieces are objective and the board are objective because they are objects. The rules of the game are ideas, not objects. They are subjective by definition. Maybe the rules are perfectly consistent, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are subjective. So too in life is it irrelevant how consistent ones moral code is. So long as your moral code stays rooted in ideas and not objective reality, it will remain subjective by definition.[/quote]

You confuse the difference between objective and subjective and the difference between material and ideal.
Many things that exists only in our minds are objective, because they doesn’t depend on our subjectivity.
The unconscious structure of the mind, the laws of logic, the rules of morality, most mathematical objects, the rules of Wittgenstein’s “language games”, etc.

Subjectivity and “the mind” are not the same thing. Subjectivity is only the idiosyncratic part of the mind.

I’m not interested in arguing semantics, so to save time I’ll just ask you to define the following terms as you see them;

Objective
Subjective
Mind
And let’s throw ‘universal rule’ in there too just for fun because outside of “It’s the definition of morality”, I still have no idea what this is.

[kamui]

Objective : what does not depend on our subjectivity.
Subjectivity : the “individual” (idiosyncrasic, personnal) part of the mind.
the mind : the complex of our cognitive faculties.

Now, i will probably have to define every word i used in these definitions.
I could play such socratic games. But not with someone who already rejected the very idea of an universal rule.

See : i “threw it in there”.
Just for fun.

[TigerTime]

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]TigerTime wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

That’s actually exactly what I’m saying. Why are you acting like this is a point against me? In the very comment you’re responding to I said that the term “moral” is pointless. Morality doesn’t exist any more than numbers do – the difference there being that morality loses its practical purpose after one reaches the age of critical thinking skills.

Oops. I had forgotten you were a “moral nihilist”.
As a result, I almost took you seriously for a short while.
My apologies. [/quote]

I like how you ignored all my criticisms of your moral code and instead stooped to an ad-hominem.

I guess I, too, made the mistake of almost taking you seriously.

[/quote]

I can’t take such a position seriously because i never met a “moral nihilism” that had the balls and the consistency to act amorally in real life.

Also, it’s obviously pointless to discuss about morality wiht someone that already decided that the whole topic was “pointless”.

[/quote]

Balls to act amorally? Every action I do is amoral. When I save a goldfish from drowning, that’s amoral. When I steal cookies from the cookie jar, that too is amoral. When I go to the gym and do box-squats, that is also amoral.

Everything I do is amoral because I don’t put actions into the category of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. There are only choices and those choices shape your life. How you want your life to be will define which choices you make.

I contend that man’s natural state is that of compassion. If everyone naturally acts compassionate, then there is no need for a moral code. Morality isn’t about making life better, it’s about justice, fairness – which is a nice way of saying it’s about revenge. Justice is the act of organizing revenge; How much revenge is fair? Who should carry out said vengeance?

Well, if everyone is acting out of compassion then what need is there for any form of “justice”? Any issues will be an honest mistake, so what punishment needs to be carried out? And who would even carry out said punishment?

Of course, as evident by the world we live in, many people are not compassionate. Why? Either they have some sort of chemical imbalance, or they have been conditioned to act out of cruelty during their life experiences. In the case of someone who acts ‘bad’ due to a birth defect, blaming them is as pointless as me blaming you for not being taller. Also, it’s easy to call a thief immoral for being a thief, but why is he a thief? And will punishing him stop him from being a thief? Maybe. Maybe not. At this point in history I’d like to think we can move past the crap-shoot that is “throw them into a jail cell and hope for the best” and instead use our minds to solve the problem.

Now, if you don’t agree that man’s natural state is compassion, then I suggest you gather up as many people who agree with you as you can find and perform mass suicide, because if the only thing stopping you from senselessly harming and murdering people is your moral code, then you are a sorry lot indeed; basically just one amnesia inducing blow to the head away from being a serial killer.

If you don’t want to talk morality with me, fine. Beat it. I didn’t start this conversation with you, you started it with me, so it’s not skin off my nose if it doesn’t go anywhere. I have other playmates.

[kamui]

That’s what i thought.

You just admitted that :

-morality does indeed exist
-that it was universal
-that the source of morality was human nature.

Here :

[quote]
I contend that man’s natural state is that of compassion.[/quote]

the rest of your post is about legality and legitimity. Which is an interesting but different question.

So, you’re a moral absolutist who happen to not believe that jail is a good solution to “enforce” morality.
Fine.

Welcome to the club.