On February 15 2015 03:47 thewh00sel wrote:
step 1: apply the non aggression principle to everything
Step 2: ????
Step 3: PROFIT
this aggression will not stand, man.
I must have missed the latest scientific discovery that proved aggression to be useless and immoral.
[ ] useless
[x] immoral
What is this fucking ridiculous discussion of morality, killing is immoral fucking period, its not a slippery slope and the way the state operates does not fall into a grey area, the fact that people dont choose to see it it doesnt mean its not immoral just as slavery was.
The so called social contract where you have no choice and no reasonable alternative but to submit to whatever rules of the state is immoral, any initiation of force is immoral (non aggression principle). You can try to dig some weird exception but "give me your money and Ill spend it as I see fit and maybe some will help you or I will kill you" its not a fucking exception
everything alive in nature kills in one way or another for food, pleasure or dominance, aggression has been an asset for the survival and thriving of countless species on the planet,
yet here you dudes have apparently decided to label nature "objectively/scientifically" immoral because of your personal taste; the fucking cheetah doesn't care how much disney you've watched when you were young, it enjoys killing because it's in it's nature.
So either nature is inherently objectively immoral, in a very Christian outlook of the universe , or it is amoral and we too are also balls of mass/energy interacting with each other the best way we see fit through complex situations. The latter interpretation of the world leaves no room for bad conscience, as it presupposes that humans too, as a product of the bloody and slow evolutionary process , always do what they perceive as the best action for their growth and well being, no matter how stupid or fucked up their actions may seem; decision making processes on the brain have differences from person to person, not to mention how personal experience can produce vastly different behaviors.
So the only thing that seems to be ridiculous about this discussion is to demand that everyone accepts the non killing (or even non aggression, for a more new agey suggestion) principle as objective moral duty.We don't want needless killing so we agree to make rules to protect human life to make our own life better as we understand "better" to be; that doesn't mean we should label our own self centered bias as the objectively moral truth
People accept the state's existence as a necessary evil. Nobody likes paying taxes or to be told what to do, it's convinced otherwise ppl like yourself that should show how a stateless society could practically work and the ways it would be beneficial for most and I seriously doubt the moral imperatives will work even on the simplest of minds
What a stupid argument seriously.
Obviously nature is immoral by human standards, killing the children and raping the mother is ok if you are a Lion, as a human guess what... surprisingly its immoral. If you think there is no such thing as morality then without any punishment you would go on a killing spree to steal pocket change? you are either sick or just arguing dumb things.
People dont accept the state as a necessary evil, they are simply born into it, educated by it and see no life outside of it, the same way religion is propagated, people dont objectivly think there is an invisible man in the sky very concerned about sexuality, they are simply born into it, most people simply dont question these kind of things.
Moral imperatives didnt eradicate slavery for thousands of hands simply because our society was too barbaric and obtuse to realize it was simply wrong and immoral, the same thing happens with the state.
the argument is not stupid, you are just a Christian and you don't even know it, or you somehow miss that we discuss objective morality. "Nature is immoral". This is a new low for the conversation especially if you mean objectively for all humans. Sure, and the sun is full of hate some days. The big bang especially was full of shit and humans have a natural inclination to sin and not just natural inclinations.
let me try to make a summary, give me an argument for the part you disagree with:
a) morality is a human construct,
b) your own understanding of good and evil is by no means exactly the same as everyone else's (subjective morality),
c) there's absolutely no sort of basis to claim that a person's own retarded ideas and values are the absolute morality to be embraced by everyone, objective morality is incomprehensible and unfounded on atheism (don't give me again the NAP or anti killing bs, where are these founded to be objective?)
d) if you think the concept of objective morality is what's really keeping people from going into killing sprees for pocket change, insert generic personal insult here (your style)
e) someone who doesn't even understand the concept of morality could never be objectively immoral; life that is not conscious will always be amoral and not immoral because moral obligations require free will to have any meaning whatsoever; free will is a concept that supposes the individual's brain works in ways other than the universe's, non deterministic and non probabilistic. It sprung from the obvious logical fallacies that came with the supposed existence of God (people get to "choose" stuff and be judged while God is all knowing and the source of everything else)
I agree on what you said about people being born into the state and not questioning it , they rationalize it by saying that it is a necessary evil, no contradiction here with what I said. Moral imperatives didn't work during slavery days because the state's influence on what most people see as ethical is huge. What you suggest is not really a great answer though; you want people to blindly follow your own perception of good and evil instead of everyone creating their own platform. You just make up an axiom that you think should be good for everyone "killing is evil" - like a commandment- and then whenever someone asks where do you base the objectivity of this statement you resort to personally attacking in the most sensationalist order ("you're sick or dumb if you don't get this" etc), something curiously enough even the great Sam Harris did in the debate I linked above.
Your own personal "gut" feelings, or mine, have nothing to do with the search for objectivity in morality. Kant tried much harder to prove objective morality and he started with moral intuition
as a basis; he then got relentless criticism on for his metaphysical prejudice by several philosophers. While his whole huge philosophical structure collapses without the metaphysical/dualistic element, at least he lived in the 1700s and made huge progress for his field, while you and I are in 2015 debating relevant subjects through the scope of atheism (lol)
Even if a unified anarchistic morality did exist and it was exactly what you had in mind, how would it enhance peoples' sense of autonomy and individuality to demand that everyone thinks that way because it is "right"
new shit has come to light... a-and... shit! man...
"Men are united by error into a compact mass. The prevailing power of evil is the cohesive force that binds them together. The reasonable activity of humanity is to destroy the cohesive power of evil. Revolutions are attempts to shatter the power of evil by violence. Men think that by hammering upon the mass they will be able to break it in fragments, but they only make it more dense and impermeable than it was before. External violence is of no avail. The disruptive movement must come from within when molecule releases its hold upon molecule and the whole mass falls into disintegration. Error is the force that binds men together; truth alone can set them free. Now truth is truth only when it is in action, and then only can it be transmitted from man to man. Only truth in action, by introducing light into the conscience of each individual, can dissolve the homogeneity of error, and detach men one by one from its bonds."
-Leo Tolstoy, My Religion, Loc 2884-2885 (Chapter XII)
On February 18 2015 21:29 RiKD wrote:
" Error is the force that binds men together; truth alone can set them free. Now truth is truth only when it is in action, and then only can it be transmitted from man to man. Only truth in action, by introducing light into the conscience of each individual, can dissolve the homogeneity of error, and detach men one by one from its bonds."
-Leo Tolstoy, My Religion, Loc 2884-2885 (Chapter XII)
Tolstoy , a major Christian anarchist influence, could almost be citing Socrates here, the first guy to ever claim that truth is good/moral/divine and people should dedicate their lives finding it through internal search. .However, the concept of glorifying the truth as moral and noble had it's toll on the Christian dogma itself
"All great things destroy themselves by an act of self-cancellation. That's what the law of life wills, that law of the necessary "self-overcoming" in the essence of life – eventually the call always goes out to the lawmaker himself, "patere legem, quam ipse tulisti" [submit to the law which you yourself have established]. That’s the way Christianity was destroyed as dogma by its own morality; that’s the way Christendom as morality must now also be destroyed. We stand on the threshold of this event" -F. Nietzsche
By emphasizing on the objective truth (=good=moral) that Christianity claims to be, generations of western scientists were born and raised that highly prioritized truth seeking as a life goal, giving crippling blows to the validity of the Christian story; the way that it was told back then at least.
new shit has come to light... a-and... shit! man...
No, I insist, the conversation is pretty retarded.
Well obviously morality is a human construct and its not absolute but as reasonable beings we can deduct what are good and bad things for a community, I dont remember a single civilization that condoned killing their own in non ritualistic activities, so basically every human on their own figured out that killing your neighbor for petty things its simply bad behavior or immoral.
There are many examples of reasonable morality rules like the golden rule, or the non aggression principle I have no fucking clue what this dull conversation has to do with anarchy.
Are you arguing that without the state there will be no morality and we will go down into a spiral where fucking your sister chop her head off and using as a hat will be ok since morality is not absolute?
Or are you arguing that not everyone must agree objectively that what the government does is immoral?
^The first question is definitely a no.
The second one... well, I'm not sure what you mean. I'm saying that the state's existence can't objectively be proved to be immoral by atheistic standards, it obviously can be by metaphysical ones.
Regarding the first one in a bit of detail:
Finding pleasure in fucking and killing your sister certainly makes you special and dangerous for all the sisters out there but it's only immoral in the sense that society finds it threatening for it's well being, not some sort of divine compass that sits inside the head of each one of us like a spider sense. A clear indication for this is that society obviously doesn't think all killings are immoral and the ones that are considered moral change according to the historical period
The state isn't the source of values, it tries to make peoples' morals more homogeneous and closer to what the government considers best. Even without the state people rarely rank values in their heads in ways that would imminently threaten their own survival. It's not like we definitely need it now in order to have social peace, but it certainly has played a big role in what we consider moral social behavior:
In the beginning stages of social structuring the rules that discouraged what we now consider antisocial behaviour were extremely severe; if you stole something you lost an arm or you even became a slave/corpse (like the infamous Draconian constitution in early ancient Athens). Without extremely strict rules and their progressively softer versions that cultivated more and more socially suitable individuals the discussion we are now having would be impossible. Freud even suggested that by socially suppressing all the aggression we carry as biological organisms we internalize it and then inflict it on ourselves with the form of guilt; that means that we substitute the objects of our inner desire for "tyrannical" behavior with our own self and then claim that guilt exists because we failed to avoid our natural tendencies completely.
Even if, for the sake of making our lives better (or the current conversation), the state must become obsolete, it's important to realize that it was a necessary stepping stone that guaranteed social cohesion, even under the cruelest conditions.
Non aggression principle and the golden rule which you guys keep repeating are axioms that try to explore ways for bettering our lives, there is a huge distinction between objective morality and well being. If we somehow agreed that eg maximum liberty for the people was an objective moral good, a society that consists only of people that hate freedom would perform great by it's own standards but it wouldn't be moral.
This is exactly why science and logic can't help with identifying morality's "true" form, there's no objective scale on which to put values to see which is more important and they very often clash with each other. Our life's experience leads to certain biases and needs. Some people perform well under severe discipline, others feel like they have to be free from all restraining influences in order to thrive etc
On February 19 2015 09:59 Baalim wrote:
Well obviously morality is a human construct and its not absolute but as reasonable beings we can deduct what are good and bad things for a community, I dont remember a single civilization that condoned killing their own in non ritualistic activities, so basically every human on their own figured out that killing your neighbor for petty things its simply bad behavior or immoral.
I'm glad we seem to agree on the non absolute of morality, think however how much difference in opinion there is and always will be on the term "petty things", it almost renders your last sentence meaningless.
new shit has come to light... a-and... shit! man...
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.)
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On February 15 2015 03:47 thewh00sel wrote:
step 1: apply the non aggression principle to everything
Step 2: ????
Step 3: PROFIT
this aggression will not stand, man.
I must have missed the latest scientific discovery that proved aggression to be useless and immoral.
What is this fucking ridiculous discussion of morality, killing is immoral fucking period, its not a slippery slope and the way the state operates does not fall into a grey area, the fact that people dont choose to see it it doesnt mean its not immoral just as slavery was.
I take your "killing is immoral fucking period" as an absolute statement. If it's not, then you can disregard my post. If it is, then here are two hypotheticals for you Baal:
1) You wake up one day with the ability to read the mind of others at will. You can even know thoughts that they have previously had. You now work with the FBI in order to help them catch the right people. You find a serial killer who is obviously severely mentally damaged and who has no chance to be reformed. You have the choice to give him a painless lethal injection or to let him squander resources, rotting in jail for the rest of his life with awful living conditions. What's your choice and why?
2) You have the ability to predict the future with 100% certainty. You are witnessing a brutal concentration camp somewhere in the future. People have been abandoned to their fate and have no possibility of escaping. You know every single person there will come to die of starvation and illness. Many of them are religious and believe God will save them in time, so they will not commit suicide. They are still very much attached to life. You are powerless to change their fate, but you could secretly poison their only source of water with a chemical that will kill them in their sleep painlessly. What do you do? And if those people knew about your plan and they were begging you not to kill them, would it influence your decision? I guess I'll also throw this one in for fun: let's say that only one person is going to make it out if you do nothing, while none of them will if you proceed with the mercy killing of poisoning the water. Does it change your decision?
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Last edit: 24/02/2015 20:03
1
WhyYouKickMyDog United States. Feb 24 2015 20:19. Posts 1623
I'd recommend reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris (as well as reading criticisms of it). I found it to be persuasive in arguing that objective morality exists, and that its a false dichotomy to say you're either an atheist who believes in subjective morality, or a theist who believes that morality is created by God.
"Killing is immoral fucking period" is obviously ridiculous, there are countless examples where killing is moral, and you don't even have to get into these insane hypotheticals to find them. It's especially ridiculous if "killing" meant any living creature instead of just killing other humans. Is that really something that anarchists commonly believe?
On February 24 2015 19:19 WhyYouKickMyDog wrote:
I'd recommend reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris (as well as reading criticisms of it). I found it to be persuasive in arguing that objective morality exists, and that its a false dichotomy to say you're either an atheist who believes in subjective morality, or a theist who believes that morality is created by God.
"Killing is immoral fucking period" is obviously ridiculous, there are countless examples where killing is moral, and you don't even have to get into these insane hypotheticals to find them. It's especially ridiculous if "killing" meant any living creature instead of just killing other humans. Is that really something that anarchists commonly believe?
I'm going to read that, but I think he didn't make good enough points on the debate I linked a few posts back. Have you seen it?
new shit has come to light... a-and... shit! man...
On February 15 2015 03:47 thewh00sel wrote:
step 1: apply the non aggression principle to everything
Step 2: ????
Step 3: PROFIT
this aggression will not stand, man.
I must have missed the latest scientific discovery that proved aggression to be useless and immoral.
What is this fucking ridiculous discussion of morality, killing is immoral fucking period, its not a slippery slope and the way the state operates does not fall into a grey area, the fact that people dont choose to see it it doesnt mean its not immoral just as slavery was.
I take your "killing is immoral fucking period" as an absolute statement. If it's not, then you can disregard my post. If it is, then here are two hypotheticals for you Baal:
1) You wake up one day with the ability to read the mind of others at will. You can even know thoughts that they have previously had. You now work with the FBI in order to help them catch the right people. You find a serial killer who is obviously severely mentally damaged and who has no chance to be reformed. You have the choice to give him a painless lethal injection or to let him squander resources, rotting in jail for the rest of his life with awful living conditions. What's your choice and why?
2) You have the ability to predict the future with 100% certainty. You are witnessing a brutal concentration camp somewhere in the future. People have been abandoned to their fate and have no possibility of escaping. You know every single person there will come to die of starvation and illness. Many of them are religious and believe God will save them in time, so they will not commit suicide. They are still very much attached to life. You are powerless to change their fate, but you could secretly poison their only source of water with a chemical that will kill them in their sleep painlessly. What do you do? And if those people knew about your plan and they were begging you not to kill them, would it influence your decision? I guess I'll also throw this one in for fun: let's say that only one person is going to make it out if you do nothing, while none of them will if you proceed with the mercy killing of poisoning the water. Does it change your decision?
I think he took the objective morality part back.
I consider it a surprising twist, even if he dissed the side debate as retarded
new shit has come to light... a-and... shit! man...
On February 15 2015 03:47 thewh00sel wrote:
step 1: apply the non aggression principle to everything
Step 2: ????
Step 3: PROFIT
this aggression will not stand, man.
I must have missed the latest scientific discovery that proved aggression to be useless and immoral.
What is this fucking ridiculous discussion of morality, killing is immoral fucking period, its not a slippery slope and the way the state operates does not fall into a grey area, the fact that people dont choose to see it it doesnt mean its not immoral just as slavery was.
I take your "killing is immoral fucking period" as an absolute statement. If it's not, then you can disregard my post. If it is, then here are two hypotheticals for you Baal:
1) You wake up one day with the ability to read the mind of others at will. You can even know thoughts that they have previously had. You now work with the FBI in order to help them catch the right people. You find a serial killer who is obviously severely mentally damaged and who has no chance to be reformed. You have the choice to give him a painless lethal injection or to let him squander resources, rotting in jail for the rest of his life with awful living conditions. What's your choice and why?
2) You have the ability to predict the future with 100% certainty. You are witnessing a brutal concentration camp somewhere in the future. People have been abandoned to their fate and have no possibility of escaping. You know every single person there will come to die of starvation and illness. Many of them are religious and believe God will save them in time, so they will not commit suicide. They are still very much attached to life. You are powerless to change their fate, but you could secretly poison their only source of water with a chemical that will kill them in their sleep painlessly. What do you do? And if those people knew about your plan and they were begging you not to kill them, would it influence your decision? I guess I'll also throw this one in for fun: let's say that only one person is going to make it out if you do nothing, while none of them will if you proceed with the mercy killing of poisoning the water. Does it change your decision?
Well I didnt elaborate much on that, I meant killing for selfish reasons is wrong, ofcourse killing in self defense or other exceptions like euthanasia are fine.
1) Id catch the serial killer before he commits a crime? Then I would defend others and I would let him choose whether he likes to live in confinement or die
2) Its their choice, they are able to reason even if they do it wrong, its not my place to make such decisions for them.
You don't have the option to catch him before he commits a crime. You gained the ability over night, he had already committed several slayings. And let's say your mind reading powers only work at close proximity, so you can't let him loose and prevent future crimes, unless you plan to dedicate your life to following a single criminal. (Cmon you were just supposed to humor me, it's an hypothetical!). Giving him the choice is a pretty noble decision; most people would want the punishment to fit the crime (but those people also believe in libertarian free will).
As for the second one, I think it's a harder choice than simply saying "it's not my place to decide for them". I think this sentiment is just our normal, humble intuitive moral sense speaking. But here you were given a godlike power and you definitely know better than they do. Appealing to their reasoning abilities is faulty when you know they are desperate, irrational animals doomed to a miserable death. Both options are unappealing, but it may very well be that it is more selfish to do nothing in such a scenario. Also, it has been proven in several studies that people are notoriously bad at knowing/wanting what would be good for them. I don't think it makes much sense to look at this data and just go with the thought, "they are self-directing agents, I should not interfere with their wishes, it is not my place". Again, I think there's a smuggling of a belief in free will in there. Just food for thought.
Actually, here's one more thought experiment that just came to my mind to sort of illustrate my point. Let's say you're a doctor and you're dealing with a couple where the woman is currently pregnant. You learn from screening tests that the baby will be born with some kind of non-trivial birth defect. It will suffer from this condition for all of its life. You know that both individuals are religious fundamentalists and they will want the baby as it is, regardless of its condition. They don't believe in evolution; they believe that if God made the child like this, then it's just part of His plan which we must not doubt. Now say you could reverse this condition permanently with medicine, but you knew that they would refuse. Would you respect their wishes? If you could use the medicine against their knowledge, would you not?
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On February 24 2015 19:19 WhyYouKickMyDog wrote:
I'd recommend reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris (as well as reading criticisms of it). I found it to be persuasive in arguing that objective morality exists, and that its a false dichotomy to say you're either an atheist who believes in subjective morality, or a theist who believes that morality is created by God.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On February 25 2015 07:41 Loco wrote:
You don't have the option to catch him before he commits a crime. You gained the ability over night, he had already committed several slayings. And let's say your mind reading powers only work at close proximity, so you can't let him loose and prevent future crimes, unless you plan to dedicate your life to following a single criminal. (Cmon you were just supposed to humor me, it's an hypothetical!). Giving him the choice is a pretty noble decision; most people would want the punishment to fit the crime (but those people also believe in libertarian free will).
As for the second one, I think it's a harder choice than simply saying "it's not my place to decide for them". I think this sentiment is just our normal, humble intuitive moral sense speaking. But here you were given a godlike power and you definitely know better than they do. Appealing to their reasoning abilities is faulty when you know they are desperate, irrational animals doomed to a miserable death. Both options are unappealing, but it may very well be that it is more selfish to do nothing in such a scenario. Also, it has been proven in several studies that people are notoriously bad at knowing/wanting what would be good for them. I don't think it makes much sense to look at this data and just go with the thought, "they are self-directing agents, I should not interfere with their wishes, it is not my place". Again, I think there's a smuggling of a belief in free will in there. Just food for thought.
Actually, here's one more thought experiment that just came to my mind to sort of illustrate my point. Let's say you're a doctor and you're dealing with a couple where the woman is currently pregnant. You learn from screening tests that the baby will be born with some kind of non-trivial birth defect. It will suffer from this condition for all of its life. You know that both individuals are religious fundamentalists and they will want the baby as it is, regardless of its condition. They don't believe in evolution; they believe that if God made the child like this, then it's just part of His plan which we must not doubt. Now say you could reverse this condition permanently with medicine, but you knew that they would refuse. Would you respect their wishes? If you could use the medicine against their knowledge, would you not?
I was trying to humor you, I thought the psycho didnt commit the crimes yet, I have no strong position on death penalty, I think both options are fine, since this guy has some kind of mental handicap letting him choose would be best, Id be more willing to kill people who commit non-passionate murders.
No I would not intervene and poison them, their free will is extremely important even if it comes at the cost of pain because of their ignorance, this happens all the time.
On the example of the child I would give the child the medicine since its a 3rd person they would be fucking up, usually we leave parents the decision because they are supposed to know best, but if for some reason I can know better than then then I will act in the best interest of the child since its not able to reason and make choices yet, but if the parents are the ones sick and refusing treatment Id let them suffer the consequences of their ignorant choices.
Ex-PokerStars Team Pro Online
1
thewh00sel United States. Feb 26 2015 09:41. Posts 2734
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.
A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. - Ayn Rand
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.
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.
new shit has come to light... a-and... shit! man...
United States. Feb 18 2015 22:29. Posts 8522
