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Post by KipEnyan on Jun 11, 2010 20:18:57 GMT -5
"While I agree that we can absolutely say that certain actions are bad/evil/immoral" Could you give me a couple of examples of these actions? Throwing acid in girls' faces... rape... Rape isn't evil. Rape is a sexual act of dominance for the pleasure of the rapist. Nothing evil about that.
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Post by chelseeyuh on Jun 11, 2010 20:20:48 GMT -5
People are generally the result of their environment, so if a person does something which we consider evil, but his environment says is acceptable, we can't blame him specifically. (watch 10:20 of that TEDTalk). Evil actions are the result of ignorance. So "evil" people aren't so much evil as they are ignorant If people are the result of their environment and what they think is good is based on what their environment says is good, then how can anyone objectively consider whether something is good? In that TEDtalk the guy used how women are treated as an example and compared how they are treated in the middle east with how they are treated in the western world. Now I support women's rights and I feel they should be able to do anything they want provided they don't interfere with the well-being of someone else, however I cannot deny the influence my environment had in developing this view; I believe this because it was what I was taught by the leaders of my environment, not because of any logical reasoning on my part whatsoever.I would say that the logical reasoning against the mistreatment of women is that women are not inferior to men and deserve to be treated as equals. Raping, murdering, and torturing women does not constitute equality. To say that his argument holds no logic is to blatantly say that you don't agree that women are equal to men. I'm indignant to hear that someone would say something along the lines of, "Well, maybe women deserve to be tortured." No. Absolutely not. We're all humans; we all deserve the same treatment. To insinuate otherwise is absolutely disgusting.
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Post by swan on Jun 11, 2010 21:55:46 GMT -5
...is that women are not inferior to men and deserve to be treated as equals. Why? What makes women equal to men, or anyone intrinsically equal to anyone else for that matter? We may all be humans but does that mean we should be treated as such considering we are unequal when it comes to other things like skill, intellect, physique, personality, etc? I would continue but it is tangential and not relevant to my point. Objectively speaking it is not clear cut, which is why morals are not objective (at least in terms of why a person should hold one value over another). In terms of something like empathy yes people should absolutely be treated equal, but why should someone value empathy? My point is not that empathy is worthless, I'm simply saying that, logically speaking, there is no reason to value empathy over something like cruelty. Now this is what I meant when I said: since I value empathy because I was taught to do so, not because it is the logical thing to do. EDIT: To be perfectly clear, what makes a value good and what makes a value bad is subjective and therefore which values are worthwhile are not determined logically. However you do not need objectivity or logic for a value to be worthwhile.
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Post by Ryan on Jun 11, 2010 22:04:33 GMT -5
metoyou - You picked a very harsh definition for opinion - but I think you misunderstand it. Yes opinions are based in lack of evidence to say that a statement is true. That is because an opinion is a subjective perspective. The truth of an opinion changes from person to person, and therefore no opinion can be called true. That is what the definition implies. You cannot hold an opinion about a fact (there is a purple dragon in space - but there's not, this statement is a fact statement - one that is false) you can only hold opinions about subjective perspectives (this room is too hot, this dish tastes good, my God loves me). These last few are examples of opinions, the one you provided is not. Each of these last few is a perspective on a subjective idea. Regardless - opinion/perspective - morals are subjective and therefore so is evil. WE can never define what makes an act evil - it's subjective, YOU can define it, and I can define it, but what acts are evil change from one person to the other. So, Kip, Chelsea was correct when she said that rape is evil, in the moral code that she follows, rape is profoundly immoral (and by definition evil). However, to you, rape is not apparently evil, it does not violate your moral code, and is not profoundly immoral. So rape is not evil for everyone, but when Chelsea says rape is evil, she is not wrong. As far as the other debate that seems to be forming, I would suggest a different discussion thread (Women/Men to be treated as equals). and again metoyou The probability of life existing on this planet is as negligent as the chance that a purple dragon floating in space - and yet we are alive, it is as foolish to assume that a purple dragon exists as it is to assume that one doesn't. (you're better off not worrying about purple dragons )
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Post by chelseeyuh on Jun 11, 2010 23:33:51 GMT -5
Swan, you act as if we have no choice in whether on not we conform to our society's ideas. If you're able to acknowledge that your opinions have been formed by society, then you're able to take a step back from society's ideas and question what you have been told, so it is possible to be objective. You're correct to say that we aren't all equal in that we all have different abilities and some people are more gifted than others, but that wasn't what you said before. You said that more than half of the world's population is intrinsically inferior to the rest of the population because of their sex. Why can't we use our logic to say that we all belong to the human race and are all essentially the same? Yes, we all differ from each other and have different abilities, but the differences aren't so different--or so gender-specific--that we should divide ourselves.
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Post by swan on Jun 12, 2010 0:50:38 GMT -5
Swan, you act as if we have no choice in whether on not we conform to our society's ideas. If you're able to acknowledge that your opinions have been formed by society, then you're able to take a step back from society's ideas and question what you have been told, so it is possible to be objective. Fair enough, but I still think that people can never truly escape the influence of society once they have received its influence. Think of it this way, which is better empathy or cruelty? To me the choice is obvious, and I would imagine that most people would agree that empathy is superior. Now if I was to abstract myself from what society deems is better and truly try to consider which is better I imagine I would choose empathy. Now is this because empathy is better or simply because I have been conditioned by society to believe empathy is better? I can't really tell. It may seem insignificant or even irrelevant when considering something specific, but when considering either what to value or whether we can objectively determine what is evil, society's influence is important to consider. EDIT: I am not entirely confident that this answer conveys the point I'm trying to get across so to add to it: When you consider something like a problem or a value abstracted from society, can reason or logic give you your answer? Can reason or logic tell you what to value? If it can't then how do you make that decision in a way that would be objective? (hopefully this makes sense and I'm not being too abstract, because it almost feels like I'm asking questions about nothing) You said that more than half of the world's population is intrinsically inferior to the rest of the population because of their sex. Why can't we use our logic to say that we all belong to the human race and are all essentially the same? Yes, we all differ from each other and have different abilities, but the differences aren't so different--or so gender-specific--that we should divide ourselves. I never meant to insinuate this and I did acknowledge that I support women's rights and for the record I believe that women are equal and should be treated as equal. I was just trying to use this topic as an example to illustrate a point and the only reason I choose this topic was because it was the primary topic discussed in the TEDtalk you posted. What I didn't like about that video was how Sam Harris simply dismissed a particular view, claimed morality was objective without providing a solid reason (at least to me) and then linked it all to science in a way that I felt was kind of absurd.
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Post by chelseeyuh on Jun 12, 2010 10:23:57 GMT -5
I think it's possible to escape society's influence. Think about slavery: There was once a time when everyone believed that whites were superior to blacks and it was completely acceptable to own them as property. That was the widespread belief until someone used logic to see that we're all people and therefore all equal. That person wasn't influenced by his society, because that wasn't what his society believed. If it weren't possible to escape society's influence, any given society's ideology would never change, and this clearly isn't the case. And it's true that Sam Harris never gave a convincing argument why his morals were rights, but in all fairness TED speakers have a very limited amount of time and his point wasn't to make a case for what he thought should be our morals and why. The point was that not all perspectives of morality are relevant, which I think he supported very well. He said that we should have experts on morality, not that he himself was one.
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Post by swan on Jun 12, 2010 13:19:20 GMT -5
The point was that not all perspectives of morality are relevant, which I think he supported very well. Not relevant to what, a given society's like America? Or not relevant because they are undesirable? I will certainly allow that both are valid reasons to dismiss a particular perspective, but that doesn't mean that what you are left with is objective morality. This is my biggest problem with the Sam Harris video (along with his questionable reasoning although I will grant that he was under a time constraint). In order for morality to be objective there must be clear cut logical reasons to adopt one value over another, since values are the foundation of a given moral perspective. Now the problem is that logically speaking, you can't derive a value from a fact, or in other words you can't derive an ought from an is. For example "giving money to a homeless man is kind" that is a fact, but that doesn't mean you should value kindness, because with that logic you could say "punching homeless people is unkind therefore you should value unkindness". Just because a certain scenario is a certain way does not mean you ought to act that way and morality is concerned with how you ought to act and consequently, what you ought to value. Now there are clear cut, logical ways to act once you have chosen your values, but choosing those values is ultimately subjective. Where society's influence comes into play is in the selection of these values. Since there is no logical reason to prefer one value over another, I would imagine people would stick with the values they were taught growing up since that is the basis for their moral compass. In order to completely disregard the basis you are given by society you would have to do the opposite of what society deems is right, but even then you're just doing the opposite of what society says and therefore still influenced by it. The point is that you can't make these choices of what to value in a sort of vacuum. Now I'm not trying to suggest that you have no control over your actions but that what you think is good will always be influenced by society at least to some extent. (EDIT: Perhaps a better way of describing this would be by trying to come up with a completely new way to make judgements, a completely new scale that no one has ever used before. I suppose it is possible just not likely, which is what I'm concerned with.) Now in the slavery example, I would argue that the person who is going against slavery is not doing the complete opposite of what society says. This person's society would appear to value equality among a select group of people, and all this person does is extend that value to include everyone as a whole not just a select group, so the value never changes, it's just the way the value is implemented that changes. So if evil is the opposite of what is good, and what is good is based upon what we value, how can we objectively say what is evil if we can't objectively say what is worth valuing?
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Post by chelseeyuh on Jun 12, 2010 20:23:17 GMT -5
Not relevant to anything. Morals should be the same for everyone everywhere, not just a particular culture. I guess you could say not relevant because they're undesirable, but they're undesirable because they're wrong. In the slavery argument, before slavery was outlawed, all people were equal, because slaves weren't even considered as people. So it wasn't expanding the idea from "all white people are equal" to "all people are equal;" it was more like "all mean are equal," to "blacks are people are should be treated as such."
I'm really against this whole, "different cultures have different ideologies, so they can think whatever they want and it's OK" way of thinking. I understand that you're influenced by your society and you can't help that, but that's not a legitimate reason to dismiss actions which are blatantly evil. We know they're evil because we can logically reason and explain why they are evil. With a lot of arguments in favor of things we would be against, that isn't the case. That's why our morals and idea of evil is right and there's isn't. Blah.
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Post by swan on Jun 12, 2010 21:17:30 GMT -5
We know they're evil because we can logically reason and explain why they are evil. With a lot of arguments in favor of things we would be against, that isn't the case. That's why our morals and idea of evil is right and there's isn't. Blah. I disagree with this but I just don't see us resolving this debate anytime soon. You believe that morality is objective and that we can therefore tell what is evil regardless of perspective, and I believe morality is subjective and that evil is dependent on perspective. Fundamentally speaking we are just too far apart, so I think it's best we just agree to disagree , although I suppose if you wanna continue debating I'm willing to continue as well, but I don't think we're gonna reach an agreement otherwise. Although for what it's worth I'm not a big fan of relativism either, I just haven't heard a very convincing argument against it.
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Post by KipEnyan on Jun 13, 2010 16:19:05 GMT -5
Chelsea Like Swan said, you can't assume there are objective morals. You would say something like murder is wrong, right? Take this example: A woman is psychologically tortured by a man for her entire life, until one day she snaps and kills him. The courts and the rest of the public know nothing about the torture she endured, and sentence the woman to life in prison, in addition to being harshly and publicly vilified. Who is wrong here? From the standpoint of someone with strong and very defined morals this may be a bit of a conundrum. However, from the standpoint of someone thinking logically, the answer is obviously and unequivocally, nobody. Unless you believe in some supernatural being that has laid out a rigidly defined, unwavering code of right and wrong for the universe, the only frame of reference that can be universally employed is that which can be empirically measured and observed. Therefore, in the aforementioned case, it was simply one collection of chemicals affecting another collection of chemicals. Or, more specifically, one human being ending the life of another human being. But what does it matter? Why is human life "good"? Why is life in general good? Being as there is no objective answer to that, there is no objective answer to murder, or anything else for that matter, being "wrong".
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Post by chelseeyuh on Jun 13, 2010 22:40:56 GMT -5
You asked what I would say is evil and I intentionally left out murder for that very reason. Actually, I had said "bad/evil/immoral," and referenced that. I think the problem with this argument is mostly in language. I think maybe "evil" is a bit harsh. I would say that murder is wrong no matter the circumstances, but it's not necessarily "evil." I shouldn't have generalized from the beginning. Phail. >_<
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Post by KipEnyan on Jun 14, 2010 10:37:54 GMT -5
But even still, why is murder inherently "wrong"?
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Post by chelseeyuh on Jun 14, 2010 12:31:49 GMT -5
I believe that life is a natural right. No one should be allowed to take that away.
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Post by krzych32 on Jun 14, 2010 14:05:53 GMT -5
Chelsea, going back to your "slavery" argument. Its not like one person just decided said that slavery is wrong and everyone started to support him. The North was agains slavery basically since the very beginning, and they didn't won the Civil War thru arguments, they went down south and forced another group of people to fallow THEIR morals. But you don't see it that way (most likely) because the society does not look at it this way. Also, what people don't understand is that slavery, at its very basic, is an alternative to killing. Kind of a lesser evil in war. Yet, even after ending the slavery, we still go to war with each other, so did the society really change?
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Post by chelseeyuh on Jun 14, 2010 14:11:15 GMT -5
I wasn't talking about the transition from slavery to non-slavery. I meant that there was a time when people generally believed that blacks weren't human and didn't deserve rights equal to those of whites. But someone disagreed with this reasoning and started to spread the idea that blacks and whites are equal. The first people to believe this weren't influenced by their society because that's not what their society believed. And I don't understand your "it's the lesser of 2 evils" argument, but it seems irrelevant to the topic of evil anyway, so whatever.
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Post by krzych32 on Jun 14, 2010 14:22:38 GMT -5
I wasn't talking about the transition from slavery to non-slavery. I meant that there was a time when people generally believed that blacks weren't human and didn't deserve rights equal to those of whites. But someone disagreed with this reasoning and started to spread the idea that blacks and whites are equal. The first people to believe this weren't influenced by their society because that's not what their society believed. And I don't understand your "it's the lesser of 2 evils" argument, but it seems irrelevant to the topic of evil anyway, so whatever. But the North was against slavery from the very start, its not like they really changed their mind at one point. And the "lesser evil argument is not mine", this is just what slavery was at its very core. You go to war, get some prisoners, and you have a choice to kill them or to enslave them, slavey was they "lesser evil".
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Post by chelseeyuh on Jun 14, 2010 17:48:09 GMT -5
We had slaves shipped from Africa... We could have just not done that altogether... There is no other evil... And the North wasn't totally against it from the start. Even though they didn't believe in slavery, they weren't necessarily for equality either..
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earth
Moon
the awesome
Posts: 245
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Post by earth on Jun 14, 2010 18:44:38 GMT -5
that depends on so much. how we see life, what we see as good or bad, our morals, why we have them. i think that should be an option, that it depends on a lot. i personally would say yes, but "evil" is just so undefined and can be explained in so many other ways that im unsure.
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Post by KipEnyan on Jun 14, 2010 19:14:03 GMT -5
I believe that life is a natural right. No one should be allowed to take that away. But if someone else doesn't believe that life is a natural right, and that it should be allowed to be taken away, who is to say they're wrong?
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