What evidence have you seen - read: not what evidence can you come up with now - that led you to this conclusion? Evidence you can now find is also useful, but I think it is important for us to notice if we are making decisions because someone asserted something and never justified that assertion.

It's all over the mainstream media and both sides of the aisle- democrats and republicans seem to agree on the basic facts here. Soleimani's complicity seems to be universally accepted.

I actually work in intelligence. I could go into work tomorrow and get the inside scoop, but it's not like I could ever actually deliver any physical evidence to the general public (or even really talk about what I heard.) Additionally, for all I know, the reports have been doctored. At some point you just sort of need to throw in with it. I think the connection between Iran and known terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah (which have been behind American deaths) as well as sectarian groups in Syria has been pretty well established.

Imagine if Vietnam or Laos or Cambodia killed Kissinger for crimes they considered he committed during the Vietnam war. They did this while Kissinger was visiting France and while he was an advisor in some way to a current president.

You wouldn't do this at the negotiating table, but out in the field I think Kissinger would have been a legitimate target for the vietnamese. I think a better comparison would be Westmoreland, who was actually a general - but yeah, absolutely a legitimate target for the Vietnamese. generals are absolutely legitimate military targets.

This act will very likely do just the opposite, except for certain interests: the arms and intelligence industries for example.

Yes, tensions could very well be inflamed. However, this comes after a long string of transgressions/attacks from Iran who previously believed themselves untouchable. With this strike that veil of impunity has been shattered. I'll make it very clear that I don't want war with Iran. Yes, we've raised the stakes but the iranians were really becoming quite bold thinking that we couldn't touch them. hopefully this will help prevent further bold escalations from iran because they know they are no longer untouchable. of course, the jury is still out on this one and the results will unfold over years.

Why?

The hardliners certainly hate our guts. Sometimes people just hate your guts.

Which is why he helped you fight the Taliban?

yes, we will occasionally share interests with groups that we aren't normally friendly with. would it mean kim jung il likes us if he dislikes isis?

No, it doesn't. You're not thinking. Try the analogy again. Try to think about not fucking yourself up just to get to fuck the other guy up. Or bite the bullet and admit you don't really care about how many people get killed, you care about being made to look bad by a country you consider inferior.

Bro, from a game theory perspective it makes sense to push the envelope if your opponent isn't responding. and that's exactly what happened; suleiman was brazen, he didn't even attempt to hide where he was going and he'd take selfies because he considered himself untouchable. you need to look at history and understand that sometimes the cost of inaction is worse than the cost of action. obviously, in this case, we'll just never know.

What are these, specifically, and why do they require you to get into an armed conflict with each other as opposed to finding some kind of mutually less destructive accommodation?

you keep implying that we can have peace and be best friends with iran but you never really come up with anything concrete... you just say de-escalate, but this term is pretty vague. so far you haven't suggested any actual alternative. the two nations won't even speak to each other directly. the iran govenrment as of 2018 refuses to negotiate with the US.

The guy is sticking pins in us because he genuinely hates us and has been hating us for decades. This is the regime, not the people. We can play nice with them, but that doesn't change the fact that we have diametrically opposed interests in the middle east. What Iran is doing now in targeting the US via proxy makes sense for it. It makes sense to ramp up the aggression if the US isn't responding too. That's just good strategy.

I don't want a war. We don't have a war, at least not officially. You're acting like this strike just started a war out of nothing and that's just not the situation.

I can't plot a positive economic or strategic outcome to this for the US ruling classes that beats sticking with the Iran deal and encouraging progressive forces in the country. Maybe I lack a sufficiently Machiavellian imagination or something. Anyone here see a war being good for the US?

No one wants a war, but given these facts:

-The general was behind hundreds of american deaths in iraq.
-He was behind the recent embassy attack.
-Was very likely to be planning more attacks, and never even really attempted to hide his involvement.

What is your solution here? To my understanding, the attacks in recent years have gotten worse and we really haven't responded to iran directly so that just emboldened them. Don't tell me the solution is empowering progressive movements because the regime just opened fire on unarmed protesters last month and killed hundreds. If it was as easy as getting a nicer iranian leadership into power that would be the obvious solution but I don't think that's really plausible.

Gary Kasparov had an interesting series of tweets:

What is happening between the US and Iran is a consequence of what I describe in Winter Is Coming: an aggressive dictatorship's sense of impunity leading to the crossing of one line too far. Deterrence is based on standing up against small aggressions in order to prevent big ones, when the price will be much higher. Many years of success led Iran & Soleimani to feel invincible, to attack a US embassy, when of course a US president had to respond. This is how appeasement kills. This is why inaction can be a deadly choice. It raises the stakes, postpones the inevitable, and encourages aggressors to assume they can act with impunity until the eventual response is massive and destabilizing. Action has clear costs because it is the reality of the road taken, making it politically unattractive. Inaction hopes to pass the dire consequences and blame to a successor, as has happened with Syria and Iran. I wish Trump had a competent team capable of strategic planning and of inspiring the trust of allies and the fear of enemies. That is far from the case. But I can't criticize the killing of a mass-murdering terrorist mastermind & reminding his ilk that they are not safe. We'll never know how many more innocents Qasem Soleimani would have murdered or how many hundreds of thousands more refugees he'd have helped create. But don't pretend you know that what is to come is worse than the world with such a person in it.

END

I didn't say it was going to lead to peace. It's probably not going to lead to war either. The strike comes after a long string of Iranian offenses. On a moral level, I have no problem with the strike. On a strategic level, I think the jury is still out but based on the information I have now I don't hate it given the history of past Iranian transgressions. Yes it could have been executed better and more people could have been informed about it.

There is no war. Neither the US or Iran wants a war.

And how in the world did you "cacluclate" what the most straight-forward cause is?

I'm not calculating anything. We use "cause" in a variety of ways in the english language, and I can't think of any of them that directly attribute inaction to a cause because it doesn't make sense. The closest I can think of is the inaction of others tacitly encouraging a perpetrator to commit an offense.

To be clear here, a bystander could still be responsible but when we use "cause" we're talking about a chain of events, not non-events.

I have to ask you though, if I don't save a drowning man am I guilty of second degree murder? If I don't donate to a charity and a child dies from a lack of mosquito nets am I also guilty of murder?

Inaction IS an action. Inaction is: Not doing X but doing Y instead, where X is the action in question. So inaction is just doing Y. Inaction is just as much an active action/choice as any other.

I get it, but we're talking about causation, i.e. which events led to X. It's just how we understand this concept. If I ask you "what caused the hole in this wall" the most straight-forward answer is "Andy punched it" not "Andy punched it and also Jim, Pam, Michael, Tobey, etc. did not directly interfere or stop him."

Of course, bystanders can still be morally liable. But this is different from causing.

Yup. He made that case and said: So you should try to reduce suffering as much as possible through your action/inaction, inaction doesn't automatically mean you did nothing wrong because it's just as much an action as anything else

Yes, so bystanders can still be morally liable but this is different from causation.

Onto a bigger issue though: I can't stand moral systems which make insane demands from individuals. Why are you on a laptop when that money could have been sent to a child in Africa? Why have savings or investments when that money must be donated otherwise you're a murderer? If everyone followed this the entire economy would fall apart and there would be zero money to donate. Everybody would be impoverished and nobody would have any money to help. It's completely insane and I can't seriously contemplate it. Sorry, you've hit on one of my sore spots here.

I actually don't want to talk about how to get people to do more good, I'm actually tired of that topic and I'm complaining about it. I'm saying that it's all we talk about and I'm investigating why that is.

That's funny because I really don't discuss this topic very much if at all in philosophy. Certainly haven't discussed it that much around here.

If you're just trying to bash disingenuous virtue signaling then sure go ahead.

Morality can get a little emotional though. If you're going to take a totally amoral or flippantly nihilistic take on meta-ethics then yeah i guess you might face a little backlash. I don't think saying there's something objectively wrong with genocide should count as being disingenuously moralistic.

I agree with you but I am not exactly discussing the morality of the situation right now. I am asking whether or not you not saving someone is a cause for their drowning. I think the answer is yes

Inaction isn't a cause. If I ask you for a cause I would expect to hear a series of actions or events.

If I were to accept what you're saying the upshot of this is that even the best of us are all the cause of countless people's deaths so I guess everyone is basically a murderer or at least guilty of countless manslaughters.

Would you agree that our opinions in philosophy are more benevolent than we are?

Could you give me an example? Under the banner of philosophy you have everything from Hobbes to Rousseau to Rothbard to Marx. If you think philosophers are too high-minded look at Hobbes or Adam Smith.

The question is that if we look at what people are doing rather than talking about doing, what does that indicate?

If you want to talk about how to get people to be actually do more good you might want to go to a psychology forum or a sociology one. Philosophers work at identify the good.

If we're in an argument or discussion and I post a link to a 3 hour lecture or 20 page paper instead of explaining that's just bad etiquette.

It really just comes down to etiquette. Videos can often convey more information and do it in a shorter time span than an article. I'll sometimes link a 5 or maybe 10 minute video but I'll re-watch it to make sure it's relevant to our discussion.

When it comes to text I might recommend an article or book but I'll never just drop a title in response to an actual argument be like "yo read dis."

If someone phrases something really well or makes an argument really well - say, better than I could offhand - then I'm happy linking to a source or a video.

EDIT: Using sources can also be helpful to further clarify an idea.

This is a really good post and I'm not really in disagreement with any of it. I do think though that on a practical level just self-teaching oneself philosophy is really, really suspect. I've just seen too many of my co-workers (I work in a field completely unrelated to philosophy) just pick up Hegel or Metaphysics of Morals one day and try to break into the field that way and you and me both know what happens there.

Talking on forums like this is a nice start, but until you've had your work critiqued and evaluated by an expert in the field I really think it's tough. I have a BA in philosophy and for the first two years of it I felt like I was wandering around in the dark even with these PhDs guiding me. I get that some people catch on quicker, but I feel like until you're actually writing those papers and getting the feel for what they expect of you it's just completely different from self-study which is mostly just you in your own head or talking to random people who are probably in the same place as you. You need to familiarize yourself with the norms and expectations of the field. Good philosophy, at least in the analytic tradition, is often much more narrow and specified than most normal people outside the field would expect and this can come as kind of an unpleasant surprise to amateurs.

But back to the OP: Find a subject that your interested in, read relevant literature, talk to people, keep an open mind, leave your ego at the door and compare many perspectives. You can entertain an idea without accepting it. Also try to seek out someone with experience if possible.

As Camus famously put it: "“There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy." the question of life's worth and suicide has been going around my mind for months now.
Do you think that life is worth living? And if so, what fuels that belief?
And what would your reaction be if on your commute you saw someone on the verge of taking their life by jumping off a bridge?

We can think about it from an individual or communal standpoint. I'm limiting my points to discussions about healthy people here and not those who are extremely sick.

From a communal standpoint it's extremely damaging. The family and community is affected for years. Again, I'm excluding cases where the person has a serious illness or disability. There was a spate of suicides among my classmates when I was in high school.

From an individual standpoint we know as a species that there's just so much to experience while you've living: namely, love. We could also include art, music, good food, etc. Intentionally dying is an explicit rejection of that. Nobody knows what happens when you die. It is a much, much more prudent decision to operate in a world of knowns with definite goals and things to aspire to than to intentionally throw that all away and dive into a complete unknown.

I don't think we're like this because we're a benevolent species, I think it's perhaps because people instinctively or subconsciously see merit in being seen as a caring, dependable team player. Or is it just because people who think collaboratively gravitate towards philosophy in the first place?

Personally, I don't engage in philosophy because I want to be seen as caring or a good team player. I think most of the more serious philosophers or students of philosophy engage for the exchange of ideas. If I'm talking to someone I'm probably probing them about something and I'm seeking a really well thought out defense of that idea that I'm probing about.

So, tl;dr... it's about improving my own understanding.

I'm not going to address your argument about anti-natalism because we haven't settled the more fundamental issue of you understanding NAP and NHP. These terms already have meanings and they are embedded within their own philosophical systems. These systems are important because they give us an idea of how to evaluate or critique an idea. I can't quite tell if you're just misunderstanding the ideas or if you're using your own private definitions. It's fine to use a personal definition with "autonomy" because that word can be a little vague and it's an easy semantical issue, but with NHP and NAP these terms have clear meanings which have already been established. If you don't agree with the idea just say you disagree with it and don't try to use the term in your own personal way and tell people that you agree with it because that would just be very confusing.

It would be like if I kept telling people that I believed in democracy and the democratic process but my own personal ideas of democracy were completely different than what the term is generally recognized as.

If a car was hanging off a precipice and about to fall on someone's head below the cliff, and a guy pushes the unknowing victims out of the way, he is not violating the NAP, as he is preventing known harm to occur, thus recognizing that person's autonomy which is about to be squashed.

The guy would be violating NAP by pushing the person out of the way. NAP is a deontological principle so it does not care about consequences. You are not allowed under NAP to use direct physical force on someone without their consent. Agree with it or not, that is what the NAP states.

It comes down to the standards of philosophy and good writing. Trust me, I wasted four years of my life on this and a pretty penny. A decent proportion of any philosophy paper will be allocated to just explaining the original author's ideas just to ensure that you understand it and to avoid the issue of using your own personal understanding of it.

Anyway, lets say I accept your own personal definition of the NHP here when we were talking about forcible vaccination.

Even if we were to allow the NAP to say that it is okay to not get vaccinated, the NHP would still be in force that we shouldn't allow for the conditions of others to be unnecessarily harmed if we can prevent it.

Your new understanding of the NHP has very authoritarian implications. If my fundamental principle is just preventing harm from befalling others then we're talking an extreme amount of paternalism and placing safety first and foremost. I don't want you to trip on the street maybe I should force you to wear kneepads and a helmut. I don't know what "unnecessary harm" is here and how it compares to "necessary harm" so I'm just trying to prevent harm.

I’m disappointed that nobody in this thread seems to know what anarchy actually is.

It’s not disorder or chaos or lawlessness. It is radically democratic, egalitarian, decentralized governance. It’s not the absence if governance, but the absence of a state, and the perfection of governance into a stateless form.

I'm actually interested in this. A couple questions though:

1. How would legislation work? Would everyone vote on every proposed law? Would it be majority rules?

2. How would law enforcement work? Would there be various bands of police in competition with each other?

There are things in anarchy which seem appealing to me and I'm not opposed to it on any base philosophical level I would just like a little more detail. I think we both agree that states can be extremely murderous.... Even if an anarchic society is a fundamentally just and fair one I question if it can conduct military affairs up to par with states.

First, I think you can make sharp distinctions between government and individual ethics.

Ok, so if my government pushes me to round up and execute Jews in ditches that's just a political thing and I have no moral culpability in that. Ok.

Second, how is it NOT aggressive to allow a deadly disease proliferate?

If you let a disease take its course that's not aggression. If I force you to do something like get a vaccination that would qualify as aggression. This distinction is important to liberal/libertarian thought.

Edit: OH Also, you COMPLETELY left out my other principle that of NON-HARM!!

...because we're focusing on the NAP? Honestly, I'm not here to beat you or destroy all of your arguments. Your tone suggests your getting defensive when the only reason I engaged you was to exchange ideas. I don't care who "wins" here. I don't care about winning internet arguments. For the record I find the non-harm principle much less problematic than NAP so.... one point for you?

Even if we were to allow the NAP to say that it is okay to not get vaccinated, the NHP would still be in force that we shouldn't allow for the conditions of others to be unnecessarily harmed if we can prevent it. That is my main point.

The NAP regards coercion as inherently bad. This isn't an "even if we were to allow" case; this is the primary idea of the NAP.

You're not understanding the NHP either. The NHP is concerned with constricting the actions of individuals to ones which don't harm others. It seeks to demarcate the proper limits of government. If we just take it to mean preventing harm in general from any source it takes on a very, very different meaning.

I don't mean to be mean here. I don't care about winning. I'm just trying to clarify.

So in what way would my version of the NAP not be applicable?

Lets take the case of an extremely contagious bio-chemical hazard or disease where we have the vaccination, but some people are refusing to be vaccinated for ideological reasons. It's a serious national security issue. And yes, we would be coercing these people if we made vaccination mandatory. If the choice is basically between mandatory vaccination or likely extinction which one do you choose?

There's no sharp distinction between the ethical and the political. Political decisions are made by people, by individuals. If I grab you and forcibly vaccinate you... I have coerced you and violated your autonomy even if I was acting as an agent of the state. I think national security is my biggest objection here.

Alright, so I'm someone who's also more libertarian in how I think and if you want to identity "autonomy" more with negative freedom that's fine with me. I also respect negative freedom and I think a lot of people recognize its importance.

What I can't do is jump from a general respect of negative freedom to embracing the non-aggression principle which categorically rejects any imposition of coercion. In other words, I can't jump from "I generally respect this principle" to "we need to abide by this principle in every possible circumstance."

I only mentioned having sex with... not being attracted to. Many gay men report having sex with women, do you think that doesn't make them gay? If a straight guy experiences same sex attraction for like a couple seconds does that make him bisexual?

Yes. You can't just say "use both" because in many situations they give opposite answers. And while I did define positive ethics as essentially utilitarianism, that's just a bad habit of mine. Positive ethics is anything telling you "you should do X"/"It would be wrong not to do X" instead of "you shouldn't do X"

Yes, thank you for the last definition. So much clearer.

Well, what does "reason" mean though? It is a tricky word and hence I avoid it.

This is Kant speaking, not me.

It all follows from the idea of not violating autonomy.

I feel like you're channeling Kant here, but Kant's idea of autonomy isn't a purely negative, libertarian idea of the subject. I don't think you can go from Kant's idea of autonomy directly to NAP (or at least I haven't seen it). It has been a while since I've picked up Kant, but I do remember that for Kant autonomy was intimately connected with rationality and to basically be bound by one's own laws. I believe he views rationality as a precondition for a free will.

I remember reading an article about a Korean guy in a gaming cafe who gamed for 72 hours and then dropped dead. Under the libertarian definition he had his freedom, but no way was this person driven by their rationality so I think Kant would say he was unfree. I'm happy to discuss this topic further.

Also any Kant experts here please let me know if I'm wrong.

I feel like we're just not agreeing on what "gay" means from LGBTQ. I'm from the US and in the US a gay man can still have sex with a woman and still be considered gay. It's just not as black-and-white as you take it to be, at least that's how we see things here. You treat it like it's an all or nothing thing.

You were totally right earlier on in your discussion with Gnonom where you said Darwin blurred the line between man and nature. Homosexuality activity is pervasive in nature and it's not uncommon to see same-sex pairings and I'm sure if we were able to follow matings habits out in the wild we'd see animals who appear to have a strong preference for same-sex mating based on their activity. It's the same for humans. That's all I'm talking -- a strong preference for same sex mating.

This, to me hides an important distinction. There is collateral damage and there is intentional targeting of civilian populations, like say in Dresden. I don't think things like this shortened the war. And I don't think the German bombing of civilian London helped their cause and perhaps actually made the British more determined.

This is a good response to Jacob. I want to point out that the intentional bombing of civilians almost certainly DID help shorten the war; case in point Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I think the historical consensus is that had these bombs not been developed and dropped it would have meant for an invasion of mainland Japan which would have been extremely bloody for US troops and prolonged the war considerably.

https://books.google.com/books?id=EftT_1bsPOAC&pg=PA179#v=onepage&q&f=false

Page 179 on Ovis Aries.

Last time I checked bisexuality is part of the LGBTQ group as well. Nature is pretty wild.

All right, well this is how I would approach it. Feel free to disagree, ask questions, clarification, etc.

Utilitarian "maximization of utility" and Kantian deontology or other deontological rules like the NAP are distinct philosophical systems. It really doesn't make sense to just pick and choose when you prefer one over the other because then it's really less about the logic of the systems and more ultimately up to your feelings or intuitions. I wouldn't "weigh" one against the other either; they're competing ideologies and if you believe in one then I think you should disregard the other. I've never heard of the two being reconciled.

In regard to making the case for one of them, Kant makes the case that his rules are derived from reason itself. It's very ambitious. Naturally, philosophers have a hard-on for this kind of thing so if you buy Kant's case then I figure that kind of settles it... you're a Kantian. Similarly, I remember I debated with someone over the non-aggression principle years ago and they also argued the principle was derived directly from reason.

The utilitarian case - and it's been some time since I looked into it - is definitely not based around such a strong claim. I think it's more of a mild common sense appeal and then we go from there. I'm not going to make the utilitarian case here - you can find it elsewhere - but ultimately you need to be comparing these two systems more as competing ideologies and less of 'how do we find balance?'

I know I'm not involved in this argument, but this stuck out at me:

We don't see LBGTQ in other species, only in human populations. This tells me that humans are diverse and versatile in their behaviors and societies are what put limitations on those diverse behaviors.

You need to read up on penguins, sir, plus countless other species if you don't think animals engage in gay, lesbian, or bisexual activity. It really is pervasive.

It's only Kantian or deontological in the sense that it is about a duty to a principle that considers the person qua person and not as utility to be maximized. Also, importantly (in my conception anyway), it is about not using people as a means. It is a strong version of this, as Kant's principle holds that you should not use people only as a means. However, I think this can be taken further, in that if you like the idea of a new person being born to do X and X (the parent's agenda for the child), yet this will inevitably cause harm to the child (as life has the possibilities for lots and lots of harm), then it is not permissible to force the parent's agenda on the child, as it is violating the non-harm principle (and the autonomous individual as someone who can be harmed and forced).

I think if we're going to progress in this discussion we need clear definitions. Maybe I haven't fully understood your argument so I'll do my best to re-phrase what I think you're saying and feel free to tell me if anything I'm saying is wrong or a misrepresentation of your argument. All right, here goes:

You're asking why positive ethics should outweigh negative ethics (and you seem to take the side that negative ethics should outweigh positive ethics.) It's crucial to define these terms though, and in your original post you define positive ethics more along the lines of maximizing well-being (this phrase is strongly linked to utilitarianism/consequentialism) versus negative ethics which is more about prohibitions and rules like the non-aggression principle or non-harm principle as well as other deontological principles which limit action. You're asking which should take priority. Am I understanding you right?

Invest it in or loan it to people starting businesses doing what?

If the machines are doing "the essentials" and humans are doing services there's still room to innovate with services. You could invest in a business related to facilitating services.

[Robots] need nothing from the humans,

This is a contentious point. Now, I'm not a mechanic or a physicist.... but every robot I've come across needs things. There could certainly be some kind of machine-to-machine economy where humans could find their own niche; I think the whole idea of a machine-to-machine economy was the idea for IOTA which is a cryptocurrency but maybe we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here. If humans are doing services I don't see why a robot couldn't pay for a cleaning.

then what are all of the other humans going to trade to the robots (or their owners) to get that food and other necessities?

They could trade with each other or provide upkeep or improvements to the machines. Maybe they could trade with the machines too.

If robot ownership is widely distributed there’s no problem, so this isn’t an argument against automation, but against concentrated ownership of the automatons.

I'm somewhat sympathetic with you here; if a billionaire or a government owns all of the robot super-soldiers we have a serious problem. Additionally, if AI gains some kind of self-consciousness we also have a potentially huge problem on our hands. I guess I'll agree with you here insofar as I'm against monopolies.

Ok, just keep in mind when you keep bringing up terms like "maximizing well-being" or "minimizing suffering" you're strongly, strongly hinting towards a utilitarian perspective of things. I've read Kant and he really isn't concerned with happiness or really even minimizing suffering. The NAP also isn't concerned with minimizing suffering.

A nice picture. Except what do Adam and Eve do with the money they earn, apart from pass it back and forth between them? The robots have no use for it, they just produce stuff and pass it around. There's no economy.

They could invest that money, loan it out, start a business with it, save it, gamble it, etc. there's a billion things they could do with that money and it would still be an economy.

Machines do need things by the way.

Ok, all I'm saying here is that negative ethics can be viewed through many different lenses. A negative ethic could be as mild as don't murder or steal from people because it violates their rights. I'm not going to come in and defend the non-aggression or try to reconcile it with birth because it's just not something I've ever really been able to make sense of. As far as I've heard negative ethics are just about getting people NOT to do certain things and we can conceive of that in many different ways.

I haven't read through the entirety of the thread... it's 10 pages but I'll give some of my initial thoughts.

Roughly speaking, negative ethics would be about preventing or mitigating suffering while a positive ethics would focus more on creating well-being and happiness.

I feel like you're conceiving of this idea of positive versus negative ethics through a utilitarian lense. And yes, when you perceive of it that way there can definitely be internal contradictions. I'm not a utilitarian and I'm not interested in defending it. Personally, when I think of a negative ethic it's more like the biblical "thou shalt not" or a political rights-based approach which forbids you from clubbing someone over the head as you walk down the street (i.e. acknowledging their rights at the bare minimum.) It doesn't in itself make for a particularly good society, but it does accomplish the bare minimum.

If you want society to be at least half-decent - and I think most of us do- therein lies the impetus behind a positive ethic.

I never got a response from you. I asked what is wrong with robots largely taking over production/manufacturing and humans moving into more service-related jobs.

You mentioned tractors earlier and tractors take jobs from people. I can't tell if you're trying to eliminate technology or not.

Okay, let me try a different example.

Lets say you're in an art museum and you go into one of the rooms there and a couple gallons of sewage water pours down from the ceiling with an overwhelming smell (lets say this event was orchestrated by an "artist.") This would elicit a greater emotional reaction out of a typical person than, say, viewing something by Picasso or Rembrandt. It would just seem to follow under your logic that whoever orchestrated the sewage dropping would be a greater artist than any of the painters of the past.

I'm not arguing with you here, I'm just trying to flush out your logic and making sure that I understand you correctly.

Anything thus presented to an audience to provoke an emotional reaction is art, whether or not the intention is to convey beauty. Something is good art when it is successful at evoking the intended reaction, where "intended reaction" can vary between the artist, the audience, the surrounding society, or some broader moral standard.

After WWII American soldiers would take nearby German civilians on tours of concentration camps. I guess Auschwitz is art then.

The Meaning of Morality
What do prescriptive claims, that attempt to say what is moral, even mean?

Bonus question: What do aesthetic claims, about beauty and comedy and tragedy and such, mean, and how do they relate to prescriptive claims about morality?

I'm a moral realist so I do believe moral claims express propositions; they can be true or false. In regard to an exact rational system to sort moral claims... I don't really know and I can't imagine we'll ever find one. It's kind of a mind-warp studying philosophy in college... nobody needs to explain to anyone in a different major or in a different walk of life that strangling babies is wrong. That kind of thing is understood without question, it's acknowledged in every culture, it's felt deep in the bones of the vast majority of the population. It's first felt and then it's justified. The justification part of it always seems post-hoc to me. At this point I'm sympathetic to some version of intuitonism I suppose, but I'm down to be questioned here and I could change my mind later.

I'm also an aesthetic realist and I believe beauty is both real thing (a property, I guess you could say) and that beauty is inherently valuable as a property and in turn ought to be preserved. Value ought to be preserved, but that's not to say it's always wrong to destroy a beautiful thing. I believe someone who can't grasp beautiful will have difficulty living a good, complete life. I do believe in the case of music that it can be learned (e.g. one often hears of someone slowly growing accustomed to, say, Bach or Mozart and growing to appreciate it.)

Anyway, I guess that's the bare bones of my thoughts. Anyone is welcome to challenge or comment on it.