Making An Effort To Understand

Discussion of articles that appear in the magazine.

Moderators: AMod, iMod

Post Reply
Philosophy Now
Posts: 1205
Joined: Sun Aug 29, 2010 8:49 am

Making An Effort To Understand

Post by Philosophy Now »

David Wong illustrates moral relativism with some telling examples.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Making_An_Effort_To_Understand
Nick_A
Posts: 6208
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:23 am

Re: Making An Effort To Understand

Post by Nick_A »

Morality is only a devolution of conscience. Since Man living in Plato’s cave has become so attached to the shadows on the wall, the potential to experience objective conscience which responds to objective human meaning and purpose had to be sacrificed to pragmatism defended by relative morality..

The author uses the question of abortion to explain relative morality. However objective conscience is an inner appreciation of respect for the cycles of life as an objective value. We have sacrificed our potential to experience conscience for the sake of defending pragmatic egoistic beliefs.

Relative morality is a quality of life in Plato’s cave while objective conscience is an attribute of conscious life beyond cave restrictions. As dwellers within Plato’s cave we restrict ourselves to arguments over relative morality.
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Making An Effort To Understand

Post by -1- »

Wow wee! What a great article.

It brushes on my theory on the work of moral theorists (Hume, Hobbes, Kant, etc.) who treat human beings as fully equal in aspects to other human beings; the much sought-after "human nature" problem is solved when one realizes there is not ONE but perhaps MANY types of human nature, as DNA mutations and permutations proliferate.

David Wong, the article writer, makes an eloquent point for relativist moral theory, and his main driving point is that you can't measure a carrot's goodness with taste buds to taste apples. So to speak.

He also warns against traps of confirmation bias both by absolutist (he calls them objectivist) and relativist theoreticians on morality.

I actually enjoyed reading every word of this article. It was informative, it lacked jargon (helpful for a reader formally uneducated like me), and it gave clear and transparent examples very pertinent to the ideals discussed.

Well done, David Wong. I like your style, your thinking, and your value classification.
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Making An Effort To Understand

Post by -1- »

Nick_A wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2018 1:22 am Morality is only a devolution of conscience. Since Man living in Plato’s cave has become so attached to the shadows on the wall, the potential to experience objective conscience which responds to objective human meaning and purpose had to be sacrificed to pragmatism defended by relative morality..

The author uses the question of abortion to explain relative morality. However objective conscience is an inner appreciation of respect for the cycles of life as an objective value. We have sacrificed our potential to experience conscience for the sake of defending pragmatic egoistic beliefs.

Relative morality is a quality of life in Plato’s cave while objective conscience is an attribute of conscious life beyond cave restrictions. As dwellers within Plato’s cave we restrict ourselves to arguments over relative morality.
Nick_A: Your statement is an eloquent plea to abandon the superiority of righteousness of believing in objectivist morality.

All one has to consider, in order to see my point, is that abortion is accepted by many social milieu and by individuals in it, who are ACCEPTED AB OVO to be morally flawless characters in and by the society they form.

If a person thinks of him- or herself as a morally correct person, and society agrees with this perception, then it is accepted that this person is morally correct. If this person is at the same time believes that abortions are not morally defunct, then instead of arguing that an error has been made, inasmuch as this person's correct morality is in clash with some absolute, unerring, infallible morality, then it is time to consider that between the following three stances not only one can be wrong and the other two right, but all can be either wrong or right:

1. Absolute morality is the one that a person fully supports (any individual's inner or moral milieu) -- this is the case of Nick_A by his stringent rejection of abortion, and declaring it across the board wrong only due to his moral upbringing, and only due to a difficulty of accepting anything outside his sphere of fossilized values.
2. Absolute morality is not defined, but defineable, can be found (except as of yet, we, humans, have not discovered yet what it is); this is what Nick_A believes is his own moral system, and which he mistakenly, in a hifolutin' self-absorbed and self-effacing fashion elevates to almost super-human superiority in Nick_A's own usual way;
or
3. Absolute morality does not exist, instead, instead, morality is a functionality that serves a purpose or many purposes, for both individual satisfaction and for social functionality of a society.

Wong bets on the third point, rejecting the first two points, while he agrees that his point can't be proven either, without using confirmation bias to some degree as well.
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: Making An Effort To Understand

Post by -1- »

The title of the article is "Making an effort to understand". Wong makes an excellent effort for others to understand; Nick_A is like a rock, he won't bend, he won't break, he is solid, with the mental agility equal to that of a rock, indeed.

Changing our understanding is what we all participate in on these forums, with the exception of a few, who don't listen to reason, entirely because they have committed to some values built on the teaching of some ancient texts which they won't disengage from.
Nick_A
Posts: 6208
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:23 am

Re: Making An Effort To Understand

Post by Nick_A »

-1-


“To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.” ~ Simone Weil.

I do not believe in man made morality and the product of indoctrination by those seeking power. I do believe in universal values or morality which is essential for conscious humanity and a functioning free society.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/weil.html
French philosopher and activist Simone Weil was born into a wealthy, agnostic Jewish family of intellectuals in Paris. She studied and eventually taught philosophy, attracting attention for her radical Marxist opinions. Hoping to understand the working class, she also worked in fields and factories and even participated in the Spanish Civil War. Over time she lost faith in political ideologies and was drawn to Christianity. Her religious writings often emphasized sacrifice and martyrdom through an ascetic lifestyle, a lifestyle that Weil personally adopted and which led to her early death at age 34 from tuberculosis. In this 1943 essay, written during the last year of her life, which she spent working with Gen. de Gaulle in the struggle for French liberation, Weil makes the case for the existence of a transcendent and universal moral law, and describes the social responsibilities that accompany it.
Man made morality is the result of societal conditioning and like Simone suggests opens the door to every kind of tyranny.

Transcendent values exist as universal principles regardless of the existence of Man on earth. Conscience can make us aware of them. I’m not against abortion but rather in favor of opening to the objective experience of conscience and the objective respect for life. All those having had the conscience experience of respect for life and its cycles will not be attracted to its destruction by convenience. I don’t think that either you or Wong are open to the distinction between objective values and Man made relative morality. Understanding is defined by what we do, not what we say. Anyone willing to witness the world sees how little we understand of the human condition in the real meaning of the word.
Post Reply