[KlassWar]

Essentially that means that you only have a duty to respect the boundaries of others, not steal from them, attack them, defraud them. If someone is drowning then you have no duty to aid them although it is "good' were you to aid them. I extend that to all sentient beings on thenasis that if you feel pain then you have an interest in not doing so. I do not give myself easy get out clauses,

If someone is drowning and you don't help, you're contemptible.

Of course you have a duty to help someone in extreme distress when you can do so without risk to yourself! Folks shouldn't just be left to die and rot. Even if you do face risk of injury, you should help. You might not be required to, but you sure as Hell are obligated to call for fucking help.

[Kman]

So why is it OK to kill non human beings but not humans (lets see if you can show any sort of consistency- my bet is that you can't)

I just explained this too you, because allowing the killing of other human beings would decrease overall happiness for the human race since we would all have to be a lot more on guard around others. Like Ayn Rand said it is in our own rational self-interest to not murder and steal from each other.
None of this is needed just because you kill cows because cows cannot retaliate or plan political schemes for the murder of human beings.

Actually they pretty much are, espcially how you phrase them .You have not thought out any sort of moral framework.

Try harder.

I am a utilitarian, I believe in things because they work the best out of all possible solutions, this just so happens to also align pretty much perfectly with libertarian principles like the non-aggression principle or the fact that stealing is morally wrong. My principles do not clash with my utilitarianism like you claimed they would.

Then there is the utiltarian (using the proper meaning of the word) that the sacrifice of a few innocents for the greater good is morally acceptable. For example (true story) the SOE in world war two killed several people who knew the exact date and place of D-Day when SOE knew that most if not all of them were almost certainly no risk at all. The risk of teh germans finding out the details would have put tens of thousands at risk. This was accepted by both the UK and US governments of the time as being unpleasant but necessary.

Even from a utilitarian aspect this can be argued against by saying that allowing the government to murder ''a few innocents'' gives them the authority to rule over the life and death of others and this will eventually lead to widescale murder which is not in the interest of the general population or their own happiness.
Saying government has the authority to kill in the name of the greater good is like saying the Crips gang has the authority to kill a few innocents in order to accomplish what they consider to be good, it is easy to see how giving the Crips the authority to murder people at will could spiral out of control and create a very evil society that does not increase overall happiness.

So essentially you refute your own claim that there is a universal moral standard. All you are really claiming is that YOU have a baseline moral standard. I have baseline standards too just as Kman has no baseline standards- he just justifies his own previously held praxis....indeed this is what most people do.

The point is however that there is an underlying code underneath the chaotic mass of human action, a code which if you follow it increases aggregate happiness in society in the long term. That means that morality is not subjective but a fixed thing that we can discover.

Lots of people have their own moral standards. Some actually rationally think them through, most ,like Kman, don't

Oh please, I have given this more thought than 99.9% of people out there because I actually find these types of philosophical questions mentally stimulating, you are just basically calling me stupid because you cannot understand what I am saying, nobody has ruled that you are an expert in this field and have the capability to judge whether a certain person is stupid or not. Maybe the truth is that you are the one who has not given this enough thought?

No one has ever been able to do that because morality is utterly subjective.

No it is not, there is a code out there for people to discover and if they can read this code they become more happy because being able to read this code that underlines human reality enables you to create a better functioning society that makes people happier.

My primary axiom isa rule constrained reverse utilitarianism aka painism. That 'the good' is that we should take actions that minimise suffering(rather than maximising pleasure) within a framework of basic human rights.

Painism and ''Happinism'' (utilitarianism) are essentially the same thing, what I argue for would increase happiness IE it would reduce pain and misery so the two things are different descriptions of the same thing (I cannot remember the term for this concept).

I extend that to all sentient beings on thenasis that if you feel pain then you have an interest in not doing so.

Why not? Just because someone inflicts pain on an animal does not mean they will do it on a human being and you are a human being so you should not care.

Of course you have a duty to help someone in extreme distress when you can do so without risk to yourself! Folks shouldn't just be left to die and rot. Even if you do face risk of injury, you should help. You might not be required to, but you sure as Hell are obligated to call for fucking help.

You should not be obligated to do anything since that would establish a power relationship between human beings with an entity using force against an innocent person and that easily leads to very bad outcomes.

[houndred]

Earlier you stated that the good is that "we should take actions that minimise suffering". Don't I have a duty to help alleviate the visible pain of another person, rather than merely respect their boundaries?

How to you rationalize the line between what is "good" (helping a drowning person) and what is obligatory (merely respecting other people's boundaries)?

Good questions.

It is about active and passive. You are not duty bound to someone else. I would be delighted if you did help them and I would feel pYou should not be obligated to do anything since that would establish a power relationship between human beings with an entity using force against an innocent person and that easily leads to very bad outcomes.retty comtemptable of you if you sat and watched someone drown when you could easily have helped but I don't think you should be criminally liable (unless you had an implicit duy because you were a person on charge for instance). That is the law in the Uk as it stands.

If someone is drowning and you don't help, you're contemptible.

I personally think so and If you did that I would not have you as a friend but I don;t think it should be legally punishable,

You might not be required to, but you sure as Hell are obligated to call for fucking help.

Once again. The only thing you have to do is not get in the way of a rescue, Such a person whould be highlighted in the national press for people to take note but they are under no direct obligation.

I just explained this too you, because allowing the killing of other human beings would decrease overall happiness for the human race since we would all have to be a lot more on guard around others. Like Ayn Rand said it is in our own rational self-interest to not murder and steal from each other.
None of this is needed just because you kill cows because cows cannot retaliate or plan political schemes for the murder of human beings.

So its all about self interest then. In that case we can still eat the metally disabled because they can't harm us either.

I am a utilitarian, I believe in things because they work the best out of all possible solutions, this just so happens to also align pretty much perfectly with libertarian principles like the non-aggression principle or the fact that stealing is morally wrong. My principles do not clash with my utilitarianism like you claimed they would.

Funny -you claimed to be a moral absolutist before. You don't really understand the difference do you!

Even from a utilitarian aspect this can be argued against by saying that allowing the government to murder ''a few innocents'' gives them the authority to rule over the life and death of others and this will eventually lead to widescale murder which is not in the interest of the general population or their own happiness.

It can -it is a ultilitarian ideal- it is contrary to your moral abolutism or are you not actually a deontolical absolutist anymore.

Oh please, I have given this more thought than 99.9% of people out there because I actually find these types of philosophical questions mentally stimulating, you are just basically calling me stupid because you cannot understand what I am saying, nobody has ruled that you are an expert in this field and have the capability to judge whether a certain person is stupid or not. Maybe the truth is that you are the one who has not given this enough thought?

I am not calling you stupid because that isn't allowed here. I think your comments are similar to that of stupid people. Your comments about Philosophy academics were in particularly stupid -unless they were soley aimed at continental philosophy in which case I agree with you.

Painism and ''Happinism'' (utilitarianism) are essentially the same thing, what I argue for would increase happiness IE it would reduce pain and misery so the two things are different descriptions of the same thing (I cannot remember the term for this concept).

No they aren't at all. They are similar but approach from a different angle

It would be entirely utilitarian to torture a child to death and record it so that sick paedophile sadists could repetatedly take pleasure from watching it over and over again so long as their combined pleasure outweighed her suffering. In my view removing the suffering is more important than giving the pleasure.

Why not? Just because someone inflicts pain on an animal does not mean they will do it on a human being and you are a human being so you should not care.

I am a white person. Just because someone inflicts pain on a black person doesn;t mean they do it one me so i should not care......(or any other combination). My morality is not based on self preservation. It is based on compassion for all sentient beings.

Added to that if you torture an animal I might kill you because I hate people who torture animals. That is not good for your self preservation.

You should not be obligated to do anything since that would establish a power relationship between human beings with an entity using force against an innocent person and that easily leads to very bad outcomes.

I sort of agree with you here

[zachd]

I more or less agree with Eran. I think we very much can and are in fact obligated to cast moral judgments on figures from the past. I don't believe in any form of ethical relativism. In addition to what has been stated by Eran, however, I think it is also important to define by what we mean when we say "the past." History as we are taught and know is not the history of the world. The history we have been spoon-fed in schools and by society is the history of power politics. It is not the history of moral correctness and of those who commit morally correct acts, but is instead the history of conquerers and figures who have fought others to dominate, to win. This is the history we are most familiar with, and the morality of such a history will nearly always be immoral. The history of power as we know it cannot be one of moral legitimacy.

[Potemkin]

History as we are taught and know is not the history of the world. The history we have been spoon-fed in schools and by society is the history of power politics. It is not the history of moral correctness and of those who commit morally correct acts, but is instead the history of conquerers and figures who have fought others to dominate, to win. This is the history we are most familiar with, and the morality of such a history will nearly always be immoral. The history of power as we know it cannot be one of moral legitimacy.

I'm sorry, but the history of power politics is the history of the world. There were many fine and upstanding people in the past who helped to improve other people's lives, but they were not, in general, the people who shaped the course of history. Human history is the temporal development of the struggle for resources, power and dominance between different groups of people, whether nations, religions or classes. It is not a morality tale about nice people doing nice things for each other, with a neat little moral proverb at the end.

[Kman]

Human history is the temporal development of the struggle for resources, power and dominance between different groups of people, whether nations, religions or classes. It is not a morality tale about nice people doing nice things for each other, with a neat little moral proverb at the end.

No that is a subdivision of history, it is not all of it.

[zachd]

Yeah, I essentially agree with Kman here. I think one of the biggest problems with Marxism (which is probably the source of the theory of history you're putting forth), is that it sees itself as being absolute, as being the definitive mode for seeing the world. Of course, I don't completely reject Marx's theory at all, but it would be a grave mistake to view the world only in terms of Marxist historicism.

I agree that the struggle for resources and political dominance plays an important factor in historical development and in present day society, but it seems that you're forgetting that the scope of history itself is infinitesimally complex. The history of political power is just one facet of the past, there is also the history of art, the history of philosophy, the history of disease, the history of agriculture, etc. There are also histories of things that are just so complex that we would be unable to categorize and document them (for example, how the personal course of Julius Caesar's day impacted his ultimate assassination, or how his own psychological nature contributed to his death). In fact, the present day world is so complex that we can't even figure out how to document the present (er, or should I say the more recent past). How are our identities and actions impacted by the development of our personal psychology, for instance, and how much of this psychology is impacted by human biology? For instance, my understanding is that much of Noam Chomsky's work in linguistics sought to establish that humans are preconditioned to think linguistically (I might be butchering his research here).

My point though, however, is that the history of the world is infinitely complex with a number of different historical motivators. The desire for political power is not the only historical motivator. The nature of our consciousness (for instance, our mind being hard-wired to think linguistically), is a major historical motivator. The nature of our biological existence can be a major historical motivator. Even the randomness (or mistakes) of our actions can impact the outcome of history.

[Eran]

zachd is making an excellent (and often neglected) point.

History is not a collection of facts regarding the past. It is a narrative of the past.

That narrative is first constructed near to the actual events, but is gradually evolving in line with current norms. The norms underlying mainstream historic narrative are very far from those libertarians would feel comfortable with.

Two obvious examples:
1. America's "Great" Presidents tend to be those who initiated wars (or American involvement in them), expanded executive power, disregarded the Constitution and presided over prolonged depressions. From a libertarian perspective, Lincoln, Wilson and FDR are some of the worst American Presidents.

2. The Gilded Age is described as one of great human suffering at the lower rungs of society, only corrected through a combination of heroic labor union action and Progressive government policies. Again, libertarian narrative would be very different, highlighting incredible improvement in living conditions due to increased productivity.

[Potemkin]

History is not a collection of facts regarding the past. It is a narrative of the past.

That narrative is first constructed near to the actual events, but is gradually evolving in line with current norms. The norms underlying mainstream historic narrative are very far from those libertarians would feel comfortable with.

Two obvious examples:
1. America's "Great" Presidents tend to be those who initiated wars (or American involvement in them), expanded executive power, disregarded the Constitution and presided over prolonged depressions. From a libertarian perspective, Lincoln, Wilson and FDR are some of the worst American Presidents.

2. The Gilded Age is described as one of great human suffering at the lower rungs of society, only corrected through a combination of heroic labor union action and Progressive government policies. Again, libertarian narrative would be very different, highlighting incredible improvement in living conditions due to increased productivity.

History is not merely a narrative, or as Napoleon put it, "a lie upon which everyone agrees". History is a dynamic system composed of countless myriads of human being interacting with each other, and these interactions obey certain laws of development, just as physical or biological systems do. If they do not obey such laws of development, then history is merely 'stuff that happened', out of which we are free to construct any arbitrary moralistic narrative we please, whether liberal or libertarian. Marxists seek to understand the underlying laws of development of the historical process rather than merely constructing yet another moralistic historical narrative.

[Eran]

History is a dynamic system composed of countless myriads of human being interacting with each other, and these interactions obey certain laws of development, just as physical or biological systems do.

The past is a dynamic system composed of countless myriads of human being interacting with each other, and these interactions obey certain laws of development, just as physical or biological systems do.

History is our narrative of the past. Naturally, we tell the story of the stuff that happened through our human lenses. We impose order on past events, judge them by contemporary sensibilities, and impose personal ethical judgements on them.

[Potemkin]

Naturally, we tell the story of the stuff that happened through our human lenses. We impose order on past events, judge them by contemporary sensibilities, and impose personal ethical judgements on them.

Not if we want to actually understand what happened in the past, we don't.

[Eran]

How else can we understand anything, let alone something as complex as historic human societies, other than through human lenses?

I don't see any alternative.

[zachd]

History is not merely a narrative, or as Napoleon put it, "a lie upon which everyone agrees". History is a dynamic system composed of countless myriads of human being interacting with each other, and these interactions obey certain laws of development, just as physical or biological systems do. If they do not obey such laws of development, then history is merely 'stuff that happened', out of which we are free to construct any arbitrary moralistic narrative we please, whether liberal or libertarian. Marxists seek to understand the underlying laws of development of the historical process rather than merely constructing yet another moralistic historical narrative.

I would go so far as to say that there are no clear laws of development. Maybe if you had some revolutionary insight into chaos theory then perhaps you could say there is a pattern (in that case you should also probably receive a Nobel!), but ultimately, for all intents and purposes there are no laws of development. History has no overarching meaning, but is rather more like a mirror to ourselves, a mirror to contemporary society. We superimpose our own values onto historical narratives that we have created, the historical narratives that we have chosen as most interesting and most "relevant."

Ultimately, Marxist historicism is just a pseudo-science. It tries to apply a scientific method to analyzing the past so that it can in turn make predictions about the future. This, however, is pseudo-science at its worst, in my opinion. First of all, it's impossible to apply a scientific method to the past. For instance, say there is a particular event from the past and we wish to construct a causal law by looking at the event and what led to the event (like the printing-press helped lead to the Reformation, or whatever your claim may be). Even if we establish a causal relationship that seems to be conclusive, ultimately it's just speculation because that event cannot be reproduced by manipulating the same variables in another setting. The world is not a laboratory, but is instead infinitely complex with infinitely numerous variables that cannot be contained or isolated. The world is inherently irrational.

While this might seem like it's leading me to some nihilistic conclusions, I would also firmly argue against that. All that I am really arguing against is using the laws we create out of history to establish overarching theories, like that Marxist one of class warfare. These are not scientifically valid laws (for it is impossible to use the scientific method to test them), these are not laws that can be replicated in the future that in turn lead to a Marxist state. Instead of basing our actions according to the historical narrative we are most inclined to be knowledgable about, we should base our actions on an attempt at rational thought and through a process of piecemeal trial and error. We can use the logic we see in historical narratives to create new ideas about how to solve contemporary problems and try them out with a non-absolutist mentality (I would argue that this is the mentality most contemporary economists have), but to create such an absolute version of history that Marx theorized is absurd, unscientific, and detrimental to social progress.

History (or I should say the past here) in an objective sense is merely "stuff that happened." There are few things more detrimental to society, in my opinion, than using the "laws of history" to prophesy the future.

[Smilin' Dave]

History is not a collection of facts regarding the past. It is a narrative of the past.

That narrative is first constructed near to the actual events, but is gradually evolving in line with current norms. The norms underlying mainstream historic narrative are very far from those libertarians would feel comfortable with.

That history in a narrative is not in itself a justification to pass contemporary moral judgement on events. Again we come back to the simple fact, which is that not all history is written to the same end. You might think your particular intended goal is better, but that would need to be demonstrated.

How else can we understand anything, let alone something as complex as historic human societies, other than through human lenses?

You don't have to judge it with your point of view, you try to judge it with theirs.

[Eran]

You can do both. You can say: "Action X was in line with the moral standards of the day, though today it would be frowned upon, as it had the result of causing the deaths of 10,000 innocents".

[Smilin' Dave]

Doing both makes for a narrative with less substance. Taking your example:

Action X was in line with the moral standards of the day, though today it would be frowned upon, as it had the result of causing the deaths of 10,000 innocents

You've told me nothing about the standards of the day in that passage, instead you seemingly only introduce it to slam it from your modern perspective. The opposite could also be argued, you haven't really explained why the deaths of many would be unacceptible by today's standards.

And what if I didn't want to read your half and half narrative? Or read your particular moral judgement? It's hard enough judging the use of evidence and logic of a historians reconstructed narrative without having to pick your way through their philosophical scheme.

You can do both, but I fail to see why there is any obligation to do so. What do you think judging the events of the past by today's standards actually achieves?

[Eran]

What it achieves is avoiding undue glorification of past leaders. We celebrate Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon and Lincoln, despite all three being massive war-mongerers and mass murderers.

If we stopped idolizing history's mass murderers, perhaps we will marginally reduce the likelihood of their modern imitators trying to do the same.

[Smilin' Dave]

What it achieves is avoiding undue glorification of past leaders. We celebrate Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon and Lincoln, despite all three being massive war-mongerers and mass murderers.

If we stopped idolizing history's mass murderers, perhaps we will marginally reduce the likelihood of their modern imitators trying to do the same.

Presenting history as it occurred and in context is not glorification.

A lot of glorification of 'great leaders' you will read in history books is actually written towards the same basic goal as your own: the author has taken it upon themselves to write a narrative with a moral/political/whatever lesson at the end for the reader. Perhaps the author lionises the great leaders as a case study in the triumph of exception individuals. Perhaps they have a political axe to grind, and the leader is a representative (or just a stand in) for an ideal. Perhaps the punchline is simply the old "the ends justify the means". But fundamentally the undue glorification is for the same reason as what could be dismissively called undue demolition of past leaders.

[Eran]

Presenting history as it occurred and in context is not glorification.

There is no such thing as "history as it occurred". History is always a selective narrative of past events. It is always framed, always prioritised, always told with a specific perspective. History is not facts.

But fundamentally the undue glorification is for the same reason as what could be dismissively called undue demolition of past leaders.

I agree. My point, I guess, is that those who today glorify past leaders are wrong not to include an examination of the actions of those past leaders through a modern moral perspective.

[Kman]

You don't have to judge it with your point of view, you try to judge it with theirs.

Why? If they did it they obviously thought it was ok and moral, seems like a pointless exercise to judge people according to whether they thought it was moral or not.

I agree. My point, I guess, is that those who today glorify past leaders are wrong not to include an examination of the actions of those past leaders through a modern moral perspective.

But that would **shock horror** involve making a moral judgement and moral relativism is rife in modern corrupt universities.