Hannibal

Is it immoral to drive your car - because someone might possibly fall into the road infront of you? I don't think that your apparent dilema falls into the realms of morality.

Life is joyous. The 1% you talk about, all things being equal (which they aren't - but lets give it the benefit of the doubt) is called bad luck.

Morality is all about action, right? In a world where it was impossible to act, then no one could do anything immoral. In a world where all actions were indistinguishable, then there could be no scope for immorality. So with that being the case, a person must - in order to have moral agency - be free to act of their own volition. Therefore individual freedom is prerequisite for all further moral narratives. Therefore, objectively speaking, we can say that that much is objectively true with regards to morality. When you think that through a bit more, the inescapable conclusion is that all that is morally virtuous, but stem from individual freedom. I.e. the NAP is objectively valid.

Thats where the different kind of morality comes in (i.e. not any kind of morality concerned with people's rights). For example, Ayn Rand didn't drink, save a little snifter at christmas for the sake of custom, because alcohol numbs the mind and reduces a man's ability to reason. As reason is the source of all morality, she thought it immoral to drink for pleasure. I drink for the pleasure of the taste, not the sedative effect, so I don't see a little drinking - at an appropriate time - as immoral. I would view using drugs that numb my mind as being immoral, because it's my mind that makes me a man. In the same way, I might (i've not bothered to really think about it) view deliberately giving birth to a being who can;t look after themselves as being immoral too.

You guys are using a very narrow definition of morality. Morality concerns personal actions as well as actions which affect other people. That aside, foetuses aren't people. There is no reason a woman shouldn't abort a foetus for either her own benefit, or to prevent a defective being from coming into the world, for that being's own sake. Dawkins is merely suggesting that a mother could abort a Downs foetus, and make another instead - resulting is a net reduction in the likeliness of future suffering. If suffering is bad, and happiness is good, and aborting doesn't violate anyone's rights - then his statement makes sense.

I forgot about the thread. I think a lot of you guys took it way more literally than I meant (and to be fair, reading it back it reads more serious than I meant). I just felt like mentioning at the time that it's amazing how many religious folk believe so devoutly without any evidence, yet often have a very poor grasp of their own chosen religion (at least here in the UK). As for pissing them off... I derive pleasure - albeit very little - from undermining the foundations of people's bullshit beliefs that they freely choose to pursue. I like truth. I dislike fraud (including self-fraud). The feeling of being pissed off is a side-effect, although I might sometimes feel satisfaction in that to, as is natural for one to feel when witnessing the frustrations of someone they hold in contempt.

yes. It's like some kind of legacy of christianity (hardly anyone here in the UK is really religious, apart from muslim community - may be different where you are) where life is all about sacrifice and service. A kind of death worship. Worth noting Rand's more sensible (imo) definition of 'selfishness' and 'selflessness' too. What many people currently call 'selfish' she would call 'self-destructive' - the opposite of selfishness which she holds as a virtue. Real love is selfish because we choose a partner to love who is worthy of ourselves, for our own joy. Selfless love is a self-delusion and a corruption of virtue, where vice is held as a value equal to virtue in the blindness of such a so called 'love'. Hope that makes sense.

Doesn't even matter if it was a choice.

and -- Ayn Rand I'm not posting those as arguments from her authority - It's just that I agree with her whole-heartedly. She does, elsewhere, bind love & sexual desire as being intimately linked - which I disagree with as I prefer to keep them strictly separate. Of course, for all I know, that may hold true in general though.

Do you mean universally preferable? I.e can possibly be preferred universally? Because universal and preferable is not the same thing.

A virtue?

Monkeys can recognise ownership among other monkeys. Humans have no need to recognise any theoretical right that an animal may have, so humans don't recognise ownership in monkeys. 'Can monkeys own property' is too vague a question to yield a sensible answer as we've already seen assumptions being made that ownership is a human-only concept. And we see elsewhere that some of us suppose that animals have rights. Both of those are incorrect, of course. I'd say 'yes' they probably do (i'm not a zoologist though), but as a human I don't care - if i want it i'll take it. Assuming he understands the concept of ownership.

Any other kind of love would be a contradiction in terms.

"This is a pragmatic argument." Pragmatism is the root of all morality. 'Universality' is is easily misleading. We're not looking for something "universally universal" (if you get my meaning), but simply something consistent and non-contradictry. Ayn Rand has already done an excellent job of defining a basis for objective morality. I'm not trying to put down your efforts - just saying that they should be based on the premise that what is moral is that which is good for man, qua man (as she would put it). For example - not that which is good for animals, for their own sake.

The human/animal divide when it comes to NAP has nothing to do with the ability to understand the NAP (at least directly). It simply comes down to the fact that morality serves to further our prosperity. That's what morality *is*. Not killing animals arguably is bad for our prosperity, so in fact it's arguable that it is morally good (on a personal level) to kill and eat animals. We stand to gain nothing from affording equal rights to animals - hence they don't get equal rights. And murder == bad is NOT universal. It's almost universal. Morality is not applicable (or at least it's applicability to social situations) in lifeboat situations. Where there is no possibility for mutual prosperity - such as a situation where 2 people must try to kill one another, or both will die - then there is no scope for morality. In such a situation you may choose, given that your own life is the most important thing in the world, to murder the other. It's you life vs theirs, and your task alone to weigh the options according to the values you hold. I might kill myself to save my child, as I couldn't face living with the alternative. But faced with a stranger, I might give little though against taking his life to save my own. The missing ingredient which appears to make the idea of philosophy being universal conflict with these scenarios (animals and the NAP, lifeboat scenarios, etc) is the understanding of what morality actually is, and why we need it. It's not that there is a problem with universality - just that the problems have been poorly or incompletey framed to begin with.

Although there is no such thing as IP, copyright (albeit in a slightly different form) is still a valid concept. I'm trying to think if your scenario could fall into a similar category.

What's an illegal cable hookup? I'm not in the Americas. Is it just watching stuff being freely transmitted to you that you are supposed to pay for before watching? or do you have to subvert some kind of system first?

I don't know about the south in the US, but here in the UK bars & clubs are where people go to socialise and relax after a weeks work. There is *some* hedonism of the moment, but the pub is also where people tend to have the deep philosophical chats. Kids here are typically out in pubs starting at around 16 years old though. I don't know if that helps to change the culture of it too. You could always check it out (unless you already know for sure).

Unconditional love is meaningless. It's a euphemism for unearned obligation, and other negative things of the kind. Tell you wife you'd love her even if she was a complete loser - if she is happy with that then she is a loser and you'd deserve each other. Tell her you lover her for the woman that she is, and she'll love you for the man that you are. Any other kind of love is an evasion.

No they don't. How can you make any kind of rational choice without an ideology to guide you in the process?

And? good ideologies are a good thing good. As can be isms. And 'Libertarianism' is so broad of a term as to be almost useless. If you want to make a serious point you should be more specific.

Do you have a definition of ideology which is founded in logic and reality? Rather than being entirely arbitrary?

I disagree strongly. That seems like very contrived & arbitrary definition of what ideology is. Philosophy is about determining truth. The determined preference to seek truth through philosophy, is itself an ideology. Emphasis mine.

From the map it looks to me as thigh it's pretty simple - the lower IQs are all in areas that weren't even 'civilised' a hundred years ago. Now in the grip of religious fanaticism the progress in those areas is retarded, and much of the rest of the world makes it their business to keep those places retarded insofar as a cultural enlightenment is concerned. Those places are only a few hundred years behind the US/UK. I would guess (and i may be entirely wrong) that if we looked at the same map 500 years ago the contrast would be much less obvious.

I'd think that the computer, being far more simple, had the intelligent creator. A human being is an incredible feat for an intelligence to create, yet almost an inevitability given enough "stuff" and enough time to munge it all together until a human emerges. A computer is a much more realistic achievement for a mind as we understand it. Or perhaps I should that something as complex as a human is almost inevitable - an actual human would be unbelievable.