Anarchy (Ethical, Moral, Spiritual Progression) - Page 9

On February 24 2015 16:45 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On February 15 2015 03:47 thewh00sel wrote: step 1: apply the non aggression principle to everything Step 2: ???? Step 3: PROFIT My post isn't specific to the topic of anarchy so I apologize if it's a bit of a digression, but I want to respond to this more generally. Let's imagine for a second that all of humanity were to apply the non-aggression principle to everything, without any discrimination. Humanity would quickly cease to exist. As Nietzsche rightly put it, "Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation." Life can only be sustained through exploitation; exploitation necessarily involves aggression. The two most aggressive acts I can think of are that of killing an individual being and that of bringing an individual being into existence. Most people only think of the former as being an aggressive act, and this is where the main problem lies with your ethics: you are being selective while thinking that you aren't. Think on this simple fact: no one ever had a child in order to benefit that child, one procreates to benefit oneself, to satisfy one's own needs. The child is thrown into cosmic brutality and god knows how much suffering it will endure. All we know is that it certainly will suffer and die. How can such an act be proclaimed to be non-aggressive, or to be moral? But the act of imposing such hardship is selectively ignored by every NAPist I've seen argue for it. Why? Because life also involves pleasure? Kierkegaard: "Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment." You say you believe in moral absolutes. How could you have possibly come to the conclusion that it's absolutely good to commit an aggressive act in order to survive or to perpetuate your own DNA? Your reasoning is most likely something like this: "The species needs to survive, I as an individual need to survive." To which I can keep responding, "why? It's not absolute, it's relative to your own welfare and your own psychological needs." I would also ask you why it is you believe humancentric non-aggression is the proper goal to pursue but sentiocentric non-aggression is not (if that is what you believe)? Surely it isn't written into the fabric of the universe that humans should have dominion over other species and use them as they wish and in the process be absolutely moral. What informs your absolute judgments and from where does the imperative that we should all act in accordance with them come from? I would like to see what your favorite scientists of morality have to say in response. (Perhaps people who haven't deliberately avoided dealing with all of the well known literature written on the subject of ethics if possible.)

I do think it is morally wrong to be aggressive toward any sentient being. Empathy informs my judgment. I agree that children are born against their knowledge. I won't say against their will because they are not sentient beings when they're sperm and egg, which cannot possibly categorize it into an aggressive action. I'll admit when you get as deep as you guys are getting that moral absolutes are both nonexistant and irrelevant...Yes I am being selective talking about humans, or sentient beings, but what the fuck? We're humans...and until something else comes along to show us empirically where we're fucking up our science of morality we have to use the EVIDENCE we have. And using evidence and hypotheses, and the scientific method on it, classifies different thoughts on morality as right or wrong. It is a science. That is all I was trying to say when I said there are absolutes in morality. That some theories for morality can be shown to be more correct/efficient/optimal than others for forming a successful human/personality/civilization. I guess absolute wasn't the right word, I'll go with objective morality then you semanticizers.

But, bringing us back to the topic at hand, there is no interaction that I can think of where the initiation of force is preferable to non-aggression. And when you get into men with guns telling everyone what to do (government), you are interfering with all competing offers on how to do everything, thus decreasing efficiency. Again, remember that government is not a real thing...it's a made up word for people with the threat of violence and death on you and your unborn children unless you give them money aka your time/productivity receiving nothing in return...other than the promise that they won't kill you until you stop.

On February 26 2015 08:41 thewh00sel wrote: Show nested quote + On February 24 2015 16:45 Loco wrote:   On February 15 2015 03:47 thewh00sel wrote: step 1: apply the non aggression principle to everything Step 2: ???? Step 3: PROFIT My post isn't specific to the topic of anarchy so I apologize if it's a bit of a digression, but I want to respond to this more generally. Let's imagine for a second that all of humanity were to apply the non-aggression principle to everything, without any discrimination. Humanity would quickly cease to exist. As Nietzsche rightly put it, "Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation." Life can only be sustained through exploitation; exploitation necessarily involves aggression. The two most aggressive acts I can think of are that of killing an individual being and that of bringing an individual being into existence. Most people only think of the former as being an aggressive act, and this is where the main problem lies with your ethics: you are being selective while thinking that you aren't. Think on this simple fact: no one ever had a child in order to benefit that child, one procreates to benefit oneself, to satisfy one's own needs. The child is thrown into cosmic brutality and god knows how much suffering it will endure. All we know is that it certainly will suffer and die. How can such an act be proclaimed to be non-aggressive, or to be moral? But the act of imposing such hardship is selectively ignored by every NAPist I've seen argue for it. Why? Because life also involves pleasure? Kierkegaard: "Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment." You say you believe in moral absolutes. How could you have possibly come to the conclusion that it's absolutely good to commit an aggressive act in order to survive or to perpetuate your own DNA? Your reasoning is most likely something like this: "The species needs to survive, I as an individual need to survive." To which I can keep responding, "why? It's not absolute, it's relative to your own welfare and your own psychological needs." I would also ask you why it is you believe humancentric non-aggression is the proper goal to pursue but sentiocentric non-aggression is not (if that is what you believe)? Surely it isn't written into the fabric of the universe that humans should have dominion over other species and use them as they wish and in the process be absolutely moral. What informs your absolute judgments and from where does the imperative that we should all act in accordance with them come from? I would like to see what your favorite scientists of morality have to say in response. (Perhaps people who haven't deliberately avoided dealing with all of the well known literature written on the subject of ethics if possible.) I do think it is morally wrong to be aggressive toward any sentient being. Empathy informs my judgment. I agree that children are born against their knowledge. I won't say against their will because they are not sentient beings when they're sperm and egg, which cannot possibly categorize it into an aggressive action. I'll admit when you get as deep as you guys are getting that moral absolutes are both nonexistant and irrelevant...Yes I am being selective talking about humans, or sentient beings, but what the fuck? We're humans...and until something else comes along to show us empirically where we're fucking up our science of morality we have to use the EVIDENCE we have. And using evidence and hypotheses, and the scientific method on it, classifies different thoughts on morality as right or wrong. It is a science. That is all I was trying to say when I said there are absolutes in morality. That some theories for morality can be shown to be more correct/efficient/optimal than others for forming a successful human/personality/civilization. I guess absolute wasn't the right word, I'll go with objective morality then you semanticizers. But, bringing us back to the topic at hand, there is no interaction that I can think of where the initiation of force is preferable to non-aggression. And when you get into men with guns telling everyone what to do (government), you are interfering with all competing offers on how to do everything, thus decreasing efficiency. Again, remember that government is not a real thing...it's a made up word for people with the threat of violence and death on you and your unborn children unless you give them money aka your time/productivity receiving nothing in return...other than the promise that they won't kill you until you stop.

I still don't see how you address Hume's "is" and "ought" distinction. You arbitrarily select one biological trait (empathy) that suits your personal taste as an axiom for morality and claim that science can be the tool that indicates whether human actions are moral or not, leaving out that that's only possible because you presupposed the goal with which science had to operate. At least Sam Harris has a wider starting point that attempts to bridge this gap : he proposes that a (vague) notion of collective well being could be objective and that when it comes down to it, morality is only about well being in the broader sense.

I don't want to further derail this thread so I'll just link Russel Blackford's review of The Moral Landscape and the essay that he judged as a winner for Sam's blog challenge on criticizing the book's main point, both make good food for thought:
http://jetpress.org/v21/blackford3.htm
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-moral-landscape-challenge

on a last note, this moral debate on the side of OP's subject isn't as irrelevant and definitely not as stupid it's been accused of. Only fools would attempt to try to restructure society positively without a coherent grasp of what motivates the human psyche, or even wondering how the term "positively" could firmly stand the pressure of universality.

It is exactly coherent grarsp of what motivates the human psyche why I am an anarchist and why the state is always doomed to fail