how can it be true that A=A when I can write down A!=A ?
i can make things not be themselves with impunity!
I can look at your sarcasm as initiated violence against me, since I generally view sarcasm to be childishly violent in nature. We did not agree voluntarily that you could treat me like a dumbass, and I feel aggressed against. Some libertarian you are, you remind me more of a violent statist thug.
that’s neither enlightened or libertarian.
is that how i treated you? i thought I treated you with respect as someone worthy of being corrected by the reveal of a counter-argument
be careful you don’t cross the line into launching insults.
According to your subjective analysis.
Can you prove that’s how you were treating me.. you know, objectively?
Is that a thinly veiled threat? You about to teach me that might equals right? Are you sure you’re not a statist? It would fit since you’re the one who started with the insults in the first place, intervening in this otherwise peaceful, voluntary discussion.
if you understand that libertarianism is concerned with property and uninvited border crossings, and reflect on what property borders i have crossed by ‘sarcastacising’ you [8-)]
irrelevant
.
no, its an explicit warning to conform to house rules. i am obliged to warn you.consider yourself warned against launching insults.
I’m just saying, it is my right to choose what I consider to be aggression. Even if morality was objective, we would still disagree on how justice should be carried out and where the line is between regular interaction and coercion.
Ultimately I totally agree with you. It is irrelevant whether rights are objective or not. If they exist or not. In the end, all that matters is that justice provided by the market will be superior than “justice” “provided” by the state.
.
Launching? I was responding to insults, not launching them. Nice try though.
I don’t really see that as obvious, ever have a staring contest? Ever see those guys who can hold their breath for like 20 minutes, because they slow their heart rate to almost nothing? You don’t give your mind enough credit. If our ego discovers it in the brain, it can be altered.
Oh and +1 for demosthenes, don’t let nigarham push you around!
you are celebrating someone that can’t intellectually respond to criticism of his arguments? +1 to you.
This is what I was +1’ing about, dude.
Here’s a good quote from Adam Knott from the “Why are there so few Misesians?” thread:
We come upon a man committing some act grossly violative of his nature: let
us say that he was engaged in a theft. We apprehend him, and while we have him
in custody we question him about the nature of the act we caught him performing.
We fmd he is an extremely knowledgeable fellow, familiar with all the arguments
of the natural law school. In fact, he has read Rasmussen’s article and was con-
vinced that the proposition that a man ought to act in accord with his nature is
correct, logically. “Well,” we ask him, “if you know that to steal is to act against
your nature, and you know that you ought to act according to your nature, how
could you bring yourself to commit your felonious act?” “I chose not to act in
accord with correct ethical principles,” our philosophical burglar might answer.
My story, I trust, illustrates the problem. To deny an ultimate value and to
defy an ultimate value are not at all the same activity, and it is the latter which
provides the stronger suppolt of the is-ought dichotomy. One can deny a fact, but
one cannot defy one. You can deny the law of gravity is operative in the world,
but your denial will have no effect on what will happen when you step off a
precipice. The law of gravity operates no matter which course of action you
pursue-if you accept the existence of the operation of the law and hold yourself
back from the edge of the cliff, or if you reject the truth of the law of gravity
and step over the ledge, or if you accept the truth of the law, but wish to fall (let
us say as a means of suicide), in all three cases the operation of the law of gravity
is unaffected.
Moral law does not work in this way, however. One can admit the intellectual
correctness of a proposition of moral law (even of its ultimate value), and yet
deliberately defy it. This being the case, we must question what moral law means:
If one could not, by any means whatsoever, defy moral law, great difficulty would
arise over the appropriateness of the use of “ought”-for we do not normally use
that word to command actions which in any event cannot be avoided. If, on the
other hand, one can and does defy the imperative of a moral law, how is one still
seen as bound by it? Punishment or other ill consequences do not suffice to make
moral law objective, for if the person committing the violation of the maxim(s)
prefers the object of his illicit action, even when coupled with punitive or other
unfortunate consequences, that seems to mean that there is no apparent reason why
he should not act contrary to that moral law.
Any reason offered for why one should not act contrary to moral law must
either be a fact or a value. If a fact, it will need to he made relevant by the accep-
tance (envaluation; not epistemological acceptance) of that fact by the individual’s
will, which condition, in turn, renders it subjective. If a value, it, in its turn, will
require an answer why it may not be defied, and so ad injnitum.
you seem confused that because people can err and be mistaken, that there is nothing for them to be mistaken about.
The problem of ‘binding’ is no more a problem for objective ethicists than it is for objective logicists or objective mathematicians.
How would you directly respond to the following?: how can it be true that A=A when I can write down A!=A ?i can make things not be themselves with impunity!
you are modifying the equation to make it untrue. You aren’t defying the fact that A=A. Writing and physically changing are two different things.
similarly. when you violate an objective interpersonal norm. you do an act which is immoral. the fact that you actualised something that you shouldn’t have doesn’t make it the case that there was no truth as to whether you should or you should not have done so.
That’s just a sentence.
“Gravity doesn’t exist.”
If I jump off a cliff naked, gravity will still be there. A will still equal A.
Now if we agree “it is incorrect to murder”, I can still go kill some people. So it’s not a “law” in the same sense.
To quote Mr. Knott:
One can deny a fact, but one cannot defy one.
no. regardless of how many people you kill. it will still be true that it is immoral to murder innocents.
the claim is that it is immoral to murder them not that its impossible. your ability to do the immoral does not prove anything apart from that you performed evil.
But if you contend morality is universal, you must concede that it is a different type of “law” than math, or physics.
no. it is formal, just like math.
physics i can grant you.
How do you reconcile the fundamental difference we were just discussing?
I’m afraid your question is a little unclear and open to interpretation. can you ask it more precisely?
Perhaps you are asking me to explain that when you do an immoral act, it remains an immoral act. the fact of the acts morality is beyond being affected by your actualizing or failure to actualize the act.
Yet, as hard as you try, you will still blink, and your heart will, in fact, beat. You do behave involuntarily. Sorry ego.
I could remove my eyelids, or kill myself. Sorry brainstem.