Why point out your opponent’s inconsistency, unless you want them to be consistent?
well, you ask ‘why’ and see if you get a moral answer or non-moral answer. find ought if its a moral kind of ought or not.
His behaviors will still not match a ‘normal’ empathetic person. For example, I have asserted that he will believe in this ‘ought’ statement: “to maximize the freedom and prosperity for humanity.” However, murdering or raping a few individuals damages humanity as a whole very little.
Suppose that society hates redheads, and society will feel much happier if all redheads are dead. The unempathetic person will murder all redheads to “maximize the freedom and prosperity for humanity.”
You misunderstood him. AM is saying that an individual unburdened with empathy can deduce libertarian ethics by assuming certain premises, IE maximizing human happiness, individual liberty, what have you. The logic may be valid, but not necessarily sound. If he feels no empathy and no concern for others wellbeing, why would he feel that the premises from which libertarian ideals are deduced are sound?
edit: correct me if I am wrong, AM. I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
ok, so now you are rejecting the idea that an unemotional rational creature can understand and follow morality. well why didnt you come out and say so to start with.?
If we categorize his belief of the “maximization of freedom” as a form of empathy, I have not believe in this idea in the first place.
I do want them to be consistent. That is not an assertion of the objective value or goodness of consistency, simply the expression of a value preference that I happen to hold.
Why not ? Or rather, what sort of things do you think can be derived from observation ? You know, from observation it seems that stuff gets bigger as you get closer to it - so called perspective.
Now, do you think material objects change in size depending on your point of view ? Is that change a fact ? It surely is something we observe …
but it doesn’t. I can retort you are strikingly similar to a materialist commie.
And one that you are trying to achieve by trying to persuade them to alter their conduct. Am I right?
You’re correct. I was wrong to categorize these premises as not empathetic. Someone who helps others, for whatevery reason, is by definition “empathetic.”
Yes. What are the implications of this, keeping in mind that I am not asserting the possibility of proving through deduction the value or preferability of such conduct, but simply appealing to a possible commonality in values?
The implications are that you want their present conduct to change from what it is now, to something else. You demonstrate, by arguing, that you believe they ought to do X and not Y. That they ought to hold some values, not others. That certain moral positions are preferable for both you and your opponent. And I don’t see how you can consistently deny this.
Please tell me why this is not logically defensible rather than just stating it?
Of course with positing God there’s the possibility of a divine command theory though that’s not necessary- one could posit a good deist style God to argue nature is good and to then prove that natural law is good. Any way even if you leave open the concept of divine command it’s not necessary that it would conflict with natural law.
Because it’s just persuasion: “Hey guys, c’mon, don’t you see how good nature is?” If you meant it to be interpreted any other way, why didn’t you give your own definition of “good”?
Right, I hold certain values and would like other to hold similar values. Certain values are preferable to me. I have never denied this; such an admission does not prove what you think it does. In my statement that you quoted, I said
“keeping in mind that I am not asserting the possibility of proving through deduction the value or preferability of such conduct, but simply appealing to a possible commonality in values”
and before that,
“Of course I cannot argue that you ought to hold similar values. However, I can critique the consistency, logic and truth value of a position assuming we share such similar values. In other words, while I cannot argue that you “should” be logical or consistent, I can argue that you aren’t.” (in the off chance that, sharing those values, you adopt similar conclusions)
There is no contradiction here. You are grasping at straws.
Its all natural, maaan.
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God is good.
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God created nature.
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Therefore nature was created good.
Now the question here revolves around what good is? Unless you have a objective basis for goodness then the use of good and evil are arbitrary. This objective basis must transcend all reality and hence must be found in the transcendent God. You could be an amoralist but as Roderick Long has poinetd out the structure of our language precludes this:
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Theft is bad.
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Taxes are theft.
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Taxes are bad.
Taking an amorailst emotivist position are this demonstrates is personal preference. Indeed it does that but it also does more than that. If bad is purely emotive then it is equivalent to saying theft boooooooo and has no propositional content, thus nothing follows from it. Yet as shown above we can logically follow conclusions from it and thus emotivism is moribund.
Now you may invoke Eupthryo on me: is something good because the God’s command it or does God command it because it’s good?
This is a false dichotomy: God is in his nature is good and acts consistently with his nature.
Back to my first argument:
It would seem that nature is somewhat against us now- natural disasters being the obvious example. But all this would prove is that creation is marred and not lay a glove on the argument that nature was created good. Now as with a broken car you can still see how it should work even though the example you have does not which is analgous to nature as I’ve formulated it.
It seems that too many individuals believe in every word that Roderick Long has said. I have written a post criticizing the ‘cognitivist’/‘non-cognitivist’ dichotomy. I will present another critique to your claim below:
You can simply define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as ‘facts’ or ‘truths’; not as ‘preferences’, ‘opinions’, or ‘values’ of the ‘subject’ itself. For example, you can define ‘good’ as “Ludwig approves it” and ‘bad’ as “Ludwig disapproves it.” Those two statements express ‘factual’ content that ‘describes’ how another person ‘feels’, not the ‘preferences’ of the ‘subject’. Therefore, you can rephrase your statements like this:
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Ludwig disapproves theft.
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Ludwig classifies taxation as a form of theft.
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Ludwig disapproves taxation.
The first statement expresses a ‘proposition’ because the statement “Ludwig disapproves theft” is ‘true’.
Why?
Roderick Long didn’t invent libertarian criticism of emotivism. Rothbard initially argued against emotivism in “For A New Liberty” as well. In either case, emotivism is bullshit. Normative statements do not inherently reduce to the level “Chocolate tastes good” or “Go yankees!”. That’s absurd on its face. When I make specific arguments for normative ethical premises, I am not merely communicating that I feel a certain way, I am giving reasons.