Waster

I am not proposing a moral system. Moral relativism is a statement about moral systems in general. That it is irrational to say that other societies are primitive, because they have other moral values. They think the same about us. Only if they want to be right. Otherwise they can believe what they want. Only if you want to debate with me.

I am completely aware of that. Religion has another solution. Create a god that is the ultimate authority where morals come from. If you are not religious, then that is not a solution. However if people commit a murder, then they are still responsible for that murder. There is only not an objective standard to say if that was good or bad.Asking the question what is the point of moral relativism is the same as asking what is the point of life. I only try to accurately describe the world.There is a difference between personal preference and morality though. Preference is about what you like, what you want to choose. Morality is always about behaviour within societies.If a group of people have the same values, there is no moral problem. Problems only arise if people within the same group have different values. What I want for example is that we try to maximize freedoms within a society where everyone is equal. You can build a moral system with that statement at its base. Moral relativism is just a recognition that these moral axioms are optional and subjective. Most systems and religions have implicit axioms so they appear to be objective. Religion already needs to accept a deity, while UPB accepts that self-ownership is normative and descriptive at the same time. But in fact the self-ownership principle is a subjective moral axiom which i can reject if want to. Please show me. What did i miss?

But a lot of libertarian use the self-ownership principle as the basis for their morality: property rights and the NAP. However if you say that it is descriptive, then there is no basis for libertarian morality anymore. How do you solve that problem?

Off course. That's the whole point why i reject objective morality. Because morality is subjective.

As said this is the is-ought problem which is already accepted for 250+ years in the ethical field. Its not that the normative or descriptive is the deal breaker for me. I only say they cannot co-exist.

I was making a quesion and you didnt answer it either. BTW, do not nag me for not answering a loaded question.

Morality is a system of rules that define what is good and what is evil. Formally ethics is the philosophical study about moral systems. However most of the time when we say ethics we mean morality.

Huh? Now the self-ownership principle is suddenly changed into a descriptive statement? Moreover, the fact that i have self-ownership at this moment, doesnt mean that self-ownership is true at all places at all times. The fact that i am typing this only shows that the self-ownership principle is not universally false. Not that it is universally true.

I am not making a normative claim, how it should be. It is irrelevant if the act of coercion is valid or invalid. I am only noticing that not everyone owns himself. Question: Is the self-ownership a normative statement or descriptive statement? If it is a descriptive statement, then yes, slaves are a counter-example. If not, if it is a normative statement, then you cannot use the self-ownership principle as a descriptive statement. Its not that hard. This is the is-ought problem.

Sorry, but this is question begging. You assume already an objective morality, to make an argument for it. You assume that self-ownership is objective moral axiom which i contest. If you are using the self-ownership principle you first have to show that it is a valid principle. I just gave you an example. The moral system where everyone should kill himself. Again. This only works if you are accepting the self-ownership principle, which i dont. Or at least i am skeptical. Which everybody should, because if it is invalid, then the whole moral theory falls down. Sorry for that. But it also applies to how you argue for the self-ownership principle. The assertion is here that the self-ownership is a good principle and that we should obey that principle and take it as our moral starting point. What if we change words from murder to killing? This is a definition issue. Murder implies intention of the murderer. Killing doesnt. Then desire is irrelevant. Which means it can be a universal rule, without leading to contradictions.

I never said that 'better' is meaningless. I only said it was subjective. I am also not saying that it is better to believe in no objective morality. The only thing i said was that you were wrong Dont forget that anyone can claim to have universal morality. A system where everyone should kill himself is also a universal moral system. That doesnt make it objective. UPB is universal but not objective. All moral rules are assertions. That is exactly my point. And I reject those dogma's by saying that X is good, because that is all subjective and personal preference. Your assertion is UPB is a good moral system and we should obey that system.

Slaves have no have self ownership. They are property. That is the definition of slavery. How can you say that you have included the whole universe of possibilities if you dont include not universal statements? Your statements are not mutually exclusive, so the true statement doesnt necessarily need to be included in your list. How can you say self-ownership is a fact when you cherrypick your statements? And i just gave you a counterexample a post above you, so a fact?

I am a moral relativist. So I agree with the OP. Morality is just a bunch of rules to shape the behaviour within a society. There is not really one society 'better' then the other. Better is subjective. Morality is a system. If we have two moral systems, moral system A and moral system B. Then both moral systems can say the other system is bad, wrong and evil. But objectively there is no one better then the other. You can only prefer one subjectively. You can try to create a new system to evaluate moral systems, however that system is a moral system itself and becomes moral system C that has exactly the same problem.

I have struggled with this topic as well. When i had the right definitions and language i was able to figure out and that took me quite some time. The first question is what is property? Property are objects that we have control over. Belongings and having ownership is the same thing. Self ownership means that we have control over our own body. If we speak that is true. We have control over our mouth, our thoughts, our language. But it is not a principle, it is not an axiom. I can give a counterexample. For example when I sleep I dont have control over my body, so I dont really exercise self-ownership at that moment. An even better example are slaves. They have no or very little control over their own body. They are controlled by their masters. So no self-ownership for them. I think where you are struggling is the is-ought problem (Hume). Self-ownership is a descriptive statement. It can never be a normative statement at the same time for a justification for the NAP. This is a weak point of UPB. It tries to wriggle around the is-ought problem, but you cant!

This topic is exactly one of the main challenges of anarcho capitalism. And one of the reason why i changed from right libertarian to left libertarian. This is a similar problem. Lets suppose you have a community that is happy and self-sufficient and sovereign. Because of war or overpopulation some people search for a new place to live. What should you do as a community? If you try to refuse them, then you effectively deny their existence. But you are not a ruler. You can offer to live in your community at the requirement that they are (wage) slaves or serfs. Then we get a feudal system of capitalistic system where some people have more rights then others and some people have to live miserably. Or you let them in as full citizens, but then the well being of the whole community can decrease, especially if there are a lot of immigrants. To me the second one looks the most fair. Especially if they can become full citizens over time when they obey the rules and fit in and they contribute to the community. Poverty and hierarchies are inevitable. Especially if there is overpopulation. An even more radical approach is to be anti-natalist and be pro anti-conception to minimize wars and overpopulation and prevent these kinds of problems. Another way to look at the problem is who has control? If everyone is sovereign - there are really no leaders - then anyone can kill you, can rob you or can enslave you. There is no protection unless you are able to protect yourself. This is what most people think of and are afraid of when they hear the word anarchy. However, if there is some form of authority and protection to protect your property and your safety and slavery is forbidden, then you are not sovereign anymore. There is some form of control and hierarchy. And it might be smaller in size, but it still is a government. There is no question when a DRO becomes a government. A DRO is already a government by definition, otherwise it wouldnt have the control and authority to resolve disputes. I long believed anarcho capitalism was a utopia, but it is an inconsistent idea.

Your story reminds me very much of my own story. Motivation is very important. I became depressed and decided to drop out and find a job. This went terribly slow, but i managed to find a job, i hated it in the end, the boss hated me and fired me. I learned a lot from it and found a new kind of motivation to finish my education. I never enjoyed my study so much. After my bachelor i worked in a big business for a year and hated that and now i am working at a very small company where i am really free to solve the problems i like. I dont say you should take the same path, but you need motivation to put effort in your study. Without those two, you cannot finish your study. The best kind of motivation is internal motivation, if you are genuinely interested in the subjects that are taught. With enough external motivation, because you really want to be independent, financially and physically, then you might be able to collect enough willpower to finish it. But then the goal needs to be really admirable and you need to constantly remind yourself. Reading your story, there doesnt seem to be a deep connection with your parents or other people around you. Therefore it is even more important to find and do the things you love and give value to you. Because the people around you dont bring value to your life. I am a software engineer and i get value by solving problems and being curious and understand the problems of people and shape that to a technical problem and solve that as well. I couldnt find that in my previous job. There were so many rules and contradictory tasks and i had no connection with my colleagues who had not any enthusiasm in their own work. You could talk about everything except the freaking project and organisation where you are working in. I felt a slave. I learned that i could not satisfy my desires in the big corporations. I literally had a conversation where I talked with my manager and that i had to conclude that i didnt have any choices and that my stress and unhappiness was all my problem. And he didnt show any sympathy for it or offered any kind of improvement so i left. Why i wanted to share this story is that if you finish your study, you might also come in the realm of big businesses. For me it was terrible and i really didnt see that one coming. The last thing you want is finishing your study and you arrive in the same situation you are at now. What you can do off course is investigating the kind of jobs that are interesting to you and see what the possibilities are. What kind of companies are out there. What do you need to do there? How will the stuff you learn now be useful? It might give you motivation to study or it might give you closure that you dont want to move this direction at all, so why bother studying? You need hope, you need a future. You need to develop your own goals and really desire them. That is the first step in my opinion. This feels really similar to me. What i wanted to share though is that curiosity for me is what connects me to people. People like to talk about things they know about and they like. Especially if it is about topics that also interests you. I think you are a curious person to. It is always the one to one conversations that gives me the most joy and that are the deepest and gives the most connection on intellectual and emotional level. And by being curious you also quickly find out the really shallow people. Isnt just half the world so shallow that you cannot have a deep conversation with them? And then we have all these kind of stories and jokes and pranks and achievements to fake a kind of connection. Maybe that is why i am so alone. I dont like that world.

Study is an investment. If it costs you more then you will ever get back, then you are spending to much on education. To answer that question yourself, you need to study the kind of jobs you are interested in and the kind of qualifications you need or the different career paths you can take.

Harris has a bigger audience then Stef, so... But all the good arguments are already made. In his FAQ he linked towards some of the criticisms and they are all valid. I had more problems with Harris own rebuttals. One of the counters of Blackford: And this was Harris rebuttal: The mistake Harris is making is that by simply living in the universe we already accept certain principles. We can argue against them, but then we would be false. The scientific method is only a way to find out more about the scientific laws of the universe. There is no one that should accept any value. If you have no desire to understand the universe, you can still discover something if you follow the rules of the scientific method. I see the scientific method as a recipe to truth. If for some reason i dont believe scientists, i theoretically could follow the recipe myself and verify that some claim is true. Therefore it is objective. There are no values or oughts build into the scientific method. And principles like logic is a fact of the universe. However morality is a man-made thought system. Morality does not follow from the principles of the universe. That is the is-ought problem. All moral systems presupposes a kind of good and bad to legitimate their own system. And Harris is doing the same thing by begging the question and defining the good and bad by already assuming a kind of good and bad to begin with.

This story really scares me. I really didnt want to think about the consequences of this issue, because it would make me pessimistic. But then I was thinking that disasters like these is what gives leaders power. If we all close our eyes for issues that make us uncomfortable, then only the few optimists that can maintain an image of certainty will deal with this. And deny, ingore or reduce the problems.

This is a real rambling. If we are not awakened yet, off course we are a slave of our own will and irrationality. But that is a philosophical wisdom already discovered by Socrates. But you are implying that it is not justified to be outraged about our enslavement by our government. How do you reach this conclusion? I see a lot of assumptions in your story and almost no arguments.

To who are you talking to? Because two times you are not answering my question. Do you feel the need to justify your own position?

Nurturing means heritable? I am confused. Nurturing means it appears to be nurturing, not nature.

You assume that autism is not purely nurture. Why is that?

Thanks for sharing. He also has a lot of resources and content that i am gonna check out. He touches it briefly, but it is true that there is a negative judgement aspect to it. I was planning to do something today and i didnt do it. It erodes self esteem. And there is also the wishful thinking part that says i am gonna do it tomorrow. These kind of fairy tales are also not good for your self esteem.

After writing my comment i had another thought. Procrastination is the warfare between the true and false self. If the false self wins, we become narcissistic or psychopathic and we can end up as a politician, a salesperson or a bank manager. If the true self wins we are happy. But if they are in conflict they can send really conflicting signals which can result in procrastination. See points 1 and 2 in my previous post. In the abscence of self knowledge, we dont understand those signals. And even if we process our childhoods, it can still be very challenging how to deal with those conflicting signals. I think procrastination is a really complex problem that needs a lot of self knowledge to solve it.