What is God to you?

Sam Vimes

raah! wrote: »

I've never put forward what "my system" is. I merely stated that more openly arbitrary systems are better. I'm comparing the two systems, I addressed all the strong points, you asked me to point out the weak points and I did so. What I did was show say that every kind of behaviour your system prevents, is also prevented by most other systems, but there are things your system doesn't prevent which mind does. This isn't confirmation anything, you've just ignored when I said "every good thign about your system is contained within others".

You're going to make me cry you really are. This is I think the 15th time that you've made exactly the same point so I'm going to try to be really emphatic now in giving pretty much the same response so maybe you'll get the point.

Your system The system you have been talking about throughout the thread, while theoretically preventing more immoral behaviour if you make the demonstrably flawed assumption that everyone will accept your axiom, depends totally on the existence of a sky fairy. My system is better because, while flawed, it will mostly work in the world as it is today, where yours depends on achieving the impossible task of convincing everyone on the planet of the existence of this sky fairy and that your interpretation of his will is the correct one. Saying that your system would work better in if the world was totally different to how it actually is is pointless. I could say that my system would work perfectly if everyone cared as much about random strangers as they do about their family but that's not true any more than it's true to say that everyone believes in your sky fairy so defining a system that depends on either of those things would be pointless. And you may not have noticed this but even people who do believe in your sky fairy still commit immoral acts so even convincing them that the sky fairy exists isn't enough.

raah! wrote: »

I've already said why I don't think using these kind of buzzwords doesn't constitute honest argumentation.

Sorry I'll stop using the correct terms for things and dumb it down lest I come across as superior. You're wrong because burger. Is that better?

Look, just using these terms doesn't entitle you to dismiss my point. If I quoted your whole post and just said "that's a straw man" or "that's confirmation bias" then you could accuse me of using learned off buzzwords but if I show how your argument fits the definition of confirmation bias or a straw man and then use these terms then I'm not using buzzwords, I'm showing how your argument fits the definition of an established cognitive bias or logical fallacy.

raah! wrote: »

Well my last post was a bit muddled. What i mean is that it is not arbitrary for people accepting this set of rules. Their moral system is then not arbitrary. I do not see god as being anyway similar to flipping a coin, but even the coin system would be non-arbitrary to people adopting it. This is because the arbitrariness is pushed back from the definition of good and bad.

Why is that good?
The coin landed on heads.

If you think people have more reason to accept the rules of a coin than they do of God then I can I accuse you of not living in the real world again.


Ok well it doesn't matter really if he had reasons or not. It's an argument from authority which I've stated earlier (which isn't a logical fallacy in this case, which we've also established). I did not put much effort into replying to this because it's very ridiculous. Do you think a coin is a better authority than a deity? (you probably do, but other people don't and they are the ones we are discussion).

All moral systems must start on arbitrary statements. They can be predicated on non-arbitrary ones (like your one based on caring about people etc.). It doesn't make sense to accuse me of something which I've been arguing against this entire time.

What I am saying is, people have reason to follow the "arbitrary" or "random" rules of an all knowing deity. They have reasons to follow them, regardless of whether the deity has reasons for giving them. That isn't relevant to the conversation.

Again you don't seem to be understanding what arbitrary means. God's system of morality can only be said to be an argument from authority if he had reasons. Either god had reasons or he defined it arbitrarily, both cannot be true. If he didn't, if the system is arbitrary as you keep saying, then the fact that it happened to be a god who arbitrarily and randomly assigned rules is completely irrelevant. You say that a god is a better authority than a coin toss, not realising that if god defined the system randomly and without reason, the authority under this system is a coin toss.

A monkey with a pin can randomly assign rules, there is no intelligence required whatsoever, least of all omniscience. The problem here is that you are trying to say that all moral systems are arbitrary and random and cannot have any reason behind them except one defined by a god. His isn't arbitrary and random even if it is. How can you not understand that a system randomly assigned by a god is no different to a system randomly defined by a coin toss or a monkey? Do you know what random means?

Again, either god had reasons, allowing you to make an argument from absolute authority, which mean good and bad are not arbitrary or god didn't have reasons and you are appealing to the authority of a monkey with a pin. Both cannot be true.

raah! wrote: »

Again, hume's gap.

I really don't give a crap about Hume's gap tbh. People want certain things and these wants can be used to derive a system of ethics because because people want the things that they want. You can argue that this is an "ought" and ask why people ought to do what they want to do while I live a pleasant life alongside the people who are willing to live by rules that are compatible with a society. It's an interesting philosophical problem that doesn't actually prevent us defining a system of ethics. Also, you don't seem to have realised that the god based system doesn't cross the gap either.

raah! wrote: »

This completely misses the point. The assumption here is massivelty different to any I've ever used in any examples, but that is an example of deductive reasoning. Just with a faulty assumption.

I gave you an example of verification. You said it was circular, it wasn't. That comparison is completely ridiculous, especially since I haven't ever been arguing against empiricism at all. The assumption that I'm a woman is an empirical matter.

I've already stressed some posts back the importance of choosing your assumptions/axioms.

I just looked at the Wikipedia page for circular arguments (or begging the question). It actually has exactly the argument you gave as an example of the fallacy of many questions, the only difference being that it mentions the death penalty instead of pushing a button to chop someone's head off:

Begging the question is similar to the fallacy of many questions: a fallacy of technique that results from presenting evidence in support of a conclusion that is less likely to be accepted, rather than merely asserting the conclusion. A specific form of this is reducing an assertion to an instance of a more general assertion which is no more known to be true than the more specific assertion:

* All intentional acts of killing human beings are morally wrong.
* The death penalty is an intentional act of killing a human being.
* Therefore the death penalty is wrong.

If the first premise is accepted as an axiom within some moral system or code, this reasoning is a cogent argument against the death penalty. If not, it is in fact a weaker argument than a mere assertion that the death penalty is wrong, since the first premise is stronger than the conclusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

So you must first establish that killing is bad before this argument becomes valid. You can't just assume it

raah!

Sam Vimes wrote: »

You're going to make me cry you really are. This is I think the 15th time that you've made exactly the same point so I'm going to try to be really emphatic now in giving pretty much the same response so maybe you'll get the point.

I'm making the exact same point because you haven't understood it and think you are giving appropriate responses to it. We should leave this as our last time to discuss this. Notice I've been the first one to start saying things like "I've already responded to this" you are the one leading this debate in circles.

Your system The system you have been talking about throughout the thread,

I haven't been talking about any particular system. This suggests you haven't been reading my posts.

while theoretically preventing more immoral behaviour if you make the demonstrably flawed assumption that everyone will accept your axiom

The idea that assuming people accept a moral system when gauging their effectiveness in producing moral behaviour is flawed is quite absurd.

If this is what you think, you should have stopped arguing to defend your system, and gone onto the other thing. We actually did do this, but then you got confused and went back to saying your system isn't worthless.
Also, if yours isn't "something to be accepted" then it's nothing at all. Posts like these show poor understanding of the points being made. They show you forget your own arguments. You've been the one going in circles. You fail to defend a certain point, move on arguing about something else, and then come back to it when you think we've all forgotten that it's already been argued against.

, depends totally on the existence of a sky fairy. My system is better because, while flawed, it will mostly work in the world as it is today, where yours depends on achieving the impossible task of convincing everyone on the planet of the existence of this sky fairy and that your interpretation of his will is the correct one.

This is absurd, I said any openly arbitrary system "at least fifteen times". You actually aren't even reading the posts, when you do read them you seem to deliberately argue against the most ridiculous parts of them (like a joke I would put in at the end, or the tolstoy example). I could nearly go as far as to say that your entire argument int this thread consists of a strawman. Most importantly, you keep turning the thread to religious matters. I don't mind aruing about them, but none of my arguments were cetred around this.

Saying that your system would work better in if the world was totally different to how it actually is is pointless.

You can't just state that everyone in the world operates on your thought-free system. People use the words "right" and "wrong", they use them external from people they know or care about. That "the world as it is" supports your claims is absurd.

I could say that my system would work perfectly if everyone cared as much about random strangers as they do about their family but that's not true any more than it's true to say that everyone believes in your sky fairy so defining a system that depends on either of those things would be pointless. And you may not have noticed this but even people who do believe in your sky fairy still commit immoral acts so even convincing them that the sky fairy exists isn't enough.

Hah, again alot of strawmanning here. But yes , that one would be better if accepted. This is something you do alot, go forward from claims you haven't supported in anyway. And that would be fine, but you claim that they are supported. Which they are not.

Sorry I'll stop using the correct terms for things and dumb it down lest I come across as superior. You're wrong because burger. Is that better?

Well you've missed the point. You're wrong because you've contradicted yourself at least more than 4 times. You've completely misunderstood matters of logic probably another 10 times. There's no reason for me to continue this argument.

Look, just using these terms doesn't entitle you to dismiss my point. If I quoted your whole post and just said "that's a straw man" or "that's confirmation bias" then you could accuse me of using learned off buzzwords but if I show how your argument fits the definition of confirmation bias or a straw man and then use these terms then I'm not using buzzwords, I'm showing how your argument fits the definition of an established cognitive bias or logical fallacy.

And I showed you in each case how you were wrong. Everytime you used them you were wrong.

Again you don't seem to be understanding what arbitrary means. God's system of morality can only be said to be an argument from authority if he had reasons.

Now, this whole paragraph is completely wrong. It's not arbitrart for the people who listen to it. I've always said "the arbitrariness is pushed back". You've obvioiusly never understood that. Also, it shows you don't understand the term arbitrary, nor are you able to logically connect the different levels of reasoning involved in the statement. It doesn't matter if it's arbitrary for a god, but it's not for people. In such a case. You also don't seem to understand the term argument from authority. You also showed earlier you didn't understand my use of it to describe people reading popular science. And respond with "strawmen"

Either god had reasons or he defined it arbitrarily, both cannot be true.

Again, this is a matter of hume's gap. He can say "I'm defining these like this because I love everyone", but he still has to start from scratch in the ought side. It's morally arbitrary. That you see this in the way you do is just an extension of your use of empiricism to try to decide averything.

If he didn't, if the system is arbitrary as you keep saying, then the fact that it happened to be a god who arbitrarily and randomly assigned rules is completely irrelevant. You say that a god is a better authority than a coin toss, not realising that if god defined the system randomly and without reason, the authority under this system is a coin toss.

Even a coin toss is based on a sentence like "what the coin lands on is good". This is far more arbitrary than "what god says is good", because god is often described as the ultimate this or that of goodness. They are both arguments from authority, yes. That doesn't make them identical.

A monkey with a pin can randomly assign rules, there is no intelligence required whatsoever, least of all omniscience. The problem here is that you are trying to say that all moral systems are arbitrary and random and cannot have any reason behind them except one defined by a god. His isn't arbitrary and random even if it is. How can you not understand that a system randomly assigned by a god is no different to a system randomly defined by a coin toss or a monkey? Do you know what random means?

They are arbitrary in their definition. From the very start I've being saying "you can base a system on empathy, but empathy isn't morality". You then came along and claimed to have a completely non-arbitrary system. You went from is statements to ought statements.

I'll use your own example to explain, if that monkey had a pin that was a magical "moral pin", then while the pin would be spinning randomly it would not be crossing hume's gap, now think of a pin that isn't random. The pin itself may be of arbitrary existence, but it's statements are not, they are by definition moral statements. Statements from a deity about good or bad are in the moral domain. They can themselves be based in other things, like your system was, this doesn't matter. But for people listening to them they have a complete non-arbitrariness.

Again, once a definition is picked, it can be supported by things. It cannot be supported before it's picked. It is in this sense that I use the term arbitrary, you can't use arguments to support it before it's chosen.

Again, either god had reasons, allowing you to make an argument from absolute authority, which mean good and bad are not arbitrary or god didn't have reasons and you are appealing to the authority of a monkey with a pin. Both cannot be true.

Both result in the non-arbitrariness of the people who accept the systems.

I really don't give a crap about Hume's gap tbh. People want certain things and these wants can be used to derive a system of ethics because because people want the things that they want.

I only brought it up because you were talking about a completely non-arbitrary system, which was wrong.

You can argue that this is an "ought" and ask why people ought to do what they want to do while I live a pleasant life alongside the people who are willing to live by rules that are compatible with a society. It's an interesting philosophical problem that doesn't actually prevent us defining a system of ethics. Also, you don't seem to have realised that the god based system doesn't cross the gap either.

I never said it stops people from building systems of ethics. You'll notice many of the systems I cited as being superior to yours were arbitraryones. The god based system involves god crossing the gap before people do. People, by using the argument from authority about gods moral knowledge, start safely on the ought side.

I just looked at the Wikipedia page for circular arguments (or begging the question). It actually has exactly the argument you gave as an example of the fallacy of many questions, the only difference being that it mentions the death penalty instead of pushing a button to chop someone's head off:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

So you must first establish that killing is bad before this argument becomes valid. You can't just assume it

Hee

If the first premise is accepted as an axiom within some moral system or code, this reasoning is a cogent argument against the death penalty. If not, it is in fact a weaker argument than a mere assertion that the death penalty is wrong, since the first premise is stronger than the conclusion.

Note my intention was merely to give an example of deductive reasoning. Note also I said "take as your premise that killing is bad" or something like that. Note also, that even if it was a circular argument, then this would be an example of faulty validation by deductive reasoning. Saying there is faulty deductive reasoning kind of assumes that there is proper deductive reasoning. Which is what you were arguing against. Though you seem to have forgotten that. I believe that this is what is causing us to go in circles. You seem to be forgetting what you are arguing against.

Cherrycola

Dog spelled backwards.

Sam Vimes

raah! wrote: »

I'm making the exact same point because you haven't understood it and think you are giving appropriate responses to it. We should leave this as our last time to discuss this. Notice I've been the first one to start saying things like "I've already responded to this" you are the one leading this debate in circles.

I think you're right there. I really don't know how to be any clearer in pointing out that there is no reason for anyone to accept a system that is openly arbitrary and that it makes the terms right and wrong meaningless so I'm not going to try again. You've also gone from actually making arguments to just declaring that I've misunderstood arguments, that I've contradicted myself, that I've missed points, that any time I've accused you of a logical fallacy you've shown me to be wrong and that my whole argument is straw men, all without actually backing any of this up. I have of course done none of those things but I'm beginning a weekend long piss up shortly so I have neither the time nor the inclination to correct you again. I'll go back to my ethical system based on whether something causes harm or not and you can go back to your one that openly admits its completely random but expects people to accept it anyway and we can get on with our lives, that is unless you ever get it into your head that god wants you to kill my children, at which point you'll be morally obliged to do it

raah!

Ok well everytime I've made any statement it's been backed up with a quote of yours, a reference to my original argument, and an explanation of why this or that is contradictory. But it doesn't matter. I do believe we've gone over peoples reasons to accept systems. In my thought, choosing starting points is one of the most important things, if not the most important thing.

Anyway, have a nice weekend