personhood

[FlashDangerpants]

Again, none of that is my problem, I am not a moral realist, so accusing me of failing at moral realism is ineffective.

I'm not accusing you of "failing at moral realism." I don't suppose you're even trying to be that, so you can't fail at that. And I'm not accusing.

But what you're not managing to do is to justify the existence of any morality AT ALL....even of the worst or best things, as most people would assess them, in life, from murder to mercy.

If that stands, that makes you an amoralist by logic, even if you don't know you are. Since you can't justify even one single moral precept or explain why any person should ever believe one, all you're left with is blanket denial of all justification for morality.

Moral rules and judgments are constructed by people, not by God or any other fictional deity. There is no myth human infallibility so there need be no myth of moral infallibility that I need to worry about. There is no myth about human constructed artifacts being inalterable that I need to worry about either. Moral categories and priorities change subtly over time. Confusing moral issues arrise because various moral desires we hold are incompatible with each other, we create conventions regarding which take precedence and those conventions could be otherwise, which makes them arbitrary conventions, whether you like it or not.

This all old stuff. Our moral vocabulary is about persuasion and agreement for a reason. If it were about discovery and proof things would be different, they would need to be for that be possible though.

[henry quirk]

None of this conversation has much of anything to do with your thread, and none of it interesting.

it's fortunate, then, you got no say-so in this thread, its contents, its direction, or what other posters may find interestin'

[Immanuel Can]

Moral rules and judgments are constructed by people, not by God or any other fictional deity.

Okay; let's take that as a hypothetical premise. We'll pretend it's true, for argument purposes.

If that's true (namely that all moral rules and judgments are just "constructs,") what makes the "construct" that reads, "We should give everyone rights" different from the "construct" that goes, "We must exterminate all the Jews"? They are, after all, but "constructs." Are you going to say, then, that they are of equal and no weight? Or are you going to suggest that one of these "constructs" is actually morally right, and one not?

[FlashDangerpants]

None of this conversation has much of anything to do with your thread, and none of it interesting.

it's fortunate, then, you got no say-so in this thread, its contents, its direction, or what other posters may find interestin'

Have I fionished answering your accusation that I haven't read what you wrote yet?

[FlashDangerpants]

Moral rules and judgments are constructed by people, not by God or any other fictional deity.

Okay; let's take that as a hypothetical premise. We'll pretend it's true, for argument purposes.

If that's true (namely that all moral rules and judgments are just "constructs,") what makes the "construct" that reads, "We should give everyone rights" different from the "construct" that goes, "We must exterminate all the Jews"? They are, after all, but "constructs." Are you going to say, then, that they are of equal and no weight? Or are you going to suggest that one of these "constructs" is actually morally right, and one not?

Perspectives. There is no such as thing as moral fact, there are such things as moral desires, beliefs, customs, expectations and practises. There is a moral vocabulary which we use to define discuss and over time alter these things, it is not perfectly consistent.

You realists are always trying to prove genocide and rape are wrong, but their wrongness is universally agreeable by convention, there is no reason why more than sheer human convention is required for a moral judgment in this matter. If you need God to tell you not to murder a million people, you might be beyond his power to save.

[uwot]

... what makes the "construct" that reads, "We should give everyone rights" different from the "construct" that goes, "We must exterminate all the Jews"? They are, after all, but "constructs."

If the bible is to be believed, your infallible god fucked up his first attempt at making humans so badly, he was compelled to exterminate everybody on the planet except Noah, his 3 sons and the 4 wives. Even Hitler can't compete with that. But you tell us that your god is good; so what crime had every human, bar 8, committed that made slaughtering them a good thing?
Without meaning to trivialise the Holocaust, the difference between a bad genocide and a good one as far as christians like Mr Can are concerned, is simply whether his god condones it.
Deuteronomy 7:1-2 "When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them."

[Immanuel Can]

Perspectives. There is no such as thing as moral fact, there are such things as moral desires, beliefs, customs, expectations and practises. There is a moral vocabulary which we use to define discuss and over time alter these things, it is not perfectly consistent.

All of that adds nothing that helps your case.

It might be the case that humans "happen" to do a thing called "morality," including desires, beliefs, customs, expectations and practices. But so what?

Humans "happen" to do all kinds of things, and many of them are not (conventionally) moral. Murder, slavery and prostitution are three of the very oldest practices we have, dating back to the dawn of history. You'd be hard pressed to name any practices so hoary and durable as those.

So to say that "there are" all these things doesn't move one stroke in the direction of showing which, if any, are legitimate, and which, like old bad habits, we're better just getting over.

You're back to amorality again. You can't give us even one moral precept we're obligated to obey, with any rationale for why we're obligated to obey it.

[FlashDangerpants]

You can't give us even one moral precept we're obligated to obey

Again, none of that is my problem, I am not a moral realist, so accusing me of failing at moral realism is ineffective.

[henry quirk]

None of this conversation has much of anything to do with your thread, and none of it interesting.

it's fortunate, then, you got no say-so in this thread, its contents, its direction, or what other posters may find interestin'

Have I fionished answering your accusation that I haven't read what you wrote yet?

guy, I thought we were done when I wrote...

so -- no -- I'm not a secular fellow and my notions aren't secular, but I guess I can see why you might think different

...but you seemed to have a need to vent

[Immanuel Can]

You can't give us even one moral precept we're obligated to obey

Again, none of that is my problem, I am not a moral realist, so accusing me of failing at moral realism is ineffective.

I didn't say it was your "problem." I just wanted to see if you were an amoralist. A person can be that, so long as he/she is happy to eat the consequences.

[FlashDangerpants]

You can't give us even one moral precept we're obligated to obey

Again, none of that is my problem, I am not a moral realist, so accusing me of failing at moral realism is ineffective.

I didn't say it was your "problem." I just wanted to see if you were an amoralist. A person can be that, so long as he/she is happy to eat the consequences.

I was just pasting the previous answer. I'm not going to provide you a moral fact because there are no moral facts. This doesn't make me an amoralist unless you have some freaky new meaning for that term.

[Immanuel Can]

...there are no moral facts. This doesn't make me an amoralist ...

Yeah, it does. It means that morals are all fakes, constructs, illusions, with no relation to moral truth. So their existence as fakes is immaterial. You're logically amoral, then.

[FlashDangerpants]

...there are no moral facts. This doesn't make me an amoralist ...

Yeah, it does. It means that morals are all fakes, constructs, illusions, with no relation to moral truth. So their existence as fakes is immaterial. You're logically amoral, then.

You have a circular dependency on moral realism there, which invalidates your argument. The simple fact you are using the word fakes should have tipped you off to that. This was completely worth the bother.

[henry quirk]

you're an anti-realist, flash, not an amoralist

you're morality is etiquette & convention...you're not indifferent to morality

[Immanuel Can]

...there are no moral facts. This doesn't make me an amoralist ...

Yeah, it does. It means that morals are all fakes, constructs, illusions, with no relation to moral truth. So their existence as fakes is immaterial. You're logically amoral, then.

You have a circular dependency on moral realism there,

Not at all. I'm not asking you to assume moral realism. I'm understanding very well that you do not.

It's YOUR view that there is no basis to legitimize morality. You're saying that people believe it, cultures have it, systems require it, but it's all based on nothing. They can't ever show it legitimate. It can only ever be arbitrary, ungrounded, unrelated to reality...in a word, "fake." "Fake" is the word we use when something seems to have something behind it, but really doesn't. And that's what you believe about morality.

I get that.