moral relativism

[henry quirk]

Like Biggy, it seems you expect me to play straight man, respondin' in ways that support your position or allow you to unpack it.

Sorry, but I got my own points to make, points obviously at odds with your own.

[henry quirk]

Standard diversionary bunkum.

[Walker]

Is he actually making a sophisticated philosophical point that I keep missing?

- Yes.

- Henry’s point is to pinpoint when a person is eligible for human rights, by defining when a person becomes a person.

- My point is that human rights pertain to all people, at all stages of life and cognitive development. Self-knowledge of personhood, whenever that happens in life, and whenever self-awareness by disappear for awhile in later stages of life, is not a condition for human rights.

- Science says that life begins at conception. Humans conceive and bear human life. The human form develops in stages, and the stages begin at conception. Therefore, human rights pertain to all stages of life, including early and later stages.

- Therefore, because abortion is a violation of the human rights of the human in an early developmental stage of life, rights which include life, depriving that right is immoral.

- What’s your take on personhood?

[henry quirk]

My point is that human rights pertain to all people, at all stages of life and cognitive development. Self-knowledge of personhood, whenever that happens in life, is not a condition for human rights.

Well then I owe you an apology: I took from your posts up-thread you held to a different position.

We're not at odds.

[Walker]

My point is that human rights pertain to all people, at all stages of life and cognitive development. Self-knowledge of personhood, whenever that happens in life, is not a condition for human rights.

Well then I owe you an apology: I took from your posts up-thread you held to a different position.

We're not at odds.

Oh, no problemo. We're just hashing it out, with good intentions.

[Belinda]

Is your body yours? Is your mind yours? Is your life yours?

Yes or no.

Note to others:

Is henry to be taken seriously here?

Is he actually making a sophisticated philosophical point that I keep missing?

Or is he basically just in his own little world posting opinions that only really make sense to him? Coming from ILP, I run into this all the time.

Seriously. I'm relatively new here so I don't have an accumulated "take" on just how sophisticated the thoughts of others are.

So, given a particular context in which moral opinions clash, what down here in our interactions with others does it mean to think as he does?

Henry's stance is sometimes physicalist.When he sees a thing, that thing he sees is reality. Henry also believes he is a mind or soul that inhabits a body which it owns and has a right to own and that is when H is a Cartesian dualist. Henry probably is unfamiliar with the lexicon of philosophy as an academic discipline.

This is not really a website mainly for academics but is geared to interested and intelligent lay people. I confess that my main motive to learn philosophy is to learn ideas that please me. Everyone is a unique Dasein, although we all have arms and legs and make mistakes.

If I were a Gauleiter I'd say Henry's libertarian morals are wrong, but I am not a Gauleiter and I guess his morals came from a sparsely populated habitat where people have historically been forced to be physically independent and wary of strangers hanging round the vicinity. May be red and blue election maps of the US reflect this attitude as historical fact.

[henry quirk]

While your description of me isn't altogether accurate or complete, but it's close enough.

I'm flattered.

[FlashDangerpants]

Is your body yours? Is your mind yours? Is your life yours?

Yes or no.

Note to others:

Is henry to be taken seriously here?

Is he actually making a sophisticated philosophical point that I keep missing?

Or is he basically just in his own little world posting opinions that only really make sense to him? Coming from ILP, I run into this all the time.

Seriously. I'm relatively new here so I don't have an accumulated "take" on just how sophisticated the thoughts of others are.

So, given a particular context in which moral opinions clash, what down here in our interactions with others does it mean to think as he does?

It's not entirely his original work, it's highly similar to the principles expressed by Von Mises. But where Mises was unabashed about his theory being entirely based on property rights and being all about a reduction of all rights and responsibilities into property rights, Henry likes to think he has a more expansive outlook that isn't just about property rights. I've yet to see him actually account for a non property right without such an eliminatvie reduction, but he gets prickly when that is mentioned.

More problematically, Henry isn't just reducing rights and responsibilities to his property based theory, he tends to collapse the entire scope of all moral judgment to the same. He recently attempted to explain why lying is morally wrong by reducing it to a matter of property harm.

I don't think Henry would have found himself out of his depth on the ILP forum, although I only know of that place as the one that Nick_A loudly announced he was leaving this forum to attend, before whistling nonchalantly on his return after getting banned there for being too boring and stupid. But it doesn't look at a glance like it's any better than this one.

[henry quirk]

Good Lord!

First Walker, then B, now Flash (who, like B, isn't altogether accurate or complete, but close enough).

Again: I'm flattered.

[iambiguous]

Is he actually making a sophisticated philosophical point that I keep missing?

- Yes.

- Henry’s point is to pinpoint when a person is eligible for human rights, by defining when a person becomes a person.

Ah, defining personhood into existence. He thought up a philosophical argument comprised of deductions that are comprised of the words that he defined.

That way the discussion and debate can revolve not around this or that particular person in this or that particular context but this or that particular word defined in this or that particular way.

My point is that human rights pertain to all people, at all stages of life and cognitive development. Self-knowledge of personhood, whenever that happens in life, and whenever self-awareness by disappear for awhile in later stages of life, is not a condition for human rights.

We'll need a context of course. Human rights as they pertain to abortion or capital punishment or gun ownership or sexuality or the use of drugs or the role of government or a just or unjust war.

Whereas, from my frame of mind, the "self" itself here is more likely [existentially, subjectively] to be the product of "I" out in a particular world historically and culturally and socially and politically and economically.

Where, for all practical purposes, assessments of "human rights" can be defended given conflicting prejudices embodied by those all up and down the political and ideological and philosophical spectrum.

Either in or out of the cave.

Science says that life begins at conception. Humans conceive and bear human life. The human form develops in stages, and the stages begin at conception. Therefore, human rights pertain to all stages of life, including early and later stages.

Yes, that seems reasonable enough. But then those like Ayn Rand still insisted that a measly little acorn should never be mistaken for a towering oak tree.

Me? I'm drawn and quartered, fractured and fragmented. Those who argue that human life begins at conception have one set of assumptions and those that argue that, no, it begins at a different "stage" have their own. They all seem reasonable enough to me given that there is not a scientist or a philosopher or an ethicist out there that has been able to establish definitively when it really becomes human life.

Or, rather, none that I am aware of. Only those like henry who insist they you are not being rational at all unless you think exactly like he does.

And now your own personal prejudice rooted [in my view] in dasein:

Therefore, because abortion is a violation of the human rights of the human in an early developmental stage of life, rights which include life, depriving that right is immoral.

What’s your take on personhood?

Again, I'm fractured and fragmented...tugged in conflicting directions...because in the absence of a God, the God [or a secular equivalent] I don't believe that issues like this can ever more than subjective assessments rooted in the arguments I make here and elsewhere.

[iambiguous]

Is your body yours? Is your mind yours? Is your life yours?

Yes or no.

Note to others:

Is henry to be taken seriously here?

Is he actually making a sophisticated philosophical point that I keep missing?

Or is he basically just in his own little world posting opinions that only really make sense to him? Coming from ILP, I run into this all the time.

Seriously. I'm relatively new here so I don't have an accumulated "take" on just how sophisticated the thoughts of others are.

So, given a particular context in which moral opinions clash, what down here in our interactions with others does it mean to think as he does?

Henry's stance is sometimes physicalist.When he sees a thing, that thing he sees is reality. Henry also believes he is a mind or soul that inhabits a body which it owns and has a right to own and that is when H is a Cartesian dualist. Henry probably is unfamiliar with the lexicon of philosophy as an academic discipline.

This is not really a website mainly for academics but is geared to interested and intelligent lay people. I confess that my main motive to learn philosophy is to learn ideas that please me. Everyone is a unique Dasein, although we all have arms and legs and make mistakes.

If I were a Gauleiter I'd say Henry's libertarian morals are wrong, but I am not a Gauleiter and I guess his morals came from a sparsely populated habitat where people have historically been forced to be physically independent and wary of strangers hanging round the vicinity. May be red and blue election maps of the US reflect this attitude as historical fact.

Thanks, I appreciate it. It's helpful.

All I can do then, in my discussions with him, is to explore his own moral philosophy "given a particular context in which [our] moral opinions clash". Examining more in depth "what down here in our interactions with others does it mean to think as he does?"

[iambiguous]

Is your body yours? Is your mind yours? Is your life yours?

Yes or no.

Note to others:

Is henry to be taken seriously here?

Is he actually making a sophisticated philosophical point that I keep missing?

Or is he basically just in his own little world posting opinions that only really make sense to him? Coming from ILP, I run into this all the time.

Seriously. I'm relatively new here so I don't have an accumulated "take" on just how sophisticated the thoughts of others are.

So, given a particular context in which moral opinions clash, what down here in our interactions with others does it mean to think as he does?

It's not entirely his original work, it's highly similar to the principles expressed by Von Mises. But where Mises was unabashed about his theory being entirely based on property rights and being all about a reduction of all rights and responsibilities into property rights, Henry likes to think he has a more expansive outlook that isn't just about property rights. I've yet to see him actually account for a non property right without such an eliminatvie reduction, but he gets prickly when that is mentioned.

More problematically, Henry isn't just reducing rights and responsibilities to his property based theory, he tends to collapse the entire scope of all moral judgment to the same. He recently attempted to explain why lying is morally wrong by reducing it to a matter of property harm.

Thanks as well.

Me, I root "property rights" more in the materialist arguments that Marx made. That, in other words, thinking about property is embedded in the evolution of political economy. Thus how property and human rights was understood in nomadic and slash and burn and hunter and gatherer and agrarian and feudal communities [revolving more around "we" than "I"] changed dramatically when, historically, as a result of burgeoning world trade, mercantilism configured into capitalism. And, as a result, thinking about property and human rights would never be the same. Shifting dramatically to "I" more than "we". With the superstructure shifting in turn more to democracy and the rule of law.

On the other hand, those like Ayn Rand and many Libertarians, root it all instead in idealism. For them property and human rights were actually within the grasp of philosophers. One embraced property rights and the market because "metaphysically" that was the most rational assessment of the human condition itself.

Whereas Marxists seem intent on shifting thinking about property and human rights away from "me" and back again to "we".

Of course, my own frame of mind here revolves around the assumptions I make about human interactions in a No God world derived more from existentialism and moral nihilism.

Libertarians are just one more rendition of "objectivists" to me.

I don't think Henry would have found himself out of his depth on the ILP forum, although I only know of that place as the one that Nick_A loudly announced he was leaving this forum to attend, before whistling nonchalantly on his return after getting banned there for being too boring and stupid. But it doesn't look at a glance like it's any better than this one.

ILP is now largely an intellectual wasteland. Well, if I do say so myself.

There is no real moderation there at all. No one gets banned anymore. Or no one I'm aware of.

[promethean75]

Hey that brief synopsis about the history of the concept of property rights you did there was pretty fuckin good, Biggs.

[Belinda]

Iambiguous wrote:

All I can do then, in my discussions with him, is to explore his own moral philosophy "given a particular context in which [our] moral opinions clash". Examining more in depth "what down here in our interactions with others does it mean to think as he does?"

I imagine in real life committed students who want to learn do so through sheer frequency of expression of alternative points of view, from psychodrama, from serious literature, or thought experiments. I doubt if Henry wants to learn anything new, and is intellectually defensive of his accustomed beliefs. I guess these, together with intransigence towards what seems to emanate from central elites, is part of the local culture in which H has been constantly immersed. None of us is entirely free of confirmation bias. Maybe I will ask Henry if he knows what confirmation bias is. Anyway, Henry is still here and that's good.

[RCSaunders]

My point is that human rights pertain to all people, at all stages of life and cognitive development. Self-knowledge of personhood, whenever that happens in life, is not a condition for human rights.

Well then I owe you an apology: I took from your posts up-thread you held to a different position.

We're not at odds.

Oh, no problemo. We're just hashing it out, with good intentions.

You' do know where that road leads, don't you?