Kevin Beal

It is not true that a thought process cannot condition reality. Certain actions are caused by thoughts, specifically willed behavior, which ethics is supposed to describe. You can see this in declarative and commissive speech acts. Their conditions of satisfaction (a promise carried out, a declaration creating the reality it describes, etc) are such that it is the thoughts that impress upon the world, through our action (reality). A moral proposition contains within it the assertive (it is true that...) and an implied commissive speech act (I represent this moral proposition and am committed to it's veracity, in part through my own actions). By saying that a proposition is moral or immoral, you simultaneously commit yourself, and by committing yourself through words, but not representing it through action, you have committed a moral hypocrisy (or inconsistency). If you accept this, you accept UPB, and you cannot sustain moral nihilism. In order for my argument to be comprehensible, the semantics have to have been communicated and as part of that, a commissive. We all commit ourselves in debate and are thus subject to UPB. If you debate, if you understand any of my argument, then your statements are subject to UPB.

You could break all the rules, like writing in all the margins, writing sideways, doing a journal that is told completely through drawings. Whatever feels constraining, break it! A journaling revolution! It sounds to me like journaling has to be a particular way for you, and in a way that doesn't feel your own, so an exercise like the above could potentially help illuminate where those boundaries are. I like to do this art approach where I draw whatever I don't think will look good. I imagine that a circle would go good in the corner so I draw a star instead like that circle exploded. I think the experience itself is sort of therapeutic, like trying new things or exercising muscles I didn't know I had.

Morality doesn't exist. Math doesn't exist either, but neither do we consider it invalid or subjective, right? Why is that? There are two different meanings of the word "objective" (and subjective). First is in the ontological sense: what we know objectively exists and what are the features of that object. The second is epistemic sense: what we know is true objectively, even if no existing objects are referred to. The actual fibers and inks in a dollar bill can be objectively accounted for in an ontological sense, but the fact that this dollar bill is a ten dollar bill and it was legitimately printed by the printing press in Denver, and is not counterfeit, that is objective in an epistemic sense. If I had a counterfeit machine that reproduced a perfect copy of a ten dollar bill, that is, it is made out of the same fibers and inks, it's still not a legitimate dollar bill. The ontology, it's existence and physical features do not determine the objectively true or false legitimacy of my copy. When looking at ethics, we mean to describe an epistemic phenomena. Being that it is epistemic in nature, we as humans represent it as being true / false or otherwise satisfying some standard. The implication here is as you suggested: without human minds to think it, ethics would not be, well, let's just say applicable. Since the logic itself is no different if human minds think it or nobody thinks it, but neither does it mean anything without human minds to think about it and reason it through. So in a sense, the answer to your question is "no" (although an incomplete answer). On the flipside, the ontology of ethics and money is subjective, since it's mode of existence is entirely within the minds of people who serve to represent it institutionally. Despite being ontologically subjective, the reasoning we do about it (assuming it's a valid methodology) is epistemically objective. Like ethics, money requires human minds as well, but that doesn't stop us from having a science of economics that relies on this ontologically subjective phenomena: the value of goods generally and the dollar in particular. We can even discover things new about it. The way that we discover things new about an ontologically subjective discipline is by either by looking at the ways that it manifests ontologically, or by working more through the logic itself. With ethics, there should be some ontologically objective way that it manifests, and the general theory (e.x. atomic theory of matter, evolutionary theory of biology, Universally Preferable Behavior) should provide a way that we can establish logical consistency. One way that ethics produces itself in an ontologically objective manner is when we institutionally use violence to achieve virtue, and how this inevitably results in the problem only getting worse (think welfare programs, public education, minimum wage laws etc). One way that the logic can be worked through toward greater advancement is through good logical standards like universality (beyond simple logical consistency). A moral proposition must apply to the person making the argument just as much as to the person they are addressing. So, of course you can imagine a situation where I can tell you to never eat black liquorice because it's morally wrong, all the while eating it myself, that there has to be some kind of logical problem here. I'm being a hypocrite obviously, but the logic itself may be less obvious. And to understand further how the logic works, and how moral propositions can be reasoned about, I would highly suggest reading Universally Preferable Behavior: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics by Stef-dawg.

...and you are also anonymous. Which is like what you were saying was so bad and stuff.

Maybe not, but it's nothing like accusing someone of child molestation either... or even "wilful malignance" or "injustice". This is very strong language, and maybe it's just some intellectual incapacity on my part, but I do not see what you are saying even a tiny bit. I'm inclined to take it rather as some quite disturbing hyperbole. Like a crazy person getting mad at me for looking at their backpack the wrong way.

Yeesh! Well, I certainly don't want to be counted among that number.

Nuh uh! You are! ...that's the best I got ;P I don't care, probably because I've got plenty of votes to spare, but I'm going to pretend like that's not the reason and say that I don't care because I think it always has a lot more to do with hurt feelings than with any perceived injustice; perhaps wrongly, but if people talked about the hurt feelings rather than the "injustice", I would totally respect that. But if I'm right, then calling it an injustice only seems to turn it up to eleven unnecessarily.

Do you challenge people who downvote youtube videos? How about any other place with this feature?

I've been working with JamesP on this cool project and I noticed something while perusing the site.

I didn't downvote, but obviously the phrasing "he's just catering to his mostly male audience" is not the most favorable way he could have stated it. Stef probably doesn't just think to himself "hey, my male audience would like this, therefore I will say it". But that's how it's phrased, and being that there is a lot of white knighting that happens around this subject, one might think that it's a diminishment of the veracity of the claims made in the video. Certainly what's true is what matters. Also, I love these public challenges for people to justify their downvotes. Why do you care?

I really like David Silverman. He's so irreverent whenever he's invited to talk on the mainstream media about these issues. He's a statist and wants some pretty bad laws, but as far as atheism goes, he's pretty awesome.

This is just kind of funny. The only logical form common to them is "if this, then that" (basically the definition of an argument). And then saying that if you can form anything in the same way (make any argument whatever) then it's the form that is wrong: all arguments are invalid. If the form of the logic has any more to it's condition then the fact that it is a condition, then it needs to be mentioned, or else any evaluation of it is just a blatant strawman. And what might be strawman'd in this instance? Probably this: It's a nice piece of rhetoric, but it's not actually addressing the position.

Stef just published an essay which is relevant. Here's an excerpt: In it he takes on this counter argument "it's not necessarily true that a fat man is selling a bad book on nutrition" and others like it. He focuses on the validity of methodologies as the criteria for the validity of a proposition rather than what may be "accidental validity" which he argues is a meaningless phrase. Although he doesn't address moral nihilism, or people who claim that property rights are invalid, it does provide a methodology for looking at such propositions and addresses inadvertently this supposed "tu quoque" fallacy referred to in the OP. In other words, that the actions a person takes not only does provide sufficient logical proof against the claim, but also how important it is generally to dismiss propositions on this basis, especially moral propositions. He also puts this sophistry into perspective:

Isn't the thing you should say "please tell me more"? Finding a way of immediately minimizing it is not terribly mature, and not something to model for children, I don't think. Communicating to a child that their feelings are wrong, or that they should be minimized / don't matter, is sacrificing their self esteem for your own personal comfort in the moment. A discomfort that you might actually need to feel in your capacity as the adult in the relationship, in being responsible for the relationship. The child expresses something you don't like; I'm not sure pacifying, diminishing or placating them is going to achieve anything except erase or suppress an emerging aspect of their personality. If that child were trying to kill the cat, then maybe some suppression is in store, but being upset with you? What a terrible thing to take off the table in the relationship. Yuck!

FDR 126 Feminism Part 1: The 'Bait and Switch' http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/feminism_part_1.mp3 FDR 127 Feminism Part 2: Divided We Fall http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/feminism_part_2.mp3 FDR 128 Feminism Part 3: Women Need Men http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/feminism_part_3.mp3 FDR 129 Feminism Part 4: A Way Forward... http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/feminism_part_4.mp3 FDR 1786 Environmentalism, Feminism and Statism http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1786_feminism_environmentalism_and_statism.mp3 FDR 2082 Feminism Is Socialism with Panties? http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_2082_feminism_panties.mp3 http://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/tag/feminism

FDR 67 Property Rights http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/property_rights.mp3 FDR 329 Property Rights On A Desert Island http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_329_Property_Rights_On_A_Desert_Island.mp3 FDR 2159 The Philosophy of Property http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_2159_philosophy_of_property.mp3 FDR 1719 The Salvation of Philosophy Part 2 - Property Rights http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1719_the_salvation_of_philosophy_part_2_Property.mp3

Haha! I do the same thing

Haha. I don't know. Maybe because it's a distraction free time to decompress while you wait for your body to do it's thing. Everything else going to the side and bringing up whatever was cooking underneath, emerging from the bowels of your mind

I apologize then. Perhaps I am too defensive and/or hasty around this subject. Thank you for the clarification.

I'm certainly not perfect at it, but I noticed a shift for myself to become a lot more expressive of the real thoughts and feelings I had, when the pain of having to hide myself became too strong that the anxiety of being myself became trivial in comparison. I think some of Nathaniel Branden's sentence completions are helpful in this regard: to put it in the appropriate perspective. If, when I was young, someone had told me my wants really mattered… If, when I was young, I had been taught to honor my own life… If I treat my life as unimportant… If I were willing to say yes when I want to say yes and no when I want to say no… If I were willing to let people hear the music inside me… If I were to express 5 percent more of who I am… If you are a good honest person (and I'm sure that you are), being yourself means being honest and living in contrast with those who are not. Who are the people who don't want you to be yourself? Who don't want you to bring honesty and truth into the relationship? It's hard to tell if you don't give them the chance to present themselves, right? One of the biggest reasons to be yourself is to spot the people who would attack or manipulate you for it. And on the flipside see who is attracted to that. So you become, well, actually Stef has a really great description of it in the following video, starting at the 3:38:

These are just my own opinions. I only represent myself. Patriarchy theory states that society is run by men, to the benefit of men, at the expense of women. The fact that men are at the top of power structures is not sufficient to support patriarchy theory, and it is often the only reason given. It never occurs to a lot of people that while men are at the top, they are also at the bottom. Certain men have power in society. The vast majority do not. By comparison, in power structures, as with many things, women are statistically perform / sit in the middle with a few men at the top and the rest of the male population doing the dirty jobs. The same people often who make this argument that men are at the top, therefore patriarchy theory is true, are the same kind of people who are completely unaware of the enormous effort on the part of men to build and maintain the society they benefit from. Or worse, they look at garbage men or other laborers with disgust. The fact that the computer she's using to type her argument, the make-up she's wearing, the car she drives, the building she's in were disproportionately made by men never enters her mind. A sort of narcissistic, gross thing she's doing. Another problem I have with feminism is the infantilization they do of women treating them as dandelions blowing in the wind, having no agency or responsibility over her life. If she does something immoral, she will often be excused for it. Lorena Bobbit is regarded as a hero for mutilating her husband, women get off with less prison time even after all other factors are controlled for, paternity fraud is minimized and the man's feelings are considered irrelevant often. And another reason is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAuqkqxk9A

Using force to stop a person from murdering someone is for the purpose of stopping them from murdering that person.

Moral absolutes, such as "thou shalt not murder" are enforceable using violence. That is to say that violence is justified in that instance, in order to prevent further evil. Things which are not enforceable are things like aesthetics, morally neutral behavior and false moral propositions.