anonymousnick2001
World's Greatest Vocalist
And, before he interjects, I'll just say that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ARE of a logical basis. Actually, so are Hinduism and Buddhism to an almost equal degree, and Daoism as well.
Radical Traditionalism
- Thread starter infoterror
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Demiurge
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Silent Song said:
Like I told you in some other topic, you don't seem to grasp what logic is. To use logic to show that loving thy neighbor is better than being a mass murderer, you'd need to construct an argument using deductive reasoning. I challenge you to do so. Please use formal structure.
Cythraul
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I disagree with infoterror in that I think he's trivializing the nature of religious values. Many, possibly almost all values found in various religions arise from a very real and practical basis, provided one subtracts all the metaphysical suppositions from the picture. His toxic waste dumping as a path to heaven retort seems trivial and irrelevant.
edit: If I'm way off base here and my point has nothing to do with what he was trying to get across...sorry. I don't read threads; I skim.
edit: If I'm way off base here and my point has nothing to do with what he was trying to get across...sorry. I don't read threads; I skim.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
agreed.Cythraul said:
agreed.anonymousnick2001 said:
sorry to disappoint you demiurge, i do grasp logic quite firmly.
Demiurge
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You clearly don't grasp logic at all if you think you can base morals on it. Ethics are completely subjective.
EDIT: I'm half sleeping :/$#@@$
EDIT: I'm half sleeping :/$#@@$
i still don't see the value of "cultural purity". after all, the western world didn't really achieve greatness until its culture began to mix with the eastern world. hence we use "arabic" numerals and have the concept of the zero, and also the philosophy of aristotle. all thanks to cultural mixing.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
Kenneth R.
Cináed
Demiurge
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kmik said:
There have been attempts, Kant's Categorical Imperative, for instance. Ultimately, they've been reduced to ashes by skeptical minds.
what would you base ethics and morality on then if not logic?
Since basing it on logic is impossible, to exert force to influence and constrain people. A normative standard is established to put the workings of society in motion. Just because ethical systems are not objective doesn't mean they cannot be used.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
i would disagree. if one bases ethics and morality on something other than logic, such morality and ethical systems will be unjustified. note that i stress they should be based on logic, and cannot be completely encompassed by it.
Demiurge
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Silent Song said:
There's a failure to communicate clearly here. What do you mean by "logic" and how to do you propose it be used to formulate an ethical system? Lets clarify meanings now, lest we go in circles forever.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
logic is a system of reason. when presented evidence, one uses logic to determine the significance. if presented a philosophy or argument, one uses logic to determine the validity. this system works in a way such that compelling evidence provided by an argument leads one to accept the argument as fact. when compelling evidence is collected, one also draws a conclusion according to the pattern of evidence that has revealed itself.
if i explained to you all the reasons why killing is wrong, and provided compelling evidence, logic suggests that you agree. if i did not supply compelling evidence, you would doubt my argument. if i provided you with charts showing rising sea level status around the globe over 1000 years and asked you what you thought, logic suggests that you conclude that it is rising and something is causing that. if i provided faulty data, you could not conclude this. if the data provided (or collected) suggested that the levels were falling, logic would not support an argument that they are rising.
morality, religion, and other such "gray areas" of life cannot be completely encompassed in logic as they are open-ended and/or faith-centric and so must be based on logic and reason though they extend beyond its reach.
so again i ask, in conjunction with the first example above, if you base morality and ethics on something other than logic, what would it be?
if i explained to you all the reasons why killing is wrong, and provided compelling evidence, logic suggests that you agree. if i did not supply compelling evidence, you would doubt my argument. if i provided you with charts showing rising sea level status around the globe over 1000 years and asked you what you thought, logic suggests that you conclude that it is rising and something is causing that. if i provided faulty data, you could not conclude this. if the data provided (or collected) suggested that the levels were falling, logic would not support an argument that they are rising.
morality, religion, and other such "gray areas" of life cannot be completely encompassed in logic as they are open-ended and/or faith-centric and so must be based on logic and reason though they extend beyond its reach.
so again i ask, in conjunction with the first example above, if you base morality and ethics on something other than logic, what would it be?
Demiurge
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My point is that they cannot be "encompassed" by logic because their most fundamental principles are relative. If you would present a deductive argument in an attempt to indicate that being a mass murderer is bad, I would show you this. All I need to do to defeat your argument is disagree. A true logical argument rests upon a priori principles which are difficult to challenge:
P1 All cats are mammals
p2 Furball is a cat
c Furball is a mammal
If you were to try to present a logical argument for murder being bad, I would tear it to shreds because it's reliant upon your perspective, little more.
Once you understand it's not an a priori formulation, you can then create it pragmatically. The ethical system extablishes the normative. How should society function and what should it accomplish? That's the question that must be answered.
P1 All cats are mammals
p2 Furball is a cat
c Furball is a mammal
If you were to try to present a logical argument for murder being bad, I would tear it to shreds because it's reliant upon your perspective, little more.
Once you understand it's not an a priori formulation, you can then create it pragmatically. The ethical system extablishes the normative. How should society function and what should it accomplish? That's the question that must be answered.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
if your goal is the destruction of your kind, which includes the destruction of your self, then you would advocate such a backward society.
how different would it be to say:
p1 killing destroys life
p2 to kill is to remove life from society
c killing takes life from society
in what twisted world would one view the destruction of their own kind as beneficial? you may "defeat" and "tear to shreds" my arguments based on YOUR definition of logic, but ultimately such conclusions do not make sense in reality.
how different would it be to say:
p1 killing destroys life
p2 to kill is to remove life from society
c killing takes life from society
in what twisted world would one view the destruction of their own kind as beneficial? you may "defeat" and "tear to shreds" my arguments based on YOUR definition of logic, but ultimately such conclusions do not make sense in reality.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
i said this. please read.Demiurge said:
it does not reduce the importance of utilizing logic and reason to the full extent possible in such matters.
Demiurge
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Let me restate my challenge: present a deductive argument proving that your form of morality should be adhered to. It's been active for over a day now and I haven't seen you take me up on it.
If I say, destruction of humanity is good, go ahead and point me to the logical rules I've violated. It's a statement. It's subjective. It's not subject to a priori reasoning. Your only recourse is to disagree.
You keep responding, but you don't get the point. There's no way to use logic to derive the proper ethical starting point. If you had that, you could try to apply it to the world and define things that contradict it as immoral. The thing is that you can't find it and neither can anyone else.
I know you said that, but it can't be encompassed at all because ethical systems are the formulation of pragmatic rules to establish a normative standard with the purpose of produciing a social world of some sort. Take an action that has had a binary value judgment imposed upon it. Use murder, for no particular reason. Why is it bad? Because it disrupts organized civilization if it's permitted and being organized into civilizations allows us to accomplish more while leading safer lives. It's strictly pragmatic. To try to prove that murder is bad, you could start by saying that society must be maintained. I would reply that absolute freedom is more important than the submission to opressive rules required by society. Society must be destroyed so we can regain our autonomy. For me, this freedom is more important than material comfort.. What I've said is, while not common, not illogical at all. Your other recourse would be to turn to an entity outside of us, a God, who superimposes absolute values upon us. You would need to put in a lot of work to prove this in a way that sceptics wouldn't burn it down. No one's done it yet, actually.
If I say, destruction of humanity is good, go ahead and point me to the logical rules I've violated. It's a statement. It's subjective. It's not subject to a priori reasoning. Your only recourse is to disagree.
You keep responding, but you don't get the point. There's no way to use logic to derive the proper ethical starting point. If you had that, you could try to apply it to the world and define things that contradict it as immoral. The thing is that you can't find it and neither can anyone else.
I know you said that, but it can't be encompassed at all because ethical systems are the formulation of pragmatic rules to establish a normative standard with the purpose of produciing a social world of some sort. Take an action that has had a binary value judgment imposed upon it. Use murder, for no particular reason. Why is it bad? Because it disrupts organized civilization if it's permitted and being organized into civilizations allows us to accomplish more while leading safer lives. It's strictly pragmatic. To try to prove that murder is bad, you could start by saying that society must be maintained. I would reply that absolute freedom is more important than the submission to opressive rules required by society. Society must be destroyed so we can regain our autonomy. For me, this freedom is more important than material comfort.. What I've said is, while not common, not illogical at all. Your other recourse would be to turn to an entity outside of us, a God, who superimposes absolute values upon us. You would need to put in a lot of work to prove this in a way that sceptics wouldn't burn it down. No one's done it yet, actually.
Cythraul
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It's logically coherent to say that murder is wrong (in that if permitted it would destabilize society) provided that permitting murder would in fact destabilize society. That's as far as you can go, which you touched upon Demiurge. To add a bit to the discussion, making a logical statement is not necessarily the same thing as stating a fact about reality. In fact, one could make a logically coherent statement that is absolutely false. I'll take a hypothetical and rather amusing example from a book I'm currently reading: It's conceptually coherent to claim for instance that a telephone could sprout wings and fly; there's no contradiction in that statement. However, it's physically impossible for the above to occur. A logical progression from premises to conclusion tells you nothing about the soundness of an argument. Making a logically coherent statement of a particular ethical postion does not make that statement true absolutely, even though it may be valid with respect to your point of view.
crimsonfloyd
Active Member
Silent Song said:
Many humans see the species as a cancer upon the world, and believe that the entire species should be eradicated for the betterment of the Earth as a whole. When you think about it, its just as logical as eliminating a muderer from a society. If one adheres to this worldview, then the murder of all humans makes sense both logically and in reality.
