Defining concepts: Good and Bad people

[Karl]

I don't see it that morality somehow equates to logic. 

Morality revolves around principles of right and wrong, which are value judgments, rather than logical conclusions. 

Whims and wishes provide the goals of logic, and so the logic one would employ to gain those objectives is subject to the whim. Logic doesn't tell one what they want out of life.

 

:-)

 

Value judgements, correct. How ? By whim, by throw of the dice, by someone who tells you he heard Gods voice.

 

Your first choice that you make is 'should I live or die' ? You are alive, you made that choice. On what grounds do you continue to choose to live ? Then we get to value judgements.

[Karl]

Well, I only ask because you said this:By me having the man arrested, I am willfully violating his right to freedom and I am endangering this lives of his starving children, regardless of his motivation. His starving children will learn a lesson all right. I can rationalize my action by saying the man deserved to be arrested -- he was a thief, after all! -- and it isn't my problem whether his children starve but, like most rationalizations, that's a logical salve applied as an analgesic against conscience.

First he has violated your rights to freedom by stealing your food. The constitution is about selfishness. Every man obeying the same constitution. Every man equal before the law.

 

You can make the judgement call as I said. You don't automatically have to send the man to prison. The point of being human is not to have a machine mentality, but to apply empathy, mercy, understanding, kindness, compassion where we think it warranted. This is to make a judgement.

 

However, the facts remain. If you had one chicken to feed your family and someone stole that chicken, then your family would starve. So, is it now right for you to steal a chicken ? Is it then fine for everyone to steal everyone's chickens ? Now, maybe you see where we end up-zero property rights, zero freedom to sustain life, zero pursuit of happiness-if we are all going to deem it acceptable to steal because of our need, then we deny everyone of a right to life. It is as if we had simply murdered the man we stole the chicken from and hence a society built on murder is obviously anti-life. Something is good which sustains, benefits and improves life and something is evil which denies, destroys or is not a benefit -theft is not a benefit.

[Karl]

So old-fashioned predestiny, then?

Why is it predestined ?

 

A man is an operator, a causality in himself if you like. Man is a volitional actor. We can choose between man made and not man made. He throws the dice and chooses to throw it, but cannot determine its position and must guess-he does not guess 7 or -1 as these are not represented on the faces of the dice. Non mand made Causality might well be considered predetermined, but of a complexity that it denies man the tools to determine it precisely, but we can have possibility, probability and certainty.

 

And that was a very good question if you take it as not being condescending. It gave me a bit of a laugh at how easily my reply could be misinterpreted as determinism and thus how difficult it is to write precisely-particularly for me as I'm big picture and not detailed, so good forcing :-)

Edited September 13, 2016 by Karl

[Stosh]

:-)

 

Value judgements, correct. How ? By whim, by throw of the dice, by someone who tells you he heard Gods voice.

 

Your first choice that you make is 'should I live or die' ? You are alive, you made that choice. On what grounds do you continue to choose to live ? Then we get to value judgements.

Ok,, Ill bite,, As I see it , My value judgments are of black box origin, arising in my mind without my intentional control, they are in part based on my physical reality , and my reactions positive and negative to that. I am hard wired to be capable of certain sentiments . others which are subordinate I come to over time as being in alignment with to larger priorities. Ultimately there is an awareness of which I partake or exhibit which has no needs , and is self satisfied simply by existing. 

Not God , no dice. But in finding myself to be living, my first choice is what do I do, not Should I live or die , that is an ancillary question sometimes asked in order to address the ultimate question.. already presented.

[Brian]

That's beneath you Brian.

 

I shall first explain why: you firmly believe in the rights of life, freedom, property and the pursuit of happiness. Stealing chickens contravenes all of those rights which you support. Either you do or don't support these rights.

 

Secondly: it's a circumstantial ad hominem. I do not need to be a parent to understand that I hold a value, but I also know that it isn't right to deny one person a chicken to feed their child in order that I feed my own. The distinguishing difference is property ownership.

 

Of course someone will say 'but he has plenty of chickens so surely it doesn't matter'. Which, as you well know, is exactly the argument employed by socialists in order to take from those who have produced and give to those who haven't produced. This is something you have always objected to.

 

Now you have yourself in conflict with your views, you suddenly turned into a moral relativist and that compromise -that need/wishes/whims count for greater than objective reason do find you wanting. Dont you think that conflict requires resolution ?

 

With the greatest of respect.

Not beneath me because you clearly don't understand the question.

 

Your proclamations about the nature of children strongly suggests you not only don't have any but haven't spent any significant time around them. I inquired and your reacted -- badly.

 

Right and wrong, good and bad (as the title reads) or good and evil (as you put it) ARE relative. This doesn't mean they are entirely subjective but that they are weighed against each other. Killing is wrong but killing a child may be more wrong than killing an axe-murderer, and watching a child die may be worse than stealing a chicken.

 

If I caught that man stealing my chicken, there would be many factors which would be included in my calculus -- rational, intuitive, spiritual, etc. -- in determining the outcome. One of them would be my own situation at the time; whether I had the wherewithal to absorb the loss or had starving children dependent upon that very chicken might alter the outcome. It is likely that, upon discovering that his story about a starving family was true, I would share with them far more than a single chicken.

 

Suppose I am hurtling down a hill in a runaway gasoline truck. One side of the road is lined with convict laborers, the other is a thousand-foot drop-off, and straight in front of me -- blocking the road -- is a disabled school bus full of children. For whatever reason, my only choices are to veer into the chain-gang, to drive off the cliff to my death, to jump from the truck (perhaps saving myself but certainly killing the children) or continue pumping the brake pedal in futility until the fireball blooms. This is not a question of "moral relativism" or of the inappropriateness of a statist control system but it is also not arithmetic.

[Karl]

Ok,, Ill bite,, As I see it , My value judgments are of black box origin, arising in my mind without my intentional control, they are in part based on my physical reality , and my reactions positive and negative to that. I am hard wired to be capable of certain sentiments . others which are subordinate I come to over time as being in alignment with to larger priorities. Ultimately there is an awareness of which I partake or exhibit which has no needs , and is self satisfied simply by existing. 

Not God , no dice. But in finding myself to be living, my first choice is what do I do, not Should I live or die , that is an ancillary question sometimes asked in order to address the ultimate question.. already presented.

Yes 'what should I do ?' (The third in the trilogy) already implicitly contains that decision.

 

Yes it's a black box judgement to some extent, but only as far as you are already alive and conscious of your existence before you can begin to ask that question. Existence and cosciousness are axiomatic corollaries that cannot be subdivided or investigated further.

 

You do not remember making the decision 'life' because you never made it. However, everyday you must seek to sustain your life, or not. Now you are making a judgement minute to minute in order to sustain your existence.

 

So, now you reached the third question-what should I do ? However, you haven't asked the first two (this is your current black box) and that's 'where am I' ? And how do I know it ? Instead you rushed onto the third without knowing the other two. You never thought to ask. So, if you don't know the previous questions then what makes you certain that you can correctly answer the third ?

 

The answer is that you can't. This isn't vital if one just bobs along with life following the flow as they see it. This is one approach which is valid for many. However you are not one of the many. You ask philosophical questions, you attempt to find a philosophy that works (the Dao). This is not irrational seeking, it is a genuine striving to know reality, to know something, to derive wisdom. It isn't your intention to remain ignorant, you have a thirst and a drive to seek something. Until you find a solid foundation of knowing where you are and how you can know it, then all your knowledge will be fog, other men's knowledge which you have adhered to blindly.

[Stosh]

Yes 'what should I do ?' (The third in the trilogy) already implicitly contains that decision.

 

Yes it's a black box judgement to some extent, but only as far as you are already alive and conscious of your existence before you can begin to ask that question. Existence and cosciousness are axiomatic corollaries that cannot be subdivided or investigated further.

 

You do not remember making the decision 'life' because you never made it. However, everyday you must seek to sustain your life, or not. Now you are making a judgement minute to minute in order to sustain your existence.

 

So, now you reached the third question-what should I do ? However, you haven't asked the first two (this is your current black box) and that's 'where am I' ? And how do I know it ? Instead you rushed onto the third without knowing the other two. You never thought to ask. So, if you don't know the previous questions then what makes you certain that you can correctly answer the third ?

 

The answer is that you can't. This isn't vital if one just bobs along with life following the flow as they see it. This is one approach which is valid for many. However you are not one of the many. You ask philosophical questions, you attempt to find a philosophy that works (the Dao). This is not irrational seeking, it is a genuine striving to know reality, to know something, to derive wisdom. It isn't your intention to remain ignorant, you have a thirst and a drive to seek something. Until you find a solid foundation of knowing where you are and how you can know it, then all your knowledge will be fog, other men's knowledge which you have adhered to blindly.

I think youre placing these out of order , please slow down. 

First , You exist without choosing it. agreed 

what then? There's no expectation of end or failure or need simply to be existing. 

And even just waking up in the morning , I don't firstly ask whether I should live or die. 

I might be aware that I exist because I can do things , but again , that doesnt require me to question what would make my living continue. Again, my ability to do things is inherent in my existing, whether thats asking myself dumb questions or moving objects. The first time I actively make a choice ,I have to have decided to do a particular thing. Before that Im acting reflexively and without choice. This a distinction inherent within making a volitional choice. I might or might not ask myself about whether I should live or die , but that question in itself doesn't let me act. It doesn't provide assertive volition. 

I still have to pass through the ( possibly implied )decision of what do I do-- about it. Before that question I am frozen , and after that , I am freed. 

It is this tranformative state which denotes the quality of ultimateness , the fact that you always have to pass through this to act with volition. It may be that you think other questions are more 'important' but they aren't because they dont have the transformational effect.

Youre still just hanging around existing , whether you decided you should live or die , or not. 

The wife says , our car is old , we should buy a new car.. you say Yeah. OK fine , you're still sitting there! 

SHould, doesnt move you , what it is you do however , you are actually doing. ( grammar falls a little short here)

Edited September 13, 2016 by Stosh

[Karl]

Not beneath me because you clearly don't understand the question.Your proclamations about the nature of children strongly suggests you not only don't have any but haven't spent any significant time around them. I inquired and your reacted -- badly.Right and wrong, good and bad (as the title reads) or good and evil (as you put it) ARE relative. This doesn't mean they are entirely subjective but that they are weighed against each other. Killing is wrong but killing a child may be more wrong than killing an axe-murderer, and watching a child die may be worse than stealing a chicken.If I caught that man stealing my chicken, there would be many factors which would be included in my calculus -- rational, intuitive, spiritual, etc. -- in determining the outcome. One of them would be my own situation at the time; whether I had the wherewithal to absorb the loss or had starving children dependent upon that very chicken might alter the outcome. It is likely that, upon discovering that his story about a starving family was true, I would share with them far more than a single chicken.Suppose I am hurtling down a hill in a runaway gasoline truck. One side of the road is lined with convict laborers, the other is a thousand-foot drop-off, and straight in front of me -- blocking the road -- is a disabled school bus full of children. For whatever reason, my only choices are to veer into the chain-gang, to drive off the cliff to my death, to jump from the truck (perhaps saving myself but certainly killing the children) or continue pumping the brake pedal in futility until the fireball blooms. This is not a question of "moral relativism" or of the inappropriateness of a statist control system but it is also not arithmetic.

That's a false alternative and a straw man Brian. There will be times when a hard choice will have to be made. There is certainly a moral choice there and that's to drive off the cliff, attempting to jump clear at the last moment to ensure the truck doesn't crash into anything. If you don't make it then you tried, it won't change the outcome. Either you and truck off cliff, or truck goes off cliff and you survive with some broken bones and skin grafts.

 

We can go at this all day. You support the constitution, but it's becoming clear that you don't actually know the philosophical underpinnings of that constitution. Unfortunately, that's why the constitution has been eroded to nothing. It's impossible to support a set of principles about which you do not understand the precepts from which they are derived. The result is that Kant and his ruinous philosophy have branded the constitutional rights arbitary whims no better than any other arbitary whim. Hence they no longer have need of existence and can be dispensed with along with the Bible and any other subjective statement-as Kant sees it.

 

You are following this same line of irrationality, yet you appear completely fine with it. Why do you support the rights laid out in the constitution if you believe things are subjective. If they are, as you believe, subjective, then why plough this libertarian furrow. Why not pick socialism, tyranny or whatever works ?

 

Surely you see this ? If everything is subjective then that is where you must stand. Why are you holding out against socialism ? Why do you judge this as bad and capitalism as good ? I've asked you this before and I really, really, don't want to be dragged into the Brian washing machine of flying boulders as it costs too much skin and blood. It's not my intention to win the argument by whatever means. I am not cleverer or more intelligent than you by any stretch, I'm simply asking the question that I think you should have asked of yourself.

[Brian]

That's a false alternative and a straw man Brian. There will be times when a hard choice will have to be made. There is certainly a moral choice there and that's to drive off the cliff, attempting to jump clear at the last moment to ensure the truck doesn't crash into anything. If you don't make it then you tried, it won't change the outcome. Either you and truck off cliff, or truck goes off cliff and you survive with some broken bones and skin grafts.

 

We can go at this all day. You support the constitution, but it's becoming clear that you don't actually know the philosophical underpinnings of that constitution. Unfortunately, that's why the constitution has been eroded to nothing. It's impossible to support a set of principles about which you do not understand the precepts from which they are derived. The result is that Kant and his ruinous philosophy have branded the constitutional rights arbitary whims no better than any other arbitary whim. Hence they no longer have need of existence and can be dispensed with along with the Bible and any other subjective statement-as Kant sees it.

 

You are following this same line of irrationality, yet you appear completely fine with it. Why do you support the rights laid out in the constitution if you believe things are subjective. If they are, as you believe, subjective, then why plough this libertarian furrow. Why not pick socialism, tyranny or whatever works ?

 

Surely you see this ? If everything is subjective then that is where you must stand. Why are you holding out against socialism ? Why do you judge this as bad and capitalism as good ? I've asked you this before and I really, really, don't want to be dragged into the Brian washing machine of flying boulders as it costs too much skin and blood. It's not my intention to win the argument by whatever means. I am not cleverer or more intelligent than you by any stretch, I'm simply asking the question that I think you should have asked of yourself.

Drive off a cliff and sacrifice yourself for strangers? What about the family dependent upon you and your values? And here I thought you were a logical self-centered objectivist. What happened to "it's all about me"?

 

You have a most peculiar paint set, Karl, in which only two "colors" exist -- black and white -- and mixing them together somehow only produces more black and white.

 

Trade of one's energy and the fruits thereof is the naturally arising fundamental state of man -- our elemental economy. This can be readily observed by watching children in a playground, inmates in a prison or survivors on a desert island, to name a few. No need to invent it. All the "isms" you care to raise (including "capitalism") are distortions -- attempts (by well-intentioned do-gooders or nefarious power-hungry Bond villains and everything in between) to manipulate an incomprehensible dynamic system tend to make a mess of things. It seems a human foible to attempt to fix messed-up things by messing with them more. It seems we also have a penchant for rationalization.

 

<shrug>

 

I'll say no more in this thread.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Brian

[Karl]

I think youre placing these out of order , please slow down. 

First , You exist without choosing it. agreed 

what then? There's no expectation of end or failure or need simply to be existing. 

And even just waking up in the morning , I don't firstly ask whether I should live or die. 

I might be aware that I exist because I can do things , but again , that doesnt require me to question what would make my living continue. Again, my ability to do things is inherent in my existing, whether thats asking myself dumb questions or moving objects. The first time I actively make a choice ,I have to have decided to do a particular thing. Before that Im acting reflexively and without choice. This a distinction inherent within making a volitional choice. I might or might not ask myself about whether I should live or die , but that question in itself doesn't let me act. It doesn't provide assertive volition. 

I still have to pass through the ( possibly implied )decision of what do I do-- about it. Before that question I am frozen , and after that , I am freed. 

It is this tranformative state which denotes the quality of ultimateness , the fact that you always have to pass through this to act with volition. It may be that you think other questions are more 'important' but they aren't because they dont have the transformational effect.

Youre still just hanging around existing , whether you decided you should live or die , or not. 

The wife says , our car is old , we should buy a new car.. you say Yeah. OK fine , you're still sitting there! 

SHould, doesnt move you , what it is you do however , you are actually doing. ( grammar falls a little short here)

Brakes on :-)

 

No, you wake up in the morning and go about sustaining your life-implicit in that sustaining is the answer to the question 'live/die".

 

When one day you take to your bed and have neither the strength, nor the energy to carry on sustaining your life, then your actions will have answered the question implicitly and now you are on the run down to your death. While there is fight in you, then life will be the implicit choice, but eventually it may reach a point when the value of life has become so low that death is preferable.

 

When the choice is life, then you must always ask what is required to sustain it, of course you don't always notice that asking (LOL more meditation required in order to strengthen the witness). Every action is a moral action initiated by a moral thought. These decisions can be equally immoral, but then you must have some way of deciding if they are good or bad for you. You must have a philosophy to decide what it is you must do. That philosophy doesn't float into your head, it isn't just waiting to be discovered as the spiritual Mystics woukd have it, neither is morality impossible because trality cannot be known-as the muscle Mystics believe.

 

You don't act 'reflexively' or automatically, you act on previous experience and conceptual understanding. It seems like it's reflex, just as emotions are given names such as fear, hate, joy, love, sadness, but each and everyone has a conception attached to it. First one must experience an event and feel the emotion arising- that emotion does not come with a label so we have to associate the event with the emotion. The event is reality, the emotion is the response to the event, the label is the conception. So, we can trace every emotion and ask what the triggers are if we have sufficient stillness to do so. I can substitute another word here, but spiritual seekers need first to use terms they are comfortable with.

[Karl]

Drive off a cliff and sacrifice yourself for strangers? What about the family dependent upon you and your values? And here I thought you were a logical self-centered objectivist. What happened to "it's all about me"?You have a most peculiar paint set, Karl, in which only two "colors" exist -- black and white -- and mixing them together somehow only produces more black and white.Trade of one's energy and the fruits thereof is the naturally arising fundamental state of man -- our elemental economy. This can be readily observed by watching children in a playground, inmates in a prison or survivors on a desert island, to name a few. No need to invent it. All the "isms" you care to raise (including "capitalism") are distortions -- attempts (by well-intentioned do-gooders or nefarious power-hungry Bond villains and everything in between) to manipulate an incomprehensible dynamic system tend to make a mess of things. It seems a human foible to attempt to fix messed-up things by messing with them more. It seems we also have a penchant for rationalization.<shrug>I'll say no more in this thread.

Bloody hell Brian you are adding ever more contingencies to the example.

 

I do not 'sacrifice' myself to strangers. I make a moral choice as to what the best action is for me. I'm going to die in a fireball if I crash, so I might as well drive off the cliff and avoid killing more people. I would try and jump out at the last second and hope to make it. It's also possible I would freeze with fear and plough straight into both bus and chain gang. Either way I'm dead. If I jump and die then I'm dead. I might not even realise I made that choice until I had. I might just twist the wheel defensively and vanish off the cliff whilst thinking 'bollox I could have jumped'.

 

I'm acting to first try and preserve my life whether I do so, or not is immaterial. Yet, in the moment I may value the lives of others higher than my own, but my decision is not sacrifice, but a deliberately selfish action based on that judgement. It remains 'all about me as it does all about you. Every decision has moral implications. I must judge what is best for me.

 

How do you know that capitalism is the right thing ? You call it natural, but nothing man does replicates the falling of a rock, nor the growing of a tree. There is no determinism as you have stated yourself, man is a volitional creature, he must decide what he will do. Now, how have you judged it ?

Edited September 13, 2016 by Karl

[Stosh]

Brakes on :-)

 

No, you wake up in the morning and go about sustaining your life-implicit in that sustaining is the answer to the question 'live/die".

 

When one day you take to your bed and have neither the strength, nor the energy to carry on sustaining your life, then your actions will have answered the question implicitly and now you are on the run down to your death. While there is fight in you, then life will be the implicit choice, but eventually it may reach a point when the value of life has become so low that death is preferable.

 

When the choice is life, then you must always ask what is required to sustain it, of course you don't always notice that asking (LOL more meditation required in order to strengthen the witness). Every action is a moral action initiated by a moral thought. These decisions can be equally immoral, but then you must have some way of deciding if they are good or bad for you. You must have a philosophy to decide what it is you must do. That philosophy doesn't float into your head, it isn't just waiting to be discovered as the spiritual Mystics woukd have it, neither is morality impossible because trality cannot be known-as the muscle Mystics believe.

 

You don't act 'reflexively' or automatically, you act on previous experience and conceptual understanding. It seems like it's reflex, just as emotions are given names such as fear, hate, joy, love, sadness, but each and everyone has a conception attached to it. First one must experience an event and feel the emotion arising- that emotion does not come with a label so we have to associate the event with the emotion. The event is reality, the emotion is the response to the event, the label is the conception. So, we can trace every emotion and ask what the triggers are if we have sufficient stillness to do so. I can substitute another word here, but spiritual seekers need first to use terms they are comfortable with.

At the point and to the extent , I am acting based on previous experience, something like with emotion , I am not actually responding based on the present one. I think that's tautologically true. But I still have to enact the volition at the time OR act without it , which we may fairly term reflexively. Emotions are predictable as falling into various categories common to anyone, they are not purely manifestations of personal experience, not a moral conclusion. 

Morality or immorality of an action isn't significant , or even real , if they can both lead to the exact same actions, its a moot concept. Morality is based on social sanction of a behavior, whether that condition is internalized or not. Whereas a persons personal decision about the appropriateness of some action, regardless of social standards is considered immoral.. as I am seeing this. Stopping at a red light , might be considered a morally sponsored action, for example, though I may do the same thing for personal reasons , which have nothing to do with social approval. The act itself would have to be both moral and immoral at the same time , if there was some kind of physically real morality (outside ones own conclusions). I'm thinking this is a pretty normal thing , to understand that each person has their own motivations, morality is a perspective.

[Karl]

At the point and to the extent , I am acting based on previous experience, something like with emotion , I am not actually responding based on the present one. I think that's tautologically true. But I still have to enact the volition at the time OR act without it , which we may fairly term reflexively. Emotions are predictable as falling into various categories common to anyone, they are not purely manifestations of personal experience, not a moral conclusion. 

Morality or immorality of an action isn't significant , or even real , if they can both lead to the exact same actions, its a moot concept. Morality is based on social sanction of a behavior, whether that condition is internalized or not. Whereas a persons personal decision about the appropriateness of some action, regardless of social standards is considered immoral.. as I am seeing this. Stopping at a red light , might be considered a morally sponsored action, for example, though I may do the same thing for personal reasons , which have nothing to do with social approval. The act itself would have to be both moral and immoral at the same time , if there was some kind of physically real morality (outside ones own conclusions). I'm thinking this is a pretty normal thing , to understand that each person has their own motivations, morality is a perspective.

You may call it reflexive, but that denies volition. Your heart beats reflexively and accelerates as you exercise, but it is you that chooses to exercise.

 

We are born with the faculty of emotion as we are with cognition, but until we conceptualise experiences and abstracts we can't yet name those emotions. Animals simply react, they feel fear, pain, hunger and react accordingly, but they aren't aware of these things in a conceptual sense as you and I are. We can communicate an abstract of our emotional state, but we must first have known how to determine what the emotion is. We don't know sadness until we experience an event to which we determine the conceptual abstract. Otherwise, sadness for you would be happiness for me. Clearly this isn't true, we both share an abstract knowledge of sadness based on our own experience of sadness, even when are experiences may differ.

 

Morality is not based on social sanction, nor on Gods word. Your view of social sanction makes you a muscle mysticist, your view that emotion based abstractions are purely devoid of experience is spiritual mysticism.

 

You think that morality is a sanctified solid. I don't mean that at all. You must choose your moral code it is not supplied to you and here you suddenly get it, but in getting it you ignore it. That's quite funny really. More later. I'm in Turkey and off for a meal with my lovely wife in a restaurant perched on the bay front. The weather is beautiful.

[Veezel]

This is my opinion...

 

Being a good person or a bad person is purely genetic. People who are naturally bad must work harder to become good, since their natural tendencies are wickedness.

 

But whether we are born with wicked tendencies or not, what matters is how we work with what we've got. As a Christian, I believe that the Lord God would take consideration with our individual genetic make up and judge us fairly as to whether or not we deserve punishment or reward. He is ultimately fair to us.