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 Post subject: Whence Ethics?
PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 3:49 am 
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Hello, all. In compliance with the seventh rule of Debate Club, I refer you to something said in passing in another nearby forum ...

Zarathustra wrote:
If religious beliefs cannot inform governmental decisions, how can the government make any decision that can be perceived as "ethical" in any way?


I take it that the respected sir believes that any valid system of ethics must be informed by God. I would suggest otherwise, and give the constitution of the United States of America as a concrete example of a functioning, entirely secular ethical system. It isn't perfect, but it has made for a truly great society.

To say that ethics is meaningless without God seems to me to be putting God in the place of metaphysical policeman. As St Anselm put it, God is that than which no greater can exist; surely there must be something greater than making a list of naughty and nice. Again, from the religious point of view, people are given free will because it is better to choose to be good than to be made to be good. If God is our traffic cop in the sky, then we aren't choosing anything.

To answer the respected sir's initial question: the government, or indeed any human institution, must choose to do right because it is right. Knowing what is right -- that is the hard problem, but it is not insoluble, and God (whichever God or gods you like to follow) shouldn't have to be there to tell you what to do. He's God: he has all of Creation to manage. He gave you a brain so you could figure your own problems out for yourself.

Tamayo the agnostic


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 4:16 am 
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Well, I'm reluctant to attempt to refute such a quote out fo context, especially given that it seems at odds with other statements Z has made.

I will say that history shows that no few perfectly stable societies have based their ethical systems on a wide variety of different religions - or none at all. This implies to me that governments, at least, are capable of existing indpendent of any religion.

As to whether ethics can exist so is largely dependent on your definition of ethics. Some would say that ethical behavior descends only from religion (and by implication, only fromt he religion practiced by the person making such claim) and so of course they would consider it unethical to act under any different moral construct.

And then we have to tackle the assumption that any particular act is necessarily right or wrong, and that's not as certain as it might seem.

On other words, it's all subjective. I don't think I can realistically debate right and wrong outside of a social construct.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 11:32 am 
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I don't own a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, which I consider to be the reference. However, I do have a copy of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, which is almost acceptable. Here's what bad old revolutionary old Noah Webster had to say:

eth.ic (sorry, can't reproduce the pronunciation clues -- don't have a Unicode dictionary either) n -s 1 ethics pl but usu sing in constr b the discipline dealing with what is good and bad or right and wrong or with moral duty and obligation ... 2 a : a group of moral principles or set of vaules ...

In short, if you want to say that this word has no particular meaning, then other people might disagree with you and point to the definitions above.

The Jewish ethic is found in the Pentateuch, the Christian one in the Gospel of Matthew and in Paul's letters, the Buddhist one in the various sutras, and the American one in the constitution and its amendments. These are systems by which people are judged to be good or bad. I can point to them because they are all very persuasive such systems. Saying "everyone has his own ethics" (not that you did, mind you) is like saying "everyone has his own opinion": true, but vacuous. Ethical systems, like opinions, can be right or wrong, too.

Tamayo the antagonist of situational ethics


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 12:09 pm 
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Okay, I'm not sure exactly what the fuck I was thinking when I said that. I found the thread it was in, and no, it doesn't even seem to make sense in context.

What I might have been trying to say is that no system of ethics can be truly transcendental if God does not exist. This is because, without some kind of human-like (i.e. sentient and possessing a will) being as creator of the universe, how can we possibly say that morality has any objective basis at all?

Basically there are two kinds of statements one can make: "is" statements and "should" statements. "Is" statements deal with simple existence, whereas "should" statements deal with a desired goal, which requires some sort of will. "Should" statements are totally dependent on the existence of a will. Unless the universe is fundamentally the product of a creature with a will, in which case we can use the "should" of that creature as the "objective should" (i.e. the "will" of this being can be found objectively ingrained into the universe), how can we establish any sort of "should" (i.e. ethical system) that isn't completely arbitrary?

This question, however, has been discussed at least a dozen times here already, most recently in the "When is murder justified?" thread.


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 Post subject: Re: Whence Ethics?
PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 12:26 pm 
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Tamayo wrote:
He's God: he has all of Creation to manage. He gave you a brain so you could figure your own problems out for yourself.


Assuming that there's a problem, and that there's a right answer.


I remember that conversation pretty well. What I think Icy was saying is that you can't have an objective system of ethics in the a priori sense without a God (big "G") who enlightens you. No way to do it. Not possible.

Tam cites the Constitution. Well, people debate the ethicality of the Constitution all the time. How does one have an ethical right to bear arms? Is leaving everything the Federal Gov. doesn't decide up to the states (10th Amandment) an ethical standard that stands alone and unchallenged? Why do you suddenly get the "right" to vote at the age of eighteen? Was it ethical for slavery to be practiced up until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed? How, for that matter, do you know that people have rights to life, liberty, and the pusuit of happiness?

What Z was saying is that a government that isn't based on an epiphany or ethics can't really claim to be objective at all. It wasn't so confusing.

EDIT- Well, well, nevermind most of that, Icy got there first.

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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 3:30 pm 
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Lucis Spei wrote:
I remember that conversation pretty well. What I think Icy was saying is that you can't have an objective system of ethics in the a priori sense without a God (big "G") who enlightens you. No way to do it. Not possible.


I am not sure I have read of this conversation, and I am (doubtless unluckily) unacquainted with this Icy; but I would ask of his postulate -- why not? In Exodus, God gives us ten commandments. In Leviticus (or was it Deuteronomy? I forget), He gives several hundred more. That's a lot of axioms; let's us start with but one, that there is a difference between right and wrong, and then try to figure out what actions are right and what are wrong.

To take an easy one, then: it is wrong to kill a person, for in killing him or her, one deprives that person irrevocably of the ability to make any further actions.

To take a hard one: sometimes one must choose between wrongs. If I am a citizen of a country at war, I must choose either to join the military and thereby participate in the slaying of other people, or to refuse to fight, and thereby enable the victory of my country's enemy. In such a situation, I personally would need a lot more information in which to make that choice.

Lucis Spei wrote:
Tam cites the Constitution. Well, people debate the ethicality of the Constitution all the time.


Good! That means that people are thinking about how this law really does reflect how they want to define good and bad. I admitted in my initial posting that the U. S. constitution wasn't perfect, but consider: there have been fewer than thirty amendments to it. That's roughly one change-of-mind per four years. How often do you change your opinions, especially after careful consideration of the facts?

Now, the respected Zarathustra gets into the game:

Zarathustra wrote:
What I might have been trying to say is that no system of ethics can be truly transcendental if God does not exist. This is because, without some kind of human-like (i.e. sentient and possessing a will) being as creator of the universe, how can we possibly say that morality has any objective basis at all?


We can say anything we like. For example, we can say, "I don't like the thought of being killed, and I don't think anyone in his right mind likes the thought of being killed. Maybe there's a principle here."

Zarathustra wrote:
"Should" statements are totally dependent on the existence of a will.


As I understand it, you are saying that an ethical statement (a "should statement") requires God, because God represents the possibility of punishment if the ethical statement is contravened. To use the U. S. constitution as my continuing analogy, America has very extensive justice and executive bodies. If you commit a crime, and if you are caught, you will be punished.

Zarathustra wrote:
Unless the universe is fundamentally the product of a creature with a will, in which case we can use the "should" of that creature as the "objective should" (i.e. the "will" of this being can be found objectively ingrained into the universe), how can we establish any sort of "should" (i.e. ethical system) that isn't completely arbitrary?


We can do it; hell, we have done it. Lots of times. Murder is wrong everywhere, because people have thought about killing and being killed and have decided that they don't want it to happen. The United States constitution was amended to ban slavery. Interestingly also, the same constitution was amended twice with respect to alcohol: one to prohibit it, and once to repeal the prohibition, when people figured out that the ban itself was wrong.

There are moral absolutes, and God doesn't need to tell us what they are. We are very capable of discovering them on our own.

Tamayo


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 5:24 pm 
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Tamayo - I changed my name on the forums several months ago. My previous name was IcyMonkey. That's why you'll see some people on the forums still referring to me as "Icy".

Tamayo wrote:
To take an easy one, then: it is wrong to kill a person, for in killing him or her, one deprives that person irrevocably of the ability to make any further actions.


You haven't really answered the question of why it's wrong to kill a person. Why is it wrong to deprive someone of the ability to make decisions?

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We can say anything we like. For example, we can say, "I don't like the thought of being killed, and I don't think anyone in his right mind likes the thought of being killed. Maybe there's a principle here."


But assuming that there is no God and we live in a universe that's totally material and non-teleological (i.e. it has no set "purpose"), how can we claim that objective moral "principles" exist? This would imply that morality is somehow encoded into the framework of the universe, which is ludicrous.

Morality is based on values, and the material universe does not really HAVE "values". Everything is acted upon by the same physical laws; nothing is given preference. It is we who create values, and perhaps our most important value is the value we place upon human life, which has no objective basis. The human body is in reality simply an extremely complex congregation of chemicals that interacts with its environment in a dynamic way. There's no "objective" reason why this complex system "should" be preserved. We could, I suppose, claim that complexity has an inherent value, but what are we basing this claim upon? What about the inherent nature of the universe suggests that complexity should be given value over simplicity?

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As I understand it, you are saying that an ethical statement (a "should statement") requires God, because God represents the possibility of punishment if the ethical statement is contravened.


No, that's not what I was saying at all. What I was actually saying was that, since morality is based upon values consciously created by sentient entities and depends upont he existence of sentient entities, the only way to establish any sort of "objective" morality (i.e. morality not dependent upon the values of individual human beings), one would have to posit the existence of a transcendental consciousness, whose morality would constitute "objective" morality.

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Murder is wrong everywhere, because people have thought about killing and being killed and have decided that they don't want it to happen.


So you're saying morality is based on what the majority of humanity agrees is right and wrong?

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There are moral absolutes, and God doesn't need to tell us what they are. We are very capable of discovering them on our own.


How can you say this? How can we "discover" moral absolutes the same way one would disover, say, a new continent, a chemical constant, or a physical force?

By the way, I highly suggest you read [url=http://forums.kyhm.com/viewtopic.php?t=5341&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20]the murder justification thread[/quote], where I address some of these ideas perhaps more clearly.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 5:57 pm 
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Zarathustra wrote:
You haven't really answered the question of why it's wrong to kill a person. Why is it wrong to deprive someone of the ability to make decisions?


It is wrong because it ends that person's ability to do right or to right any wrongs he may have committed. It is wrong because it reduces a person, i.e. something that has the ability to make decisions, to a smelly, rotten something that does not have that ability, and in general, people do not wish to have that done to them.

I once read a science fiction novel (and I am sorry, I do not remember the title or the author) wherein an entire, plausible legal system was based upon the idea that all crimes were theft of one kind of another. A lie is a theft of trust; a slaying is a theft of time; a rape is a theft of dignity. It is surely limiting to view all criminality in this light; but in that it did seem plausible, at least whilst reading the book, it showed how actions that harm people can be classified as such without reference to a deity.

Zarathustra wrote:
But assuming that there is no God and we live in a universe that's totally material and non-teleological (i.e. it has no set "purpose"), how can we claim that objective moral "principles" exist? This would imply that morality is somehow encoded into the framework of the universe, which is ludicrous.


No, it doesn't; it implies only that morality is somehow encoded into the mentality of human beings, which is not at all ludicrous. Lots of things are so encoded: for example, I can't help being charmed by small children. I am very literally programmed to protect children and to want to produce them for myself, even though doing so puts me at a real risk to my health.

You like to use the word "objective"; I'll spare you the dictionary lookup again. I would, however, appreciate it if you would explain it in your own terms. You say ...

Zarathustra wrote:
It is we who create values, and perhaps our most important value is the value we place upon human life, which has no objective basis.


Nay; some of those values are indeed imposed upon us by the universe: for example, we prefer to eat food that comes from clean, healthy sources, because rotten food will poison us. Good food tastes better than rotten food. We did not choose to be like this; our evolution, over which we had no control whatsoever, led to our being this way. Good thing, too.

We value human life because we partake of it; we fear death, and we very much dislike pain and suffering, and we wish to avoid all of those things. The human body may be an "extremely complex congregation of chemicals that interacts with its environment in a dynamic way" but it is not merely our bodies we value, but our interactions. I am not claiming that complexity per se has inherent value, but that the complexity of human behaviour is valued by human beings. I insist on the distinction.

Zarathustra wrote:
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Murder is wrong everywhere, because people have thought about killing and being killed and have decided that they don't want it to happen.


So you're saying morality is based on what the majority of humanity agrees is right and wrong?


Aha, now here's a better attack on my position. You should have brought this up earlier. ;-)

No. I didn't say, morality is decided by majority vote. I chose this example, however, because it really does seem to be universal amongst human societies, and I believe it is because to be a person subsumes the knowledge of (and usually the desire not to suffer) the cessation of personhood. I admitted it was an easy example -- you will likely have lots of harder ones with which to challenge me.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 6:07 pm 
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So, am I right in conclusing that you believe morality to be based upon our instinctual drives?


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 29, 2004 9:37 pm 
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Hm, hello, IcyMonkey. :-)

I don't know, really. Got a better idea? Situational ethical systems are necessarily inconsistent, and the alternative -- that ethics per se is as meaningless as metaphysics -- is unpalatable. If you would prefer the latter, I would suggest you try to decide between breathing good air and breathing ammonia without making any ethical statements, such as "breathing ammonia is unpleasant."

Dropping a nuke on Nagasaki was unjustifiable and unforgivable.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2004 9:18 am 
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Tamayo wrote:
Dropping a nuke on Nagasaki was unjustifiable and unforgivable.

Actually it can be both justified and forgiven.
It can be justified because it has already happened thus it was justified in the past by Harry Truman. I've usually seen it justified in a Japanese deaths in nukes vs total deaths in US invasion of mainland way, but it's possible that Truman had some other justification. All the extreme war nuts around here could probably go into better detail than I could.
As to being forgivable, well it's up to the victims and their relatives to decide whether they can forgive the US for what they did. If they can see fit to forgive the US then everyone else should be able to. However the government/emperor of Japan forgiving the US on the people's behalf is stupid, in my opinion, and is unlikely to represent the opinion of the people themselves.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2004 9:28 am 
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Tamayo wrote:
Hm, hello, IcyMonkey. :-)


You probably fired this out, but thi is Zarathustra. I changed my name back to IcyMonkey (as it was originally) a few days ago.

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I don't know, really. Got a better idea? Situational ethical systems are necessarily inconsistent, and the alternative -- that ethics per se is as meaningless as metaphysics -- is unpalatable. If you would prefer the latter, I would suggest you try to decide between breathing good air and breathing ammonia without making any ethical statements, such as "breathing ammonia is unpleasant."


Problem is, you can never isolate genetic influences from social influences, partially because we've genetically evolved to be social creatures. Take the example of "feral" children - i.e. children who grew up in the wild with no human contact. Their actions are indistinguishable from those of, say, an insane, rabid dog. They never possess self-awareness, and hardly ever seem to show any signs of sentience, at least, not until they've been in contact with other humans for a while. Even then, they act in ways we would perceive as disgusting and immoral - for example, brutally attacking anyone who tries to touch them or even get close to them.

You could claim, of course, that the only way our "natural" genetic tendencies can develop properly is in a proper "natural" social setting. But what determines which societies are more "natural" than others? It seems like any standard one could establish for this would have to be arbitrary.

[digression]I've always believed that the word "natural" is a bit of a bullshit term. "Natural" simply means the way things are. EVERYTHING is natural. Technology is natural. It's a natural consequence of the human animal having evolved such a large brain. Pollution, as a consequence of these human animals using technology, is also natural. The idea of "naturality" always seemed to me simply an arbitrary concept based on some misguided idea (rooted ultimately in the Christianity, the vestiges of which still persist in even the most secular Western mind) that humans and human society are somehow "above" or "seperate from" the rest of the world (i.e. "nature"). [/digression]

Genetic influences and social influences CANNOT be seperated, because there's no way to remove either from the picture. (Even lack of social contact, as is the case with feral children, is simply a special type of social influence.) The very process of living is a process of accumulating social influences while developing based on genetic influences.

So how can we establish any sort of self-consistent, non-arbitrary system of ethics rooted in the objective world? I really don't think there's a simply and satisfactory way to answer that question. What's convenient for human civilization and what's true are two different things. Society, in my opinion, has to be built on certain "useful lies" or "practical fictions". The idea of absolute morality is, IMHO, one of those fictions.

So where does that leave us? Well, I gave a fairly good explanation of my moral system in the thread about murder that I mentioned earlier. Basically, in any given situation, I let my conscience guide me. I don't question my conscience; I don't question why I care for others, or don't want humans to die needlessly. I take my conscience as a given, having been created by some combination of genetics and social influences.

This doesn't prevent me from being critical of myself and my decisions; in any particular situation, some methods achieve the goals desired by my conscience (e.g. preservation of life) better than others. Also, I have a natural dislike for blatant inconsistencies (althugh there are more subtle ones that may be lurking at the very root of my moral assumptions), so I try to root them out of my moral ideas when I discover them.

Generally, when I'm arguing about the rightness or wrongness of an action, I don't question the fundamental assumptions of the person I'm arguing with (since fundamental moral assumptions, thankfully, tend to be pretty much the same from human to human), but rather I point out how the particular actions they are advocating are inconsistent with those fundamental assumptions, or inconsistent with actions they'd advocate in analagous situations. Of course, this does mean that if a person decided that killing everyone on the planet was good and a worthwhile goal, I couldn't condemn his actions as wrong per se. However, I would still attempt to stop him, since his actions conflict with my moral goals. Does this mean I'm imposing my morality on someone else? Yes, yes it does.

This solution to the problem of how to establish a moral system may seem a bit unsatisfactory; however, as I said, I don't think a truly perfect and satisfactory solution exists. The universe was not made for us, unfortunately. As unsatisfactory as this moral system is in theory, in practice it works just fine, and that's all I care about.

(BTW, Tamayo, you conna respond to my Midlands Matrix post? :-?)


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2004 12:25 pm 
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Please forgive the terseness of this posting -- I'm on lunch break and am in a bit of a hurry.

With respect to your saying that biological and social forces are both involved in morality -- yes, indeed, they are; we build societies because our genes tell us to. We are pack animals. It is up to us to build good societies.

With respect to your choice to follow your own conscience in any situation: why does your conscience tell you to do this or not to do that?

With respect to the Matrix: many people complained about the undead topic. Have the topic moved to this forum and I will re-enter it, but I do not wish to upset the other Midlands readers.

With all respect.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2004 4:10 pm 
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Tamayo wrote:
Please forgive the terseness of this posting -- I'm on lunch break and am in a bit of a hurry.

With respect to your saying that biological and social forces are both involved in morality -- yes, indeed, they are; we build societies because our genes tell us to. We are pack animals. It is up to us to build good societies.

With respect to your choice to follow your own conscience in any situation: why does your conscience tell you to do this or not to do that?


It doesn't matter. There's no use questioning my fundamental drives. They're just a given. Like I said, useful fiction. I, personally, don't want people to come to harm.

Asking where ethics comes from is irrelevant, and furthermore almost unresolvable. Asking where we get our fundamental drives and motivaions is tantamount to asking why we are what we are... and the answer to that, of course, is incredibly complex, and includes genetic influences, social influences, environmental factors, and dozens, if not thousands or millions, of other things. Everything we encounter affects and changes who we are in some way. Ultimately, none of these influences can be seperated fom the others even in theory.

Genetic "tendencies" alone do nothing without an envionment to select how exactly the gene will be expressed. Keep in mind that the vast majority of our genes are of the variety that get turned "on' or "off" depending on whether the environment demands their use. Society itself, of course, could be understood as the consequence of different individual genetic tendencies (in the form of the individual genomes that make up the society) interacting with each other, sometimes reinforcing each other and sometimes cancelling each other out. This "collective genome" is then handed down to the next generation both physically and in the form of the collective genetic tendencies that formed this society. Society is thus an amplification and direct consequence of genetic tendencies.

This does not mean that we started out with the genetic tendencies alone, however; genetic expression always occurs in the context of some sort of social atmosphere, and that genetic expression in turn changes the social atmosphere that originally determined its method of expression. It's a chicken-and-egg situation: society influences genetics influences society influences genetics, ad infinitum. Thus, it's utterly wrong to think of the two as seperate forces acting upon our development; rather, they're opposite ends of the same feedback loop.

I'm using genetics and society as examples here. The point I'm trying to make is this: Classical, Cartesian-Western thinking errs by conceiving of cause and effect as discreet things. It's ludicrous to try to study a component of a system (such as the Earth, or the universe as a whole) in isolation and try to figure out the specific forces that "caused" the component, so to speak. Any complex system (and all non-theoretical systems are incredibly complex - just look at Chaos Theory) is going to be full of loops, cycles, feedback mechanisms, and mutually-dependent elements. Rather then some sort of discrete, isolated entity who is IN the system, a human being, and by extension the human conscience, is fundamentally just another element of the system. Thus, asking what particular force causes our ethical beliefs is like asking what particular force caused it to rain in Chicago on the morning Sept 1, 1895.

Quote:
With respect to the Matrix: many people complained about the undead topic. Have the topic moved to this forum and I will re-enter it, but I do not wish to upset the other Midlands readers.


I'll ask one of the admins to move it here ASAP.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 1:47 am 
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I fear you are trying to divert my topic of "whence ethics" to "whence epistemology". Naturally, I'm going to disagree with much that you said. It's not interesting otherwise.

Modelling large systems by abstracting the behaviour of small systems is a tried-and-true paradigm: it's called empirical science. Now, mathematicians are not scientists (perish the thought!) but we do respect scientific results.

It is not always the case in reverse, however. Physicists in particular tend to despise chaos theory, because physics has always concerned itself with events and processes that can be modelled as smooth, predictable curves, and they're not used to events and processes that seem entirely unpredictable and can be modelled only by manifolds that are everywhere undifferentiable.

But -- differentiation is not the only higher-order function of interest!

Feedback loops in a system often result in chaotic behaviour, yes, but far more often, they do not. I would refer you to Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science where he discusses that phenomenon in the context of cellular automata. Even if they do result in chaotic behaviour, that behaviour can be classified and studied -- that's the whole point of having a mathematical discipline called "chaos theory".

As a practical example of harnessing chaos to predictable, useful application, consider fractal image compression. It's in its infancy as a technique even now, but it's getting much better. The discrete cosine transform used by JPEG compression is way uncool. :-)

Finally, I would take issue with your contention that human behaviour is not predictable in the large scale. In his Foundation trilogy of novels, Isaac Asimov imagined a discipline of "psychohistory" which was precisely that -- the prediction of group behaviour based on statistical models. In the 1950s when he wrote the books, the idea was preposterous; now, in 2004, there are profitable companies that do nothing but gather data on people with which to predict their behaviour.

No, I don't like it either.


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 6:29 pm 
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IcyMonkey wrote:
Okay, I'm not sure exactly what the fuck I was thinking when I said that. I found the thread it was in, and no, it doesn't even seem to make sense in context.

What I might have been trying to say is that no system of ethics can be truly transcendental if God does not exist. This is because, without some kind of human-like (i.e. sentient and possessing a will) being as creator of the universe, how can we possibly say that morality has any objective basis at all?


Well, if we're starting with the supposition that objectivity is superior to subjectivity (which is your entire beef, otherwise there wouldn't be a problem with subjective moralities) then you can basically go from there; ie, honesty is superior to lies, because what is, is superior to what isn't.

Otherwise there's no reason to complain about subjective morals; if subjectivity = objectivity in terms of value, then...well...

head explody. Nothing makes sense. So our first value judgement has to be that objectivity > subjectivity. Then we can go from there; honesty is morally superior to dishonesty, because honesty is the observation of what is, and dishonesty is distortion of what is into something else.

etc

-MiB

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delenda est communism


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 7:48 pm 
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The Man In Black wrote:
Well, if we're starting with the supposition that objectivity is superior to subjectivity (which is your entire beef, otherwise there wouldn't be a problem with subjective moralities) then you can basically go from there; ie, honesty is superior to lies, because what is, is superior to what isn't.


That has to be the most retarded thing I've heard... well, today. Seriously, don't smoke crack before posting to this board, mmkay?

Objectivity isn't "objectively" superior to subjectivity, and I didn't imply thast anywhere in any of my posts, ever.


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 7:54 pm 
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IcyMonkey wrote:
That has to be the most retarded thing I've heard... well, today. Seriously, don't smoke crack before posting to this board, mmkay?
Haha , you sound just like him. :lol:

That is so cute. :wink:


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 7:59 pm 
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Well then, there's no problem with subjective morality, since its just as valid as objective morality...and there's no reason to seek an objective morality.

-MiB

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 8:11 pm 
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The Man In Black wrote:
Well then, there's no problem with subjective morality, since its just as valid as objective morality...and there's no reason to seek an objective morality.


When did I ever say I was seeking an objective morality? All I've done in this thread and every other is attack those who do try to do this. At most all I've said is that humans in general tend to dislike the fact that there's no objective foundation upon which to establish our morality.


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