Irysa Posted June 23, 2015 Share Posted June 23, 2015 (edited) I think I obfuscated things a bit too, sorry. Here's how I view the argument. If we accept a proposition that it is possible for our own intuitive morality to be incorrect (utilitarianism for future generations, God's lack of behaviour WRT natural disasters), what reason is there to ever trust your own intuitive morality? If a utilitarian or theist proposes that a natural disaster has greater utility/higher purpose, then this is not only incompatible with our own general intuition, it is actually wildly opposite. In the case of a theist, they're further burdened by the fact that they believe God is Good, yet their own understanding of Goodness does not seem applicable to the being they believe to be Good. A counterargument (that has been presented) may be that we simply do not know enough in all situations beacuse we lack knowledge that God may have, but since that level of detailed knowledge is unobtainable by an indiviual, there seems nothing for it but to accept that your own morality can and will differ wildly from what is actually good. feplus used the word "probably" in his post explaining why people should save lives if they can, regardless of there being a possibility of it leading to problems. Chiki challenged him to show it was probably a good thing, feplus declined on the basis that "it's intuitive". However, I don't believe that can fly when we're already within a framework that shows our intuitive morality isn't neccessarily reliable. Thus I pressed him to expand his point about why it is "probably" a good thing to save lives. To be clear, I'm absoloutely fine accepting my own intuitive morality regarding saving lives, but I have reasonings beyond that for as to why individual lives are valuable. That however, is a tangent. To give a real world, current example to this, there are many refugees and migrants who are paying vast amounts of money to human traffickers on the north coast of Africa to ship them near the coast of Europe and dump them in the sea to be rescued by European ships. Those ships will dock at a nearby European port, and the people on board have various rights due to their circumstanes of having been rescued. There is an ongoing debate right now as to what needs to be done about this situation. Most agree that all human lives should be saved without question, but there are some people who insist that the fact we're willing to rescue people like this only encourages the act itself, and will escalate it's severity. Currently, many people drown regardless of our efforts, so an increase in scale will lead to even more deaths in the long term. So it's somewhat sustainable that by refusing to rescue people now will save more lives in the future. Edited June 23, 2015 by Irysa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feplus Posted June 23, 2015 Share Posted June 23, 2015 The argument is simple: if your moral paralysis argument holds, all teleological morality is bunk. Most professional philosophers are teleologists anyway. This is because they believe justified knowledge, rather than certain knowledge, about the future is sufficient for taking sound moral action. All this requires is granting basic moral truths, such as saving a life being better in a vacuum than not saving a life. You deny this. There is no vacuum! And since you deny this, no productive conversation can be had. There is no shared point of departure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chiki Posted June 23, 2015 Author Share Posted June 23, 2015 (edited) The argument is simple: if your moral paralysis argument holds, all teleological morality is bunk. Most professional philosophers are teleologists anyway. This is because they believe justified knowledge, rather than certain knowledge, about the future is sufficient for taking sound moral action. All this requires is granting basic moral truths, such as saving a life being better in a vacuum than not saving a life. You deny this. There is no vacuum! And since you deny this, no productive conversation can be had. There is no shared point of departure. Bolded part: Wrong. http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? Other 301 / 931 (32.3%) Accept or lean toward: deontology 241 / 931 (25.9%) Accept or lean toward: consequentialism 220 / 931 (23.6%) Accept or lean toward: virtue ethics 169 / 931 (18.2%) I don't really care if utilitarianism is rejected because of this, personally, since I'm an error theorist. Edited June 23, 2015 by Chiki Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irysa Posted June 23, 2015 Share Posted June 23, 2015 (edited) Likewise, I have no problem throwing out telelogical morality. I loathe utilitarnaism, and all forms of "the ends justifies the means" approaches to morality. However, as opposed to Chiki, I'm something of a deontologist, since I believe in moral absoloutes. Although I suppose the technically correct way to put it would be moral univeralism, but I'm not entirely sure. Edited June 23, 2015 by Irysa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chiki Posted June 24, 2015 Author Share Posted June 24, 2015 (edited) If we accept a proposition that it is possible for our own intuitive morality to be incorrect (utilitarianism for future generations, God's lack of behaviour WRT natural disasters), what reason is there to ever trust your own intuitive morality? In philosophy, almost every argument is based on a priori intuitions. Ethical theories and other philosophical theories are always, or almost always, based on a priori intuitions. Biological ethics is crap for reasons I can illustrate on if you want, but that's going off topic. The "issue" that feplus raises is a little different. He says that people should act despite the threat of moral paralysis, because it's probably right to save a person's life, ceteris paribus (all things remaining equal). For example, suppose two people exist in the void of space, and one is about to die of an illness, and you have a way to save them. You should go save them since there's no negative consequence in doing so. But that's not how it's ever going to work in real life. You'll never know what's going to happen as a result of your actions simply because everything is so overly complicated. And I was obviously right in raising this issue. I also think that utilitarianism can be saved from moral paralysis objections by adopting different versions of it while at the same time denying that move to theists who don't want to be morally paralyzed, but ethics is not my area of specialty, and I'd have to read up on this for a couple hours before making a post. Edited June 24, 2015 by Chiki Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walker Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 Why are you restricting your concept of G-d to your so-called "moralities"? Theists (and I do not enjoy using that term) believe that G-d, being the omnipotent being is the source of all that is right. Also, to an earlier point. Life is a gift, possibly the greatest gift one can receive. G-d puts you in this world with a finite number of years. Why is He not allowed to choose how you exit? Also, realize that your exist is more than merely on this Earth, but also applies before and afterwards. On a side note, it is logically impossible to prove that G-d does not exist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Wright Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 i think it's impossible to scientifically prove god doesn't exist, but not logically. can god pick up something it made infinitely heavy (ie, no one can lift it)? can god move and immovable object? etc. etc. through many of god'd properties. Why are you restricting your concept of G-d to your so-called "moralities"? Theists (and I do not enjoy using that term) believe that G-d, being the omnipotent being is the source of all that is right. Also, to an earlier point. Life is a gift, possibly the greatest gift one can receive. G-d puts you in this world with a finite number of years. Why is He not allowed to choose how you exit? Also, realize that your exist is more than merely on this Earth, but also applies before and afterwards. On a side note, it is logically impossible to prove that G-d does not exist. and if god does something we would consider wrong? are you saying your parents have a right to kill you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blaze The Great Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 Why are you restricting your concept of G-d to your so-called "moralities"? Theists (and I do not enjoy using that term) believe that G-d, being the omnipotent being is the source of all that is right. Also, to an earlier point. Life is a gift, possibly the greatest gift one can receive. G-d puts you in this world with a finite number of years. Why is He not allowed to choose how you exit? Also, realize that your exist is more than merely on this Earth, but also applies before and afterwards. On a side note, it is logically impossible to prove that G-d does not exist. That is a form of morality in and of itself. Look up Divine Command Theory, which was widely discussed in this thread. The basic premise for it is that if God commands it, regardless of other circumstances or what we can tell, it is right. Very controversial, in my opinion, but not totally without merit. Also, despite being a Christian myself, I'm pretty sure that scientifically, if something has not been proven yet, it should be regarded as fake. So therefore, our argument in that case is invalid. Unfortunately. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walker Posted July 24, 2015 Share Posted July 24, 2015 can god pick up something it made infinitely heavy (ie, no one can lift it)? can god move and immovable object? etc. etc. through many of god'd properties. and if god does something we would consider wrong? are you saying your parents have a right to kill you? 1) This was once asked to a wise man I know. The answer was "probably". In other words, just because you can set up a loaded question does not restrict / disprove G-d. So don't worry about it unless you enjoy headaches. 2)Your parents do not not have a right to kill you. This is because G-d created you as well. But there is an inherit responsibility to obey them because they help create you. I do not consider the morality of such actions in a universe where G-does not exist, because I avoid dealing in paradoxes when possible Also, despite being a Christian myself, I'm pretty sure that scientifically, if something has not been proven yet, it should be regarded as fake. So therefore, our argument in that case is invalid. Unfortunately. That is incorrect. Scientific theory states that if something (i.e. a theory) has not been proven, it is not considered true. This is different from being proven false. As for logically, how do you prove a lack of something? No axiom, rule, or law (barring's Murphy's, of course) allows you to prove a lack of something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Wright Posted July 24, 2015 Share Posted July 24, 2015 (edited) 1) This was once asked to a wise man I know. The answer was "probably". In other words, just because you can set up a loaded question does not restrict / disprove G-d. So don't worry about it unless you enjoy headaches. 2)Your parents do not not have a right to kill you. This is because G-d created you as well. But there is an inherit responsibility to obey them because they help create you. I do not consider the morality of such actions in a universe where G-does not exist, because I avoid dealing in paradoxes when possible That is incorrect. Scientific theory states that if something (i.e. a theory) has not been proven, it is not considered true. This is different from being proven false. As for logically, how do you prove a lack of something? No axiom, rule, or law (barring's Murphy's, of course) allows you to prove a lack of something. it's not a loaded question. it's completely fair and tests the validity of something actually being omnipotent. it calls into question whether omnipotence is simply a concept (much like perfection), or if an example of something that has it can actually appear in nature. you avoid dealing in paradoxes when possible? it does one no good to consider only fantasies in which a deity is verifiably real, when in reality it is farthest from that. perhaps it's more prudent to consider the moralities of such a case in reality first, and in hypotheticals next. actually, all of science is attempting to prove things false. what we end up with are theories that people accept. Edited July 24, 2015 by Phoenix Wright Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eclipse Posted July 24, 2015 Share Posted July 24, 2015 Also, despite being a Christian myself, I'm pretty sure that scientifically, if something has not been proven yet, it should be regarded as fake. So therefore, our argument in that case is invalid. Unfortunately. . . .and here I will have to disagree. If something hasn't been proven yet, its truth value is uncertain. Otherwise, there'd be no point in testing out a hypothesis! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blaze The Great Posted July 24, 2015 Share Posted July 24, 2015 And this is just more proof of my vast information overall. Good grief. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tetragrammaton Posted July 24, 2015 Share Posted July 24, 2015 IF GOD exists, she did make Satan and lets Satan do whatever evil GOD allows Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansem Posted July 27, 2015 Share Posted July 27, 2015 wtf lol i thought spam wasnt allowed on this board ^ @proof that god doesnt exist: i agree that it makes logical sense, but must a god be omnibenelovent? if this was discussed already i apologize. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Wright Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 a deity doesn't have to be, but god certainly does (abrahamic god). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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