On Moral Authorities

[Ignorant]

So far, you've written just under 1500 words in response to my original question about what it is, exactly, you are aiming to help and avoid harming and in what sense that is meant. Several times, you have said it is very obvious, and that anyone who has moral agency knows the answer. Somehow, you have avoided providing that answer in the 1500 words you have written about your own morality. That is fascinating to me.

You don't aim to help and avoid harm for the sake of human happiness (as you use the terms). Fine. 

But you DO aim to help and avoid harm for the sake of something. 

"The happiest human life consists in __________________."

Your evaluation then your apparent revised version: "That is mere hedonism! You couldn't possibly mean anything else by 'happiness' than what I understand by the term!" The happiest human life Something about a moral life consists in providing help and avoiding harm. 

You say it is good to do helpful things, and bad to do harmful things. Yes, even a child can grasp that concept. But children would struggle to formulate a sentence about WHAT helpful things are good for and WHAT harmful things are bad for. What do helpful things help? What do harmful things harm? I am not asking so I can agree or disagree with whatever your answer might be. I am asking because the fact that you have an answer AT ALL to the question means that you fall into one of the two broad categories I described earlier. 

Either your answer has something to do with the 1) intrinsic value and reality of human life, or 2) it has to do with obedience to some external and arbitrary authority.

Before, you explicitly rejected the rational appeal of #2 above.

I don't care what your answer turns out to be. The fact that you have an answer at all that is not categorized by #2 is enough for me. Getting you to actually formulate an answer could have easily shown that. 

If, however, helping is good and harming is bad "just because", then we can talk to each other as children. I'd prefer to talk to you as an adult.

Now, if, at any point, you can accept a simple disagreement, maybe we can have a conversation...but if you can;t...ofc we can;t. [1] I;m not interested in arguing with you over what belongs in either set, I'm not arguing with you that things I place in the helpful can't  lead to "he happiest life" -however you define it-, and I'm not interested in arguing with you over which morality is the "right morality". [2] I'm simply making you aware of a different framework. [3] You have found a way to make this simple task as odious as possible, lol. Congratulations. [4]

1) I am happy to accept simple disagreements where simple disagreements exist. I am happy to accept simple agreements where simple agreements exist. I'd prefer to accept ACTUAL disagreements and ACTUAL agreements.

2) Neither am I interested in these things. The fact that you suppose that I am is evidence that there has been a gross misinterpretation.

3) And I'm trying to make you aware that your "different framework" is a mere reformulation of already acknowledged frameworks.

4) That is often the case for me. I am sorry you have found this so miserable.

What follows demonstrates a simple but important misunderstanding of what I'm suggesting:

Does -this- lead to "the happiest life"? If I told you that decapitating someone and parading their skull up and down the street could -easily- fit into my "helpful" category, would you twist your scrote into knots to tell me how this leads to or has something to do with "the happiest life"? [1] What if I told you that my harm category could include chemical therapy and brain surgery to remove any negativity in a person..would you twist your scrote in the other direction to tell me how that -doesn't- lead to "the happiest life"? [2] At this point, I'd love to watch you turn "happy life" into a dumpster term in order to make it the same as things it isn't. [3]

1) No. I would simply make the distinction I made here in my first post: 

"All people, therefore, would be subjects who try to act in ways that would perfect their nature (i.e. the object of their intellectual judgment), in common with every other person, according what THEY hold true (some holding truer things than others) about the reality of human nature"

So, if you hold it to be true that decapitating someone is helpful and therefore good according to the reality of what a human is, then that means YOU have judged such an action as leading toward a happy life. You have made a subjective judgment about an objective reality. Subjective judgments can be wrong. Some judgments are closer to the objective reality than others (e.g. some "lists" of helps and harms will bring about better human lives than others, objectively. And I'm not interested in trying to determine which lists those are right now) 

I think there are any number of reasons why you (the royal you) could have made this bad judgment, but the things that will guide the conversation in discovering where you went wrong will revolve around the reality/intrinsic value of humanity (what is a human) and how actions actually bring about the best versions of that reality. These also happen to be the two things you are refusing to provide even a bare bones answer.

2) See above. People can make bad subjective judgments about objective reality. Subjective judgments are unavoidable. Either you think objective reality exists, or you don't. Either you think subjective judgments can approach the truth about objective reality, or you don't. Either human life itself is the objective reality about which subjective moral judgments are made, or it isn't. I think in the affirmative in each case. I think you do too. Your interpretive key for making judgments about the objective reality of human life is help and harm, seemingly meant as "does this 'help' the objective reality of human life, or does it 'harm' it?" What is explicitly missing, but what I am sure you know very well, is the 'what' about the objective reality of human life the help or harm relates to. Whatever that turns out to be, it will mean your own judgment about the "in what a good human life consists".

3) Actually, quite the opposite. I was trying to rescue "happy life" from the dumpster and return it to its fuller meaning, and you seem hell bent on keeping it where it is among the hedonist garbage. Clearly we're not at the place where we can do that.