Site move notes
It looks like most folks are already here viewing the site at its new host. This is far faster than I had dared hope and I’m quite pleased. And yet, there are some problems that crop up in every move and this one is no different.
Do you know how when you move to a new house and after everything is unpacked in the new house how you get that weird feeling because even though it’s all the same stuff it’s all in different places? Well, moving a weblog is very similar. All of our content was moved from the old host to this new one but it is all in different places.
Old hyperlinks will work but they’ll likely take you to a different post than the one you were looking for. Things will sort out eventually but in the meantime you can use the search function if you are looking for a particular post and your old hyperlink takes you somewhere strange.
Links within the site will work correctly and any new links created or sent out will work correctly. The only issue is with links taken when the site was on the old host.
It’s a lot faster than the old site. I’m impressed.
Worlds faster. A rebuild used to take up to 10 minutes. Now it’s between 30 and 45 seconds. I’m a very happy camper.
OK dweeb,
You say that there is no objective way to determine moral rules. If you honestly believe that, then why keep referencing the constitution? What makes it so important that you treat it as objective while referring to everything else as subjective? If all moral rules were subjective, then morality would be very easy; just act on your beliefs and you could never be wrong. However, I think we can both agree that it takes more than belief to make something true. What if a person believes that everyone else’s beliefs are false. The person believes it, so doesn’t that make it true? No. Saying that morality is subjective to someone’s beliefs has a few implications that are implausible (and in at least this case, impossible). Morality cannot be subjective. Therefore, we can reasonably draw the conclusion that morality is objective.
Tolerance, in most cases, is a good thing. Human beings are all different. If we couldn’t be tolerant then we couldn’t form a society, and without society no human being could expect much from life. We get far more out of living in a society than going it alone. Tolerance is a good thing. That being said, it doesn’t mean a person should tolerate absolutely everything. Some things don’t need to be tolerated, and some things shouldn’t be tolerated (like murdering the innocent, Manipulating others solely for one’s own gain, etc.).
The government cannot stifle free speech whenever it feels like. However, it can take sides on moral issues, and it has (genocide, segregation, etc.).
To set the record straight, I don’t want the government to censor what people say. Of course a person can say the earth is flat, but that doesn’t make him any less wrong.
T.J.,
I reference the Constitution because it is the supreme law of the land, not because it’s the objective yardstick for morality or what is right and what is wrong. The Consitution originally endorsed slavery, and the 13th Amendment makes it self contradictory, as do the 20th and 22nd (begin/end prohibition.) The 19th contradicts parts of the original document, as do most Amendments after the first 10.
We started a nation, and agreed to a framework, that’s all.
The Constitution appeals to beliefs - the idea that all men are created equal is a belief, and very orderly societies have flourished under the belief that all men are NOT created equal. Is freedom better than totalitarianism? I think so, but a serious communist doesn’t. I BELIEVE he is wrong, and I can offer evidence that things work better under our system, but then, he can always dispute my definition of “better.” You are aware, for instance, that the Soviet Union had very few problems with STD’s and almost no HIV, before communism fell. Why? Because citizens had no right to privacy or to travel freely, which makes for easy control of such public health problems. One thing our Constitution says is the government cannot take sides on questions of morality. It can regulate ACTIONS, based on a compelling public interest that passes Constitutional scrutiny, but that doesn’t stop the debate. Skinheads are fully free to advocate genocide, segregation, etc., and to actively work to make these practices legal through the established legislative process (lotsa luck there.)
There have been successful and orderly societies that were grossly intolerant. Talk to a Syrian about life under Shariat law sometime. It does deal pretty effectively with a lot of problems (but I’d rather live with those problems, thank you.) One could very easily argue that tolerance is the death knell of an organized society, because conformity brings order and harmony. People can’t come to blows over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin if a totalitarian dictatorship says the number is 42 and executes anyone who says otherwise.
If we take a purely Carl Sagan, naturalist, objectivist frame of reference, then you, I, and everyone else are just randomly produced systems of serendipitously interacting charged particles, and if I were to strangle you to death, that would be nothing more than one set of charged particles interacting to alter the interactions of another set of charged particles. Your particles would still interact, but the interaction would be decomposition, rather than what we call human metabolism. Under this frame of reference, if the human race were to be wiped out by famine, disease, or nuclear war, it be no more significant than someone losing badly at SimCity. Thus, the whole concept of attaching moral weight to any event is dependent on some transcendant worldview that attaches significance to existence. It could be religion as we know it, belief in The Force as in Star Wars, what have you, but absent some belief that the interactions of a bunch of hominids on the third ball of rock from a given star have some sort of significance and meaning, there is no basis for any morality. Eat, drink and be merry, rape, pillage, and plunder, because, in the immortal words of Bill Murray, “it just doesn’t matter.”
Your whole position on lifestyles depends upon several belief components about what people are entitled to in life, what is good for them, and what degree of say others should have over their activities. Other people have differing opinions on this. The debate on this is almost identical to the ones over lifestyles you’ve made clear you don’t want allowed, which is expected - it’s also very similar to the past debates over ones we both do want allowed. As I said, there’s a spectrum on this, and any one position is completely arbitrary without appealing to some transcendant belief system.
I’ll have a reply ready for you, but I’m going to be busy for awhile.
“…but absent some belief that the interactions of a bunch of hominids on the third ball of rock from a given star have some sort of significance and meaning, there is no basis for any morality. ”
Like I said, it takes more than belief to make something true. Either our existence matters or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t and there truly is no basis for morality, then it follows that morality can’t be based on beliefs (because it doesn’t even exist). If it does matter (and there is a basis for morality), then morality still cannot be based on beliefs.
Just because we believe something is right doesn’t make it right. We hold many beliefs; some of them change over time and some of them contradict other beliefs we hold. Having beliefs as a basis wouldn’t lead us to rules that are moral, but rather to rules we THINK are moral. We may not always have the tools we need to come to an objective conclusion of what is moral and what is not, but that does not mean that there ISN’t an objective standard.
P.S. The government DOES take sides on moral issues. The government is opposed to torture, genocide, segregation, slavery, etc. (some of these may not hold true for the Bush administration :p ). They government doesn’t just prohibit the actions because of mass disaste for them, it openly declares that such things are wrong.
P.P.S. You’d have to be fairly strong to strangle me ( I can breath through a fair amount of strangulation :p )
What you seem to be missing is, whether our existence matters is a matter of belief.
You are correct that, if ANYTHING matters, then there is an objective standard out there
of right and wrong. The problem is, WE DON’T KNOW what it is. Unless and until the Creator,
or at least some being(s) with WAY more power and wisdom than us, decides to come forward and
unambiguously state the standard, all we have is a bunch of people’s speculation.
If we don’t matter, and morality doesn’t exist, then it’s based on beliefs because it’s nothing more that a belief. If we matter, then it exists, but all we have are speculative approximations. Whose approximation is closest to the objective reality? There’s no way to objectively test it. Thus, all we have is, again, our beliefs with which to judge the approximations, or come up with our own new approximation.
Is killing other people wrong, or just natural selection in action? That depends - do you believe the greater good is respecting a human right to live, or mercilessly improving the species? Which is more important, quantity of humans or quality of humans? Why? Ultimately, you have to go to the speculative model of the nature of the universe that you happen to believe in. Pick any moral tenet and try to defend it, and you’ll always end up dead ended at a belief.
The government prohibits torture, genocide, segregation, and slavery exactly because the majority of the people (government by, of, for the people, remember) have a mass distaste for them. The US government has condoned and participated in all those activities, and both sides of the Dem/Rep equation have presided over same. Genocide was stopped when there weren’t enough Indians left to bother killing, not because of any strong sentiment against it, and it wasn’t until two or more generations later that there was widespread regret. Torture was used in probably every war we’ve been in. Segregation? Do the words “separate but equal” ring a bell? Those are the words of the Supreme Court in the latter half of the 20th century. The Supreme Court also upheld slavery before the 13th Amendment, which was only ended as a strategic move to cripple the economy of the Confederacy. The 13th Amendment was ratified very democratically, and let’s face it, most voters act on their distastes more than any strong principles. The government does NOT declare that such things are wrong, only that they are incompatible with our Constitution, which is the rulebook we settled upon over 200 years ago. and that they are proscribed by law. Segregation is illegal only when government bodies engage in it - private organizations can segregate, as do synagogues, for instance - and more to the point, people are free to argue for a return to segregation, and they do. If they can get two thirds of both houses of Congress and the majority of the voters in 3/4 of the states to agree with them, then there is nothing to stop them from legalizing segregation. The same goes for slavery - people are free to advocate it, and if the procedure for amending the Constitution is followed, there is nothing to prevent re-legalizing it.
By the way, the Second Amendment guarantees that I don’t have to resort to strangulation. :p)
Actually dweeb, our approximations ARE the objective standard for determining morality. Keep in mind that objectivity does not require absolute certainty; it merely means taking other viewpoints into consideration, weighing the pros and cons of the outcomes, keeping an open mind, etc. . And yes, sometimes it may be off and it may even turn out to be wrong. But, it’s really all we can do. Relyng on beliefs causes obvious problems, because we can believe just about anything. Moreover, our beliefs change.
“If we don’t matter, and morality doesn’t exist, then it’s based on beliefs because it’s nothing more that a belief.”
If morality doesn’t exist, then it CAN’T BE BASED ON ANYTHING. Not beliefs, not some absolute standard - nothing. Moreover, the thought has recently occured to me that there is a lack of clarity on what makes existence matter.
“If we take a purely Carl Sagan, naturalist, objectivist frame of reference, then you, I, and everyone else are just randomly produced systems of serendipitously interacting charged particles, and if I were to strangle you to death, that would be nothing more than one set of charged particles interacting to alter the interactions of another set of charged particles. Your particles would still interact, but the interaction would be decomposition, rather than what we call human metabolism. Under this frame of reference, if the human race were to be wiped out by famine, disease, or nuclear war, it be no more significant than someone losing badly at SimCity. Thus, the whole concept of attaching moral weight to any event is dependent on some transcendant worldview that attaches significance to existence.”
After looking at this a bit, I realized that there is a crucial flaw. First off, you make the assumption that if the world is simply a set of physical interactions, then existence doesn’t matter. What is this assumption based on exactly? Without a sound basis, this entire proposition is without merit. Furthermore, we need a solid criteria for what would make existence matter; without an objective framework for this, your proposition will become unfalsifiable* (In fact, I now realize that many propositions I have seen you make have this problem). I will be more wary of this from now on. I refer you back to my first comment here. Look it over again, and give me a response.
*An unfalsifiable argument is one that is not only impossible to prove wrong, but has no conceivable condition that would prove it wrong. Such propositions are meaningless.
P.S. : Sorry for the late response.
TJ, our approximations are based on belief. You’re missing the point that morality is nothing more that an idea. It’s not an animal, vegetable, or mineral. In the concrete, observable universe, morality exists only in the minds of people. It’s a set of ideas. I should have phrased it differently - If we don’t matter, and an external basis for morality doesn’t exist, then it’s based on beliefs because it’s nothing more that a belief. Morality, as an idea, exists, whether there is a god or whether you’re just a cockroach having a really bizarre dream. No matter what, it’s based on something. That something is a belief. It MAY turn out to be more than a belief, it may not.
You can take an objective approach to evaluating belief, but that doesn’t make the belief objective.
As for unfalsifiable arguments, that’s what makes morality and the question of significance belief based. We can’t prove anything is significant. As for what the assumption of existence not mattering, and its basis, it’s all a question of belief. If you play Sim City, and you wipe out your entire population, what is the consequence? What is the moral wrong? OK, so now let’s postulate the human race, as a random occurance, and the only source of sentient awareness in the universe, and we are all wiped out in a nuclear war. Your Sim City game would seem to matter more, because at least there, you put thought and effort into setting up that universe, and you’d feel disappointment, whereas, for the human race, there’d be no one left to care. Significance comes from either cause or consequence - was the event intentionally caused, and what are its consequences)
It’s like the ZT thread, one set of students supports tolerance, another condemns it. What are the causes and consequences of their choices? If those condemning tolerance do so out of religious dogma, is that any different from condemning tolerance for ruthlessly Darwinist reasons? I mean, come on, racism and hatred of those who are different are clear evolutionary success strategies. War is a great idea because it increases the evolutionary pressures on humanity - that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
A federal judge just made my point:
http://www.mcpscurriculum.com/May5doc-2.pdf
How so?
-So what if it is an idea? That holds no bearing on whether it is objective or subjective.
-Your use of the term belief makes it sound that anything that involves belief AT ALL is subjective. However, people also believe that 2+2=4 and that inertia is a property of matter, and no intelligent person would dispute that these are facts. When you argue about beliefs being subjective, keep in mind that people can believe things that are objective.
-And finally, you have still not offered a sufficient rebuttal of my assertion that having morality based on subjective beliefs leads to logical contradictions, which makes it NESCESSARILY FALSE that morality is based on subjective beliefs.
P.S. : dweeb, slavery was not ended to cripple the economy of the Confederacy. That could only hold true if the Confederacy was abiding by the laws of the Northern states, which they obviously were not. The emancipation proclamation was mainly a way to boost the morale of the northern troops near the end of the civil war. The fact is, slavery was a touchy issue between the north and south for some time, and the halting of slavery was in the works for quite some time. This is the second time I have seen you list something that is blatantly false. I’m beginning to suspect you are not a worthy opponent…
P.P.S. : dw,
“I mean, come on, racism and hatred of those who are different are clear evolutionary success strategies. War is a great idea because it increases the evolutionary pressures on humanity - that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
you’re kidding, right? Racism serves no evolutionary purpose whatsoever. The genetic differences between races are miniscule. No race possesses any sort of inherent flaw that would make the race inferior. No one has ever offered any sound argument as to why one race is better than any other. As for war, that is not an aid to evolution either. The survivors are not nescessarily superior to the casualties in any way. War is simply the most extreme phase of conflict between nations or groups, and are started and fought for numerous reasons.
P.P.P.S. : dweeb, the article you linked does not seem to hold any bearing on this argument. It really just seems like an argument over curriculum.