IS EVIL REAL? OR, LIKE GOD, A HUMAN INVENTION?
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If by capitalizing and adding timeless you mean to convey something supernatural then i agree it cant exist. I am referring to demonstrable behavior with malice. If you consider humans with a modicum of intelligence and absence of superstition then i think you will have near unanimity in condemning as evil the most egregious acts. Those who are controlled by tribe and or ideology are lacking and not included in aforementioned. Is there a position on a moral/ethical issue that is fact? That is a non sequitur. How can an ethical opinion be a fact? Do you mean to say incontrovertible? I approve of Roe v Wade. I have an opinion.
What you are saying is mostly true. Unfortnately history has shown rational atheists justifying horrendous cruelty, especially in Soviet Russia. In their eyes they were dealing with an unknown revolution of government and it seemed sensible at the beginning. As goes with the cultural revolution in China. Or the support for the death penalty in the US (by sensible atheists). I agree that pointless cruelty is in general an obvious position in western democratic culture. And we are fortunate that we’ve cut down on pointless cruelty, but this is an extremely unique case in history and without the humanist pinciples in place we are open to endless stupidity by rational atheists. In fact, rational atheists can be a major threat to western ideals (anti terrorists hawks, radical free market small government capitalists, rational atheist college boy rapey behaviour, woman hating pick up artists, spouse abusers. They may in general be against cruelty but manage to justify a lot of pointless cruelty in practice. Surprisingly when you submit university students to moral questions (highest concentration ofnathists) it is shocking the number of them who support laws that permit gay discrimination, oppose euthanasia, support limitles torture of non-charged suspected terrorists, oppose government welfare/assistance etc.
Are you auditing the course at a university or college? Is it for non-degree students?
It’s a Philosophy college degree applicable elective, albeit freshman level. (I wish now I’d instead taken the CT Writing elective.) But it won’t apply to my major. I’m just taking the course for brain exercise, and ditto for a Child Psych class coming up, interested in ways we might be able reach kids before they get corrupted by current-day, anti-intellectual, don’t-think-too-much American “culture”.
Have you started on fallacies? Have you compared critical thinking to other methodologies (that really helps).
Oh yeah, we’re deep into fallacies, and types of arguments, imo ad nauseum. No new reading materials in the last half of the course, just increasingly hair-splitting exercises on the same themes learned weeks ago. I understand better now how it’s necessary to hair-split even the American language syntax and grammar in the presentation of every argument, but it still rubs me the wrong way. I naively expected the class to have a more multi-cultural, universal approach to what I think should be a global endeavor to communicate critical thinking concepts, or at least include some discussion on the imperfectability of languages in general.
This instructor and the textbook dictate a dogma in detail that is presumed perfect, from the beginning. (IMO. Perhaps I’m just tooooo skeptical. Or maybe I’m treading carelessly into deconstructionist territory?)
If you consider humans with a modicum of intelligence and absence of superstition then i think you will have near unanimity in condemning as evil the most egregious acts. Those who are controlled by tribe and or ideology are lacking and not included in aforementioned. Is there a position on a moral/ethical issue that is fact? That is a non sequitur. How can an ethical opinion be a fact? Do you mean to say incontrovertible? I approve of Roe v Wade. I have an opinion.
How do you decide which acts are “most egregious” without it being some sort of opinion-fest, like a poll? Of course there’s no position on a moral/ethical issue which can be factual because ethics and morals are about attitudes, emotions, and opinions, and not objective measurement. There are no deterministic proofs of ethical/moral propositions. No way to falsify them, but only to raise or reduce confidence in them.
Suppose someone puts out a cigarette in a baby’s eye. Few of us would regard that as anything short of a horrific deed requiring a very harsh response involving not mere condemnation but also punishment. The whole world might agree, and yet no amount of attitudes, opinions, or gut responses will turn that crime into something that’s factually wrong. One can’t get past this: ethics and morals are about attitudes, emotions, and opinions, and we get these from our respective tribes, and tribal values vary over time. One has only to look around the world to see this is true.
@davis – Everyone seems to be locked down and afraid to move in case they get accused of being sexist, racist and homophobic.
Academics and many politicians are being more careful with their words indeed. To be honest, being more considerate with how you label and identify people is in many cases a good thing. Saying: “women like this kind of thing” or “the Gay agenda” or “the black community is riddled with crime” are terrible statements that are at the minimum offensive and in general very misleading. There is no “gay agenda”, gay people live in extremely diverse neighborhoods and there isn’t anything remotely close to shared goals, especially now that there are anti-discrimination laws and gay marriage. Some black communities have a higher level of crime than the national average but that is hardly representative of neighborhoods that are predominantly black. And a lot of women don’t appreciate being told “what they like”, especially the many who don’t even recognize these seeming default “likes” to begin with. In this sense, this change is a good thing. There are however many unpleasant examples where people look for malice where it doesn’t exist or shame others for saying something in a way that maybe perhaps offends someone. This is especially ironic considering many of these people who shame others for how they word things, are against things like “body shaming” or “abortion shaming”. How you choose to dress yourself and the figure you have is hardly so different from how you choose to express yourself.
There are some benefits to being more careful about how you phrase things, especially when you are painting a picture of a group of people. And yes, some people overdo it and damage others reputations, but that is a loud fringe group, not representative of the left, nor is it a mess that people on the “left” are responsible for cleaning up.
@davis – Jordan Peterson apparently believes they’ve been abusing a distorted version of Post Modernism.
Post modernism, in a political, identity, philosophy term…is already highly flawed and damaged goods in my opinion. Adding agressive toxic idenity-politics people who shame others for the words they choose, does not abuse or distort post-modernism. If anything it is highly representative of their general behavior: question western culture, deconstruct privileged hegemony (rich , white , straight, men and the power they have) and question objective truth and definitive answers:
while
At the same time passing sweeping and toxic judgments of western governments, the male gender, straight people, white people, conservative ideals. Often to question the merit of these criticism is to prove just how wrong you are…which puts their views out of the scope of dialogue, which is no different then holding a “definitive view” which is something post-modernists are against. Post-modernism works well in art, music, architecture, self-contained literary criticism etc. It is a disaster with politics, philosophy and many (something)-studies. These toxic shamers are really the extreme result of it.
For example, many post-modernists are against scholars judging Islamic culture for consistent inequality between the genders, and yet go on to say “women are taught to frequently defer to men’s decisions, take the blame when things go wrong and not assert their own opinion”. If a female scholar claims that women aren’t “taught” to do these things but instead, there is a general trend because of cultural pressure that allow men’s opinions in office structure to hold more merit (something you can investigate), most post-modernists will say something like: “that this woman says this only proves that she is unwilling to assert her own defense of injustices against women”. Which is, as I said…an example of making untouchable statements, something that is invincible to critique, which is the kind of things they say are “impossible”.
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