On Ethics

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
101

There have been a lot of talk lately about Aristotelian virtues as basis of ethics, laced with antropology and science according to preference. I sure would like to see some of this ethic code in action. What would the 10 commandments be like, for example? Transcendentalism wont do, the readily observable childhood as origin of morals wont do. But so far every description of ethics of this modern kind of Aristotelianism on this thread has been incoherent and ad hoc. Not very convincing, really.

E: Why Aristotles, why not Confucius? Too many obligations?

102

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
There have been a lot of talk lately about Aristotelian virtues as basis of ethics, laced with antropology and science according to preference. I sure would like to see some of this ethic code in action. What would the 10 commandments be like, for example? Transcendentalism wont do, the readily observable childhood as origin of morals wont do. But so far every description of ethics of this modern kind of Aristotelianism on this thread has been incoherent and ad hoc. Not very convincing, really.

E: Why Aristotles, why not Confucius? Too many obligations?[/quote]

Why Aristotles? Good question, I choose Aristotles works because it was his intention to develop such a framework of Ethics. That is Ethics based on reason and science. It was indubitably his endeavor to develop such, to the point he for the most part invented Biology and a coherent form of logic that is relevant to this day.

If we take his ideas about reason and science and correct the things he got wrong there is all of a sudden a potentially working Ethics already in place.

The things we know for a fact he got wrong that undermine the foundation of his ethics are ideas of Tabula Rasa. He got some physics famously wrong as well… But given what we know about how we are hardwired, we know now that nature and nurture aren’t always dichotomous, in that nature influences nurture through inclinations of genetics.

Example’s are people who are born in such a way that they will have chemical imbalances, or will likely wind up with psychological disease based purely on genetics. If someone is just born a certain way, with certain conditions and inclinations we cannot rationally judge such people as if their actions are fully of their own volition. Someone who suffers from say Alzheimer’s calls his daughter a cunt, and we know he wouldn’t do so with clarity, are we going to be as critical compared to a fully coherent man calling his daughter cunt? It’s a strong word to drive the point home… That there are aspects of nature that impact us, that probably shouldn’t be judged morally. This conduct that is typically assigned to nurture and Virtue is sometimes assigned to nature and genetics. We already do this naturally. But back in the day we might have called people possessed, had exorcisms, burned them?

Instead of calling things virtue, it would seem more rational to establish what is normal according to what environments. We have to know what is normal or average to know what is flourishing or abnormal. We also need to figure out to what degree, and what things have impact on nurture from nature.

With this knowledge we can figure out what it means to be an awesome human in all aspects. Physically, mentally, and socially.

I also bring up Aristotle to show how different his endeavors actually were in comparison to the various Philosophers I brought up. Aquinas famously wanted to prove Gods existence with his 5 ways arguments and chose rationality over faith in so far as believing that if something can be explained with rationality we should use that explanation over faith. I also bring up Aristotle because he’s the most influential Philosopher of the worlds ethics. If you are Christian or Muslim your ethics are rooted in his ideals of virtue. Defined by guys who also wanted to root ethics in reason, who also really liked Aristotle. The problem is they didn’t endeavor to create a framework of pure reason, they endeavored to prove Gods existence and defined what it meant at the time to be virtuous. Their ethics are not a framework that can be critiqued by reason itself, their frameworks have become these things that are only critiqueable by God, at least until they become so horrid we make a transition from literal to figurative. Plenty of examples of such in the various Bibles and Qurans.

Need I go on?

103

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[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.

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?[/quote]

You hate the same people I do. I hate certain religious extremists who want to impose their way of life on the world, and would do so by means of violence. I HATE those fuckers.

What bothers me so much is the similarities I see in you ideologically. The way you see it, it’s your way/the right way, or some other inferior way. Your way is accountable to nobody but God. That’s the exact same shit they are doing, they are on the same path as you, just farther down it.

104

[quote]Severiano wrote:

You hate the same people I do. I hate certain religious extremists who want to impose their way of life on the world, and would do so by means of violence. I HATE those fuckers.
[/quote]

On the contrary I don’t hate them in the slightest. They lack moral agency. It’s their nature to do what they do. I don’t hate sharks or rattlesnakes or scorpions. I accept them for what they are.

Not really. It’s nothing to do with religion. It’s to do with reason. Reason forces me to make value judgements. To say that all cultures have equal value is to abandon reason and to wallow in relativism and solipsism.

[quote]

Your way is accountable to nobody but God. That’s the exact same shit they are doing, they are on the same path as you, just farther down it. [/quote]

Islam is based on the idea of proselytism. I don’t seek to force or even convince anyone else that my spiritual beliefs must be adopted. I doesn’t matter to me if someone else is a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Muslim. As far as I’m concerned I’m happy for them to remain so. I don’t seek to force my beliefs on others.

105

[quote]Severiano wrote:

Instead of calling things virtue, it would seem more rational to establish what is normal according to what environments. We have to know what is normal or average to know what is flourishing or abnormal. We also need to figure out to what degree, and what things have impact on nurture from nature.

With this knowledge we can figure out what it means to be an awesome human in all aspects. Physically, mentally, and socially.
[/quote]

Well being a snitch in Soviet Russia or modern day Northern Korea was/is perfectly sound and normal in the given environments. If you don’t accept that you end up making value based estimations to derive value based results. Normal is not the same as flourishing.

[quote]I also bring up Aristotle to show how different his endeavors actually were in comparison to the various Philosophers I brought up. Aquinas famously wanted to prove Gods existence with his 5 ways arguments and chose rationality over faith in so far as believing that if something can be explained with rationality we should use that explanation over faith. I also bring up Aristotle because he’s the most influential Philosopher of the worlds ethics. If you are Christian or Muslim your ethics are rooted in his ideals of virtue. Defined by guys who also wanted to root ethics in reason, who also really liked Aristotle. The problem is they didn’t endeavor to create a framework of pure reason, they endeavored to prove Gods existence and defined what it meant at the time to be virtuous. Their ethics are not a framework that can be critiqued by reason itself, their frameworks have become these things that are only critiqueable by God, at least until they become so horrid we make a transition from literal to figurative. Plenty of examples of such in the various Bibles and Qurans.

Need I go on? [/quote]

It was not a rhetorical question when I asked why not Confucius.
Pure reason, you wont find a single scientist of today who is worth his/her salt that would be willing to use the concept in the first place. There is no such thing as pure reason. That’s transcendental thinking.

106

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

Instead of calling things virtue, it would seem more rational to establish what is normal according to what environments. We have to know what is normal or average to know what is flourishing or abnormal. We also need to figure out to what degree, and what things have impact on nurture from nature.

With this knowledge we can figure out what it means to be an awesome human in all aspects. Physically, mentally, and socially.
[/quote]

Well being a snitch in Soviet Russia or modern day Northern Korea was/is perfectly sound and normal in the given environments. If you don’t accept that you end up making value based estimations to derive value based results. Normal is not the same as flourishing.

[quote]I also bring up Aristotle to show how different his endeavors actually were in comparison to the various Philosophers I brought up. Aquinas famously wanted to prove Gods existence with his 5 ways arguments and chose rationality over faith in so far as believing that if something can be explained with rationality we should use that explanation over faith. I also bring up Aristotle because he’s the most influential Philosopher of the worlds ethics. If you are Christian or Muslim your ethics are rooted in his ideals of virtue. Defined by guys who also wanted to root ethics in reason, who also really liked Aristotle. The problem is they didn’t endeavor to create a framework of pure reason, they endeavored to prove Gods existence and defined what it meant at the time to be virtuous. Their ethics are not a framework that can be critiqued by reason itself, their frameworks have become these things that are only critiqueable by God, at least until they become so horrid we make a transition from literal to figurative. Plenty of examples of such in the various Bibles and Qurans.

Need I go on? [/quote]

It was not a rhetorical question when I asked why not Confucius.
Pure reason, you wont find a single scientist of today who is worth his/her salt that would be willing to use the concept in the first place. There is no such thing as pure reason. That’s transcendental thinking.[/quote]

When I say pure reason, I’m talking about every man made discipline that has been created based on reason as I have explained earlier. There are obvious links to reason in every major science and methodology. You are correct in the sense that there is no such thing as pure reason outside of some Platonic or metaphysical realm. I’m referring to reason based, man made disciplines that we refer to as various sciences.

This framework would be subject to science itself, so when we learn new shit we can amend the framework.

Also, your example of N. Korea and Russia show that you have missed my point. I’m not saying flourishing is the same as normal. I’m saying we need to know what normal is inside of various environments to know what flourishing is.

107

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

You hate the same people I do. I hate certain religious extremists who want to impose their way of life on the world, and would do so by means of violence. I HATE those fuckers.
[/quote]

On the contrary I don’t hate them in the slightest. They lack moral agency. It’s their nature to do what they do. I don’t hate sharks or rattlesnakes or scorpions. I accept them for what they are.

Not really. It’s nothing to do with religion. It’s to do with reason. Reason forces me to make value judgements. To say that all cultures have equal value is to abandon reason and to wallow in relativism and solipsism.

YOU as an individual are no different than individuals of Islam that are fine with others being the way they are. You can say this and that, but at the end of the day there are still going to be other Christians who do the very things you say Islam is all about in proselytizing, the entirety of Evangelism is about Proselytizing and putting fear in people via their leave behind rapture shit, which ideologically is worse than how Islam describes hell.

There are plenty of Muslims who could give a shit if you are Christian, Buddhist, Sikh etc, and they are happy for you to remain such. So really there is no difference between you and them. You don’t seem to understand how indifference in some cases is on par with hatred.

108

[quote]Severiano wrote:
YOU as an individual are no different than individuals of Islam that are fine with others being the way they are. You can say this and that, but at the end of the day there are still going to be other Christians who do the very things you say Islam is all about in proselytizing, the entirety of Evangelism is about Proselytizing and putting fear in people via their leave behind rapture shit, which ideologically is worse than how Islam describes hell.
[/quote]

This is laughable. You’re making wild assumptions about what I believe and painting an utterly distorted picture of modern Christianity as well. Let me break it down for: it is you who are just like Christians. Since Vat II Catholics have become egalitarians; most Protestants are today too. You just don’t realise it. The modern Christian has no identity beyond association with a particular belief system. The only “other” is the potential convert - someone, anyone to welcome into the fold. Even “conservative” Christians embrace the individualist branch of enlightenment classical liberalism. The “individual” is merely an abstraction - a stand in for the collective. He can have no identity - race, sex etc - because that would violate his universality.

The Muslim has an identity. He has a culture. He believes his identity and culture are supreme and that everyone else must submit to his will; his culture; his identity.

You’re right about one thing. Ideologically I am close to the Muslim in some respects. At least closer than I am to the modern Christian. But my identity and culture is only asserted on a national level - it’s not universal. I don’t seek to make the black man white or the Muslim submit to me. At least not on an interstate level. I only want my piece of land; my society. I’m not into killing and dying to take someone else’s. It’s enough for me to hold my own ground.

That there are. But that’s not what their religion is really about. They’re not “real” Muslims as Obama would say.

Sorry, but fail. You are making assumptions and you’re also drawing me into discussing things I really don’t feel comfortable talking about.

109

[quote]Severiano wrote:

When I say pure reason, I’m talking about every man made discipline that has been created based on reason as I have explained earlier. There are obvious links to reason in every major science and methodology. You are correct in the sense that there is no such thing as pure reason outside of some Platonic or metaphysical realm. I’m referring to reason based, man made disciplines that we refer to as various sciences.

This framework would be subject to science itself, so when we learn new shit we can amend the framework.

Also, your example of N. Korea and Russia show that you have missed my point. I’m not saying flourishing is the same as normal. I’m saying we need to know what normal is inside of various environments to know what flourishing is.
[/quote]

You fail to see that you can’t provide a single example of this new objective moral code. You are just reiterating how you vaguely think it should look like. And you fail to prove how Aristotles ethics is more objective than for example Confucius, or any moral code actually.

Is being a snitch in a repressive society acceptable? Is it unethical? It definitely is normal and the thing that makes the repressive society to flourish. What is Aristotles take on this? How do you develop it with scientific or anthropological facts?

Not that I’m directly opposing your moral code, only the fact that you try to present it as being objective.

110

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

When I say pure reason, I’m talking about every man made discipline that has been created based on reason as I have explained earlier. There are obvious links to reason in every major science and methodology. You are correct in the sense that there is no such thing as pure reason outside of some Platonic or metaphysical realm. I’m referring to reason based, man made disciplines that we refer to as various sciences.

This framework would be subject to science itself, so when we learn new shit we can amend the framework.

Also, your example of N. Korea and Russia show that you have missed my point. I’m not saying flourishing is the same as normal. I’m saying we need to know what normal is inside of various environments to know what flourishing is.
[/quote]

You fail to see that you can’t provide a single example of this new objective moral code. You are just reiterating how you vaguely think it should look like. And you fail to prove how Aristotles ethics is more objective than for example Confucius, or any moral code actually.

Is being a snitch in a repressive society acceptable? Is it unethical? It definitely is normal and the thing that makes the repressive society to flourish. What is Aristotles take on this? How do you develop it with scientific or anthropological facts?

Not that I’m directly opposing your moral code, only the fact that you try to present it as being objective. [/quote]

The groundwork would look at a situation of a repressive society from the perspective of asking whether the repression is natural or man made, or a combination of the two?

Remember? You aren’t even supposed to be able to know what an oppressive society is, since you cannot define a normal one. Coming around?

In a situation like N. Korea we could be critical of the society and the regime. Just as we are critical of Nazi sympathizers today we should be critical of those who support such regimes for their personal gain. Because it’s their personal gain which ends up being an enabler to oppressive societies. They aren’t thriving in the sense a thriving human being should.

Why? What tells us this outside of the Bible and various holy books? We have these faculties that allow us to feel empathy, sympathy, indifference and anger towards others. Likely a result of us being wired to be social animals. It’s wildly common for people to feel these emotions when we see a starving child on television or first hand. When we put into our imaginations the things holocaust survivors went through, imagining ourselves in the same situation, our self awareness and wiring tells us what is wrong. Understanding the whole allows us to be critical of snitches in oppressive societies, and call people who find various ways to fight back heroes.

The ends I see in Islam and Christianity are feelings of indifference towards one another. Indifference and fear, they are the things outside of hate that block feelings sympathy and empathy with others. When the Nazi’s were out gathering the Jews there were many Christians and others who were indifferent towards the Jews. What do we blame it on today? I think a lot can be blamed on the national politics which blamed Jews for for the then current environment in Germany at the time, which was economically in a worse depression than the United States. Prior to Hitler and his politics Germany was still reeling from WW1. Through politics Hitler was able to convince enough Germans that it was the fault of the Jews, some drank the Kool-Aid and hated the Jews while many others became fearful or indifferent about their plight.

Today we aren’t much different… We tend to empathize with people along various lines of culture, nationality and religion. You see what Russia is doing today with the Ukraine and their ideas of land expansion. China and Japan are bickering over Islands. Jews and Palestinians encompass it all… We have SexMachine whose ideals are to be indifferent towards everyone and wants to have a strongly defined idea of statehood complete with rigidly controlled superior culture.

These views are pretty fucked, and not adaptive to the current world environment.

So, if you wanted a judgement based on the ethics I supposedly cant apply, there you go. I just used them.

111

[quote]Severiano wrote:
Remember? You aren’t even supposed to be able to know what an oppressive society is, since you cannot define a normal one. Coming around?
[/quote]

You have been repeating this a couple of times already. What do you mean by it? I can very well define what is normal, I can derive an arithmetic mean (IQ 100) but when I interpret what it means things get subjective. I can question the ways by which it is calculated, too.

112

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:
Remember? You aren’t even supposed to be able to know what an oppressive society is, since you cannot define a normal one. Coming around?
[/quote]

You have been repeating this a couple of times already. What do you mean by it? I can very well define what is normal, I can derive an arithmetic mean (IQ 100) but when I interpret what it means things get subjective. I can question the ways by which it is calculated, too.[/quote]

Right on, and of course there is going to be subjectivity in defining what is normal or average, but really it’s something we already do. A lot of the things I call for are things we already do, we just need to be more honest with ourselves about our own emotions and the way we view the world. We are all connected, have the same origins. Through time we have been able to assign meaning and reason to what at one time was the chaos and ignorance/ lack of knowledge.

As we learn more we can let go of things not not necessary to explain… At this point I think it’s reasonable to just abandon various religious Cosmological beliefs given what we have learned about the universe. We don’t need explanations as to what days God created what. So why use them to explain things away?

Concepts of God seem to be making a living in gaps of knowledge. Religion seems to be good at relieving peoples fears of the unknown, but it also assigns a bunch things to people that become very hard to let go of, like ideas of eternal life, existence of a soul, etc.

113

[quote]Severiano wrote:

Right on, and of course there is going to be subjectivity in defining what is normal or average, but really it’s something we already do. A lot of the things I call for are things we already do, we just need to be more honest with ourselves about our own emotions and the way we view the world. We are all connected, have the same origins. Through time we have been able to assign meaning and reason to what at one time was the chaos and ignorance/ lack of knowledge.

As we learn more we can let go of things not not necessary to explain… At this point I think it’s reasonable to just abandon various religious Cosmological beliefs given what we have learned about the universe. We don’t need explanations as to what days God created what. So why use them to explain things away?

Concepts of God seem to be making a living in gaps of knowledge. Religion seems to be good at relieving peoples fears of the unknown, but it also assigns a bunch things to people that become very hard to let go of, like ideas of eternal life, existence of a soul, etc. [/quote]

A lot could be said about if an animistic worldview is chaotic or meaningfull for he practitioner, but that’s another subject.

Religion is this and it is that, it has many faces, everything changes drastically if religious truths are seen as symbolical or as concrete facts. I don’t think religion is going to go anywhere, but then again I have nothing against non-religious views, either. But realistic solutions should strive to accommodate very different kinds of people, so in that sense keeping common ethics simple makes sense.
This doesn’t mean one can’t develop complex systems of ethics, people do it anyway, but for the whole spectre of people we are better served with simple ones.

114

[quote]kaaleppi wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

Right on, and of course there is going to be subjectivity in defining what is normal or average, but really it’s something we already do. A lot of the things I call for are things we already do, we just need to be more honest with ourselves about our own emotions and the way we view the world. We are all connected, have the same origins. Through time we have been able to assign meaning and reason to what at one time was the chaos and ignorance/ lack of knowledge.

As we learn more we can let go of things not not necessary to explain… At this point I think it’s reasonable to just abandon various religious Cosmological beliefs given what we have learned about the universe. We don’t need explanations as to what days God created what. So why use them to explain things away?

Concepts of God seem to be making a living in gaps of knowledge. Religion seems to be good at relieving peoples fears of the unknown, but it also assigns a bunch things to people that become very hard to let go of, like ideas of eternal life, existence of a soul, etc. [/quote]

A lot could be said about if an animistic worldview is chaotic or meaningfull for he practitioner, but that’s another subject.

Religion is this and it is that, it has many faces, everything changes drastically if religious truths are seen as symbolical or as concrete facts. I don’t think religion is going to go anywhere, but then again I have nothing against non-religious views, either. But realistic solutions should strive to accommodate very different kinds of people, so in that sense keeping common ethics simple makes sense.
This doesn’t mean one can’t develop complex systems of ethics, people do it anyway, but for the whole spectre of people we are better served with simple ones.[/quote]

I’m not against having simple ethics. What gets me going are ethics that aren’t responsible to anything but God, and having people who are supposed authorities of interpretation telling people this and that are the right and wrong ways to interpret and live. We are critical and rational animals, some of us moreso than others. Some of us are able to blindly follow rules without thinking of the real world consequences because some authority says this is bad, this is good. For those of us who are able to easily see through the facade, it’s scary to see what we have coming. Especially with these dogmas that preach how great it is to be fruitful. Look at the numbers swelling in Islam and tell me we have good things to look forward to.