Playing With Plato

Okay! That's what I was unclear on. Again, I really appreciate your time.

Great advice. You have no idea how much I appreciate your time. I've started taking on myself to bypass the media and go straight to the things they're reporting on. My new thing is reading bills. I found myself destroying one particular one about background checks for fire arms. Trying not to turn into a preacher but we do need to help people see past the emotional crap and to the ethical logic behind it. So I hope that if my thanks are insufficient, you can take pride in knowing you're helping make me better at spreading the word.

I get that human beings and rocks are different. What I'm saying is that people are different from each other and can't really be blanketed with this universal term. I don't trust someone who has stolen a bunch of cars in his lifetime with the keys to my car. I would trust my friends with them though. So I can't universalize "trust others with your keys" or "don't trust others with your keys. I can however universalize all situations in which I deal with someone who has stolen cars. Within this universe, don't trust. Obviously this isn't a moral example, but okay. Adolph Hitler and Helen Keller are hanging off the side of a cliff. I help Helen Keller and walk away from Hitler. I'm going to let him die, because fuck him, even though in most instances it would be morally appalling to just let someone fall from a cliff if I could help them.

Thanks for talking your time to help me out. But, I still feel he's using being kind of arbitrary about at what level rules apply universally. A rule that said all redheads must be kicked in the balls, would apply universally to all redheads, right? So I can both classify and apply a rule universally, but I think Stef stops at "human." You can only apply something to one person if you apply it to all humans. Why? Why can't something apply to all brown-eyed people, people who are allergic to peanuts, or all things including stars and dust bunnies? Like, if all people want to not die, people who are allergic to peanuts have to follow an obvious different action than the rest of people. Their preferred action is to not eat peanuts, but that doesn't mean anything to me. Applies universally to people allergic to peanuts and not universally to all humans. Then let's take it a step further and talk about people with different motives, because obviously not everybody wants the same thing in the world. If I want to be a politician, since crowds are moved by emotion more than logic, I really will be required to be full of shit. My preferred behavior is to be somewhat of a d-bag so that I can get what I want. I kind of think this theory makes the mistake of assuming we all want the same things or that we all ought to want to be good. It's kind of like the central planning of morality, really. Idk, maybe I'm missing the whole thing. Anyway, thanks guys, I'm just trying to understand it.

So the title is just meant to be a joke, I know I'm a little new at this to be jumping in the ring with Tyson but I did have a couple nagging issues with the logic of UPB. They're probably just some issues with understanding terms but here are my questions Universality/Universal – That's a big word. Yet it's used to describe only a subset of the universe; human beings. And then it holds all human beings to the same standard. So it first explains the difference between something like a star blowing up and killing all the life forms in a galaxy as ethically different from a human being killing a bunch of people. I feel like this kind of means that we aren't talking about “Universal” principles because clearly we're excluding most of the Universe. I think the example Stef used was that a falling rock has no preferential behavior. So I have a gripe with the word Universal. Maybe uniformly preferential behavior would be better. Or really 1b. Since we are talking about the preferential behavior of a classified subset of the Universe why can't we further classify subsets of human beings; those that can do X and those that can't. If we accept that we can classify humans as having different behavioral standards as a star (which I fully accept), why then can we not classify between types of humans. (I know another guy posted about the possibility of excluding some humans from the definition of human, but that's not what I'm saying.) What I'm saying is that there are some people I'll trust with the keys to my house and others that I will not. Or lets say, its my friend's house and his baby is inside and lending the key to our mutual friend so he can feed the cat is still okay while tossing the key to any guy on the street becomes potentially dangerous for the baby. There are people who I won't lose sleep over knowing that they are in jail and others that I do sometimes. So I'm not clear on what it means to have “universally preferential behavior.” I would prefer to be able to trust everyone with my keys, but I can't and don't. I make distinctions about who I'm dealing with when in my interactions and adjust my behavior accordingly. Also, does universally preferential behavior mean that I prefer all others in the universe to behave a certain way or does it mean that there is some sort of giant conscience that prefers something of my behavior? Another issue is with the argument that if I don't believe in universally prefrential behavior, that I'm proving it. I think the argument is that I prefer there to be another code of ethics to apply to all human beings. So if I don't think one code of ethics can apply to all human beings, “that human beings can follow their own code of ethics” is a code I believe is preferable to all human beings. Is that right? But Stef, I really really really want you to be right. If I had believed it when you said it, I could be taking a nap right now, sleeping peacefully knowing that you'd solved all our ethical questions for the rest of time. I'd prefer that you be right, but I just don't believe it. God damnit, Stef! Also, I forgo doing things that I'd prefer to do all the time. Isn't that what morality is all about? Doing what is universally, or at least individually unpreferred? Like if I don't want to beat up a kid, there's no inner battle that I've won to stop me from beating up the kid. You wouldn't call me moral for breathing, so why is it ethical to not beat up a kid if it comes naturally to me like it does most people. But if this kid is being particularly annoying and I think it would feel just awesome to kick his butt, but I don't, then I'm showing some ethical strength. I'm doing what I didn't want to do.

It is interesting that you happened to use examples you know to be human to explain how you could manipulate the definition, indicating that you actually do see those examples as human. What you're really saying is that your capable of lying to yourself and others about what a human being is. You didn't accidently say, for example, a turtle is no longer human. You very clearly demonstrate an understanding of what a human is, and therefore an acceptance of the uniformity of "human" by suggesting that you can just change the definition to include (examples you know not to be human) or exclude (examples you know to be human) whatever you want. You thus prove that you don't think the concept of human is as elastic as you claim to percieve it. You might say, but during slavery the definition of human didn't include blacks, and that's why whites allowed themselves to abuse and mistreat them. But I would say that those whites knew they were abusing human beings, they just had other justifications or self-egrandizing motives for it. It may have been common place to call them "subhuman" or the like, but they knew.

Hey guys, I'm new to the group. An instant Stef fan. The dude can talk. What I really love about his style is that he's always got a fact to kind of combo punch his way through a debate. I'm a horrible researcher. When I google things, I just get advertisements and all sorts of useless crap. And I'd like to improve my debating skills, and specifically my research skills and just general knowledge base I suppose. I was wondering if anybody was in the charitable mood to lend me some research tips, search engines you find usefull, online libraries, whatever.... I'm not asking about any specific subject. I'm just looking for general pointers for improving my skills at finding new information. I'm living in China right now so learning my way around this gypsy magic we call the internet has become pretty important. Thanks for your time.