[split] Are Questions About God Important?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Come on thumps, I will that's an easy one:
Mysterious ways and shit.

"Lyin' for Jesus ain't no sin."

[FrustratedFool]

@Belacqua
It's not that you can't prove that it's bad to torture infants for fun, it's that the question is somewhat meaningless because the word 'bad' has been smuggled in - which is the whole problem.

Is it wrong to do X (whatever X is)?

Since no ought can be derived from an is, the terms bad/good and all moral language doesn't seem to refer to anything objective or concrete or measurable - it only refers to subjective feelings and intuitions. It boils down to personal preferences. You can see the influence of Hume, the logical positivists, and nihilism upon me lol

So, certainly, because of the way humans have evolved, the psychotic lack of empathy is seen as an illness, but it doesn't correspond to some delusion about the nature of reality in the way someone subject to irrational illusions and hallucinations does. It's just that a psychopath's brain doesn't work the same as everyone else's not that they are misperceiving reality.

The rubber hits the road with the idea of human flourishing when there's a split between what is best for me as an individual and what is best for human flourishing, or anyone else in any quantity. There's nothing irrational about choosing to do what is entirely selfish, nor can we say there's anything 'bad' as if morality was some external objective force. The only concern would be whether or not the selfish action is truly in my own best interest given how society functions (and given whatever degree of personal empathy and conscience etc I have).

I don't see any ethical question that needs to invoke anything else other my own best interest or personal preference. There's no need to obfuscate matters by trying to place ethics outside myself.

[Belacqua]

@Belacqua
It's not that you can't prove that it's bad to torture infants for fun, it's that the question is somewhat meaningless because the word 'bad' has been smuggled in - which is the whole problem.

Is it wrong to do X (whatever X is)?

Since no ought can be derived from an is, the terms bad/good and all moral language doesn't seem to refer to anything objective or concrete or measurable - it only refers to subjective feelings and intuitions.  It boils down to personal preferences.  You can see the influence of Hume, the logical positivists, and nihilism upon me lol

So, certainly, because of the way humans have evolved, the psychotic lack of empathy is seen as an illness, but it doesn't correspond to some delusion about the nature of reality in the way someone subject to irrational illusions and hallucinations does.  

I think we're close to the conversation we had earlier, about meaning and nihilism. As I recall, we agreed that meanings are created by people. I held that even though they are created things, they are still real.

I also think that subjective feelings and intuitions are real things that exist in the world. Human minds are real things. Some real things are not quantifiable. 

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It's just that a psychopath's brain doesn't work the same as everyone else's not that they are misperceiving reality. 

The rubber hits the road with the idea of human flourishing when there's a split between what is best for me as an individual and what is best for human flourishing, or anyone else in any quantity.  There's nothing irrational about choosing to do what is entirely selfish, nor can we say there's anything 'bad' as if morality was some external objective force.  The only concern would be whether or not the selfish action is truly in my own best interest given how society functions (and given whatever degree of personal empathy and conscience etc I have).

I don't see any ethical question that needs to invoke anything else other my own best interest or personal preference.  There's no need to obfuscate matters by trying to place ethics outside myself.

Well, some psychotics believe untrue things. They think the mailman is a monster or something. But I see what you're saying. 

Subjective things can be intersubjective to a very strong degree. And this makes them more than personal -- they are things that are held in common by a significant percentage of people. So ethics is not entirely inside oneself alone. 

You're right, of course, that there are major unsolvable issues about what is best for me as an individual vs. a more general view of human flourishing. We talked earlier about smoking, for example, and I was willing to accept that as a personal choice I can see the attraction. But that doesn't make ethical discussions worthless -- it only makes them difficult. And eventually unsolvable in any absolute sense. (Which is why humility is ethically good.) I just think we need to keep discussing and challenging ethical questions, despite the knowledge that we will never reach an end of it. (Which is true of most philosophical questions, I think.) 

Even Dante thought that we can't know all the answers.

[FrustratedFool]

Real is a vague word, but yes thoughts/feelings exist. But they exist in a different way to something that exists outside the human brain. Unicorns and fairies don't exist in the same way that cats and dogs do. Morality likewise is an abstract conceptual framework that doesn't cohere with some externally existing, measurable thing that acts regardless of minds like gravity or the laws of physics. This is the subjective/objective divide. The trouble is that language and society usually make a category error treating good/bad as if they were things that objectively existed like rocks and sound waves rather than subjective and inter-subjective things like the laws of England or the worth of the pound. Given this, the strongest way to declare this error is to declare morality doesn't exist, in the same way that fairies don't exist. If this then leads onto a discussion about in what ways fairies exist then that's fine so long as all parties can agree that goodness, metaethically speaking, exists in the same sort of way as pixies do.

Again, there's no ethical discussion which can't be resolved (and which ultimately boils down to) by appeal to my personal interest. The language of ethics is largely a fool's errand if it seeks anything like an objective external should/ought to my behaviour (not least because humans likely don't have freewill which makes any sense of accountability moot). And if it acknowledges that ethics is really just an intersubjective social construct (and accepts that different individuals, societies, and species will have different ethical inclinations all of which equally have no connection to objective things) then it is reducible to simply thinking through whether what I hold to be in my own interest truly is, or is consistent with my other views on what is best for me. Ethical philosophy can, at best, reveal inconsistencies between our professed desires and our ethical choices, it cannot provide a normative framework by which to assess the goodness/badness of such-and-such an act.

I believe this can be tested out. Present me with any ethical conundrum, and I will say what I prefer from a purely self-interested perspective, and it will be seen that it pragmatically ends up the same as anyone else who tries to justify their moral choices with appeal to some external source of constraint.

[The Grand Nudger]

I learned this approach from Dante, because it's the standard Catholic view. Sin, for Dante, is not the breaking of arbitrary laws, but a stubborn refusal to pursue our proper ends. His views translate easily into modern language, where instead of sin we would talk about unhealthy obsessions, addictions, or neuroses. But even if we differ from Dante considerably in what we consider the aims to be, the general framework still makes sense to me.

There's not likely to be much daylight between catholic proper ends™ and arbitrary laws.

[The Grand Nudger]

I believe this can be tested out.  Present me with any ethical conundrum, and I will say what I prefer from a purely self-interested perspective, and it will be seen that it pragmatically ends up the same as anyone else who tries to justify their moral choices with appeal to some external source of constraint.

You could test it out internally.  Have you never been in the position of thinking that a/the right thing to do is something that you didn't want to do? Or thinking that something you very much did want to do, was not a/the right thing to do? Did you ignore your concerns in all of those cases and do what you wanted to do no matter how you felt about it's rightness or wrongness?

Subjectivism as an error from an error theorist is not subjectivism as a metaethical fact or from a subjectivist. Subjectivism as a metaethical fact allows that morality does exist, and is predicate on some fact about us, and this is the right way to "do morality". An error theorist might even allow that we could do morality some objective way, but we don't, we do it a subjective way. In every explanation of moral content or moral statements morality exists and is [insert our theory to explain it here].

End of the day, if we're all subjectivists now, we probably ought to get comfortable with the language and consequences of that, rather than contend that an error theorists criticism, objectively asserted..is subjectivism, which doesn't exist.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Come on thumps, I will that's an easy one:
Mysterious ways and shit.

That's not a defense, that's an excuse.

[Ahriman]

This simply pushes the question back: why should I care about human flourishing?

The only answer is because I care for my own interest - so just cut out the middle-man and ask what do I prefer.  Hence ethics is just my personal preference.  It just so happens that I prefer, generally, human flourishing for my own best interest (whether practical or emotional).

Ethics boils down to preference and then expediency (what best accomplishes my desires).  Anything else is pointless addition or rhetoric.

I can safely say I would prefer the opposite of human flourishing, because that would suit my interests. I'm sure there are not too many people who would agree with my stance on this. But less humans means less competition. It also means a more managable population, in terms of building an ideal society.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Come on thumps, I will that's an easy one:
Mysterious ways and shit.

That's not a defense, that's an excuse.

That's what believers have, excuses. Defenses require evidence. What we get is defenses for having no evidences. "Well, it's a mystery." St. George of Carlin.

[FrustratedFool]

We could perhaps argue as to whether or not human flourishing actually is in your best interest or not, but can you give me a real life practical example of how that personal preference affects your behaviour?