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Posts by Obbe
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2018-12-29 at 4:10 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny But you would agree that moral facts, if they exist, are not a mere matter of opinion? You just happen to think there are no true unqualified ought statements, but that itself is a moral fact, your position is that it's not merely your opinion that there are no unqualified ought statements, it's a matter of fact, yes? So we can at least agree on what a moral fact is, even if you're not yet convinced "we ought not eat meat" is a true one.
Your physical conclusions might be consistent with the physical framework they emerge from but if a person rejects your physical frame work they are going to reject your physical conclusions.
We can talk about metaethics if you like, about the justifications given for moral frameworks, but first let's make sure we have a mutual understanding of what is meant by terms like "moral obligation" and "moral facts", otherwise there's no point discussing justification of something if we can't even agree on what that thing is. Posts like this:
suggest you're using these kinds of terms differently than I, or any moral realist, would.
The reason I may be using the terms differently than you might be that I am not a moral realist and that I do not agree with you that moral facts exist in the same way that the mass of an electron is the mass of an electron.
If a person rejects physical reality, well, they are probably going to have a tough life. If a person rejects your moral framework it probably doesn't matter at all, unless the system is compelling everyone to adhere to that specific moral framework.
Maybe you could explain why you are a moral realist, and how you know your moral framework and moral conclusions are more than mere opinions, and what you mean by terms like moral facts and moral obligations.
Since you are simply asserting that moral facts exist without giving any explanation as to why, we can simply reject your assertion without needing to give any explanation as to why. -
2018-12-29 at 1:27 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny Exactly, and the same goes for moral facts. Nobody decided what is actually morally right. Moral facts are no more a matter of opinion than the mass of an electron is. We have have unjustified or incorrect opinions about what is or isn't right, just as we might have wrong ideas about the mass of an electron, but relegating moral facts to mere opinion is to misunderstand the meaning of terms like "moral obligation" to moral realists.
I don't think I do misunderstand you, I just don't agree with your assertion that moral facts exist in the same way that the mass of an electron is the mass of an electron.
Your moral conclusions might be consistent with the moral framework they emerge from but if a person rejects your moral frame work they are going to reject your moral conclusions, and so far I have not seen you give any argument as to why your moral framework is absolute.
Maybe you could explain why you are a moral realist, and how you know your moral framework and moral conclusions are more than mere opinions. -
2018-12-28 at 9:42 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
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2018-12-28 at 6:32 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny Why not?
Who decides what the mass of an electron is?
I mean there is no should, beyond our imaginations. People imagine that this should be that, or that I should do this or shouldn't do that. But outside of our imaginations there only is what there is. Why do you believe the world should be a certain way? Why do you believe good and bad exist beyond your imagination? Why do you believe things "should" be done? Why do you believe moral obligations exist?
Nobody decided that electron should have "Y" mass. It either does or it doesn't have "Y" mass. Maybe someone imagines it should have "Y" mass, but they won't know until they measure it. How do you measure good and bad? It's all in your imagination. Who decides what "sufficient moral agency" is? -
2018-12-25 at 6:27 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Loing Well no, not exactly, it is completely opposite of your point and your statement is retarded. The current state of the universe turns into the next state by virtue of the properties of the current state. But this is not the context in which pizzas exist. People deliver pizzas because people want to make money, which is provided to them in exchange for their service in delivering the pizza. If he wants to do the job as well as possible, he ought to adopt the most efficient route. To say "he will or he won't" is an autistic category error that blatantly just changes the subject. If I buy 10 packs of candy with 20 candies per pack, I reason that if the packaging is accurate and I did receive the right amount of packages, I ought to find 200 candies in my purchase. This relation of two facts is completely independent of whether or not there are in fact 200 candies, which is not going to be the case if either of my first assumptions are wrong. The point of Hume's assertion of the gap between is an ought is that there is always a hidden assumption in the relation between two "is"es.
Again, autisticslly denying that "ought" exists isn't a coherent argument. I know you are trying to parrot Sam Harris on this because you thought he said something vaguely similar one time, but he doesn't deny the existence of oughts either.
No I said the sufficiency of your moral agency is determined by other agents. You're the one who has to assert your competence as a moral agent. They are the ones that have to accept your competence.
Yeah quoting Kaczynski doesn't make people think you're mentally ill.
Everything literally happens for its own sake, not because anything "should" happen. People want to make money, not because they "should" make money, but because of the system that compels them to. -
2018-12-25 at 4:56 PM UTC in Ho Ho Ho ya Hoes! 🌲
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2018-12-25 at 3:24 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Loing Literally everything happens for its own sake.
Yes, exactly. Everything that is happening is happening, but there is nothing that "should" be happening. People deliver pizzas because people deliver pizzas, not because they "should".
Originally posted by Loing Everyone else that the agent comes into contact with.
So you imagine an agents agency is determined by other agents with agency. I don't think I agree with that. An agents agency is an inherent quality of their agentness.
Originally posted by Loing But we allow this level of judgment to abstracted away to society because we want to do other things.
You use the roads so you do too, and you also make principally avoidable but practically unavoidable concessions to participate in (and benefit from the membership of) the Moral Agents Club of society.
Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion we like (as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice “safe sex”). We can do anything we like as long as it is unimportant. But in all important matters the system tends increasingly to regulate our behavior.
Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only by the government. Control is often exercised through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation, and by organizations other than the government, or by the system as a whole. Most large organizations use some form of propaganda to manipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to “commercials” and advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form of propaganda. An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer’s orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else’s employee. Modern man’s obsession with longevity, and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced age, is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the individuation process. The “mid-life crisis” also is such a symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children that is fairly common in modern society but almost unheard-of in primitive societies.
Before the system took over, life was a succession of stages. The needs and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no particular reluctance about passing on to the next stage. A young man goes through the individuation process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food. This phase having been successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family. (In contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children because they are too busy seeking some kind of “fulfillment.” The fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the individuation process—with real goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully raised his children, going through the individuation process by providing them with the physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and death. Many modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of physical deterioration and death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. This is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they have never put their physical powers to any practical use, have never gone through the individuation process using their bodies in a serious way. It is not the primitive man, who has used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man, who has never had a practical use for his body beyond walking from his car to his house. It is the man whose need for the individuation process has been satisfied during his life who is best prepared to accept the end of that life.
The oversocialized man has feelings of inferiority so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the oversocialized man. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself. He may claim that his activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, but compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for moralist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of moralist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much of their behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people, or animals whom the moraliats claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But moral activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for individuation. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred. If our society had no social problems at all, the moraliats would have to invent problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss. -
2018-12-25 at 2:02 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
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2018-12-23 at 6:10 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny On the contrary, our ideas about what is right and wrong… model what is right and wrong
If that were true our ideas about morality would be modelling the reality of morality more accurately as time goes on, like our scientific theories do with the world. But they don't accurately model anything because "right and wrong" don't exist anywhere outside of our imaginations. Whatever moral differences exist between two different people is something that doesn't even matter because the system will do whatever is best for it regardless of their preferences.
Originally posted by Loing Oh cool, a positive claim. Either give a positive argument for total moral anti realism or neck yourself.
No, there is what people do, what people think they should do, and there is a fact to what they should actually do, given that they desire a certain outcome.
If you have a pizza route with a certain number of clients and you "want" to deliver pizzas as efficiently as possible to make the most money, the pizza boy's opinion of the fastest route is completely irrelevant to the factual fastest route.
That is irrespective of whether the enterprise of pizza delivery should necessarily involvemaking the most efficient deliveries or most money as a universal moral imperative.
What is "the system"?
People aren't delivering pizzas because "they should", people deliver pizzas because they want to or because they are compelled to by the system. -
2018-12-23 at 6:27 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny Then you've misunderstood what is meant by terms like "moral obligation".
Aristotle didn't share our framework of physics and didn't share our conclusions about physical systems. That doesn't mean Aristotelian physics is just as valid modern standard model physics.
That's because the world is the way it is, and so as time goes on and we study the world more our scientific theories will model it ever more accurately. But our feelings about what is right and wrong are not modelling anything. Different moral systems are not really comparable. Predator and prey, for example, will always have different interests and will therefore always have different ideas about what is good and what is bad and will therefore always view their own perspective as the better perspective. Whatever moral differences exist between two different people is something that doesn't even matter because the system will do whatever is best for it regardless of their preferences. -
2018-12-23 at 5:40 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Loing And whether people do what they feel like doing is completely irrelevant to whether they are doing what they should be doing, irrespective of their belief in it. That is what is being asserted. I can't believe you are so fucking retarded that this has to be explained this many times.
Everything from this point onwards in this post is strictly irrelevant, but I'm arguing it anyway because you're dumb:
Well no, that's just blatantly false. People make normative judgments completely independent of "the system maaan". Let me press your hand to a hot stove and hold it there while telling you your subjective judgment on the experience is irrelevant.
Jimmy, answer the following question:
How many vertices does a triangle have?
Yes duh, are you stupid? For any moral discussion to reach a conclusion, it will ultimately rely on us coming to terms on certain moral premises to start with.
This is why we can have practical moral discussions, as we do in many current events and political cases cases, because we can start from points of moral agreement (including articles of international law), without agreeing in ultimate moral truths or even our most basic axioms or systems.
So if I offer a trolley problem like postwar Hitler who was captured and given a full judicial trial and found guilty and admitted his own guilt vs 5000 newborn babies, most people will realistically opt to kill Hitler. Why? Because whether or not we all agree on the same ultimate moral authorities, we can still conduct moral discussions and come to moral agreements. We do this all the time. A Muslim and a Christian can both agree that murder is wrong.
Again, I cannot believe I am having this autistic never-took-a-phil-class discussion with someone who claims to have been interested in philosophy for so many years.
You're assuming there is something people should be doing. There isn't. There is only what people do, what people think they should do, and what the system compels people to do.
Originally posted by Lanny That's not common usage, that's not what you'll find in the dictionary, and that's not how the term has been used in this thread. You are wrong on every level it is possible to be wrong about the meaning of a word.
I made no effort to explain that because I don't think that's the case and never said it was, you mentally deficient cunt.
When a physicist says "an electron has less mass than a proton" they are, in some sense, saying "I think that <an electron has less mass than a proto>" and in that same sense when I say things about moral obligations I'm also expressing my opinions, but whether my opinions are correct or not, there is a fact to the matter. I'm sorry that you've been offended by the ever so pretentious claim that there are true and false statements about the world but uhh, that's kinda not my problem?
Opinions about morality cannot be true, only consistent with the moral framework they emerge from. If I don't share your moral framework I won't share your moral conclusions. The mass of that proton on the other hand is something that is consistently demonstrateable whether I acknowledge it or not. If I feel something is right or wrong, and you feel the opposite, that doesn't tell us anything about reality, that only tells us about how each of us feel about something. -
2018-12-22 at 7:16 PM UTC in In the Bible, what is "God"
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2018-12-22 at 4:05 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by MORALLY SUPERIOR BEING III: The Quest for 911 Truth That's unclear - what does should mean?
You should brush your teeth. It benefits you.
How can anyone say I should do something that doesn't benefit me?
We goyim are getting real fucking tired of being told what we "should" do.
The system will compel you to feel that you should do whatever the system needs you to be doing. Whether that is consuming more of this or less of that, building these or destroying those, it's all based on what the system needs and whatever individuals think is right or wrong is irrelevant unless the system starts to use them as little propaganda machines.
Brushing your teeth is good for your health but is it morally right? Does that question even matter? Does it even make sense? Guess it depends on how you feel about the things that live on your teeth. -
2018-12-22 at 3:47 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny I do believe that, but the point there, and that I've made to obbe several times in this thread and which we still seem to be talking past each other on is about what is meant when I or OP or most people in this thread mean when they say "moral obligation".
When you say "We have a moral obligation" you mean "I think we should do this," but in a really pretentious and entitled way. -
2018-12-22 at 3:41 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Loing You are more guilty of conflating the two than anyone else in the thread.
What you think is completely irrelevant to the moral reality of meat consumption. Whether or not people are too stupid to make the right moral decision is an irrelevant response. Maybe you are having troubles with athletic abilities?
Do you have a moral obligation to not kill children and burn their corpses over rubber tires in your backyard?
You are literally babbling, completely incapable of addressing any point with a relevant answer, and possibly borderline brain damaged. Nothing stated here is relevant whatsoever to the question of moral obligation .
What you think about "moral reality" is completely irrelevant to reality. People are going to do whatever they feel like doing. The system will pressure people into feeling that somethings are right and some things are wrong based on what is best for it. There is no "right" decision, only responses based on what people feel is right or wrong. People who make different choices than you have a different moral code. Imagine you see a runaway trolleymoving toward five tied-up people lying on the tracks. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. You have two options: Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track. Or pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
Which is the moral choice depends entirely on how you feel about the outcome it will lead to. There is no "moral reality" there is only how you feel about your decision and how the system will respond to your decision. -
2018-12-22 at 3:38 AM UTC in Where do we go when we die?What even is "you"? Are you your body? No, you can lose parts of your body and still be you. Theoretically we could replace all your parts with synthetic versions and you would still be you. Are you your thoughts and personality? People can suffer brain injuries or even naturally develop mental conditions and changes in personality and thought process? All these things are a part of a pattern which your identify with, but how much of that gestalt is permanent or unchanging? If there is something fundamental that everything is made of, some energy or particle or vibration, well, that's what your really are, that's where you came from and that's where you will go. Like sand on a beach, and the "you" you identify with, your ego, that's more like a pattern that formed on the sand. The pattern grows and changes and disappears but the sand remains and the patterns keep coming.
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2018-12-21 at 11:56 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
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2018-12-21 at 11:22 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny Then you misunderstand what is meant by "moral obligation" in the title of the thread.
I don't think I did, it really is just personal preference. Maybe you misunderstand what moral obligations really are?
Originally posted by Loing Okay, and I'm presuming you wouldn't think it's acceptable for people to kill or destroy other people's homes for recreation.
We put overwhelmingly more calories into the generation of meat than necessary for the production of vegetables, and vegetables are cheaper and easier to produce. Cattle accounts for over 90% of the world's carbon emissions. We could have complete and total food abundance by simply switching to vegan diets and totally eliminate most of global climate change overnight.
We are literally destroying homes, right now, by eating meat. Rising sea levels are literally forcing Sri Lankan people to leave their homes from their beautiful island and come to the mainland, which is receding too.
Yes, you have a moral obligation to stop eating meat.
As a bonus, we don't need to operate pain mills, where we just generate suffering and pain and fear in innocent animals, born sinless but destined for a life of pain and a brutal end. Never to roam a real field and graze real grass, fed corn and raised in a pen with two inches of leg room since it comes stumbling out it's calf, born ambling and ironically optimistic for the great world it has just arrived in. What a sad, sudden break with reality he will meat. We can end that.
I think people are going to eat each other, kill each other and destroy each other regardless of whether or not you or I think it is right or wrong or what our preferences are. The system makes these things illegal because these things are bad for the system, disrupt cohesion. Whether you or I believe these behaviors are right or wrong is irrelevant to what the system does.
A solution to all of that impending doom you mentioned is something the system is going to be seeking if it doesn't want to collapse. Nobody has any real obligation to do anything at all, though some people feel like they do. The system will utilize propaganda to compel you to feel a certain way, the system will attempt to influence your beliefs but that's all they are. Beliefs, feelings, opinions and preferences. You really can do whatever you want to do, but try to destroy the system you face the consequences. Everyone is doing what matters to them, and the system is doing what matters to it. Maybe everything will collapse and turn back into dust one day. -
2018-12-21 at 10 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Loing Do you think cannibals should be allowed to kill and eat members of our society because it is their dietary preference?
No, I don't.
Originally posted by Lanny No one ever said you did, the claim has been that the moral obligation is not to eat meat. This has nothing to do with opinions or preferences.
I think morals are just opinions or preferences. A vegetarian might feel morally obligated to not eat meat, but someone who eats meat does not. -
2018-12-21 at 11:51 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meatNobody has a moral obligation to adopt someone else's dietary opinions or preferences.
