Sunday School

[Unseen]

jakelafort wrote:

Simon, you’ve given examples of broad and general. Are you in favor of an absolutist approach to morality?

If you are a real absolutist and not just someone who feels that one’s own values must be followed absolutely, then there is no choice. There’s either believing in them and adhering to them rigidly and without exception, no matter how inconvenient and disconcerting they might be, or there’s being wrong. Principles that unbending are to be viewed as facts, not choices.

Simply because we can use the word “absolute” and all the other words built on it as if they are options doesn’t change the fact that they are not. I can talk about an indiscernible round square on the dark side of the Sun, but merely stringing those words together grammatically doesn’t make the assertion make sense.

Absolutism isn’t an approach simply because one can say the words.

[Unseen]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Absolutes – we absolutely must care for children, for example – are broad and general, but the ways they are carried out in real life are many and diverse.

Please note that your use of the word “absolutely” doesn’t invoke an absolute, it simply makes “must” more insistent in the practical sense of “what a terrible/dysfunctional world if we didn’t care for children?”

[Simon Paynton]

Unseen wrote:

Principles that unbending are to be viewed as facts, not choices.

But if something is viewed as a moral fact, that doesn’t change that following it is still a choice.  We behave as if child care is an absolute, but some people still violate that principle.

[Unseen]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:

Principles that unbending are to be viewed as facts, not choices.

But if something is viewed as a moral fact, that doesn’t change that following it is still a choice. We behave as if child care is an absolute, but some people still violate that principle.

Of course, were moral absolutes to be real, one would still have the option of obeying them or not.

Of course, the difference between a system based on absolutes vs. man-made/societal standards is that in the former instance being noncompliant makes you actually and factually wrong even if no one knows it, including you. Disobeying man-made/societal standards simply makes you liable to be punished or shunned.

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

I didn’t yet find the Dawkins work saying that one man and one woman couldn’t have created the entire human species, but I did find this article that confirms what I’m saying with some solid genetic and geological reasons and I’m sure Dawkins would probably concur:

No, Humans Are Probably Not All Descended From A Single Couple Who Lived 200,000 Years Ago
Michael Marshall
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelmarshalleurope/2018/11/26/no-humans-are-probably-not-all-descended-from-a-single-couple-who-lived-200000-years-ago/?sh=4fe9af3a7cd8

[Simon Paynton]

Unseen wrote:

in the former instance being noncompliant makes you actually and factually wrong even if no one knows it, including you. Disobeying man-made/societal standards simply makes you liable to be punished or shunned.

It’s a fine distinction.  Only people who are ethical in the first place will care if they are “factually” wrong about a moral principle.

If we have certain goals, then certain facts are inevitable.  If we want to reproduce, then it is a fact that we have to take good care of our children.  If we want to cooperate, then it’s a fact – mind-independent, impartial – that it has to be done *this* way.

[Unseen]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Unseen, I didn’t yet find the Dawkins work saying that one man and one woman couldn’t have created the entire human species, but I did find this article that confirms what I’m saying with some solid genetic and geological reasons and I’m sure Dawkins would probably concur: No, Humans Are Probably Not All Descended From A Single Couple Who Lived 200,000 Years Ago Michael Marshall https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelmarshalleurope/2018/11/26/no-humans-are-probably-not-all-descended-from-a-single-couple-who-lived-200000-years-ago/?sh=4fe9af3a7cd8

From Dawkins to Forbes. Quite a journey that. Let me take you back to the post where I said inbred defects could be bred out using well-known genetic principles.

Let’s note from the headline the word “probably.” Your article is hardly proof of anything. It’s written by a journalist, not a scientist.

And were it written by a scientist, it’s unlikely you or I would fully understand it. Mitochondrial inheritance isn’t a subject that’s easy to dumb down. For example, the famed “mitochondrial Eve” may not have even been a recognizable homo sapiens. Ditto for her partner. (Or at least that’s my understanding.)

Beyond that, it’s fallacious to think that incest necessarily results in breeding in genetic defects. First, the defective gene would need to be somewhere in the genome in recessive form in not just in one genome, but in both. Clearly, that would be accidental.

Anyone breeding dogs, cattle, whatever to improve a species knows how to breed out the bad as well as breeding in the good. Humans are no different.

Once again, you are arguing just to argue, not to contribute.

 

[Unseen]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:

in the former instance being noncompliant makes you actually and factually wrong even if no one knows it, including you. Disobeying man-made/societal standards simply makes you liable to be punished or shunned.

It’s a fine distinction. Only people who are ethical in the first place will care if they are “factually” wrong about a moral principle. If we have certain goals, then certain facts are inevitable. If we want to reproduce, then it is a fact that we have to take good care of our children. If we want to cooperate, then it’s a fact – mind-independent, impartial – that it has to be done *this* way.

Your “facts” are all contingent, not necessary.

[Simon Paynton]

Unseen wrote:

Your “facts” are all contingent, not necessary.

True.  But they give us our illusion of objectivity.

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

From Dawkins to Forbes. Quite a journey that. Let me take you back to the post where I said inbred defects could be bred out using well-known genetic principles.

In your End-Of-Days scenario, it’s not likely that the Daddy and Daughter know about Gene Therapy and CRISPR. And past ages certainly would not.

Let’s note from the headline the word “probably.” Your article is hardly proof of anything. It’s written by a journalist, not a scientist.

The title is not the substance, the article is. And one of his Masters is in Science Communication. Very useful in carrying out Science and spreading it through time.

And were it written by a scientist, it’s unlikely you or I would fully understand it. Mitochondrial inheritance isn’t a subject that’s easy to dumb down. For example, the famed “mitochondrial Eve” may not have even been a recognizable homo sapiens. Ditto for her partner. (Or at least that’s my understanding.)

Why do you assume that scientists can’t communicate their ideas clearly? And anyway, it would still take many mitochondrial “Eves” to perpetuate the species, as redundancies or “back-ups” in case others die or get killed by countless ways to die in a Nature “red in tooth and claw.”

Beyond that, it’s fallacious to think that incest necessarily results in breeding in genetic defects. First, the defective gene would need to be somewhere in the genome in recessive form in not just in one genome, but in both. Clearly, that would be accidental.

In an End-Of-Days scenario, humans would have to be tight as a group to survive whatever perils they face, and the tighter the group, the more apt that two persons with defects will click and procreate.

Anyone breeding dogs, cattle, whatever to improve a species knows how to breed out the bad as well as breeding in the good. Humans are no different.

And again, how likely is that in your scenario that Daddy and Daughter know this? And again, past ages would not and in an Apocalypse, the accumulated knowledge to breed and alter genetics may be destroyed.

Once again, you are arguing just to argue, not to contribute.

I thought it was all of a single piece on a Forum.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendums

[Unseen]

@Enco

You’re taking a sidebar on a side trip.

You know, to those of us who do and enjoy doing philosophy, we all remember from our college days the student who was taking philo as a requirement and couldn’t pick up on what philosophy is all about.

I remember vividly a couple engineering students who had engineering “solutions” to philosophical problems which were clearly, to the rest of us, attempts at doing end runs to avoid facing up to the actual philosophical issues.

Your comical concentration on the “end of days scenario” and your attacking it for its practicalities is a reminder to me of those engineering students who bored us and wasted our time in our philosophical studies.

Thanks for the memories.

[_Robert_]

Unseen wrote:

@Enco You’re taking a sidebar on a side trip. You know, to those of us who do and enjoy doing philosophy, we all remember from our college days the student who was taking philo as a requirement and couldn’t pick up on what philosophy is all about. I remember vividly a couple engineering students who had engineering “solutions” to philosophical problems which were clearly, to the rest of us, attempts at doing end runs to avoid facing up to the actual philosophical issues. Your comical concentration on the “end of days scenario” and your attacking it for its practicalities is a reminder to me of those engineering students who bored us and wasted our time in our philosophical studies. Thanks for the memories.

And then when the engineers pulled up to Wendy’s take out window to grab lunch, do you think those philosophy grads were still bored as they served their customers?

[Unseen]

@Robert

So, your “reply” is a cheap shot. You know who makes even more than engineers? Drug lords.

[_Robert_]

Unseen wrote:

@robert So, your “reply” is a cheap shot. You know who makes even more than engineers? Drug lords.

Yeah, big deal, that’s illegal. Undergrad soft courses were a kind of a joke. The prof’s get their egos rubbed by the kiss-ass students, nobody fails unless they don’t show up and let’s have a lame “discussion” on chapter 2 of the text. It’s just memorization, recall and regurgitation. I got an MBA on the company dime and that was basic compared to the hard sciences where you really have to demonstrate clear understanding and problem solving (that often takes 5 pages of equations to answer 1 question.) No wonder we have to import Asian and Indian engineers because so many Americans kids have devolved into smooth brains. Just part of how we are going down.

[Unseen]

@Robert

There are no engineering answers to Does God exist? Do we have free will? Is reality material, mental, or both? What is beauty? What is a just society?

If there were, they would have been solved by now.

Is philosophy dead? Not by a longshot.

BTW, I agree that the American educational system has turned to shit. We have mistaken a hole in the head for an open mind.

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