KILL THOSE FILTHY VEGETARIANS — Heister Eggcart

But emotion is primary, in my view, in that it is the primary guiding force, whereas reason has secondary functions. I get this powerful intuitive feeling about what is right or wrong, and I think of that as my conscience, and try to follow it in order to be ethical. This conscience is foundational, whereas reason is like a tool which can be used in an attempt - which might or might not be successful - to control conflicting emotions, and to arrange priorities. Being conscientious is no guarantee of acting morally, but I cannot go against my conscience in good faith without thinking and feeling that I have done wrong. — Sapientia

It is important to overcome prejudice, bad ideas and psychological decoys - even if that means being disloyal, since loyalty is worthless and ought to be eschewed if it is loyalty to that which is immoral. And loyalty should always be a secondary consideration. That which is moral warrants loyalty more than anything else which is not necessarily moral, whether that be family, tradition, religion, nation, some abstract concept, or any personal quality deemed to be a virtue. — Sapientia

Because their point is that certain types of morality are associated with certain types of political positions. This is what Haidt's research focuses on - the relationship between morality and politics. Personally in my case, my moral values did push me towards conservatism for example. If it wasn't for my moral values, I probably wouldn't have been a conservative. — Agustino

Why? It's not superficial at all if most people are engaged in it. — Agustino

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.” — Bertrand Russell

Your point fails precisely because society cannot avoid using mechanisms of peer pressure to enforce social norms. Whether these norms are hedonism or Phariseeism, it will still be one of them :P - you think that just because you don't have people knocking on your door asking you to come to Church, there are no mechanisms to indoctrinate you... of course there are, and because they are not even known, they are more insidious than ever. At least if you have the Communist coming to your door to indoctrinate you, you know who he is and what he's there for. But when you're just watching a movie... you have no idea, what's really going on. — Agustino

Democracy (as understood today) is a bad political system - one of the worst, according to Plato in fact - only tyranny is worse than democracy according to him. Democracy, capitalism, consumerism, hedonism - these are one and the same. Democracy has no aristocratic principle - it has no principle of pulling people towards the higher. Since it seeks equality so rampantly, it leads to everyone being reduced to the same common denominator - everyone being leveled down and becoming equivalent to Nietzsche's Last Men. In a democracy we all tend to become equally bad.

I come from a communist country, but communism was only worse than democracy simply because communism was tyrannical. But democracy isn't much better. My grandfather who lived under constitutional monarchy, communism and capitalism used to tell me as a child how constitutional monarchy was the best in his opinion, and we discussed this for a long time and well into my teenager years actually. Monarchy has an aristocratic tendency, and since the monarch is guaranteed almost life-time rule, he's not going to be searching for power, since he already has it. His efforts will be elsewhere. — Agustino

All holograms are Goats. — Banno

That's interesting. I agree insofar as whether or not it's family isn't what should be most important. But, for me at least, it's emotional connections whichever way you look at it, and you'd just be swapping one for another, rather than transcending emotional connections. And I think that although ethical principles can be more important than certain people, ethical principles are more important in relation to people than, say, abstract concepts like purity. — Sapientia

I agree with all of this, beautifully said :) 8-) — Agustino

It's a moral questionnaire, not a political one. Your chastity is relevant to your morality. — Agustino

Yes, there is intense involvement from popular media and culture which is largely secular, and largely hedonistic - it utilises mechanisms of peer pressure to push you to do certain things and live a certain way. Just as bad as having religion actively involved in your life if you ask me. — Agustino

Hate the sin, but lover the sinner a Christian would say. I never said to sacrifice your own principles and engage in immorality because of your emotions, indeed that would be weakness. But there's a difference between that, and being loyal to your family. — Agustino

That only happens to me when I accidentally fall asleep early haha - then I'm like "umm I didn't just fall asleep without even eating dinner did I? :’( — Agustino

Chastity? Respect for the sacred? That kind of stuff. — Agustino

I disagree with this, and I think that any such morality is ultimately an abstraction, completely removing feeling - especially fellow-feeling, compassion - from the equation. — Agustino

As you know, I adopt the opposite starting position. For me it starts with community and asks "How can we live and flourish together?" In fact it starts with community and asks "How is individuality even possible?" For me, the idea of the individual entirely separated from society is incoherent, for the simple reason that none of us are born as individuals. Our individuality develops in society - we are nurtured by society. If it wasn't for society you wouldn't be alive in the first place, much less be an individual. So it's our society that allows us to develop our individuality and know ourselves. In it we move and have our being. It is true that our society is more often than not not harmonious and it becomes better not to take part because of this, but this is only an a posteriori consideration. — Agustino

There are a variety of questions. However I can never come to a definite conclusion as to finding out the answers to all of these questions. — GreyScorpio

Personally I found the test better relative to the others. I found that even on those questions where something had to be sacrificed, because of the gradations of answers (slightly agree, moderately agree, strongly agree, etc.) one could answer somewhat satisfactorily. — Agustino

I answered "slightly disagree" on this one because I'm not exactly proud of my country, nor do I think this is a moral value. At the same time, neither is not being proud of your country a moral value so... Slightly disagree fits the best. — Agustino

I answered "moderately agree" - I could see exceptions, but for the most part they should be loyal to family. For example if my wife or child steal something, I'll do my best to save them from facing the consequences of it, especially if it was the first time they've done such a thing, and they were compelled by some reasons to do them. Now obviously I'd also try to convince them never to do such a thing again. But then it depends, in some circumstances I wouldn't defend them - say if my child rapes someone, then I wouldn't be loyal to him. So it depends on the gravity of the offence, and on their intentions. — Agustino

I answered "slightly agree" because you're in the army - you have to obey, for the most part. The only times when you can disobey is when you have (1) tried to convince your commander otherwise, and (2) when what you're being asked to do goes against the interests of the army. For example if the commander orders something that consists in betraying the cause the army is fighting for, then you have grounds to disobey. If the commander proposes a course of action you disagree with, you can try to convince the commander otherwise, but ultimately you must listen to what he says - he's the commander for a reason. Without such principles the army couldn't function, nor could pretty much any other organisation. — Agustino

That moral foundations test is terribly designed. Almost all of the questions are super abstract. It doesn't test how you think about things; it tests how you think, abstractly, about your moral self-image. This one, though clearly low-rent, is way better. It's not great, by any means, but it at least has the virtue of being concrete — csalisbury

Leftist's view is utopian, hence all the ideological revolutionary/revolting push comes from the left. Children tend to be leftist, due to lack of life experience and abundance of naive world views. — Emptyheady

Although women have contributed to mathematics at the highest level for a long time, this fact has not been visible to the general public. I hope that the existence of a female Fields medallist, who will surely be the first of many, will put to bed many myths about women and mathematics, and encourage more young women to think of mathematical research as a possible career.

Conservatives have traditionally taken a more pessimistic view of human nature, believing that people are inherently selfish and imperfectible. — Emptyheady

Liberals have historically taken an optimistic view of human nature and of human perfectibility — Emptyheady

When a man loves a woman, she actually is the most beautiful woman on Earth, in the most real of senses. It's the love that makes her beautiful. — Agustino

Forgive me; I don't really understand what you're saying. I really do not follow. Are you essentially saying virtue means self improvement? — Sylar

To be honest, that sort of thing makes me sick. If he loves her genuinely, that's cool, but if he's dating someone just to go against mainstream expectations, he's still a slave to their expectations but in the reverse. He shouldn't even consider what others will think, that'd be genuine independence.

I do not think that beauty is a social construct, even if it is personally subjective. If I had to guess, I'd say it's 80% biologically innate, and 20% influenced by environment with in constraints. In my view, beauty is generally based on some kind of perceived harmony.

In my own case, I've always found certain things beautiful in a girl, even though oftentimes my friends disagree — Sylar

To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity. — Sören Kierkegaard

I'm thinking of a certain type of advocate: the unthinking kind. So don't be so hasty in your defamations. You'll notice I didn't say "refugee advocate," but "uncompromising refugee advocate," the unpacking of which would deflate your charge. — Thorongil

If I don't know someone I just assume they are generally rational and are thinking honestly for themselves. Why do you entertain a strange story about how I might be an irrational dope who can't think for himself? :P — Sylar

What is virtue and how do you prove it to be good? Objectivism has virtues.

What is the highest good? How do you prove it? Why will it make me happy?

I have looked into some virue ethics, but I'm interested to know your version. So far, I find it unconvincing. — Sylar

Might be a reach, but sure, give it a go. — apokrisis

A crusader during one of the Albigensian massacres once allegedly said: "Kill them all; God will sort them out." The modern, uncompromising refugee advocate merely replaces the word "kill" with "accept," while retaining the same unwarranted, absurd faith in a just and happy outcome. — Thorongil

So physicalism predicts the existence of symbols - the zeroed dimensionality of a code being a physical freedom that can't be constrained (because how can you restrict dimensionality to less than nothing?)

And then physicalism predicts what will happen as a result of the evolution of symbolic complexity. Global entropy will be significantly increased. — apokrisis

With strong emergentism, new ontological categories come into existence at certain stages of complexity, which in principle could not have been predicted beforehand by a God-like being who knew all the physical facts.

If something fundamentally new is coming into existence, something that couldn't be predicted knowing everything about physics beforehand, how is this new domain physical? — Marchesk

I wish. That'd make me 21, which is actually how old I was when I joined PF. But people often assume that I'm about that age anyway, and are surprised when I tell them my age. Apparently I look several years younger than I am. — Sapientia

So apparently Gengis Khan who had all the women and the power in the world, with no consequences ever for the killing and raping he did... was not really happy. Not really. — Sylar

Well I initially believed it to be entirely correct, and so if I found difficulties in my own life, it was a moral failing, my fault, nothing to do with my nature. In this sense, it was a sort of trap. I didn't think, "this part doesn't make sense" but then decided to follow it. No, I actually thought it was spot on.

Over time, my own frustrations and discussions with a friend who is an effective altruist, lead me to accept pleasure as inherently good. He then pointed out some inconsistencies in what Rand said, and the threads started to unravel very quickly. Everything came to a crisis point in my mind and I could almost feel my belief system rewiring. Since I have always held truth and my own judgement as supreme over any particular belief, I will ruthlessly discard any idea, however strongly held in the past, as soon as I see clear reason to do so. Reason is the ultimate arbiter of my beliefs, and I am proud to have proven to myself once again that given evidence and reason, I will change my mind. Though it was somewhat psychologically uncomfortable, truth prevails. — Sylar

No woman has been a significant original thinker in any of the world's great philosophical traditions" — Emptyheady

I have spent hundreds of hours studying Objectivism. I feel I know it inside and out. And now, I am on the other side, so I can at least critique with a deep knowledge. Perhaps that is the only good thing about this. Objectivism gave me the vision of happiness being important, for which I will forever be grateful, and it also made me interested in deep questions, which is a gift as well. But in a sense, it has stolen years of my youth with its moralization. A deep sense of guilt whenever I could not identify a reason behind a desire, and a stiffling of any natural ambition, natural pleasures of life, in the name of reason and not living irrationally. Whim worship, I feared it like the plague. — Sylar

So these people who abandon their partners not only cause a grave harm to their partners, but they wreck their own souls (as you can see, this all comes before we even speak of the pain of the children, who have been deprived of the love that they are entitled to as people, as human beings, as ends-in-themselves of which the song speaks about). — Agustino

Its adversely affects all the lives that involved, fuck traditional values. — Cavacava

Over time, he revisited them several times. You can read the book -- you'll have to buy it on the used book market, most likely -- but it is quite interesting.

When the Beatles helped introduce Ravi Shankar, the sitar, and Indian ensembles to British and American audiences, Shankar noted that the audiences, totally unfamiliar with the Indian music, could not tell the difference between their tuning up and their actual playing. Someone who had never heard western music before (if there is any such person left on earth) might be similarly unfamiliar with the symphony orchestra's tune up before the conductor appears on stage. — Bitter Crank

There's nothing wrong with whilst; it is common in British English. I'm just curious about word usage and geography. (Like whether one prefers "pop", "soda", "tonic", or "coke" when referencing carbonated soft drinks.) — Bitter Crank

Challenging or confirming cultural relativism? I think it confirms relativism. Western music isn't a universal genre. It's more or less specific to European culture, which of course can be learned by non-westerners. — Bitter Crank

Well music certainly has eternal properties, if you buy Schopenhauer's Kantian point that the in-itself of the world is revealed through man. This means that subjectivity is something that cannot be understood objectively, but only by being it - and hence this objective aspect of the world can only be revealed subjectively. This revelation breaks the barrier between noumenon and phenomenon, and thus makes the latter accessible, though not as object-for-a-subject. Music, by creating subjective movement in the soul, makes one aware of the noumenon as it is moving - for no one can be aware of something which is static. For a fish to be aware of the water in which he moves and has his being, someone has to produce a ripple in it - music performs this function for the soul. It's similar to what they do in physics, for example to discover the Higgs Boson, they need to produce sufficient energy to disturb the Higgs Field, and thus determine that it actually exists. — Me!