IS and OUGHT

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Advocate
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by Advocate »

IS is a prerequisite for all versions of OUGHT.
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Sculptor
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by Sculptor »

Advocate wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:17 am IS is a prerequisite for all versions of OUGHT.
But it is not a precursor.
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Sculptor
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by Sculptor »

Here's an IS for you.

It is true that more people are stealing food.

What is the natural and obvious ought to stem from that fact???

Answers on a postcard to..

Helen Hywater
PO Box 12
Tressel Street
Hungerford.
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Sculptor
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by Sculptor »

Astro Cat wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 6:42 am
henry quirk wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 2:27 am Tomorrow...

Supervising Unit 1: Let's see...according to your profile you were some kind of scientist, yes?

Citizen 4798: Yes.

1: Well, here in the Nimbus colony we have no need of scientists...let's see (leafs thru a stack of note cards) ...yes...here, this your assignment.

4798: (reading the offered card) Pleasure Unit. Wait...does this mean what I think it does? Am I being made into a whore?!

1: Please, citizen, whore is rife with all manner of negative connotation. You are a Pleasure Unit.

4798: But I'm a scientist! This (waving the card) is for someone who can do nothing else! I educated myself! This isn't right!

1: Citizen, you are what you are assigned. As I said, Nimbus has no need of scientists...

4798: ...then send me where there is a need!

1: (annoyed at 4798's interruption) You, like each of us, go where you are assigned, become exactly what you are assigned to be.

4798: But this isn't right!

1: There is no right, Citizen, only necessity. (1 quickly scans 4798's profile) I'm puzzled by your reaction, Citizen...your examinations revealed little in the way of moralist tendencies. Why is your assignment wrong?

4798: I...I...I'm a human being!

1: (chuckling) Why citizen, we're all human beings...human beings in service to the Hive...we each serve as assigned.

4798: But...uh...me, as a Pleasure Unit, that's...uh...poor resource allocation...yes! That's it! it would be wrong because I could be better used elsewhere!

1: Oh my! You believe you know what's best for the Hive? What's best for you? You're above it all? You know better than the local, regional, and national committees put together?! I see through you well enough! In The Time Before you smugly claimed the high ground of amorality...it was easy, then, yes? You said the words and thought I'm enlightened. When the Great Transition occurred you were all for it, weren't you. When the Great Equity was established you were right up front to cheer it, weren't you. When the night of the Great Leveling was done, your appetite was sated, wasn't it. But, here and now, in the paradise you pined for, your true colors emerge, don't they. You think you matter...you're a person and you matter and it's wrong to be used in a way you don't consent to. You're no better than the religion and freedom scum we scrapped off our shoes during the Leveling. You're meat, citizen, a commodity...and you're a hypocrite (1 presses a button on his desk) ...and, you're right...it wouldn't be right for you to be a Pleasure Unit.

4798: Then...what?

1: I'm sending you to Food Processing.

4798: (visibly relieved) I'll be working there?

1: (smiling broadly) No, Citizen...your work is done.

4798: (eyes widen as two Security & Escort Units enter the room) No..no..no!
You should consider writing dystopian fiction, maybe :P

In any case, if this pastiche is targeted at my position, I'm not sure what point it's trying to make. Entire societies have gone off the rails of altruism in the past, and those who do value things like human dignity and altruism and the like have opposed them. Citizen 4798 would have been food whether or not moral realism is sensible. Someone that doesn't value human dignity and life wouldn't do so even if moral realism were true, after all. So this does not really accomplish a biting response or anything, unless it was just for fun.
Henry considers himself as an inheritor of a bunch of white men over 230 years ago that thought that all non whites and women were inferior and not deserving of equal rights. They wrote a constitution to preserve their power, to deny it to others, and to give them a right to bear arms to persecute black people and the indigenous population.
He has failed to see that he and his ilk are dinosaurs who are out of date.
His avatar of a lonely caveman is rather apt.
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henry quirk
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by henry quirk »

if this pastiche is targeted at my position
It wasn't. My original thought was 4798 was a philosopher. But most of those are already whores of one kind or another. Also, the night of the Great Leveling woulda had most of 'em dead or in low level flunky jobs like Supervising Unit 1.
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by henry quirk »

Henry considers himself as an inheritor of a bunch of white men over 230 years ago that thought that all non whites and women were inferior and not deserving of equal rights.
Nope. I'm a free man with a natural right to my life, liberty, and property, same as you or anyone else.
They wrote a constitution to preserve their power, to deny it to others, and to give them a right to bear arms to persecute black people and the indigenous population.
I don't care about that piece of paper, so I won't defend or condemn it.
He has failed to see that he and his ilk are dinosaurs who are out of date.
No, Supervising Unit 19. What's antiquated is the idea man is a member. The whole of human progress has been away from collective. It hasn't been a straight or easy path. The Hive, for example, in my crap above, is just a way station, it's not an end point. The poor souls in it, like 4798, like SU1, believe, are told, its solid and perpetual; those on the National Committee know otherwise. Were I to write more it could be about those livin' outside the Hive. A different world.
His avatar of a lonely caveman is rather apt.
Absolutely...just not for the reason you think.
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Harbal
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by Harbal »

"is" is absolute, "aught" is conditional.

"is" is actual, "aught" is hypothetical.

"is" is the existent state, "aught" is the potentially preferable state.

:idea:
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henry quirk
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by henry quirk »

A man, any man, is free; you ought not leash him.

A man, any man, has a natural right to, is the owner of, his life, liberty, and property; you ought not, without just cause, deprive him of them.
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Harbal
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by Harbal »

henry quirk wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:14 pm
A man, any man, has a natural right to,
I don't think nature grants rights, henry. Rights are what men grant each other.
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by henry quirk »

Harbal wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:18 pm
henry quirk wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:14 pm
A man, any man, has a natural right to,
I don't think nature grants rights, henry. Rights are what men grant each other.
Quite apart from who or what is the source: you have them. They aren't granted to you by men. They can't be taken away (they can be ignored and violated).

Or: do you really believe your life is not your own?

Don't be a 4798, H: fess up.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by FlashDangerpants »

These inalienable rights, impossible to question change or update in any way, have a lot in common with this invisible undetectable but unquestionable God dude.

The amazing thing about them is that they always somehow completely tally with what the person looking for them expected to be given. And if somebody else looks at them, well they just completely agree with that guy too.
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Harbal
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by Harbal »

henry quirk wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:26 pm
Quite apart from who or what is the source: you have them. They aren't granted to you by men.
In what other way could a right possibly be granted to you? Rights are given and exercised between people. They don't exist outside of that mutual agreement. I suppose you could grant a right to yourself, but nobody is obliged to respect that right, or help you to defend it.
Or: do you really believe your life is not your own?
Ownership is just a concept. And, again, in order to own something, others must agree that you own it. Anything that you consider to be owned by you is just a thing that is in your temporary possession. If it is taken away from you, and you don't have the means to take it back, you no longer possess it, or own it, if you prefer.
Don't be a 4798, H: fess up.
I don't know what the number refers to, so I will wait until I do before owning up to anything. :wink:
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henry quirk
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by henry quirk »

What I note, H is no answer to this question...

Do you really believe your life is not your own?

Leave everything else aside for the moment.

Are you yours?

If you were overpowered and leashed, treated as property: is this wrong?
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henry quirk
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by henry quirk »

The bottom line is this...

Any where or when you go, every man, any man, knows he belongs to himself, knows his life, liberty, and property are his; he knows it's plain wrong his life, liberty, and property should be stripped from him without just cause.

As I say: even the slaver knows he is his own.

Whether this knowing is built into him by The Creator or is simply some peculiarly specific survival trait, is irrelevant, I think. Moral fact or amoral drive, this absolutely universal notion of I am mine can inform what is permissible between and among men. When one recognizes and respects the other as havin' the same right to his life, liberty, and property, what can go wrong?
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: IS and OUGHT

Post by FlashDangerpants »

henry quirk wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:55 pm Whether this knowing is built into him by The Creator or is simply some peculiarly specific survival trait, is irrelevant, I think.
I don't agree. You offer a weird and restrictive set of rights that is entirely directed at your own preferences. It would suit you to set these arbitrary limits and have no need to explain them, but what you don't have for that is ... any right at all.
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