[ingliz]

validity is demonstrated by the necessity of their assumption.

The Trinity

The problem is that the Bible speaks of God in his oneness in the same way as it speaks of the 'persons'* in their threeness, as unique subjects of the divine act. If God is not a person in his oneness then we end up with a form of tritheism, even if it is disguised as a tritheism in community.

* Using Boethius' definition of a person, namely that: a person is an individual substance of rational nature.

[Victoribus Spolia]

The Trinity

The problem is that the Bible speaks of God in his oneness in the same way as it speaks of the 'persons'* in their threeness, as unique subjects of the divine act. If God is not a person in his oneness then we end up with a form of tritheism, even if it is disguised as a tritheism in community.

* Using Boethius' definition of a person, namely that: a person is an individual substance of rational nature.

I have given my proof for the Trinity in the Immaterialism thread, so I am not getting into it here.

I used St. Augustine's understanding of the relation of Essentia and Personae or Essentia and Substantia as he argued when analyzing the formula of Nicaea in his work De Trinitate as the basis of my argument.

How does this have to do with my axioms in the debate post for objective morality?

[ingliz]

How does this have to do with my axioms in the debate post for objective morality?

You can’t have an objective morality without a god.

[Victoribus Spolia]

You can’t have an objective morality without a god.

I'm glad you think so, ultimately you may be right.

@Potemkin and I have agreed via the terms of the debate that if morality can be demonstrated as logically required, that such would be sufficiently objective and universally binding.

Apparently you disagree, but I guess that only means that if you were to be challenge on whether morality were objective, you would prefer to go straight to the question of God's existence?

If that is the case, I make my case for God's existence in the immaterialism thread. I'll duke it out with you there if you want to go down that road.

[RhetoricThug]

@Victoribus Spolia

Forum image Ingliz believes in the Marxist notion that morality is a ruling class ideology. Marxists attack God because it threatens dialectical materialism and their socioeconomic critique of Capitalism which is built around efficient cause (an axiom of causality) and the idea that morality is subjective. This is a curious thing, because Communism as a political theory is fundamentally a moral argument for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

-KM



Marx, being frustrated with human mythology, decided to create his own myth. Such is life. You did IT again Universe, you cosmic joker! Send me a phantasmagoria of mystery and revelation (you can't have one without the other)!

[ingliz]

@Potemkin and I have agreed via the terms of the debate that if morality can be demonstrated as logically required, that such would be sufficiently objective and universally binding.

I doubt it.

objective and universally binding.

Even when morality has been shown to be nothing more than a culturally conditioned response and people’s moral judgments can be shifted by simply altering their emotional states?

[Victoribus Spolia]

Even when morality has been shown to be nothing more than a culturally conditioned response and people’s moral judgments can be shifted by simply altering their emotional states?

It has not been shown as such. The very claim itself is begging the question and even if it weren't it would be the naturalistic fallacy.

Likewise, the truth of a proposition is not negated by the adherence it enjoys, or the lack thereof.

[Rich]

I am trying to have only two formal debates, one with Potemkin and one with Saeko.

I think you're on the wrong web site. PoFo doesn't do formal debates. Its regulated anarchy here.

[ingliz]

I can demonstrate this same morality from plain reason which is objective and that has been done in this thread.

No, you cannot.

Reason is evaluatively neutral (Prinz 2011).

At best, reason can tell us which of our values are inconsistent.

monogamy is the only rational contract for heterosexual relations

When studying culturally independent societies, anthropologists have found that over 80% permit polygyny (Murdoch 1981, White 1988).

It has not been shown as such.

No?

Simone Schnall et al, Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment (2008)

Simone Schnall et al, With a clean conscience: cleanliness reduces the severity of moral judgments (2008)

It is a fact that disgust is associated with appraisals of moral transgressions and that this emotion influences moral judgments.

The very claim itself is begging the question

No.

I offer an evidential fact and ask a question.

and even if it weren't it would be the naturalistic fallacy.

It would not.

We must recognize that while not all natural facts are relevant to ethical or moral discourse, all facts that are relevant to ethical and moral discourse will nonetheless be natural facts.

the truth of a proposition is not negated by the adherence it enjoys, or the lack thereof.

The truth of a proposition is not negated by the coherence it enjoys within your belief system, or lack thereof. All that is needed for coherence is that a statement or proposition must be consistent with a suitably defined body of other propositions, and this body needs to be consistent within itself.

In coherence theory - the best one can hope for is a coherent view of nature since one can never be sure that perception and reality are concordant - it is implicit that more than one truth is possible in our attempts to know the world.

[Victoribus Spolia]

I think you're on the wrong web site. PoFo doesn't do formal debates. Its regulated anarchy here.

Eventis Stultorum Magister

No, you cannot.

Reason is evaluatively neutral (Prinz 2011).

At best, reason can tell us which of our values are inconsistent.

Reason can establish the truth of conclusions from valid premises, thus establishing the conclusion.

This is how propositional logic works actually.

No?

Simone Schnall et al, Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment (2008)

Simone Schnall et al, With a clean conscience: cleanliness reduces the severity of moral judgments (2008)

It is a fact that disgust is associated with appraisals of moral transgressions and that this emotion influences moral judgments.

Exactly, these are individual opinions and judgments, morality is obligation, this does not demonstrate that origination of "ought" comes from cultural conditioning as you claim, only that people's feelings as to what constitutes an ought is often emotional and baseless. I would agree, but that does support what you actually said.

No.

I offer an evidential fact and ask a question.

Yes, because your evidence and claim assume that morality is (inter) subjective in both the premise and conclusion of your argument.

your question was obviously rhetoric, and if sincere, still assumed contended premises (hence a complex question).

It would not.

We must recognize that while not all natural facts are relevant to ethical or moral discourse, all facts that are relevant to ethical and moral discourse will nonetheless be natural facts.

Sure it would, because you claim is that morality IS culturally conditioned response based on evidence (observed events); hence, you are defining morality (ought) based on what you observe people doing via empirical research (is); which is the naturalistic fallacy.

The truth of a proposition is not negated by the coherence it enjoys within your belief system, or lack thereof. All that is needed for coherence is that a statement or proposition must be consistent with a suitably defined body of other propositions, and this body needs to be consistent within itself.

Red herring.

This is not a debate about the coherence v. correspondence theory of truth. Even if it was, coherence is necessary for any syllogism to be valid even if the truth of the conclusion fits the definition of a correspondence theory of truth (corresponding to an actual state of affairs).

The claim I have made is that the moral values of my ethical system can be demonstrated from undeniable axioms of the human experience via propositional logic, and logic itself being universally binding for human intelligibility, thus imply that the moral conclusions of my system are likewise universal and objective is scope unless someone can demonstrate otherwise.

Feel free to do so, or quit wasting my time.

[ingliz]

Red herring

My belief system is just as coherent as yours.

My conclusion, even if the truth of it corresponds to an actual state of affairs, as valid .

All that is needed for coherence is that a statement or proposition must be consistent with a suitably defined body of other propositions, and this body needs to be consistent within itself.

So, I would contend that if my arguments are invalid, so are yours and your 'Truth' is no more a truth than mine.

Reason can establish the truth of conclusions from valid premises, thus establishing the conclusion.

This is how propositional logic works actually.

A truth not the Truth; logic does not deal with truth in the absolute sense

Stop wasting my time.

[B0ycey]

VS will claim he doesn't understand you now @ingliz. He does that when his arguments unravel.

[SolarCross]

I read through your entire post before starting my response, a couple of times, and I see a pattern that starts here, and will be addressed throughout. This amounts to a concession. You first concede my point with "I suppose," but then complain I am being too logical, or too obtruse, or too philosophical, or too abstract.

Thats not an argument, and in case you didn't know, my argument is intended as a semi-rigorous deductive and logical argument in a philosophical debate concerning the universal, abstract, and objective nature of morality.

I don't care if you think my argument is too logical or too philosophical and so if you really intend to help me out by giving my argument a stress-test, then assess its logical strength and leave it there.

Given what you said above, you seem to concede the point. Thats good enough, your remarks of disdain towards intellectualism are quite irrelevant.

Also, on fetuses, they are not ispo facto self-owning; however, their rights can be derived by the relation of potential and actual personhood (which is also in my original argument).

What I acknowledge is that the act of argument and action is a display of self-ownership and that a response to argument and action is also a display of self-ownership and a recognition of self-ownership in the other.

However:

1. We cannot safely derive a universal assumption from instances of argument alone because too many self-owning entities do not necessarily make anything resembling arguments in their entire lives. Action serves better in this regard.

2. Moreover while it might be said that argumentation implies a mutual recognition of the fact of self-ownership for those parties in dispute, nothing can be said regarding the right to self-ownership for any party to the debate from this. And it is a right to self-ownership not the fact of self-ownership that you want to prove.

Argument is analogous to action: If we are engaged in a duel to the death, then clearly by parrying your blows and attempting to slip attacks through your guard I am recognising that you are a self-interested agent in control of your body, that your self-ownership is a fact, but by the fact that I am attempting to kill you I am not displaying a recognition of your right to self-own just the opposite. By engaging in debate, then clearly by parrying your claims and slipping attacks through your axioms, I am recognising that you are a self-interested agent in control of your body, that your self-ownership is a fact, but by the fact that I am trying to defeat your argument then I am not displaying a recognition of your right to exercise your self-ownership in that way.

It is fallacious to infer rights from recognition of possession. It is also unsafe to derive universals from specific instances.

If you are making a counter-assertion regarding self-ownership, which contains its own definition, then i need those definitions clearly set forth. Like I said, I think i know what you mean regarding self-will, but self-power will need unpacked if you are serious about pursuing this line of thought. I do think this will take us into the weeds though.

Well I'll try not to take us "into the weeds" here then.

The Axiom's self-evident nature does not derive from its being observed, but from its being assumed in reasoning. That an axiom has observable qualities is secondary. For instance, the law of identity is self-evident, but it is not derived from observation (in spite of the fact that all observed entities are instances of the law of identity in being differentiated).

Hence, this is no small matter. Empirical ethics are always fallacious as they attempt to derive both rights and obligations from observation. I am deriving rights and obligations from axioms and inferrable laws irrespective of any synthetic qualities. The gap is as wide as rationalism and empircism, as deontology and utilitarianism, as night and day.

Perhaps although an assumption's relevance to reality depends upon it being observable in reality. In platonic space a sguirgly might be said to have the property of furgly and we could derive some pretty inferences from that but its relevance to real space would be zero. Hoppe's argumentation ethics in being rooted in praxeology was at least attempting to be relevant to reality.

No disagreement really. Very well stated and presented.

Thanks

This is the same thing you did earlier (and will continue to do below) where you don't deny the logic of the system, but claim it doesn't matter because of "muh force."

This would be like saying that I won the debate because I shot you.

I did not negate the validity or invalidity of your statements just because I shot you.

But under your argument, this would have to be the case, but that is clearly absurd. the truth of gravitational theory is not dependent on those supporters of such you happen to let live.

Same thing here, given the "undeniable axioms" and "presuppositional inferences" self-ownership is logically established no matter how many self-owning people you kill or make into slaves.

You may not like this and you may even say in a nihilistic way "it doesn't matter if its true if I have all the guns," but the truth pf the system mattering to you personally is quite irrelevant.
---
Same issue as above, the truth of a position or an argument is not invalidated by you killing the one arguing it.

If that were the case, you would be wrong just because I shot you and you would have to say the communists were right and their victims wrong, simply because the oppressors killed them and enslaved them.

Either way, this is not an argument and your conclusion does not follow from your premise.

You are making unsafe generalisations again because there are some arguments you can win exactly through violence. If I made the proposition that I am immortal then by killing me you have exactly proven my proposition to be incorrect. So far all you have done is prove that the fact of self-ownership not the right to self-ownership may be demonstrated in certain instances. That the fact of self-ownership can be negated through violence is relevant counter argument to the implied claim that the fact of self-ownership is universal. If you were to engage in argument with a thoroughly broken in slave you could not take his counter arguments as evidence of the fact of his self-ownership.

---------

Initially I only looked at your first section of your first post, the part attempting to derive the right to self-ownership from argumentation ethics, and so far that is all we have been discussing. I have now read the rest of your argument and I am sorry to say section 1 on argumentation ethics was the strongest part. Would you like me to fully stand in for @Potemkin and discuss the rest of your propositions?

[Victoribus Spolia]

VS will claim he doesn't understand you now @ingliz. He does that when his arguments unravel.

Please show me where my arguments are unraveling.

Also, when I say I don't understand what your saying, i ask you to clarify, if you can't, that tells me you never knew what you were talking about in the first place.

A common problem for you.

My belief system is just coherent as yours. All that is needed for coherence is that a statement or proposition must be consistent with a suitably defined body of other propositions, and this body needs to be consistent within itself (Mine are).

If my premises and conclusions are invalid, so are your's.

Your Truth is no more a truth than mine.

Lets put it to the test.

Present your argument for the contrasting moral system, and I will refute it.

logic does not deal with truth in the absolute sense

Would you say this statement is true? absolutely?

1. We cannot safely derive a universal assumption from instances of argument alone because too many self-owning entities do not necessarily make anything resembling arguments in their entire lives. Action serves better in this regard.

If a being is not capable of any meaningful communication whatsoever in the establishing of a proposition as either true or false, then they cannot be regarded as having self-ownership in any meaningful sense per my definitions.

Action is not sufficient because even bacteria act, but that understanding is not likely compatible with your definition of self-will and self-power as a criteria, hence you have incompatible standards, this is besides the fact that regarding all acting-agents as having self-ownership would imply absurd conclusions, which it surely would.

2. Moreover while it might be said that argumentation implies a mutual recognition of the fact of self-ownership for those parties in dispute, nothing can be said regarding the right to self-ownership for any party to the debate from this. And it is a right to self-ownership not the fact of self-ownership that you want to prove.

Depends on what you mean by rights, if you mean a guarantee that no one will violate your right to X, well then there is no such thing as rights at all under any system of rights, no one claims under any school of rights that they cannot be violated by others who disregard them, if you think that is what I am arguing, you are gravely mistaken.

The standard my opponent agreed to in the debate was logic as universal and objective; hence, if moral principles could be established as logically derived, and therefore both universal and objective, then he must agree to accept them.

That is all I aimed to demonstrate regarding "rights," their existence as logical realities, the violation of which would be, by definition, an act of irrationality. Once again, this does not mean people won't violate your self-ownership, appropriation, private property, etc., only that a person's claim to such rights is rationally beyond contest. That is all that I intend to demonstrate.

You also make this claim again here:

You are making unsafe generalisations again because there are some arguments you can win exactly through violence. If I made the proposition that I am immortal then by killing me you have exactly proven my proposition to be incorrect. So far all you have done is prove that the fact of self-ownership not the right to self-ownership may be demonstrated in certain instances. That the fact of self-ownership can be negated through violence is relevant counter argument to the implied claim that the fact of self-ownership is universal. If you were to engage in argument with a thoroughly broken in slave you could not take his counter arguments as evidence of the fact of his self-ownership.

As I said above, if you are using "rights" to mean something that no one can violate, then you are saying something that no one who has ever advocated for in any theory of rights, ever. Having a right does not magically grant you invincibility, they can be violated. The universal and objective nature is what makes them inalienable, but inalienability is not the same as inviolability (as long as by inviolability, we mean someone can deprive you of exercising what is rationally inalienable), which is where you seem to be confused.

So what are rights and how are they distinguished from natural facts (like your might-makes-right theory)?

Reason demands that people have certain logically deducible rights; to life, liberty, and property. These rationally inferred principles are not what we see in nature (might makes right), hence they cannot be merely stated as "empirical facts," hence what do we call them if not facts? We call them rights.

My argument's conclusion is what makes a right a right versus a fact of observed human activity.

This will also serve as an answer to your duel example, which operates under the same lack of distinction.

However, as it stands, you have already conceded in this post and in others that the logic of necessarily presuming self-ownership is not something you can deny. Since that is all I claimed to prove, and that such a logical truth is to be dsitinguished from the fact of might-makes-right, I think it would be best for you to just concede this (which you basically did already), so you can move on and test my inferences for original appropriation, NAP, and private property (and thus Anarcho-Capitalism) from self-ownership.

We've discussed this enough, I want to see you critique my other inferences from self-ownership so I can assess their actual strength as well.

Perhaps though an assumptions relevance to reality depends upon it being observable in reality. In platonic space a sguirgly might be said to have the property of furgly and we could derive some pretty inferences from that but its relevance to real space would be zero.

If they are established as undeniable logical truths that are universally applicable to all mankind, you can't get much more relevant than that.

It is fallacious to infer rights from recognition of possession. It is also unsafe to derive universals from specific instances.

I have done neither.

Initially I only looked at your first section of your first post, the part attempting to derive the right to self-ownership from argumentation ethics, and so far that is all we have been discussing. I have now read the rest of your argument and I am sorry to say section 1 on argumentation ethics was the strongest part. Would you like me to fully stand in for @Potemkin and discuss the rest of your propositions?

I suppose you are referring to the Pronatalist Master Argument?

I actually think section 2 is my strongest as I am most familiar and well-seasoned in its use. I have debated it with others many times in many places with satisfying success (it has also been the cause for me getting the most censure in academic institutions, forums, etc., because of its "offensive" conclusions )

I have even debated it on this forum, but I don't think we (you and I) have ever debated it as of yet.

So sure! Lets go for it.

Give me your best shot, this is my baby (no pun intended) as its an argument that I uniquely developed, not based on any formal argument given by anyone else (though it was influenced by the ideas of certain Theologians).

[Though technically my arguments in both threads are all sorta my own creation even if based on the works on others. You should debate my argument for Trinitarian Phenomenal Idealism as well when you get the chance.]

I LOVE debating this stuff.

Thanks for indulging me.

[B0ycey]

Also, when I say I don't understand what your saying, i ask you to clarify, if you can't, that tells me you never knew what you were talking about in the first place.

Are you seriously asking me to spoon feed you into understanding that if there is no consensus on the existence of God, then his morality has to be subjective.

Ok. Whatever.

[Victoribus Spolia]

Are you seriously asking me to spoon feed you into understanding that if there is no consensus on the existence of God, then his morality has to be subjective

Please do, because the claim is bullshit.

Let me do some feeding to you.

Your argument is this, based on your above statement;

P1: Popular-Consensus-Having is Moral Objectivity.

P2: God's-Existence is Not Popular-Consensus-Having.

Corollary to P2: God's Morality is Not Popular-Consensus-Having.

C: God's Existence (Morality) is Not Morally Objective.

Restatement: Divine Commands are Subjective.

Critique:

Definition One: Naturalistic Fallacy: The inferring of obligation from observation, ought from is, the attempt to determine morality from human behaviors, actions, or stated opinions as empirically assessed.

How It Obtains: Your argument claims that morality is objective IF it has a consensus of human assent. Thus, morality (ought) can only be inferred from observing consensus among humans (is).

Thus your argument is fallacious given definition one, of the naturalistic fallacy.

Definition Two: Argumentum Ad Populum- The claim that a proposition is true if a majority of people believe in it, or inversely, that a proposition must be false if a majority of people do not believe in it.

How It Obtains: You have argued that the truth of the proposition "Divine Commands Are Objective" is false because a majority of people do not accept it (appeal to popular consent).

Thus, your argument is fallacious given definition two.

Please explain to me how your fallacious argument "unravels" mine

OR

If I am misrepresenting your position, please spoon-feed me because apparently your reasoning is "so far above mine." I must just not be as educated in logic and propositional reasoning as you are.

[ingliz]

Would you say this statement is true?

I will go with Wittgenstein.

Logical truths are just vacuous sentences, senseless nonsense, that we find useful to manipulate (see Tractatus 6.54).

To think, the mental effort invested by its readers to recognise that the Tractatus is nonsensical; on a book that has no significance beyond the fact that it is nonsense!

Wittgenstein was a card .

[Victoribus Spolia]

Logical truths are just vacuous sentences, senseless nonsense, that we find useful to manipulate

Surely you don't take this claim seriously?

You do realize the implications of denying logic, right?

At this point, your just trolling.

In fact, I think you've been doing that for sometime now.

[ingliz]

Surely you don't take this claim seriously?

Wittgenstein believed that all philosophical and metaphysical sentences are just nonsense pseudo-propositions (that is, nonsense pseudo-object-sentences). Senseless tautologies that tell you nothing about the world.

[B0ycey]

I do like how you spoon fed my own argument back to me VS and completely put your own principles to it and ignored mine.

My argument is much more simpler than that btw. It is quite simple actually. Morality is the principle of right or wrong. So is an opinion. For something to be objective, it must be adhered/accepted by everyone. So for God's law to be objective, everyone must agree with it or it is opinion whether to it has any principle to it. The acceptance of God is not absolute. So his law has to be subjective.