There is simply no evidence that atheist morality exists. If it exists, it can be documented. So, where can we read a copy of the documentation?

I'm not really aiming to get into another conversation about atheist morality right now.

I'd like to stick with the social rules/norms issue: Do you not believe in social norms/social rules or etiquette because there is no one God-given source which includes all of them? I'm just curious as to your thoughts on how these rules are justified, if they are at all in your opinion.

Documenting information allows it to be objectively transmitted. It also allows the information be stored without alterations. Civilization has been keeping written records for thousands of years now.

I understand that and I completely agree but I think rational people can agree that just because something is written down or it's in a beautiful book somewhere doesn't immediately give it authority or make it a source of authority.

No, I know for a fact that this is not true.

You can't write down every single social rule for every single social situation. You could, however, say, write down an article describing bathroom etiquette. They do exist out there.

In any case I don't see how something being written down now "validates it."

If I just listed a bunch of rules now those rules would be written down but I don't know how that would suddenly validate them.

If the rule really exists, then it should be possible to write it down, no?
So, why don't they do it?

Yes, you could write them down. However, there's a ton of these social norms and rules and they change according to the specific situation, but nonetheless you could write at least some of them down. I'm sure there's etiquette books available on the subject. As to which one of these etiquette books is the "validator" I have no idea.

If I'm not mistaken, this is how autistic people receive help. A lot of rules and social norms that neurotypical people are able to intuitively grasp autistic people struggle with and they need explicit reinforcement.

Social rules are different from morality though. When it comes to social rules everyday we just unthinkingly abide by many rules which are not explicitly written out which can be tricky for some people.

In an illiterate society there is no need to document anything, not even the laws. Nothing. So, the real question becomes: Why are we reading and writing, instead of just saying things?

Yeah, this wouldn't make sense in an illiterate society. However, in an illiterate society there are still social norms (which was what first came to mind for me when I read your point about "good and bad behaviors for society" needing a document which puzzled me a little.)

There are no such agreements, let alone, documented ones, simply because there will be no way to validate them.

We might think a little differently on this. For me, it's not so much a matter of "validation" as it is just that the rule itself exists.

For instance, I don't know if it's written down anywhere but it's a commonly accepted etiquette rule that if two men are in a public restroom you don't take the urinal right next to the other one. There's a ton of public restroom etiquette. I have no idea what "validates" it but I still consider it a social norm.

There is, however, no document that describes "good and bad behaviour agreed on by society". In that sense, the whole idea of ethics is just fantasy, i.e. some kind of "imaginary friend" !

Why is a document needed? If there were a document written up, what would validate it?

I think if you're a utilitarian this kind of judgment makes sense. Personally, I'm not a utilitarian so I wouldn't judge how morally good a person is by their balance of good consequences versus bad consequences. The first reason I'd use for this is that I feel like as people we just know that there are things we should never, ever do - for instance, crimes against children. I don't care if you're a doctor who has saved hundreds of lives; that doesn't allow you to go abuse children. That's just how I think about morality - it's first and foremost "don't do this" and then we can go on to other topics.

Keep in mind someone could also do a moral action but it has a bad consequence. How do you judge that? For instance, lets say you rescue a man but he turns out to later kill some people. Would that count against you or in your favor in your moral credits vs debts? There's always that question of how far we extend those consequences. Maybe that man who you saved has a son who is the next Hitler.

Why can't the guy who saved 100 million lives just go out one day and kill someone? He's still far in the net positives for moral credits.

We might even say the person has paid their moral debt and has a surplus, moral credit, if they ended up with a huge imbalance of moral acts over immoral ones.

This seemed kind of funny to me because it implies that if someone were to spend a year doing charity or building houses for the homeless or something they'd now be entitled to go punch a few pregnant women because, hey, they got all these moral credits and why let them go to waste?

Fair enough its been a while since I saw the movie. I tended to remember the poor family as the stronger of the two groups as well as the more ruthless group just in terms of how they were going about the whole scenario. I guess even if we pin the two groups as equally self-interested I think it's still their lack of (class) unity which is their downfall.

I was not making a value statement of it, but rather make an observation (survival, comfort, entertainment are our three main drives in my idea about our everyday affairs). But, with this comes a lot of low-level tedium/discomfort/anxiety.

I thought you were making a value judgment because you referred to picking out shoes (or fretting over shoe size) as "silly tedious maintenance" and then you just regarded it as a quirk of western civilization that we have different shoe sizes....In any case, if you just want to say comfort, survival and entertainment are main drives I'll agree with that.

I do believe though that shoe shopping can be meaningful, and I think you would definitely agree if you've had to run in uncomfortable shoes.

When they discovered the other family in the basement I remember thinking "alright, if you two groups can compromise and work this out this doesn't need to end in chaos"... but of course we all know what happened. If I remember correctly I interpreted this struggle more caused by the poor family's ruthlessness than anything else. I think it might be a bit of a stretch to just chalk up this sometimes sociopathic ruthlessness to their class position but I could have missed something.

It's funny because even as a capitalist I was rooting for them up until a point. I understand their desire to get out of poverty and secure their position in the rich household. I just don't think that this drive to succeed is at all limited to the poor though... just think of financial crimes and movies that portray rich people who have that same mindset. Is that born out of their social class? Does the criminal investment banker get the same treatment?

All of this takes place in a physical world in a social context. I think of something like fretting over which shoe size really fits best. It is not hunting to survive, it is not boredom really.. Just silly tedious maintenance of something that is contingently due to Western civilization's quirk that we have various size shoes which, if one is enculturated to wearing shoes, one gets used to wanting them to fit right..

I was thinking about this and I do notice this general attitude among a lot of philosophically-minded people. The attitude I'm referring to is one that tends to de-value or maybe denigrate that which is considered tedious (like buying shoes) and on the other hand places the emphasis/the value on "the big picture."

I'm not looking to start an argument here, but I think the biggest change I've had since I finished my philosophy degree is that the focus has shifted away from "the big picture" and into a more detail-oriented perspective. I remember back to when I was picking out running shoes or choosing boots during basic training and those decisions - if not chosen wisely - could have disastrous consequences. A runner who picks the wrong size shoe could find himself in serious foot pain half way through a race. Even if you're out with friends and your shoes are the wrong size that could suck. Don't even get me started about military footwear. I understand that if it's just casual use the stakes aren't that high though.

I just liked your example with the shoes here because shoes are actually extremely important in certain domains, but in the world of philosophy there seem to be bigger matters to be dealt with.

I can pretty much guarantee you that if someone were to put a gun to your head or threaten you or your family with something serious that meaning you've been looking for would be back in an instant. Similarly, if you were to catch a friend or a sibling about to jump off a bridge would you be thinking "oh well in the long run 1,000 years from now...."

I feel like this "meaning" question often pops back into life when we're either depressed or bored. A new parent doesn't find themselves asking this. Meaning is found in the here and now. If you want to lie back and take this 100,000 foot view of the super big picture of life and existence feel free to do so but I don't know why anyone needs to accept that view as the most true one as opposed to the here-and-now picture.

What do you think of my idea that the inability in establish class unity was the downfall of the poor family?

I can get on board with this. I do believe love is humanity's highest aim and I do hold learning and teaching in high regard and I can see them as reasonable universals. If you really love a trade or a craft or a subject it makes sense to teach & learn the transfer it and keep it alive.

I do wonder though if a certain craft or activity could be a waste of time though even if it is truly loved. I wonder if humanity's actualization could be better described as a attaining a goal or more like a habit/a way of living.



I'll need to look up these words and I don't mean to be insulting but I don't why you needed to write in latin or greek. I could write in Russian but I wouldn't.

ok so i grew up jewish so... presumably still the abrahamic god, but the jewish god isn't this wonderful, all good, all loving father figure that christians portray him. i mean don't get me wrong, he's "essentially" good in the sense that it all works out for some purpose, but he does directly cause misfortune. i'm not a religious jew, but as far as i can tell from my knowledge of the bible is that the jewish god can occasionally be negotiated with and that he can do good things sometimes but good god do not get him angry.

Isn't the director really suggesting we are ALL parasites? I get that "parasite" is very extreme, but they may just be pointing out that we all rely on each other.

I don't feel comfortable extending his conclusion that far. I just don't think he's saying that all workers are parasites. I can't imagine he'd portray a man who makes an honest day's living as, say, a manual laborer as a parasite. Then there's people who just work for themselves who'd fall outside the scope of what he's saying here about parasitism. The poor family here was quite pernicious.

If we go back to the director's quote: "But if you look at it the other way, you can say that rich family, they're also parasites in terms of labor. They can't even wash dishes, they can't drive themselves, so they leech off the poor family's labor. So both are parasites." - He seems to be saying that wealthy families who employs maid and drivers are parasites..... it doesn't make a lot of sense.

ok thank you for conveying to me the creative explanation.

If you're just going to look at it from a marxist perspective then aren't all employers parasites? If he's a marxist or has that kind of weird perspective then sure he can have that interpretation but most average americans wouldn't call anyone who employs a maid a parasite. I don't even know what we're arguing here.

If this were actually real the rich guy has given that family a huge pay raise and probably taken them out of poverty. But nah he's a parasite.

They can't even wash dishes, they can't drive themselves, so they leech off the poor family's labor. So both are parasites."

Yeahhhh that seems like a bit of a stretch to me. Maybe there's a translational issue, but it's just not really making sense to me. It would imply that if I were, say, to pay you $500 to wash my dishes that I would be the parasite. "Parasite" isn't the same thing as useless or lazy.

It's an incredibly naive reading to think that 'parasite' refers only to the poor family, and not - perhaps especially so - the rich one too (to say nothing of the cellar dwellers).

In science, a parasitic relationship is one where one group lives off of another and it's harmful to that other group... there's not mutually beneficial. I don't quite understand how the rich family are parasites on the poor one. You'll need to explain that to me. I agree they were quite rude and classist at points, but I don't understand how they were parasites.

Alright its been a few months since I saw this film so I'll do my best to remember.

As far as I can remember, the downfall of the poor family began when they attempted to eliminate the other poor couple in the basement. They seemed to be doing fine up until then. In other words, there just wasn't unity with their socio-economic class. Once the infighting began, it all started to unravel. Additionally, the poor family is definitely craftier than the rich family. As mentioned, the rich dad in particular is condescending and especially with that remark about how poor people smell the rich really don't come off well. So yeah - if only class unity could have been established the proletariat could have reached their goals was the message that I remember believing the director was trying to convey.

I also left the movie unsympathetic for the poor family given all they did.

Just as with alcohol, drugs or automatic weapons, you can surely have them and use them, but is it legal or illegal depends on the sovereign state you are in. And that will have consequences.

I understand countries have policies towards bitcoin, but enforcement is an entirely different issue. Strictly speaking, bitcoin doesn't require governments to sign off on it. Someone can send a transaction from Pakistan to Nepal (despite both countries banning it) because the transaction never relies on the governments or banks or anything to "approve" or sign off on it. This is huge. The transaction cannot be reversed or intercepted either.

Governments can shut down bank accounts. They can de-bank you or limit where your money is allowed to flow. They can reverse transactions between bank accounts even if the transaction somehow went through. Governments can also shut down brokerage accounts and go after companies that provide these services.

Governments and corporations are made of people too. The real power of a government institutions comes from the fact that people also support them and obey the rules. And then "the people" aren't as unified as many want to depict them.

I am talking about the common good of humanity. If you support 24/7 surveillance and believe that "only wrong-doers need to be worried" then you're just not on the side of 'the people.' I understand that governments are made of people, but this isn't the sense that I mean it. I'm not speaking strictly literally.

I'd say that there are worrying phenomena, these kinds of vicious circles in society going around without a clear culprit or a designer / mastermind behind them. We can blame some actor for them and create this elaborate nefarious plan they have, but very seldom is there any kind of true conspiracy.

You're going to need to be a little more specific because I'm not sure what you're talking about here.

Actually, the middlemen are there. They aren't just so visibile. For example, you still need:

a) secure and reliable internet connections
b) a working global payment system
c) all agreements between sovereign states and laws that make the above possible.

In the 15th Century the Medici's and the Fuggers could handle international transactions simply by sending a family member to foreign countries to serve as the trustworthy banker there.

It actually is possible to send bitcoin without an internet connection. The technical side of it is beyond me, but people have sent bitcoin transactions through high frequency radios, mesh networks, and satellite. Bitcoin is the global payment system. It is a currency and a network. There is no agreement between governments that needs to make this possible.

Oh, you think there aren't equivalent investments anymore of need of similar centralization? Or think that the financial system will take care of it by itself?

You need to read what I was actually saying earlier. I never said that the era of all that is centralized is over. I didn't make that claim. I just said that in the past decade exciting opportunities involving decentralization are in development and some are in active use. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution society has been geared towards centralization, how could you not be excited for a new paradigm potentially emerging? I'm not saying everything is going to be decentralized, but lets just keep our minds open. Decentralization offers many advantages and acts as a hedge against totalitarianism.

I'm not sure we are swinging into decentralization. Might be the opposite.

We are potentially swinging into decentralization, but this is an ongoing battle as governments and corporations attempt to further centralize power and use technology to monitor citizens. I don't know who will win: maybe government, maybe corporations, or maybe the people.

Surveillance of the masses is now totally possible with ever more detail that was unheard of earlier.

Absolutely.

That of course leads to a society where you simply don't talk politics to anyone. Or perhaps only to your friends in a safe environment. Which is more or less the way it was in the Soviet Union.

I agree.

Interesting, that could be something which naturally tends to happen when there is a major war.

Yes, especially in the case of a war which poses an existential risk to the state.

Does that suggest they are essential figures in history or culturally?

I'm not entire sure what you mean by that, but Lincoln and FDR are among the most influential and favored Presidents in the US.

The issue is that when there isn't centralized power, the lack of this can have a lot of consequences.

Yes, and a lot of more small-gov't types are fine with the roads and some of that major infrastructure being left to the government. Of course centralization has played a huge role in the development of this country, but in modern times we're at a unique point where technology has developed to potentially give us better solutions.

For the past 10 years we've had a decentralized currency not tied to any state. The average lifespan of a currency is something like 27 years. It is immune from hyper-inflation (or even inflation) and it is impossible to seize/confiscate (of course you can always hold a gun to someone's head and do it but you can't just close their account like you could a bank and cut them off from their money.) You can send it to anyone else in the world and it's immune from interception.

We're seeing more tech like this. Our economy is increasingly becoming peer to peer with the rise of Uber and Airbnb, and with this tech we're pushing the envelope even further with the possibility of cutting out the company entirely and going directly peer to peer with basically no fees going to the middleman. We're really seeing a boom in this space and it's exciting.

I understand that in the 1950s we needed a centralizer to build the highways. But it's 2020 now. The world is increasingly digital, and governments and intelligence agencies are well aware of this and have used to it further centralize power and keep tabs on their citizens like never before. The banks and the intelligence communities here in the US work hand in hand so any debit or credit card you use has a data trail which does not belong to you, the user. Your own internet use belongs to your internet service provider which, again, is not yours.

We're just at a neat point in history where the pendulum is starting to swing the other way towards decentralization after around 150 years of it swinging towards centralization beginning with the industrial revolution.

Why desperately cling for the old ways?

I'm reading a book about primitive warfare right now and interestingly in many of these primitive societies, in particular the native americans, the warfare was necessary because it was how young men would advance in the society. Nobody would respect a man who hadn't been to war and he wouldn't be able to lead hunting parties or advance to positions of responsibility.

But, the point hereabouts seems to me to be about when is war justified?

That's a really difficult question that philosophers have been trying to answer for ages and I personally do not know.

So, what's left is cooperation, yes or what is (at least nowadays) most rational?

Well, the US is able to wage long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so I wouldn't call war "too expensive." Ideally everyone would cooperate but in real-world circumstances this just hasn't been the case or it hasn't been possible.

I am not saying that war is inherently rational. I'm just saying we need to judge its rationality in relation to some goal. Very often the stated goal is national security, but there's been so many wars in history that it's impossible to account for all of the leaders motivations. Often stated motivations can't be totally trusted or they're not the whole truth.

I feel like you're just using the economic definition of "rational" here which is concerned with, well, economics.

The philosophic notion of rationality is a little more elusive. One way of defining it would be something like "hey, if I want X then how do I achieve it?" and from there we can begin to give reasons or evidence. This would be called a hypothetical imperative and it's a more constricted sense in that reason/rationality is always considered in relation to an end. If someone doesn't share your end then it can be difficult to discussion rationality.

To put it more concretely, if someone just doesn't value peace or the life of an individual or happiness then war might make sense for them. If someone values, say, instilling military values in a generation of the youth or the expansion of an ethnic group then war might make perfect sense to them.

What I'm saying here is that you need to make a more expansive definition of rationality if you want to make your point stronger.

I'm not even a Democrat and I'd be a little outraged if Bloomberg managed to buy the Primary away from Sanders. Bloomberg seems to be climbing at least on betting sites where he's at around 25% in second place where Sanders stands at around 45%. It's amazing how much Biden has fallen.

If I had to give my best guess about this I'd have to go with love - at least with humanity. I would very much reject any purpose that hinged on rationality or grasping something intellectual.

Furthermore, I believe that Hitler was evil. As certainly the Jews do. Did the Nazis know they were evil?

People can actually knowingly commit evil, at least in the sense that they're fully under the impression that they're doing or about to do is wrong but they do it anyway.

I was just basically saying that the discussion on intersectionality which traditionally focuses on race, class, gender and sometimes disability could be broadened enormously. By only confining the conversation to those few factors we leave out other "oppressed" group traits. The reality is that basically everybody is oppressed on some front. I believe that even if we did have racial, gender, and economic justice we'd still have a very, very long way to go given none of nature's injustice have been "corrected." The world would still be ridiculously unfair.

On the other side, economic conservative argument assumes that people have an almost boundless potential for abilities, making the correct decisions economically, and that circumstances of one's background doesn't make much of a difference if one CHOOSES to be in the correct areas to make money. For example, if people value doctors and financial brokers, then that is where one should be to get the money. Not doing so is simply not choosing correctly.

I'm an economic conservative and this isn't what I believe. If someone argued this I'd think they were naive. Not everyone can be a doctor or a broker. Life is unfair no matter what kind of society you grow up in and not many people have that kind of "boundless potential." You need to make the best of what you've got, and if we're talking about climbing the economic ladder I believe from a pragmatic standpoint that'll often be done over the course of generations and gradually. Only a completely absurd person would declare that someone born poor and someone born into an affluent family have the same possibility to achieve, say, $5M or $10M net worth.

EDIT: Tagged.

You're gonna have to explain that one to me.

I was just trying to broaden the discussion beyond the usual race, class, and gender topics. I don't see any harm in doing that. I mentioned height, charisma, and looks.

I always loved Harrison Bergeron. It was one of the inspirations for the thread, but the topic of the thread moved onto "what else should be included into intersectionality?" basically in a subtle attempt to boil intersectionality down to the individual.

I'm generally not in favor of giving power figures "free reign" even inside a functioning democracy like the US, and I think things generally work better if everyone just stays in their lane. I'm personally more a small government, classical liberal kind of guy. That said, at critical events in US history like the Civil War or the Depression/WWII these "power figures" (in a more modified American sense) or "centralizers" did step up and expand the state and we generally look upon Lincoln and FDR favorably even though they were undoubtedly centralizers who took considerable executive privilege.

Are you really a psychologist, Isaac? That's cool, what area do you work in?

You were testing your convictions on your surroundings, trying to validate them. The benefit you were seeking seems obvious to me, even if you may not be convinced yourself.

I would say that I was living out my principles at the time, which were moral nihilism. I do believe a true moral nihilist - one who actually lives their ideology - is someone to be very careful of. A true moral nihilist would believe that those inbuilt moral ideas are basically illusions either put in place by society or evolution or whatnot.

I believe so too. Which I why I do not agree with the notion that humans are naturally evil.

I do not believe that humans are naturally evil either. I would describe myself as someone who's a little more cynical about human nature, but I definitely wouldn't describe humans as naturally evil. I'd be more inclined to say that humans are inherently more self-interested or maybe self-focused and morally probably more neutral. I definitely wouldn't say that humans are inherently good either.

I also consider one's views towards humanity to be a foundational belief. And by that I mean foundational in the sense that it influences or impacts many other beliefs.

Did Bundy's actions made him a happier person?

Well, we can't look into the man's head, but I'll wager an educated guess that he was probably deeply unhappy.

We're now experiencing difficulty at this notion of "happiness."

From what I understand about a really evil guy like Carl Panzram is that he may have reached this "happy" state if the entire universe burst into flames.

I feel like you're pushing a different notion of happiness though. I feel like you're pushing one that's a little more universal, maybe something more in line with Eudaimonia? I thought I suggested this idea to you earlier but you shot it down.

Happiness is a difficult subject though. Something might make you happy in the short term, or it could be unpleasant in the moment but form a good long-term memory. I would usually view happiness/content as a subjective thing, but I'm not totally closed off to the notion of some sort of Eudaimonic happiness either.