Number 92 : May 1998 |
Theo : [C91, p.30/31].
Since a goodly part of my general argument is that autonomy or entity is necessary, I'd go with the "Mensa not being a person" bit. If anything Mensa is an opinion - or at least a consensus of opinion. An opinion doesn't become an entity just because it is perpetuated. Not unless you're religious anyway.
As to the white knuckle ride scenario.
1) I suspect your desire is more likely to be to get off in one piece.
2) Being physically unable to get off, even should you decide it's worth a broken neck trying, does indeed restrict your ability to exercise free-will. Were I arguing for "Hard Determinism" I'd be heading for the horizon trailing smoke. As I've said elsewhen though I favour a "Free-will over limited options" argument.
On the "statistical" example viruses, quarks or ducks would indeed have served equally well. Any large numbers would've - and I agree with the general thrust of your argument. I also support your assumption that a certain level of complexity is required before "an organism" qualifies as "an entity".
As to the extreme unlikeliness of actually turning out to be a human being. Isn't that part and parcel with what philosophy, religion, art and science are all, in their way, aimed at ?
More generally.
As a newcomer to the SIG I've been playing safe so far - avoiding anything too contentious or outspoken. Tiny fluffy woodland creatures must needs beware when exploring new environments. Or they get eaten. Sticking with a "softly, softly approach" indefinitely, however, means never getting much past "trivia and comments". Time perhaps for a bit of a scurry about.
Were wildebeest to invent a religion would it be animalled by rapacious lion demons and devouring crocodile spirits, from which perils The Great Gnu delivers The Chosen via The Last Migration unto Eternal Grazing ? Spurious nonsense, of course - wildebeest are far too smart (and preoccupied) to bother with religion. And even were it otherwise, several orders of intellectual magnitude separate our hypothetical wildebeest fundamentalists from their human religious contemporaries. Don't they ?
Ahem, where was I ???
Not being especially religious I tend to view moral matters through somewhat existentially tinted glasses, regarding "good" and "evil", as we understand them, as having a place in "nature" only inasmuch as they (arguably) have a place in "human nature". Whether originating therein or "handed down" courtesy of some "Higher Moral Authority" (i.e. "God") moral issues cannot be separated from our understanding of them. Whether adopting religious or rationalist terms in describing or explaining "right" and "wrong" what we have available to us is not "the truth" but "a semblance of truth" - individually subjective, collectively a compromise, convention or consensus. Being human such "human truths" are the only sort we can have. We are, of necessity, inhabitants of a more or less anthropic universe, being unable to view it from anything other than a human frame of reference.
As individuals, whether developing our own set of "personal values", following "social convention" or adopting "religious principles", wholesale or in part, our "moral beliefs" like any other beliefs we may hold, are held subjectively. Only we experience them, thus, at the level of an individual, moral justification is self justification. Provided we think we're right we are. For us. But our "right" may well be "wrong" given other ways of seeing the world.
Where a group shares a common set of beliefs, albeit subject to individual interpretation, self-justification and social justification amount to much the same. It is only where several groups or individuals hold different or conflicting beliefs that "absolute" or "objective" criteria must be sought - a broadening of the collective compromise or widening of the "in-group". Alternatively there's always the possibility of narrowing the "out-groups" - necessitating no compromise and keeping "The Cause" pure. Either ways, before a "universal system of ethics" becomes viable it is necessary to establish a unified "Global Society". Which means winning (by persuasion or force of arms) on a big scale, and probably involves genocide. Which is maybe why all previous efforts at a "World Order" have failed so dismally and bloodily.
Perhaps anarchy is the answer after all ...
Kill if you have to. Steal if you need to. Lie, cheat and deceive if you want to. But don't be-more of a shithead than is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, when some righteous vengeful bastard finally brings you down, the world will piss all over you. And everyone will laugh.
There y'go kiddies - universal system of ethics.
Stef Gula
Stef : you’re not the first to spot theistic anthropomorphisms or theromorphisms - Xenophanes (c. 560 - c. 478 BC) got there first. To repeat the well-known quote (via Bertrand Russell in History of Western Philosophy) : "... Mortals deem that gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form ... yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds .... The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair". You mustn’t suppose theologians (and ordinary religious people for that matter) are ignorant of this. No one believes God is a bearded old man in the sky, do they ? Even Xenophanes went on (according to Russell) to "believe in one God, unlike men in form and thought, who ‘without toil swayeth all things by the force of his mind’".
While I agree with most of what you have to say on the ethical side, I disagree with your suggestion that, for all, "moral justification is self justification". Some people feel bound by moral scruples or imperatives, that, if they felt they had the freedom, they’d rather be rid of, because they think they are right and binding, and if they fail to live up to them feel shame and remorse. They may be deluded, but they aren’t smug.
Theo