TrueBeluga t1_j4mpczz wrote
Reply to comment by EducatorBig6648 in Life can’t be reduced to a rulebook. But committing to certain moral principles can help us navigate life better. by IAI_Admin
Ok, I'll just point out my issues with the premises and the conclusions you provided:
>Benevolently protecting others is good (opposite of evil) (premise)
Leap of logic. You need to prove that "benevolence is good" or, "benevolently protecting others is good". Benevolence's definition does not equal good's definition, and so to prove that benevolent action is good (in this case, benevolent protection), you need to provide other premises to prove that. Because you are implementing a logic chain (as is common in arguments), the fact that this premise is logically unsound means that your entire argument (after this premise) is unsound. So, if you want to correct your argument, you need to fix this issue first, but even though this damns your argument already I will provide some more criticisms below.
>Malevolently harming of others is evil (premise)
Same issue with above. This is unsupported. Just because harming exists, and malevolence exists, does not mean malevolent harm is evil. This needs to be proven with further evidence, reasons, or premises or else it also causes your argument to be unsound and illogical.
>A person can recognize good (premise)
A person can recognize evil (premise)
A person can recognize the distinction between good and evil (premise)
I do not accept these premises. Different cultures all around the world recognize the existence of evil and good. However, what they call evil, and what they call good, is drastically different. In many cases, say some ancient pagan cultures (lets just say the Asatru norse, in this case) would say that malevolent harm can be good (and not evil) if its done in the service of a God, or in an act of revenge. Even Christian witch hunts, which are malevolent cause of harm, would not be recognized as evil, and this witch hunts have continued in Africa into modern times. If we are using your definitions of good and evil, then it is actually completely incorrect to say that people can recognize good and evil. Some can, but if you were to pick a random person in history or present, it would be quite likely that they couldn't "recognize good/evil" in many, many cases. Thus, these premises are false.
>Even if no people exist in the past or present, people will exist in the future (premise)
Not necessarily. The science is still evolving, but if heat death were to happen ( a real possibility), then at some point nothing would be able to live as entropy would have reached a maximal state of continuous and equal energy levels throughout the entire universe and thus reactions (chemical, physical, biological) could not occur. You have to add the assumption: "assuming heat death, or any other end-of-universe scenario will not occur, and that the universe will remain persistent and hospital for some kind of life for all time", which an assumption which is ungrounded in current science and thus I do not accept.
Each one of these criticisms of your argument are, so to speak, damning. That means that if you want your argument to be logical or sound, you must address and fix each one.
EducatorBig6648 t1_j4nqszi wrote
>"Leap of logic."
No, it seems you're confusing logic with what people have written in dictionaries. To which I keep saying this: Something used to be written in dictionaries about the Sun and the stars was "They orbit the Earth."
>"You need to prove"
Objection. I never "need" to do anything, I could have died in the womb or all organic life could have died out before there were even dinosaurs. "Needing/need/necessity" is a myth.
>"that "benevolence is good" or, "benevolently protecting others is good". Benevolence's definition does not equal good's definition, and so to prove that benevolent action is good (in this case, benevolent protection), you need to provide other premises to prove that. Because you are implementing a logic chain (as is common in arguments), the fact that this premise is logically unsound means that your entire argument (after this premise) is unsound. So, if you want to correct your argument, you need to fix this issue first, but even though this damns your argument already I will provide some more criticisms below."
All of this is nothing I didn't already know. Except the last part about fixing this issue, I do not at this point recognize that there is an issue to fix.
Logically prove to me (with numbers, premises and conclusions) that (just pulling an example out of a hat here) a firefighter choosing to sacrifice their life to save a complete stranger from a burning building is not being good (i.e. opposite of being evil).
Or, if you prefer, logically prove to me that a man ("legally" sane i.e. not hallucinating that he's saving the world from alien invasion through this) chaining a complete stranger up in a building he's just lit on fire so the stranger will burn to death is not being evil.
Because if you can't do either, then what does my "logical leap" (as you call it, incorrectly if you ask me) conflict with? Other people's inconclusive philosophical theories? Other people's unproven "personal definition" of what good and evil are, i.e. the Pope has one based on religious dogma?
Or perhaps you already have the proof as perhaps you have a dictionary that can reveal unto us the "Definitive Definition Of What Good And Evil Are" like Deep Thought was asked to reveal The Ultimate Answer and The Ultimate Question in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy?
>"Same issue with above. This is unsupported. Just because harming exists, and malevolence exists, does not mean malevolent harm is evil. This needs to be proven with further evidence, reasons, or premises or else it also causes your argument to be unsound and illogical."
Same issue as above. I do not at this point recognize that it is unsupported.
If I could just stomp babies to death in front of their weeping mothers because I have a gun and they don't and no one on the planet called this "evil"... because "Well, you know, our academics have never figured out what this thing that the word evil would stand for would actually be. In ancient Greece some scholars argued that it refers to whatever Zeus and the pantheon frowned upon while others argued that Zeus and the pantheon would frown upon it because it would be a flaw in an otherwise perfect universe. And some argue that it refers to something devoid of moral value as blablabla.", well... that is absurd.
That is the way I understand this (and I may be wrong here), that if you can't logically prove the "stranger in a burning building" thing to be morally neutral then the above is exactly what you're doing, you're holding up philosophy papers and dictionary excerpts written by others and proclaiming that no one simply recognized a basic 'lack of neutrality' and named it "good and evil", no, there "must" be this grand all-encompassing solution so that discovering it will ALSO make all the philosophical papers and dictionaries stop conflicting on the subject. Again, the "Definitive Definition Of What Good And Evil Are"... like Deep Thought was asked to reveal The Ultimate Answer and The Ultimate Question.
That would seem to me philosophers have their concepts of "good and evil" on such a tall pedestal that philosophy itself is literally parody of seeking the truth.
>"I do not accept these premises. Different cultures all around the world recognize the existence of evil and good."
Cultures are irrelevant.
>"However, what they call evil, and what they call good, is drastically different."
Which is one of the larger parts of how cultures are irrelevant. I don't care what the Pope calls good or evil anymore than what some stoned medicine man in the deepest part of anywhere calls good or evil since it's irrelevant. Say they both say homosexuality is evil, I don't give a flying *** since homosexuality is not malevolent causing of harm hence I don't consider gays and lesbians evil or immoral. A rapist or pedophile, on the other hand... yeah, I don't care what the Pope or the medicine man or any human of any culture you can bring to the table has to say about that either.
>"In many cases, say some ancient pagan cultures (lets just say the Asatru norse, in this case) would say that malevolent harm can be good (and not evil) if its done in the service of a God, or in an act of revenge."
Exactly, which is how they're wrong. That is not how morality works. Being in the service of a fictional "deity" or revenge is not benevolent protection of others hence it would not (even partially) cancel out the malevolent harm.
>"Even Christian witch hunts, which are malevolent cause of harm, would not be recognized as evil, and this witch hunts have continued in Africa into modern times. If we are using your definitions of good and evil, then it is actually completely incorrect to say that people can recognize good and evil."
You're completely misreading (or intentionally twisting) the point: Yes, they could recognize that burning a person alive at the stake would normally be evil, they just didn't believe it was in this case since they believed God made it not be evil in this case. If the "witches" were doing the burning of the Christians, you think the neighboring Christians would shrug and go "Oh well, God's will be done. Hope they don't come for me tomorrow. Time to milk the cows."? I do findeth that unlikely.
>"Not necessarily."
You're using that word again. Also, you're misunderstanding the point. Wind the clock back to before we exist and we will exist in the future. Since I said "in the past or present". Which does not include "in our future" (heat death etc).
TrueBeluga t1_j4qcrkt wrote
Let me attempt to explain something.
Morality is a word, yes? Words have meaning. I don't mean to get into the philosophy of language, but lets saying the meaning of words is based on common language use and the definitions within dictionaries, as is commonly accepted (if you disagree, read into theories of meanings and the philosophy of language to develop your own theory of meaning). For example, the meaning of literally used to mean "not figuratively", but because of common language use, it cannot be argued that it does not mean "figuratively" as well. The meaning of words is a complex, dynamic thing. This dynamic complexity is shared with the meaning of morality, as morality is a word like any other.
I would concede to you that some concept akin to morality, that I will call from now on as EB-morality (for EducatorBig), could be something that is not imaginary and exists irrespective of the mind. However, the issue is, EB-morality is not synonymous with morality as used in English. That's my main problem with your point. You can argue that morality is malevolence and benevolence all you want, but to do so you would be logically required (and by logically required I mean that if you were not to, you would be being illogical) establish a new philosophy of language and meaning.
I'm not sure how to explain this in clearer terms. The concept you are professing could fit under the definition of morality and common language understanding of morality, but it is not the definition or common language understanding of morality. Because your definition concerns moral right and moral wrong, evil or good, it does fit as a "theory of morality", or an ethical theory. However, it cannot somehow usurp its definition. Just like how no amount of logical argument could change the definition of "being", or really any other word, because the meaning of words has never been tied to these types of logical arguments. You can say the current definition of morality is incorrect, but on what basis? The basis that it is illogical is irrelevant (which I don't even agree with), because meanings of words do not have to follow logic.
To attempt to drive this point home, let me examine this quote by you:
>Something used to be written in dictionaries about the Sun and the stars was "They orbit the Earth."
This may be true, however the issue is not that the definition is wrong. The definition was never wrong, not even then, because when people said "the sun", what they were referring to was an object that orbited the Earth (footnote below). The issue isn't that the definition was wrong, but that the defined object simply did not exist. Definitions (in a language sense) can never really be "wrong", so to speak. It's simply the word as defined may not exist. Just like the definition of unicorn, as defined as "a horse-like animal with a single horn", is not incorrect, but the defined object does not factually exist in the real (real as defined in realism, as mind-independent) world.
I'm not going to continue to argue this further, because sadly I have a lot of university work to complete, but good talking to you.
​
Footnote: They would have been wrong if they were to point at the sun in the sky and say, "that glowing object orbits the earth", but not if they were to say, "the sun orbits the earth" if the sun were defined as "the glowing sphere which orbits the earth" as these are definitionally and logically consistent statements. If they defined the sun as, "the glowing sphere in the sky" but said nothing about its orbit, then in this case it would be incorrect to say "the sun orbits the earth" as this is no longer definitionally consistent and also refers to an object that can be said to exist. I know this is sort of dense philosophy of language, but sadly I cannot explain a few hundred years of modern philosophy in a reddit thread lol.
EducatorBig6648 t1_j4rmb0m wrote
>"Morality is a word, yes? Words have meaning."
Everything has meaning.
>"I don't mean to get into the philosophy of language, but lets saying the meaning of words is based on common language use and the definitions within dictionaries, as is commonly accepted (if you disagree, read into theories of meanings and the philosophy of language to develop your own theory of meaning)."
Language is the communication of concepts e.g. a deer alerting its kin to danger with its tail communicating the concept of danger to its kin and they all flee.
Dictionaries are just a tool we humans use to attempt to keep track of the most common agreed upon meanings because we communicate a lot. What's that old black-and-white movie where the professor spent like a decade slaving away on the biggest encyclopedia yet then is utterly thrown by modern slang ("Corny?"), realizes the book would be half obsolete and basically employs a woman to help him and sparks fly? Eh, whatever.
>"For example, the meaning of literally used to mean "not figuratively", but because of common language use, it cannot be argued that it does not mean "figuratively" as well. The meaning of words is a complex, dynamic thing. This dynamic complexity is shared with the meaning of morality, as morality is a word like any other."
I understand what you're saying but all of this was known to me. To use your phrasing, you have no reason to tell me that when a number of people say the word morality some or all of them might mean different things by it.
>"I would concede to you that some concept akin to morality, that I will call from now on as EB-morality (for EducatorBig), could be something that is not imaginary and exists irrespective of the mind."
ALL concepts are non-imaginary and exist irrespective of the mind. The concept of plastic toothbrush cannot be destroyed once it exists. You can destroy the entire universe, even time and space on top of that, and the concept of plastic toothbrush would just continue to exist as it has since it began to exist, in the conceptual realm.
I was not talking about a concept existing, I was talking about the actual nature of morality. I.e. morality existing in that if humans did not evolve on Earth but instead a Martian people evolved on Mars then rape would be immoral there too for the exact same reasons as they are on Earth provided that rape would involve malevolence and harm (as those are the reasons).
>"However, the issue is, EB-morality is not synonymous with morality as used in English."
Sure, if you say so. But English dictates how the universe works? Dictates the true nature of morality? I think not.
>"That's my main problem with your point. You can argue that morality is malevolence and benevolence all you want, but to do so you would be logically required (and by logically required I mean that if you were not to, you would be being illogical) establish a new philosophy of language and meaning."
No. Language is the communication of concepts and meaning is... eh, you'll just quote "the official definitions from books that are official because they are in books" at me.
Also, I never argued that morality was benevolence and malevolence, that is over-simplying my argument bordering on strawman argument.
>"I'm not sure how to explain this in clearer terms. The concept you are professing could fit under the definition of morality and common language understanding of morality, but it is not the definition or common language understanding of morality. Because your definition concerns moral right and moral wrong, evil or good, it does fit as a "theory of morality", or an ethical theory."
My "concept" or "definition" (which is what you call it while I would hesitate to label it either of those things) of it does NOT concern "moral right" and "moral wrong", since (as I've said many times now) those are myths, except in the sense that it deliberately distances itself from them.
What I'm "professing" is how I have personally concluded the true nature of morality to be. If you want to call that my "theory of morality", fine, but it is not an all-new concept that whole-sale replaces anything, in a sense it just shaves off the myths, like "People should be moral." and "People should be immoral." having any connection with reality.
EducatorBig6648 t1_j4rmhcw wrote
>"However, it cannot somehow usurp its definition."
It is not intended to "usurp" its definition. The word "gods" (in any language, really) did not have its hard drive of meanings written by Judeo-Christian etc. religions coming in with monotheism and omnipotence and existing outside of time etc. It didn't instantly erase Ragnarok or Zeus and Cronus slaying Ouranos and then getting slain by his sons.
>"Just like how no amount of logical argument could change the definition of "being", or really any other word, because the meaning of words has never been tied to these types of logical arguments."
I have not argued otherwise. I obviously am already aware that the word 'morality' means different things to different people and that it is never tied to logical arguments like this since if either of those we would not be having this conversation, would we? We wouldn't even be able to have this conversation since it would be an impossibility for us since what you've just described would literally prevent us from having it, yes?
>"You can say the current definition of morality is incorrect, but on what basis? The basis that it is illogical is irrelevant (which I don't even agree with), because meanings of words do not have to follow logic."
I am not arguing that the meanings of words "have to" follow logic or anything else. And I do not mean that just because "imperatives" are a myth.
>"This may be true, however the issue is not that the definition is wrong. The definition was never wrong, not even then, because when people said "the sun", what they were referring to was an object that orbited the Earth (footnote below). The issue isn't that the definition was wrong, but that the defined object simply did not exist. Definitions (in a language sense) can never really be "wrong", so to speak. It's simply the word as defined may not exist."
Which is exactly the reason why you have not seen me say "The definition for morality in your dictionaries is wrong!" Instead what you have seen me say is (in a nutshell) "All our many lofty and conflicting ideas about morality being about right and wrong and should and moral values etc. are mistaken. Morality is, at its core at least, simpler than you might think."
>"Just like the definition of unicorn, as defined as "a horse-like animal with a single horn", is not incorrect, but the defined object does not factually exist in the real (real as defined in realism, as mind-independent) world."
Actually you're wrong there. Google "Elasmotherium sibericum" for the reason I nowadays use "pegasus" instead of "unicorn" in my argument about myth/fiction. Except for when I do use it but specify "magical unicorn" or, if I'm in the mood, "time traveling unicorn with cybernetic wings". :-)
>"Footnote: They would have been wrong if they were to point at the sun in the sky and say, "that glowing object orbits the earth","
That is exactly what they did. They pointed at the sky and said "That glowing object and that pale object and those tiny dots of light are the Sun, the Moon and the stars and they all orbit the Earth." Case closed, you have no case. Their definition was factually wrong. Nice tr... actually, no, terrible try.
I understand your preference that the definition "Zeus is king of the gods and rules from Mount Olympus and throws all the lightning on Earth." be untouchable by logic but reality is that the mountain in question exists and Zeus ain't there and as we learned more about lightning it seemed more and more far-fetched that he was involved so eventually we added "Oh yeah, Zeus is also a myth."
That is what would happen to all those old conflicting ideas about the nature of morality, they would be seen for what they truly are, factually incorrect since they involved myths. Hypotheses and musings really.
Good talking to you too.
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