Time For Martial Law...

[Charles]

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...207#post746207

Are you going to ask me to leave that thread if I qoute an encyclopedia in it or if I point out that you admit anything you say about it is only what you yourself presupposed. :-)

[Starlight]

Well some people, like our Founders, believe that whether human rights were unalienable or not was an important question. And whether one can make a rational argument for said unalienable rights. Starting with God you can make a logical connection

I don't think any such logical connection can be made.

In my experience your posts on this subject, even allowing for your theistic framework, make about as much sense as "One plus Car equals Tomato, because God". You can't add God like he's some magic sauce and make your nonsensical arguments somehow valid.

In all the hundreds of pages of threads I've seen you write on this subject over the years, I can't recall ever seeing even a single logical step from you that I thought genuinely made sense. I did a philosophy major because I enjoy following creative arguments, but yours always seem nonsensical rather than creative. It's not like you've almost got valid arguments but are just making one wrong leap in your chain of logic, it's that not a single item in your chains ever makes any sense at all, alone or in conjunction with the others.

[Leonhard]

Charles, we both know that you can not offer a non-circular argument for moral truths,

As a natural moralist I disagree. Moral truth is found in reason and nature. We have a particular nature, and we can determine our appropriate end from that, and from that follows how we ought to live and act.

[Starlight]

As a natural moralist I disagree. Moral truth is found in reason and nature. We have a particular nature, and we can determine our appropriate end from that, and from that follows how we ought to live and act.

When you say "appropriate end" is that in a Catholic teleological sense of "God created us for the purpose of behaving that way, and that's what makes it a Good when we act that way"? Or are you just using "end" as a synonym for "behavior"?

[Leonhard]

When you say "appropriate end" is that in a Catholic teleological sense of "God created us for the purpose of behaving that way, and that's what makes it a Good when we act that way"?

The Aristotelian sense of end, as in what something aim's towards. Say for a human it is living and surviving, our minds have truth as their end, we are aimed towards happiness which is the natural state we seek, etc...

[seer]

As a natural moralist I disagree. Moral truth is found in reason and nature. We have a particular nature, and we can determine our appropriate end from that, and from that follows how we ought to live and act.

Leonhard this is about making a non-circular argument for a moral truth. Feel free to give it a try.

[Leonhard]

Leonhard this is about making a non-circular argument for a moral truth. Feel free to give it a try.

What to your mind is circular about the ethical naturalists approach? It seems to me to proceed from observations about human nature, and draws conclusions from that.

[seer]

I don't think any such logical connection can be made.

In my experience your posts on this subject, even allowing for your theistic framework, make about as much sense as "One plus Car equals Tomato, because God". You can't add God like he's some magic sauce and make your nonsensical arguments somehow valid.

In all the hundreds of pages of threads I've seen you write on this subject over the years, I can't recall ever seeing even a single logical step from you that I thought genuinely made sense. I did a philosophy major because I enjoy following creative arguments, but yours always seem nonsensical rather than creative. It's not like you've almost got valid arguments but are just making one wrong leap in your chain of logic, it's that not a single item in your chains ever makes any sense at all, alone or in conjunction with the others.

Sorry Star, creative arguments don't get us to universal moral truths. If you think they do offer one. You tried in the past but failed miserably if memory serves.

[seer]

What to your mind is circular about the ethical naturalists approach? It seems to me to proceed from observations about human nature, and draws conclusions from that.

Really, what about human nature - greed, lust for power and wealth, selfishness?

[Leonhard]

Really, what about human nature - greed, lust for power and wealth, selfishness?

This objection doesn't work, you claimed it was circular, not that it was wrong. In order for it to be circular then the truth of its conclusion would have be an implicit or explicit premise. This isn't the case. I disagree with you on human nature. That one can derive human happiness as the natural end of man, and along the way find the virtues that belongs to it is something that was done in Nicomechean Ethics (I've asked you to read that book for seven years now seer), doesn't mean that there aren't also vices.

And again, the substance of the argument doesn't matter, in order to defend it from the claim that it is circular (rather than the claim that it is wrong), all I have to do is point out that it proceeds from observations about human nature, and abstracts from that humans have certain natural ends, and derives the virtues as appropriately belonging to those ends. And that is the basic flow of virtue ethics.

[seer]

This objection doesn't work, you claimed it was circular, not that it was wrong. In order for it to be circular then the truth of its conclusion would have be an implicit or explicit premise. This isn't the case. I disagree with you on human nature. That one can derive human happiness as the natural end of man, and along the way find the virtues that belongs to it is something that was done in Nicomechean Ethics (I've asked you to read that book for seven years now seer), doesn't mean that there aren't also vices.

And again, the substance of the argument doesn't matter, in order to defend it from the claim that it is circular (rather than the claim that it is wrong), all I have to do is point out that it proceeds from observations about human nature, and abstracts from that humans have certain natural ends, and derives the virtues as appropriately belonging to those ends. And that is the basic flow of virtue ethics.

Right Leonhard, that only works if we created for specific ends. That is not the case if naturalism is true (as we discussed in the past). If naturalism is true there is no overriding natural end or goal for all men. Certainly the evolutionary process did not create a goal.

[Starlight]

The Aristotelian sense of end, as in what something aim's towards. Say for a human it is living and surviving, our minds have truth as their end, we are aimed towards happiness which is the natural state we seek, etc...

Hmm, I've never been a fan of this Aristotelian sense of 'end', and prefer to avoid it by phrasing things in other ways. So, to give what I think you're saying my own phrasing, would you agree you're saying something like:

A. "The concept of morality is about humans living out the fullness of their innate potential, taking their natural state further towards its implied [evolutionary] goals."?

or perhaps even a more evolutionary-focused:

B. "Morality is about the flourishing of the species, and the kind of actions that, if taken by all members of the species, would cause the species to flourish."?

or, perhaps the more psychology-centric:

C. "Morality is the behaviours that tend toward maximising the psychological well-being of those involved, and we can continue to discover through science what is helpful and harmful for human psychological well-being."?

[Starlight]

That one can derive human happiness as the natural end of man, and along the way find the virtues that belongs to it is something that was done in Nicomechean Ethics

I read that many years ago in philosophy class and found it very hard going and can't say I got anything out of it. Having checked a few summaries of it on the web today I'm not sure I'd reach any different view from rereading the whole of it.

I often think the Greek word Eudaimonia in such works is better translated "well-being" than the common rendering of "happiness". Do you interpret it as "happiness", "well-being", "flourishing", "contentment" or something else? I personally tend to use the word "happiness" in English to mean something like "a feeling of generalised pleasure and contentment". Is that the concept you're getting at / think Aristotle is trying to get at?

So, perhaps, would you agree with a statement like:

D. "Most humans spend most of their lives doing things they think will make them happy. Morality is the list of virtues / behaviors / traits that will actually successfully lead to happiness in most instances."?

[Starlight]

creative arguments don't get us to universal moral truths.

I don't think any creative arguments are needed.

Since the dawn of time, when one human was afraid of being ambushed and killed by another, humans in our every interaction with each other try to assess the motives of others in an attempt to predict their actions, to understand whether they might be ally or enemy or neither, to predict whether they might help or hinder us, benefit or harm us. Do they desire to bring about our ruin and suffering? Or desire our success and joy? Are they benevolent or malevolent? Do they value us? Or do they value our destruction?

It is these positive / negatives values and intentions toward others that I, and I think most people today, use the word "morality" to refer to. Morality could thus be defined as "valuing others", or as "benevolence", or as "good-will toward others", or as "altruism" (in the sense of positive intentions toward others, not necessarily the self-sacrifice that is sometimes part of 'altruism'), or as "love for others", or as "being an ally of all and an enemy of none". I see all these terms as synonyms. I am not trying to give a complex meaning, but rather give a very very simple one over and over using different words to mean the same thing just to convey as clearly as I can what I am meaning and referring to. Its opposite, immorality, could similarly be defined as "not valuing others, i.e. placing zero or negative value on the well-being of others", or as "malevolence", or as "a psychopathic/sociopathic complete disinterest in the well-being of others", or as "ill-will toward others", or as "a lack of love for others and even a hatred of them".

It is these "positive vs negative values/intentions/motivations toward others" that I take to be what "morality" refers to. And I would say that I understand that to be how the word is commonly used today in any setting that isn't specifically religious.

But I observe that even those few religious people who would not specifically refer to the above concepts using the term "morality" would still spend much of the time using those concepts - assessing whether others have your best interests at heart, or is out to get you, or has other motives, remains part and parcel of almost every human-human interaction. So even one who says to me "well, you guys meaning 'benevolence' by 'morality' is all very well, but for me, personally, I like to use the English word 'morality' to literally mean 'obeying the will of god revealed in the bible'" is still going to be spending just as much of their lives thinking about the positive/negative intentions and motivations of others toward them and of them toward others. Them changing their use and definition of the word 'morality' to refer to something else, doesn't mean they can escape the core concepts of what I call morality - those still apply to them regardless. They, and any person from any culture and any time, is objectively assessable by my definition of morality regardless of whether they personally ascribe to it, and is going to spend a great deal of their lives thinking about it and acting upon it and caring about it even if they don't call it 'morality'.

[Starlight]

Deriving political rights, however, can get a bit more complicated, depending on what angle one decides to approach it from. One can approach it from any of the angles of duties, obligations, social contracts, legal frameworks, morality, democratic pragmatism etc.

Personally, I usually tend to approach rights as a result of my morality outlined in the previous post. I ask myself, "Imagining myself to be free of my imperfections and to thus be truly a person who values and cares about everyone in the world, what would be the list of things I would want for everyone?" Would I want, for example, people to go hungry? No. So I would say it would be "morally right" for everyone in the world to have food. So I would want people having food to be globally acknowledged as a thing that should always happen. If the UN was creating a list of things that should always happen to all people, then I would want it on that list (which it is - UN Declaration of Human Rights, 1949, Article 25.1). And then I would want the governments of the world to take that list and ensure the things on it always happened to all people in their countries. I wouldn't particularly mind what the details were of how they went about ensuring that (how much they relied on the free market etc) so long as it happened. That list of things that I'd want to always happen to everyone, gets called by the name "human rights".

So that's one way of deriving a list of human rights. It reasons from my definition of morality, and can derive from that what individual rights should and shouldn't be. This method is likely to lead to a list of human rights that is the same, or close to the same, in all times and all places and all cultures. It is far more objective than subjective, though I allow that it might be technology dependant (e.g. we might want to consider access to electricity as a human right now, but obviously it's inapplicable to someone 1000 years ago).

A completely different way of constructing lists of human rights is what I might call "the will of the people" or "democratic pragmatism". In this method of constructing a list of human rights, what goes on the list is whatever a sufficient number of people (majority or super-majority) agree ought to go on the list. Their reasoning / motivations for wanting something on that list could be literally anything, and they need not agree amongst themselves as to their motivations. This might work even in a completely selfish society that has no interest in caring about others. If everyone, individually, says "I want to be free to speak what I like, therefore I don't want people infringing on my freedom to speak, therefore I'm going to vote for 'freedom of speech' to be a human right in order to ensure I can legally exercise that right myself", then "freedom of speech" is going to be on the list of voted-for human rights. The outcome of this process will be a fairly subjective list that might change from country to country and time to time, though there will probably be some commonalities in the lists due to human nature being the same. But it's totally possible for things I would label morally bad to make such a list at certain times and places - e.g. "the right to hold slaves".

In practice in the world, not everyone has the same motivations and views around what should or shouldn't be a right or why. Due to the widespread diversity of thinking on the topic, in practice we do tend to follow the democratic pragmatism method of establishing rights - whenever there is a sufficient majority / super-majority in favor of establishing something as a legal right, we do. Trying to enquire as to what percentage of the population supported it being a legal right for which reason, is a bit of a fruitless and pointless task. But we can probably assume that some percentage of the population was thinking only of themselves when they wanted it as a right (e.g. "I want to be politically free therefore I will support political freedom being a human right") while others were thinking about morality (e.g. "If I were to value all people, would I view it as helpful to them for this to be a right?") while still others were thinking about the country as a whole (e.g. "In what ways would the country be better or worse if this were to be a right?") and perhaps some lawyers were thinking about their own careers (e.g. "If this were to be a right, would there be more of less opportunities for defence attorneys to appear in court on the subject?"), and many religious people probably think about the extent to which they perceive the bible aligning with it (e.g. "What would Jesus want?") etc. In the real world, creating a list of legal rights in our democracies is a messy process, and not everyone acts out of the same motivations.