an extremely sarcastic post of half WP users

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twoshots
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17 Jan 2008, 5:03 pm

sartresue wrote:
Having said this, there are laws (not always effective, and always need revising) in place that prescribe a minimum of rules that we must follow in order to prevent society from collapsing into complete anarchy.


But the interesting question is by what means did the whole acquire the right to punish the few in order that they might enjoy their society? Is not society built on the backs of the deviants, so to speak? Sacrificing this few for the masses?

It is often taken for granted that we should behave in a way that will make society profitable, and then prosecute those who do not conform to this code. This "right" of the people is rationalized in many and myriad ways, each system as much of an arbitrary construct as the last.

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Well, right, I tend to disagree with the concept of moral relativism because to me every system must either have or reject truth. Moral relativism tries to do both.


Hmm. I've always been confused by this. Can moral relativists really keep themselves separate from moral skeptics without encountering inconsistency? It is after all quite easy to say "X and ~X are right" provided we simply define "right" as a certain class of behaviors which is valued by at least one society. No subjective value stance needs to be taken in this case.


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Anubis
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17 Jan 2008, 6:09 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
snake321 wrote:
Ok, if I'm wrong, then what gives you the right to victimize innocent people or innocent sentient creatures? I see nothing that could rationalize barbarism as such.....

Who says that there needs to be a right to do or not do anything? Couldn't ability be ability and "right" be denounced as a religious term or a matter of faith?
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People can rationalize anything, slavery, halucaust, that doesn't mean it's right. Such people who adhere to what I guess you'd call moral relativism, more than anything theyr just professional spin doctors. So are far right and left people actually.

Yes, they can rationalize anything, but the real question is how do we determine right and not right. Your intuition and that alone? How is your intuition a special source of validity? People have intuited slavery, holocausts and things of that nature as well, and to say that your intuition is inherently better than there is to invoke an unprovable claim.


Generally, laws and ideas of right and wrong, are not just religious terms.

People can rationalize all sorts of things, but in this they also can be hypocritical. People rationalize crimes against others, by making up reasons, just as you can do with anything if that is what your emotions drive you to. Humans are not neccessarily rational. Many simply follow their "hearts", etc, after basic instincts. Emotion is a powerful driving force. At the same time, emotion itself can also be a rational reason! Do we sit back and watch people die, to emotional pain, or do we act upon it, and feel better for doing the "right" and selfless thing?
Just as people use emotions to justify selfishness and actions which cause harm and emotional distress to another person, who has not previously done any harm to the aggressor. The agitator, who attacks another person at random, might not be sick in the head, but they certainly have disregard for the life of another, and emotion drives people to punish such criminals.


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17 Jan 2008, 6:12 pm

question everything, believe nothing!


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Awesomelyglorious
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17 Jan 2008, 8:11 pm

Anubis wrote:
Generally, laws and ideas of right and wrong, are not just religious terms.

No, right and wrong is a religious idea. Law isn't a religious term. This all goes back to the fundamental issues with the nature of morality or "oughtness" and its unprovability and even its removability via rationalist reduction.
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At the same time, emotion itself can also be a rational reason!

Assuming an egoist naturalist position, it can be argued as so, however, that does not establish a universal idea of right but rather destroys most morality and states human society as having a fragmented nature as everyone has different emotional drives.
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Do we sit back and watch people die, to emotional pain, or do we act upon it, and feel better for doing the "right" and selfless thing?

Well, that depends on where our emotions are guiding us. If we are the inflictors of pain then watching people die is the best end from our view. Really though, your position is that what is best is what man wants.
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Just as people use emotions to justify selfishness and actions which cause harm and emotional distress to another person, who has not previously done any harm to the aggressor. The agitator, who attacks another person at random, might not be sick in the head, but they certainly have disregard for the life of another, and emotion drives people to punish such criminals.

So, basically egoism attacks egoism, but right and wrong do not exist. Ok, I could attack egoism itself, but really given that egoism here could even be taken as tautological to mean all ends, I really don't care so much. You have killed right and wrong and made justice merely the interest of the stronger, so removing things is perhaps a waste of time because the system is practically nihilistic anyway.



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18 Jan 2008, 3:17 am

Well? How do you know?


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snake321
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18 Jan 2008, 12:30 pm

Who_Am_I wrote:
Well? How do you know?


I shouldn't even dignify this with a response, technically on some god-like scale nothing is definate, but that's just taking s**t way too far. If your 5 senses tell you the computer is there, then for us, the computer is there.



twoshots
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18 Jan 2008, 12:37 pm

Descartes saw doubting his own existence as a valid inquiry. Hence he produced "Cogito ergo sum." These are not meaningless questions just because you found an answer which you found satisfactory.


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monty
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18 Jan 2008, 1:20 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
No, right and wrong is a religious idea. Law isn't a religious term. This all goes back to the fundamental issues with the nature of morality or "oughtness" and its unprovability and even its removability via rationalist reduction.


Says you. But law does define right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. It can do so from a religious or secular approach.

You keep referring to your arguments of 'oughtness' but I don't think you have persuaded anyone here.



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18 Jan 2008, 1:50 pm

twoshots wrote:
Descartes saw doubting his own existence as a valid inquiry. Hence he produced "Cogito ergo sum." These are not meaningless questions just because you found an answer which you found satisfactory.


Well then Descartes is a total ret*d. Because as for our reality, we do exist. We see, hear, feel, taste, and smell, and we experience, the world from what we CAN OBSERVE. I'm not talking about some god-like realm of super philosophy s**t that goes way above our understanding on what's around us. I can OBSERVE, that FOR OUR STATE/PLANE OF REALITY/EXISTENCE that I AM TYPING ON THIS COMPUTER, I CAN OBSERVE THAT TO ME AND OTHERS, I EXIST, THIS COMPUTER EXISTS. Therefore, i can conclude the same for other people and their computers and hince, hacking or sending a virus to someone's computer would be wrong, because I wouldn't like it if someone did that to me.



monty
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18 Jan 2008, 2:13 pm

Tell me, Chuang Tzu, when you dream that you are a butterfly floating across a field, are you? It can seem very real at the time. And when you wake up and realize that being a butterfly was just a dream, how do you know that the human part is real, and not another nested dream??



snake321
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18 Jan 2008, 2:16 pm

Your missing the point, if I am a butterfly in a dream, then in that dream I will live as a butterfly, because in that dream the reality is that I am a butterfly. In our human realm, the reality is that I am a human. This relativity s**t it ret*d.



snake321
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18 Jan 2008, 2:19 pm

I mean your delving into "what ifs" to justify ignorance of what IS real, according to our perception here (ie the perception we actually live in).



monty
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18 Jan 2008, 2:29 pm

Well, I haven't seen anyone here say that everything is a dream, therefore, Auschwitz was ok. Clearly, according to the currently agreed upon schema, it was horrendously evil.

Weren't you the guy pushing the 'matrix thing' where what everyone thinks is real is an illusion ??



twoshots
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18 Jan 2008, 5:35 pm

snake321 wrote:
twoshots wrote:
Descartes saw doubting his own existence as a valid inquiry. Hence he produced "Cogito ergo sum." These are not meaningless questions just because you found an answer which you found satisfactory.


Well then Descartes is a total ret*d. Because as for our reality, we do exist. We see, hear, feel, taste, and smell, and we experience, the world from what we CAN OBSERVE. I'm not talking about some god-like realm of super philosophy sh** that goes way above our understanding on what's around us. I can OBSERVE, that FOR OUR STATE/PLANE OF REALITY/EXISTENCE that I AM TYPING ON THIS COMPUTER, I CAN OBSERVE THAT TO ME AND OTHERS, I EXIST, THIS COMPUTER EXISTS. Therefore, i can conclude the same for other people and their computers and hince, hacking or sending a virus to someone's computer would be wrong, because I wouldn't like it if someone did that to me.

:lol:
Yes. Descartes was a moron. :roll:
Thinking like that led to things like the epistemic standards of science.

And absolutely the observation of human beings as being empirically similar to myself implies nothing about their internal reality; see the thought experiment known as "p-zombies".


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snake321
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18 Jan 2008, 7:07 pm

Twoshots, your missing one important thing here, so I'll repeat what I posted:

Your missing the point, if I am a butterfly in a dream, then in that dream I will live as a butterfly, **because IN THAT DREAM the reality is that I am a butterfly**. In our human realm, the reality is that I am a human. This relativity sh** it ret*d.

Even if our reality is a dream, we live in this dream, so to us it is not a dream, it's real. Repeat: Even if our reality is a dream, we live in this dream, so to us it is not a dream, it's real



snake321
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18 Jan 2008, 7:15 pm

monty wrote:
Well, I haven't seen anyone here say that everything is a dream, therefore, Auschwitz was ok. Clearly, according to the currently agreed upon schema, it was horrendously evil.

Weren't you the guy pushing the 'matrix thing' where what everyone thinks is real is an illusion ??


Yes I do believe our world is a matrix, but not to the extent that we should treat physical objects as if they don't really exist in our plane of existence. I am certain that my computer and I both physically exist, at least on my plane of existence, which is all that matters to me. Why would some alternate plane of reality mean s**t in this plane of reality? I mean, even if this were a dream state? And I have no knowledge or evidence of any other plane of reality.
What I was talking about being unreal were systems, the money system, religion, political ideology, things that ultimately controls peoples' minds and keeps people from asking rational questions. I never argued that we should pretend any of these things do not exist --to us-- (even if our reality were a dream, to us it's reality), I just argued that they are systems of individual supression and complacency.