So you’re enlightened.

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Dan,

Morality is for people who believe in free will, which is ignorant.

I'll assume that you're talking about the magical conception of free will which is obviously incoherent. Nevertheless, there are much better ways to understand free will, that don't fade with a reasoned examination. I'll ask you what sorts of things compose an individual? What are the components of "will"? To me it seems that our will is driven by emotion, environmental influence, and predictive capacity. In fact, we can reduce the "will" to these components, and given that these components are what cause us to take any particular action, we can say that the will is indeed free. Not free in the sense that it operates independent of circumstance, but free in the only way that the term makes sense.

Look at it this way. If I have an apple and an orange in front of me, I'm most likely going to choose the one I prefer, or feel like at the moment. What could possibly be enslaving the will to choose one of these options? My preferences? That would be like suggesting that the will is enslaved to the will. Hardly a sound concept. The reason that it feels as if we have free will is that we very much do. To suggest that we don't have free will due to the fact that we'll will what we will strikes me as nonsensical. Obviously our will is going to be influenced by circumstance. One could even say controlled by circumstance. That's because circumstance is a part of what the will is.

"Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is." -Sartre

"Man is condemned to be free" -Sartre

[Dan Rowden]

No, not really, they are logical judgements in that such things express ignorance, which is bad (it's bad because it goes against my purpose).

So, if a murder didn't express ignorance, would it be ok? Like killing someone to prevent a crime?

Well, there's a distinction to be made between "killing" and "murder", but whether such things are bad is contextual.

Or killing massive numbers of people to end a war (my brain is on Hiroshima at the moment)?

That's a somewhat slippery one. It would depend on the purity of the motive behind the action as to whether it was an ignorant and therefore "bad" act. It's debatable as to whether those bombings constituted a bad act or not. There's arguments either way. But a bombing such as that of Dresden is simply bad because it came from impure motives.

Or what if my purpose is to not be homeless, rather than to avoid ignorance? Is it then not-bad to steal? I mean, that will let me pay my rent...

"Bad" is always contextual. For you it wouldn't be; for the person you stole from it would be. However, if you had any mixed purposes in your life - such as wanting to be homeless and possibly also wanting to fit into certain social moral memes - your actions would likely cause you emotional conflict. This happens for most people because they haven't got their values and goals clearly defined.

They wear silly hats. Apart from that heinous crime, they peddle fundie Xianity.

So is there a problem with charity in general, or just that specific one?

I think all religious charity is ultimately bad, but I'd be prepared to put it on a sliding scale dependent on the degree to which the organisation brings its religious mentality to that social work. The Salvos suck for multiple reasons. Even their name is disgusting.

[Sapius]

Pye,

A moral or morality does in one sense imply an objective judgment source or system, but it can also be an expression of one's personal alignment to things as well, without anyone else telling them what to do. I doubt there is a person on this forum (or elsewhere) that does not have some sort of subjective standard for when they would judge their own behavior as over the line or off the scale; everyone has an inner line, a scale. If one person wants to call it "moral" and another "wise," this is to their tastes; it's still a neutral description of a person's inner code as it manifests itself in the 'outer' world.

I very much agree with that. Each and everyone creates his own circle of morality; a circle that expands and shrinks according to situations and current values.

I don’t understand one thing though… If subjectivity is all that we have, then why is it taken so lightly? As in stressing…

Dan: But nothing is good or bad until we make it so.

As if that is unnatural… as if that is not Reality… If at other times everything is attributed to causality, how and where does this ‘we make it so’ pop up? Would that even make sense then?

Dan,

Morality is for people who believe in free will, which is ignorant.

(and)

But nothing is good or bad until we make it so.

Then, do WE?

Unless and until one is free to reason as one does, he cannot be held responsible. Alternatively, if that is not the case, then one has no case whatsoever.

One of the attributes of consciousness is judging good and bad, which is as natural as a lightening strike. If one says that Nature doesn’t care, of course not, but then in that, one is separating nature from ones self, and what is Nature apart from me?

[Katy]

Well, there's a distinction to be made between "killing" and "murder", but whether such things are bad is contextual.

What would be a context in which murder was not wrong?

"Bad" is always contextual. For you it wouldn't be; for the person you stole from it would be.

So is there no relationship to other people? I mean I know you don't want to form attachments to others but, in a more general sense?

I mean, if someone decides their only purpose in life is eliminating prostitution by killing prostitutes, and that's the only thing they care about, is that not wrong?

I think all religious charity is ultimately bad, but I'd be prepared to put it on a sliding scale dependent on the degree to which the organisation brings its religious mentality to that social work. The Salvos suck for multiple reasons. Even their name is disgusting.

I don't know; I mean, in some ways I'd rather see people helped with religion than starving in the streets without it. I mean, it would be great if we could geta bunch more secular groups to do it, but until then...

[tooyi]

clyde,

tooyi;

You heard "do no harm,"
. . . so it was not too late for you :)

Now, you missed it by being too busy playing games.

It is not important to have "Do No Harm" or "Harm well" (either would do just fine for the same thing). Also, the latter was in response to the other. What is important is to understand that simply starting with either alone, without clear understanding they are tantamount to "Stick to your illusions." What you are describing is a solution as a fix in attitude, which is not enough. It might also amount to actual harm in itself by giving people false hope of thinking in terms of merit.

But, the Do No Harm thread apparently has all these things rehashed so many times already...

[DHodges]

DHodges wrote:

If I move a hand up and down the way the bob their heads, they get very excited. (I usually don't do that, since I don't know what I'm saying, and it gets them pretty riled up.)

[laughs] That's particularly funny.

Yeah, it's pretty funny.

Do they get riled up with eachother when they bob their heads, or just when you mimic them with your hand?

As far as I understand it, a fast head bob means "I am dominant," and a very slow bob means "I recognize your dominance, and am therefore submissive."

Generally, the male does the fast head bob, and the female responds with the slow head bob. These are complementary, and so it just reconfirms their relationship.

At other times, they seem to ignore each other completely, as if the other is not there - they will walk right over each other.

If you do a fast head bob (with your hand) at the male, he takes it as being aggressive toward him, his territory or his mate. He doesn't like that. He's already pretty jealous.

A slow bob can also get him riled up - he has to do a fast bob, as if to say, "That's right, bitch." The fast bob can be pretty violent, sometimes smacking his head into the ground, or lifting his front legs off the ground with its intensity.

I'm not sure exactly what a fast head bob (with the hand) would mean to the female, but I think it might be promising something I can't deliver... the dominance thing obviously has a lot to do with mating.

[Leyla Shen]

I'm not sure exactly what a fast head bob (with the hand) would mean to the female, but I think it might be promising something I can't deliver... the dominance thing obviously has a lot to do with mating.

Yes. I think you would have to take that fast-head-bob hand thing a bit further and actually kill the male for the female to respond to you in any way. What does she do while you and he engage in this fast-head-bobbing?

This is quite interesting, actually. See, we have these testosterone-riddled lizards--remembering that testosterone is apparently held to be some sort of single panacea for unconsciouness/cause for consciousness--who will never have the potential for philosophy...

[Edit for coherence]

.

[Pye]

.

Sapius writes:

I don’t understand one thing though… If subjectivity is all that we have, then why is it taken so lightly? As in stressing…

Hi Sapius. I don't take it lightly at all. It is all that I have, the only instrument through which anything can be apprehended, this is truth. That I am not "inherent" does not devalue this for me. That I do not last forever does not take away from me. That I am not free in willing does not take away my will. I am also a cause, as well as I am a result of effects.

You've been in quiet questioning mode! It's good to speak with and see you here again (slow head bobbing . . . :)


.

[Sapius]

Pye, some questions are answers itself, aren't they... :)

[Nordicvs]

Well, there's a distinction to be made between "killing" and "murder", but whether such things are bad is contextual.

What would be a context in which murder was not wrong?

Murder by definition is "wrongful killing"---killing is neither moral nor immoral, yet "murder" implies a moral precept.

Frankly, I don't get Dan's ideas on this morality stuff---base ethics are built into our brains. The conscience of every human can be found in the right hemisphere of the brain---the opposite side as logic, in the left hemisphere, and because the left brain translates for the (mute, non-verbal) right, it means that deep inside we "know" what's right and wrong, yet it's at the whim of logic, as well as being subject to flaws of reason and emotion, sentiment, whatever.

All animals have ethics---knowing instinctively what is right to do and what is wrong to do (in its most basic form: "it is right to eat this" and "it is wrong to eat this"---usually meaning "it will eat me if I try"). Seems to me that there is a difference between "morality" and ethics...I'm just not entirely sure what it is.