ControlsFreak
No bio...
User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I'm definitely siding more and more with ZRslashRIFLE that I'm going to have to just interpret your statements in terms of vibes. When you say that something is "correct" or "not correct", you just mean that you like it or don't like it. Not that it's like... "correct" or "not correct" as those words would be used in any other context. When you say that you think murdering people for religious reasons is moral/immoral, you mean, "According to my meta-ethical position, the moral truth of whether murdering people for religious reasons is wrong for me is irrelevant. Instead, I'm only pointing out that I think it would be wrong by THEIR worldview."
I will try to update when reading your comments in the future. I think this new language is going to be wildly difficult to remember.
But if I were to try one last time...
It doesn't matter on what axis "better" means in this context
I really think it does. Because best as I can tell, when you say "X is better", at this point, I guess it just means, "I like X more," and there are no more implications whatsoever. This is especially problematic, because you're using "better" as the sole explanation of "correct/not correct", meaning there are two stages of hidden meaning when you say that something is correct/not correct. The first stage is that you think it is just "better", not really "correct" or "not correct" in the sense of having a truth value. The second stage is that you think "better" is just "I like it". Meaning that when you say, in the future, that something is "correct" or "not correct", I pretty much have to filter it twice to mean "I like it" or "I don't like it". It honestly is no wonder why this theoretical haranguing leads to many of the excesses of wokeism; it really does make it seem like statements that appear at first glance to have truth value are really just expressions of personal feelings/emotions.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
since the moderator clearly saw that you were flipping the script
Nah. They said that part was okay.
belligerent attitude
You say "belligerent attitude". I say "simply responding to the swarm of people who jumped on me". What's "belligerent" about it? Later, they say it was "holistic", with no post actually being bad. Just that I replied to a lot of responders. I know enough to know that "holistic" means "bullshit", just like when it's used in university admissions or in academic journal reviews (I've seen this, and I've seen it get slapped down by the EIC). You just can't skewer the sacred without being viewed as "belligerent". I'm sure many historical atheist heroes were considered "belligerent" by the boot of the Catholic church that was stomping on them.
Calling trans people delusional might be how a lot of people genuinely feel on this site, but it doesn't add much light to the conversation.
I would suggest advocating for that rather than advocating for calling religious people delusional. It might actually get you what you want.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
If Christians believe religiously motivated murder is wrong
...but you were specifically trying to consider the opposite of that. This is why it is so confusing. This is the bit
Of course everyone (or nearly everyone) holds that their own views are moral. My near relatives who thought that murder was wrong, but that if it was a Catholic, well that is quite all right have no more objective source of morality than the IRA members who thought the opposite, and both sets were because of their experiences and values that were imparted to them by their families and communities. But just because I understand they think their beliefs are moral
before the "[I do not] have to agree they are correct" bit. Specifically that they don't believe that religiously motivated murder is wrong. So, you think that they are not correct about what?!
Or now, when you say:
(as I obviously think my moral view is "better" than theirs otherwise I would hold their moral views, not the ones I currently do)
What does "better" have to do with "correct"? What truth value... or what thing... or where is the concept that you are talking about?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Oh wow, I did actually somehow read SlowBoy wrong. I went back and checked and everything. Whoops.
In any event, I'm not claiming that hiding your atheism is the rhetorical trick you're using. I think it's that your meta-ethical position shouldn't allow you to respond in ways that heavily imply that you're speaking about a generic moral truth of the matter. In response to a now-corrected-reading of SlowBoy's comment, you could have said something like, "According to my meta-ethical position, the moral truth of whether murdering people for religious reasons is wrong for me is irrelevant. Instead, I'm only pointing out that I think it would be wrong by THEIR worldview," which is the position that you have now spent pages more word count getting around to saying. Does this at least correctly portray your position? That would be significantly more clear and not require all this follow-up. The only downside is that it wouldn't allow you to imply that you think that "religiously-motivated killing is wrong" is a generic moral truth.
I probably didn't have much of a sense of what you were actually meaning to say, given your meta-ethical position, until much much later. In fact, rereading now, I see a shred here, where you say:
Of course everyone (or nearly everyone) holds that their own views are moral. My near relatives who thought that murder was wrong, but that if it was a Catholic, well that is quite all right have no more objective source of morality than the IRA members who thought the opposite, and both sets were because of their experiences and values that were imparted to them by their families and communities. But just because I understand they think their beliefs are moral does not mean i have to agree they are correct.
But this leads to still the same confusion, which is probably why I spent so much time getting you to say that you really really really just committed yourself to the meta-ethical position that you're claiming. Statements like this are damn near impossible to parse, given your meta-ethical position. You don't have to agree that they are "correct"? "Correct" about what? What truth-value is in question here? Certainly not the truth value of, "Religiously-motivated killing is wrong," because you have expressly declined the possibility of such statements. The truth value of, "Religiously-motivated killing is wrong to them"? I mean, you just said that their experiences and values and community and stuff means that this statement is false. Like, full stop. What is there for you to think is "incorrect"? Incorrect about the truth value of their moral statement? I don't think so. Incorrect about something concerning Christianity? Very weird, and would require a very different type of argument than what I see anywhere. Incorrect about how the results would look from the perspective of others? Seems irrelevant. At the very least, I think this is not a paragon of clarity.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I have been trying to get clarification on "slurs", but it hasn't been forthcoming. "Delusional" is an item of serious lack of clarity in the rules. Your cite really rested the entire "irrational" claim on, "The essential danger for people of any belief system is becoming dogmatic and therefore irrational." Which is pretty weaksauce and is probably ignored by most people, because it's just not really what people mean when they use the term. Here's an example that didn't even say delusional, just the weaksauce about kid gloves (c.f. unmodded).
I agree that there should be consistency, but I don't know that you actually agree. Most folks everywhere want their sacred positions protected.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I mean, you're missing alllll sorts of qualifiers that would be needed in order to accommodate your meta-ethical position. Like, you could have easily said, "You think that Catholics and Protestants think that violent terrorism between Catholics and Protestants...." But you didn't. Because you wanted to heavily imply that there was a generic moral truth of the matter. It is only after pressed that you revealed that this was a slight of hand.
Moreover, when SlowBoy clarified that he didn't believe in god, it would be a clear indicator that he was not asking for an answer of the type that your meta-ethical position would allow without specific qualification. Again, I think you just shrugged this aside in order to be able to imply that you were speaking about a generic moral truth of the matter... just playing hide-and-seek, violating the norms of discourse. I just ask that you be on the lookout for this conflation in the future and be more precise to avoid confusion. I'll try to help keep an eye out.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
game theory at least posits what the best option is under a series of conditions. The fact that distributed social behaviors match that somewhat is an indicator there might be some truth to it.
Do they? There's a whole field of behavioral economics that shows alllll sorts of situations where people tend not to do the "rational" thing. Some settings have more or less adherence. I don't see what conclusions follow.
RE: What you should answer. If the question is concerning morality of religiously-motivated killing, and you are not religious, then your answer that you think is completely confined to only applying to your non-religious particular self would be utterly vacuous. It would be like saying, "I don't think lions should eat people," and hiding the fact that you really mean, "I don't think that I should eat people, but I am not a lion, and I don't actually have anything relevant to say about what lions should/shouldn't do." It violates the norms of discourse to play this slight of hand. Vastly better to speak plainly and state what your actual position is. However, if you find brevity to be too valuable to you, in the future, I can try to endeavor to chime in with the appropriate caveats as I find time. I think it will save a lot of people much confusion.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Obviously, the tools used to rationally investigate morality are going to be different from the tools used to rationally investigate science. Same as how the tools used to rationally investigate history are different. That doesn't seem to be much of an impediment to rational inquiry into the nature of any of those things.
For example looking at the prisoner's dilemma, the idea of not snitching on each other isn't reasoned out by actual prisoners.
Sure, and on many scientific matters, there are tons of nonrational folks out there who don't reason their way into their positions, either. Again, not an impediment to the possibility of using a rational approach. I think it would be perfectly fine to have a rational approach to game theory in order to understand a rational, objective methodology for answering hypothetical imperatives (e.g., if you're being interrogated and your payoff function is such and such, you should do such and such). That many folks are mere adapters rather than rational agents WRT science or game theory doesn't imply much about whether science or game theory have an objective quality.
yes if Bob is from culture which believes (and he concurs with this) that eating the dead will condemn their souls to an eternity of torment then probably it would continue to be immoral for him, even while Sally is lighting up the cook fire.
Ok. I think we have the most important conclusion at this point. Your perspective is that the truth value of a moral judgment depends on the individual. So, in the future, when people ask you why you think that murdering people is wrong (even for silly-sounding religious disputes), I think it would be more accurate for you to say that it would be wrong for you to do such a thing, but your meta-ethical position is that it may be entirely morally right for others to do this sort of thing.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I think when you convince someone of a change to their morality, it is not because they consciously and rationally change. So they can't just decide to either accept or reject your argument based upon a rational approach. They may protest and argue against you, only to find that over some time of it percolating in their subconscious their position has changed. I don't know if I would call it vibes as opposed to a kind of below conscious thought approach. Some of the arguments that might be used to change someone's opinion may well be rational, but the way that is integrated into their belief system is not. What we see as feelings or beliefs are complex interactions of thought processes we are not consciously aware of. But that doesn't mean it is as simple as vibes.
One might (and many have) say the same about scientific reasoning. "Science progresses one funeral at a time," and all that. That some people become emotionally attached to ideas rather than progressing rationally does not imply much about the underlying plausibility of rational inquiry. The entire premise of rational inquiry is that this is possible for scientific truths, even though not all humans actually do so in a perfectly rational fashion. It's the reason why we promote norms of rationality on the topic. If we fail to have this for morality, then there is no reason to promote norms of rationality for morality. Ergo, the list of things like cancel culture, etc.
The only way the truth can be judged is within the context of the position
One can, and there is a long philosophical history of, distinguishing the concept of contingent moral facts. That is, one can easily simply distinguish the statements, "It is immoral to cannibalize the dead in normal situations," and, "It is moral to cannibalize the dead in certain, extreme situations." Not needing to take a position on any specifics here; instead, pointing out that contingent moral facts are clearly not a problem whatsoever.
It seems that you are claiming something different from mere contingent moral facts. It seems that you are claiming that the truth-value of moral statements depends on the individual involved (or perhaps their society), apart from any contingent, situational distinctions. That is, would you say that one could conclude, "It is true that Sally can morally cannibalize the dead in Extreme Situation X, but it is false that Bob can morally cannibalize the dead in exactly the same Extreme Situation X"? Would you say that one could come to these conclusions by way of reasoning about Sally and Bob's respective upbringings/dispositions/etc.?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I'll preface by saying that I don't think people are rational
I would like some more explanation of this in context of (1). You say that people can come to an agreement on how to practically deal with mismatched moral intuitions or that you can convince someone that they should adopt your moral precepts; do you think that this can be done rationally, or that it's just done based on vibes?
2
I read this as saying that the truth-value of a moral judgment is simply attached to an individual. Perhaps attached to a society. That is, a moral judgment could have value "true" for one individual and value "false" for a different individual. As such, there is no "truth-value" to such moral judgments; simply true statements about opinions of individuals (and possibly societies). I'm not really sure why you're opposed to simply saying this outright.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Morality may be constructed, and subjective, but that is not the same thing as not being real, or not being morality. When I say something is wrong, I mean just that. By my moral code (which I acknowledge is not rational), I judge it as wrong. So saying I don't believe in moral judgements would be incorrect.
I don't see how you're saying anything other than that you have subjective opinions, vibes-based feelings, and you would like to call those things "moral judgments". You can use that language, but we should be clear about what it means. To that end, I would pose two questions to you about your position:
-
Do you think that it is possible, in principle, for moral disagreements to be rationally resolved?
-
Do you think that moral judgments contain truth-value, and if so, in what sense?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Yeah, again, this is definitely why are there still monkeys territory.
I expect the typical reader of this forum to be able to understand, when presented with:
"What sin did a two year old child with ALL commit, such that she wasn't worthy of a miracle while your remission from UC was?"
That we are operating under the hypothesis that there is an All Knowing, All Powerful and All Loving Creator who loves his children equally.
Like, where exactly did this come from, and what is supposed to be the implied conclusion? Please speak plainly.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
What do you think arguing is? It is generally an attempt to persuade people. Brainwashing, arguing, shaming, preaching are all part of the same set of things.
I apologize. I meant to have a more specific sense of "rational argumentation", rather than mere sophist rhetoric. Rational argumentation is premised on the notion that there is a truth of the matter that can be discovered via such a method. Without such, there is little point to grasping on to rational argumentation and every reason to simply move to brainwashing, shaming, canceling, deplatforming, intimidating, and maybe even having struggle sessions or genocides... at least, when it becomes more convenient than the alternatives.
People who claim to have access to an objective morality behave in contradictory ways from each other.
This tells me little, besides that there is room for progress via rational argumentation. You could say the same thing about nearly any other belief, even ones claiming access to objective things. That there are lots of irrational people out there tells me nothing about underlying reality.
I have seen nothing in more than 50 years on this planet that suggests that there is an objective moral standard that we can know.
Fair enough. We know your position. I think ZRslashRIFLE was just more honest about what it is. You simply think that it is all vibes-based reasoning and pure cultural power. That is, to me at least, an intellectually defensible version of moral error theory. But I think it means that you should simply say so when you're asked about the morality of something. You should just say that there's nothing moral/immoral to it, because you think that's not a thing; you just personally like/don't like it.
Telling me there is an objective morality is of no use if you cannot tell what it is and show that it is indeed objective. People have been trying to do that for thousands of years and have failed
Phil papers survey of professional philosophers has 56.4% accepting or leaning toward moral realism. This is certainly not a knock-down argument that it is true; by no means would I argue that. But it casts significant doubt on such bold proclamations that the entire project has simply failed. I would definitely be curious to know why you think you have such a simple, knock-down argument for why it has so clearly failed that seems to have eluded them.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Fair enough. I would only express to you that it might be of value to understand that your opponents have done more than their fair share of wrestling with the general problem you propose. Simply asking, "What sin did a two year old child with ALL commit, such that she wasn't worthy of a miracle while your remission from UC was?" as though it were a complete, coherent argument for a specific position is sort of on the same tier as, "If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" Like, yes, Mr. Fundi, we have thought of that concern, but you'll need to step away from your Fundi Smugness for long enough to try to understand anything about how this tradition works.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
So... uh... after that nice interlude... what sin did Job commit?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I responded to your assertion that you cannot call the evil atheists deluded otherwise the mods scold you and I responded with an example of a recent thread where it didn't happen.
No, you didn't. You said:
We have recently had a thread about how faith healing is totally totally totally true I swear but the existence of atoms? No sir! I haven't ever seen an atom, therefore God.
That is not remotely the same. Someone simply making a bad argument for a god is miles away from calling atheists delusional. At least, it is to rational people who aren't overly emotionally invested and view literally any argument for a god, no matter how poorly constructed, as a personal attack.
It seems like it is not clear to you and think that this place is your platform to have your claims asserted without opposition. In a coven of contrarian quokkas? Are you sure that it isn't you that haven't understood the purpose of this place?
See how easy and how unhelpful it was to just assert that about you?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
You asked me why my point of view would not lead to genocide etc. And I told you. I also explained why it appears those who would resort to genocide would generally not out-compete others who would.
...and I responded to that? I explained why your current view from the position of the apex society does not imply some law of the universe. You seem to weirdly trust in the pure coercive power of "everyone else" turning on them. That would weirdly be an argument for why no genocide has ever happened. Or at least, some weird claim that those cultures were then, in turn, eliminated, rather than continuing to exist after whatever the political outcome of their actually-existing genocide was. It would be wholly unconvincing to anyone who thinks that, e.g., modern Americans (at the apex of current society) got to their position by essentially genociding Native Americans. A more proper descriptive account would be that genocide simply becomes morally tenable whenever political forces drive a society to believe that genocide is morally tenable in order to achieve their goals, as has happened countless times in the past. They are only limited to the extent that "everyone else" can amass sufficient political and military power to counter them.
Regardless, the focus on the extreme case of genocide is less central to what I said; it was clearly an add-on. I had said:
If there's no truth of the matter to bother arguing for, why argue? Just cancel, deplatform, shame, struggle session, brainwash, and intimidate people to be inculcated with your view.
Genocide is the extreme case, and as stated as a descriptive matter, only occurs when enough power has been amassed by a large enough group that they think they can settle a matter by such extreme means. That certainly is not going to be the SOP of societies everywhere at all times; that just wouldn't make sense. Instead, there would be all these things that I pointed out, specifically for the purpose of inculcating their own vibes-based opinions... specifically abandoning the pretense that what we're doing here is searching for truth. Such a process, as a descriptive matter, may only explode into genocide occasionally, once sufficient uniformity has been enforced across a large enough group with sufficient political and military power, yes. But the important part of my point is that we are abandoning the alternate process of a search for truth in favor of this general route.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I'm here for a discussion where people actually read each other and respond in a way that is, uh, responsive to what they have said. That's kind of the purpose of this place. Ah, I do see that you're new here.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I wrote:
Try it and see. Try calling atheists delusional or saying that they're treated with kid gloves. You might be surprised, and then you might not make such silly claims as your original comment.
I don't think you've responded to anything I wrote in the slightest. Tilting at windmills; blinded by your own rage; incapable of even reading when the topic makes you too emotional.
You're missing the point I think. This is an is claim not an ought claim.
No no. I understand that point entirely. In fact, I responded to that point, specifically. I think you are the one missing the point. I would suggest that you reread my comment. Simply observing that you live in the current apex society, so that things have historically happened to break in favor of your current society, isn't very interesting. There is clearly no law of the universe that it must be this way, and we can see the seeds of its destruction right specifically in the exact concept that you are claiming - that there is no such thing as truth worth arguing for; that the reality only is what is, that is, power politics.
I completely understand that you are embracing at least a weak version of moral error theory, claiming that all one can be is descriptive about different folks' vibes-based opinions. Simply repeating such is not terribly responsive.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Please speak plainly and explain what you're aware of.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
What sin did a two year old child with ALL commit
What sin did Job commit?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I just hope there'd be some consistency from the moderators.
Try it and see. Try calling atheists delusional or saying that they're treated with kid gloves. You might be surprised, and then you might not make such silly claims as your original comment.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
This sort of pure moral relativism leads to wokeness and totalitarianism. If there's no truth of the matter to bother arguing for, why argue? Just cancel, deplatform, shame, struggle session, brainwash, and intimidate people to be inculcated with your view. Up to genocide if necessary. Of course, if you're not willing to do this, you'll simply be out-competed by those who will.
If you want to argue for something otherwise, you need to argue that there's some thing worth arguing about, some thing that matters a shred, other than pure cultural power to force people to proclaim to believe what you say.
I don't think I'm making anything too complicated. I'm simply trying to find out if there is any room for rational argumentation on your view of the moral world, where we can say that certain statements have truth value... or whether it's all vibes-based. I think this last comment is by far the most clear embrace of the vibes-based view of the world. Whereas before, it was really hidden in language that seemed to imply other things.
And sure, I understand that you think that everyone else is just purely operating in a vibes-based way, too. That was the essence of what ZRslashRIFLE said, only much more compactly. I get that idea. I just sort of wish you had said that twenty comments ago, at least no later than when I linked to him. And I really hope you won't be so loose with your language in the future.
More options
Context Copy link