You dont need the self for that cohesion and unity. It happens without it. Thats why they call the self an illusion.

I agree, I do not see much point in living in that state all the time, or much time at all. That doesnt mean it isnt useful at all though.

Well I have experienced psychedelics. But no matter how far down the rabbit hole I go, there is always a nagging little "I' that never leaves. What the "I" is saying is "you are on drugs, don't get carried away here." I would think drugs would make it easier to identify a partial loss of self...the first step in losing the self would be forgetting you are on drugs. If I know I am on drugs, then "I' has not gone anywhere. If "I" am not on drugs, who or what is?

To be fair, I have never done...is it called DMT? I think that is the one that is supposed to be directly tied to the loss of self...maybe? — ZhouBoTong

Correct, DMT will have that result. Other psychedelics can in the right settings, but DMT is a very reliable means of producing this effect.

Can't you have this experience just by drinking too much? You wake up the next day to find video of yourself dancing on a table that you don't remember? How were the machines operating if you don't remember operating them? Heck, even entirely sober, have you ever got in your car and backed out of your driveway, then paused and thought, how did I get here? Or any other thing that just happens on auto pilot while we are thinking about something else? Our brain can do a lot with minimal to no intention. — ZhouBoTong

Id call that loss of memory and attention, not self. Also, in the “auto pilot” example, you reference yourself as part of denying your “self” was present. “...while we are thinking of something else”. That implies the self is present but otherwise focused. So I would say its not the same thing we are talking about.

I can't say you are wrong. But a loss of self seems to fail as the simplest explanation. It feels like claiming there is a god. A HUGE claim, with very limited evidence. — ZhouBoTong

Interesting, please elaborate.

There might be some semantics to it ya. Its very difficult to explain to someone whose never experienced it. Imagine a room with a bunch of machines (turned on, active) in it, and your in the room watching. Then you leave the room but the machines still continue working. When you return to the room you can check the security cams to see what you missed and you will see what happened while you were away and you will notice you weren't there. Like that. So now imagine when youre in the room you are the one working the machines, and when you return after leaving, you are surprised to find on the security cams that the machines work fine without you and the machines being worked/controlled by you was an illusion.
Its like that, if any of that makes sense.

Well there is still something going on, an experience is happening but its not the “self” thats experiencing. When the “self” returns, it can access the experience via memory for reference. Its present before, and after just not during..

The illusion of self is present, and once it dissolves you see that all the things “self” was doing are actually a collection of processes the “self” had no real presence or control to start with.
Do remember the carnie rides as a kid, where a car goes around on a track? They have steering wheels and you’d grab it and turn it and it felt like you were the one driving, taking the turn etc but by the end of the ride you figured out you were never driving at all. Its like that.
Now, some people might think of the ride itself to be the “self”, but it doesnt feel that way just like it doesnt feel that way once you let go of the wheel and just tide the ride.

Nothing. Your self isnt experiencing itself, “self” just a thing that's present and in certain conditions it isnt.

Nothing loses the sense of self, the sense of self dissolves and is no longer present. The “I” part of your consciousness goes away and “you” becomes removed from the experience of consciousness.
Its difficult to explain, but this is where the “self is an illusion” comes from.

Have you tried any psychedelics or achieved a deep mediative state? In other words, have you actually done anything that would result in the loss of your sense of self?

No, I do not remember that. Maybe you're confusing me with someone else. I don’t think we have interacted before.

What kinda of criticisms make sense about Trump? Any examples?

What criteria do you use to distinguish between TDS and legitimate criticism of Trump? How do you know when a person who has a negative even anti-trump perspective is motivated/caused by TDS?

Some people would say they are not being unethical. They aren't breaking any rules. — schopenhauer1

Then they would be ignoring how you’ve framed the question wouldnt they? As I said, you have defined the act as unethical.
You are essentially asking, as far as I can tell, whether its unethical For the company to do something unethical if they are still technically following the rules. The answer seems very obvious. Yes, the immoral act is immoral but abiding by the rules.

Well, you didnt really include those parameters in the initial post. Sure, if it is unethical to get those people to come to work when they could work from home then yes the company is in ethical breech.you’ve defined it thar way.
I dont understand the conundrum.

Lol, come on that was funny.
Anyway, arent you essentially asking if the guidelines that are in place are ethical? In your example the guidelines are all being followed, so its only if you think that those guidelines are ethically inadequate that there would be an ethical breech.

Im confused, what does this have to do with Anti-natalism?

I don’t quite believe you think it’s that relative. If a society/group considers that donating a chewing gum makes up for murder, they would be plain wrong, wouldn’t they? — Congau

Different discussion. Im not asking about your own “objective” morality and how the societies morality is measured against it, im just referencing the societies standards. (Specifically so we dont have to dick around with an entirely different discussion about whats right and wrong). Im asking about how the measurement is done, not what its being measured against.

If by morality you mean moral character, that’s right. And I think that’s what you are trying to measure with your scheme. Isn’t it? The issue is the moral worth of the person and I don’t know what that would mean other than character. — Congau

No, by morality I mean morality. Not a scheme, a simple moral question about how we settle on moral questions. Not moral worth, moral balance. This is entirely a straw-man...straw-men. I chose the framing for a reason, if you think im not using the best words for my meaning you’ll have to show me why first.

Right. The action is still good, and the actor is neither good nor bad based on this action.
Of course it’s difficult or impossible for us, the observers, to know his intention. That’s why we make shortcut judgments based on his actions, and that’s why your scheme might seem to work on the surface. We can’t look inside a person’s head, so we assess him based on the circumstantial evidence we have.
That would be the way we actually judge character, but it’s highly inaccurate and often unjust. We look at the drunkard who neglects wife and kids for his booze, which of course is bad, but we don’t know what brought him there, what tragedies he may be fighting against. Therefore, we shouldn’t judge anyone, if we can refrain from it, and a system like yours is an invitation to superficial judgment. — Congau

None of that answers the question.

ay of thinking has an absolute truth value (which makes it an ethical theory). Very good. Let’s test that. — Congau

No im not claiming absolute truth. Its relative to whatever standard of the society/group.

I would say that a good person is one who is inclined to do good actions. He has a mental disposition that makes him do what is good when it’s time to act. This is what is called virtue. A person possesses a degree of virtue now at this moment - he is now a good or bad person.
People can change. He may have been a terrible person in his youth, a murderer even, but now he has grown virtuous and that depends on the mental disposition and habits that he has now acquired. It doesn’t depend on what he has actually done, he may not have had the chance, or the change may have come over him relatively recently, but if something came up now, he would do the right thing. — Congau

So your objection is essentially that morality isnt about taking moral measure of the past but only as the persons Moral disposition is currently? Is that right?

So, how can we tell that he is now a good person? We can’t. We don’t know what is going on inside him. We can only judge from what we see from outside. We acknowledge his good acts, subtract his bad ones and guess his inner state based on that, but we may be wrong. An extremely good deed, curing cancer or creating peace in the middle east, doesn’t make him a good person unless he did it for the right reason, that is a desire to do good. (Maybe he did it to make money) — Congau

How do you separate the act from the intention? If a guy saves babies and cures cancer so he can pick up chicks easier, the act is clearly morally good and the intention not so much, but since the act is an act of good Im not sure it makes sense to say the actor is bad (or not good).


.

I went to my local supermarket and they were out of eggs and toilet paper, so no toilet paper omelettes for me this week. — Hanover

:lol:

Well I disagree with pretty much all of that. I think its precisely logical, and do not think its correct to call it inaccurate. I think you can take moral measure on more than an instinctive level. I think you are mistaking discomfort for illogical.
Ok, so if a guy steals 20$, then feels bad so builds a few houses for homeless people, cures cancer and creates peace in the middle east to make up for it, you would say its illogical to A) forgive him and/or B) consider him a good person? And you think there is something inaccurate about saying his good deeds outweighs his bad deeds?

Why is creationism mutually exclusive of theoretical sciences of the same field? — LuckilyDefinitive

Well creationism does actually include some evolution, they just call it something different. Where the two divide is on scale. Under creationism any kind of evolution must happen on a much smaller times scale, as the earth is only 6000 years old. It includes small changes over short time, such as dog breeding or getting a trait from a parent. Obviously, evolution accounts for changes over much greater time scales, and therefore contains more severe changes.
So the timescale is where they become mutually exclusive, not necessarily because of evolutions premiss of biological change over time.
Thats why evolution seems so preposterous to a creationists, because evolution of the darwinian kind IS preposterous on a 6000 year old earth.

So people are judged morally in any given society by adding and subtracting good and bad actions according to the standards of their society. So what? — Congau

So now we’re clear about how I framed this in the OP? This was all about clarifying on what basis I made my questions about moral debt.
Now that you’ve agreed there is moral measuring going on, Im interested in your thoughts about how they balance out so id refer you the OP.

Regardless of what those standards are, whether they are very strict or very lenient from our perspective, one would assume that the average member would have an average score, that is a balance between good and bad. It is pretty much a tautology: The standard of any society is determined by how the members generally behave, and how the members generally behave will be identical to the standard. Those who subscribe to the standard, the members in general and the average member, will naturally accept those who are like themselves, those who hit the balance. (They will condemn those below and praise those above.) — Congau

This is a tangent, and I fail to see the relevance. We may have gone into the weeds a bit, we’ve spent a lot of time sorting out the context of my question and not the question.

Yes, that is another valid criticism of DCT. Even if it were true, we have no reliable means of knowing. A DCT proponent would probably say we do, through divine revelation, but that puts them in the same boat as before with “A” imo. Divine revelation must be shown to be reliable first, and it hasnt.

If DCT means Divine Command Theory, then your objection of Aleph Numbers' not answering your proposition is false. Because all one needs to do to destroy your DCT is to not believe in the divine. Then the DCT falls apart immediately. — god must be atheist

That IS my objection to his argument, thats what I’ve been saying. DCT defines and then assumes a god as one of its premises. Thats why someone like Craig has to combine it with Kalams Cosmological argument.
And again, its not MY DCT. Im just explaining it because Aleph doesnt get it (and therefore doesnt understand how his argument fails) and neither do you as evidenced by your next quote here:

B. is that even the DCT is not objective. It was designed by someone, or thought up, or invented, to the faithful, by god. So it does not rest on some general, a priori unassailable logic or truth, it is arbitrary. Arbitrary, by god, for sure, (to the religious), but still arbitrary. — god must be atheist

DCT defines moral perfection as part of gods “essential nature”. Its not something god came up with its something that he is, perfectly good. Its not arbitrary because it never changes, it would be like saying a human having legs is arbitrary. Which isnt a problem really, as you so cleverly and originally pointed out in “A” above. It doesnt matter because there is no good reason to believe such a god exists.

Lol, i heard you the first time. We’re done here.

Ya, I wasnt intending to operate from a universal standard for ethics. Ive meant it to be about any given societies standard. All thats required is a standard by which people are morally judged, or their moral measure taken.
So to your point about it not being about ethics anymore but law/politics. I think we both recognise that distinction, however Im not referencing laws here. Im still referencing the ethics of the group/community, whatever they may be. Law is about whats best for society, and morality is about whats best according to a moral standard.
I agree that you could have unjust laws and imperfect ethics in a group, but thats not what Im asking about. Im asking about how the balance of moral/immoral works, regardless of what the individual standards that are in place may be. Its about how people are judged morally according to any given moral standard, not whether or not the standard is just or not. Thats a separate topic.
I understand its not always clear where the overlap between law and ethics is, so examples Ive used might have been confusing, for that I apologise.

Why would I do that? So you can ignore what I said and restate your position?
This is what I mean by not arguing in good faith. You aren’t engaging with what Im saying, Im not sure you’ve really answered anything Ive posed to you. This time, you ignored my post and instead posed a new line of argument. (By trying to use DCT, with you as the divine commander). Can you see how thats going to come across as disingenuous?
I stated why I thought your argument falls flat, cuz it ignores a premiss of DCT, and you didnt respond to it. If you think Im wrong about that, then show me how, or why.

Lol, now youre getting it. The big hint is in the title of the theory: Divine Command Theory...not Divine Command if the Commands Seem Reasonable Theory.
Like I said to Streetlight, its not MY theory. All Im saying is your argument is already accounted for in DCT, your criticism doesn't follow logically from the main DCT premiss. Thats why DCT is so widely respected (as with Craig, its main mouthpiece) among theistic apologists, they already firmly, desperately believe the premiss. Also why its do unimpressive to everyone else.

What? Thats how gods are defined in DCT. Its NOT my theory Im just repeating it.

Quite frankly, Dingo, I don't understand half of what you say, and I have not been arguing in bad faith. I did indeed address you because you failed to understand the simple point that just because god commands something doesn't mean that it is not arbitrary. — Aleph Numbers

If you do not understand half of what I say, how can you make the claim I didnt understand your simple point? I think you are the one lacking understanding here, by your own admission. Ill keep it as simple as possible.
If gods moral commands are defined as non-arbitrary, as they are in Divine Command theory, then your argument fall completely flat.
Your only option then is to attack the premiss of gods definition under DCT. You have only done this by referencing your own standards of morality based on reason. It should end there, with a choice between which of the two moral foundations seems more plausible, but you keep trying to muscle in your argument against DCT which as I pointed put, fails.
Now, if there is anything in there you do not understand, we should elucidate it before you reject it. If you understand and disagree, then directly address where Ive gone wrong.

Your original question was: “Can we pay off moral debt?” and I realize that the question is one of principle and not concerned with the exact measurement of each act of charity or transgression. The problem is not about subjective/objective, but that a debt to an unspecified collective doesn’t make sense. How could there be a debt to mankind? The idea of repayment necessitates some unity of feeling on the part of the creditor. Someone feels a loss and a repayment somehow relieves the pain. That unity of feeling obviously doesn’t exist in mankind. — Congau

Well now you’ve gone the complete opposite of the individual, all of mankind.
Two things. Its not an unspecified collective. It can be a specific one. A city, a town, a community within a city or town and whatever standards that group agrees on...and also its not about paying off the debt or accruing it to a specific person, Thats a separate judgement I would say. Its about the moral debt to the community. Stealing from that community and balancing it out with service to that community.

If we still judge the moral value of a person according to how we think his good and bad deeds add up, that doesn’t include any notion of debt since we only assess the achievements and shortcoming of the moral agent. If a student gets some excellent grades and some lousy ones, we call him a medium level student, but there is no preconceived assumption that overall grades are always ok if they balance in the middle. Grades should be as good as possible and so should a person’s moral standing. There’s nothing inherently ok about being average. It’s just that we don’t find it fair to judge a person too hard if he’s no worse than most people. — Congau

Is there something inherently not ok about being average? (Just curious)
Anyway,
We judge the student on the balance of his good and bad grades. That may come out medium, low or still excellent. Thats exactly what Im suggesting about taking someones moral measure.
So its not about aiming for average, but surpassing a minimum standard to qualify as a good person. This standard can actually be very high or very low, whatever the group or community has accepted/adopted.

Since your name change, I'm picking up a defiant vibe. Maybe change your name again and return to the Eeyore thing you had going for a while. It was just as annoying, but the spinelessness kept you out of harm's way. — Hanover

Wait, who is he?

Ouch. Just caught up on some of his gems from the sex ethics thread. His Weinstein stuff was fairly gross. The aforementioned
misogyny. Good riddance.

And no it's not a joke. He had already been warned for religious misogyny etc. — Baden

Ya, his winking emojis dont convince me either. So much for his claims of practicing a peaceful religion.
So from what I gather you exercise banning because of people not heeding your warnings more than shitty behaviour. Is that right?

What kinda extremism? Don’t get me wrong, no big loss imo but I only read ignorant, repetitive religious stuff. None of it was extreme that I saw. Whats he say?

You’ve given me a lot to think about, thanks. :up:

↪DingoJones I can't give you a conclusive answer to that. In myself, and almost every living thing I meet, I observe a strong affinity with life. Any attempts to quantify that objectively would be futile. It is an intuition. — Tzeentch

I see. So your morality is intuition based?

Life and death are natural, and on their own neither moral nor immoral. Perhaps it would be better to say all premature death is tragic. But then again, when an elder dies naturally of old age it may cause grief in their relatives, and is that not tragic? — Tzeentch

I should have asked before...how are you using “tragedy” here? If death and tragedy are both natural, how can an abortion be morally wrong on the basis of a tragic loss of life?

The matter of morality, at least, becomes more clear when a human decides to voluntarily end life prematurely, whether that be by stomping on a bug that did them no harm, or chopping down a tree for no reason, or killing an unwanted fetus. — Tzeentch

Thats the really tough bit, what reasons count as good ones?

Ok, so the distinction is moral agency.
Ok, so back to all loss of life being tragic. Why is that? If its a part of life as you say, then its not under the province of moral agency is it?

Ok, so Im just wondering why you are not more focused on the greater loss of life of bacteria or plants. You implied it has to do with them not being eligible for moral judgement while in the case of abortion you can do so with the mother at least. Is that right?

Of course, yes, and by participating in the abortion thread you are showing where your focus is, or is that not the case?
Just to be clear, Im being sincere and not trying to trap you or use your words against you. Your perspective interests me and it seems youve put some thought into its consistency, so Im inquiring in good faith. (Which is not to say I wont disagree at some point)