Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.religion.christian Subject: Re: The Harumpheror's Old Clothes Message-ID: <1334@pyuxd.UUCP> Date: Sat, 27-Jul-85 13:23:23 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1334 Posted: Sat Jul 27 13:23:23 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 29-Jul-85 06:15:25 EDT References: <1311@uwmacc.UUCP> <1281@pyuxd.UUCP> <998@umcp-cs.UUCP> Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week Lines: 102 Xref: watmath net.philosophy:2133 net.religion.christian:980 >>>Thus, all the talk about objectivity, examination of presuppositions >>>clung to in order to bolster a preconceived desired conclusion, >>>wishful thinking, etc., etc. (many of you as well can no doubt mimic >>>the usual phrases), is a complete smokescreen. >>>Truly, Emperor Rosen has no clothes. When pushed back to his real >>>reasons, he says: "because we like them". [DUBOIS] >>Yup, because we like them. That happens to be as objective a statement >>as you'll ever see. Why do WE value survival? BECAUSE WE LIKE IT. Because >>it brings us pleasure to continue living and reaping benefits of life. >>Death, I've heard, is a very painful experience, and after it happens, you >>don't get to live life anymore. Thus, we value survival because we like >>living, because we gain pleasure (whether you believe a soul gains this >>pleasure or that the chemicals of your body predispose you to it) from it. >>Now that Paul has allowed me to zip up the philosophical pants I was >>already wearing, what exactly does he find UNobjective about that? And where >>are HIS clothes? [ROSEN] > And I suppose that we should therefore do what we please? Rich, I'm sorry but > you seem to be missing something very basic here. Morality is proscriptive > and prescriptive; it tells you to do things you don't want to do, and forbids > some things you want to do. "Because you like it" simply doesn't cut it, > especially when you are talking about social interactions. You have in fact > given me a very powerful weapon with which to DENY the validity of your > moral system; I don't like it. No amount of rational argument can convince. That's funny, I wasn't talking about "morality", I was talking about what basis we can use to value our survival. If we REALLY value our survival in the long term, KNOWING that there are other people who have the same interests in surviving that we do, rational people might just come to an agreement about limits of "rights" to interfere inother people's lives. Note that I didn't say "granting" of rights. That would imply some authority to bequeath people with these elusive rights. I said limiting rights. Willingly creating a system that bind people in agreement not to "do as they please" when it comes to interfering with other people, for their own good and the good of the community. Got it? The "weapon" I gave is not just nothing but a water pistol, it's not even loaded! > As a matter of fact, I do NOT absolutely value the human race. Some things > are more important than survival. Humans appear to be the only animals on > earth which can evaluate and change their own nature. This is in fact where > any moral obligation at all must come from. To say that we should perpetuate > survival as a value simply because we like it is about as unobjective as one > can get. The whole moral question is indeed whether liking to do something > is sufficient grounds for doing it. It's rather unobjective to say that "we" > like survival with some quantification; there is certainly a sizable minority > who quite obenly state that survival is a curse. Rich's statement is an > intuition, and not objective at all. On the contrary, it's quite objective precisely because I'm not doing what you might like to think I'm doing: I'm NOT attempting to "justify" survival of human being as an absolute. The question was "Why do we value survival?" and the answer is "Because we like surviving". The question was NOT "Why in an absolute objective sense SHOULD we survive?" Without an assumption of some special status for humanity, there's no such valid reason. Moral "obligation"? Phtooey! >>Who said anything about "making right"? (You did.) The question was why >>do we value survival, why SHOULD we value survival. Seems to me like a >>very reasonable answer. Why doesn't it seem that way to you? > WRONG. You quoted me above and disproved this yourself. Let's talk about > "maximizing freedom" for a minute. Examination of almost any stretch of > history shows that for an important minority, minimizing other people's > freedom has been a primary goal. You can hardly claim, after all the ranting > you've done against the likes of Don Black, that everyone wants to maximize > freedom. And it is a primary question: why should the oppressor care about > what he does to his victims? Why should he care that they don't like being > oppressed? "Because we like it?" Hell, we like to burn villages to the > ground. You're arguing against yourself. I didn't say everyone wants to maximize everyone's freedom. I said everyone wants to maximize THEIR freedom as you said above. I DID say that in order to this for everyone, in order to preserve the benefits of the society for all people, the logical way to go about it that will please the most people in the most beneficial way is a maximization of freedom. >>A twenty-nine year old just told YOU that. Why didn't you listen to the >>three year old in the first place when he/she told you that? The kid sounds >>a lot smarter than you, Paul. :-? > Gee, I'm younger than you, Rich. Why aren't you liening to me? :-) Because age in either direction is not an absolute criteria for rightness either, much as some people seeking automatic respect might wish for... > You can't justify wanting survival. You either do or you don't. (At least > you can't unless Ubizmo comes down and tells you "Survival is good".) > Certainly one can construct non-theistic moral systems, even absolute ones. > But eventually it all comes down to some sort of intuition about the nature > of humanity, AND an intuition of what man ought to be like. These things are > highly subjective. As I said before, 1) I wasn't out to "justify" human survival as an absolute because that can't be done without anthropocentric special status claims. 2) The moral system I have been discussing is a logical outgrowth of the facts that people want to maximize their own benefits and freedom, and it can be shown that through cooperation more people get more benefits, thus such an agreement is advantageous. -- Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts. Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr