zippy2006
Dragonsworn
Hey Frumius,
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I had a minor disaster. Three very large limbs fell from my Cottonwood tree in the front yard and practically blocked us in the house. I've been dealing with that.
Haha, not a problem. Did you at least get some firewood out of the deal? ..And you'll be delighted to hear that I'm Zippy, not Frumious.
Well, dictionaries tell us how words are commonly used and the vast majority of people hold a deontological view of morality which is wrong. The notion of a duty-based morality is a contradiction in terms. A duty is something that you must do regardless of your thinking and judgment on the matter. To divorce morality from choice is to commit the fallacy of the stolen concept. Are you familiar with this pernicious fallacy? My definition of morality is that it is a code of values to guide one in one's choices and actions, which actions determine the course of one's life. See, my definition includes the essential connection between moral values and life as well as the fact that man must think in order to live and he must act on his judgment and not blindly follow the dictates of authority. On my view morals or values are not handed down by an authority, nor are they dictated by society or your parents. Moral values are some aspect of reality in relation to man's life as identified by an objective process, i.e., one based on facts, and by an objective standard: man's life and its requirements.
Okay, thanks for giving me some background on your moral beliefs. I'm not going to get into a discussion on meta-ethics just at the moment. (FYI: I follow Thomas Aquinas who himself followed Aristotle, not unlike Rand.) I think our discussion focuses in on the relation between 1) Life, and 2) A morality that is based upon life. I will try to stick to that topic so the replies don't get too long.
My point was that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Life is an active process. Life is a process self generated, self sustaining action. Every living organism has a means of survival. For man that means is reason. Plants and the other animals act automatically to gain their values. Man does not. Man is the rational being. That doesn't mean all men are rational, it means that man is a being who survives by thinking and judging. So living for a man means thinking rationally. Reason does not happen automatically, it must be undertaken volitionally. So I think must is the right word to use in that context. I forget that you are probably not an Objectivst so I should have spelled it out explicitly. I've lived with these ideas for so long that they almost seem self-evident. I need to remember that they are not. Man must choose to live as man.
Alright, that all sounds good to me.
Whoa, where did I say this? I said that the choice to live or not is pre-moral which means its outside of the realm of morality. Morality begins with the commitment to live, which means to take such actions that your nature requires if you want to continue living. The choice to live is just that, a choice. It won't give you the values your life requires. That requires thinking, judging, making logical connections, planning, discovering causal connections, and all of the things that you must do to live.
Is my inference mistaken? If the choice to live or not is pre-moral then wouldn't committing suicide be as moral as living your life?
See, either we have some obligation to live or else we don't. It seems to me that you keep vacillating between seeing life as a categorical imperative and seeing it as a hypothetical imperative (even despite your opposition to deontology).
Suppose you are teaching your son morality. You are trying to help him understand the reasons behind your morality:
"Dad, I don't want to eat!" "Son, you have to eat." "Why?" "To nourish your body!" "Why do I need to nourish my body?" "Because if you don't you will lose weight." "What's wrong with losing weight?" "If you lose enough weight your body will shut down." "What's the problem with my body shutting down?" "If your body shuts down completely you will die!" "Is there something wrong with dying?" "Oh, no son, there isn't anything wrong with dying. Living and dying are pre-moral decisions." "Okay... so do I have to eat?"
That strikes me as a pretty anticlimactic resolution to your lesson to your son. I'm sure you can see the problem? It's like you're running a train with a long line of cars and no engine.
I never said that dying is as good as living. Life is a value. In fact it is the ultimate value. Life is the only value that is an end in itself. It is the source of values, so how could it not be a value? But nothing forces you to live and if you don't want to live, no action on your part is required and there's no standard by which to judge such choices. I call it pre-moral because to do otherwise would be to make use of stolen concepts. A rational morality does not permit one to drop context or to steal concepts. I'm simply remaining true to reason by doing it.
If life is a value and an end in itself, then how could it be pre-moral? I realize what you are saying here, but if someone truly doesn't want to make use of stolen concepts then I'm not sure they would be allowed to say that life is a value. I'm not perfectly sure how you define morality--apparently you see it as a closed logical system with life as an axiom--but if life is an end in itself then rejecting life is a blameworthy act which one ought not commit. By modus tollens, if one is "allowed" to commit that act then it is not blameworthy and life is neither valuable nor an end in itself.
I gave it above but I'll do it again here: morality is a code of values to guide one's thinking and actions, which actions determine the course of one's life.
Thanks. Let me try to express this succinctly...
1. Life ought to be lived.
2. All prescriptive claims fall within morality.
3. Morality only begins or applies once one has decided to live.
2. All prescriptive claims fall within morality.
3. Morality only begins or applies once one has decided to live.
It seems to me that you accept [3], deny [2], and deny(?) [1]. I'm honestly not quite sure how you view [1], but [2] is very important and (3 -> (~1 v ~2)). That is, if you accept [3] then you cannot accept both [1] and [2]. It could also be written (3 -> ~(1 ^ 2)). My biggest complaint is that you are rejecting [2]. You want to say that moral choices are important, choosing life is not a moral choice, but choosing life is important/valuable. Yet if choosing life is important & valuable then a prescriptive claim regarding life is derivable, and thus that prescriptive claim about life must itself fall within morality.
Notice how I gave examples of diverging actions that mean the difference between life and death and then you gave an example that is not a life and death choice. Of course it might be a life or death choice if you lived under sharia law or at the north pole.
Well, my point was that if choosing life is pre-moral then beard-shaving is as significant as walking off a cliff. It was an obscure argument; feel free to ignore it.
Then you would be very wrong. All that is proper to the life of a rational being is the good. All that destroys it is the bad. Death is bad if one wants to live.
But you've contradicted yourself. According to your second and third sentences death is bad, period. Yet your fourth sentence adds a qualification: death is only bad if one wants to live. Well which is it? Is death bad always? Or only for those who want to live? Is all that is proper to life good? Or is it only good for those who want to live?
See, there's that all important context that you keep dropping. Good and bad have no meaning apart from the context of a living being's goal to continue its life. The concept of good and bad presuppose the answer to two questions: good for whom and for what purpose. You would never say that something is good but it's good for nothing, just good, would you? Good does not exist in any object intrinsically, nor does it exist in the mind apart from any object. It exists in the relationship between some object or action and the life of a living organism. Just like truth is not in reality apart from the mind nor is it in the mind apart from reality. Truth exists in the relationship between the contents of a mind and the facts of reality. Hence its basis in the primacy of existence.
You are free to take the stance that all good is instrumental, but you can't do so while at the same time claiming that life is an end in itself. That's another contradiction. If all good must be good for some other purpose then nothing can be good in itself, or be an end in itself.
Because one wants to live. Hopefully, after the above, you know that it is not the case that I "don't think life is good". I love life, life is wonderful and rich. I want to live it fully and to the marrow. That is precisely why I need a rational code of values.
Ah, but I was asking whether eating food is good for humans, not whether it is specifically good for you. In your first sentence here you seem to reply that all desire to live, but the following sentences make clear that you are talking only about yourself, not humans generally. Presumably, then, eating is not good for all, but only for those who want to live?
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