moral relativism

[Skepdick]

We have constructed rationales by which to reason about morality. It is therefore by definition not arbitrary.

By which definition?

arbitrary adjective 1.based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

Once you know what conclusion you want to arrive at, literally any rationale which starts with the current state of affairs and arrives at your desired state of affairs would suffice. That's literaly how humans strategise/enumerate options!

By the principle of equifinality there's always multiple ways to get from A to B - the gap between the available degress of freedom vs the actual choice made is precisely what we call "randomness".

You can't actually explain why you've chosen a particular strategy from the multiple possibilities. The choice was random, and therefore arbitrary.

[iambiguous]

As promised, I'm back to entertain you with this guy!

My point is that if the moral nihilists are objectivists, what they assert about God and religion and moral relativism is not the same as what they can demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to assert as well.

Again, the irony. They are just like you!

You assert many, many things about the Christian God. But you are actually able to convince yourself that your videos and quoting the Christian Bible to "prove" the Christian God does exist is a bona fide demonstration that He does exist.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here and suggesting to others that it is a "condition". It is basically "beyond your control".

They aren't. At least, they insist they're not.

At the same time, they insist that their (dis)beliefs are objectively true. Make sense of them, if you can. I can't.

How dense can you get?! I'm agreeing with IC that those moral nihilists who insist that what they believe or disbelieve is that which all other rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn are no less "arrogant, autocratic, authoritarian" objectivists. Why? Because that they believe something is not the same as in fact demonstrating that it is true.

Again, it's the irony here that I focus on. They're just like IC claiming the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven while providing us thatv ridiculous "evidence" that I note above: youtube videos and quotes from the Bible.

Now, I call myself a moral nihilist. And an atheist. I make arguments supporting that frame of mind. But I do not assert that moral nihilism and No God is the objective truth. Instead, I note that, existentially, given the life I lived, this is what "I" have come to believe "here and now".

But, given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge, I might well change my mind. As I have so many times in the past.

And it's only when I suggest further that this is also applicable to the moral and political and spiritual objectivists here that they beg to differ. After all, they have much invested in the comfort and the consolation...in the psychology of objectivism...in being able to anchor their Self in one or another of these...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies


...fonts.

Right? Or do you actually believe that you are different? That you and your Christian God font really are the real deal...the One True Path.

Of course you do.

And, sure, if others here wish to engage you in discussions that allow you to simply assert the things that you do about the Christian God over and over and over and over again, that's their business

Then you don't care what I think, or anybody else does.

Why are you here?

Over and again, I note that I don't exclude myself from my own point of view. So, I'm here noting that I may well be wrong about my assessment and my conclusions. I'm more then willing to hear others out. It's just that with some I respect their intelligence and with others I don't. With IC it's mostly just entertainment to expose how shallow I believe his thinking is.

But that's just me. Others here may be impressed by his thinking and respect his intelligence. And that's fine with me.

Folks have to earn my respect. Just as I have earn theirs. But that means different things to each of us, right?

And that what counts in the end is only what we and the scientists and philosophers and theologians can demonstrate to others is in fact true.

I'm sorry, but that's just epistemologically naive. There is nothing empirical that can be "demonstrated" to that degree, including the existence of the entire external world. You don't know "demonstrably" and beyond possibility of doubt that it is in fact true that you will wake up tomorrow.

Sure, sure. And we can note things like solipsism, sim worlds, dream worlds, the red pill/blue pill conundrum embedded in a Matrix world. Or how about mental afflictions like schizophrenia.

I didn't refer to any of those. I'm speaking of normal cognition, and the fact that you don't know you'll wake up tomorrow, based on "demonstrably" and "beyond possibility of doubt."

Come on, IC, using normal cognition and epistemologically sophisticated assumptions, how do you go about demonstrating that the Christian God resides in Heaven as others using normal cognition and epistemologically sophisticated assumptions can demonstrate that Popes resides in the Vatican?

There is nothing in the entire physical world, in fact, that can be "demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt to exist," because skepticism can be employed very durably, even in the face of good evidence, and empirical proofs are only ever probabilistic, not absolute.

Right, so use this to lump together the Christian God in Heaven and the Pope in the Vatican.

Only why on earth is your omnipotent God unable to provide us mere mortals with absolute proof of His existence. Again, with so much at stake on both sides of the grave?!!!

He has provided such proof. You just don't like that He has.

Right, back to youtube videos and quoting from the Christian Bible.

Jesus Christ is that proof. But since He came and went before your time, you feel free to be infinitely skeptical about the proof God has already given, to not even look at it, and to take nothing seriously.

That can't be helped. It's a character fault on your side. It's not a lack of evidence fault on God's. He's done more than enough to show you what you need to know.

I challenge anyone here to explain how this is not circular logic on his part. Around and around he goes. Jesus Christ and God must exist because he says so...and because the videos prove it...and because it says so in the Christian Bible.

I challenge anyone here to provide us with further evidence that IC has himself provided us with evidence that goes beyond this.

I'll wait to hear what you think makes that a certain fact for you.

Also, I've never been to the White House. I've never met Joe Biden there. So that proves that the Christian God resides in Heaven!!!

That makes your case even weaker. You can't even say, "Well, I went there, and saw..." You're just believing...what, exactly?

Well, I believe that Joe Biden resides in the White House. And I await actual substantive proof from you that the Christian God resides in Heaven.

Think, Biggie, think...what are you relying on as evidence for the Pope? Be specific. Is it pictures you've seen? Rumours? Catholic promises? What is it that has you so darn convinced the Pope's in Rome?

And how do you know he's there today?

A goddamned "condition", right?!!


Amused yet?

[FlashDangerpants]

We have constructed rationales by which to reason about morality. It is therefore by definition not arbitrary.

By which definition?

arbitrary adjective 1.based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

They are systematic as long as you don't look too hard at them. I'm an antirealist, I don't expect these manufactured systems to hold up terribly well under close investigation and nobody has ever shown me any system that really did.

But the raw fact is that I am signed up to a certain set of moral dispositions that are variously referred to as globalist neoliberal metropolitan liberal blah blah blah because I find those persuasive and plausible. IC is a highly conservative ultra-religious far right type, he has bought into a biblical evangelical system of frowning at people who have fun or enjoy life. You have your own set of mroal preferences and they don't fuilly overlap with those of anybody else today, nor even with your future self in a year.

But still it is systematic. The issue really is that it's not systematically contructed, we interpret what is actually quite a tangled mess in systematic fashion and we overloook most of the problems using a combination of heuristics and mimetics. Or more likely our primary heuristic is to copy our next opinion from the same source as we did the last.

Once you know what conclusion you want to arrive at, literally any rationale which starts with the current state of affairs and arrives at your desired state of affairs would suffice. That's literaly how humans strategise/enumerate options!

I can't aergue that point as it is central to my own mockery of Henry and VA and IC. One of them consults God to find out he was already right about everything. One of them uses his impeccable unpacking of his suitcase of self-ownership to discover he does indeed already know everything that is right and everything that is wrong. Meanwhile the other can investigate some deep mystery within the very DNA of morals to learn that his guesses are perfect and all wise.

However I would have thought that most people have at some point in time experienced temptation to do wrong only to find that their moral principles won't permit that naugthy deed. So at least sometimes we must use what we believe to decide our next choice rather than what we have chosen to determine our beliefs.

By the principle of equifinality there's always multiple ways to get from A to B - the gap between the available degress of freedom vs the actual choice made is precisely what we call "randomness".

You can't actually explain why you've chosen a particular strategy from the multiple possibilities. The choice was random, and therefore arbitrary.

Is that what we call randomness? Seems as fraudulent as what Mannie calls "legit" to me but you're the mathematical wonderkid not I.

[iambiguous]

i want you to know you forced my hand here, Henry Quirk... forced my hand into posting the dreaded billy madison link, something i never thought i have to do to you, Henry.

Thanks 75. God knows we needed that.

Perhaps even henry's God. Well, if He's not already in the penalty box of IC's Christian God,

[Immanuel Can]

...numbers don't have existence except as man made concept.

Apparently untrue.

You can tell because numbers deliver exactly the same realities to every person, in every generation, every time they use them. What numbers really are is an accurate adjectival way of describing realities that pre-exist us.

Peter would have to be one of them.

I don't know how many more times he has to write that there is no such thing as an objective moral status...

That IS his problem.

If he were right, it would mean that there is no real "wrongness" to rape, pedophilia, slavery...

He won't say so, though.

Apparently, he just doesn't like the taste of the fruit off the tree he's planted.

[Immanuel Can]

Think, Biggie, think...what are you relying on as evidence for the Pope? Be specific. Is it pictures you've seen? Rumours? Catholic promises? What is it that has you so darn convinced the Pope's in Rome?

And how do you know he's there today?

A goddamned "condition", right?!!

So, you have no answer. You don't "know" that Joe Biden is in the White House. He could be in the street, lying under his bicycle, or falling down another flight of stairs, or in the salon, sniffing hair.

Or he might not even exist. He could be a "hyper-real" AI, programmed to fool you into thinking you have a senile president.

So what justifies your confidence that Biden is real?

[FlashDangerpants]

...numbers don't have existence except as man made concept.

Apparently untrue.

You can tell because numbers deliver exactly the same realities to every person, in every generation, every time they use them. What numbers really are is an accurate adjectival way of describing realities that pre-exist us.

So that's an example where it's relatively easy to put together a very coherent and reliable man made system. So that one is "legitimate" without be "real" just because it's so easy to reach agreement that anybody who just decides to quus is easily identified as mad, foolish, or at the very least mistaken.

All that even tough numbers aren't real. Or "legitimate" if you insist that legitimacy entails concrete reality.

Peter would have to be one of them.

I don't know how many more times he has to write that there is no such thing as an objective moral status...

That IS his problem.

If he were right, it would mean that there is no real "wrongness" to rape, pedophilia, slavery...

He won't say so, though.

Apparently, he just doesn't like the taste of the fruit off the tree he's planted.

You are still fallaciously insisting that an antirealist position fails on grounds of not being realist enough to succeeed.

[Immanuel Can]

...numbers don't have existence except as man made concept.

Apparently untrue.

You can tell because numbers deliver exactly the same realities to every person, in every generation, every time they use them. What numbers really are is an accurate adjectival way of describing realities that pre-exist us.

So that's an example where it's relatively easy to put together a very coherent and reliable man made system.

No, it's a demonstration of the fact that much of what man imagines he "constructs" he actually "discovers" from pre-existent realities.

You are still fallaciously insisting that an antirealist position fails on grounds of not being realist enough to succeeed.

Stick to what I say, quote that accurately, and you won't confuse yourself and say more goofy things.

[FlashDangerpants]

Stick to what I say, quote that accurately, and you won't confuse yourself and say more goofy things.

I just needed to preserve a quote of you writing that.

[iambiguous]

ME:

As promised, I'm back to entertain you with this guy!

My point is that if the moral nihilists are objectivists, what they assert about God and religion and moral relativism is not the same as what they can demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to assert as well.

Again, the irony. They are just like you!

You assert many, many things about the Christian God. But you are actually able to convince yourself that your videos and quoting the Christian Bible to "prove" the Christian God does exist is a bona fide demonstration that He does exist.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here and suggesting to others that it is a "condition". It is basically "beyond your control".

They aren't. At least, they insist they're not.

At the same time, they insist that their (dis)beliefs are objectively true. Make sense of them, if you can. I can't.

How dense can you get?! I'm agreeing with IC that those moral nihilists who insist that what they believe or disbelieve is that which all other rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn are no less "arrogant, autocratic, authoritarian" objectivists. Why? Because that they believe something is not the same as in fact demonstrating that it is true.

Again, it's the irony here that I focus on. They're just like IC claiming the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven while providing us thatv ridiculous "evidence" that I note above: youtube videos and quotes from the Bible.

Now, I call myself a moral nihilist. And an atheist. I make arguments supporting that frame of mind. But I do not assert that moral nihilism and No God is the objective truth. Instead, I note that, existentially, given the life I lived, this is what "I" have come to believe "here and now".

But, given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge, I might well change my mind. As I have so many times in the past.

And it's only when I suggest further that this is also applicable to the moral and political and spiritual objectivists here that they beg to differ. After all, they have much invested in the comfort and the consolation...in the psychology of objectivism...in being able to anchor their Self in one or another of these...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies


...fonts.

Right? Or do you actually believe that you are different? That you and your Christian God font really are the real deal...the One True Path.

Of course you do.

And, sure, if others here wish to engage you in discussions that allow you to simply assert the things that you do about the Christian God over and over and over and over again, that's their business

Then you don't care what I think, or anybody else does.

Why are you here?

Over and again, I note that I don't exclude myself from my own point of view. So, I'm here noting that I may well be wrong about my assessment and my conclusions. I'm more then willing to hear others out. It's just that with some I respect their intelligence and with others I don't. With IC it's mostly just entertainment to expose how shallow I believe his thinking is.

But that's just me. Others here may be impressed by his thinking and respect his intelligence. And that's fine with me.

Folks have to earn my respect. Just as I have earn theirs. But that means different things to each of us, right?

And that what counts in the end is only what we and the scientists and philosophers and theologians can demonstrate to others is in fact true.

I'm sorry, but that's just epistemologically naive. There is nothing empirical that can be "demonstrated" to that degree, including the existence of the entire external world. You don't know "demonstrably" and beyond possibility of doubt that it is in fact true that you will wake up tomorrow.

Sure, sure. And we can note things like solipsism, sim worlds, dream worlds, the red pill/blue pill conundrum embedded in a Matrix world. Or how about mental afflictions like schizophrenia.

I didn't refer to any of those. I'm speaking of normal cognition, and the fact that you don't know you'll wake up tomorrow, based on "demonstrably" and "beyond possibility of doubt."

Come on, IC, using normal cognition and epistemologically sophisticated assumptions, how do you go about demonstrating that the Christian God resides in Heaven as others using normal cognition and epistemologically sophisticated assumptions can demonstrate that Popes resides in the Vatican?

There is nothing in the entire physical world, in fact, that can be "demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt to exist," because skepticism can be employed very durably, even in the face of good evidence, and empirical proofs are only ever probabilistic, not absolute.

Right, so use this to lump together the Christian God in Heaven and the Pope in the Vatican.

Only why on earth is your omnipotent God unable to provide us mere mortals with absolute proof of His existence. Again, with so much at stake on both sides of the grave?!!!

He has provided such proof. You just don't like that He has.

Right, back to youtube videos and quoting from the Christian Bible.

Jesus Christ is that proof. But since He came and went before your time, you feel free to be infinitely skeptical about the proof God has already given, to not even look at it, and to take nothing seriously.

That can't be helped. It's a character fault on your side. It's not a lack of evidence fault on God's. He's done more than enough to show you what you need to know.

I challenge anyone here to explain how this is not circular logic on his part. Around and around he goes. Jesus Christ and God must exist because he says so...and because the videos prove it...and because it says so in the Christian Bible.

I challenge anyone here to provide us with further evidence that IC has himself provided us with evidence that goes beyond this.

I'll wait to hear what you think makes that a certain fact for you.

Also, I've never been to the White House. I've never met Joe Biden there. So that proves that the Christian God resides in Heaven!!!

That makes your case even weaker. You can't even say, "Well, I went there, and saw..." You're just believing...what, exactly?

Well, I believe that Joe Biden resides in the White House. And I await actual substantive proof from you that the Christian God resides in Heaven.

Think, Biggie, think...what are you relying on as evidence for the Pope? Be specific. Is it pictures you've seen? Rumours? Catholic promises? What is it that has you so darn convinced the Pope's in Rome?

And how do you know he's there today?

A goddamned "condition", right?!!


Amused yet?

HIM:

Think, Biggie, think...what are you relying on as evidence for the Pope? Be specific. Is it pictures you've seen? Rumours? Catholic promises? What is it that has you so darn convinced the Pope's in Rome?

And how do you know he's there today?

A goddamned "condition", right?!!

So, you have no answer. You don't "know" that Joe Biden is in the White House. He could be in the street, lying under his bicycle, or falling down another flight of stairs, or in the salon, sniffing hair.

Or he might not even exist. He could be a "hyper-real" AI, programmed to fool you into thinking you have a senile president.

So what justifies your confidence that Biden is real?

Absolutely shameless!!!

This guy doesn't have a clue as to how to respond to me. So, perhaps, as with henry [in a similar bind himself], IC should put me in the penalty box.

In my view, he has no business being in a philosophy forum at all.

Let alone posting 17,197 times!!!!

[Immanuel Can]

So, you have no answer. You don't "know" that Joe Biden is in the White House. He could be in the street, lying under his bicycle, or falling down another flight of stairs, or in the salon, sniffing hair.

Or he might not even exist. He could be a "hyper-real" AI, programmed to fool you into thinking you have a senile president.

So what justifies your confidence that Biden is real?

Absolutely shameless!!!

Still no answer.

I'm not forgetting what I've asked you, and I'm not letting you slide of the hook with all the reams and reams of distractors, deflectors, ad hominem nonsense, and petulant posturing. Either you answer, or you don't.

And that you don't is manifest.

You don't know anything about the Pope, Joe Biden, or anything else by proof beyond possibility of doubt. You are happy to take the probability of Biden or the Pope being where you think they are as if it were certainty; and you apply a completely different standard to God, one you deliberately set beyond the highest levels of probability, at the level of a demand for absolute certainty.

And then, it seems, you smugly retire your brain, as if you'd been wise.

When faced with this realization, you bluster, distract, insult, avoid...and then return to your old, defeated canards about perfect knowledge.

But you don't dare answer.

[iambiguous]

So, you have no answer. You don't "know" that Joe Biden is in the White House. He could be in the street, lying under his bicycle, or falling down another flight of stairs, or in the salon, sniffing hair.

Or he might not even exist. He could be a "hyper-real" AI, programmed to fool you into thinking you have a senile president.

So what justifies your confidence that Biden is real?

Absolutely shameless!!!

Still no answer.

Okay, let's bring this around to a point that his best buddy henry quirk and I discussed before he put me in the penality box.

Now, henry once admitted to me that in regard to the "big stuff" issues we discuss here, he had been wrong in the past. But whenever I suggested that implies that he may well be wrong about them in the present and in the future, well, nothing from him that I recall.

So, okay, does IC maintain here that in regard to his own answers -- the videos, quotes from Christian Bible, his arguments -- that he has never been wrong?

Suggesting that unless the answer you give is entirely in sync with his own it may as well be the same as not answering at all.

Indeed, is there anyone here in regard to IC's 17,200 plus posts who can recall him either admitting that he was wrong about something or that an answer you gave qualified as worthy of consideration if it didn't entirely jibe with his own answer.

A single instance of this?

I'm not forgetting what I've asked you, and I'm not letting you slide of the hook with all the reams and reams of distractors, deflectors, ad hominem nonsense, and petulant posturing. Either you answer, or you don't.

And that you don't is manifest.

Okay, but please...please...don't let him put me in the penalty box!

And, sure, let him do what he can to keep henry out of His penalty box, okay?

You don't know anything about the Pope, Joe Biden, or anything else by proof beyond possibility of doubt. You are happy to take the probability of Biden or the Pope being where you think they are as if it were certainty; and you apply a completely different standard to God, one you deliberately set beyond the highest levels of probability, at the level of a demand for absolute certainty.

When have I ever said that I am myself in possession of proof that they exist? I don't even have the indisputable proof that we do not live in a sim world, a dream world, a Matrix contraption.

For all I know this entire exchange is unfolding in a wholly determined universe going all the way back to what I don't have a fucking clue about regarding the existence of existence itself.

Nope, I'm just pointing out how preposterous his own claims are that in fact the Christian God resides in Heaven. That he has proved this here!!!

I've even given him an escape clause...a "condition".

Besides, I'm not asking others to take this exchange seriously. With IC, I'm basically just here to entertain them. And to amuse myself.

Well, at least until he posts something that so impresses me, that I have to take it seriously.

Which is why I ask others here to be on the lookout for that. To bring it to my attention immediately.

After all, there's still a part of me that wants to believe in the Christian God again. I haven't forgotten just how comforting and consoling I did feel back then when I did. And, believe me, truly, truly devoutly.

[Immanuel Can]

Absolutely shameless!!!

Still no answer.

Okay, let's bring this around to a point that his best buddy henry quirk and I discussed before he put me in the penality box.

No, let's have you answer my question.

What are you using as your evidence, when you judge that Biden's in the White House?

It's a simple question.

[iambiguous]

Still no answer.

Okay, let's bring this around to a point that his best buddy henry quirk and I discussed before he put me in the penalty box.

Now, henry once admitted to me that in regard to the "big stuff" issues we discuss here, he had been wrong in the past. But whenever I suggested that implies that he may well be wrong about them in the present and in the future, well, nothing from him that I recall.

So, okay, does IC maintain here that in regard to his own answers -- the videos, quotes from Christian Bible, his arguments -- that he has never been wrong?

Suggesting that unless the answer you give is entirely in sync with his own it may as well be the same as not answering at all.

Indeed, is there anyone here in regard to IC's 17,200 plus posts who can recall him either admitting that he was wrong about something or that an answer you gave qualified as worthy of consideration if it didn't entirely jibe with his own answer.

A single instance of this?

No, let's have you answer my question.

What are you using as your evidence, when you judge that Biden's in the White House?

It's a simple question.

And I gave him a simple answer:

When have I ever said that I am myself in possession of proof that [Joe Biden resides in the White House]? I don't even have the indisputable proof that we do not live in a sim world, a dream world, a Matrix contraption.

For all I know this entire exchange is unfolding in a wholly determined universe going all the way back to what I don't have a fucking clue about regarding the existence of existence itself.

Nope, I'm just pointing out how preposterous his own claims are that in fact the Christian God resides in Heaven. That he has proved this here!!!

Thank God then: it's almost certainly a "condition"!

He's clearly a few cans short of a six-pack in his thinking here.

He keeps going on and on about me providing evidence for something I keep agreeing that I can't provide evidence for. All I can do is to Google Joe Biden in the White House: https://www.google.com/search?q=joe+bid ... s-wiz-serp

Others can then click on the links and decide for themselves if he really does reside there. And thus prove that IC has demonstrated that the Christian God resides in Heaven.

In fact, when it comes to the presidency, the closest I ever came to evidence of its existence was back in the day when I worked for a guy named Michael. He ran the George McGovern campaign for the Baltimore area. And with him I once shook the hand of George McGovern himself. Then later that day his wife Eleanor and the actor Nancy Kulp visited our campaign office. I shook their hands too and talked about "the issues" for a few minutes.

Though, sure, how do I know that actually happened? That, say, I wasn't [and still am] just a character in some advanced alien civilizations sim world?

Right?

[Immanuel Can]

No, let's have you answer my question.

What are you using as your evidence, when you judge that Biden's in the White House?

It's a simple question.

And I gave him a simple answer:

When have I ever said that I am myself in possession of proof that [Joe Biden resides in the White House]? I don't even have the indisputable proof that we do not live in a sim world, a dream world, a Matrix contraption.

That's not an answer. It doesn't at all explain how you judge what you judge to be true.

You claimed you have knowledge of Biden being in the White House and the Pope in Rome, because that's the level you ask of the knowledge of God. Now, it turns out you don't "know" those things at all, as you say. You think you're in The Matrix. So you don't "know" anything. And there's no level of certitude about God that will ever satisfy you. You are never going to have any knowledge, no matter what anybody tells you.

But that's not anybody else's fault, then. It's the fault of your own epistemic demands.