Philosophy Now Forum

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 3:56 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 3:34 pm No shack is on fire, except in your imagination.

People dont need telling. And are not likely to listen to you given your track record.

If you succumb to IC’s “preaching” — he is an absolutely bad apologist for Christianity and also despises Catholicism — you will commit an intellectual error: mistaking a bad representative for what is essential in a supernaturalist philosophical religion.

I assume it is convenient for you and others to see IC as •representative• and to hold him and Christian doctrine in contempt. But it would be unfortunate were you (and others) to do so.

IC represents a severe misinterpretation of Christian doctrines. And one stark example of this is seen in his Christian Zionism — a genuine evil strongly operative right now in our present. We are now seeing the fruits of this evil tree (to employ a Christian metaphor!)

I've run out of fucks to give.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:00 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 3:34 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 3:32 pm
I think it's a public service to point it out. After all, if somebody is trying to live in a shack that's on fire, wouldn't you want to at least tell them they'd better leave it? Seems fair.

No shack is on fire, except in your imagination.

We can see that Subjectivism is indeed a "shack" a badly-constructed idea, and that it is indeed "on fire," since it falls apart at the first sign of logic. It can't even perform the most rudimentary functions of "morality."

All moraity is wonderfully subjective and most effective with the mitigation that enriches

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:02 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 3:33 pm You seem to be dancing around a point.

An odd statement. Every post of mine is composed strictly of points.

Your "points" are supposed to address items in the post you were responding to.

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:38 pm So do you believe that the communion wine is literally the blood of Jesus and the bread the flesh?

I believe in supernatural power that enters our world. That is likely what separates your and my understandings.

Do you believe that it is okay to pay money to the Pope to have your sins washed away?

Actual Catholic doctrine (which I now study) places emphasis on assuming responsibility for one’s negative snd harmful actions. I am aware that there have been (and still are) absurd violations.

Have you got the slightest clues about Luther's theses?

Probably I need to understand the Protestant rebellion better but I do think I capture Luther’s general undertaking.

Understanding the contrast between these stances is important, it seems to me.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:28 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:25 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:20 pm
I retract the "we". Perhaps you can't see it. But in that case, I've overestimated either your sagacity or your openness to arguments. I hope I have not.

I think it's my gullibility you have overestimated.

Apparently not. I've offered you clear reasons, and even a means of proving it to yourself -- just supply one principle Subjectivism requires of you. Just one. And you cannot. The conclusion should be totally obvious.

Although I have allowed myself to be repeatedly lured into talking about the subjectivity of morality, thus handing you on a plate the opportunity to attack it, albeit with very bizarre reasoning, it is not really what I am interested in talking about. I am much more curious about the strange phenomenon of objective moral truth, but nobody seems to have enough confidence in the idea to risk making a fool of himself by trying to explain it, except VA, of course, but the horse has already bolted in his case.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:53 pm I am much more curious about the strange phenomenon of objective moral truth, but nobody seems to have enough confidence in the idea to risk making a fool of himself by trying to explain it

Here I am, Harbal. Prepare your mind!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 5:01 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:53 pm I am much more curious about the strange phenomenon of objective moral truth, but nobody seems to have enough confidence in the idea to risk making a fool of himself by trying to explain it

Here I am, Harbal. Prepare your mind!

If you want to try and explain how there could be such a thing as objective moral truth, then please go ahead, but I'll just observe from a distance, I've already been led on enough of a dance.

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:40 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:00 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 3:34 pm

No shack is on fire, except in your imagination.

We can see that Subjectivism is indeed a "shack" a badly-constructed idea, and that it is indeed "on fire," since it falls apart at the first sign of logic. It can't even perform the most rudimentary functions of "morality."

All moraity is wonderfully subjective and most effective with the mitigation that enriches

No "moraity" is subjective, actually. And you can test that for yourself. Just go looking for even one Subjectivist moral precept.

Harbal, OK. So chill, brother. Stretch your legs. You washed your hair two months back so no need again till August. But open a window. You smoke too damn much as it is. Relax. I’ll tell you my theory in a bit. Heading out •for a bike ride•.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:53 pm ...very bizarre reasoning,

Really?

What's so "bizarre" about pointing out exactly what you know to be true yourself: that Subjectivism cannot rationalize even one moral precept?

That seems pretty obvious to me, and surely doesn't require any sophistication of logic, let alone "bizarre reasoning."

I am much more curious about the strange phenomenon of objective moral truth, but nobody seems to have enough confidence in the idea to risk making a fool of himself by trying to explain it, except VA, of course, but the horse has already bolted in his case.

Indeed so.

By contrast, I'm interested in pointing out to you that the real choice you have is between two things, not three. It's not that one can become an Objectivist, a Subjectivist, or a Nihilist. That middle option is manifestly fake. There's no Subjective morality...the thing is not just an oxymoron, it's an outright contradiction in concepts. If something's only Subjective, then it's surely not also "moral." When we go looking for some moral content in Subjectivism, we invariably come up with nothing. (If it were otherwise, you, yourself would surely have offered my at least one subjective moral precept, and the matter would be settled in your favour; the fact that you have not tells us both all we need to know.)

As for Objective morality, it's the only 'game' left 'in town.' Nihilism is an option, but it's utterly unliveable and utterly reprehensible to any moral mind. So we can begin an investigation of morality with this confidence: that if there is any such thing as morality, it's bound to be objective. It cannot exist as anything less.

Then the question becomes, how to find it? But that's a second-stage question, so we begin with the debunking of Subjectivism, which cannot even get that far.

Seems a good procedure to me. Not the one you would prefer, perhaps, because it rather ungently massacres your preferred option right at the start, I admit. But there we are. We have to deal with reality as it is, not as we would like to imagine it to be.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 5:50 pm

Then the question becomes, how to find it? But that's a second-stage question, so we begin with the debunking of Subjectivism, which cannot even get that far.

I thought you had already debunked it to your own satisfaction. Just get on with explaining how objective moral truth is possible if you dare.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 6:02 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 5:50 pm Then the question becomes, how to find it? But that's a second-stage question, so we begin with the debunking of Subjectivism, which cannot even get that far.

I thought you had already debunked it to your own satisfaction. Just get on with explaining how objective moral truth is possible if you dare.

Oh, I can. And I have. But you don't like any of my reasoning, not because it's "bizarre" or something, but because it leads where you don't want to go, obviously.

I would like to debunk it to YOUR satisfaction. And until I do, I know you'll just retreat to the "burning shack" of Subjectivism, if I haven't made clear why that's an unliveable wreck. So I keep at it, in the vague optimism that you're going to see reason at some point, and value that more than the posture of having won something here, merely if you can manage to keep saying, "I'm not convinced."

That may be a vain hope, but hope springs eternal.

I can make a case for Objectivism, and have been, all along. Let me jump ahead, then, and start completing the argument. However, I'll need to find a point of contact for both of us, something bedrock that we can trust to be the case, something from which agreement can be built.

Let's start with something you can be quite sure you and I can agree is morally right, or something we can both agree is morally wrong. I'll totally let you pick it. The field is wide open to you. What will you pick? Charity? Slavery? Racism? Theft? Educating women? Foreign aid? Feeding the hungry? Ending war? Genocide? Rape? I'm pretty sure we can find one of these issues you and I can agree is actually morally right or wrong, can't we?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:46 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:38 pm So do you believe that the communion wine is literally the blood of Jesus and the bread the flesh?

I believe in supernatural power that enters our world. That is likely what separates your and my understandings.

That is not an answer.

Do you believe that it is okay to pay money to the Pope to have your sins washed away?

Actual Catholic doctrine (which I now study) places emphasis on assuming responsibility for one’s negative snd harmful actions. I am aware that there have been (and still are) absurd violations.

Yet yo uclaims that its was Protestanism that was tainted, Yet it was Luther who addressed what you call an "absrud violation"

Have you got the slightest clues about Luther's theses?

Probably I need to understand the Protestant rebellion better but I do think I capture Luther’s general undertaking.

Understanding the contrast between these stances is important, it seems to me.

You are clueless, as I thought.
May I suggest Wittgenstein's apothegm "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." You share , in common the arrogance and the ignorance of the Theist.
Such easy prey.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 5:41 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:40 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:00 pm
We can see that Subjectivism is indeed a "shack" a badly-constructed idea, and that it is indeed "on fire," since it falls apart at the first sign of logic. It can't even perform the most rudimentary functions of "morality."

All moraity is wonderfully subjective and most effective with the mitigation that enriches

No "moraity" is subjective, actually. And you can test that for yourself. Just go looking for even one Subjectivist moral precept.

Easy.
Since you have not been able to furnish a SINGLE objective moral rule I'll stick with my own rules which have served me , my friends, and family for my whole life.

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 6:48 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 5:41 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:40 pm All moraity is wonderfully subjective and most effective with the mitigation that enriches

No "moraity" is subjective, actually. And you can test that for yourself. Just go looking for even one Subjectivist moral precept.

Easy.

You say "easy," but I don't see one. If it's "easy," where is it?