Do you have a conclusive argument justifying an imperative moral system? — Mark S

I don't know what that is.

If not, what moral guidance would you suggest as superior to what I propose here?

You have not proposed any moral prescriptions, so I'm not sure what you're asking. And I've previously stated my position with respect to your so-called "science of morality":

(Feb 2024)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/885162

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/885373

(2023)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/777275

GFY and watch the videos I've linked throughout this thread. Or go troll someone else with your ahistorical apologia and disinformation.

In no way does the science of morality (as the study of what is and has been descriptively moral) make our ultimate moral goals an empty phrase — Mark S

I didn't claim or imply that it did. You make it an empty phrase, Mark, by confessing you do not know what "our ultimate moral goals" are and yet propose that a "science of morality" can describe conditions whivh determine them. This kind of jugglery is of no use to moral philosophy.

Jews are one family. — BitconnectCarlos

:roll: Tell that to the non-Ashkenazim of color (Mizrani Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ethopian Jews, Indian Jews) in Israel who are racially discriminated against and treated as second-class Israelis.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel
.

So what? Non sequitur.

So what? Besides, modern Ashkenazim certainly were not – they are European invaders and colonizer-settlers.

@Jack Cummins

Religion is (especially in its manifest theocratic forms are) the denial, or negation, of morality (e.g. teleological suspension of the ethical, theodicy of "ends justify means", etc) as e.g. Confucius' / Hillel's "golden rule", Plato's Euthyphro, Epicurus' "Tetrapharmakos", Spinoza's Ethics ... or Phillipa Foot's Natural Goodness, etc suggest.

:up: :up: "Manifest Destiny" was, after all, an imperialist theodicy ...

Colonizer-settler. :shade:

Psychologism is unwarranted. There are plenty of non-depressed, even happy, nihilists pessimists cynics & fatalists. Besides, if "nothing matters", then that statement also doesn't matter (just as "all is meaningless" is meaningless too).

Some blacks were fine with slavery & with their roles under the confederacy. — Moses

How do you know this? (Of course you don't.) Sounds to me like the "happy slaves" trope of white supremacist propaganda. 'Uncle Toms' (e.g. Clarence Thomas) were/are not ever just "fine with their roles" ... But don't worry, Moses, I won't link you again to videos critical of Israeli oppression and atrocities – clearly, you're just fine with your role. :shade:

So "our ultimate moral goals" is just an empty phrase, mere rhetoric, and your "science of morality" "determines" that. :ok: Mere scientism ...

:eyes: :rofl:

There is nothing threatening about opposing occupation and oppression. That is not antisemitism; you can agree with it or not. Even being anti-zionist is not antisemitic. There are hundreds of thousands, if not more, of ultra-orthodox Jews, including some who are in the Israeli government, who are anti-zionist but they are not antisemitic. They see themselves as the epitome of Jewishness and Jewish tradition.

So there is politics and there is prejudice, and if we don't make a distinction between the two, then what we are actually doing is enforcing a kind of silence over the policies that have been conducted by the Israeli government for a long time and that have ultimately culminated now in the utter destruction of Gaza. — Omer Bartov, Israeli-American Holocaust scholar

:fire:

... There's been no strong response to these campuses protests which involve vandalism (and apparently now hostage taking) and protestors barring Jewish students from campus in scenes reminiscent of the 1930s in Europe. — BitconnectCarlos

Your willful ignorance or disinformation is pathetic, BC, especially since many of the protestors are Jewish students. :shade:


@RogueAI @tim wood @Moses and other Crimes Against Humanity (zion-über-alles!) apologists :eyes:

What I can't figure out is, what Trump voters think they're voting for. — Wayfarer

It's never been a mystery to me – formerly a 7 year black resident of the "ruby red" deep south following 13 years in the once "bright red" gun-crazed, desert southwest US – that MAGA (Make Apartheid Great Again (aka "Morons Against Great America")) cult followers and non-cult supporters, who have taken over the GOP (Gimps of Putin), are 'voting' for a patriarchal, white ethnostate dictatorship. No doubt, my friend, there will be blood, especially when it becomes undeniable even to them that their bankrupted, convicted, possibly by then imprisoned Dear Cult Leader will lose the "anti-Trump blowout" reelection of POTUS & the Dems.

May Day Eve – my fear today is, however, that MAGA terrorists will try to make the US ungovernable (therefore, acutely vulnerable to national security threats from Russia, China and/or the Middle East) in the weeks and months following, if not before, the ROEvember election. The US military may have to be deployed to impose Martial Law, reminiscent of the 'state of emergency' during the weeks after "9-11" (but worse by an order of magnitude) in order to secure federal, state & local elections and to protect key officials and vital infrastructure. :fire: :mask:

'Free will or determinism?' doesn't matter. 'Nothing matters' also doesn't matter. If we have no choice (i.e. "free will"), then we are determined (i.e. caused) to live as if 'we are free to choose' and thereby 'responsible for our choices'. Either way: amor fati! :razz:

Or die before you learn you are – or how to be – unfulfilled.

↪Echogem222 I didn't strawman you. You have this tendency to accuse others of making a strawman when they point out how your posts make zero sense. — Lionino

:smirk: :up:

:100:

A paradox is a situation that results in something impossible or contradictory. This ain't one. — Lionino

:up: :up:

Weak dodge. Your so-called "solution" doesn't matter ‐ isn't worth considering – if there is not an actual problem (or its merely a pseudo-problem) in the first place.

our ultimate moral goals. — Mark S

What exactly are those "ultimate moral goals" and, since "moral science" is not prescriptive, what is the non-scientific basis for determining such "goals" and that they are "ours" (i.e. universal)?

Hey you, Whitehouse
Ha, ha, charade you are
You house proud town mouse
Ha, ha, charade you are
You're trying to keep our feelings off the street
You're nearly a real treat
All tight lips and cold feet
And do you feel abused?
You got to stem the evil tide
And keep it all on the inside
Mary you're nearly a treat
Mary you're nearly a treat
But you're really a cry

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gZM1WQKwpl0

What do you think about the relationship between ethics and politics? — Jack Cummins

I think ethics (re: moral agency) is concerned with the cultivation of human flourishing whereas politics (re: solidarity, legitimacy) is concerned with resolving conflicts in ways which to varying degrees arrange (or derange) the material-symbolic conditions for making the cultivation of human flourishing possible.

Also, what is 'right' or 'wrong' about political correctness, and how far should such correctness go in outlawing what may some may regard as being 'offensive'?

"PC" is and always has been useless – "identity politics" shite – and, where it harms more than it helps, it's wrong. Don't be an Asshole or a Cunt! (billboards? PSAs?) – civility & (a little) empathy when in public almost always suffices. Fuck censors, prudes, fundies & other hypocritical, virtue signaling, "offended" twats! :strong: :mask:

'Blood Meridian'

... on my short list for The Great American Novel.

The quote matches the bleak, bereft setting of the book - circumstances where god seems to be missing. — Tom Storm

:fire:

... my brain generates a model of reality ... — Truth Seeker

Certainly this – what you describe here – is mind-independent, no?

Imagine trying to define a hole. — Echogem222

From a 2022 thread Does nothingness exist? ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/707639

examples: a
donut or
hole in a bucket / boat or
negative space or
randomness (i.e. total symmetries) or
blindspot or ...

IMO, no "paradox". Check (correct) your assumptions / premises.

The closest thing to a hobby I had was 20 years drinking whisky and meeting strangers in bars. Loved almost every minute of that, but quit to save my liver. — Tom Storm

Ah cool, we're former barfly brothers! (Btw, fucking "healthy livers" are overrated, mate.) :smirk:

:up:

How can we prevent all harm? — Truth Seeker

We cannot** since only the dead are free from "all harm" or conflict; however, far more often than not, we can prevent greater harms from occuring and/or reduce harms that have been inflicted. Lack of perfection** is neither a rational nor a moral argument against doing good (i.e. negating worse) whenever possible. Nonviolent conflicts are usually resolved less harmfully than violent conflicts which almost always follow from either refusing to engage in and/or defecting from nonviolent conflict (e.g. dialectics, deliberations, dialogues). So again I ask, Seeker:

Absent this Sisyphusean agon (i.e. 'the unexamined life is not worth living'), how else can we – at least some small yet nontrivial fraction of the eight billion of us – thrive (flourish)? — 180 Proof

:chin:

I sometimes think humans are addicted to crisis. — Tom Storm

:up:

To the extent our "conflicts" are not violent (e.g. win-win), they facilitate our searching for – not our ever finding "unquestionable" – truthes (re: dialectics), that is, potentially learning from mistakes errors & failures as we cross-examine one another's assumptions and mutual testing of our competing, or contrary, claims. Absent this Sisyphusean agon (i.e. 'the unexamined life is not worth living'), how else can we – at least some small yet nontrivial fraction of the eight billion of us – thrive (flourish)?

With all due respect, I didn't ask for hypothetical dilemmas; rather I asked for your experiences of kinds of harm which no one else is vulnerable to or can recognize as harm because such kinds are "not objectively defined". Have you had such an experience? If not, then isn't it more reasonable than not to conclude that everyone is vulnerable to and can recognize the kinds of harm you've experience because they are objective phenomena? :chin:

harm is not objectively defined — Lionino

Really? Name a kind of harm that you have undergone and yet, because it's not "objective" phenomenon, no one else is vulnerable to it or can recognize it as harm. (Some of the kinds I have in mind I've described here .)

So apparently some negative utilitarians think there is a "second," namely, to "maximize the total amount of happiness." The question could then be rephrased: why choose the first form of negative utilitarianism over the second form? — Leontiskos

Harm, or suffering, is not merely subjective (as I've sketched previously ) whereas "happiness" is whollly subjective (e.g. hedonic set-points are not the same for everyone or constant through time for each individual); the latter, therefore, is not as foreseeable, or reliably known, as the former such that reducing harm / injustice is a more realizable and effective moral strategy than trying to "maximize happiness" (whatever "happiness" means).

However, it's my position that on average – all things being equal – we optimize well-being, or "happiness", in any situation where harm / injustice has been prevented and/or reduced as much as possible such that it's not a binary choice but rather is a matter of priority whereby the "secondary" consideration (positive utility/consequence (e.g. more sex)) is a function, or opportuned by, the "primary" (negative utility/consequence (e.g. less illness)) and yet not the other way around (e.g. health-wealth-fame-power-pleasure "maximizing" itself cannot prevent or reduce suffering, misery or (self)harm).

Some primary influences on my moral thinking are Epicurus, Spinoza, K. Popper, D. Parfit & P. Foot.

@Leontiskos – Assuming you intend to reply, I've just edited my previous post so that (hopefully) my statements are clearer.

Causality itself implies things are caused, so I would assume causality has a cause, it is the case directly, probably by some divine force. — Barkon

"Assume" whatever you like but you've not offered a valid argument yet and without any demonstrable evidence of either "causality" (Hume) or "some divine force" (Epicurus, Spinoza, Hume) you're just talking out of your *ss – poor reasoning at best.

Yup, psychoceramics ... :smirk:

Things don't pop up for no reason ... — Barkon

What about vaccuum fluctuations, virtual particles or other random events?

And, like the "first point", or edge, on a circumference, the cause of causality itself is? :chin:

You laugh at mine [value system] but what is yours grounded in? — BitconnectCarlos

Naturalism.

Why is it true?

Naturalism is internally coherent and consistent with the demonstrable facts of both our species' cognitive limitations and the regularities of the natural world of which we are constituted.

Because Marx said it?

No. Spinoza (Epicurus, A. Murray, P. Foot, M. Nussbaum ...)

... where's our justice?

Your ongoing injustices forfeits it ... ever since "the shofar blew down the walls of Jericho." :eyes:

What does yours tell you? — BitconnectCarlos

:lol:

Our 'imaginary friend' does not tell us anything because we take our meds everyday as prescribed and do not ever oppress and ethnically cleanse anyone (Hillel the Elder).

[W]e don't exonerate murder, rape, and man stealing because one is from an oppressed group.

Oppression exonerates the oppressed. The best security against terrorism is not to practice it in the first place (re: Israel as well as the US, EU, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia & Iran). :fire:

@RogueAI @Moses et al ...

[W]hat monstrous thing is concealed in the shadows beyond this raging bonfire? — tim wood

Several decades of suffering of the dispossessed – Warsaw Ghettoized – Palestinian people.

https://imeu.org/article/quick-facts-the-palestinian-nakba

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

And like antisemite Holocaust denial, anti-arab zionists also deny/blame their victims ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_denial :mask:

Zionism seeks a homeland — BitconnectCarlos

... The Promised Land Grab ... Manifest Destiny ... White Man's Burden ... Lebensraum ... Making Apartheid Great Again ...

https://inthesetimes.com/article/jewish-anti-zionism-israel-palestine-colonialism-annexation-apartheid :fire:

So I would want to ask, first, why "positive utilitarianism" is not partially correct (i.e. why consideration of the harm-complement is non-moral). — Leontiskos

I don't understand the question. :confused:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_utilitarianism (I interpret this reducing harm-caused-by-personal-conduct / judgment as normative morality )

Second, I would want to inquire into the relevant definition of harm.

From a 2023 thread Convince Me of Moral Realism, by 'harm' (in some of its various forms) I mean this:

- deprivation (of e.g. sustanence, shelter, sleep, touch, esteem, care, health, hygiene, trust, safety, etc)

- dysfunction (i.e. injury, ill-health, disability)

- helplessness (i.e. trapped, confined, or fear-terror of being vulnerable)

- stupidity (i.e. maladaptive habits (e.g. mimetic violence, lose-lose preferences, etc))

- betrayal (i.e. trust-hazards)

- bereavement (i.e. losing loved ones & close friends), etc ...

... in effect, any involuntary decrease, irreparable loss or final elimination of human agency — 180 Proof

And by 'injustice' I mean harm to individuals as a direct or indirect consequence of a social structure, or lack thereof, reproduced by customs, public policies, legistlation, jurisprudence or arbitrary violence. Thus, utilitarianism is a kind (or subset) of consequentialism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_consequentialism (I interpret this reducing injustice (i.e. reducing harm-caused-by-social-structure / violence) as applied morality )

Jenna Ellis has already flipped on her boss in Georgia so it's more likely than not she will do it again in Arizona. Rudy Guiliani is due for a meltdown since he's filed for bankruptcy and can't afford to pay for legal defense in Georgia and now in Arizona. Christina Bobb was thrown under the bus by the boss for abetting Obstruction of Justice in the Florida Espionage case and therefore is probably cooperating with the Feds and will try to get a deal from Arizona prosecutors too. And so on ... Sworn testimony by two or more indicted co-conspirators will provide more than grounds for an Arizona Grand Jury to indict Unindicted Co-conspirator-1 sooner rather than later. No need for the trial to happen before the general election since additional indictnents (to the current 88) will only compound Sleepy Don's already considerable legal and financial problems to the detriment to his so-called "campaign" (to stay out of prison). And (if I were a betting man) my money is on the "J6 Conspiracy" trial in DC to start by September/October following Michigan's "Fake Electors" indictments of Unindicted Co-conspirator-1 by August.

"Wishful thinking?" TBD. :victory: :mask:

:up: Exactly!

From 2021 ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/501897 :nerd:

In general I am apt to prefer classical justice ... — Leontiskos

Maybe I've missed it but could you briefly describe "classical justice" or link to a post upthread where you discuss it. Thanks.

You think the points mentioned in thie wiki article below are just pie-in-the-sky fantasies? My guess is we're only limited by current technology since "current science" (i.e. extant physical laws) does not prohibit "interstellar travel", just 'AFAL/FTL acceleration' through spacetime.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel

24April24

Today in Trumpenfraude:

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/04/24/arizona-fake-electors-indictments/73184206007/

When one or more of the criminal co-conspirstors Rudy Guiliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis (all of whom are also indicted in Georgia), Christina Bobb, Boris Epshteyn & Michael Roman flip, the GOP (Gimps for Putin) candidate for president Unindicted Co-conspirator-1 ... again will be indicted in Arizona (probably by the end of May, just in time for his conviction in NYC). :cool: :up: