On Ethics

[SexMachine]

I’m not sure how this post relates to my statement about international relations, so I’ll address it on its own.

[quote]Severiano wrote:

It’s funny how we can use rationality and ethics to understand why societies come together and form in the first place, yet you a religious person rely on social Darwinism as if it’s deterministic.

The thing about us as humans is we have foresight, and we are rational. Greed is one of the things we can use our rationality to recognize as something unhealthy.

When we can clearly see our downfall down the road (at least I do) tied to lack of land, and resources, while the demand for both increases, and we continue to buy into dogmas that preach to be fruitful it’s no longer about social Darwinism but about us as a species ignoring our rationality which informs us we cannot continue living this way, at least if we give a shit about how our children and future generations will have to live.
[/quote]

I’m sure I’ve addressed this before. Productive people are not being fruitful - quite the contrary. There is a direct correlation between intelligence and income level on the one hand and fertility rate on the other. Unproductive people are rapidly outbreeding productive people. And the unproductive people are living off the labour of the productive. Surely no one can deny this is occurring. So what is your solution? Encouraging or forcing the third world to restrict their birthrate? For ethical reasons I find it difficult to accept forcing anyone to restrict their birthrate. However on principle I’m not necessarily against methods to encourage them to do so.

I also realise that as resources become more scarce, conflict will increase. As Hobbes said:

“When all the world is o’ercharged, the only remedy will be war, which provideth for every man in victory or death.”

[quote]

Dogma when it comes to ethics, social Darwinism when it comes to conduct… About the stupidest most myopic combination possible, and you see so many of us making that choice. [/quote]

It’s not “dogmatic” to believe in an objective, extrinsic, transcendent moral order. In fact, such an ethical paradigm is the only safeguard man has against the consequences of pure social Darwinism. My ethical system puts limits on and restrains social Darwinism.

[Severiano]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
I’m not sure how this post relates to my statement about international relations, so I’ll address it on its own.

[quote]Severiano wrote:

It’s funny how we can use rationality and ethics to understand why societies come together and form in the first place, yet you a religious person rely on social Darwinism as if it’s deterministic.

The thing about us as humans is we have foresight, and we are rational. Greed is one of the things we can use our rationality to recognize as something unhealthy.

When we can clearly see our downfall down the road (at least I do) tied to lack of land, and resources, while the demand for both increases, and we continue to buy into dogmas that preach to be fruitful it’s no longer about social Darwinism but about us as a species ignoring our rationality which informs us we cannot continue living this way, at least if we give a shit about how our children and future generations will have to live.
[/quote]

I’m sure I’ve addressed this before. Productive people are not being fruitful - quite the contrary. There is a direct correlation between intelligence and income level on the one hand and fertility rate on the other. Unproductive people are rapidly outbreeding productive people. And the unproductive people are living off the labour of the productive. Surely no one can deny this is occurring. So what is your solution? Encouraging or forcing the third world to restrict their birthrate? For ethical reasons I find it difficult to accept forcing anyone to restrict their birthrate. However on principle I’m not necessarily against methods to encourage them to do so.

I also realise that as resources become more scarce, conflict will increase. As Hobbes said:

“When all the world is o’ercharged, the only remedy will be war, which provideth for every man in victory or death.”

[quote]

Dogma when it comes to ethics, social Darwinism when it comes to conduct… About the stupidest most myopic combination possible, and you see so many of us making that choice. [/quote]

It’s not “dogmatic” to believe in an objective, extrinsic, transcendent moral order. In fact, such an ethical paradigm is the only safeguard man has against the consequences of pure social Darwinism. My ethical system puts limits on and restrains social Darwinism.[/quote]

You have the part about hard working people applies to everyone. There are leaches and contributors of various economic levels. Calling the poor not hard working because they are poor isn’t just as false as calling all the rich not hard working. Plenty of poor people outside of Aus work hard, and there are plenty of people who make it big by hard work. But, you are going to believe what you want.

I know very well we use the Bible to tell us right from wrong. Being fruitful is the thing that propelled the faith through time. It promotes ideals to go without birth control and rely on self control. Works fucking brilliantly.

Supposedly you can morally work by faith, and old unchanging rules that are supposedly right in every environment including one where there will certainly be overpopulation. But then conduct yourself in a Socially Darwinistic way. You sound like a fucking Jihadist with your view on war, really when it comes down to it, it’s no different outside of it just being talk.

[SexMachine]

[quote]Severiano wrote:

You have the part about hard working people applies to everyone. There are leaches and contributors of various economic levels. Calling the poor not hard working because they are poor isn’t just as false as calling all the rich not hard working. Plenty of poor people outside of Aus work hard, and there are plenty of people who make it big by hard work. But, you are going to believe what you want.

[/quote]

You’re misinterpreting what I said. I’m not talking about rich and poor. Hell, I’m not rich. Many of my ancestors fled starvation and poverty in Ireland during the potato famine. Others came here as convicts. I’m merely talking about productive people and non-productive people irrespective of their wealth.

I know very well we use the Bible to tell us right from wrong. Being fruitful is the thing that propelled the faith through time. It promotes ideals to go without birth control and rely on self control. Works fucking brilliantly.

You’re focusing on something that I’ve clearly addressed. Without an ethic system based on natural rights social Darwinism can quickly lead to the kind of outcomes we saw in Nazi Germany. I’m okay with social Darwinism in general so long as it is underpinned by an ethical system that respects human life and the individual. I can’t entertain notions of forcibly preventing people from reproducing because that kind of system leads to the kind of excesses we saw in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

[quote]

Supposedly you can morally work by faith, and old unchanging rules that are supposedly right in every environment including one where there will certainly be overpopulation. But then conduct yourself in a Socially Darwinistic way. You sound like a fucking Jihadist with your view on war, really when it comes down to it, it’s no different outside of it just being talk. [/quote]

You’re confusing is with ought. I’m not saying warfare and conflict are good. I’m just recognising they’re inevitable. Obviously I believe we should seek to avoid and minimise conflict but I’m not prepared to advocate things like infanticide or forced sterilisation as a means of minimising conflict. As I said, without an ethical system that places human life and the individual first the world would not be worth living in.

[Severiano]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

You have the part about hard working people applies to everyone. There are leaches and contributors of various economic levels. Calling the poor not hard working because they are poor isn’t just as false as calling all the rich not hard working. Plenty of poor people outside of Aus work hard, and there are plenty of people who make it big by hard work. But, you are going to believe what you want.

[/quote]

You’re misinterpreting what I said. I’m not talking about rich and poor. Hell, I’m not rich. Many of my ancestors fled starvation and poverty in Ireland during the potato famine. Others came here as convicts. I’m merely talking about productive people and non-productive people irrespective of their wealth.

I know very well we use the Bible to tell us right from wrong. Being fruitful is the thing that propelled the faith through time. It promotes ideals to go without birth control and rely on self control. Works fucking brilliantly.

You’re focusing on something that I’ve clearly addressed. Without an ethic system based on natural rights social Darwinism can quickly lead to the kind of outcomes we saw in Nazi Germany. I’m okay with social Darwinism in general so long as it is underpinned by an ethical system that respects human life and the individual. I can’t entertain notions of forcibly preventing people from reproducing because that kind of system leads to the kind of excesses we saw in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Supposedly you can morally work by faith, and old unchanging rules that are supposedly right in every environment including one where there will certainly be overpopulation. But then conduct yourself in a Socially Darwinistic way. You sound like a fucking Jihadist with your view on war, really when it comes down to it, it’s no different outside of it just being talk. [/quote]

You’re confusing is with ought. I’m not saying warfare and conflict are good. I’m just recognising they’re inevitable. Obviously I believe we should seek to avoid and minimise conflict but I’m not prepared to advocate things like infanticide or forced sterilisation as a means of minimising conflict. As I said, without an ethical system that places human life and the individual first the world would not be worth living in.

Recognizing conflict is inevitable is a product of your faculties/reason. That you can make sense of your holy book, and it’s various moralities that don’t account for environment are also result of your faculties/reason. Shit, reason itself allows you to make sense of the bible, sciences, and allows us to know anything at all… Why not use it? Because over some plagiarized, re-written ancient texts to tell you what is right instead?

The options we have are to keep breeding with the foreknowledge of inevitable wars based on land, and materials, which will never end anyhow until we do adopt some kind of population control. I guess one side could let out some horrible weapon to wipe out most of mankind, but then we set up the next generations to follow the same path, where the victor eventually turns on itself and finds a god given reason to fight because him and his has a right to this and that.

I don’t have any groundbreaking ideas. Maybe some sort of credit for people based on not having children, yeah, welfare or reverse welfare. But we aren’t going to get anywhere with religion telling us what is right. It guarantees you have a big showdown with Islam.

[SexMachine]

Recognizing conflict is inevitable is a product of your faculties/reason. That you can make sense of your holy book, and it’s various moralities that don’t account for environment are also result of your faculties/reason. Shit, reason itself allows you to make sense of the bible, sciences, and allows us to know anything at all… Why not use it? Because over some plagiarized, re-written ancient texts to tell you what is right instead?

Reason tells me that without a transcendent moral order all that exists is ethical “opinions.”

[Severiano]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

Recognizing conflict is inevitable is a product of your faculties/reason. That you can make sense of your holy book, and it’s various moralities that don’t account for environment are also result of your faculties/reason. Shit, reason itself allows you to make sense of the bible, sciences, and allows us to know anything at all… Why not use it? Because over some plagiarized, re-written ancient texts to tell you what is right instead?

Reason tells me that without a transcendent moral order all that exists is ethical “opinions.”[/quote]

Ethics are constructs made by man by use of reason, just as the sciences and social sciences are.

WE, as humans assign meaning and look for it.

Aristotle came up with ethics that the Aquinas plagiarized based on a very rudimentary idea of biology and physics. He got caught up in tabula rasa and hence forth the church has linked free will to that very idea.

What do you think a mind like Aristotle’s would make of what we know now of the sciences, of biology, of physics and nature? What would he say is human flourishing now that psychology and psychiatry tell us that certain aspects of our minds ARE hardwired? We probably would have fewer virtues, we would probably look for reasons that lead to unhealthy life, and shitty quality of life. A good, flourishing human being knowledgeable about the future would probably do what he could to set up his children to flourish, if that means having fewer children as a convention, why not?

If Anthropology tells us we are social animals, then wouldn’t we be able to assign reasonable constructs to make ethical sense of us as rational, social animals? We make sense of things like empathy, pity, indifference, charity, and compassion, it’s already part of how we are wired as social animals. You don’t need some old book to tell you that anymore. People of faith get to have extra pitfalls like become too cowardly to entertain the idea of permanency in death… They also have a tendency to believe they are incapable of understanding good without faith.

The other religion teaches the same exact shit. It too was influenced by various religious philosophers who read Aristotle, and as a result is fucked up due to ethics that aren’t connected to the environment and based on expansion.

Hitler, misinterpreted… Or had his own interpretations of Nietzsche, we can look at Mein Kampf and see Summa Theologica, as well as interpretations made by Averroes (Islamic Religious Philosopher like Aquinas who wrote several books on morality and reason).

As similar as your two religions are, you worship the same God, you have extremely similar moral codes and both have ideals of expansion. How do you not end up at war? All your great peaceful religions do is lead to overpopulation and war by means of the virtues taught by your unchanging books… Unchanging books whose ethics become so repulsive that they eventually change, or are, “re-interpreted” to mean things more acceptable to the masses.

[SexMachine]

[quote]Severiano wrote:
Ethics are constructs made by man by use of reason, just as the sciences and social sciences are.
[/quote]

I don’t believe that’s true. I’ve made my case in this thread for the existence of universal ethics - objective and extrinsic.

WE, as humans assign meaning and look for it.

Aristotle came up with ethics that the Aquinas plagiarized based on a very rudimentary idea of biology and physics.

Aquinas didn’t “plagiarise” Aristotle’s ethics. Aristotle founded ethics as a philosophical discipline continuing on form Plato and Socrates. Everyone after Aristotle worked from the base Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had created.

He got caught up in tabula rasa and hence forth the church has linked free will to that very idea.

What do you think a mind like Aristotle’s would make of what we know now of the sciences, of biology, of physics and nature? What would he say is human flourishing now that psychology and psychiatry tell us that certain aspects of our minds ARE hardwired? We probably would have fewer virtues, we would probably look for reasons that lead to unhealthy life, and shitty quality of life. A good, flourishing human being knowledgeable about the future would probably do what he could to set up his children to flourish, if that means having fewer children as a convention, why not?

Why commit a definite and quantifiable evil now in an attempt to prevent an abstract, unquantifiable evil in the future. You would need to make the case for why we should do it.

If Anthropology tells us we are social animals, then wouldn’t we be able to assign reasonable constructs to make ethical sense of us as rational, social animals? We make sense of things like empathy, pity, indifference, charity, and compassion, it’s already part of how we are wired as social animals. You don’t need some old book to tell you that anymore. People of faith get to have extra pitfalls like become too cowardly to entertain the idea of permanency in death… They also have a tendency to believe they are incapable of understanding good without faith.

I don’t believe one needs an “old book” to understand ethics. Quite the contrary. I’ve made the case in this thread that ethics is intuitively understood. It’s perceived by mans’ “spiritual eye.”

The other religion teaches the same exact shit. It too was influenced by various religious philosophers who read Aristotle, and as a result is fucked up due to ethics that aren’t connected to the environment and based on expansion.

Hitler, misinterpreted… Or had his own interpretations of Nietzsche, we can look at Mein Kampf and see Summa Theologica, as well as interpretations made by Averroes (Islamic Religious Philosopher like Aquinas who wrote several books on morality and reason).

As similar as your two religions are, you worship the same God, you have extremely similar moral codes and both have ideals of expansion. How do you not end up at war?

Man is in a constant state of war and always will be. Man is competing for scarce resources. Nation states are competing for land and will always be at each other’s throats.

All your great peaceful religions do is lead to overpopulation and war by means of the virtues taught by your unchanging books…

Man will always be at war regardless of religion. Religion is just one of the ways men bind themselves into groups - others include race, class, political ideology etc.

[Bismark]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
What ethical paradigm should guide statecraft? [/quote]

Rational self interest. Ethics really has no place in international relations. Nation states are in a constant state of war with each other - the state of nature.[/quote]

I concur in the realm of international relations, but does your calculus change when the focus is turned to domestic governance?

[SexMachine]

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
What ethical paradigm should guide statecraft? [/quote]

Rational self interest. Ethics really has no place in international relations. Nation states are in a constant state of war with each other - the state of nature.[/quote]

I concur in the realm of international relations, but does your calculus change when the focus is turned to domestic governance? [/quote]

Absolutely it does. Except of course during civil war. Rational self interest is the ethical paradigm suited to warfare. The civil society must be grounded in an ethical system that safeguards the nature rights of the individual. This is the whole point of the social contract.

[Severiano]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:
Ethics are constructs made by man by use of reason, just as the sciences and social sciences are.
[/quote]

I don’t believe that’s true. I’ve made my case in this thread for the existence of universal ethics - objective and extrinsic.

WE, as humans assign meaning and look for it.

Aristotle came up with ethics that the Aquinas plagiarized based on a very rudimentary idea of biology and physics.

Aquinas didn’t “plagiarise” Aristotle’s ethics. Aristotle founded ethics as a philosophical discipline continuing on form Plato and Socrates. Everyone after Aristotle worked from the base Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had created.

He got caught up in tabula rasa and hence forth the church has linked free will to that very idea.

What do you think a mind like Aristotle’s would make of what we know now of the sciences, of biology, of physics and nature? What would he say is human flourishing now that psychology and psychiatry tell us that certain aspects of our minds ARE hardwired? We probably would have fewer virtues, we would probably look for reasons that lead to unhealthy life, and shitty quality of life. A good, flourishing human being knowledgeable about the future would probably do what he could to set up his children to flourish, if that means having fewer children as a convention, why not?

Why commit a definite and quantifiable evil now in an attempt to prevent an abstract, unquantifiable evil in the future. You would need to make the case for why we should do it.

If Anthropology tells us we are social animals, then wouldn’t we be able to assign reasonable constructs to make ethical sense of us as rational, social animals? We make sense of things like empathy, pity, indifference, charity, and compassion, it’s already part of how we are wired as social animals. You don’t need some old book to tell you that anymore. People of faith get to have extra pitfalls like become too cowardly to entertain the idea of permanency in death… They also have a tendency to believe they are incapable of understanding good without faith.

I don’t believe one needs an “old book” to understand ethics. Quite the contrary. I’ve made the case in this thread that ethics is intuitively understood. It’s perceived by mans’ “spiritual eye.”

The other religion teaches the same exact shit. It too was influenced by various religious philosophers who read Aristotle, and as a result is fucked up due to ethics that aren’t connected to the environment and based on expansion.

Hitler, misinterpreted… Or had his own interpretations of Nietzsche, we can look at Mein Kampf and see Summa Theologica, as well as interpretations made by Averroes (Islamic Religious Philosopher like Aquinas who wrote several books on morality and reason).

As similar as your two religions are, you worship the same God, you have extremely similar moral codes and both have ideals of expansion. How do you not end up at war?

Man is in a constant state of war and always will be. Man is competing for scarce resources. Nation states are competing for land and will always be at each other’s throats.

All your great peaceful religions do is lead to overpopulation and war by means of the virtues taught by your unchanging books…

Man will always be at war regardless of religion. Religion is just one of the ways men bind themselves into groups - others include race, class, political ideology etc.
[/quote]

Plato and Aristotle are starkly different. Plato’s ideas were rooted in idealism which leaves room for things like mysticism. Aristotle’s ideas were rooted in logic and methodologies/frameworks such as Aristotelian/basic logic, the same line of thinking is responsible for the scientific method itself. If Plato is Night then Aristotle is Day, they are that different.

What you call a spiritual eye, or whatever is simply a result of your evolution as a social animal. We evolved to have all these faculties, nature and science tell us so, and such was Aristotles framework.

[SexMachine]

[quote]Severiano wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:
Ethics are constructs made by man by use of reason, just as the sciences and social sciences are.
[/quote]

I don’t believe that’s true. I’ve made my case in this thread for the existence of universal ethics - objective and extrinsic.

WE, as humans assign meaning and look for it.

Aristotle came up with ethics that the Aquinas plagiarized based on a very rudimentary idea of biology and physics.

Aquinas didn’t “plagiarise” Aristotle’s ethics. Aristotle founded ethics as a philosophical discipline continuing on form Plato and Socrates. Everyone after Aristotle worked from the base Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had created.

He got caught up in tabula rasa and hence forth the church has linked free will to that very idea.

What do you think a mind like Aristotle’s would make of what we know now of the sciences, of biology, of physics and nature? What would he say is human flourishing now that psychology and psychiatry tell us that certain aspects of our minds ARE hardwired? We probably would have fewer virtues, we would probably look for reasons that lead to unhealthy life, and shitty quality of life. A good, flourishing human being knowledgeable about the future would probably do what he could to set up his children to flourish, if that means having fewer children as a convention, why not?

Why commit a definite and quantifiable evil now in an attempt to prevent an abstract, unquantifiable evil in the future. You would need to make the case for why we should do it.

If Anthropology tells us we are social animals, then wouldn’t we be able to assign reasonable constructs to make ethical sense of us as rational, social animals? We make sense of things like empathy, pity, indifference, charity, and compassion, it’s already part of how we are wired as social animals. You don’t need some old book to tell you that anymore. People of faith get to have extra pitfalls like become too cowardly to entertain the idea of permanency in death… They also have a tendency to believe they are incapable of understanding good without faith.

I don’t believe one needs an “old book” to understand ethics. Quite the contrary. I’ve made the case in this thread that ethics is intuitively understood. It’s perceived by mans’ “spiritual eye.”

The other religion teaches the same exact shit. It too was influenced by various religious philosophers who read Aristotle, and as a result is fucked up due to ethics that aren’t connected to the environment and based on expansion.

Hitler, misinterpreted… Or had his own interpretations of Nietzsche, we can look at Mein Kampf and see Summa Theologica, as well as interpretations made by Averroes (Islamic Religious Philosopher like Aquinas who wrote several books on morality and reason).

As similar as your two religions are, you worship the same God, you have extremely similar moral codes and both have ideals of expansion. How do you not end up at war?

Man is in a constant state of war and always will be. Man is competing for scarce resources. Nation states are competing for land and will always be at each other’s throats.

All your great peaceful religions do is lead to overpopulation and war by means of the virtues taught by your unchanging books…

Man will always be at war regardless of religion. Religion is just one of the ways men bind themselves into groups - others include race, class, political ideology etc.
[/quote]

Plato and Aristotle are starkly different. Plato’s ideas were rooted in idealism which leaves room for things like mysticism. Aristotle’s ideas were rooted in logic and methodologies/frameworks such as Aristotelian/basic logic, the same line of thinking is responsible for the scientific method itself. If Plato is Night then Aristotle is Day, they are that different.

[/quote]

I simply meant that the philosophical discipline of ethics began with Socrates. The pre-Socratics did not really address ethics. It began with Socrates’ dialectic questioning on the “good life” and virtue. And as Socrates was Plato’s teacher and Plato was Aristotle’s they were essentially building upon the discipline of ethics that Socrates started.

[Severiano]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:
Ethics are constructs made by man by use of reason, just as the sciences and social sciences are.
[/quote]

I don’t believe that’s true. I’ve made my case in this thread for the existence of universal ethics - objective and extrinsic.

WE, as humans assign meaning and look for it.

Aristotle came up with ethics that the Aquinas plagiarized based on a very rudimentary idea of biology and physics.

Aquinas didn’t “plagiarise” Aristotle’s ethics. Aristotle founded ethics as a philosophical discipline continuing on form Plato and Socrates. Everyone after Aristotle worked from the base Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had created.

He got caught up in tabula rasa and hence forth the church has linked free will to that very idea.

What do you think a mind like Aristotle’s would make of what we know now of the sciences, of biology, of physics and nature? What would he say is human flourishing now that psychology and psychiatry tell us that certain aspects of our minds ARE hardwired? We probably would have fewer virtues, we would probably look for reasons that lead to unhealthy life, and shitty quality of life. A good, flourishing human being knowledgeable about the future would probably do what he could to set up his children to flourish, if that means having fewer children as a convention, why not?

Why commit a definite and quantifiable evil now in an attempt to prevent an abstract, unquantifiable evil in the future. You would need to make the case for why we should do it.

If Anthropology tells us we are social animals, then wouldn’t we be able to assign reasonable constructs to make ethical sense of us as rational, social animals? We make sense of things like empathy, pity, indifference, charity, and compassion, it’s already part of how we are wired as social animals. You don’t need some old book to tell you that anymore. People of faith get to have extra pitfalls like become too cowardly to entertain the idea of permanency in death… They also have a tendency to believe they are incapable of understanding good without faith.

I don’t believe one needs an “old book” to understand ethics. Quite the contrary. I’ve made the case in this thread that ethics is intuitively understood. It’s perceived by mans’ “spiritual eye.”

The other religion teaches the same exact shit. It too was influenced by various religious philosophers who read Aristotle, and as a result is fucked up due to ethics that aren’t connected to the environment and based on expansion.

Hitler, misinterpreted… Or had his own interpretations of Nietzsche, we can look at Mein Kampf and see Summa Theologica, as well as interpretations made by Averroes (Islamic Religious Philosopher like Aquinas who wrote several books on morality and reason).

As similar as your two religions are, you worship the same God, you have extremely similar moral codes and both have ideals of expansion. How do you not end up at war?

Man is in a constant state of war and always will be. Man is competing for scarce resources. Nation states are competing for land and will always be at each other’s throats.

All your great peaceful religions do is lead to overpopulation and war by means of the virtues taught by your unchanging books…

Man will always be at war regardless of religion. Religion is just one of the ways men bind themselves into groups - others include race, class, political ideology etc.
[/quote]

Plato and Aristotle are starkly different. Plato’s ideas were rooted in idealism which leaves room for things like mysticism. Aristotle’s ideas were rooted in logic and methodologies/frameworks such as Aristotelian/basic logic, the same line of thinking is responsible for the scientific method itself. If Plato is Night then Aristotle is Day, they are that different.

[/quote]

I simply meant that the philosophical discipline of ethics began with Socrates. The pre-Socratics did not really address ethics. It began with Socrates’ dialectic questioning on the “good life” and virtue. And as Socrates was Plato’s teacher and Plato was Aristotle’s they were essentially building upon the discipline of ethics that Socrates started.[/quote]

I don’t know how else to explain to people that the daddy of their Christian morals’ daddy was Aristotle. He would scoff at your ideas if he were around today. If Aquinas were around today, I doubt he would be Christian. Aquinas would have come to the conclusion that reason alone is sufficient to ground morality in given our ideas about right and wrong come from imagining us in nature.

When you think it out, we have all these disciplines rooted in science and reason that have developed since their deaths, which they would have recognized and used.

If you don’t need faith to explain things away, why use it?

It’s because you either don’t have the development/knowledge needed, or you are dogmatic. Afraid to entertain ideas in a serious way that are scary to you… People are too invested in religion.

[SexMachine]

If you don’t need faith to explain things away, why use it?

It’s because you either don’t have the development/knowledge needed, or you are dogmatic. Afraid to entertain ideas in a serious way that are scary to you… People are too invested in religion.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/nietzsche-madman.asp

I entertained such ideas for the first 30 years of my life.

[Severiano]

Existence precedes essence.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/Existentialism.htm

You have become too afraid to seriously entertain new ideas because of your faith. Because of your faith your mind cannot be changed about certain facts.

[Bismark]

[quote]Severiano wrote:
Existence precedes essence.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/Existentialism.htm

You have become too afraid to seriously entertain new ideas because of your faith. Because of your faith your mind cannot be changed about certain facts. [/quote]

What does any of this have to do with ethics and international politics?

[SexMachine]

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:
Existence precedes essence.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/Existentialism.htm

You have become too afraid to seriously entertain new ideas because of your faith. Because of your faith your mind cannot be changed about certain facts. [/quote]

What does any of this have to do with ethics and international politics? [/quote]

He is attempting to draw me away from a transcendent ethical system and into the void of nihilism and epistemological solipsism.

[Severiano]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:
Existence precedes essence.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/Existentialism.htm

You have become too afraid to seriously entertain new ideas because of your faith. Because of your faith your mind cannot be changed about certain facts. [/quote]

What does any of this have to do with ethics and international politics? [/quote]

He is attempting to draw me away from a transcendent ethical system and into the void of nihilism and epistemological solipsism.[/quote]

It’s about the way you create a dichotomy that doesn’t exist. You believe that there are ultimately only two ethics which are transcendental ethics and void nihilism. Problem with that is that if you follow history of transcendental ethics you realize they come from void nihilism, in that your ethics came from Aristotles.

Aristotles ethics are based on his understanding of biology. Nothing SexMachine says seems to be able to come to grips with this… That’s all I’m trying to point out Bismark.

If what SexMachine says is true then Void Nihilism is the father of Christian Ethics. Kinda like Darth Vader being Skywalkers daddy. He’s just the Skywalker who hasn’t figured out, or is in denial that his daddy is Darth Vader. He still needs to seek Yoda and is but a padiwan learner.

[SexMachine]

[quote]Severiano wrote:

It’s about the way you create a dichotomy that doesn’t exist. You believe that there are ultimately only two ethics which are transcendental ethics and void nihilism. Problem with that is that if you follow history of transcendental ethics you realize they come from void nihilism, in that your ethics came from Aristotles.

[/quote]

Not really. Natural rights are a product of an enlightenment attempt to reconcile secular human rights with Abrahamic divine law.

[quote]

Aristotles ethics are based on his understanding of biology. Nothing SexMachine says seems to be able to come to grips with this… That’s all I’m trying to point out Bismark.

If what SexMachine says is true then Void Nihilism is the father of Christian Ethics. Kinda like Darth Vader being Skywalkers daddy. He’s just the Skywalker who hasn’t figured out, or is in denial that his daddy is Darth Vader. He still needs to seek Yoda and is but a padiwan learner. [/quote]

Sartre was a fool steeped in relativism. That’s why he chastised his own countrymen for torture in Algeria but said nothing about FLN cutting people’s heads off and placing their dicks in their mouths. All cultures are not equal. I’m not a blank slate. My ancestors were in Europe for forty thousand years.

[Severiano]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

It’s about the way you create a dichotomy that doesn’t exist. You believe that there are ultimately only two ethics which are transcendental ethics and void nihilism. Problem with that is that if you follow history of transcendental ethics you realize they come from void nihilism, in that your ethics came from Aristotles.

[/quote]

Not really. Natural rights are a product of an enlightenment attempt to reconcile secular human rights with Abrahamic divine law.

Aristotles ethics are based on his understanding of biology. Nothing SexMachine says seems to be able to come to grips with this… That’s all I’m trying to point out Bismark.

If what SexMachine says is true then Void Nihilism is the father of Christian Ethics. Kinda like Darth Vader being Skywalkers daddy. He’s just the Skywalker who hasn’t figured out, or is in denial that his daddy is Darth Vader. He still needs to seek Yoda and is but a padiwan learner. [/quote]

Sartre was a fool steeped in relativism. That’s why he chastised his own countrymen for torture in Algeria but said nothing about FLN cutting people’s heads off and placing their dicks in their mouths. All cultures are not equal. I’m not a blank slate. My ancestors were in Europe for forty thousand years.

Yeah, because you want to define anything that doesn’t agree with your worldview; void nihilism.

It’s no different than extremists on their end who view other faiths and belief systems as; void nihilism.

The next step is for people like yourself to impose your way of life, or be indifferent to others ways and you will be just like those people that you hate.

[SexMachine]

[quote]Severiano wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

It’s about the way you create a dichotomy that doesn’t exist. You believe that there are ultimately only two ethics which are transcendental ethics and void nihilism. Problem with that is that if you follow history of transcendental ethics you realize they come from void nihilism, in that your ethics came from Aristotles.

[/quote]

Not really. Natural rights are a product of an enlightenment attempt to reconcile secular human rights with Abrahamic divine law.

Aristotles ethics are based on his understanding of biology. Nothing SexMachine says seems to be able to come to grips with this… That’s all I’m trying to point out Bismark.

If what SexMachine says is true then Void Nihilism is the father of Christian Ethics. Kinda like Darth Vader being Skywalkers daddy. He’s just the Skywalker who hasn’t figured out, or is in denial that his daddy is Darth Vader. He still needs to seek Yoda and is but a padiwan learner. [/quote]

Sartre was a fool steeped in relativism. That’s why he chastised his own countrymen for torture in Algeria but said nothing about FLN cutting people’s heads off and placing their dicks in their mouths. All cultures are not equal. I’m not a blank slate. My ancestors were in Europe for forty thousand years.

Yeah, because you want to define anything that doesn’t agree with your worldview; void nihilism.

It’s no different than extremists on their end who view other faiths and belief systems as; void nihilism.

The next step is for people like yourself to impose your way of life, or be indifferent to others ways and you will be just like those people that you hate. [/quote]

Which people do you think I hate?