(March 26, 2017 at 12:06 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: I know it's bad to revive threads, but I feel this was one of the better discussions.
I want to say we can prove the thesis by contradiction:
It's absurd to say false judgement can define who we are and it's obvious we can falsely estimate ourselves and that our value cannot be just chaotically assigned to what we desire, yet it was obvious that value is a thing given by perception.
This shows 1. We are defined by value giver that is right in it's judgement. 2. That we are created in a way that actions and value are interlinked and value either negatively or positively happens with our actions.
I would define actions as series of states that forms a summary of usually a goal or various goals in mind. For example I biked to school, is a series of me biking and the goal is to get to school through biking (and it may have other intentions like exercise, losing weight).
Actions being a series of states means the goal or goals and the spirit while doing it, the life force behind it, get's inherited to who we are and the value we are.
To say our actions are not and we simply decide what our value is by those actions and assign it, has been proven wrong, as we can have absurd morals like Hitler and think we are some sort of hero.
But the value of you riding your bike to school is based on your goals. Because you want to get to school and exercise, biking has value to you. But to me, I have no goals associated with you. So it doesn't matter to me if you get to school or get exercise. So your biking to school has no value to me.
If the goals are not universal, then the value the actions have in helping achieve the goal is also not universal.
If Hitler wants to get to school on time as well, and their is only one bike that he shares with you, you will both have opposing goals, and consequently, the value of an action will be opposite. If you ride to school, your actions has value to your goal, but has negative value towards Hitler's goal. And the same the other way around. If Hitler gets the bike, it hurts your ability to achieve your goal, so has negative value to you.
Just like Hitler committing genocide and trying to conquer Europe were actions with positive value in achieving his goals, yet, for most, the actions had negative value. The negative value just happened to be a vast majority, and people just rounded up to everyone, and pretend it's universal. But there've been enough people committing genocide and trying to conquer the world in history, that I think it's pretty clear it's far from a universally held idea.
If you want to have a universal values, you need a universal goal. You can make one up, I suppose. But I'm not sure how you convince others that your 'universal goal' is not just something you made up. If I were trying to do it, I'd probably try to create an authority figure. Possibly some God type, and say they have a bunch of universal goals, and that'd probably be pretty effective.
