As to the test for murder, there is such a test: would you consent to be murdered (not would you want to be murdered); do you imagine that everyone would or should consent to be murdered? And then why not?
— tim wood
But that is not a test for whether murder is wrong,its a test for whether I'd want it done to me....
And...back to the word salad again I'm afraid. — Isaac
The question is not whether you desire one; no one desires to have a flu shot. The question is, would you consent to have one? — tim wood
But likely you would not consent to murder because murder is not a good thing. — tim wood
Do you accept as meaningful the proposition that something - anything - is. X is. This table here is. Relative? Depends on how I feel about it? What do you say? — tim wood
But likely you would not consent to murder because murder is not a good thing. And most people would reason it out that way. — tim wood
Why are human emotional responses so frequently characterised as mere preferences? Why can't they be, in the context of morality, profound and heartfelt passionate dispositions?
— ChrisH
Exactly. There's a weird bias against things that are mental phenomena, where the bias has it that something is far less valuable, worthwhile, worth talking about, etc. if that's the case.
Given how important love is to most of humanity, you'd expect this bias to lead to people claiming that love can't be just a mental phenomenon--and maybe some folks do claim that, I don't know. — Terrapin Station
Morality. All humans follow one after (mostly)adopting their first world-view via language acquisition.
— creativesoul
In my view it doesn't at all depend on language-acquisition. — Terrapin Station
Moral agency requires thinking about thought/belief.
— creativesoul
Because? — Terrapin Station
Reason can change one's passions. Therefore, it is not a slave to one's passions.
— creativesoul
Okay, go ahead and reason me out of my passionate belief that murder is wrong. — S
I'm after what grounds all morality in order to compare it with conventional moral discourse.
— creativesoul
Unless you bring it with you, other than my brief and scattered remarks, and perhaps not even then, you won’t find what you’re after here. People are too bound up in projecting outward to demonstrate, rather than retreating inward to discover, those grounds. — Mww
People are too bound up in projecting outward to demonstrate, rather than retreating inward to discover, those grounds. — Mww
There's a weird bias against things that are mental... — Terrapin Station
...commonality has no normative weight except for people who happen to be rah rah conformity. — Terrapin Station
An exception negates the claim. — creativesoul
Desires, wants, needs, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, etc. Reason is not distinct from any of these things. Reason is thinking about thought/belief. Thought/belief is chock full of emotional meaning, wants, needs, and desires... — creativesoul
I'm not quite sure what you're arguing here. My point was that merely "saving lives" cannot be presumed to be a goal above all others, such that any technology or lifestyle change which brings about this goal can be given objective superiority over one's that do less well in this regard. People have goals other than staying alive for as long as possible.
Im not, in any sense suggesting that society as a whole has a duty to make everyone happy, but I think we're really straying too far from our objective common ground when we start deciding that someone's happiness is not 'good enough' type of happiness. Yes, I personally think that getting your own way shouldn't be something that always makes you happy. I personally feel that some of the things people claim to want are 'ridiculous'. But I have absolutely no grounds whatsoever to tell them that they are objectively wrong to feel that way. — Isaac
The more important point, to me, though, is that following intuition simply feels better and so automatically has a higher weight in those situations where the right course of action is being weighed merely on a preponderance of evidence.
In other cases, where the evidence is overwhelming, them yes, intuition can be cast aside. — Isaac
Rhetoric is a sure sign that one's position/argument is sorely lacking. — creativesoul
I'm no theist. That's a funny thing to say about someone like me... you clearly haven't read much of my writing. — creativesoul
I'm of the very strong belief that we can acquire knowledge of that which existed prior to our awareness and/or naming it.
Aren't you? — creativesoul
Morality is codified rules of behaviour. Code is language. — creativesoul
We can try. We ought try. — creativesoul
If one gets that wrong, then they've gotten all sorts of other things wrong as a result. — creativesoul
This is interesting, to say the least. Did you come up with emotivism? Except for those who happen to be rah rah conformity, you say? Why should we equate what's right with what feels right, and vice versa? — creativesoul
Moral agency is thinking about morality. — creativesoul
What's weird about it? — creativesoul
Haven't you ever taken an action that you thought/believed and/or strongly felt was good, right. and/or moral at the time only to later find out that you were sorely mistaken? — creativesoul
You talk about using reason to persuade people of both methods and perhaps moral values they might actually prefer if only they tried them — Isaac
And there is no exception to Hume's claim that reason is the slave of the passions, — S
Reason is important in figuring out how to appeal to someone, but re the present topic, you have to know the moral stances that person already holds, especially their core/foundational stances. Particularly if you can find some apparent conflict with other stances they hold, you can try to persuade them to another stance via an appeal to consistency. That might not work, but it can, and does often enough, that it can be worth trying. — Terrapin Station
As long as he wants to, then, we have no complaint."
Is that about right? — tim wood
We can try. We ought try.
— creativesoul
Sure, but only to the extent of patience, re: when barking at the moon and Wiki have equal dialectical authority, I find myself with nothing to say. — Mww
It would appear, then, that if the persons of the relativists on this thread were gathered away somewhere and informed that the lord of the castle intended to murder them, the best they could do is say, "Are you sure that he wants to?" And on being answered in the affirmative, would have to reply, "Ok, then, we just needed to know that he wants to. As long as he wants to, then, we have no complaint."
Is that about right? — tim wood
What's weird about it is that it's difficult to understand where anyone got the idea that there's something inherently inferior about mental phenomena. — Terrapin Station
I think the idea is that mental phenomena are subject to bias and subjective limitations which weaken conclusions while if something can be confirmed seperate from those bias’s and subjective limitations then its a stronger conclusion. — DingoJones
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