If Willy can create any world he wants, then no, creating this one doesn't seem particularly moral.

What if nothing eventually can win against entropy? Does it then make everything meaningless? — niki wonoto

No, meaning isn't solely defined by ultimate outcomes... what we do in between also matters.

Entropy has a beneficent effect allowing us to make change in determined systems. — ghostlycutter

I don't think entropy "effects" anything, it's a description. What allowed us to happen is the fact that the universe was low entropy at the start, moving to progressively higher entropy.

To use Sean Carroll's, referenced by Manuel, analogy of coffee and cream, in between the original perfect division of cream and coffee (low entropy) and the ultimate perfect mixture (high entropy) is where interesting things can happen.

To understand entropy, you can best view it as a statistical law or law a chance I think. Low entropy is a state of a system that is relatively rare among all possible states of that system. High entropy then are states that are common/numerous. All things being equal, it's more likely that over time the more numerous states will occur rather that rare states.

And as things naturally will tend to higher entropy because of chance, maintaining low entropy in a subsystem requires energy from the outside... we, life in general, require energy to maintain homeostasis to fight off overall increase in entropy.

Therefor you could say that the meaning of life is literally taking in energy to fend off increase in entropy.

Part of what motivated the OP was discussion I had elsewhere, in which I articulated the thought that in an environment that overwhelmingly deadens human flourishing, a sense of joy can almost function as an ethical imperative. Joy as a militant practice. Inspired in part by Audrey Lorde: "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." So this is a kind of motivated joy, one diametrically opposite to happiness as contentment. A joy that specifically cuts against the given, rather than tries to settle amongst it (as with one that would turn a blind eye). I'm mostly trying to think about how to articulate or conceptualize these two notions of happiness and joy. — StreetlightX

Yes, I like this idea. I'm tempted to view it in terms of Spinoza's and Nietzsche conception of Joy as the feeling of increase in power. In face of an environment that deadens human flourishing, that is oppressive, you presumably can go a couple of ways. One in which you tell yourself that things aren't that bad, where the 'solution' to the problem is self-deception... to be able to keep going and at the same time avoid doing something about it that may be unpleasant. And the other would be to actually try and do something about the situation, to 'empower' yourself which would feel joyous no matter if you end up having to face unpleasant situations as a result.

So I would view this in terms of empowerment, agency vs narcotic, fatalistic... or what 180proof pointed to with dionysus vs the crucified. In Nietzschian philosophy what the crucified signified was a psychological state where one no longer wants to make any distinctions because of hypersensitivity and aversion to pain, to any sensation that upsets a harmonious blissful state. Dionysus then symbolizes the reverse where one is engaged with the world as is, that is not the dreamed up Apollonian world papered over with concepts, but the world given to us by the senses. Or in terms of aims and action the difference would be that the crucified wants to attain and maintain a psychological state by denying the world (inward focus), while Dionysus experiences joy by effecting the world (outward focus).

I'm kindof repeating what you and 180proof allready said here for the most part... but I feel like it's the first time I really get what he was getting at with this distinction.

So: I think what bothers me about 'happiness' is - as least, as it strikes me intuitively - is that it tends to function as a psychological category, which is to say it is individual and 'hedonic'. — StreetlightX

Joy, on the other hand, is not a state. Rather it is an event, or it has event-like characteristics. Joy is something one undergoes: it happens to us. — StreetlightX

I had a similar intuïtion... interestingly enough if you look at the etymological roots of the words it seems to have been the other way around historically.

Happiness comes from luck (happ), being fortunate, which points more to the material state of a person in relation to the world, rather than a psychological state... something that 'happ'ens to someone.

Joy then seems to have been associated throughout history with an inner feeling, a pleasurable sensation... which would be more in line with 'hedonic'.

Don't know if this necessarily has any bearing on how we use the terms now, maybe it has, but I thought it interesting at least, if only because of the shifts in meaning.

The political part of me wants to call it 'bourgeois happiness', a happiness that allows one to turn a blind eye to injustice and even active maliciousness. — StreetlightX

If one is happy in the historical meaning of the word (lucky, fortunate) one would probably be more inclined to turn a blind eye to the injustices of a system that has benefited you more than most.

If they serve a signalizing purpose than they themselves are not bad, but the circumstances that lead to agony and despair are
— ChatteringMonkey
But their signalling "purpose" is to help our genes leave more copies of themselves. Agony and despair are still terrible even when they fulfil the functional role of maximizing the inclusive fitness of our DNA. — David Pearce

I think this more or less brings us back the original point of our exchange.

One of biological life's defining features is making more copies of the genes it is build out of.

Biological life is the origin, and so far as we know, the only thing that evaluates in this universe.

How then can one come to a conclusion that more life is bad?

Without life in the universe nothing matters either way right?

I happen to be a negative utilitarian. NU is a relatively unusual ethic of limited influence. An immense range of ethical traditions besides NU can agree, in principle, that a world without suffering would be good. The devil is in the details... — David Pearce

The devil is in the details indeed, I don't think many traditions would agree that sterilization of our forward light-cone is the most moral course of action for instance...

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion, thanks for that.

Agony and despair are inherently bad, whether they serve a signaling purpose (e.g. a noxious stimulus) or otherwise (e.g. neuropathic pain or lifelong depression). — David Pearce

I don't think anything is really 'inherent'. If they serve a signalizing purpose than they themselves are not bad, but the circumstances that lead to agony and despair are. I'll grant you that yes, in the case of chronic pain and depression, the agony and despair are bad themselves without any signaling or other purpose... But if you permit me using the same analogy I made in my previous post, this seems to be a case of malfunctioning smokedetectors. If they go off all the time without cause, then yes they needs fixing. But some malfunctioning smokedetectors are not a reason to get rid of all smokedetection, nor does it make getting rid of smokedetection an end in itself. So by all means yes, we should try to find a solution for chronic pain and depression... I just don't think those specific cases are necessarily representative or to be generalized to all pain and pleasure.

Almost no one disputes subjectively nasty states can play a signalling role in biological animals. What's controversial is whether they are computationally indispensable or whether they can be functionally replaced by a more civilised signalling system. — David Pearce

Maybe they can be replaced or maybe they cannot, that's a technical question. What's also controversial I'd say is whether we 'should' replace them by a more 'civilised' signaling system. What is deemed more civilized no doubt depends on the perspective you are evaluating it from.

I think, and we touched on this a few pages back, a lot of this discussion comes down to the basic assumption of negative utilitarianism, and whether you buy into it or not. If you don't, the rest of the story doesn't necessarily follow because it builds on that basic assumption.

Ergo, hedonism could be a case of conflating means and ends — TheMadFool

I think this is right. I think pain/pleasure are indicators for what is good or bad, not what is good or bad itself.

Consider the following analogy, smokedetectors serve the function of alerting us when there is a fire. The bad thing is not the smokedetector going of, it's the fire it signals that is bad.

Analogously pain signals us that something bad is happening, for example that your skin is getting burned when you have your hand on a hot stove.

Negative utilitarianism or hedonism is akin to saying that the solution to the problem is getting rid of smokedetection. It just doesn't make sense to me from the get-go.

Some of the soul-chilling things Nietzsche said make him sound as though he had an inverted pain-pleasure axis: https://www.nietzsche.com — David Pearce

Well I don't think the point of those quotes was to glorify pain in itself, but rather the function it plays in human biology, in attaining things he valued more. I think you're actually saying something similar when you talk about preserving information-sensitivity and nociception if we were to do away with pain. Of course at the time Nietzsche didn't have the option of separating the two with biotech.

I think the question to ask is why we nominally (dis)value many intentional objects that are seemingly unrelated to the pleasure-pain axis. "Winning” and demonstrating one is a dominant alpha male, who can stoically endure great pain and triumph in competitive sports, promises wider reproductive opportunities than being a milksop. And for evolutionary reasons, mating is typically highly rewarding. We see the same in the rest of the Nature too. Recall the extraordinary lengths some nonhuman animals will go to in order to breed. What’s more, if (contrary to what I’ve argued) there were multiple axes of (dis)value rather than a sovereign pain-pleasure axis, then there would need to be some kind of meta-axis of (dis)value as a metric to regulate trade-offs. — David Pearce

Yes, Nietzsche for instance chose 'health/life-affirmation' as his preferred meta-axis to re-evaluate values, you seem to favor pain/pleasure... People seem to disagree on what is more important. But maybe there's a way, informed among other things by contemporary science, to get to more of an objective measure, I don't know... which is why I asked.

You may or may not find this analysis persuasive; but critically, you don't need to be a psychological hedonist, nor indeed any kind of utilitarian, to appreciate it will be good if we can use biotech to end suffering. — David Pearce

This is certainly a fair point, but I'd add while it would be good to end (or at least reduce) suffering, It needn't be restricted to that. If we are going to use biotech to improve humanity, we might as well look to improve it on multiple axis... a multivalent approach.

IMO, asking why agony is disvaluable is like asking why phenomenal redness is colourful. Such properties are mind-dependent and thus (barring dualism) an objective, spatio-temporally located feature of the natural world:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#metaethics — David Pearce

I certainly won't deny the fact that pain is real for me and other people, and I wouldn't even deny that pain is inherently disvaluable, where I would want to push back is that it needs to be the only thing we are concerned with. It seems more complicated to me, but maybe this is more a consequence of my lack of knowledge on the subject, I don't know.

Here's an example you probably heard many times before, sports. We seem to deliberately seek out and endure pain to attain some other values, such as fitness, winning or looking good... I wouldn't say we value the pain we endure during sports, but it does seem to be the case that sometimes we value other things more than we disvalue pain. So how would you reconcile this kind of behavior with pain/pleasure being the inbuilt metric of (dis)value?

Do you make a difference between (physical) pain and suffering? To me there seems be something different going on with suffering, something different from the mere experience of pain. There also seems a mental component where we suffer because of anticipating bad things, because we project ourselves into the future... This would also be the reason why I would make a difference between humans and most other animals because they seems to lack the ability to project further into the future. To be clear by making this distinction, I don't want to imply that we shouldn't treat animals vastly better than we do now, just that I think there is a difference between 'experience of pain in the moment' and 'suffering' which possibly could have some ethical ramifications.

I've no short, simple, easy answer here. But fast-forward to a time later this century when approximate hedonic range, hedonic set-points and pain-sensitivity can be genetically selected – both for new babies and increasingly (via autosomal gene therapy) for existing humans and nonhuman animals. Anti-aging inteventions and intelligence-amplification will almost certainly be available too, but let's focus on hedonic tone and the pleasure-pain axis. What genetic dial-settings will prospective parents want for their children? What genetic dial settings and gene-expression profiles will they want for themselves? Sure, state authorities are going to take an interest too. Yet I think the usual sci-fi worries of, e.g. some power-crazed despot breeding of a caste of fearless super-warriors (etc), are misplaced. Like you, I have limited faith in the benevolence of the super-rich. But we shouldn't neglect the role of displays of competitive male altruism. Also, one of the blessings of information-based technologies such as gene-editing is that once the knowledge is acquired, their use won't be cost-limited for long. Anyhow, I'm starting to sing a happy tune, whereas there are myriad ways things could go wrong. I worry I’m sounding like a propagandist rather than an advocate. But I think the basic point stands. Phasing out hedonically sub-zero experience is going to become technically feasible and eventually technically trivial. Humans may often be morally apathetic, but we aren't normally malicious. If you had God-like powers, how much involuntary suffering would you conserve in the world? Tomorrow's policy makers will have to grapple with this kind of decision. — David Pearce

I actually agree with most of this. Ideally I wouldn't want these kind of powers because they seem way beyond the responsibilities a chattering monkey can handle. But if it can be done, it probably will be done... and given the state and prospects of science at this moment, it seems likely it will be done at some point in the future, whether we want it or not. And since we presumably will have that power, I suppose it's hard to deny the responsibility that comes with that. So philosophers might as well try and figure out how to best go about that when it does happen, I can certainly support that effort. What I would say is that I would want to understand a whole lot better how it all exactly operates before making definite claims about the direction of our species and the biosphere. But I'm not the one doing the research, so I can't really judge how good we understand it already.

Thank you. Evolution via natural selection has encephalised our emotions so we (dis)value many things beyond pain and pleasure under that description. If intentional objects were encephalised differently, then we would (dis)value them differently too. Indeed, our (dis)values could grotesquely be inverted – “grotesquely” by the lights of (our) common sense, at any rate.

What's resistant to inversion is the pain-pleasure axis itself. One simply can't value undergoing agony and despair, just as one can't disvalue experiencing sublime bliss. The pain-pleasure axis discloses the world's inbuilt metric of (dis)value. — David Pearce

Thank you for the response. I hope you don't mind a follow up question, because this last paragraph is something I don't quite fully get yet.

I understand that many of our emotions and values are a somewhat arbitrary result of evolution. And I don't really have a fundamental bioconservative objection to altering them, because indeed they could easily have been be otherwise. What puzzles me is how you think we can go beyond our own biology and re-evaluate it for the purpose of genetic re-engineering. Since values are not ingrained in the fabric of the universe (or maybe I should say the part of the universe that is not biological), i.e. it is something we bring to the table, from what perspective are we re-evaluating them then. You seem to be saying there is something fundamental about pain and pleasure, because it is lifes (or actually the worlds?) inbuilt metric of value... It just isn't entirely clear to me why.

To make this question somewhat concrete. wouldn't it to be expected, your and other philosophers efforts notwithstanding, that in practice genetic re-engineering will be used as a tool for realising the values we have now? And by 'we' I more often then not mean political and economic leaders who ultimately have the last say because they are the ones financing research. I don't want to sound alarmist, but can we really trust something with such far-reaching consequence as a toy in power and status games?

Hi David,

I have a (maybe) straightforward question regarding the value assumptions in negative utilitarianism, or even utilitarianism in general, and the possible consequences thereof.

My intuition against utilitarianism always has been that pain, or even pain 'and' pleasure, is not the only thing that matters to us, and so reducing everything to that runs the risk of glossing over other things we value.

Would you say that is just factually incorrect, i.e. scientific research tells us that in fact everything is reducible to pain (or more expanded to pain/pleasure)?

And if it's not the case that everything is reducible to pain/pleasure, wouldn't genetic alteration solely with the purpose of abolition of pain, run the risk of impoverishing us as human beings? Do we actually have an idea already of how pain and pleasure are interrelated (or not) with the rest of human emotions in the sense that it would be possible in principle to remove pain and keep all the rest intact?

Thank you for your time, It's been an interesting thread already.

Is there a theory of how even the losers and the underdogs can have some peace of mind and some sense that their life is worth living? — baker

You redefine what constitutes losers and winners so it fits you, and convince yourself and others of that redefinition. Jesus is actually a good example of that.

Is there a philosopher or other author who has written about this? — baker

Nietzsche has, though not as an advocate of it evidently. Anyway this is more the purview of religion, of priests, the philosopher is typically the antipode of that... so they are probably not the best source for this kind of thing.

Good point, is it even possible to disentangle ideology, personal experience, the culture wherein one is raised etc etc, to arrive at some pristine fact about human nature?

Maybe not, but still even those ideologies have to come from somewhere...

But in this point I still disagree that introvert o more “lonely” people don’t need to be selfish at all. — javi2541997

Yeah I think the problem here is not necessarily equating lonely with selfish, but introverted with 'more lonely'. Introverted just means that they don't need or want the same frequency of social interaction as extroverted people. They are not necessarily lonely, or want to be alone all the time...

But sure, people do differ, and maybe you could question the validity of making these general claims about all of humanity like Bakunin does, based on his personal experiences alone.

So why is Nationalism still tolerated and even lauded? Why is the British flag allowed to be be waved all over the place, but the Nazi flag not so much? (Feel free to substitute your own local good and bad flags here.) — unenlightened

You could generalize 'nationalism' further to any group identifier, including sports team, religious groups, hipster groups etc etc... I think we have a need to identify with groups, and will do it regardless. For all the negative that is associated with it, it also motivates and mobilizes to transcend the purely individualistic/selfish. Doing away with all of it also would imply also doing away with some of the positive aspects of it.

So why do we still tolerate Nationalism is a bit like asking why do we still tolerate the rain? Because it will rain regardless of us tolerating it.... and we probably wouldn't want to do away with it entirely anyway, because, aside from being unpleasant, the rain also makes the crops grow.

The question to me ends up being, what kind of groups should we aim for, and how can we get the most out of it, while minimizing/making amends for the negative?

As an aside, failing to realize this, is I think the single biggest mistake the left has made in the last couple of decades and the reason for the ascent of right wing populism.

I generally agree with the sentiment.

It's difficult to make an argument for or against it though, because ultimately i think it boils down to an empirical claim whether we are social creatures or not. I think we are, and I think if you want, you could come up with evidence for this, such as stats for loneliness being an indicator for shorter lifespans and unhappiness etc... Bakunin feels alone and unhappy because of it, it's hard to argue with that. It is what it is.

I guess the question for me now personally is not whether we need social relations and communities, I think we do, but whether any kind of social relations and communities is better than being alone. I think the forms of social relations and communities we have today are not especially conductive to happiness either, so this end up being a bit of a conundrum.

So, my question: Is there a dividing line between low probability events and the Supernatural? Is it just a matter of the degree of probability or should one apply other criteria to an event to qualify it as 'Supernatural’? — Jacob-B

Yes, I would say the supernatural relies on explanations that aren't and can't be verified with empirical data.

So to use your example, any number of explanations could possibly fit the data of a perceived miracle. If you use something like God as an explanation that would be a supernatural explanation of the phenomenon (because God is by definition outside of this universe and so unverifiable).

Note that I don't think it makes much sense to say an event is natural or supernatural by itself, it's something you say about the explanation or interpretation of the event I think.

You mis-understand. If something bothers you, it's 99.99% not the "something" that bothers you but something inside of you. If not Christianity, then something else. The thinking world is chock-full of things that bothers us. — synthesis

Don't know why you think Christianity bothers me, or what this has to do with what I said. I have no particular axe to grind with Christianity, my original comment was meant quite light-heartedly. And then I was just saying Christianity played an important role historically. Me being bothered about it or not, doesn't change anything about that.

It's not myth. Attempting to worry about what everybody else is doing is foolhardy. Change begins within, then if others like what they see, they may look more closely. — synthesis

"Within" is not causally disconnected from the rest of the world...

Think about the ramifications of that for a second, instead of trying to read things into my comments that aren't there.

But... they are not only guilty in this problem. My governors only put investment in tourism and that’s a big fail — javi2541997

Yes agreed.

The Euro was a very bad deal for the south.
— ChatteringMonkey

We don’t have any other solution. It is bad but it could be worse... — javi2541997

Now you maybe don't have any other solution, right. But at the moment of conception of the Euro, the southern countries never should have joined, because it removed the possibility of running their own monetary policy. Because of the Euro you had to follow a monetary policy that would never work for you, because you had another economy. It was an accident waiting to happen... and yeah hindsight doesn't really solve anything, but I think I wouldn't have been as bad as it is now.

I was only semi-serious... But Christianity has played an important role in how we got where we are now.
— ChatteringMonkey

If it wasn't Christianity, it would have been something else. — synthesis

I don't think this is true, Christianity was historically very peculiar in many ways.

In the end, you can only control your own actions. — synthesis

This seem like a part of the myth of individualism, which ironically had its roots in Christianity.

Truste me they are not. You have a perspective of us because you visited my country multiple times but remember just for tourism. It is important to emphasise that touristic countries tend to make an unrealistic mask just to attract a lot of people (Spain does it) I don’t know which territories you visited but I guess the common ones as Andalucía or another Mediterranean beach. Well yes they are happy more they have to because we are in a mess. I don’t even understand my own compatriots but it seems very legit the 38 %.
I was buying some stuff in a market and a random dude asked us: “do you have some coins?” And then some woman replied “I wish I could give you some coins but I earn 400 € at month”
This made me feel sad my own country man... — javi2541997

Yes it was mostly touristic regions I guess, the Catalonia region multiple times and the Sevilla region. So I take your word for it. But then I don't really believe the numbers are that high in my country, people generally don't seem all that happy. Maybe material wealth (in which we do ok I guess) does paper over a lot of perceived unhappiness, certainly in reporting considering wealth is seen as a measure of 'succes' a lot of time...

But yeah the bad situation Spain, and the other southern European countries, are in at the moment, is really a shame. The Euro was a very bad deal for the south.

And I agree Christianity is to be blamed for everything.
— ChatteringMonkey

How convenient. — synthesis

I was only semi-serious... But Christianity has played an important role in how we got where we are now.

I understand that, I'm just disputing your claim that religion is a story. It's not a story. The gods are real, God is real. From my perspective, obviously, you have your Modernist perspective. — Dharmi

Your disagreement about the existence of Gods and God is noted.

I think there is a problem of meaning, certainly in the west. I think meaning for most people is tied to having a perspective of playing some role in the larger societies they are part of. Historically religion played a huge part in providing that, even if it was just a story people told.
— ChatteringMonkey

Yes, but that religion is "just a story" is a very Modernist type of thing claim. Premodern religion, pagan religions, were not stories. They were the way things are. The metaphysical underpinning of ultimate reality itself. Ancient people had methods of knowing this Ultimate, through what Plotinus termed theurgy, but what the Vedic tradition refers to as yoga. It's not just a story, if anything, Modernity is "just a story"

Modernity has absolutely nothing to do with Greco-Roman civilization, it's a deviation and perversion of Dark Age Christendom which stole, plagiarized and appropriated the writings of the ancients like Plato and Aristotle to create this catastrophe of a so-called civilization which is destroying the whole planet as we speak. Modernity is a story, not Premodernity. — Dharmi

Sure, as someone born in the modern age, I think it save to say I view things from a modernist perspective... I'm a product of the times, I'm not sure how that could be otherwise.

And I agree Christianity is to be blamed for everything.

I find these numbers very hard to believe. China at 93%? And my country in the 70ties while Spain only at 38. I've been to Spain multiple times, and didn't have the impression that people were fundamentally more unhappy. Spain has been through a rough patch lately to be sure, with lots of unemployment and lack of perspective in general, but these numbers seem exaggerated.

That said, I'll throw two completely different ideas at this question of meaning/happiness :

1. Expectations matter. Perception of ones happiness will invariably be relative to ones expectations about happiness. If you have high expectations, chances are you will report being less happy than someone with low expectations in the same circumstances. This might some of what's going on with Spain, historically coming from a more rich/prominent position than it has now.

2. I think there is a problem of meaning, certainly in the west. I think meaning for most people is tied to having a perspective of playing some role in the larger societies they are part of. Historically religion played a huge part in providing that, even if it was just a story people told. With secularization in the west people have lost that... and not a whole lot has come in it's place. What is the role now for the average person? Working some unfulfilling BS job to be a consumer and keep the economy going so the rich can get richer? That is if you can get a job anyway. Maybe the question of meaning is hitting Spain especially hard now because it is traditional more Catholic than the rest of Europe and late to the secular party? And so it hasn't had the time to deal with this question of meaning for a secular point of view?

"The most general formula on which every religion and morality is founded is: "Do this and that, refrain from this and that--then you will be happy! Otherwise..." Every morality, every religion, is this imperative; I call it the great original sin of reason, the immortal unreason. In my mouth, this formula is changed into its opposite--first example of my "revaluation of all values": a well-turned-out human being, a "happy one," must perform certain actions and shrinks instinctively from other actions; he carries the order, which he represents physiologically, into his relations with other human beings and things. In a formula: his virtue is the effect of his happiness."

Did he think first we should achieve happiness which then will make us virtuous? — deusidex

Basicly yes... although there is no 'should', it's meant to be descriptive of how one ends up being virtuous.

His point here is that moralists and religions got the direction of causation wrong. He thinks you do not become happy because you do good, or follow some prescribed moral rules. He thinks you will do good because you are "happy".

Also note the quotes there, happy and virtue will not have the same meaning as it has for those moralists and religions.

Ok I see now what my difficulty with the categorization may be. You're looking at it from an American perspective for the most part I guess. In my country, and most of European Countries, we don't have a two-party system. We have 5 "main-stream" parties and a couple of extreme parties at either end, who have to form coalitions to form a government. So "agrees with you politically" is not a simple black or white matter usually.
— ChatteringMonkey
Yes, absolutely. In European countries, things are not so either-or or black-and-white as in the US. Although there is a less or more visible trend toward such a simplification and polarization of political life in Europe as well. — baker

Yes definitely. There's a trend of 'extremist' or 'populist' parties gaining more traction in Europe now for 20 or more years, depending on the country. The difference with the US is I guess that they are for the most part not subsumed in the traditional parties and so don't get all that much chances to effectively take part in power. But the trend is unmistakably there and probably caused by more or less the same socio-economic dynamics, i.e. globalization, neo-liberal policies and rise in inequality from the 1970 on wards.

I would have a category for 'totally different or incompatible' for the genuinely religious and traditional. It's not that I think they have bad intentions (5) or that they are duped or misinformed (if they consciously affirm their faith) (4), but that they have a totally different and incompatible way of thinking about ethics and society.
— ChatteringMonkey

If they’re well-intentioned just for bad reasons, that would put them in group 2. E.g. if you’re a socialist atheist and a socialist Christian agrees with you politically but for religious rather than rational reasons, they’re group 2 to you. OTOH a prosperity theologian would be group 5 to you: they really wholeheartedly and devoutly believe something that is completely contrary to any good reasons you can think of. — Pfhorrest

Ok I see now what my difficulty with the categorization may be. You're looking at it from an American perspective for the most part I guess. In my country, and most of European Countries, we don't have a two-party system. We have 5 "main-stream" parties and a couple of extreme parties at either end, who have to form coalitions to form a government. So "agrees with you politically" is not a simple black or white matter usually. A socialist Christian and a socialist atheist would typically not be voting for the same party, and those parties may or may not be in the same ruling coalition.

I think you've misunderstood what Pfhorrest is talking about. He's suggesting a way of approaching people who disagree with you using categories relative to the person using them. — Isaac

I did misread him, I thought he had a more objective distinction in mind. My reaction was maybe a bit to strong because of that.

What is this other category in which we could place those who disagree with us ethically aside from misinformed, misguided, or wrong? — Isaac

I would have a category for 'totally different or incompatible' for the genuinely religious and traditional. It's not that I think they have bad intentions (5) or that they are duped or misinformed (if they consciously affirm their faith) (4), but that they have a totally different and incompatible way of thinking about ethics and society.

following your categorization someone who disagrees with you can only incorrect, because they are either confused/not informed enough/to be converted (middle group) stupid/misguided (4th group), or morally corrupt (5th group). Doesn't seem all that respectful to me.
— ChatteringMonkey

I think you've misunderstood what Pfhorrest is talking about. He's suggesting a way of approaching people who disagree with you using categories relative to the person using them. So there are no other ways to categorise those who disagree with you ethically. They're either wrong, misinformed (where an ethical choice might be based on empirical data), or misguided (where an ethical choice might require some complex consideration). I'm not sure what other category you might imagine putting people in...

'Also right' doesn't work because that would take them outside the scope of the people being considered (those who disagree with you).

'Differently right'...? 'Using alternative facts'...? 'Not yet right'...?

What is this other category in which we could place those who disagree with us ethically aside from misinformed, misguided, or wrong? — Isaac

Well there's always the possibility that you are or I am wrong, no? If two people disagree about something, isn't it strange to assume that one is always automatically right and the other must be wrong? Seems like a constructive conversation would have to start from the idea that you might also be wrong about some things. Otherwise aren't you effectively always taking on the role of teacher/moral authority? I don't think anyone really likes being on the receiving end of such a conversation.

But aside from that I also do believe that you can come to different conclusions on ethical questions. And I don't mean this in a totally relativistic sense, better and worse arguments can be made, something can be more or less coherent, you can be misinformed etc... but usually - if it's not about extreme clear-cut cases - ethics is not like mathematics or science where you can demonstrate with absolute certainty that this one answer is the right one. And with politics I think this becomes even more questionable because of the enormous complexity involved. There are ideas that seem better or worse, but I don't think anybody really "knows" with any kind of certainty, and I would have that epistemic uncertainty reflected in the terms I use and in the way I approach those conversations.

Rarely have I seen someone change their minds following rational arguments.
— ChatteringMonkey

This is why I am pursuing the sociological approach which views detailed ideological positions as representative of more fundamental social trends, driven by actual volitional energies of the "whole man". If we can understand why groups of people come to believe what they do then we can begin to find ways to bridge the disparate positions. And indeed, we can see that these type of inter-evolutions and even reconciliations do occur, aiding us in our analysis. — Pantagruel

I think that's a step in the right direction, but it might also be worth considering that it's not a real possibility to bridge certain disparate positions. Beliefs seem to be clustered in coherent wholes, i.e. you typically don't just change your mind on some fact or value in isolation, but because it fits better into a larger structure of beliefs that is already there. And those seem very hard to alter, as is I think well documented with the phenomenon of religious conversion or de-conversion.

The topic of this thread isn't determining which is which, but just what's a good way to address people relative to their place on a spectrum of (dis)agreement about which is which. "A good way" both in the sense of a kind and respectful way, and also in the sense of a productive and effective way. — Pfhorrest

Judging from the reactions, it would seem that what you are proposing isn't very effective and productive. And honestly, I don't know why that should be all that surprising considering following your categorization someone who disagrees with you can only be incorrect, because they are either confused/not informed enough/to be converted (middle group) stupid/misguided (4th group), or morally corrupt (5th group). Doesn't seem all that respectful to me. If I were to make a guess, it's this kind of attitude that drives people in the middle group to the other side.

Rarely have I seen someone change their minds following rational arguments. And people seem to especially resist being told what to think or do if they feel like something is being forced onto them. What maybe helps is just listening without trying to convert them and trying to engage them on their terms. But yeah nobody ever does that.... ships passing in the night, all the time.

I think it's useful to differentiate between at least these five different shades of ideological (dis)agreement, and treat each kind of person differently in conversation:

- People who solidly hold correct opinions for good reasons

- People who just socially identify with the side of those correct opinions

- People who don't have strong opinions one way or the other and just try to give all ideas a fair shake

- People who have been duped or manipulated into thinking that bad causes are good causes

- People who honestly and devoutly have genuinely bad intentions — Pfhorrest

This seems like a bit of a biased categorization, because I think the basic disagreement is one of methodology. One group doesn't think the way to arrive at 'correct opinions' is through reason, or at least reason alone, but via tradition predominately. In making distinctions this way you are already favoring one method above another, and misrepresent people who favor the other method by looking at it solely the perspective of your preferred method.

What I think could help, is trying to understand why people come to different opinions, and see if there is enough of a common methodology and basic values that I think are necessary to make it even possible to continue discussing these things rationally. If not, there's little point to it, and the best thing to do might be to just agree to disagree.

Pfhorrest covered most of it.

Maybe I would add, you need something to reflect on. The "self" gets formed in relation to the world and to others... via your experiences.

There's nothing wrong with reflecting on your "self", on your experiences, from time to time, but if you do nothing else, you end up with nothing to reflect on.

The mistake is I think in thinking that by reason alone, or that 'in-ward looking'/introspection will bring you closer to some kind of true, pristine self, apart from the world.

Ask the obvious question: is he telling the Prince what to do? If so, it's a moral document. — Banno

Sure, moral in the widest sense.

My original point was just that Machiavelli's claims like, "It's better to act cruel" could be refuted in a couple of different ways: Either by saying that cruelty is simply bad (which would be a moral evaluation) or by saying that cruelty does in fact not contribute to staying in power (which would be more a matter of causation). If Machiavelli is predominantly making claims in the latter sense, then it would seem more convincing to me to try to refute them on those terms.

Yeah ok, but I don't think Montaigne is saying that only to clean up his image, I think he means it, or at least it seems like he does to me.
— ChatteringMonkey
If he was a mediator between the Protestants and the Catholics, he surely meant it.

Yet I think that many politicians could honestly agree with Montaigne and then when engaged in politics follow the advice of Machiavelli. — ssu

Ok, so you saying that they are talking about different things then? Machiavelli about how to be effective in politics, and Montaigne more about his own personal view on things. I probably agree with that for the most part.

I'm not sure, I'm not exactly a Machiavelli scholar, I read The prince.

What do you think he is saying then, that a ruler should be cruel, not because that is how you best stay in power (as a matter of causal description), but as some kind a moral imperative? That would be a weird thing to say.

Or maybe you think he says these things as some kind of apologetics for abject behaviour? That could make more sense.

I guess my question is, if it's rethorics, what is it he's trying to sell then? Maybe himself as a potential advisor to the prince, that could make sense too.