TheRobin

Yeah, a skype chat would be nice I'd mainly have some more question about how you end up with moral nihilism and your definition of ethics, but other than that, I think I mostly share your criticism of UPB, which gives me a good incentive to ask Stef for clarification, if there's time for that in Amsterdam and he's up for it there. (Given that it would be a bit of a more obvious (imo) blunder and given that he's quite an intelligent fellow, I think it'd be fair to give him the benefit of the doubt before accepting UPB to be logically invalid). Also, I think there are good reasons why ethics isn't about all of human behaviour, but since I haven't given any reasoning, I'd say fair enough (also something I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on if you like).

@Noesis: Thanks for the explanation. Yeah I think I understand more or less what you mean. Though I must say the conversation exceeds my comfort zone a little in terms of the amount of work it would take to debate the points of disagreement (meaning, the amount of work it takes to continue communicating once the texts have exceeded a certain length is just to much for me to go on writing. I mean, if we were sitting somewhere talking I'd enjoy it a lot probably, but in writing it always exhausts me to debate certain points once the textblocks get too large)But could you give me one more explanation instead? What do you use as the defining goal that ethics/moral try to accomplish? Like, in physics the goal is to describe the behaviour of matter, in biology the goal is to describe the behaviour of organic life forms. The reason I ask is, because you're definition of "right" seems to be more a description of biological reality than a prescription for human behavior (which is what I'd define to goal of ethics to be: A set of principles which are used as a prescription of behaviour for a subset of human interactions).

I think it would help you a lot if you were more precise in your question. If you ask "why does the universe and we exist?" then the why can refer to either causation or characteristic. To give to quick examples. "Why does my hand hurt?" "Because I've been playing videogames for 12 hours non-stop" (i.e. playing that long caused the hurting), on the other hand if you ask "Why does do things fall to the ground?" al you can really say is "Because matter attracts other matter" (i.e. it's a characteristic of the substance you're talking about). But in either case, no answer for existence is possible. If you ask about causation, then you can always ask "But what caused THAT?" one more time, no matter how many answers you already have. on the other hand, if you ask about characteristic then you can only do that if you already accept that the thing in question exists (i.e. that existence is one of it's characteristics), but unlike other physical characteristics, there's no degree of accuracy in existence. (i.e. while you can describe how gravity works in greater or smaller scales, there's no scale to existence, it's an either/or, yes or no question), so there can't be a more indepth or accurate answer in regards to the characteristic of existence. As for why human beings exist and how exactly that could happen, I think people already gave good answers for that. But in the end I think it's the same problem, human beings exist as a result of the parameters of the principles of how matter behaves and there's no reason why they should be one way or another, except to add, that if they were any other way, no one could ever know of it, as the universe would probably not exist in an inhabitable form and so no one would be there to observe the lack of observers.

I think you'd have to explain to me then, what you mean with "right" then. And give me some examples of what it would mean to have the right violated or what the difference is between someone having a right to do something or not. If I'd say "People have a right to not being killed" that'd mean that if someone tries to kill me, I have the right to stop them (even if that means I have to use deadly force and kill the person). It would also mean, that anyone who tries to stop me from defending myself is wrong and I'd be right to use force against them too. But it seems to me you're using the word differently.

Well, I'll give it a shot. A wants to take the shoes B is currently wearing. B wants to keep them. A uses force and B uses force. If A is right to use force then B can't also be right to stop him from doing that, else what does "right" mean? (I assume this might be a point of disagreement). But at the same time B has the right to use force too to satisfy his goal while A doesn't have the right to stop him. So you'd end up in a situation where both people simultaniously have the right to use force and don't have the right to use force. (I hope this makes some sense logically. Still awake for 32 hours here, so it might be total nonsense ofc )

Have you tried journaling about why you (want) do that?

For simplicities sake (and also cause the odds of having a prodcutive debate in writing tends to go to zero if the timeframe is just big enough), Can you tell me what you mean with "murder" and "evil"? Maybe it either makes more sense then what I mean, or I can exaplin it in a way that's appropriate to how you approach thoses concepts.

I see what you mean, but I don't agree. First of all, unless we have a basis that "I should have the right to control my body" there can be no moral claims. (I don't know why you brought up "I should control my body" though). And you don't get that just from the claim "I control my body". Control is needed but not sufficient for making the moral claim (else, any living thing would have a moral claim to not being killed).And "murder" itself is only a possibility after you accepted that one should have the right to his or her own body, else you'd simply call it "killing" and not "murder". "Murder is evil" is really just shorthand for "I should have the right to control my body and therefore you shouldn't kill me (or don't have the right to kill me) and I'm justified in fighting back". So I don't see how you can make a descirptive claim that is moral.

Maybe there's more to the idea of "descriptive" that I'm aware of. But aren't descriptive claims things like "A cat is mammal with whiskers" and the like? As I understand it, if one says "I control my body" then that's a description of reality. When one says "I should have the right to control my body" then that's a moral claim not a descirptive one.

just fyi, I'm an anarchist and I don't mean that (or as labmath has pointed out, if you use it as a description, then there's no moral claim to it.)

I think you're missing the point a bit here. Moral theories are theories that want to explain, when a person has the right to use force against another. The first goal here is that the theory needs to be logically valid within itself. So you have multiple principles you can use and try out. Some of them produce logically consistent theories, some don't. You can use the UPB framework to show which ones work and which don't.What ethics isn't about is 1) What people do 2) What subjective tastes people should have

How about just going for full casual and hang out in the parks or so? Or are they too crowded too usually?

I don't even wanna go into the details, but it's just the usual double standard going on when it comes to statism (imo obviously). A gang of people committing mass armed robbery to fund environmetal activist to produce a global warming scare is apparnetly completely moral, but other interest groups funding skeptics is evil...But it also just goes to show how even people who do know how to think critically can just go on with confirming whatever emotional bias they have without even needing to expose themselves to valid ciritcism of their point. Also scary to see how, practically every kind of skepticism can presented in such a way by those academics to make it look like a bunch of crazy people who want everyone to die. (Then again, that's apparently to modus operandi of the left as it seems...)

Ethics isn't about goals, it's about defining an enforcable standard of behaviour between human beings. And if you can show, that certain standards are contradictory, then those standards can't be a valid set of ethical rules.

As far as I can tell, no one assumes it's anything else than an idea in people's heads (same as mathematics, logic, language, just to name a few). The point is, that neither of these disciplines are arbitrary just because they're subjective, in the sense, that they exist only in people's heads.

Wouldn't that be true then for your own body as well though? Like, there wouldn't be any moral claim over it just cause you control/own it then, so the whole idea of murder and rape and such would be complete bogus too. Or if not, how do you justify that in that instance?

So, if I drug you and drag you around I have greater control over you. So I should (at least in that moment) have higher right to your body than you (?)

Aren't there two aspects to Self-Ownership though? One being the fact that we control our bodies, the other being the right to have ownership over our bodies (as in, another person can't claim my kidneys his own and cut one out, when he needs one)? Because the first one is simply a fact and wouldn necessairly matter for the second one. And the second one is just the only universalizable of the possibilities (as, not having the right to your own body would contradict itself when applied universally)

I'm really sorry to hear this ofc. But I'd assume going with your gutfeeling might be the most accurate. No random guy on the internet has any detailed knowledge of you, your friends and your shared history anyway, but our subconscious usually has all the info ready in the blink of an eye.

I wonder how it would be possible, that one coulnd't take it personally when one is being publicly insulted (by a person who calls himself a friend no less).Did he apologize for it afterwards at some point? Does he think this was perfectly fine and good behaviour on his part?

That's the same mistake as some people make, when they say that arguing against governments is arguing against roads or healthcare. Just cause people who work for a certain group called "government" use violence against everyone who would compete for creating a good justice system and therefore have created a monopoly justice system in a given region, doesn't mean that there can't be justice without a group of people violating the very principles they're claiming to uphold.

Funny satire, enjoy.http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2014/03/libertarian-police-department.html?mobify=0

Why would they give all their stuff to the food producers? I mean if tomorrow all the food producers wanted sell their food for 1'000$ I doubt anyone would actually pay. Also, cause you can only pay "all you got" once, and afterwards, what do you do? The whole economy would be totally destroyed as a result of no one having any money left to buy of produce other thigns (which ultimtaley would make the cartle kind of pointless anyway). But either way, simpy paying wouldn't work longterm, so I doubt people would do it. Or what is your argument for why they would pay?