Objective Demonstration Thread

[Pure]

comment on ami.

your calm posting is following a very rational procedure-- you're looking at evidence.

i think shang was talking about human's standards of beauty for any number of things, e.g. a painting, a lamp. but ftsoa let's limit the 'beauty' discussion to human's standards as applied to themselves.

Am however...recently, a world wide survey, following all the procedures required to qualify for an 'objective, scientific survey', found that world wide, all surveys determined that 'beauty' in a human being, was consistent in all societies, all age groups, both genders and over a period of time.

In other words, the same human physical features that you might define as 'beautiful' were also defined the same way by all others.

The parameters were symmetry and physical health and youth and to those, all who viewed them found them 'beautiful'

So...one can assume that there is an universal definition of 'beauty' in the human form

To begin, can you reference this 'survey'. When you say 'all surveys', are you talking about others' previous surveys or parts (subsurveys) of this present project?

You say, 'worldwide' and 'all societies'--is that plausible? Every culture? would that include historical ones that aren't around now? like the Moabites and the Carthaginians?

Looking at the last sentence quoted. It speaks of "assuming". Surely the correct word, assuming all the evidence is in order, but that it's limited in some ways (did it encompass the Aleut Indians?),
is 'hypothesize.' We hypothesize that humans' standards of human beauty are objective. Is this an hypothesis in which we have *total* faith? or are we 99.9% certain, or just 98%? Is it subject to disproof?

===
HOWEVER, favoring amicus position: The objectivity of beauty of species is an intriguing possibility. Look at the judgments we make about horses or dogs.
A horse with a 'sway' back or a dog with a crooked leg is generally conceded to be less beautiful (though maybe still a fine companion).

We look at the 'excellences' of a species. A horse is for running or pulling. Thus a horse with a short, left rear leg is not so good at running. AND he will be said NOT to be as beautiful as a horse whose rear legs are the same length and which work well for running. This doesn't just apply to human purposes either. What makes a hummingbird beautiful? It can hover. A hummingbird with wings that did NOT work for hovering would not be beautiful.

======

Returning to the main skeptical line of questioning.....
Do you think, supposing 'human beauty' were objective that if we polled all cultures, we'd get a uniform answer that infanticide was wrong? It's pretty clear the Greeks and Romans mostly thought it was morally permissible, if not desirable.

 

[gauchecritic]

In other words, the same human physical features that you might define as 'beautiful' were also defined the same way by all others.

The parameters were symmetry and physical health and youth and to those, all who viewed them found them 'beautiful'

So...one can assume that there is an universal definition of 'beauty' in the human form and from that assumption, one can begin to build and objective, absolute, intellectual, ethical and moral definition of 'beauty' so that it becomes an 'objective' pursuit of knowledge and does not remain forever, 'in the eye of the beholder', or 'subjective' as my relativistic friends would have it.

amicus...

I'd question the universality of the definitions. I'd also have to include the word 'apparent' before the word 'youth', which would effectively destroy the objectivity of that parameter. And I'm pretty damn sure that a died in the wool white supremacist would absolutely insist that beauty can't be applied to non-whites. So there's your cultural universality up the swanee too.

Returning to the main skeptical line of questioning.....
Do you think, supposing 'human beauty' were objective that if we polled all cultures, we'd get a uniform answer that infanticide was wrong? It's pretty clear the Greeks and Romans mostly thought it was morally permissible, if not desirable.

The short answer would be no, because the question is far too large and vague. I would imagine that there are some extremely virtuous and responsible people that could be given a scenario where a single case of infanticide would be deemed acceptable in those circumstances.

Indeed, from eighteen years ago (it was his birthday last week), and I have no reason to believe the situation to be different today, some doctors are willing, however obliquely, to offer parents of non-thriving children (new borns and otherwise) to 'be left'.

 

[impressive]

Indeed, from eighteen years ago (it was his birthday last week), and I have no reason to believe the situation to be different today, some doctors are willing, however obliquely, to offer parents of non-thriving children (new borns and otherwise) to 'be left'.

Certainly was the case 13 years ago ... as well as 3 years ago, when a hospital just assumed a "do not resuscitate" order was in place.

 

[amicus]

This be my third attempt to address this thread and another featuring Oblimo and 'incompleteness', in each case, somewhere along the way, my inability to adapt my typing to a laptop without resting my wrists on the touchpad mouse, has erased my words and left me greatly frustrated.

I made some rather unkind statements concerning Pure, for which I neither apologize nor retract, however, I would qualify the blanket condemnation of 'evil' as I purported and soften it just a tad by accepting the possibility that even 'evil' is a necessary ingredient, as are skeptics, cynics and doubting 'Thomas's" to drop in a biblical reference.

There is an pseudo intellectual bent amongst a small coterie of highly intelligent if somewhat jaded posters on the Lit forum, with a dose of collegiate sophomoric show-offs and intellectual snobs.

I am not so subtly referring to the postings of Oblimo who is pulling a rather juvenile snow job on Litsters by unearthing and heralding as startling evidence, theories such as Godel's, 'incompleteness theorems, 1 & 2...add to that various uncertainty theories, chaos theories, Heisenberg's ramblings and a dozen other misguided intellects whom all have a rather common denominator.

It is a combined quest to overturn Darwinism, which overturned theology, well over a hundred years ago.

A tenuous connection, I know, and one not many will entertain, however...

Scientific Darwinism, Social Darwinism, having destroyed religion as a foundation of intellectual endeavor, set about to fill the vacuum by claiming that 'science, reason, rationality and logic' could fill the space left by the death of God.

Since, by nature, there are always those who will oppose a theory or a postulation, regardless of it's basis, our pointy headed intellectuals set forth to rip to shreds the implication that 'science' could discover absolute truths concerning the nature of the universe and everything in it.

Ayn Rand pointed out the irony and black humor in that these skeptics, while using logic and reason as a means to question and doubt, never doubt or question their own use of knowledge to form those objections. Rather like our hippy friendly eco nuts, consumers of the highest order of technology, biting the hand that made their comfy hovels possible.

So while admitting the necessity of the gadfly's such as Pure and Oblimo and I guess Gauche Critic and a silent Dr. Mabeuse and a handful of others who know who they are, I am still left with a pang of sadness and regret to see such wonderful minds wasted on fruitless efforts.

Roxanne Appleby put it well, an unproductive effort to even address their sillyness.

And in part, it is snobbish sillyness and part psychological aberration and I will attempt to say why.

Pure brought up the eliptical orbit of planets around Sol to make a point, expecting, I suppose, that few if any on the forum would know, off hand, just how the 'elliptical' was discovered.

It was the well know thesis, anti thesis and synthesis; the concentric orbits so long accepted, failed to stand when actual planetary movement could be
determined.

If Ayn Rand isn't 'absolutely'right in her 'Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology', a work concerning how man acquires, stores and manages knowledge, she is close enough to set all nesting crows atwitter and the hyena's howling. (like my alliteration?)

Although I never claimed to be a 'scientist' or skilled in higher math or physics, some here on the Lit forum do seem to assert their tremendous knowledge of such matters. I rather think at best they are lab technicians and college students appalled at the journey before them who have accepted abstract, obtuse and obscure theories as a means to shy away from the real endeavor of discovering truth in all aspect of an intellectual quest. They would rather have us believe that man is incapable of comprehending any absolute truth and worse, that such axiomatic truths are transient or don't exist at all.

As part of my google search on the obscure theories, I did one with the keyword, 'layman', admitting my lack of formal professional training and looking for common english explanations of these theories.

Ya wanna know what I found in overwhelming numbers of articles? "These theories cannot be comprehend in 'lay' terms..."

Now the audacity of some on this forum, to throw before a general audience, reference to theoretical knowledge that admittedly cannot be comprehended without long and arduous formal studies...is a little cheeky, I think.

We are to believe that Pure and Oblimo are first rate, theoretical scientists, who are just a little kinky in the libido and favor us with their magnificent presence from time to time to enlighten we poor ignorant souls.

I beg ur fuckin' pardon! As I speculated, intelligent gadfly's showing off a quantifiable ability to google and possessed of maximum verbosity.

And the sadness I alluded to, is that much of their effort is wasted when there is so much to be rationally done in man's undending question for knowledge.

They are just so much baggage.


amicus...

 

[gauchecritic]

And here's me thinking the greater purpose of debate was to elucidate, amplify and above all question one's own stance on the topic.

What was your last post supposed to about MiAmico? Frustration because you can't cut the callers off?

 

[Oblimo]

I am not so subtly referring to the postings of Oblimo who is pulling a rather juvenile snow job on Litsters by unearthing and heralding as startling evidence, theories such as Godel's, 'incompleteness theorems, 1 & 2...add to that various uncertainty theories, chaos theories, Heisenberg's ramblings and a dozen other misguided intellects whom all have a rather common denominator.

It is a combined quest to overturn Darwinism, which overturned theology, well over a hundred years ago.

Wait. What? The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics is a conspiracy against evolutionary biology?

Scientific Darwinism, Social Darwinism, having destroyed religion as a foundation of intellectual endeavor, set about to fill the vacuum by claiming that 'science, reason, rationality and logic' could fill the space left by the death of God.

Am I reading this right? Did Amicus just equate Social Darwinism with bona fide Darwinism? Did he just equate science with religion?

I can't make head nor tails of the rest of his post, except that I think I'm supposed to be ashamed of my studying modal calculus in college or something.

 

[rgraham666]

Wait. What? The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics is a conspiracy against evolutionary biology?

Am I reading this right? Did Amicus just equate Social Darwinism with bona fide Darwinism? Did he just equate science with religion?

Welcome to the world of our 'friend', Oblimo.

He is a true believer in Social Darwinism. With him, of course, as the end product of evolution.

 

[Oblimo]

Welcome to the world of our 'friend', Oblimo.

He is a true believer in Social Darwinism. With him, of course, as the end product of evolution.

But, but, Ayn Rand hated Social Darwinsim! It's completely contradictory to Objectivist philosophy! It's collectivist!

*brain s'plode*

 

[rgraham666]

But, but, Ayn Rand hated Social Darwinsim! It's completely contradictory to Objectivist philosophy! It's collectivist!

*brain s'plode*

She did? It is?

Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to go back and read all that stuff. (Shudder) I've obviously got the wrong idea.

Not looking forward to reading Rand. I found her subby mindset most unappealing.

On the other hand, I've always regarded her as never overcoming her Marxist upbringing.

 

[Oblimo]

Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to go back and read all that stuff. (Shudder) I've obviously got the wrong idea.

Both Objectivism and Social Darwinism advocated laissez-faire capitalism, but for very different reasons. Objectivists want laissez-faire capitalism because they think it's the system that works, the only economic and political environment wherein an individual can actualize his or her potential. If someone is never given the chance to make an autonomous decision, their succcess and failure is not truly their own, and are thus not real.

Social Darwinism, on the other hand, was a bankrupt justification of classism, the status quo and the perpetuation of dynasties. "Some people are just weak and are destined to perish" is anathema to Objectivism. Objectivism holds that everyone is capable of making the rational choice, of succeeding on their own terms, if left unfetterred by governmental regulation and artificial societal concepts like the necessity of an established aristocracy. It is the other side of collectivism: socialism was bad, but the entrenched aristocracy advocating socialism was worse.

In the Fountainhead (and please, don't read it again; it ain't worth it), the Social Darwinist is Toohey, the book's greatest villain. It's important to remember that Toohey does not believe any of the philosophy of mediocrity that he espouses. He considers himself inherently superior to the people he's tricking, and it's his right to rule them and to be recognzied as the better man, the man who won.

Rourke, on the other hand, doesn't give a shit what other people think of him, unless they are against him for no good reason. He gets no pleasure from monetary wealth, and he doesn't give a damn what other people do as long as they don't interefere with the work. For Rourke, it's all about the work; he wants to be a successful architect, not so he can be rich and famous, but so he can keep building things.

 

[rgraham666]

Editing this: The original sounded like I was being nasty to someone I respect.

Anyway, both sound like ideologies to me. Both tout themselves as 'Great Truths' that must be followed to their logical conclusion. And the lives of most people are quite secondary, even tertiary to this pursuit of Truth.

I don't believe we humans can ever know the truth, and especially ever know 'The Truth'. And people who chase after 'The Truth' scare the living shit out of me. Having been on the receiving end of ideology it's a very rational choice.

 

[Oblimo]

Edited:

I don't believe we humans can ever know the truth, and especially ever know 'The Truth'. And people who chase after 'The Truth' scare the living shit out of me. Having been on the receiving end of ideology it's a very rational choice.

Now you're just trying to turn me on.

 

[rgraham666]

Now you can reply to my edited thread.

Sorry, Ob. I thought I was whining with my original post and I thought it sounded like it might be a personal dig.

So I changed it.

 

[Pure]

same old amicus

lots of personal attack and random maunderings, but one small tidbit.

Ayn Rand pointed out the irony and black humor in that these skeptics, while using logic and reason as a means to question and doubt, never doubt or question their own use of knowledge to form those objections. Rather like our hippy friendly eco nuts, consumers of the highest order of technology, biting the hand that made their comfy hovels possible.

This is of course, an old objection probably going back hundreds of years. Hume himself mentions returning to the billiards table for a dose of real life after his skeptical reflections. This objection alleges that the skeptic about knowledge is saying, "I know for sure that nothing can be known for sure," or "I have employed my reasoning to arrive at the truth that no reasoning can arrive at the truth."

It might be noticed, though we have strayed (mea culpa), that the thread topic, was in the limited area of morals [moral knowledge] . On this topic, one might take the limited stance, "I know the truth objectively [regarding those systems that call themselves 'moral']--that there are no universal and objective truths to be found WITHIN moral/ethical systems." There's nothing self defeating about this statement.

And of course, for the general case, the skeptic could easily rephrase and say, "I believe it's probably true, that no truth is ever known more than 'probably'."

The general ad hominem line of Amicus and Rand is that the enemies of capitalism are its beneficiaries--they enjoy its wealth. Hence they are ingrates and dishonest. Yet the achievements of capitalism in transforming the world, eliminating the medieval rut of thinking and living, facilitating transportation, communication and mass production are well acknowledged by Marx, for instance in the Communist manifesto.

Again, it's outside Amicus black and white world, but many of us of social democratic leanings endorse mixed economies and have no problems acknowledging the benefits of capitalism, adequately channeled. I'm a great admirer of Ikea the Swedish company, and Nokia, the Finnish one. Both flourishing in social democratic states.

The issue of the limits of human reason is, to me, worth exploring. It's not shoddy or dishonest, even though we are reasoning about reasoning. As Oblimo indicated, proofs about the incompleteness of any axiomatic mathematical system show the limits of mathematical proof. Though of course, Godel's proof exists in the field of metamathematics. I see no problem with that. Godel didn't say 'nothing can be proved,' but rather 'some things that may be true cannot be proven for any given mathematical system.'

Further, the shoe is actually on the other foot. Most of us of more skeptical leanings are quite 'pro' science, including Darwin's and other biologist's efforts (Mendel, etc.). I believe this would apply to me, gauche, imp, oblimo and many others of the politics and philos crowd.

It is actually the Rand folks who are more leery of science and who worry about it. They also tend not to know any. Why is this? Well, science looks at human culture and its effects; it looks at 'conditioning,' e.g. Pavlov.
Science is *deterministic*; it looks for causal patterns and human behavior is one possible object. When humans get into jealous rages, they sometimes kill. There seems to be 'temporary insanity.'

For Rand, this all undermines 'free will' and 'responsibility'. She's really, underneath the 'science-friendly' mask, hostile to it, just as the Southern Baptists are---and for the same reasons. For Rand, "Man" must be above it all; above the animals; the lord of the universe. This is the same allegiance the southern baptists have; they want "Man" to be God's special creation with unique characteristics setting him off from animals.

 

[rgraham666]

An Objectivist would say, "that depends." Personally, I think Objectivism relies on a very naive view of the human mind.

A line I used in an essay I wrote said, "Human beings are often rationalizing creatures rather than rational ones."

So I agree with your view of the naiveté of the Objectivists. In fact, I regard any ideology as naive.

The big difference is that the Objectivist wants to abolish inheritance, while the Social Darwinist wants to abolish inheritance taxes. Otherwise, I agree with you; any utopia that requires the deaths of millions ain't worth it the price to get there.

I'm somewhere in the middle on inheritance, as usual. Certainly I believe some of a person's wealth can be passed on. But not so much as to create spoiled brats who believe an easy life is their right.

And any utopia, in my opinion, is likely to result in massive death. Any grid of value we humans can create is going to be sadly limited and many won't fit into this grid. And no ideology has ever been able to handle its misfits in a wise and good manner.

My wife dropped out of school in the 7th grade. Drop-outs are hot.

Pity you're the wrong sex for me to properly appreciate that sentiment.

 

[Oblimo]

Oh, and I can't believe I let this slip by...

Pure brought up the eliptical orbit of planets around Sol to make a point, expecting, I suppose, that few if any on the forum would know, off hand, just how the 'elliptical' was discovered.

You mean how Kepler was a numerologist obsessed with the occult powers of sacred geometry and all around wacko?

It was the well know thesis, anti thesis and synthesis; the concentric orbits so long accepted, failed to stand when actual planetary movement could be
determined.

Heck, no. Epicycles worked just fine, especially Tycho Brahe's model, which put Earth at the center of the universe, the Sun and Moon orbiting the Earth, and the other planets and the stars orbiting around the Sun. In fact, Brahe's Earth-centric model was better at accounting for the recorded observations than Kepler's (the heliocentrist model had to wait for another numerologist occulist wacko, Isaac Newton, to invent the calculus before it finally beat Brahe's numbers.*)

*Which, honestly, always made me a little suspicious. The observations that Brahe's model were better at reporting were Brahe's own observations--Brahe being the best naked eye astronomer and computer in history and all. Never understood why Kuhn didn't harp on that.

 

[rgraham666]

It occurs to me, if the Objectivists such as Rand regard skepticism as a bad thing, they must work to purge themselves of it.

If that's the case, I have a bridge to sell them. No cheques or credit cards please. Just cash, in small unmarked bills.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I liked this take (a bit edited, but I think preserving the original intent) on facts and their interpretation:

But, as gauche suggests, the requirements of a particular human society are not necessarily uniquely specifiable. What should the human 'race' look like, for instance? Solitary animals like tigers, or a wolf pack, or bees in a hive? What color might it be?

[...]

When one reads these forums and hears talk of life in England, Sweden, or in Canada or the States, one realizes that very different 'facts' are being seen. Is there, in country X, "Loathsome dependence on a nanny state" or is there "Calm productivity based on feeling secure because of the social 'safety net'"?

There's the rub of it. It all depends on what ideal you're aiming for, and the selection of that ideal takes us back again to assumptions that cannot be empirically proven to be correct.

Personally, I very much doubt that there is any one single model that works best for all humans anyway. Our intelligence, our social nature, and our long lives make us complex, and that makes it considerably more difficult to predict our behavior or create uniform patterns in it. I think that most people's views of an ideal society have a great deal to do with their upbringing and experiences and relatively little to do with other people's needs, goals, or natures. We tend to build up our idea of reality from what we know ourselves, however unusual our circumstances might have been, and our thoughts on what would be best for other people are very difficult to disentangle from what would be best for ourselves. I don't necessarily mean that in a cynical sense of wishing to exploit others for one's own good, although of course that can be part of it; I mean that even the most well-intentioned person I think will find it difficult to imagine others being happy in situations he or she would not enjoy, possibly for purely individual reasons.

Sometimes it seems to me that the best system for governing humans might be to give them a variety of options and let them move to the area that's run as best suits them. Of course, that would only work until the people who all liked the idea of killing everyone else and taking their worldly possessions all got together.

i think shang was talking about human's standards of beauty for any number of things, e.g. a painting, a lamp. but ftsoa let's limit the 'beauty' discussion to human's standards as applied to themselves.

Yes, you're correct there. I was speaking about beauty in the broadest sense, applicable to both material and non-material, living and non-living subjects.

The studies on biology have been interesting, although I don't recall any phrasing their findings in nearly so absolute terms as Amicus suggests. I remember one or two, admittedly imperfectly, but I'm fairly sure that I remember something like the phrase "when cultural and other factors are equal." At any rate, I do believe that there is a difference between beauty as a universally applicable term and physical attractiveness in a member of the same species. Those studies I'm familiar with that examined symmetry often suggested that evolution was at least part of the mechanism; healthy, symmetrically built young creatures were the most likely to have good genes to pass along, and so individuals that were predisposed to mate with such other individuals were more likely, ultimately, to reproduce.

This strikes me as significant because to me it suggests that our aesthetic sense as applied to ideas or objects not affecting breeding would not inherently be connected to the values driven by reproduction. That is, we prize symmetry in humans because that keeps us alive and gives our bloodlines a good chance of continuing, but there's no evolutionary imperative operating when we attempt to decide between jazz and easy listening music - or if there is, it's a great deal more subtle and rooted more in social interaction than in physiology.

Shanglan

 

[Pure]

"social darwinism" and "objectivism"

there is a good discussion by an 'objectivist' , mr. bissell at one of the randist sites:

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1312-Social_Darwinism.aspx

i think he's correct that although both might approve a 'laisser faire' capitalist economy, the reasons are different, and the goals. in particular Bissell notes that Spencer held that at a later point, 'selfishness' would be superseded in favor of some degree of social mindedness.

in any case the topic is a tangent for this thread, except for the issue, "Is Darwinism an objectively true account of evolution?" there are also issues of 'sociobiology' and ethics.

 

[Pure]

a basic concept in many "objective morality" proposals

Columbia online encyclopedia entry, verbatim.

natural law,

theory that some laws are basic and fundamental to human nature and are discoverable by human reason without reference to specific legislative enactments or judicial decisions. Natural law is opposed to positive law, which is human-made, conditioned by history, and subject to continuous change. The concept of natural law originated with the Greeks and received its most important formulation in Stoicism.


The Stoics believed that the fundamental moral principles that underlie all the legal systems of different nations were reducible to the dictates of natural law. This idea became particularly important in Roman legal theory, which eventually came to recognize a common code regulating the conduct of all peoples and existing alongside the individual codes of specific places and times (see natural rights).

Christian philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas perpetuated this idea, asserting that natural law was common to all peoples—Christian and non-Christian alike—while adding that revealed law gave Christians an additional guide for their actions. In modern times, the theory of natural law became the chief basis for the development by Hugo Grotius
of the theory of international law.

In the 17th cent., such philosophers as Spinoza and G. W. von Leibniz interpreted natural law as the basis of ethics and morality; in the 18th cent. the teachings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, especially as interpreted during the French Revolution, made natural law a basis for democratic and egalitarian principles. The influence of natural law theory declined greatly in the 19th cent. under the impact of positivism, empiricism, and materialism. In the 20th cent., such thinkers as Jacques Maritain saw in natural law a necessary intellectual opposition to totalitarian theories.

 

[Pure]

Note to Shanglan,

There is a nice account of a 'naturalistic' ethics, 'objectively' derived from biology and evolution at

http://www.iserv.net/~merriman/natmoral.htm

In particular the section "innate morality". This exposition is neither Randist nor Thomistic.

 

[Pure]

OK, here's a simple little puzzle. Murder.

The 'natural law' and 'natural rights' folks believe that the universe operates by and is permeated with Reason, which I suppose involves, among other things, order.

Through one's own Reason then, one acts in accord with (as they say) Nature and Nature's Law, which is (said to be, self evidently) the right thing to do. Notice that we have, here, two kinds of laws of nature. The first kind, exemplified by gravity, you can't contravene. The second kind, exemplified in certain basic moral prohibitions, you CAN violate (you are capable of that choice), but that brings disorder into Nature (your environment) and your psyche, and you will pay the cost either in obvious, observable, material terms, or psychic turmoil, or both. When one has paid the cost--and one can't avoid doing so--, the (moral) order of things, so to say, has been restored.

So let us consider the simplest possible example of an alleged [moral] "law of nature". It is expressed in the commandment, "Thou shalt do no murder," meaning, "Do not deliberately kill another human being for no good reason," i.e., aside from defensive wars, just executions, acts of self defense, and perhaps other categories. As the Pope would put it, natural law prohibits the taking of innocent life. Though said to be given to Moses, the Catholic position is that all rational humans can see the truth of this according to the 'natural light' (without revelation, reliance on the Bible, etc.).

To come back to our definitions, does it offend Reason, and the order of Nature for me to murder? For example (one dear to Rand), I see you've got a pile of gold, and aren't about to part with it and I can't buy or trade for it, so I kill you to get the gold. (Obviously if you have a very large, mean spouse or brother, this is an unwise thing to do, perhaps 'irrational', so let's stipulate that that there is no obvious, powerful 'protector' figure who is going to pretty quickly retaliate by killing me.)

NOTE: This isn't a proposal that maybe murder is fine; rather the question is, Can one, through *rational processes* and appeals to her reason, convince any rational human that such is wrong.

 

[rgraham666]

Considering how many murders there are every day, I must assume at least some of the perpetrators were 'rational' about it.

Ethical is another thing all together.

Reason alone is irrational.

 

[Pure]

why do you say some 'some were rational...about it'? surely people do foolish things and so to say 'shoot themselves in the foot,' constantly.

 

[BlackShanglan]

The argument I've heard on murder and most other "basic" assumptions from the rationalist point of view is based on a sense of social structure and its contribution to the individual good - pretty much the way Spencer goes, and also at the roots of the "social contract" point of view. That is, reason tells us that it's a good idea to outlaw murder because otherwise we would waste of lot of resources defending ourselves and killing each other, and we'd have emotionally and socially unpleasant lives because we'd be under a constant threat of attack. Additionally, productivity would be low in a society in which having more goods meant you were more likely to be killed and in which the capital for large endeavours was therefore difficult to amass.

Of course, if you want to call this a moral system rather than a practical way of running a society, you have to assume that a state of chaos and constant murder is not merely frustrating or economically unviable, but also morally wrong. That, to me, is where rationalist approaches to morality break down. They can give me a good idea of what works or what the affects of certain actions will be, but I don't see that as reflecting on what is moral. To call it a system of morality would be to embrace an inherent Utiltarian assumption - that the action generating the greatest good for the greatest number of people is the most moral. That cannot be empirically proven to be true.

Shanglan