True, but very superficial. Why did they enact them?People enacted them. That is their origin. — TheWillowOfDarkness
I agree with this, but not with what immediately follows it.For the most part, they are not planned at all, but driven by an instinctual response — TheWillowOfDarkness
And their own instinct to dominate society is in-born? :sWould be kings are fooled into the scapegoating by their own instinct to dominate society. — TheWillowOfDarkness
So if leaders don't get anywhere and they must be believed by others, how does it happen that they are ever beleived in the first place and so gain power over them?But leaders do not get anywhere on their own. They must be believed by others. — TheWillowOfDarkness
No, I wouldn't say that. For someone to be immoral, they have to be immoral by choice in the first place, so obviously not by nature.even someone like yourself, who is supposedly aware, don their Pharisee garb announcing gay people are immoral by their nature — TheWillowOfDarkness
Claiming that their behaviour is immoral isn't the same as scapegoating them. It is true that scapegoats are often accused to immorality amongst other things, but the primary accusation is responsibility for the ills of society.scapegoating of them — TheWillowOfDarkness
Idyllic.What's prior to a given structure depends on the states if the world prior to it's development. In the case of a particular issue, this may well be entirely different for the particular people in question-- e.g. gay people going about their business in whatever society before the new religious leaders come down announcing homosexuality is the scourge to be wiped out, indigenous populations holding property and being valued community members prior to being overtaken in colonisation, etc. — TheWillowOfDarkness
They are myths, because they scapegoat the powerful.These analysis of power are not myths. — TheWillowOfDarkness
To me, all this ignores the spontaneous power of violence that would otherwise destroy a community in its natural state. Scapegoating is the spontaneous, unplanned, instinctual response of transferring the destructive violence of the community onto a scapegoat who is held responsible for it and guilty, deserving death. This allows the community to unite around the scapegoat, who is thus both guilty of the violent crisis of the community and also responsible for its settlement. That's why the victim is often sacralized and perceived to be a god - we have this evidence in abundance in available anthropological research. It is only after this event 0 that structures start to form - rituals, prohitibitions, political institutions (kings, etc.).These aren't causal accounts of structure, but rather accounts of being of structure and power. For any structure, there are a multitude of causes (leaders, masses, instincts, fears, circumstances of power, in some rare cases, deliberate planning by an elite, etc.), which are not addressed in this analysis. In this analysis, the point is about what is done to a particular people under structure, regardless of how it might have been caused. — TheWillowOfDarkness
If a functional watch was randomly assembled by the pounding of the waves and washed up on shore, would it be immoral to smash that watch given it has no owner? — VagabondSpectre
I noticed you have this misunderstanding of virtue ethics (at least of the Aristotelian kind) ever since we discussed MacIntyre in another thread. You seem to think that virtue ethics cannot say X is wrong, because that somehow has to do with Kant's categorical imperative. — Agustino
:s Aristotle had already looked into chastity (called continence). Nothing is imported and renamed a virtue. Chastity itself is a virtue. And it's not so because of any rules.renamed a virtue — mcdoodle
No it's not, it's effectively saying that chastity is a virtue - promiscuity is the opposite of that.'promiscuity is wrong' — mcdoodle
Aristotle had already looked into chastity (called continence). Nothing is imported and renamed a virtue. Chastity itself is a virtue. And it's not so because of any rules. — Agustino
And what does promiscuity mean if not having multiple sexual partners? — Agustino
I suggest you pop out the Nichomachean Ethics and check what it says about continence. Doesn't continence involve self-restraint and self-control, the opposite of promiscuity? Isn't licentiousness (including sexual) closely associated with incontinence? :sNeither of them for Aristotle, have anything to do with sexual continence or incontinence. You have just misunderstood, you must be reading Aristotle at second- or third-hand. — mcdoodle
What do you mean not actually solving it? How isn't the demonstration that the problem doesn't exist in the first place a solution to it? It resolves the entire conundrum that arises out of it. — Agustino
We should employ Aristotle's "four causes" model because this model enables us to do ontology and metaphysics - in other words it enables us to understand the structure of reality and the way things fit together with each other. The approach to knowledge of modern science is opportunistic - it aims to create models of the world which enable predictability and which can be translated into mathematical terms. This isn't a problem so long as all you do with it is calculate and predict - but it is a problem if you are trying to understand the nature of reality. The motivation of the activity you engage in will alter the decisions you take, which can lead you to become blind to certain other truths.
The scientific approach, for this reason, offers merely useful models, but there are problems with those models when you attempt to abstract an ontology from them without any other theoretical alterations. They don't much care for coherency except in-so-far as it is required for predictability. This is exactly the disagreement MU and I are having with apokrisis in another thread - the metaphysics science adopts is opportunistic and does not much care for coherency. — Agustino
Well, I think you've picked on the wrong cause from Aristotle's model. That cause, the efficient cause, is actually precisely the one science says we do need to understand a thing. Efficient causes are important to understand because they show the link between causes and effects. The efficient cause of a statue is the sculptor. In this case, knowledge of the efficient cause shows us how the state comes about, and that it is the effect of another cause. But this efficient cause doesn't necessarily have to be external to the formal cause of an object (or to its essence) - such as in the case of radioactive decay. — Agustino
Well, the causes are all related to each other. Without an efficient cause, you cannot understand how the material and formal causes are related together towards the production of the final cause. How would you make sense of them then? — Agustino
basically understanding one particular aspect of existence is always performed by placing it in connection with all other aspects of existence and seeing how it connects. Like a piece within a puzzle. You cannot understand the piece except by classifying it in its proper context. — Agustino
Also, the slight suggestion above that categories prevent differences and variations isn't the understanding Aristotle had. Obviously, a particular triangle isn't the same as triangularity. But a particular triangle is a particular instantiation of triangularity, even though it may have features that only approximate the nature of triangularity. So there's obviously differences between particular things and universals. — Agustino
this isn't at all true. I don't know why you conceive of Aristotle as some idiot savage that couldn't tell his right hand from his left hand and couldn't see that there exists variation between animals, that children don't inherit all the traits of their parents, and so on. He clearly did know this, in fact, Aristotle was the first to dissect a chicken egg and analyse the embryo and how it develops, including identifying that the embryo has a heartbeat. Doing so, he analysed exactly the evolution of the particular animal and noticed that this process was somewhat different and not exactly identical except in certain forms (patterns of organisation), between different particular eggs.
Aristotle was as scientific as you get in terms of mindset. In fact, he criticised Plato's Academy for spoon-feeding students imaginary things about Realms of Forms, etc. and not anchoring them in concrete and multi-faceted reality as his Lyceum did. — Agustino
Darwin's understanding is not at odds with Aristotle's model of causality. First of all, it couldn't be, because Aristotle's model is metaphysical anyway. It's important to understand this distinction between physical facts and metaphysics. But more importantly, the "complex worldly forces" are nothing but causal agents themselves, which fits perfectly into Aristotle's model. — Agustino
I wouldn't say an organism's behaviour, in this case, is its final cause. No, not at all - it's final cause is that for the sake of which it behaves in the first place. And there's nothing in an organisms adaptability to its environment that stops us from comprehending it using the 4 cause model. Indeed, it is only within this model that we can understand how and why the organism uses its environment the way it does. — Agustino
Yep, Aristotle inferred his four causes out of an analysis of motion and change. — Agustino
No, as I said above, the final cause is that for the sake of which the thing acts. This is not the same as what the thing does. — Agustino
To a certain extent yes, not necessarily a moral human. Why not? Because certain things that make a good human being - such as health for example - aren't entirely within one's control. So if a human being is sick, they're obviously not immoral, even though they are a bad human being in-so-far as they are sick, since they do not choose to be sick. That's why morality involves the application of free will with regards to teleology. — Agustino
The obvious fact that non-adherence to it would logically imply choosing to harm one's self in more or less damaging ways. — Agustino
Well no, it's not entirely beyond our current level of understanding. Extreme variation of behaviour (more extreme in humans than in other animals) is easily accounted for by the form of the human being - man is a rational animal and as such has freedom of choice. Out of freedom of choice we would indeed expect to see very varied behaviour. — Agustino
All people are teleologically oriented towards the same end - eudaimonia as Aristotle would say - but they each think there are different ways to get there. This does not mean that each particular human being is as wise as he can be in any way or that the ways he chooses are the right ones. The presence of choice and reason make chosing the wrong thing entirely possible in ignorance. — Agustino
No, just like the reductionism that Michael attempted before, this actually obfuscates the issues. Saying that we're identified merely by a set of genes may be, strictly speaking, correct, but it gives off the idea that we can be reduced to those genes in isolation, just how for Michael, sexual attraction can be reduced to the chemical happenings in one brain, in isolation from other brains. This is wrong. — Agustino
A lot of things. They are negentropic biological systems far from equilibrium, which means they need to take in nutrients and pass out waste products (these are absolutely constant, it cannot ever be otherwise given our physical laws), — Agustino
humans are rational creatures with free will — Agustino
we are subject to disease and aging (which are also inevtiable), women have to be pregnant for 9 months, — Agustino
there's a lot of invariant structures in what makes a human being human - much more than there are in triangles actually — Agustino
The presence of variation though does not in any way affect what the objective standard is. There's also sick people in the world, does that mean that sickness is an objective standard of goodness, or that we cannot understand that sickness is bad? :s Of course not. The presence of variation in terms of health does not prevent us from understanding what a healthy human being is, and that health is good. — Agustino
In fact, it is precisely an understanding of human form, however vague, and of human teleology, that enables us to universally accept that health is good and to be desired, and illness is bad and to be avoided. And if some human being freely chose to be ill, we would classify them as diseased, not as normal. — Agustino
...Variation is exactly what we would expect, especially given the form of human beings which allows for freedom of choice, even when that freedom of choice goes against the organism's interests.... — Agustino
No, I cannot accept that, because it implies that feeling happy is all that happiness consists of. That's wrong. A murderer can feel happy, it doesn't follow from that that he really is happy. Indeed, the more happy he is, the more unhappy he is in reality. — Agustino
Yeah, freedom to choose is actually part of what it means to be human - you know, those invariant structures of being human that you don't really want to accept. — Agustino
That's like saying that willingly putting your hand in the fire doesn't seem to be a clear case of harm and immorality. It's just playing with words. By definition that is a case of harm and immorality. Repressing a side of yourself by definition is harming yourself - that's what repressing it means - forcing it to stay quiet, disregarding it, not caring for it. — Agustino
Yeah, I can see that you are confused. Probably because you haven't much studied psychoanalysis before. — Agustino
All rivalry leads to inability to enjoy objects. It's very simple how. The rival is an obstacle to your enjoyment of the object - by definition. Capitalism leads to the concentration of wealth in a few hands, hence the inability of the many to enjoy wealth. Promiscuity leads to the gradual impossibility of intimacy and sexual fulfilment. And so forth. — Agustino
And what is this if not fascination with rivals in the sexual game? :s — Agustino
Yes that is a logical possibility, you have yet to show that it holds in practice. Furthermore, intimacy isn't some kind of currency that you have a limited amount of, so until you formulate a clear understanding of intimacy it is pointless to discuss this. — Agustino
Right, even in our society we do need families in order to adequately take care of infants. Some people can do without this, precisely because the majority doesn't do without it. — Agustino
I hope you're not under the imagination that those women would be happy to be shared. — Agustino
No, because polygamy isn't a way to harmonise all aspects of our soul together. That's precisely the problem. You may solve an economic issue through polygamy, but you do that by neglecting other issues. — Agustino
Maybe, but that wouldn't be a good situation to be in. It would be like having a sickness that one doesn't have much choice about. So not immoral, but not good either. It would be a temporary solution at most. — Agustino
They're not going to be happy with lack of strictness either. People are woefully bad at determining what will make them happy. — Agustino
It's a true psychological fact, virtually unanimously accepted in psychoanalysis for example. If you look at most people's lives you will see this as well. Most people aren't exactly happy - they always find reasons to complain, new desires, etc. Everyone is neurotic to a certain extent or another, not everyone is pathologically neurotic. Freud for example differentiated between an ordinary Oedipus Complex (which all people have more or less) and an abnormal one, which is pathological. — Agustino
Happiness comes by degrees, they can achieve some degrees of happiness, I'm sure of that. — Agustino
Yes, mental health issues are frequently more commonly seen amongst the trans, gay, etc. — Agustino
Well yes, the cuck is latently homosexual. He has reached the stage of desire where the sexual object can only be enjoyed in the presence of the rival. — Agustino
This doesn't follow, they would not prohibit homosexual sex in that case, just people being entirely homosexual. — Agustino
Well yes, most people are incapable of too much self-control. Another psychological fact. — Agustino
It's not peddled by third wave feminism, the argument is as old as Kant, and perhaps even older. But it is not intellectually bankrupt. Of course you don't actually treat her exactly like an inanimate object. The point is that there is a gradation from treating someone as a person to treating them as an object. You are lower down towards the object end in this case, but obviously not as low as raping her for example — Agustino
No. You confuse what they think will fulfil them and hence what they do, with what would actually fulfil them. — Agustino
No, we're not individuals either. Just look at when someone posted a picture of feet in the Shoutbox - everyone else started to do the same. Just because people around here have a higher IQ doesn't mean they're less prone to succumb to mimetic tendencies which are biologically inherent in us. — Agustino
Metaphysics isn't the same as absolute certainty. That's what Descartes thought, and he was wrong. Nobody needs metaphysics to do what? You do need metaphysics if you want to understand reality, it's inescapable if that's what you want to do. — Agustino
One point of difference, for example, is in my conception of sex as having two purposes, intimacy and reproduction, and so long as one of them is met, the activity isn't immoral - with the former taking precedence over the latter if they ever come in conflict. — Agustino
The same way we know the telos of any other thing/activity - by looking for the end towards which it is directed. In the case of sex, one such end is clearly reproduction, since it can only occur through sexual intercourse. Clearly, we see that sex is necessary in the economy of nature in order to allow for reproduction. If all pleasure was somehow eliminated from sex, it would still be necessary in order to permit for reproduction.How do we come to know the telos of something like sex? — darthbarracuda
You look at the context in which the action happens and understand how it fits in - how it connects with everything else.Do we simply look at nature and "recognize" function? How does this work? — darthbarracuda
Not necessarily. They could also be accidental features. That's why you have to conceive of the activity in its context and determine if the feature is accidental in that context or essential. With regards to sexuality for non-human animals, it is clear that something like pleasure is accidental (just a means) and something like reproduction essential (the end). Nature could do without the one, but not without the other.Does a pattern imply an essential feature, though? — darthbarracuda
I have already answered that. You have to look at the activity or thing in its full context and how it fits in with everything else. You will detect both essential features and accidental ones when you do that. I've illustrated how that is done with regards to non-human sexuality.How do we determine this, though? What is this process? — darthbarracuda
The same way we know the telos of any other thing/activity - by looking for the end towards which it is directed. — Agustino
Yes, the telos of the whole Creation is God, and as such all Creation attempts to draw closer to God, however unknowingly.Isn't the telos of everything (object and person) primarily to exist? — MysticMonist
No, since it's not the necessary end of their existence on any level of analysis.Do squirrels serve a telos to also be food for foxes and for methods of distributions of acorns? — MysticMonist
Who's food for whom is probably an accidental feature that emerged along with sin. But obviously, this would be going beyond the virtue ethics of Aristotle.Does God design nuts and squirrels and foxes together on purpose or are they related only by chance? — MysticMonist
Well - as I said, ultimately the telos of the whole Creation is God. The First Cause is also the end towards which all things are oriented.Wouldn't part of the telos of human sexuality be not just intimacy between partners but as a shadow/manifestation/mode of Divine love and our ecstatic union with God? — MysticMonist
I'm trying to figure out this concept of telos/purpose. — MysticMonist
Wouldn't part of the telos of human sexuality be not just intimacy between partners but as a shadow/manifestation/mode of Divine love and our ecstatic union with God? Just like love of a parent is a shadow/manifestion/mode of divine love. — MysticMonist
as we advance through things, at the most general level, the telos of everything put together is seen to be God. God is thus seen as being that which holds everything together. — Agustino
In the case of sex, one such end is clearly reproduction, since it can only occur through sexual intercourse. Clearly, we see that sex is necessary in the economy of nature in order to allow for reproduction. If all pleasure was somehow eliminated from sex, it would still be necessary in order to permit for reproduction — Agustino
Feser and MacIntyre's arguments confuse the notion of good as a theoretical notion with the notion of good as a directive. Here's the way their basic arguments are supposed to work:
Every act that fulfills human human nature is good.
X is an act that fulfills human nature.
Therefore, X is (so far forth) good.
The problem is that the term good in the premise has the theoretical meaning "what contributes to the fullness of being that is due a thing," or something along those lines. However, for the argument to establish a normative conclusion, the term must have, not its theoretical sense, but its practical sense, namely, "something fulfilling that is to be done or pursued" (and the term will have a practical meaning through its being part of a practical proposition). For if the meaning of the conclusion were merely "X contributes to the fullness of being that is due a (human) being," then we would need to add a proposition to reach the properly practical or normative proposition: one would need the properly practical proposition "that which contributes to the fullness of being that is due a (human) being is to be done or pursued."
This point can be illustrated more clearly by looking at the type of syllogism that is supposed to prove that an action should not be done:
Whatever impedes the fulfillment of one's nature is bad.
Y impedes the fulfillment of one's nature.
Therefore, Y is bad.
Again, this is a valid syllogism, but only if the term bad in the conclusion is taken in a theoretical sense rather than a practical sense.
For human beings, there seems to be another end which is simultaneous to reproduction - and that is intimacy. But that isn't so for animals - just for human beings. That's why human beings attempt to make love, and not just have sex and reproduce. — Agustino
Well, it's pretty much the standard view of sin in Christianity - namely that human sin in Heaven affected ALL of Creation which is now corrupt. It's also quite standard in certain forms of Neoplatonic Gnosticism where this world is seen as created by an evil demiurge, and hence also being evil itself. So you should check out those sources of thought. St. Augustune, Valentinius, Plotinus come to mind.Anything I should read about this view of sin in the meantime? — MysticMonist
Yes, it may be possible that intimacy is possible for some animals too. I don't have much beef with that, I said human-only because it's just most evident in humans. Animals, even the higher primates you mention, are not capable of the same extensive range and nuance of emotions as humans are.I think this is disputable. Many animals display intimacy, such as penguins and the higher primates. Animals are not simply reproductive robots. — Thorongil
His accusation seems to be one of equivocation on the word "good", and in the end it's nothing but another attempt to reintroduce Hume's fact / value dichotomy. I'm happy however to grant the first sense of the good both times - I don't see why we need the second.Feser and MacIntyre's arguments confuse the notion of good as a theoretical notion with the notion of good as a directive. Here's the way their basic arguments are supposed to work:
Every act that fulfills human human nature is good.
X is an act that fulfills human nature.
Therefore, X is (so far forth) good.
The problem is that the term good in the premise has the theoretical meaning "what contributes to the fullness of being that is due a thing," or something along those lines. However, for the argument to establish a normative conclusion, the term must have, not its theoretical sense, but its practical sense, namely, "something fulfilling that is to be done or pursued" (and the term will have a practical meaning through its being part of a practical proposition). For if the meaning of the conclusion were merely "X contributes to the fullness of being that is due a (human) being," then we would need to add a proposition to reach the properly practical or normative proposition: one would need the properly practical proposition "that which contributes to the fullness of being that is due a (human) being is to be done or pursued."
This point can be illustrated more clearly by looking at the type of syllogism that is supposed to prove that an action should not be done:
Whatever impedes the fulfillment of one's nature is bad.
Y impedes the fulfillment of one's nature.
Therefore, Y is bad.
Again, this is a valid syllogism, but only if the term bad in the conclusion is taken in a theoretical sense rather than a practical sense.
Animals, even the higher primates you mention, are not capable of the same extensive range and nuance of emotions as humans are. — Agustino
Rather it is, in the end, a free choice, which has to be willed. And beyond that, the good is, of course, the telos of the will itself. — Agustino
No, they are defined as moral. You're now confusing morality as it pertains to virtue ethics, with Kantian concepts of morality.But it's only an instrumental good, not a moral good. — Thorongil
The question is simply answered by the telos itself. You should pursue it because it is the telos of your being. If it is the telos of your being, it means that this is what your being is directed towards, which implies pursuing it. Now if you answer "so what?", then no other answer is possible - in other words, you would have got to the point where no reason can even be provided. If X being your telos isn't sufficient reason to pursue it, what could, in principle, be that sufficient reason?So why should I pursue it? — Thorongil
Depends on what you mean by normative. I don't think of ethics as "imperative" - that's why there exists freedom of will. But on the other hand, there is an objective morality out there.So what is holding you back from proposing a normative ethic? — Thorongil
No, they are defined as moral. You're now confusing morality as it pertains to virtue ethics, with Kantian concepts of morality. — Agustino
If it is the telos of your being, it means that this is what your being is directed towards, which implies pursuing it. — Agustino
If X being your telos isn't sufficient reason to pursue it, what could, in principle, be that sufficient reason? — Agustino
Just that happiness and directedness are not separate from fulfilment of one's telos.Explain. — Thorongil
It would depend. Some ancient Aristotelian would say that since sin is ignorance, you cannot really choose to not pursue it. Even when you're sinning, you are pursuing the good (however blindly). It's only the later Christians who introduced the radical conception of freedom which doesn't disagree with the Greek conception that sin is ignorance, but adds that the will can willfully blind the intellect and maintain a state of ignorance, even when knowledge is offered and available.The bolded part is a non-sequitur. It doesn't imply that, for you admit that one can choose not to pursue it. — Thorongil
No, such a reason cannot exist, nor is it needed.To explain why one ought to pursue it requires a reason other than the telos itself. — Thorongil
Happiness is nothing but achieving one's telos though. So the pursuit of one's telos just is the pursuit of happiness.Using Adler, one reason to pursue one's telos might be that it makes one happy (in the Aristotelian sense) — Thorongil
This is a tautology because of the relationship between happiness, telos, and good. Good and happiness are defined as a function of one's telos. So invoking happiness is nothing but a sophism since it doesn't add anything else - it's just another category which says the same thing as what was already said before.True happiness results in fulfilling the teloi of one's nature.
It is good to pursue true happiness.
Therefore, it is good to pursue the teloi of one's nature. — Thorongil
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