PsiPog.net
View topic - Your ethical standpoint
PsiPog.net Forum Index » Telepathy and Empathy » Your ethical standpoint
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Next
| Your ethical standpoint | |||||||||
| Author | Message | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Posted on Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:09 pm | |||||||||
JOHNNYBEGOOD
Joined: 17 Jul 2006 |
"It follows that only after a corpus of laws has been established can there be any talk of 'right' and 'wrong'....To speak of right and wrong per se makes no sense at all. No act of violence, rape, exploitation, destruction, is intrinsically 'unjust,' since life itself is violent, rapacious, expoitative, and destructive and cannot be conceived otherwise."
---Friederich Nietzsche, "The Geneology of Morals" |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:34 pm | |||||||||
Elliptic
Joined: 19 Jan 2006 |
I, too, am a fan of Nietzsche, but a quote taken out of context proves very little. I recall that passage. This was during Nietzsche's attempt to disclaim the ethics of former philosophers. Don't take it out of context - he does later go on to describe his own ethic. "A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:19 am | |||||||||
JOHNNYBEGOOD
Joined: 17 Jul 2006 |
|
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:31 am | |||||||||
Heolstor
Joined: 17 Feb 2006 |
since we're talking about ethics here..here's my point of view.. whether we do it for a reason big or small, tps is still considered unethical.. let me make this a little easier to understand.. like lying, whether you lied about going to bed early or whatever.. it's still lying.. and stealing, even if you stole just one sheet of paper.. it's still stealing.. of course, justification is never left out.. you'll tell yourself "nah, it's just a paper.. what's the guy gonna loose?".. well, it's still stealing..
although in terms of what i said above.. i still do tps.. and no matter the reason i don't find it unethical nor do i find it ethical.. |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 9:29 am | |||||||||
WhiteRaven
Joined: 13 Jan 2006 |
"Before you do, I would like to let you in on a secret: the arguments you post here are called strawmen. You have created a false point (one which I have never argued) and then soundly defeated it (because, well, you made the point, if you can't defeat it, there's a problem). It only proves that you're able to employ logical fallacies in your rhetoric. And now on to your examples... "
actually, I'm using definitions other people have given me. "For the hell of it, I'm going to respond to this with a Kantian perspective. Kantian rationalist philosophy would argue instead that something is good if (and only if): 1) the maxim of the action is to become by your will a universal law of nature. 2) humanity is being used, in your person or by the person of another, always as an end and never as a means only. This is considerably more advanced than your relatively weak strawman - though the points are debatable, they are in no way "stupid."" true, they are not stupid. *looks up the word maxim* although the first one looks like gobbledygook, but Maybe I just don't understand what's being said "I might argue, for example, that because of the complex nature of any given situation, a person is "right" to act best in the interest of a majority of sentient creatures. That is to say that we might not ever be able to do right to all persons, but in situations which involve many (for example, something that will affect a city or populous group) it is always best to act in the interest of the majority of sentient beings." *looks up sentient* so eating cows and drinking their milk is evil, because millions of cows are killed each day, and although it benefits us, there may be more cows killed than people need. "Actually, if you want to get down to the meat and bones of the issue, evil wouldn't necessarily be a hatred driven action. For example, I might hate disease. I might love killing bacteria. So your strawman is simply too weak for me to defend. However, I again wouldn't accept that as a viable ethic. See the Kantian example above, or, hell, for something you'd like more, look into Randian Objectivism, which is a rational egoist ethic arguing that that which is most rational is that which is most ethically correct, and it is always ethical to act in one's own self interests. Now, of course, that particular ethic is problematic because it is always possible to claim someone is acting in their own best interest through altruism, but, again, I needn't defend an ethical viewpoint in order to see it as valid (indeed, if I was able to defend rational egoism, I would use that, rather than my own rationalist utilitarian ethic)." hm... |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:05 am | |||||||||
Elliptic
Joined: 19 Jan 2006 |
But not me. You used someone else's arguments to make my position seem weak.
That seems likely. It also effectively disproves the idea that all ethical discussions are "evil."
The popular online dictionary at http://www.dictionary.com defines "sentient" as "having sense perception; conscious." We then follow on to "conscious," which is defined as "having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thought." Cows do not meet the criteria of consciousness, because cows do not demonstrate the complex cognitive capacity necessary for metacognition. Again, with the strawman...I never said anything about cows, but I admit, that would have been a pretty neat way to defeat my argument if I had.
Hm...indeed. Just because you haven't put much into a strong definition of ethics doesn't mean that the field itself is wrong. |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:27 am | |||||||||
WhiteRaven
Joined: 13 Jan 2006 |
"Cows do not meet the criteria of consciousness, because cows do not demonstrate the complex cognitive capacity necessary for metacognition. Again, with the strawman...I never said anything about cows, but I admit, that would have been a pretty neat way to defeat my argument if I had."
cows are creatures, and they have sensory perception, they can feel, sniff, taste, see, hear. how could any animal with A BRAIN not be aware of its existence? and if it didn't recognize it's environment it couldn't eat or drink or anything, So I do think cows are conscious, and they have sensory perception, so I do believe they are sentient, granted I haven't proven that they are conscious, but... I don't know how to prove that... |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:48 pm | |||||||||
Elliptic
Joined: 19 Jan 2006 |
I know it's hard to believe, but not everything with a brain uses it the same way. Cows don't have the higher functions that humans do. One thing they lack is the ability to calculate, and to reason. Another, very important thing they lack, is language, and the ability to think about things in abstract. While some animals other than humans do have these faculties (e.g., crows, dolphins), not many animals do. And, likewise, I would consider that killing an intelligent animal such as a crow is "worse" than killing a cow - crows are able to conceptualize death. Simply because you don't understand the various factors that go into consciousness, sentience, and rationality does not mean that those factors don't exist. Not all brains are created equal. |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 7:26 pm | |||||||||
Roy
Joined: 27 Nov 2005 |
Oooh, is that moral relativism right there? No moral absolutes on killing, it's better to kill the less intelligent animals? Should the same go for humans? The mentally deficient should face capital punishment even if they don't understand their actions? 
|
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 7:36 pm | |||||||||
JOHNNYBEGOOD
Joined: 17 Jul 2006 |
|
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 7:44 pm | |||||||||
Roy
Joined: 27 Nov 2005 |
My post wasn't directed at you, however you're entitled to your opinion. It was directed toward Elliptic because, if I recall correctly, he's aruged against moral relativism in his earlier posts and stresses that there must be moral absolutes. Favoring the death of one animal over another animal, or one person over another strikes me as moral relativism. |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 7:59 pm | |||||||||
Elliptic
Joined: 19 Jan 2006 |
Actually, not at all. Moral relativism is the belief that what is "moral" and "good" varies from person to person, or from culture to culture. A relativist would claim that, for example, ritual sacrifice of children might be wrong in America, but if we were Incan, then it would be "ok" to do so. The idea that one animal or thing is more worthy than another of moral consideration is not relativist at all - I would claim that a human is greater than a cow in every culture - even cattle worshipping cultures, and that if those cultures were killing humans in place of cattle, then they would be morally wrong, regardless of their own self-belief. The Inquisition, though perpetrated by a church and believed to be morally right at the time, was not, regardless of the endorsement of the acts by their culture. That's what moral absolutism means - not that things can't change situationally (in fact, I believe that it is necessary to know the ends of an act before we can determine if the means are moral). |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Tue Jul 25, 2006 6:22 am | |||||||||
WhiteRaven
Joined: 13 Jan 2006 |
"I know it's hard to believe, but not everything with a brain uses it the same way. Cows don't have the higher functions that humans do. One thing they lack is the ability to calculate, and to reason. Another, very important thing they lack, is language, and the ability to think about things in abstract. While some animals other than humans do have these faculties (e.g., crows, dolphins), not many animals do. And, likewise, I would consider that killing an intelligent animal such as a crow is "worse" than killing a cow - crows are able to conceptualize death.
Simply because you don't understand the various factors that go into consciousness, sentience, and rationality does not mean that those factors don't exist. Not all brains are created equal." I realize that, however, all animals are self aware, if they weren't, they wouldn't whine when you step on their feet, because they wouldn't be aware of the pain. Does a cow cry out or Kick you back if you kick it in the head? |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Tue Jul 25, 2006 12:36 pm | |||||||||
Elliptic
Joined: 19 Jan 2006 |
Not true. Automatic responses to pain do not imply self-awareness. Whining and responding to painful stimuli serve more purposes than the result of self awareness. Even unintelligent animals response to nociception - that does not mean they necessarily feel "pain" the way we do. There is a nice article about that here. Though the article is about fish, it can be extrapolated on to other lower animals, and the information about pain and nociception is very nice. |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
| Posted on Tue Jul 25, 2006 6:24 pm | |||||||||
WhiteRaven
Joined: 13 Jan 2006 |
"Automatic responses to pain do not imply self-awareness. Whining and responding to painful stimuli serve more purposes than the result of self awareness."
True, crying out may startle the attacker, causing it's attention to drop, or in the most risky scenario, cause a bigger attacker to come along, and yeah, that last argument didn't make much sense, probably because I was sleepy. but I've asked several biology teachers, and they agreed that all mammals and some birds are, in fact, self aware, though not necessarily very smart. self aware and intelligent are two very different beasts. self aware simply means that the creature knows that it exists. intelligence involves high level thinking, all animals think, of course, but high level thinking is limited to humans, and the occasional monkey. Of course, speaking of morals again, Humans are the only animals that use them, how odd... |
||||||||
| Back to top | |||||||||
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Next
PsiPog.net Forum Index » Telepathy and Empathy » Your ethical standpoint
All Content, Images, Video, Text, and Software is © Copyright 2000-2006 PsiPog.net and their respective authors. All Rights Reserved.
You must agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to view this website. Click here to contact the webmaster.