Good and evil are relational. It is the relation between what is and what is adequate that makes things good or bad. There is nothing bad about cancer cells growing in a petri dish, only cancer cells interfering with health are a physical evil. — Dfpolis
I am surprised to find that you think we are designed at all. — Dfpolis
In the course of dying, our health will decline, and that is a physical, but not a moral, evil. So, what point are you making? — Dfpolis
To deteriorate is to become worse. In other words, something was better and has now lost its previous perfection. — Dfpolis
You seem to think ideas exist in the ether, and that they are not tied to a consciousness ground, and not subject to evolutionary principles.
— Pop
Yes, of course, just as numbers, functions, sets, properties, relationships, and all the other abstract things exist in the ‘above-heavenly world (hyperuranion)’ – which is just another way of saying that they don’t exist in space or time (but not outside them, either, for outsideness is a spatial notion) – and aren’t tied to awareness or evolution or anything conrete for that matter, be it physical, mindly, spatial, or temporal. — Tristan L
A masochist would have people cause him pain. Following the Golden Rule, would he have to conclude that he should cause other people pain ? — MMusings
It's just that here in America it's more of a losing battle for you. — 3017amen
Just a random coincidence or are we dealing with the same force, only at different scales? — TheMadFool
Cancer is a physical evil because it, itself, is a privation of health. — Dfpolis
First, we're not designed to live on carcinogens. If we were, they wouldn't harm us. — Dfpolis
Second, the very fact that you call it a "deterioration," means that it is a lesser state. i.e. one in which some perfection is no longer present. — Dfpolis
It is neither immature nor ranting to call things by their proper names. — Dfpolis
What do you mean by "text"? Where did Tristan limit his purview to texts? — Luke
However, not every string of characters is an idea. — Luke
Rome conquered them first — Gregory
This is also incorrect. I, and most other people, accept the fact that bad things happen. I do not wish to continue if you are going to engage in further ad hominem attacks. — Dfpolis
I never implied that it was. — Dfpolis
So? The evil is still a privation -- the lack of a perfection in a human being. — Dfpolis
For saying that they make up things like every religion in the world? — Gregory
And this view collapses charge and parity into a single formalism (or at least, that was what I have been meaning to check more carefully). — apokrisis
I said that was their intent. You can't prove otherwise — Gregory
No it would be "(another part of)will" deciding to chose, because you don't like indecision for instance. — ChatteringMonkey
If you took pleasure in harm to others, you would lack the disposition to empathize proper to a social animal, which humans are. So, you would be a defective human being. — Dfpolis
because it deprives their bodies of their proper function. — Dfpolis
When we look at examples of evil, we always see a privation of some perfection -- of good health, of justice, of compassion, of rights, etc. So, while you may use words as you wish, I prefer to analyze examples to understand what terms mean. — Dfpolis
Yes, it is literally evil -- a privation of good health. — Dfpolis
One might point to ideologies that put an emphasis on individual liberties, and look for an explanation in people wanting to rationalize their ideologically inspired beliefs. — ChatteringMonkey
I don't think that is what motivates those people holding those ideas. They want to be defiant — ChatteringMonkey
Kenosha Kid, I'd like to add to that, that while the idea itself from the example you gave may be stupid, I can understand the general sentiment behind it. People have been lied to continuously in order to get them to sacrifice for the greater good, only to learn that the greater good usually meant some select group.
So rather than stupidity, it seem to me it's more a case of wilful defiance. There is no trust whatsoever in what authorities say, and a sense of living in a world that is only out to get you... which has led to a deep cynicism and instinctive reactions to try to repel manipulation. — ChatteringMonkey
We were not discussing subjective moral character, but whether good and evil can be objective. — Dfpolis
I find myself increasingly incline towards misanthropy. It's the form of Humanism that realises that all we have is each other, then looks around in despair. — Banno
Some people opt to be non-religious for the following reason: different religions make different and contradictory claims — Jjnan1
The existence of an equally rational opposite, at most, diminishes the degree of confidence in their warrant, but it does not mean that one should just give up belief in some set of religious claims since one still has some reason that appeals to a particular person in such a way that it makes a particular claim the case for that person. Hence, the original argument seems to not succeed. — Jjnan1
I was steering towards a discussion of chirality. That should have been obvious. — apokrisis
So the difference between an electron and a positron is simply that one is left handed, the other right, in its “spin”. — apokrisis
Intense belief must be backed by equally sufficient evidence. — Josh Vasquez
You are confused. I am not saying that good or bad acts have a moral dimension independently of the intent of the agent, just that they are objectively good or bad. — Dfpolis
It's not about Jews in particular. Religious documents, like the Book of Mormons for example, were written in order to take over a region of people — Gregory
Morality reflects the agent's intentionality, not directly the good or evil (privation of good) of acts. — Dfpolis
You assert that ‘clothes are necessary for basic survival’, but many posters here have pointed out that clothes are needed to survive only in some circumstances, not all. There are, in fact, many human experiences in which nakedness is not even a health risk, let alone a risk to survival. Clothes are useful for survival, but not necessary. — Possibility
Acts can be objectively good and evil — Dfpolis
Dooesnt dawn on them that first century Jews might have had an agenda in writing the Gospels. Like the take over of Rome and the West. And isn't that exactly what happened — Gregory
One argument in favor of (1) is:
a) Logical inference requires that premises and conclusions have truth-values.
b) There are logical inferences (and other logical relations) between normative statements.
c) Therefore normative statements have truth-values. — MMusings
Not sure if you made a typo here, but objectivism as I mean it is context-DEpendent but observer-INdependent. — Pfhorrest
who is making the judgement is an important part of the context of the moral statement — Kenosha Kid
When we judge moral acts, we must take them out of context to some degree. Our brains simply lack the capacity to represent everything that might be relevant. So, we are forced to deal with abstractions, treating what seems most relevant to us -- not the situation in its full complexity. That is why Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics that we most not expect the same degree of exactness in all sciences. — Dfpolis
↪Isaac You and Kenosha Kid are the first two to come to mind. He really seems to go back and forth about whether he actually seems like a relativist in practice, throughout his descriptions of his position, but he consistently calls himself one. — Pfhorrest
What light can or cannot do is irrelevant to my point. It is similar in other ways, which is why I brought it up. My arguments have not been based on light signals. — noAxioms