Ron Paul and the Singularity

[Richard Tanner]

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You might want to reword your morals

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They aren't really mine, I was just providing an example.

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The ends do not justify the means.

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By what reasoning? Anything but "it violates my morals"?

Cody

[DVaut1]

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No, no one claims this, and that's the point. Your morals say all people are free, mind might say that all people have the responsibility to help others. Neither of us can prove our morals, that's why they're morals and not "facts", yet everyone tries to cite "the moral highground" as a reason for belief. Seems odd to me, thus my post on the topic.

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I disagree that we can't 'prove' our morals.

True, there's no mathematical proof to demonstrate the validity of our morals. There's no lab where we can establish controls and test our moral hypotheses.

But I, for one, think I can 'prove' the morals I adhere to by establishing some premises, making some inferences, and then forming conclusions. So I would steadfastly object to being called a moral relativist, because I maintain there are objective and universal moral truths we can 'prove'.

This is a much larger discussion about epistemology that ought to be moved to SMP, but I certainly don't think morals are just impenetrably subjectivistic.

So while you might not agree with the conclusions I've come to -- while you might claim I have an obligation to help people, while I maintain no such obligation exists -- that doesn't indicate the proof is absent. It just may indicate one of us is making an error in logic. So there's no reason why we should treat disagreement as a lack of proof. Therefore, claiming "well I think A, and you think anti-A, and neither of us can prove it" seems fallacious.

[AlexM]

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The ends do not justify the means.

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By what reasoning? Anything but "it violates my morals"?


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Mostly I'm just saying that you didn't state a moral that's mutually exclusive with any morals that an ACer might have.

[pvn]

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I can't start a new thread about this lest it get moved and you guys don't see it, but are there any answers for this? Specifically (trying to make this apply directly to politics), do you believe that governments today are acting without regards to morals or are they under the impression that what they're doing is moral.

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I think most of the people who act in the name of governments probably think they have some moral high ground.

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If it's the latter, then how do we decide who has the high ground.

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If they think their actions are justified, they may state their moral principles.

[Richard Tanner]

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I disagree that we can't 'prove' our morals.

True, there's no mathematical proof to demonstrate the validity of our morals. There's no lab where we can establish controls and test our moral hypotheses.

But I, for one, think I can 'prove' the morals I adhere to by establishing some premises, making some inferences, and then forming conclusions. So I would steadfastly object to being called a moral relativist, because I maintain there are objective and universal moral truths we can 'prove'.
So while you might not agree with the conclusions I've come to -- while you might claim I have an obligation to help people, while I maintain no such obligation exists -- that doesn't indicate the proof is absent. It just may indicate one of us is making an error in logic. So there's no reason why we should treat disagreement as a lack of proof.

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I'd be interested to hear about how (more specifically) we can go about proving our morals. I guess I'm a little different from others here in that I don't have all the answers already, so I'm asking questions on this particular topic.

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Therefore, claiming "well I think A, and you think anti-A, and neither of us can prove it" seems fallacious.

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I think in reading this, and reading other ACers posts, that my mind has been too warped by science. I tend to approach everything as a math problem, so maybe a little mental vacation is in order. That said, I'd still like to hear what you have in mind, I think it would be very interesting.

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This is a much larger discussion about epistemology that ought to be moved to SMP

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See here's the thing. I made a post very similar to my first one in this thread, and Iron moved it to SMP (in less then 15 seconds, Christ on a crotch rocket he's quick). I then deleted the post, as I had little interest in DS and other SMP regulars opinions on the matter, at least not initially. The reason I put it in here is because there are about 10-20 regular AC v. State posters in here who's opinions I was wanting, not those in SMP (like I said, at least not initially).

In short, don't encourage Iron [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Cody

[Richard Tanner]

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I think most of the people who act in the name of governments probably think they have some moral high ground.

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That's what I was getting at.

Cody