Thy Plague Doctor

Simon Paynton wrote:
@davis – “hierarchies” – what I mean is, we can compare any two crimes and usually, one will be worse than another.

Great. Could you please at least list those 15 unfavorable acts from worst to least worse???

Simon Paynton wrote:
I think it is fairly straightforward to work out a hierarchy of imperatives

First of all. Please stop referring to imperatives as a set of moral laws. The CI is independent of moral laws, to put it very briefly: it is a tool used to understand, test, apply and make sense of moral laws. It is not a moral law nor a generator…[Read more]

@Reg re:CI

That’s a fairly reasonable summary. The CI is a tool in deontological ethics. Without it, your own moral laws that you devise would be fairly meaningless. But you can easily form your moral laws well before the CI comes into it. And in any case, despite it being called “categorical” and an “imperative”, it is just a tool, not an ab…[Read more]

Threshold deontology is a series of theoretical approaches to moral conflicts. It is not a theory. The Stanford article tries to discuss the many approaches to deontological ethics, but don’t confuse that with a long article of authors who are known, read, discussed or taken seriously. I cannot find a single book with an author who directly posits…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Davis if i were to make a joke then using your criteria Earle and Trump are incapable of internalizing pain.

LOL Trump cares too much about what people think of him, he never forgets an insult, he relives hurtful episodes in his mind from decades ago, he blames those for his pain who had nothing to do with it, whines “that’s n…[Read more]

Brightsky wrote:
Its a theory ( not a law) to test a persons stage of moral development. There are 6 stages By prof Lawrence Kohlberg.

I have a lot of major issues with his 6 stages, not because they don’t individually shed light on different responses to moral problems, but because he creates a ladder when one development stage proceeds the n…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
I think that Kant’s Categorical Imperative could be made useable with two steps: 1.  introduce a heirarchy of imperatives:

Simon that completely loses the point of the imperative. If some imperatives are less imperative than others (I don’t even know how that is possible) then you would suddenly have to introduce a moral no…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
If animals are suffering with the same disorders isn’t it reasonable to assume they have internalized pain?

Well that depends doesn’t it. If they are able to do even some of the things I’ve mentioned earlier like agonize over it, relive it, feel or give blame, have the ability to forgive, reflect on what lead to the pain, pr…[Read more]

Earle Sanborn wrote:
If I believe adultery is always wrong and say so – is that hateful?

No it isn’t because choosing to deceive your partner is a CHOICE you can EASILY AVOID by not deceiving them. Being gay is NOT A CHOICE. This has been well demonstrated empirically. You don’t wake up one day and say…hey I’d love to be discriminated ag…[Read more]

@davis Son of God sounds just like Bride of Godzilla to me.

Or maybe Spawn of Gargamel? 😉

_Robert_ wrote:
When one uses the term “greater good”, objectivity and universality are cooked.

It’s partly the reason why I am really hesistant to take some moral systems seriously. Utilitarianism and consequence based moral systems are more about social engineering rather than the integrity and strength of of moral laws. Greater good is the fou…[Read more]

@davis Son of God sounds just like Bride of Godzilla to me.

Earle Sanborn wrote:
It’s always fascinating to me how people try their utmost to prove The Son of God either never existed or was just another prophet, etc.

Would someone please do something about this guy? He is repeatedly blabbing the same recycled shit about evolution not being scientific anymore and some religious apologetic and will NOT de…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
“what is good for society?” or in other words, a large group.

Actually, that isn’t the point of the categorical imperative. Besides the main point I’ve already mentioned (holding to your moral rules without justifying exceptions), you must act AS THOUGH others would follow that rule. That doesn’t mean that the point of it is…[Read more]

Brightsky wrote:
I was thinking how does one get there? What is the process?

Hi Brightsky. I understand now what you mean. It obviously depends on the person. First because atheists are an enormous multicultured multi-ideaology group with little in common other than lacking a belief in God. If you randomly picked an atheist from a Chinese Village…[Read more]

Here is my hypothesis on patriarchy, which rests on the evolutionary idea that all beings want to reproduce.

No. All beings are held hostage to genes that are obsessed with replicating itself. Not all beings are compelled to reproduce. There are many other ways for your genes (or part of your genes) to continue replicating.

So, explanatory power…

[Read more]

Do you think it would be possible to understand the main normative ethical frameworks and use a combination of all 3 to arrive at a sensible and practical solution. For the real world situations?

No. It is next to impossible to rationally and objectively pull this off. How on Earth could we? We cannot predict the future, we don’t know what other…[Read more]

Simon I really don’t think you have understood deontological moral systems. Kant never outright said it is okay to break your moral rule. In essence, if you have posited a moral rule, it’s your duty to follow that rule and to not self-justify an exception (especially since we cannot possibly know the outcome of that decision) and that j…[Read more]

Earle Sanborn wrote:
May I ask this

You can take you and your questions to some other forum where people welcome your style of trolling. Or you can show intelle tual respect for the users and the policies of this site. Please do one or the other.