obviously that goes unsaid
givens, I mean you’re not saying anything new. But you’re definitely risking your life if you actually did these things. Talk is cheap. It’s fun on the internet but you really couldn’t get far with what you say if you actually did. Don’t you think? I mean I a bit realistic when it comes to life. I interact with other people outside of the internet. I assume you do too.
Good for you. I’m not very good at estimating what would bring me happiness too far down the road, so I’ve found that a humbler posture works better. It’s much easier to make a mess than it is to fix it. Z.
givens, I mean you’re not saying anything new. But you’re definitely risking your life if you actually did these things. Talk is cheap. It’s fun on the internet but you really couldn’t get far with what you say if you actually did. Don’t you think?
So? That is just a relationship between my actual ends and my perception of the ways to achieve various of them. If you want to cook food dynamite probably isn’t the best option. That doesn’t mean I bar the use of dynamite to myself, even if I never have cause to resort to it.
Your ends wouldn’t fly with anybody that I know. So you’d see a lot of boundaries. I just thought I’d ask to see how realistic your quest was. I thought maybe, but it doesn’t seem so thus far.
Depends on how big the lake is
Oh. So you’re just pretending?
That is, by the formal conception of suitability, necessarily true of everyone.
That is, by the formal conception of pleasure, necessarily true of everyone
That is, again, by the formal conception of suitability, necessarily true of everyone.
That is, by the formal conceptions of satisfaction and “best”, necessarily true of everyone
With regard to these truisms, you are no different from any ascetic monk, rothbardian ancap, or bleeding heart humanitarian. You simply have different personal value judgments. And your value judgments are just as non-rational and irreducible as anyone else’s.
I agree. Egoism is an ontological fact, it is identical in theory with continental subjectivism ala Mises or Heidegger. The main extension I make it is that this necessarily makes critiques of value judgements nonsensical. As Mises himself would assert. Morality is nothing more than social behavior. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ except with regards to actual perceived means to actually felt desires of specific individuals. Anyone who purports to critique individual preferences is, basically, acting retarded.
That would negate your proposition that “Morality is nothing more than social behavior”. Cause people critique individual preferences non-stop. I couldn’t find anything but bottled water yesterday but for $1.50. I would have preferred food or flavored water and definitely not that price. I thought I was buying flavored water but after I put money in the machine all that came out was simple water. Sometimes I hold negotiating power with other people but seeing that I get most of my stuff from stores that already set their prices I deal with what other people have set the bar at. But we could play pretend still or maybe I’ll find it worth my while to gain more negotiating power, holding more capital but even then I would need to be the one using it and other people would need to be coming to me. I think a good entrepreneur would still need to sell it to other people and find out what they wanted. I could twick it my way, you know sell something unique but if it’s too out there nobody’s going to buy it.
That would negate your proposition that “Morality is nothing more than social behavior”.
As a way of exerting control over the gullible it can do wonders, convince a man something is his duty and he enslaves himself. But as a method of ‘proving’ anything other than disguised value judgments, it is nonsense.
When you don’t see the other person. I find that unrealistic. I think it’s good to encounter somebody not gullible. Let’s me know somebody’s elses mind is ticking. I mean you can march your tune but it’s gotta be obvious your only proving that there’s some really smart people out there that don’t fall for your value preferences and they stick to their guns and hold their ground against you quite a bit, at least here anyways. If it was easy to march all over people then how weak, eh? I mean some people chat with you but it’s not as if anybody is repeating your mantra. I think that’s grand and uplifting. Not that people disagree with you per se, but that people have the smarts to still rely upon their own values and thoughts not go all in for what you say. I wouldn’t find it worthwhile to be around other people that went the distance on what I said word for word. I don’t mind it when other people find what I say to be agreeable to a certain extent. Who doesn’t? But I couldn’t stand it to live in a world of just me’s. Dress like me. Walk like me. Get paid like me. Do the same job as me. It just wouldn’t work.
She’s saying its not possible to critique it rationally. You can still say “I find child molestors detestable” so long as you don’t delude yourself that there is some objective fact of the universe you’re referencing. People who do the latter are “retarded”.
You’re building a utilitarian case against a rationalist critique of ethics?
All human action is rational.
Of course the person that finds them detestable makes it an objective fact. I hope you’re not going to bring in a subjective v. objective debate. It’s really a primitive sense of the world that doesn’t offer much explanation. Not saying you are primitive blah, blah, blah. I find you to be quite the intellectual. I’m only making a categorical proposition.
Am I? Cause to be honest I thought I was just bullshitting. 
…or trying to be persuasive. Value-imposing arguments may be entirely invalid, but they often work. If someone is told something is wrong enough, they will often come to believe it. However, I do think value-imposing arguments ultimately end up as a wash, because any progress they make is easily offset by the success of arguments imbued with counter-values. Scientific arguments, like those Mises marshalled to the exclusion of all others, are much more effective because of the harmony of interests among men.
There are game theoretic reasons why proclaiming oneself a rigid disciple to an ethical system is a superior strategy to achieving ones earthly satisfactions than denial or distancing. So perhaps the ‘non’-gullible have been persuaded to shoot themselves in the food by rendering themselves social outcasts.
All human action is purposeful. Its possible to write 2+2=5 that doesn’t make it rational.
Yes this debate is kind of annoying. I was merely pointing out that there’s no contradiction saying that people who engage in objective ethics are (objectively) retarded, because its a rational as opposed to moral judgment.
Irrespective of the scripture justification the is ought gap can be bridged:
God is good.
God created the heavens and the earth.
Therefore the heavens and the earth (nature) were created good.
can be justified by the necessity of an objective reality to exist.
Roderick Long argues thus:
Now if this statement was purely preference, essentially meaning theft equals boo, then you couldn’t derive any conclusion since it wouldn’t count as a premise but since we can do so, the statements must be more than pure preference.
My import is that this implies objective morality which can only be rested on the positive existence of a transcendent good.
First, let me define time as: that which is necessary for action.
When did time exist? Well, there are two possibilities: it has always existed or it came into being.
The first I believe is incoherent since it rests on the assumption of the cogency of actual infinites. Infinity, as conceived by Aristotle, was essentially considered as an ongoing process which never reached a final point. Now, with the advent of set theory, by Cantor I believe, he argued that actual infinites were possible since there was a set that contains all sets and as such actual infinites were possible. I think Russell then pointed out the paradox that the set couldn’t contain itself and therefore this didn’t hold. Russell did believe in transfinite numbers but I am not sure on his justification. My history in this area is sketchy, so any help here would be great.
Anyway, I believe one can show the absurdity of actual infinites rather easily. I am here shamelessly stealing Hilbert’s hotel.
Imagine a hotel with a countably infinite number of rooms, all of which are occupied. Then a new customer arrives. One may think there would be no room, but all that needs to happen is to move the guest in room 1 to room 2 and the guest in room 2 to room 3 etc and one can accommodate a new guest. This process can continue with every new guest who arrives. So we have a situation in which all rooms are occupied but we can still accommodate new guests; it is both full and not full at the same time.
Put it another way (sorry, the symbols are messing up):
(infinity) + 1 = (infinity)
Which makes sense due to the potential nature of infinity. Yet if it is actual too, we can do this:
(infinity) - (infinity) = 1
Therefore 0 = 1
Slightly odd to say the least.
Thus we must conclude that time began from which it follows that a timeless being brought it into existence. You could then argue who made God, but the regression ends at the beginning and the timeless being must be without beginning. NB: he is not before the beginning, before there is nothing to be before, he is without time and therefore the question who made God is therefore nonsensical. I’s argue though, at creation (action) he exists within time which is consistent with my above definition.
In conclusion then, theism solves the regression problem, whereas naturalism does not.
Now since 1 and 2 are proved via natural law, it follows that 3 is also and thus provides a basis for normative natural law.
Romans 1 is correct - nature (natural law) does condemn us.
Any help with the formatting would be great. Whatever I try I can’t get any paragraphs to show. Grrrrrrr.
Wasn’t time necessary for the action of bringing it into existence to have occurred?
Z.
I could be wrong but I thought all human action is rational. Because somebody is wrong doesn’t mean they are being irrational. Isn’t that how it goes?
Really, the objective and subjective are tainted. I’m not lying and I agree with you it gets annoying. Cause what you said here didn’t make sense either. There’s other terminology that is better. There’s adjective’s that can be used along with the noun objective or subjective to better qualify what they mean by the person using the terms. If you really want to know how I would phrase it, then maybe pm me so as not to derail the thread. I’m sure you would be able to make clear your perspective too. So, being that my effort is to not derail the thread I’ll leave it at that.
I am smart. I created a child. Therefore my child is smart. No.
Why can’t he just be indifferent. Or, nonexistant.
We could just be wrong about using it as a (rational) premise.
You know that time is relative right. Even stopping inside black holes. A priori there’s no reason that time can’t be looped. It is not forbid by conservation laws, and the second law of thermo is probabilistic. Anyway,
No proof for this whatsoever. We have never observed anything coming into existence.
Also consider that your theory of a good - god presupposes that god began to exist too. I suppose you’ll say he’s self causing? Why can’t all things have ‘caused’ themselves. Or have always been there. Its all mysticism.
And allows you to say nothing about any properties god might have other than “he is whatever caused us to be here today”. He could play solitaire all day. You don’t know. No one knows.
A lot of things are necessary for action. Try ‘that which separates cause and effect’. It should be obvious at this point that time is a subjective phenomena, as it requires an observer to categorically differentiate between cause and effect.
At what time did time exist… hmmm…
You can’t subtract infinity from itself. Anyway infinity in mathematics is just a tool to estimate the long (or very short) term behavior of functions. It has no ontological grounding.