I didn't speak about God at all. So why are you bringing God in? I've asked you to prove merely that love is JUST a chemical cocktail and nothing more. It's not a black and white thing. If love isn't just a chemical cocktail, that doesn't mean God exists, so don't be scared. This is not a trap. I'm just asking you an honest question. — Agustino

I bring God into it because that's the only other source of "why love is what it is" (with it's specific telos, etc...) that I can imagine you have in mind other than evolution (as a basis for why this telos is morally important). Given that you're suggesting we orient (some) morality around the teleological specifics of love, the reasoning for doing so must come from some argument pertaining to the virtue/success of the way love is rather than merely appealing to it as a starting point. (the question becomes what's so great or important about "love" what we orient our morality around it?). (Or in other words, why should our teleological assessments of "love" be taken as morally necessary to pursue or immoral to frustrate?). If God designed love to be the way it is, then I can imagine why you hold love to be morally important to preserve/pursue (because god is good, basically). If only evolution designed love, then I think you would agree that appealing to it as a necessary beginning moral value would seem somewhat arbitrary and unpersuasive (given that the evolutionary path we've taken is somewhat arbitrary/random).

So first we have this question: "what is love"? The way I've answered it is by getting at it's mechanics in physical biology and it's structure/function in terms of evolutionary purpose/strategy. More than that, I cannot venture to say. And I cannot prove the negative of "love is nothing more than it's physical description" (there might be some hidden metaphysical truth out there, a "god" for instance). To say that love is something more than it's physical description, from my perspective, makes a claim that begs for actual evidence (my scientific standards).

Under a love-telos based moral framework, I've managed (I think) to substantiate my claims regarding the evolution endowed teleological ends of love (which is essentially one strategy of many designed to perpetuate the species, like pleasure from eating, etc.). But since successful species perpetuation comes in so many other and varied forms (including the failure of some members of a given species), when considered on the whole exclusive life-long monogamy actually becomes one option of many possible strategies that humans are capable of taking thanks to evolution.

So, under a teleological moral framework, if you want to convince me that love is actually something more than what I can actually show it to be, then you have to tell me what it is that makes it "more than it's physical description" (so we can understand it's teleology). Presumably, God is the thing that designed love to be more than just an optional evolutionary strategy, I just don't know to what else you would point or appeal. We don't have to talk about god and I would prefer not to, but instead of God you've got to some up with some kind of argument that gives me some reason to believe that love is anything more than a something which exists in a physical, chemical, biological, and psychological worlds.

Likewise I'm not trying to trap you into talk of god or anything, I'm looking for the bedrock of your moral reasoning, and if you have no solid starting point, then I hope to incentivize you to create one.

And don't you need to prove your point if you want to convince us that love is just a chemical cocktail? Or do you expect us to fall down before your great wisdom in blind acceptance? That sounds quite like what you project on religious people to tell you the truth. It's quite hypocritical to hold others to standards you don't hold yourself to. — Agustino

I only tend to make claims that I can demonstrate to be true (that's what I try to do at least). Claiming that love is basically a chemical cocktail and evolution is the bar-tender is something I can back up with evidence. I think it's reasonable to believe that there's no hidden metaphysical design or telos of love, but that's not necessary to my would be claims under a telos based moral framework. The way I see it, if you want to suppose that your metaphysical suppositions reflect the reality of what love is, then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate why.

What does that mean? I didn't ask you to recite what I said, I asked you what it means. You say you're familiar with Aristotelian tradition, so please go ahead and explain to me what exactly a rational soul is. What is this thing that human beings are formed of? — Agustino

Oh me oh my! I love a good quiz! (But I don't love having to unpack Aristotle's "rational soul" for you, that's your job!)

Aristotle believed that the best way to understand things in the world was to classify them under a teleological framework that names the materials something is composed of, the form/shape that this material is situated in (the soul), the thing that produced it (your parents?, or evolution?, or god?), and the final cause or function that the thing has (where my current point of contention is while adopting your teleological presuppositions. see: propagation/adaptation through trial and error thanks to evolution).

So, Aristotle's soul is the actual form that humans take which can be understood by the actions/functions that they manifest. Plants have only the "nutritive soul" (where seeking nutrition and consuming nutritious material is an action inherent to the form of plants), while non-human-animals have a "perceptual soul" in addition to a nutritive soul (they perceive things, but do not understand them), and finally human-animals actually have "a mind" aspect to their soul, which is what supposedly makes us totally special and unique, and able to actually engage in complex activities which require complex understanding. A "rational soul" is the form of a living thing with nutritive, perceptual, and mind components.

So if the above is satisfactory to you, can I now tell you why I think Aristotle's teleological approach to understanding the world (per the above) is a primitive and poor basis for objective moral reasoning? (let alone critical and scientific thinking)...

Okay, I agree. What would you say "obscure" and "unsubstantiated" mean? How do you make a belief "clear" and "substantiated"? — Agustino

By "clear" I mean with language that is not tied to some specific (and ancient -_-) school of thought or thinker who tended to use their own vocabulary in specific ways, but also, and especially also, not using using or invoking concepts which point to very complex phenomena without at least giving a solid definition and description of what that phenomena is (for example: "emotional well being" or "person-hood"). I'm happy to speak in colloquialisms, but I cannot be expected to sniff out underlying hard arguments when you employ them in your actual arguments.

So I really like it when premises and conclusions are clearly defined and clearly articulated.

In terms of "substantiated" all that I ask is that your premises logically follow from your conclusions (or are made highly probable by them). If I cannot object to your premises, and I cannot disagree with the logic your conclusion employs, then I'll accept the conclusion.

And would you agree that we mean someone good at healing, instead of good at baking pies, because we appeal to the function of the doctor, and so we consider a doctor to be a good doctor when he performs his function well? — Agustino

"Good" can be used as a adjective describing someone skilled in their profession, so yes?

I don't see where you're going with this yet... And when we say "doctor" we don't mean "baker" due to an arbitrary reality of the english language. We're not appealing to some innate and necessary function of an immutable "doctor form", per se, we're just pointing to the common understanding of doctor when we say it. In the english language we invent categories... I don't see the significance of this yet but hopefully you can show me this is going somewhere...

Right, and I agree with that. But to claim that this tradition is presented without evidence is quite silly - even on an a priori basis, some of the brightest minds who have ever lived have believed it. To really make that claim you must first show that you understand that tradition, and show that it lacks such evidence, something that you haven't done. To be able to do that, you'd have to engage with the tradition, do you agree? — Agustino

To show that a tradition lacks evidence I would have to engage with the tradition yes...

I'm not the one trying to argue that it has sufficient evidence though, that's your position, and I cannot be expected to prove a negative. You're the one who in the process of arguing for the position that casual sex and promiscuity are inherently harmful eventually pointed directly to the existence of a tradition (as evidence/argument) and now again are making this explicit appeal that the existence of a tradition is reason enough to believe something is valid until someone comes along and proves that the tradition contains insufficient evidence.

This is called an "Appeal to tradition". It's a well known informal fallacy and piece of sophistry/rhetoric that humans have irrationally employed for millennia. It's employment is itself a tradition. I'm sure there's irony hiding around here somewhere...

In other words, saying "smart people believed this stuff and it's really old so you need to show why it lacks evidence" is a fallacious appeal to my request that you explain to me why your Aristotelian teleological framework is a sound basis for a moral one, or at the very least what makes casual sex necessarily harmful. I think I've been very sporting of your constant demands that I rebuke Aristotle directly, so now maybe you can meet me half way and close the remaining logical gaps in your argument without demanding that I recite or paraphrase the meaning of the terms you employ without yourself actually qualifying them.

The fact that it necessarily frustrates the telos of intimacy of sex. — Agustino

As soon as I realized you were founding your moral values on some notion of teleological purpose, I understood completely what your argument was and where it ends.

It ends with your personal definition of what the function of humans are. Essentially it amounts to your own experience based assessment of how you think humans ought to live (a naiveté stemming from a LACK of experience and the belief that there is one best way of behaving for all humans (perhaps cemented by the mistaken assessment that all humans share the exact same form or soul)).

We can get into all kinds of moral dilemmas where it turns out that actually adhereing to "necessary teleological ends" of one random aspect of human emotion or psychology (like anger for instance) can actually be unhealthy to humans, and that the very presupposition of necessary ends themselves is often the result of a limited understanding of the diverse functions of complex things.

Entertaining the idea from a modern perspective leads to issues as well. The "form" (soul) that my body "actualizes" wasn't merely created by my parents alone (they didn't design it); evolution had something to do with it, and it also involves a world of genetic complexity whose full functions we're not capable of understanding (and to the degree that we do understand them, diversity and adaptability of methods seems to be how evolution achieves it's end function of propagation, even in the behavior of humans).

Evolution really gives Aristotle's teleology quite a hard time in my opinion. Because he didn't realize how so much variation, complexity, and change could come to exist, he must have supposed that all the different forms must exist as intrinsic archetypes of elementary categories of "things that can/do exist". He supposed then that if he could define these archetypal categories that he could then better understand how things relate to and differ from one another as a part of his pursuit to comprehend the world around him.

Maybe the world is divided into discrete categories of form (and categories of soul for living objects), but poor Aristotle was missing a shit ton of information about the nuance of form. Genetic mechanisms and the information they store is a much more interesting description of the form of the human body, and it's a world neither you, nor I, nor Aristotle can speak authoritatively about...

And after an unconscionable hiatus, we may now return to our regularly scheduled topical musical programming:

Oh come now. Appeal to un-philosophicalness? — VagabondSpectre

Because I said you are having trouble being philosophical. Then you say:

Why should it always follow friendship? Because that's how you feel about it? Because otherwise your feelings get hurt? — VagabondSpectre

Or:

I don't understand what you mean here; I don't have sex with objects, I have sex with people. — VagabondSpectre

I am going to do my best to avoid most of the nonsense that you write and try to find the best parts of your argument, because it is clear that you are a broken record incapable of thinking beyond your little world and that somehow writing lengthy posts would enable you to present yourself as an authority on this subject when, by your own admission, you have stated that you enjoy such argumentative tact. I personally find that distasteful.

Your moral point about approaching women with sexual interest/intentions is that it's harmful to them. — VagabondSpectre

This is the last time I am going to say this to you. I am NOT talking about individual, case-by-case situations. I am talking sexual morality. Do you understand that? It is not harmful to them - we are not discussing a problem of ethics - I specifically wrote it is about the person' intent, what you think, how you perceive. You keep on going back to the same thing, hence the broken record.

Why is "friendship" required to be "morally conscious"? — VagabondSpectre

It is the other way around; through friendship one becomes morally conscious, they begin to experience empathy. The pursuit of a sexual relationship should follow and not precede this. As I said, to become morally conscious - which is established by friendship - enables one to feel empathy and thus ultimately love, the cognition and capacity to connect to the external world and identify other people.

I remain an 'object' that one passively experiences, a non-being that exists merely as a benefit rather than actually seeing and experiencing 'me' or my identity. One becomes trapped in their own cognitive limitation that adheres merely to instinctual drives and follows morality only as is dictated by their environment rather than autonomously.

And as I will reiterate (again :-d ) that seeking a genuine bond with a man does not suddenly mean that I am averse to sex, on the contrary, so I would appreciate your coercive subtleties to be kept to a minimum; was it not you that said that you should not be concerned about the emotional well-being of women?

So despite your attempt at an open marriage, you have a monogamous one. That's life right there for you. If you're still holding hands, that's a very good sign :)

I am going to do my best to avoid most of the nonsense that you write and try to find the best parts of your argument, because it is clear that you are a broken record incapable of thinking beyond your little world and that somehow writing lengthy posts would enable you to present yourself as an authority on this subject when, by your own admission, you have stated that you enjoy such argumentative tact. I personally find that distasteful. — TimeLine

I wish you would communicate your arguments as clearly as your insults...

This is the last time I am going to say this to you. I am NOT talking about individual, case-by-case situations. I am talking sexual morality. Do you understand that? It is not harmful to them - we are not discussing a problem of ethics - I specifically wrote it is about the person' intent, what you think, how you perceive. You keep on going back to the same thing, hence the broken record. — TimeLine

More virtue ethics....

O.k, let me rephrase your position: "approaching women (ever) with sexual intentions prior to being friends with them is immoral because... Because.... Because it's immoral?"

OR

"Certain thoughts and intentions are immoral, and wanting to have sex with a woman and approaching her on that basis is one such inherently immoral/un-virtuous thought"

That sound about right?

It is the other way around; through friendship one becomes morally conscious, they begin to experience empathy. And as I will reiterate (again :-d ) that seeking a genuine bond with a man does not suddenly mean that I am averse to sex, so I would appreciate your coercive subtleties to be kept to a minimum; was it not you that said that you should not be concerned about the emotional well-being of women? — TimeLine

My coercive subtleties :-O

Do you want me to wield a moral hatchet like yourself?

I don't actually need to be friends with someone to empathize or sympathize with them. I even sympathize with my "enemies" (people who don't like me?). I even sympathize with you, which is why I say honest things like "be prepared to be approached by men in bars" or "avoid certain establishments". I understand that you have very high standards for intimacy and respect and when and with whom you choose to have sex with, but not everyone else shares those standards. The majority of men and women who go to night clubs do not share those high standards, and that's why the environment produces interactions that offend you. I get that you're offended, but that's life in a world where everyone else prefers to treat sex more crudely than yourself. You may look down on us, that's fine, but unless one of us transgresses against you in a way more substantial than thought crime, you're not going to persuade very many people that your own lofty standards are what's good for them (or moral).

P.S: I can even empathize/sympathize with the women I'm physically attracted to even while I approach them with sexual interests in mind... (for example, i only intend to approach women with sexual interests in mind in reasonable settings, such as a club setting, although circumstances can make this a bit of a grey area (i.e, body language)).

Do you want me to wield a moral hatchet like yourself? — VagabondSpectre

Isn't that what you are attempting to do, only conversely? I am not playing a game here, this is not a competition of who will win and I am quite literally trying to have a discussion, but this attempt is being swallowed and it is frustrating that you are resorting to the abovementioned.

It is not just me who identifies the importance of morality, neither does one need to be religious as many would agree it to be an important aspect to human nature.

Certain thoughts and intentions are immoral, and wanting to have sex with a woman and approaching her on that basis is one such inherently immoral/un-virtuous thought — VagabondSpectre

Yes. Now, that we have established this, can we move forward? What I am interested in is not whether mutually consensual casual sex between two single adults is immoral (which is a case-by-case situation that depends on a number of factors), but this very assumption that enables one to assume the right to approach a woman with the sole intent of having sex with her. This objectifies the woman - turns her into an object or a thing - that who she is, what she thinks, what she has done etc., are all irrelevant as you yourself have confirmed. When your objective has been fulfilled, her as an object is no longer necessary and she becomes disposable.

Without this intention, is it not true that approaching a woman for casual sex no longer becomes possible?

I even sympathize with you — VagabondSpectre

Don't contradict yourself. Was it not you who said:

This is what I mean by not wanting to have to consider everyone's emotional well-being — VagabondSpectre

Sympathy and empathy are two very different concepts and I certainly do not need your sympathy, no matter how difficult my circumstances may have been. To acknowledge is very different to feeling and empathy is a personal connection, a felt experience and not simply being able to agree that a given situation is bad.

Friendship itself enables the opportunity to experience mutual care and trust and other duties that are constitutive of a relationship and this relationship draws two close enough to begin a teleological purpose and where one becomes motivated by concern and affection for their said-friendship. This shared interest in one another' well being enhances the experience of empathy, because they begin to share a genuine bond and a shared sense of what is important.

When two people who lack this friendship or said-bond are in a relationship based on mutual need rather than empathy and love, it always results in unhappiness. There may exist deception and lies, blanketed by an external show that is bound together by social or perhaps even familial expectations.

To pursue a sexual relationship preceding friendship would mean that you are not seeking to form this bond or that you desire to learn more about and experience the person. This is wrong and why any sexual relationship should be initiated only after forming a friendship.

I only intend to approach women with sexual interests in mind in reasonable settings, such as a club setting, although circumstances can make this a bit of a grey area (i.e, body language)). — VagabondSpectre

A 'grey area' is not good enough. You should be concerned about the intent itself and the formulation of categories that hastily generalise.

You say this: — TimeLine

So if I call someone who is a tramp, a tramp (not to her face in this case) is that bad? Why? — Agustino

But then, earlier in your little tirade against me, you said: — TimeLine

That's not kind, that's not nice, and that's not virtuous. End of story. — Agustino

You contradict yourself constantly — TimeLine

Ok so what does the fact that I call a tramp a tramp have to do with the fact that I think some of your behaviour is not kind, nice or virtuous? :s How is that a contradiction? The only way I can see it as a contradiction is if you assume that calling an actual tramp a tramp is wrong, and that's precisely what I've asked you - if it is wrong. So you cannot answer me by the contradiction story, since that would be to beg the question.

so I am not kind or nice or virtuous when I speak, but you are? — TimeLine

When did I claim to be? :s Really, you keep making up shit, the same way you made up shit that I called you a dog. I never called you a dog - I said you were foaming at the mouth LIKE A DOG. Which was true, since you had an entire post written all in caps, combined with repeatedly insulting me for no reason by calling me an idiot, a moron, etc. Comments which by the way, you removed - good that I managed to quote them before you did. So I'm not quite sure which one of us is running away from responsibility.

is only deceptive to you and asking a multitude of irrelevant questions is as much a tactic as appealing to the 'many people agree with me' rhetoric when you attempt re-direct the blame to your interlocutor. — TimeLine

Funny that you project that on me. I'm not sure how I'm trying to get out of anything - I answered all your questions, the same cannot be said about you - you've avoided all my questions.

Several of your posts have been deleted if you haven't noticed. — TimeLine

No, only ONE post was deleted, and in my opinion that shouldn't have been deleted as I had a valid point. You tempered with your comments to remove evidence, that's not what a person with integrity does. It is true that it was quite a harsh post, but it nevertheless had a valid point.

This is not a game of who can write the most or who will give up first or who can manipulate words the best as a way to deflect any responsibility. Again, here you are contradicting yourself and you are indeed aggressive. — TimeLine

No it's absolutely not a game, and I never claimed not to have been aggressive, so why do you keep imputing shit to me that I've never said? You always do this. Always. Almost every single sentence contains a lie.

I bring God into it because that's the only other source of "why love is what it is" (with it's specific telos, etc...) that I can imagine you have in mind other than evolution (as a basis for why this telos is morally important) — VagabondSpectre

This is false. Buddhists for example don't believe in God, and yet they'd disagree that evolution alone is responsible for what love is, if you take evolution to be a purely physical process.

(Or in other words, why should our teleological assessments of "love" be taken as morally necessary to pursue or immoral to frustrate?) — VagabondSpectre

Good question, we will answer it in due course.

If only evolution designed love — VagabondSpectre

Why must love be designed in the first place?

To say that love is something more than it's physical description, from my perspective, makes a claim that begs for actual evidence (my scientific standards). — VagabondSpectre

And there is actual evidence, namely our experience of love.

Claiming that love is basically a chemical cocktail and evolution is the bar-tender is something I can back up with evidence. — VagabondSpectre

No, you cannot back that up with evidence at all. You cannot show that love is just a chemical cocktail, you yourself have just admitted this. Maybe what you want to say is that you can back up with evidence the fact that the experience of love involves the release of certain chemicals within the body, but that is an entirely different story. Correlation does not necessarily entail a causal link.

So, Aristotle's soul is the actual form that humans take which can be understood by the actions/functions that they manifest. Plants have only the "nutritive soul" (where seeking nutrition and consuming nutritious material is an action inherent to the form of plants), while non-human-animals have a "perceptual soul" in addition to a nutritive soul (they perceive things, but do not understand them), and finally human-animals actually have "a mind" aspect to their soul, which is what supposedly makes us totally special and unique, and able to actually engage in complex activities which require complex understanding. A "rational soul" is the form of a living thing with nutritive, perceptual, and mind components. — VagabondSpectre

Okay, I don't think you have the right understanding of what a soul is in Aristotelian terms, but for now we'll work with yours. So you say that a "rational soul" is the form of a living thing with nutritive, perceptual, and mind components. You also say that "the actual form that humans take can be understood by the actions/functions that they manifest". So if the form is understood by the actions/functions they manifest, then clearly the test to determine the existence of the form is to see if they manifest the respective actions/functions that the respective form would entail. But previously you said:

The assumption that humans have a "rational soul" is not proven or scientific. — VagabondSpectre

I believe that it's time to retract this statement, since we have shown that forms are understood by the actions/functions they manifest (just like atoms would be understood by the actions/functions they manifest) and we do know that human beings have nutritive, perceptual and mind components - we know it from direct observation.

So if the above is satisfactory to you, can I now tell you why I think Aristotle's teleological approach to understanding the world (per the above) is a primitive and poor basis for objective moral reasoning? (let alone critical and scientific thinking)... — VagabondSpectre

No it's not satisfactory. Substances per Aristotelian ontology are composed of form & matter - hence the doctrine of hylomorphism. This isn't a very controversial thing, since both matter (potential) and form (actuality) are required to have an actual, real substance.

The form of the living body, as Aristotle writes in De Anima, is known as the soul. The form of the body has nothing to do with the shape of the body. Rather, the soul is the principle by virtue of which the body is a living body, instead of a dead body. The soul is not some ghosty thing which has the shape of the body, and leaves the body upon death to go up to heaven, or whatever you may have imagined when you made the silly statement that there is no scientific evidence for the soul.

Now forms give the matter that they govern the powers that it has, and only those powers. Forms are absolutely necessary to explain the behaviour we notice in matter. Take the simplest particle, the quark. Why does it have the behaviour that it does, and not some other behaviour? Clearly to explain this we have to postulate a principle which governs its behaviour. Even if, via the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle that behaviour happens to be somewhat random, we still require a reason why it's random, and not non-random.

Also think about genes. You say that genes are responsible for the features that we have. So why do genes have such powers? This is more besides the point, but you have to understand why Aristotle postulated forms in the first place.

Now - we have discovered that the soul is the form of the living body, and together they constitute the creature in question. If either the soul is gone, or the living body is gone, then we cannot have the creature. Once the creature dies, the soul disappears or dies - and the body stops being ANIMATED (Anima = soul). That's why, for example, Epicurus the atheist and materialist believed in souls - he, unlike Aristotle, thought that the soul dies with the body.

Now a rational soul is distinguished by the powers it gives the respective body. Namely all the powers the vegetative soul has (nutritional, reproduction, etc.), all the powers of the animal soul (locomotion, sensory, etc.), and in addition to those, will and intellect, which are uniquely human powers (as far as we know). There's nothing primitive about Aristotelianism, in recent years in fact it's been coming back very strongly in philosophy of science.

By "clear" I mean with language that is not tied to some specific (and ancient -_-) school of thought or thinker who tended to use their own vocabulary in specific ways, but also, and especially also, not using using or invoking concepts which point to very complex phenomena without at least giving a solid definition and description of what that phenomena is (for example: "emotional well being" or "person-hood") — VagabondSpectre

Okay. So then that seems a bit contradictory to me because on the one hand you do not want to stick to the very well defined philosophical terminology of Aristotelianism, but at the same time you want to avoid the vagueness that exists in other more colloquial terminology.

So I really like it when premises and conclusions are clearly defined and clearly articulated. — VagabondSpectre

How do we go about choosing correct premises? A conclusion is only as good as the premises, but mostly because the premises already contain the conclusion. But clearly we decide on the premises before we decide on the conclusion. Therefore it is at least logically possible to get to the conclusion without any premises, right? Certainly it's not the argument that will decide what the truth is, for the argument always presupposes premises, and premises always presuppose some other source - other than arguments.

In terms of "substantiated" all that I ask is that your premises logically follow from your conclusions (or are made highly probable by them) — VagabondSpectre

I would hope the premises don't follow logically FROM the conclusions.

If I cannot object to your premises, and I cannot disagree with the logic your conclusion employs, then I'll accept the conclusion. — VagabondSpectre

Your objection to my premises can always happen - it's not constrained by anything, except your honesty and your experience.

"Good" can be used as a adjective describing someone skilled in their profession, so yes? — VagabondSpectre

Okay I see. So then I think you'll also agree that a good watch is one which tells the time right, a good hairdresser is one which does your hair right, and a good eye is one which allows you to see well, correct?

And when we say "doctor" we don't mean "baker" due to an arbitrary reality of the english language. — VagabondSpectre

Yes we don't but I don't wish to talk about language, but rather the underlying concepts.

Would you agree that a moral man is a good man?

We're not appealing to some innate and necessary function of an immutable "doctor form", per se, we're just pointing to the common understanding of doctor when we say it. — VagabondSpectre

But would you agree that if anyone, regardless of who they are, understands what we mean by doctor, then they will also understand that a good doctor is one who is good at what we mean by healing? I'm trying to talk about the underlying concepts now, not about whatever words we use to refer to the concepts, so just checking if you're still with me. Because concepts are objectively related to each other in a certain way - such as doctor with healing.

To show that a tradition lacks evidence I would have to engage with the tradition yes... — VagabondSpectre

Okay!

I'm not the one trying to argue that it has sufficient evidence though, that's your position, and I cannot be expected to prove a negative. You're the one who in the process of arguing for the position that casual sex and promiscuity are inherently harmful eventually pointed directly to the existence of a tradition (as evidence/argument) and now again are making this explicit appeal that the existence of a tradition is reason enough to believe something is valid until someone comes along and proves that the tradition contains insufficient evidence.

This is called an "Appeal to tradition". It's a well known informal fallacy and piece of sophistry/rhetoric that humans have irrationally employed for millennia. It's employment is itself a tradition. I'm sure there's irony hiding around here somewhere...

In other words, saying "smart people believed this stuff and it's really old so you need to show why it lacks evidence" is a fallacious appeal to my request that you explain to me why your Aristotelian teleological framework is a sound basis for a moral one, or at the very least what makes casual sex necessarily harmful. I think I've been very sporting of your constant demands that I rebuke Aristotle directly, so now maybe you can meet me half way and close the remaining logical gaps in your argument without demanding that I recite or paraphrase the meaning of the terms you employ without yourself actually qualifying them. — VagabondSpectre

Right, so I think you should retract the statement that there is no evidence for the tradition, since quite clearly you do not wish to prove a negative. So we can cross this one out.

It ends with your personal definition of what the function of humans are. — VagabondSpectre

So if I say that the function of the heart and the cardiovascular system is to pump blood that is my personal definition, and no more true than saying that the function of the heart and cardiovascular system is to stare at the moon?

Essentially it amounts to your own experience based assessment of how you think humans ought to live — VagabondSpectre

Well it's quite peculiar that you complain that my morality is based on experience, on what is yours based?

The "form" (soul) that my body "actualizes" wasn't merely created by my parents alone (they didn't design it) — VagabondSpectre

Your body cannot actualise a form, rather a form actualises your body, and together they make the substance you consider to be "you".

Evolution really gives Aristotle's teleology quite a hard time in my opinion. — VagabondSpectre

Okay, so let's see, why do you think evolution is opposed to Aristotelian teleology? I think that quite the contrary, evolution requires Aristotelian teleology to make sense. If you think about it, a certain combination of genes produces a certain effect. Clearly it seems that specific genes are directed towards producing a certain range of effects, which is exactly what modern molecular biology is discovering. If specific genes weren't directed towards a specific range of effects, then evolution wouldn't even get off the ground, because everything would be chaotic. One day gene X caused blonde hair, and the next day the same gene would cause purple hair! So natural selection would have nothing to select from if there wasn't this underlying teleology.

Genetic mechanisms and the information they store is a much more interesting description of the form of the human body, and it's a world neither you, nor I, nor Aristotle can speak authoritatively about... — VagabondSpectre

Sure, I agree with you, but this genetic mechanism in no way negates teleology, because it is itself teleological as I've illustrated above. It just has to be to even get off the ground. Teleology just explains why a certain cause is directed towards certain effects and not towards others, which is just as needed today to account for science, as it was 2000 years ago. When we say for example that pollen particles suspended in water seem to undergo random motion as noticed even by the materialist Lucretius more than 2000 years ago, then clearly we have to attribute to something - in this case atoms - the power to produce such an effect on the pollen particle. We know this as Brownian motion in modern science today. But we must attribute only such a power to the collisions that atoms cause, and not for example the power to make the pollen particle fly to the moon. Clearly the underlying causes are teleologically oriented towards those effects.

From the original statement we started from we seem to have discussed the issues I crossed out so far:

The assumption that humans have a "rational soul" is not proven or scientific. Dividing this unproven soul into the "animal" and "vegetative" is an unsubstantiated extension of just assuming "rational souls" exist in the first place (regardless of how vague I might object the terms to be). Then comes the arbitrary moral value assumption that says the "vegetative" is more morally valuable than the "animal". And finally comes the assumption that the telelogical hierarchy of necessary ends of these realities constitutes a sound basis for objective moral reasoning. This is just bullshit predicated on bullshit... — VagabondSpectre

Urg, done.

Running away much? :s And you claim I run away from responsibility - ain't that interesting now?

This isn't a competition as I have said time and time again. You are a waste of time and energy. I could have a better intellectual conversation with a brick wall.

Yes, and you are a person who runs away when they are forced to face the truth.

Yeah ok, whatever you say. :-}

So despite your attempt at an open marriage, you have a monogamous one. That's life right there for you. If you're still holding hands, that's a very good sign :) — geospiza

It's a good sign but it is not without it's trials and tribulations. The best part of getting older with someone is: one is usually in good health of the body and the other is in good health of the mind. He made the mistake of saying that it didn't surprise him when I hurt my back because of what he called my "fragility" to which I loudly objected to while wincing in pain.
However, my husband has finally admitted to forgetting things and I swear he is not trying to retain knowledge about certain topics on purpose.
I told you that to explain that now, when I manage to slam my head in the Jeep door or twist the wrong way and he forgets that we had made arrangements to meet up with family, we call our selves F&F. I am Fragile and he is Forgetful and together we will find our way through life~

Why must love be designed in the first place? — Agustino

If love isn't designed then the necessary ends of love (what you suggest are morally necessary to uphold) become the result of evolutionary dice rolls that have resulted in a random human telos.

If someone were born with a physical or mental deformity, then their teleology could define contrary moral positions compared to what we consider to be moral for average humans (i.e, can't reproduce or can't communicate). If such a deformity was an aberration from some essential standard, then we might say that the normal human telos still applies, but if the telos of an individual is defined by the form that they take, and our morality is based upon our telos, then morality for that individual becomes defined by their form.

Another way to think about it: if male humans had hardened knuckles and hardened heads that were designed for us to compete by knocking one another out, then according to our teleology it would be a morally necessary end to use the tools we are given toward their intrinsic purpose (one might argue a society based around the numbest skulls would be moral) Morality in this case becomes evolutionary happenstance. (side note: my personal moral position accounts for evolutionary happenstance, but because I found my morality on only the most universally shared values (like the desire to be free from pain and freedom to pursue happiness) they are therefore more common and more applicable (more persuasive to the individual) when considering the outlying dilemmas).

And there is actual evidence, namely our experience of love. — Agustino

People experience love differently, I think that much is clear. People also tend to value it differently given different preexisting psychologies and actual experiences of love. "Love" (the exclusive monogamous and romantic kind) is not actually a universally shared experience or value. Because our feelings toward that specific kind of love differ so much, it becomes very difficult for us to come to agreements about what is morally obligatory when it comes to love (among other things).

No, you cannot back that up with evidence at all. You cannot show that love is just a chemical cocktail, you yourself have just admitted this. Maybe what you want to say is that you can back up with evidence the fact that the experience of love involves the release of certain chemicals within the body, but that is an entirely different story. Correlation does not necessarily entail a causal link. — Agustino

Just to clarify, I'm not making the hard claim that love is nothing more than it's physical description, but I am making the argument that love is causally linked to the physical brain. My strong evidence has to do with case studies involving things like brain damage and brain tumors which can drastically impact the behavior of individuals, and in addition to what we know about the effects of various kinds of lobotomies. Further evidence can be found in the correlation between the use of psycho-active drugs and sometimes drastic impacts on human behavior. Some very compelling evidence comes from degenerative brain diseases which tend to produce drastic and irreversible changes in behavior, up to and including utterly losing the ability to even remember who your spouse is, let alone love them.

I can show that the evolution endowed biological/physical component of love actually exists (to such a strong inductive degree that disagreement is unreasonable). Can you show that any additional metaphysical components of love actually exist? If not, as a devil's Aristotelian, why should I accept any telos which you try to base on unsubstantiated metaphysics?

Okay, I don't think you have the right understanding of what a soul is in Aristotelian terms, but for now we'll work with yours. So you say that a "rational soul" is the form of a living thing with nutritive, perceptual, and mind components. You also say that "the actual form that humans take can be understood by the actions/functions that they manifest". So if the form is understood by the actions/functions they manifest, then clearly the test to determine the existence of the form is to see if they manifest the respective actions/functions that the respective form would entail. But previously you said:

The assumption that humans have a "rational soul" is not proven or scientific. — VagabondSpectre

I believe that it's time to retract this statement, since we have shown that forms are understood by the actions/functions they manifest (just like atoms would be understood by the actions/functions they manifest) and we do know that human beings have nutritive, perceptual and mind components - we know it from direct observation. — Agustino

Here's my beef with this approach: It's difficult enough to try and classify something by "function from form" when they exhibit very many and varied (and often contradictory) behaviors and actions, but to even begin by arbitrarily categorizing human functions along "nutritive" and "animal/mind" lines implies that the parts of us which "seek out nutrition" (which lacks an explanation of how) are wholly separated from the parts of us which perform other kinds of functions (like intimacy). This separation in the first place could be the result of a misunderstanding of the underlying causal mechanisms.

It's as if you're categorizing elementary attributes of humans but you're not taking into account any real causal structures or fundamental relationships between them; it seems like approximation and guess work from mostly behavioral norms. I won't retract my statement that the "rational soul" is not scientific because I don't see how even the claim that human function can be divided into the aforementioned arbitrary categories is justifiable or scientific from the get go.

All you're really saying with "rational soul" is that humans have the ability to think, and the drive to consume energy to say alive, but you're saying nothing about the why and how of these human attributes, so at best it amounts only to a general observation...

No it's not satisfactory. Substances per Aristotelian ontology are composed of form & matter - hence the doctrine of hylomorphism. This isn't a very controversial thing, since both matter (potential) and form (actuality) are required to have an actual, real substance.

The form of the living body, as Aristotle writes in De Anima, is known as the soul. The form of the body has nothing to do with the shape of the body. Rather, the soul is the principle by virtue of which the body is a living body, instead of a dead body. The soul is not some ghosty thing which has the shape of the body, and leaves the body upon death to go up to heaven, or whatever you may have imagined when you made the silly statement that there is no scientific evidence for the soul. — Agustino

I meant that it's not an adequately testable or precise regime of interpreting the differences between objects (and how they change), and it doesn't lead to any predictive power...

Now forms give the matter that they govern the powers that it has, and only those powers. Forms are absolutely necessary to explain the behaviour we notice in matter. Take the simplest particle, the quark. Why does it have the behaviour that it does, and not some other behaviour? Clearly to explain this we have to postulate a principle which governs its behaviour. Even if, via the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle that behaviour happens to be somewhat random, we still require a reason why it's random, and not non-random — Agustino

According to deconstructionism yes we need want a reason for the quark's special qualities, but slapping the label [FORM OF: QUARK] and then saying "quark = what quark forms do" isn't an actual reason or explanation of why quarks do what they do, it's just a sloppy means of categorization. Such categorizations can be quite charming but we mustn't forget that these categories are actually just placeholders for actual physical descriptions we do not yet and may never have (or metaphysical one's we'll probably never have).

Also think about genes. You say that genes are responsible for the features that we have. So why do genes have such powers? This is more besides the point, but you have to understand why Aristotle postulated forms in the first place. — Agustino

He wanted to try and understand the world, the things in it, why they're different, and how they change.

When you say "substance" I understand what Aristotle would have meant: "matter of different types which have different inherent characteristics and mysterious qualities" (note that the mysterious qualities of actual matter (i.e, why bronze shines) was an impassable end-point for Aristotle), but when I try to square that with my own understanding of the world I can see that variations in substance actually comes from different combinations and compositions of molecular and atomic complexity and environmental conditions that work on relatively few fundamental principles or "rules" and with relatively few building blocks as starting points. Protons, neutrons (standing in for quarks) and electrons can be rearranged to form any kind of matter that exists. Differentiating between the characteristics of certain arrangements in certain conditions can be quite useful, but for a full understanding (including predictive power) over these things we must go beyond simply categorizing their various behaviors (along with presumed teleological final causes) as a behaviorist would. We may be forced to accept the behaviors of certain elementary particles for what they are (being unable to delve further into the physical world) but we need not think of human psychology or human function as an elementary or fundamental thing by any stretch.

Now - we have discovered that the soul is the form of the living body, and together they constitute the creature in question. If either the soul is gone, or the living body is gone, then we cannot have the creature. Once the creature dies, the soul disappears or dies - and the body stops being ANIMATED (Anima = soul). That's why, for example, Epicurus the atheist and materialist believed in souls - he, unlike Aristotle, thought that the soul dies with the body.

Now a rational soul is distinguished by the powers it gives the respective body. Namely all the powers the vegetative soul has (nutritional, reproduction, etc.), all the powers of the animal soul (locomotion, sensory, etc.), and in addition to those, will and intellect, which are uniquely human powers (as far as we know). There's nothing primitive about Aristotelianism, in recent years in fact it's been coming back very strongly in philosophy of science. — Agustino

I have not the gumption to assent to the position that my existence has purchase in any realm beyond the physical world we share (I do not have the evidence). As far as I understand what animates the body is not "the powers given to it by the rational soul" but rather that the body animates itself (describable by fundamental and elementary particles/forces), along with producing the end behaviors they exhibit such as movement, reproduction, and complex thought.

As far as I understand it, a human thought is the result of networks of neurons firing in sequence: it's bio-chemical/mechanical. It's all body... If we want to think of human conscious as non-physical, sure, but all evidence suggests that it's the body which empowers/produces/animates the consciousness, not the consciousness which empowers or animates the body on a fundamental level. Yes the consciousness is permitted to do some high level steering (not always though ;)), but it's not pulling the strings on the lower levels (which govern the higher)...

Stopping at "will/desire and intellect/creativity" or "love" as fundamental or elementary parts instead of going deeper with science seems primitive to me.

Okay. So then that seems a bit contradictory to me because on the one hand you do not want to stick to the very well defined philosophical terminology of Aristotelianism, but at the same time you want to avoid the vagueness that exists in other more colloquial terminology. — Agustino

Yes. If you want to use a term in a very specific way, whether it be a term with colloquial meaning or special meaning pertaining to a particular school of thought, then just be careful to give a robust and precise definition of exactly what you mean when you use that specific term.

This way not only will I always know what you mean, but I will have easier access to the underlying premises and justifications which support your conclusions.

How do we go about choosing correct premises? A conclusion is only as good as the premises, but mostly because the premises already contain the conclusion. But clearly we decide on the premises before we decide on the conclusion. Therefore it is at least logically possible to get to the conclusion without any premises, right? Certainly it's not the argument that will decide what the truth is, for the argument always presupposes premises, and premises always presuppose some other source - other than arguments. — Agustino

The answer to choosing robust premises is to apply doubt to them and test them in every conceivable way. Usually premises themselves have supporting arguments, and so attacking the premises of the argument supporting one of your chosen premises can also be an effective way of falsifying premises.

Generally, the harder we try to falsify a premise, and the more we continue to fail, the more confident we become in the truthiness of that premise.

Strictly speaking, the premises of an argument don't "contain" their conclusion, but are rather indicate or point to that conclusion (sometimes via probability, sometimes via necessity). If a single premise contains a conclusion, then it's circular logic, and really what should be considered is the argument for the premise in the first place.

When we get down to fundamental premises though (premises with no traditional logic behind them, such as the premises underlying logic itself) (let's call them brute facts) they're really only as good as they are demonstrably inviolable. A good first premise is a truism that you can rhetorically and through physical demonstration beat someone over the head with until the cognitive capacity of their brain submits to it as true (brute experiential/experimental force). The existence of gravity is a good example of a starting assumption whose underlying argument involves simply observing it bunch of times and becoming confident that the phenomenon of gravity is reliably and consistently existent.

The best fundamental premises are those premises which are very easy to falsify, but despite all attempts remain un-falsified.

Your objection to my premises can always happen - it's not constrained by anything, except your honesty and your experience. — Agustino

It's constrained by my cognitive/logical capability primarily though, so if you show me my objections are unreasonable then any self-deception should be overcome.

Okay I see. So then I think you'll also agree that a good watch is one which tells the time right, a good hairdresser is one which does your hair right, and a good eye is one which allows you to see well, correct? — Agustino

Yes, but it might also be worth noting that anything we call "good" can be also considered "not good" by someone with different standards of quality or even decency. A good doctor from WW1 is a butcher by today's standards who wouldn't be qualified to treat a horse. A "good" performer for example is hard to justify on any objectively measurable quality other than how successfully they entertain people, but the problem there is that different types of people might be highly entertained by a given performance, and a different crowd might be entirely offended by it. We should keep this subjective nuance to the word "good" in mind going forward.

Would you agree that a moral man is a good man? — Agustino

Sure, but what if we disagree about what is "moral" and how might we come to moral agreement?

But would you agree that if anyone, regardless of who they are, understands what we mean by doctor, then they will also understand that a good doctor is one who is good at what we mean by healing? I'm trying to talk about the underlying concepts now, not about whatever words we use to refer to the concepts, so just checking if you're still with me. Because concepts are objectively related to each other in a certain way - such as doctor with healing. — Agustino

The relationship with doctor and healing is a very robust distinction (making it a good basis for a word to refer to a category of healers) but again keep in mind that what people consider to be "good doctor" qualities can differ drastically.

Right, so I think you should retract the statement that there is no evidence for the tradition, since quite clearly you do not wish to prove a negative. So we can cross this one out. — Agustino

Well, technically I said that what you've written contains no actual evidence, and that referencing a tradition is not actual evidence. Demanding that I rebuke a tradition in order to justify my lack of belief instead of providing the evidence yourself wont persuade me

You're telling me to prove that X does not exist (or that there is no evidence for X) in order to justify my exclamation that I see no reason/evidence to believe in X (or for you to provide evidence for X). The idea that love goes beyond the physical in the ways that I've described is a central part of your claim that there is a necessary final cause of love that ought to be upheld above and beyond the varied final ends that evolution can be shown to have developed (presuming we're basing morality on teleological final causes in the first place).

So if I say that the function of the heart and the cardiovascular system is to pump blood that is my personal definition, and no more true than saying that the function of the heart and cardiovascular system is to stare at the moon? — Agustino

We understand what hearts are and what hearts do with much more fully than we understand what humans are and how/why they do what they do. The reason we should refrain from defining "the final causes" of humans is because we understand ourselves so poorly and the reality of our complexity is quite beyond us.

If we were to write out that hypothetical long list of what humans are, and the variations of what they can do and why, why is it that you pick out certain bits and bobs like "intimacy" and "reproduction" over other random bits and bobs "conflict" and "destruction"?

Well it's quite peculiar that you complain that my morality is based on experience, on what is yours based? — Agustino

Shared experience...

I might have trouble persuading you than something is not harmful (promiscuity and sex) due to some extra beliefs that you hold, but I reckon I would have no trouble persuading you that something IS harmful per my own moral beliefs. In my moral reasoning I try to only use the most universally shared positions as starting points (the most brute-fact realities of the human condition), and from there if I use good reasoning then I wind up with very persuasive and agreeable moral arguments and positions. The fact that both you and I want to be free from the oppression of others is simple but powerful, and as a starting moral value stands on it's own like a brute fact that cannot be disagreed with. With this idea alone we could tear down a tyrannical monarchy and contrive a system of governance, by us and for us, in pursuit of a system which promotes freedom of the individual while also seeking to protect them harm done to them by others (including the new government itself).

Your body cannot actualise a form, rather a form actualises your body, and together they make the substance you consider to be "you" — Agustino

Since I believe that the form is caused by the body (see: my substantiation of the causal link between love and neural-chemistry), I cannot assent to the idea that an extra "form" is required for the body (made from matter/substance) to behave as if it behaves.

Essentially I believe we're all automatons, mechanical beings whose will and behavior comes from (bio)mechanical goings on of our bodies and brains. It's all bottom up physical action, all substance/matter in particular arrangements where those arrangements give rise to end functions.

I want to highlight my distinction thatthe body does what the body does (which I believe includes the mind/consciousness) and that the "rational soul" or final cause/function/form of humans is just our attempt to categorize what it is that the body does, and that the rational soul doesn't "actualize" anything beyond an arbitrary and invented category used to differentiate humans from other beings and objects.

Okay, so let's see, why do you think evolution is opposed to Aristotelian teleology? I think that quite the contrary, evolution requires Aristotelian teleology to make sense. If you think about it, a certain combination of genes produces a certain effect. Clearly it seems that specific genes are directed towards producing a certain range of effects, which is exactly what modern molecular biology is discovering. If specific genes weren't directed towards a specific range of effects, then evolution wouldn't even get off the ground, because everything would be chaotic. One day gene X caused blonde hair, and the next day the same gene would cause purple hair! So natural selection would have nothing to select from if there wasn't this underlying teleology. — Agustino

It's actually incorrect to think that individual genes do anything specific and necessary (in fact, "genetic markers" are vast swaths of individual base pairs in DNA which more or less work together - somehow - to achieve more complex results down-the causal line). The best we can currently do is to look at the prevalence (recurrence) of specific genetic markers in the overall code of an individual and make correlation based assumptions about what those genes might actually have some influence over (we're beginning to get at the first steps of "how" but we're no where close to bringing it full circle to "here's it's range of possible behaviors"). The trouble is that these genetic markers in all likelihood influence many things and in many different ways (through spurious and hidden factors we don't yet understand), and layers of complexity we cannot consciously grasp, and this lack of understanding renders us only able to make approximate guesses about what final/necessary effects a higher and lower prevalence of specific genetic markers actually have. It's actually a good analogy that demonstrates the pitfalls of assuming discrete categories and functions of things without understanding the full scope of how they actually interact and behave.

The biggest problem that I see though is not how frighteningly incomplete our categories actually are, it's that evolutionary teleological ends to me seem like a more rational basis for a resulting moral argument (if we're going to appeal to teleological function/form/rational soul in the first place) than presumed metaphysical realities of poorly understood phenomena such as "love".

I eagerly await your argument that demonstrates the moral importance/necessity of adhering to teleological final causes in the first place...

Regarding my musical selection for this evening, this time it's got some actual class. Pyotor Ilych Tchaikovsky was a homosexual man who went through a failed marriage and as far as I know produced no children. And yet, he managed to create music of such lasting beauty that it rivals love and intimacy itself. Among that hypothetical long list of human functions, enjoying life and it's beauty is among the final causes that I choose for myself...

Certain thoughts and intentions are immoral, and wanting to have sex with a woman and approaching her on that basis is one such inherently immoral/un-virtuous thought — VagabondSpectre


Yes. Now, that we have established this, can we move forward? What I am interested in is not whether mutually consensual casual sex between two single adults is immoral (which is a case-by-case situation that depends on a number of factors), but this very assumption that enables one to assume the right to approach a woman with the sole intent of having sex with her. This objectifies the woman - turns her into an object or a thing - that who she is, what she thinks, what she has done etc., are all irrelevant as you yourself have confirmed. When your objective has been fulfilled, her as an object is no longer necessary and she becomes disposable. — TimeLine

You're presuming too much: "what she thinks" is not irrelevant and describing sex as my "sole intention" is a bit misleading. It might be a main intention, but I'm not going to approach her and start having sex with her regardless of what she thinks.

People are not "disposable" as such.

Regarding "the moral obligation to constantly consider everyone's emotional well being", I'll clarify what I mean by this below.

Don't contradict yourself. Was it not you who said:
This is what I mean by not wanting to have to consider everyone's emotional well-being — VagabondSpectre — TimeLine

I don't believe it is morally obligatory to go to all necessary lengths to avoid any possible harm to anyone and everyone's emotional well being. There are reasonable degrees of consideration, such as the reasonable expectation that harassment will result in emotional harm, or that sexual advanced in an inappropriate setting will be emotionally harmful, but essentially I am arguing that I'm not morally obligated to presume that every woman in a night club will be emotionally damaged by me approaching them with any degree of sexual interest. Just because I act on sexual drives doesn't mean that I'll suddenly forego other moral considerations and stop treating individual women as they want to be treated in wild pursuit of sexual gratification.

That's the rub I suppose; I treat women as individuals, and I don't presume that all of them will take offense or experience any kind of harm if I approach them. I don't treat them like they're incapable of making their own decisions, decisions such as finding a temporary sexual partner.

To assume that having sexual interest in a woman and approaching her is immoral presumes too much about human psychology (if you mean to argue that I therefore stop perceiving women I'm sexually interested in as people with thoughts desires and moral rights.

Friendship itself enables the opportunity to experience mutual care and trust and other duties that are constitutive of a relationship and this relationship draws two close enough to begin a teleological purpose and where one becomes motivated by concern and affection for their said-friendship. This shared interest in one another' well being enhances the experience of empathy, because they begin to share a genuine bond and a shared sense of what is important. — TimeLine

Teleology...? Not you too... NOT YOU TOO!

Oh gosh... Umm.... Friendship is important and all that but I still don't understand why it's a moral obligation prior to sex. I don't subscribe to virtue ethics, notions of thought crime, or slippery and presumptuous of presuming that wanting sex must somehow mean not wanting to be moral...

When two people who lack this friendship or said-bond are in a relationship based on mutual need rather than empathy and love, it always results in unhappiness. There may exist deception and lies, blanketed by an external show that is bound together by social or perhaps even familial expectations. — TimeLine

Well that's quite bleek and negative...

If I am not friends or in love with someone then interacting with them on a regular basis will make me unhappy and conceal it with lies?

No?

If I told you that our interaction makes me happy and yet we're not friends or in love, would you accuse me of lying?

To pursue a sexual relationship preceding friendship would mean that you are not seeking to form this bond or that you desire to learn more about and experience the person. This is wrong and why any sexual relationship should be initiated only after forming a friendship. — TimeLine

I still don't understand why mutually consensual and casual sex between two non-friends constitutes some kind of unvirtuous thought crime that should be considered a worthwhile moral standard...

I only intend to approach women with sexual interests in mind in reasonable settings, such as a club setting, although circumstances can make this a bit of a grey area (i.e, body language)). — VagabondSpectre


A 'grey area' is not good enough. You should be concerned about the intent itself and the formulation of categories that hastily generalise. — TimeLine

I'm scratching me head trying to figure out what category I've invented that you're unsatisfied with...

"a bit of a grey area" isn't a hasty category, it's a palce-holder for a discussion we've yet to have which presumably will be difficult to have.

My claim has to do with the qualifiers I have actually defined, not any ramble of cases you think I've neglected to exclude. My claim is that in a night club setting, when a woman is displaying certain body language, eye-contact even, with a certain kind of attire, it's entirely reasonable to approach her with the expectation that sex is the primary and mutually desired outcome from the encounter. Unless you can convince me that the thought crime of sexual interest prior to friendship will reasonably lead to some kind of harm, I've no reason to think that two mutually satisfied non-friend sexual partners have committed any moral infractions against one another.

If love isn't designed then the necessary ends of love (what you suggest are morally necessary to uphold) become the result of evolutionary dice rolls that have resulted in a random human telos. — VagabondSpectre

Not necessarily, because love may be a basic metaphysical fact of the world, in which case it would not be designed, but it would simply be there.

If someone were born with a physical or mental deformity, then their teleology — VagabondSpectre

A deformed triangle is still a triangle, just like a deformed human person is still a human person, therefore their teleologies are the same. A crooked triangle still shows the form of a triangle, even though quite imperfectly.

if male humans had hardened knuckles and hardened heads that were designed for us to compete by knocking one another out, then according to our teleology it would be a morally necessary end to use the tools we are given toward their intrinsic purpose (one might argue a society based around the numbest skulls would be moral) Morality in this case becomes evolutionary happenstance. (side note: my personal moral position accounts for evolutionary happenstance, but because I found my morality on only the most universally shared values (like the desire to be free from pain and freedom to pursue happiness) they are therefore more common and more applicable (more persuasive to the individual) when considering the outlying dilemmas). — VagabondSpectre

If such was the case, then perhaps our happiness too would revolve around how well we use our hardened heads, so yes, I don't see why not.

People experience love differently, I think that much is clear. People also tend to value it differently given different preexisting psychologies and actual experiences of love. "Love" (the exclusive monogamous and romantic kind) is not actually a universally shared experience or value. Because our feelings toward that specific kind of love differ so much, it becomes very difficult for us to come to agreements about what is morally obligatory when it comes to love (among other things). — VagabondSpectre

Sure, but then differences are never so big such that we don't recognise someone else's description of love, are they? The mere fact we recognise someone else's description as a description of love, shows that our different experiences have commonalities. Furthermore, you're speaking of love in a very narrow sense (simply erotic love), but love is much larger than this, and even erotic love presupposes charity (love of neighbour) - for your beloved is always first your neighbour and only secondly your beloved.

I am making the argument that love is causally linked to the physical brain. — VagabondSpectre

I don't think you can make this argument. This would be a metaphysical, not a physical argument. Love is correlated with the state of the physical brain, that's what we do know scientifically, but to go beyond that would be to overstep the boundaries of science.

Some very compelling evidence comes from degenerative brain diseases which tend to produce drastic and irreversible changes in behavior, up to and including utterly losing the ability to even remember who your spouse is, let alone love them. — VagabondSpectre

And equally compelling evidence comes from people like this man:

It's difficult enough to try and classify something by "function from form" when they exhibit very many and varied (and often contradictory) behaviors and actions, but to even begin by arbitrarily categorizing human functions along "nutritive" and "animal/mind" lines implies that the parts of us which "seek out nutrition" (which lacks an explanation of how) are wholly separated from the parts of us which perform other kinds of functions (like intimacy). This separation in the first place could be the result of a misunderstanding of the underlying causal mechanisms. — VagabondSpectre

Yes, you are correct! But your misunderstanding is in thinking that Aristotelians disagree with you, they don't. Distinctions are matters of the intellect and they don't exist as distinctions in reality. The functions which the intellect takes to be separate are actually one thing in reality.

All you're really saying with "rational soul" is that humans have the ability to think, and the drive to consume energy to say alive, but you're saying nothing about the why and how of these human attributes, so at best it amounts only to a general observation... — VagabondSpectre

Right, but even so, it does not lack scientific evidence, which is what your initial claim was stating. So that claim is false, we can clearly discard it.

I meant that it's not an adequately testable or precise regime of interpreting the differences between objects (and how they change), and it doesn't lead to any predictive power... — VagabondSpectre

The test is simple. Do people have such capacities? If they do, then it is clear. It has a lot of predictive power - we rely on that predictive power even in this discussion. For example on prediction is that you have will and intellect - if you didn't, I wouldn't be trying to have this conversation with you.

Such categorizations can be quite charming but we mustn't forget that these categories are actually just placeholders for actual physical descriptions we do not yet and may never have (or metaphysical one's we'll probably never have). — VagabondSpectre

This is not true. Metaphysical categories, such as forms, aren't just placeholders, they are absolutely essential to give a final account of reality - a metaphysical account - above and beyond physics. Whatever the ultimate level in physics happens to be, we must still account for why that level is such as it is. And to do that, we'll have to make an appeal to its nature - to its form. It simply has such a nature so as to have such properties. If we don't do that, we cannot explain why it does have the properties that it does. And this is true regardless of what ultimate physical constituent we land on.

"matter of different types which have different inherent characteristics and mysterious qualities" — VagabondSpectre

It still is true today - quarks display these mysterious qualities - as does quantum mechanics as well. Why should it behave the way it does rather than another way? It's just as mysterious today.

(describable by fundamental and elementary particles/forces) — VagabondSpectre

This is actually false. It has never been described by fundamental and elementary particles. Physicists think it can IN PRINCIPLE be so described, but it has never actually been done.

As far as I understand what animates the body is not "the powers given to it by the rational soul" but rather that the body animates itself (describable by fundamental and elementary particles/forces) — VagabondSpectre

Clearly it's not just the body, because the same body can also be a dead body, which is not animated at all. So something - the form - which we would describe via a process in the brain most likely - is so responsible.

As far as I understand it, a human thought is the result of networks of neurons firing in sequence: it's bio-chemical/mechanical. — VagabondSpectre

This is false. You cannot assert a causal link based purely on correlation. For all you know, idealism could be the case, and everything is thought, and indeed then neurons firing in sequence are the result of thought (though not of your thought, or conscious thought that is)

Stopping at "will/desire and intellect/creativity" or "love" as fundamental or elementary parts instead of going deeper with science seems primitive to me. — VagabondSpectre

Nobody stopped at them as fundamental at all.

The answer to choosing robust premises is to apply doubt to them and test them in every conceivable way. — VagabondSpectre

Ok, I feel this is very important. Doubt presupposes a different set of premises, so this doesn't work. If I have statement A, I cannot just doubt it. To doubt it I need to first believe statement B, which is contrary to A or an implication of A, and then I will start having GROUNDS TO DOUBT. Without grounds to doubt, my doubt is irrational.

Usually premises themselves have supporting arguments, and so attacking the premises of the argument supporting one of your chosen premises can also be an effective way of falsifying premises. — VagabondSpectre

But those supporting arguments will ultimately also be composed of premises, just like the main argument is correct? So what use? We'll still have to return to some premises which are totally unsupported by anything else, except our PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. If we don't, then we'll have an infinite regress of premises, backed by arguments which are supported by other premises, which are backed by argument, ad infinitum. Sextus Empiricus proved this clearly in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, and Plato and Aristotle were well aware of it, that's why their main question was how to come to correct premises.

Strictly speaking, the premises of an argument don't "contain" their conclusion, but are rather indicate or point to that conclusion (sometimes via probability, sometimes via necessity). — VagabondSpectre

It can never be by probability, since the conclusion must necessarily follow from the premises to be valid.

If a single premise contains a conclusion, then it's circular logic, and really what should be considered is the argument for the premise in the first place. — VagabondSpectre

Agreed.

When we get down to fundamental premises though (premises with no traditional logic behind them, such as the premises underlying logic itself) (let's call them brute facts) they're really only as good as they are demonstrably inviolable. — VagabondSpectre

This isn't so simple, because what counts as being violable must be determined, via an argument as well.

The existence of gravity is a good example of a starting assumption whose underlying argument involves simply observing it bunch of times and becoming confident that the phenomenon of gravity is reliably and consistently existent. — VagabondSpectre

:s gravity would in no way count as a first principle.

The best fundamental premises are those premises which are very easy to falsify, but despite all attempts remain un-falsified. — VagabondSpectre

Is this premise easy to falsify as well?

Yes, but it might also be worth noting that anything we call "good" can be also considered "not good" by someone with different standards of quality or even decency. A good doctor from WW1 is a butcher by today's standards who wouldn't be qualified to treat a horse. A "good" performer for example is hard to justify on any objectively measurable quality other than how successfully they entertain people, but the problem there is that different types of people might be highly entertained by a given performance, and a different crowd might be entirely offended by it. We should keep this subjective nuance to the word "good" in mind going forward. — VagabondSpectre

There is no subjectivity in the meaning of it though. The WW1 good doctor is "bad" only in reference to the better doctor of today. But what it means to be a good doctor - to be good at healing, never changes so long as the terms are understood.

Sure, but what if we disagree about what is "moral" and how might we come to moral agreement? — VagabondSpectre

Okay, so it seems that so far you agree that we describe something as good if does its function well, and a moral man is a good man. Thus to determine what a moral man is would be equivalent to determine what a good man is. So, since we appeal to the function of a thing/person to determine whether they are good in a certain context (like for the watch, hairdresser, doctor, etc.) it seems quite intuitive that we should appeal to a man's function in order to determine whether he is a good or a bad man, and thus whether he is moral or immoral. But in the past, you were quite obnoxious about morality being dependent on teleology, in multiple instances, here's one of them:

And finally comes the assumption that the telelogical hierarchy of necessary ends of these realities constitutes a sound basis for objective moral reasoning. This is just bullshit predicated on bullshit... — VagabondSpectre

You even called it bullshit, but it seems to be quite reasonable now. You seemed to say that we can't establish what man's ends/functions are, which may be true, but that doesn't invalidate the claim that morality must be based on teleology (if it is to be based on anything at all), which we have just shown to be true. So by your own words now you admit that it isn't bullshit at all, and it's not a silly assumption to make at all, but quite the contrary, it is dictated by the very logic we have so far pursued. So I think you should retract that statement.

but again keep in mind that what people consider to be "good doctor" qualities can differ drastically. — VagabondSpectre

We weren't discussing about their qualities now.

You're telling me to prove that X does not exist (or that there is no evidence for X) in order to justify my exclamation that I see no reason/evidence to believe in X (or for you to provide evidence for X). — VagabondSpectre

No, this isn't what I asked you to retract. I asked you to retract your definite statement that there is no evidence. Not that you do not see that there is any evidence. That is an entirely different thing.

One thing that is important in this discussion if it is to be productive is that we each stick with what we have said. If we start moving goal posts, and changing what we say, etc. we'll get nowhere. You said something, and we've just shown that it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If you meant something else, that's all fine and good, but you must agree to retract what you first said.

We understand what hearts are and what hearts do with much more fully than we understand what humans are and how/why they do what they do. — VagabondSpectre

Sure!

The reason we should refrain from defining "the final causes" of humans is because we understand ourselves so poorly and the reality of our complexity is quite beyond us. — VagabondSpectre

Well that depends. Is morality important for human beings? If it is, then we better make an effort to define our final causes, because as we have shown, to be moral we have to know our final causes and direct ourselves towards them. Even an inkling of an idea, a hypothesis, is better than nothing, for at least it will enable us to act in a certain way which may take us closer to our goal.

Shared experience... — VagabondSpectre

Well this is very quaint, because if we are to go by shared experience, then I think we'll have to conclude the very opposite of what you do in fact conclude. As I have illustrated, most large societies that have ever lived have been quite conservative with their sexual norms - certainly more conservative than we are today. So if we are to go by shared experience, then we should not only prioritise today, but the whole of human history. And if we do, then you'll remark that the number of large civilisations (to take into account population) which have held to conservative sexual standards, far outweighs the opposite. Sure, there were tribes here and there who lived nude, and who didn't think casual sex immoral. But then virtually all the large religions of today have a very conservative sexual morality, and we're talking even atheistic religions like Buddhism now. So if we are to take mankind's experience as a whole, I'm afraid we'll have to conclude that casual sex is immoral.

I might have trouble persuading you than something is not harmful (promiscuity and sex) due to some extra beliefs that you hold, but I reckon I would have no trouble persuading you that something IS harmful per my own moral beliefs. In my moral reasoning I try to only use the most universally shared positions as starting points (the most brute-fact realities of the human condition), and from there if I use good reasoning then I wind up with very persuasive and agreeable moral arguments and positions. The fact that both you and I want to be free from the oppression of others is simple but powerful, and as a starting moral value stands on it's own like a brute fact that cannot be disagreed with. With this idea alone we could tear down a tyrannical monarchy and contrive a system of governance, by us and for us, in pursuit of a system which promotes freedom of the individual while also seeking to protect them harm done to them by others (including the new government itself). — VagabondSpectre

This is all fine and good, but it would of course depend on what you mean by being free of oppression. I do want to be free of oppression, but what I consider oppression may not be oppression to you, and inversely, what you consider oppression may not be oppression to me. So it's still not very simple, even though we do agree fundamentally that we want to be free of oppression - but what we mean by this is actually different, and our superficial agreement would only hide this.

I eagerly await your argument that demonstrates the moral importance/necessity of adhering to teleological final causes in the first place... — VagabondSpectre

Ah, but it seems you yourself have argued for this better than I could!

It's actually incorrect to think that individual genes do anything specific and necessary (in fact, "genetic markers" are vast swaths of individual base pairs in DNA which more or less work together - somehow - to achieve more complex results down-the causal line). The best we can currently do is to look at the prevalence (recurrence) of specific genetic markers in the overall code of an individual and make correlation based assumptions about what those genes might actually have some influence over (we're beginning to get at the first steps of "how" but we're no where close to bringing it full circle to "here's it's range of possible behaviors"). The trouble is that these genetic markers in all likelihood influence many things and in many different ways (through spurious and hidden factors we don't yet understand), and layers of complexity we cannot consciously grasp, and this lack of understanding renders us only able to make approximate guesses about what final/necessary effects a higher and lower prevalence of specific genetic markers actually have. It's actually a good analogy that demonstrates the pitfalls of assuming discrete categories and functions of things without understanding the full scope of how they actually interact and behave. — VagabondSpectre

Indeed, but we have managed to isolate genes, and determine that certain genes for example lead to higher risks of certain diseases.

Anyway, going back to the initial statement:

The assumption that humans have a "rational soul" is not proven or scientific. Dividing this unproven soul into the "animal" and "vegetative" is an unsubstantiated extension of just assuming "rational souls" exist in the first place (regardless of how vague I might object the terms to be). Then comes the arbitrary moral value assumption that says the "vegetative" is more morally valuable than the "animal". And finally comes the assumption that the telelogical hierarchy of necessary ends of these realities constitutes a sound basis for objective moral reasoning. This is just bullshit predicated on bullshit... — VagabondSpectre

It seems we have gone through everything, apart from why some ends are more valuable than others, more precisely why the ends belonging to the rational part of the soul are more valuable than the ends belonging to the animal part of the soul. This is a relatively minor point granted that we've gone past the two bigger hurdles, but that's what we'll discuss next.

I wonder what Serena Williams would think if she knew that a thread started about her on a philosophy forum would end up with a dozen plus pages filled with humongous walls of texts saying nothing of import.

I wonder what Serena Williams would think if she knew that a thread started about her on a philosophy forum would end up with a dozen plus pages filled with humongous walls of texts saying nothing of import. — Heister Eggcart

Do you like those walls of text? (L) Or are they too powerful for you?

They have nothing to do with the OP.

If such was the case, then perhaps our happiness too would revolve around how well we use our hardened heads, so yes, I don't see why not. — Agustino

I don't agree that our "telos" or "final causes" are morally obligatory to pursue or uphold. Your moral argument from teleology indicates that I should adhere to some average standard in order to be moral (find happiness?), but what if I'm not average?.

I'm also not trying to argue that morality equates to whatever makes individuals happy but rather that morality is a mutually shared/cooperative agreement that we generally figure out based on what makes us both happy/unhappy (shared values) such that we find ways to avoid/promote those things (oppression for instance)(note: the controversial sentiments of a few people aren't sufficient for my standards of moral argument. The values which I do base moral arguments on are the most universally shared values available).

Chimpanzees will instinctively try to castrate other males when in a fight with them. According to their telos, castrating one another is what's moral. Conversely if humans had an extra appendage designed to castrate men, our telos would define it as moral to use it per your reasoning, correct?.

Sure, but then differences are never so big such that we don't recognise someone else's description of love, are they? The mere fact we recognise someone else's description as a description of love, shows that our different experiences have commonalities. Furthermore, you're speaking of love in a very narrow sense (simply erotic love), but love is much larger than this, and even erotic love presupposes charity (love of neighbour) - for your beloved is always first your neighbour and only secondly your beloved. — Agustino

I can recognize anyone's concept of love (although occasionally with some strain) but that doesn't mean our definitions are common enough that I therefore agree with your teleological and moral positions. Our experience of love isn't common enough to base such a specific and objective claim like "intimacy and reproduction are morally necessary per the necessary teleology of love".

I don't think you can make this argument. This would be a metaphysical, not a physical argument. Love is correlated with the state of the physical brain, that's what we do know scientifically, but to go beyond that would be to overstep the boundaries of science. — Agustino

All scientific arguments are inexorably based on strong correlation. To show causation with scientific standards (using reliable experimentation for instance) employs no metaphysical supposition.

The strong inductive argument supporting gravity isn't metaphysical, and it doesn't overstep the boundaries of science so much as it defines them (repeatable observation and successful prediction)

If you don't think that brain damage/disease or psychoactive drugs can causally affect someone's feeling of love, I'm not sure where else to go but to lectures in human behavioral/neuroscience and more examples of brain damage affecting behavior.

And equally compelling evidence comes from people like this man: — Agustino

What is compelling here? Am I missing something?

Yes, you are correct! But your misunderstanding is in thinking that Aristotelians disagree with you, they don't. Distinctions are matters of the intellect and they don't exist as distinctions in reality. The functions which the intellect takes to be separate are actually one thing in reality — Agustino

But if you're only making distinctions based on invented categories from observed norms, why should we hold that the "final cause" of a human is required to be upheld for morality (happiness?).

Right, but even so, it does not lack scientific evidence, which is what your initial claim was stating. So that claim is false, we can clearly discard it. — Agustino

I want evidence for the claim that "frustrating the necessary ends of sex" necessarily leads to unhappiness, or that "love" is anything more than the chemical cocktail that evolution has designed (and as I have previously described) it to be. Even a description of what love is (more precise than "a metaphysical force") would be a good starting point

The test is simple. Do people have such capacities? If they do, then it is clear. It has a lot of predictive power - we rely on that predictive power even in this discussion. For example on prediction is that you have will and intellect - if you didn't, I wouldn't be trying to have this conversation with you. — Agustino

The problem is that "love" and "intellect cannot be adequately defined when they are not adequately understood. We might conflate what we think are "final causes" with intermediate and spurious other factors/ends.

This is not true. Metaphysical categories, such as forms, aren't just placeholders, they are absolutely essential to give a final account of reality - a metaphysical account - above and beyond physics. Whatever the ultimate level in physics happens to be, we must still account for why that level is such as it is. And to do that, we'll have to make an appeal to its nature - to its form. It simply has such a nature so as to have such properties. If we don't do that, we cannot explain why it does have the properties that it does. And this is true regardless of what ultimate physical constituent we land on. — Agustino

It's only true for fundamental particles and forces, like gravity. We're not providing a final account of reality by creating an incomplete system of categories to try and differentiate between more complex combinations of matter, especially not in the context of "love" or "intellect".

We don't actually need metaphysics if we found our starting positions on physical evidence (i.e: the test-ability of gravity). I cannot demonstrate the physical mechanism that makes gravity work, but I can at least demonstrate it's consistency with strong inductive arguments that have massively persuasive power.

It still is true today - quarks display these mysterious qualities - as does quantum mechanics as well. Why should it behave the way it does rather than another way? It's just as mysterious today. — Agustino

The fundamental forces and particles are mysterious, yes, and some aspects of human cognition/emotion are not fully understood, but we're well on our way to filling in this knowledge gap. Looking at higher "forms" as if they're fundamental or elementary becomes fallacious because all complex forms depend on the goings-on of the more basic and fundamental forms (elementary particles and forces) which combine in certain ways and produce variations of effects. Observing that something nourishes itself doesn't provide any insight into the mechanism (the how, the why) of how humans actually nourish themselves. The way plants nourish themselves is drastically different from humans, and if i was satisfied with a description of the world that says "plants nourish themselves because they have a nutritive soul" I would never bother to learn more. "Love" is actually less mysterious than gravity because we can actually point to (some)causal mechanisms...

This is actually false. It has never been described by fundamental and elementary particles. Physicists think it can IN PRINCIPLE be so described, but it has never actually been done. — Agustino

How many pieces of the puzzle do you need before you will agree that we're on the right track by assuming that the goings-on of the brain dictate the goings-on of the mind?

Clearly it's not just the body, because the same body can also be a dead body, which is not animated at all. So something - the form - which we would describe via a process in the brain most likely - is so responsible — Agustino

Actually living bodies are different from dead bodies. Living bodies have organismic activity (moving organs, firing neurons, flowing blood, respiring lungs (or adequate replacements), etc... The main thing is that the brain be kept with a steady flow of oxygen rich blood and at a certain temperature/pressure, once brain death occurs (irreversible damage/loss of function due to whatever cause) we consider the "person" to be dead, but the "body" could actually remain alive if we kept it on life support.

The difference between our approaches to understanding death is that I point to the actual mechanisms and physical causes of death while your teleology only points to end results.

This is false. You cannot assert a causal link based purely on correlation. For all you know, idealism could be the case, and everything is thought, and indeed then neurons firing in sequence are the result of thought (though not of your thought, or conscious thought that is) — Agustino

Inductive reasoning has a long and proud tradition of providing strong reasoning which has carried many a person towards the successful ends they've sought. Personally I try to speak of inductive reasoning in terms of "strong" and "weak" rather than "valid" and "invalid" (such as is the case for deductive reasoning). Presuming that premises are true (we must still appraise the strength of premises involved in inductive arguments (such as "sample size" in statistics)) a strong inductive argument is an argument whose conclusion is made probable or likely by it's premises while a weak inductive argument does not make it's conclusion persuasively probable. In legal courts, the kind of standard they aim for is "beyond reasonable doubt", where it's sometimes left up to a jury to decide whether the arguments presented strongly indicate a specific truth.

Gravity has been physically demonstrated to exist beyond a reasonable doubt, and so too has the the necessity of the human brain (and it's mechanics) for the human consciousness (and it's emotions). At some point correlation can become so reliable and consistently un-violated that it becomes like a brute and undeniable fact of existence; a starting point for good arguments.

This isn't so simple, because what counts as being violable must be determined, via an argument as well. — Agustino

If you can make a prediction from something and then test to see whether that prediction holds true (using sufficiently precise experimental constraints), then you're able to possibly violate it. Once the premise/conclusion with predictive power fails at making a prediction, we then consider it falsified or at the very least compromised/less than accurate.

You violate something through experimentation, which is why it's useful to make predictions from knowledge (as a continuing correlation/induction based test of it's accuracy).

:s gravity would in no way count as a first principle. — Agustino

Oh but it does by my standards. It's one of the four fundamental forces. It's one of the premises with no underlying explanation other than strong correlation (like the behavior of a quark), and it's at the heart of so much of our successful physics.

Maybe one day we will deconstruct gravity with some understanding that is currently hidden to us, at which point gravity will finally gain supporting premises of it's own other than the sheer experimental consistency that tests of gravity produce (observation and experience).

Okay, so it seems that so far you agree that we describe something as good if does its function well, and a moral man is a good man. Thus to determine what a moral man is would be equivalent to determine what a good man is. So, since we appeal to the function of a thing/person to determine whether they are good in a certain context (like for the watch, hairdresser, doctor, etc.) it seems quite intuitive that we should appeal to a man's function in order to determine whether he is a good or a bad man, and thus whether he is moral or immoral. — Agustino

There are two issues here. The statement "a moral man is a good man" uses a different and colloquial meaning of the term "good" that the statement "my watch works good" employs. The "goodness" of a moral man has to do with what I believe to be moral in the first place while the "goodness" of a watch has to do with how well it performs it's function. This is known as equivocation.

The second issue is that even if you could convince me that "teleological final causes" are somehow morally obligatory to pursue and uphold, you could n ever convince everyone that your idea of "proper human function" actually applies to them or that their contrary definition of proper human function is not superior to your own. The reality is that human function seems endlessly diverse, and I see no good reason to cherry pick a few variants and hold them to be the moral ones...

But in the past, you werequite obnoxious about morality being dependent on teleology, in multiple instances, here's one of them: — Agustino

And finally comes the assumption that the telelogical hierarchy of necessary ends of these realities constitutes a sound basis for objective moral reasoning. This is just bullshit predicated on bullshit... — VagabondSpectre


You even called it bullshit, but it seems to be quite reasonable now. You seemed to say that we can't establish what man's ends/functions are, which may be true, but that doesn't invalidate the claim that morality must be based on teleology (if it is to be based on anything at all), which we have just shown to be true. So by your own words now you admit that it isn't bullshit at all, and it's not a silly assumption to make at all, but quite the contrary, it is dictated by the very logic we have so far pursued. So I think you should retract that statement. — Agustino

If I thought that it was morally obligatory to pursue reproduction, or intimacy, or to uphold and conform to some ideal form, I think I would be aware....

Your strange equivocation of "good/moral man" and "good watch" (to conclude that morality = human function) readily leads to ridiculous moral scenarios as I've already shown (you basically assented to the idea that a society and morality organized around ritualistic headbutting (the eminent function of an evolutionary endowed numb-skull) would become moral per the telos of such an adapted species). To continue on with this dilemma, let's imagine that one day a human is born with horns in addition to their severely numbed skull. He has deviated from the human form and can be considered a broken/malformed human under your teleological framework, and so would his participating in the headbutting be moral? With his horns he could gore the faces and necks of any challenger and might quickly rise to the top of the social hierarchy as a result. Would it be moral according to his telos to use his equipment in a novel and accidental way which gives him unfair advantage? Once his horned children eventually kill off all the competing males and everyone on earth has horns, does the human telos overall change and hence our morality along with it, where the new selective forces leading to bigger and more pointed horns cause humans to progress toward a new ideal form?

I ask this question honestly: how can you say that what you describe as sexual aberration from the ideal form (promiscuity, casual sex, homosexuality, transsexualism (presuming the last one)) are not actually adapted and successful components or future components of how the human species organizes/propagates?

So far, your claims rest on your ability to argue that your own framing of what constitutes "the ideal human form" is stronger or more valid than someone who claims that the ideal form is broader or that ti is different (you're supposing that your highly controversial experience based classification of "love" (see Christian Puritanism) is actually shared by everyone or even most people). And this is then predicated on the idea that my colloquial use the word "good" to describe "a moral man" is logically equivalent to the way I would use it to describe "a good watch" (equivocation). I stand by my statements.

No, this isn't what I asked you to retract. I asked you to retract your definite statement that there is no evidence. Not that you do not see that there is any evidence. That is an entirely different thing.

One thing that is important in this discussion if it is to be productive is that we each stick with what we have said. If we start moving goal posts, and changing what we say, etc. we'll get nowhere. You said something, and we've just shown that it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If you meant something else, that's all fine and good, but you must agree to retract what you first said. — Agustino

Well technically I said that what you had presented contains no evidence and that referencing a tradition and thinking that shifts the burden of proof is also not evidence. It's your burden to show the proof of your claims about teleology and morality, human function, and love.

Well this is very quaint, because if we are to go by shared experience, then I think we'll have to conclude the very opposite of what you do in fact conclude. As I have illustrated, most large societies that have ever lived have been quite conservative with their sexual norms - certainly more conservative than we are today. — Agustino

I disagree. I can find many examples of societies with diverse and sexually liberal norms. I think this generalization is hasty. The fact that many exceptions exist indicates that the telos of human sexuality does not conform to the singular strategy of heterosexual monogamy.

And if we do, then you'll remark that the number of large civilisations (to take into account population) which have held to conservative sexual standards, far outweighs the opposite. Sure, there were tribes here and there who lived nude, and who didn't think casual sex immoral. But then virtually all the large religions of today have a very conservative sexual morality, and we're talking even atheistic religions like Buddhism now. So if we are to take mankind's experience as a whole, I'm afraid we'll have to conclude that casual sex is immoral. — Agustino

Just because society decides something is a norm really is no sound basis for determining morality. What makes the telos that society decides more valid than the telos that an individual decides for themselves? (again, presuming a teleology based moral framework is useful in the first place).

This is all fine and good, but it would of course depend on what you mean by being free of oppression. I do want to be free of oppression, but what I consider oppression may not be oppression to you, and inversely, what you consider oppression may not be oppression to me. So it's still not very simple, even though we do agree fundamentally that we want to be free of oppression - but what we mean by this is actually different, and our superficial agreement would only hide this. — Agustino

We can hammer out some pretty hard specifics though. For instance, the people of society should be free to practice (or not practice) the religion of their choosing. Do you find that to be agreeable? (keep in mind, if someone invents a religion whose practice involves harming others, then we can outlaw that practice with additional laws and enshrine rights protecting people from that kind of jarm). For instance, the legal right to control and enforce control of your own property (like land?). Would that be an agreeable standard that we could make a moral handshake on?

Indeed, but we have managed to isolate genes, and determine that certain genes for example lead to higher risks of certain diseases — Agustino

Oh come now. You think that the function of these genes is to increase the prevalence of some disease!?

Certain combinations of genetic markers (whose functions we do not understand and pertain to our long evolutionary history) can cause catastrophic problems for complex reasons that we also do not understand. We make very loose correlations in such statements, and while we can reason that certain genes have something to do with the diseases they correlate with, presumably their original or intended functions pertain to many other things.

Your statement "You cannot assert a causal link based purely on correlation. For all you know, idealism could be the case, and everything is thought, and indeed then neurons firing in sequence are the result of thought (though not of your thought, or conscious thought that is)", brought a childhood favorite to mind.

Your moral argument from teleology indicates that I should adhere to some average standard in order to be moral (find happiness?), but what if I'm not average?. — VagabondSpectre

Not at all, my moral argument from teleology holds that we all, as human beings, have the same telos, which is by no means "average", but quite the contrary. Our telos is what human excellence itself would be.

but rather that morality is a mutually shared/cooperative agreement that we generally figure out based on what makes us both happy/unhappy — VagabondSpectre

This is demonstrably false. A cannibal may look for a victim who wants to be eaten. It would not be moral for that action to happen, even though they both share the same values and would think they are profited from it.

note: the controversial sentiments of a few people aren't sufficient for my standards of moral argument. The values which I do base moral arguments on are the most universally shared values available — VagabondSpectre

This is false, and a form of argumentum ad populum, which is a fallacy.

Conversely if humans had an extra appendage designed to castrate men, our telos would define it as moral to use it per your reasoning, correct?. — VagabondSpectre

Then the function of that appendage would be to castrate. That, however, does not mean that castrating would be moral in all circumstances. It wouldn't be moral in circumstances where it would contradict the telos of other parts (perhaps more important) of the body/soul. It would for example contradict the telos of brotherhood among men, and thus would be immoral in most circumstances, unless perhaps you used it on someone trying to kill you, etc.

I can recognize anyone's concept of love (although occasionally with some strain) but that doesn't mean our definitions are common enough that I therefore agree with your teleological and moral positions. — VagabondSpectre

You're now moving goalposts again. If you can recognise their concepts as being concepts of love instead of something else, then they clearly do share commonalities.

All scientific arguments are inexorably based on strong correlation. — VagabondSpectre

Sorry, science isn't in the business of deciding on metaphysical questions. Science just had to find predictabilities and understand how one thing is associated with another. Science is in the business of identifying correlations.

The strong inductive argument supporting gravity isn't metaphysical, and it doesn't overstep the boundaries of science so much as it defines them (repeatable observation and successful prediction) — VagabondSpectre

:s Gravity being nothing else than the apple falling to the ground when you drop it, I understand. That's just a predictability that you observe in the world.

If you don't think that brain damage/disease or psychoactive drugs can causally affect someone's feeling of love, I'm not sure where else to go but to lectures in human behavioral/neuroscience and more examples of brain damage affecting behavior. — VagabondSpectre

Yes of course they affect ability to think/feel so what? That doesn't mean that ability to think/feel doesn't also affect the physical brain - gasp - it does! It's called neuroplasticity. Glasses affect your ability to see, but so do your eyes.

What is compelling here? Am I missing something? — VagabondSpectre

I think you are.

But if you're only making distinctions based on invented categories from observed norms, why should we hold that the "final cause" of a human is required to be upheld for morality (happiness?). — VagabondSpectre

This is a strawman - the categories are neither invented, nor are we speaking of norms. And finally, it's also a non-sequitur.

We don't actually need metaphysics if we found our starting positions on physical evidence (i.e: the test-ability of gravity). I cannot demonstrate the physical mechanism that makes gravity work, but I can at least demonstrate it's consistency with strong inductive arguments that have massively persuasive power. — VagabondSpectre

>:O >:O >:O Good one, you must be one of those people who does metaphysics while they're thinking they're not doing it.

How many pieces of the puzzle do you need before you will agree that we're on the right track by assuming that the goings-on of the brain dictate the goings-on of the mind? — VagabondSpectre

Even if you had all the pieces of the puzzle you would STILL not be able to assume that, since it's a matter of metaphysics, not of physics.

Living bodies have organismic activity — VagabondSpectre

ORGANISMIC ACTIVITY >:O >:O - sounds like a soul to me! In fact PRECISELY like a soul, for the soul also is an activity, and not a thing ;) (don't forget forms are act, matter is potency)

Inductive reasoning has a long and proud tradition of providing strong reasoning which has carried many a person towards the successful ends they've sought. — VagabondSpectre

>:O Yes, but it's not all about how you can manipulate the world to do your will. That's a very selfish view of things.

Gravity has been physically demonstrated to exist beyond a reasonable doubt — VagabondSpectre

No it hasn't. All that has been demonstrated is that objects in the Universe we have observed seem to currently attract each other. There's no statement there about this happening in the future, why it happens, or whether it even happens outside of what we know as the visible Universe. And in fact it's worse - things are actually not even attracting, so we postulated this weird dark energy that we don't have a fucking clue what it is. Maybe just our understanding of gravity is wrong. That's what my money is on actually. Einstein overcame Newton, and someone will overcome Einstein. That's science - always looking for more and never reaching an end.

At some point correlation can become so reliable and consistently un-violated that it becomes like a brute and undeniable fact of existence; a starting point for good arguments. — VagabondSpectre

That's scientism at its best. No we have a piss poor understanding of our emotions, and the like in all truth. A large of the so called understanding we have is culturally mediated and only valid in certain cultures.

Oh but it does by my standards. It's one of the four fundamental forces. — VagabondSpectre

Today, but wait till tomorrow. It wouldn't be the first or last time science changed its mind ;) - if you base your life off science, you may soon find the ground under your feet running away.

There are two issues here. The statement "a moral man is a good man" uses a different and colloquial meaning of the term "good" that the statement "my watch works good" employs. The "goodness" of a moral man has to do with what I believe to be moral in the first place while the "goodness" of a watch has to do with how well it performs it's function. This is known as equivocation. — VagabondSpectre

That's false. We're looking for objective morality, and we have shown that a good doctor is objectively one who is good at healing, where healing is the doctor's function - and objectively so. A good man also depends on his function, in similar manner. There is no equivocation between the terms, the terms good have the same sense in both phrases. It's funny how now you're all backpeddling and moving goalposts - soon you'll be falling off the pitch!

The second issue is that even if you could convince me that "teleological final causes" are somehow morally obligatory to pursue and uphold, you could n ever convince everyone that your idea of "proper human function" actually applies to them or that their contrary definition of proper human function is not superior to your own. The reality is that human function seems endlessly diverse, and I see no good reason to cherry pick a few variants and hold them to be the moral ones... — VagabondSpectre

So what if I can't convince you? That means I wouldn't be right? :s That's certainly a very strange way to establish what right and wrong is. But clearly when you run out of other means, you appeal even to those!

But alas, you can sleep well, it's not my purpose to convince you in particular that casual sex is wrong. I've done my purpose in this thread by educating you on Aristotelian philosophy, so that at least you understand the basics correctly and see the motivations behind the distinctions Aristotle drew. Maybe you'll come to your own conclusions later.

Not at all, my moral argument from teleology holds that we all, as human beings, have the same telos, which is by no means "average", but quite the contrary. Our telos is what human excellence itself would be. — Agustino

So then Tchaikovsky was a failed and sub-par human because he divorced and failed to have children or be successfully intimate with a woman.

What makes your definition of human excellence the actual objective human telos?

What if there is no objective human telos and instead each individual has their own objective telos?

but rather that morality is a mutually shared/cooperative agreement that we generally figure out based on what makes us both happy/unhappy — VagabondSpectre

This is demonstrably false. A cannibal may look for a victim who wants to be eaten. It would not be moral for that action to happen, even though they both share the same values and would think they are profited from it. — Agustino

I address this in the very next sentence and I've addressed it previously in this thread

note: the controversial sentiments of a few people aren't sufficient for my standards of moral argument. The values which I do base moral arguments on are the most universally shared values available — VagabondSpectre

This is false, and a form of argumentum ad populum, which is a fallacy. — Agustino

The point of making moral arguments based on values which are nearly universal (as opposed to not universal at all, like your notions about love, intimacy, and sex) is that people will agree on the importance of those values, and be persuaded by moral arguments which promote those values.

I define morality as cooperative agreement based on shared values, therefore the more universal the value, the more persuasive and widely held the moral position becomes. Since I define morality as pertaining to individual human desires, not to and broad objective human "telos" this is why it makes sense for me to found moral arguments on the desires of the populace.

You're now moving goalposts again. If you can recognise their concepts as being concepts of love instead of something else, then they clearly do share commonalities. — Agustino

You do realize that I'm able to entertain the ideas of others (even ideas opposed to my own) while simultaneously holding belief in my own?

Just because I'm able to comprehend the diverse emotional experiences of others doesn't mean that our emotions share sufficient common grounds to define a "necessary final cause" like monogamy or reproduction.

I'm not moving goalposts, you're just demanding that I accept your inaccurate premises.

Sorry, science isn't in the business of deciding on metaphysical questions. Science just had to find predictabilities and understand how one thing is associated with another. Science is in the business of identifying correlations. — Agustino

So is everything metaphysical?

When we add gasoline, oxygen, and a spark, there's no physical cause of combustion, it's just some metaphysical cause that for all we know is playing out in the "physical world" like some abstract reflection that we're unable to understand? (see:post-modernism?)

Gravity being nothing else than the apple falling to the ground when you drop it, I understand. That's just a predictability that you observe in the world. — Agustino

No, gravity is the strength of attraction which is proportional to the masses times the distance squared. It's what causes apples to fall to the ground, but our description of gravity is more than "apples fall to the ground".

It's a precise measurement of a consistent relationship that gives us predictive power well beyond "apples fall".

Yes of course they affect ability to think/feel so what? That doesn't mean that ability to think/feel doesn't also affect the physical brain - gasp - it does! It's called neuroplasticity. Glasses affect your ability to see, but so do your eyes. — Agustino

You're still presuming that thought is somehow separate from the brain. "Ability to think/feel" is first and foremost dependent on the brain, evidenced by the fact that if I damage your brain, it doesn't matter what you were thinking or feeling prior to that damage, the effects of the damage will still manifest.

My point is that thoughts like love are the result of the brain, and in so far as they affect the brain themselves in on-going and complex processes, it's still inevitably the brain affecting the brain... Unless you can prove some sort of metaphysical quality of emotion or the mind actually exists......

I think you are. — Agustino

You linked me a video of a man that appears to have some sort of mental/psychological issues who is rambling somewhat incoherently about his religious beliefs...

If you would be so kind as to give some indication of what your point is (where it's not obvious), I would feel much obliged to respond.

>:O >:O >:O Good one, you must be one of those people who does metaphysics while they're thinking they're not doing it. — Agustino

In my opinion the difference between physics and metaphysics is that physics bases itself on the material and observable world while metaphysics tends to be based on nothing at all.

Even if you had all the pieces of the puzzle you would STILL not be able to assume that, since it's a matter of metaphysics, not of physics. — Agustino

What you really seem to be saying here is even if science could give a full account of human consciousness and emotion you would still assume that love is something more... That's metaphysics for you...

ORGANISMIC ACTIVITY >:O >:O - sounds like a soul to me! In fact PRECISELY like a soul, for the soul also is an activity, and not a thing ;) (don't forget forms are act, matter is potency) — Agustino

Once again you reduce your definition of the rational soul merely to "is alive", while I actually point to underlying causal mechanisms. "Sounds like a soul to me" is a vague and ambiguous standard to be forced into.

But if you want to reduce the human soul to "however any living human acts" (implying that all living humans share the same kind of "rational soul"), then given all the morally contradictory human actions I don't know where your moral compass comes from other than your own personal intuition and emotion.

No it hasn't. All that has been demonstrated is that objects in the Universe we have observed seem to currently attract each other. There's no statement there about this happening in the future, why it happens, or whether it even happens outside of what we know as the visible Universe. And in fact it's worse - things are actually not even attracting, so we postulated this weird dark energy that we don't have a fucking clue what it is. Maybe just our understanding of gravity is wrong. That's what my money is on actually. Einstein overcame Newton, and someone will overcome Einstein. That's science - always looking for more and never reaching an end. — Agustino

The theory of gravity makes predictions: statements about the future.

Thew cosmological principle can be used to inductively argue that gravity is consistent outside of the visible universe.

Einstein did not overcome Newton. GR and SR added precision to Newtonian calculations (especially concerning gravity) it did not overturn them. All of modern Newtonian scale physics still works, Einstein just enhanced it.

Things are actually attracting, and dark energy is still being explored... Were all scientists Aristotelians, they would have gave up and fucked off long ago thinking that the differences and nuances perceivable to them at the time must have constituted a full rubric of "elementary forms".

If our understanding of gravity is flawed why do our calculations/predictions of the motions of celestial bodies so stunningly and accurately correlate with observed data?

Scientists hold that gravity causes attraction between all masses because it's among the most repeated experiments and repeated observations in all of science. They view it as a fundamental force...

That's scientism at its best. No we have a piss poor understanding of our emotions, and the like in all truth. A large of the so called understanding we have is culturally mediated and only valid in certain cultures. — Agustino

We understand enough about the brain to confidently make certain approximations regarding it's mechanics, and we can say with the highest confidence that "without a functioning brain a functioning mind cannot exist". Surely you will demand proof of this, and all I can offer is the repeatable experiment where you try to interact with things with no brain or a dead/broken/non-functional brain as if it had a functional mind, and see if they ever answer back... (Hint: they won't answer back, and never have).

I know you would like to believe that the consciousness has some kind of metaphysical/spiritual transcendent force attached to it, but all the evidence points to the contrary. Psychic phenomenon like telekinesis or remote viewing or astral projection have never been shown to actually exist. You try to deride me for "scientism" while yourself buying directly into superstitious fairy tales.

(a quick note: you're resisting the widely accepted scientific fact that the brain produces the consciousness, but this is not a necessary aspect of your teleological position. You could posit teleological ends from some standard form of a human brain, and so the only reasons for you to resist this which I can fathom are that you're trying to avoid having to make teleological conclusions based on evolutionary endowed design, or else you're trying to leave room for some extra magical nonsense (leading to god possibly?). I need to know which is the case so I can adjust my criticism of this appropriately...)

There are two issues here. The statement "a moral man is a good man" uses a different and colloquial meaning of the term "good" that the statement "my watch works good" employs. The "goodness" of a moral man has to do with what I believe to be moral in the first place while the "goodness" of a watch has to do with how well it performs it's function. This is known as equivocation. — VagabondSpectre

That's false. We're looking for objective morality, and we have shown that a good doctor is objectively one who is good at healing, where healing is the doctor's function - and objectively so. A good man also depends on his function, in similar manner.

There is no equivocation between the terms, the terms good have the same sense in both phrases. It's funny how now you're all backpeddling and moving goalposts - soon you'll be falling off the pitch! — Agustino

Let's unpack the argument in question starting with precise definitions of "good" (I'll include the definitions you equivocate with as well, and within the context of applying them to men and watches)

"A good watch": Definition 1: A good watch is a watch which performs it's function well.

"A good watch" Definition 2: A good watch is a watch that satisfies my personal watch-standards.

"A good man" Definition 1: A good man is a man which performs his function well.

"A good man" Definition 2 : A good man is a man that satisfies my personal "goodness/morality" standards.

You use definition 1 for "a good watch" but then you use definition two of "A moral man".

The first sense of "good" applies to watches in the sense of fulfills it's design efficiently but clearly when applied to "a moral man", it refers to more than just "performs his function well".

You're literally equating "objective morality" with "function" and expecting other people to agree with your personal notion of what proper human function is (let alone agree that objective morality is dependent on "human function" to begin with). You most certainly are equivocating because "tells time effectively" isn't analogous to "is objectively moral".

To rephrase, just because we use "good" to describe objects which perform their designed and intended functions well and also use "good" to describe moral views which we agree with doesn't mean that objective morality is based on how well we achieve some notion of intended or proper function.

So what if I can't convince you? That means I wouldn't be right? :s That's certainly a very strange way to establish what right and wrong is. But clearly when you run out of other means, you appeal even to those!

But alas, you can sleep well, it's not my purpose to convince you in particular that casual sex is wrong. I've done my purpose in this thread by educating you on Aristotelian philosophy, so that at least you understand the basics correctly and see the motivations behind the distinctions Aristotle drew. Maybe you'll come to your own conclusions later. — Agustino

The main issue I take with your moral framework is that it from the outset presumes that morality is whatever human function is. I could spend more time trying to show you why your personal assessment of human function is limited and therefore alter your moral conclusions, but we must come full stop until you can square up your argument as to why objective morality ought to come from "human function" in the first place, because as it stands "well we say good watches are good when they perform their function well" is an entirely confused appeal to equivocated and colloquial word usage.

It's like one day you looked down at your watch, saw that it was keeping time effectively and then wondered if your watch was moral... "EUREKA! FUNCTION = OBJECTIVE MORALITY!"...

When we add gasoline, oxygen, and a spark, there's no physical cause of combustion, it's just some metaphysical cause that for all we know is playing out in the "physical world" like some abstract reflection that we're unable to understand? — VagabondSpectre

Causality is actually a metaphysical not a physical category. That's why there are actually attempts, including by atheists like Bertrand Russell, to eliminate it from science altogether. You add gasoline, oxygen and a spark and you get combustion. That's a physical correlation. The causality is explained metaphysically through the natures of the elements added.

In my opinion the difference between physics and metaphysics is that physics bases itself on the material and observable world while metaphysics tend to be based on nothing at all. — VagabondSpectre

That's wrong. Metaphysics is required in the first place to make sense of any kind of physics whatsoever. It observes and categorises non-empirical first principles which we need in order to make sense of the world. Causality is one such principle that it needs to discover. Metaphysics works by establishing coherence mainly, but also correspondence. We certainly compare different metaphysics by how coherent they are.

Einstein did not overcome Newton. GR and SR added precision to Newtonian calculations (especially concerning gravity) it did not overturn them. All of modern Newtonian scale physics still works, Einstein just enhanced it. — VagabondSpectre

They do work, but the theory is false. The reason for example why objects attract one another via gravity given by Newton is false. We now know that it's the curvature of space-time that accounts for gravity, with mass having the property of bending the space-time continuum.

"A good watch": Definition 1: A good watch is a watch which performs it's function well.

"A good watch" Definition 2: A good watch is a watch that satisfies my personal watch-standards.

"A good man" Definition 1: A good man is a man which performs his function well.

"A good man" Definition 2 : A good man is a man that satisfies my personal "goodness/morality" standards. — VagabondSpectre

I actually do mean definition 1 in both cases. A man who performs his function well is a moral man. That's what Plato illustrated if you read, for example his Republic, or if you read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics.

In fact, a moral man simply could not be someone who doesn't perform his function well.

Causality is actually a metaphysical not a physical category. That's why there are actually attempts, including by atheists like Bertrand Russell, to eliminate it from science altogether. You add gasoline, oxygen and a spark and you get combustion. That's a physical correlation. The causality is explained metaphysically through the natures of the elements added — Agustino

That's wrong. Metaphysics is required in the first place to make sense of any kind of physics whatsoever. It observes and categorises non-empirical first principles which we need in order to make sense of the world. Causality is one such principle that it needs to discover. Metaphysics works by establishing coherence mainly, but also correspondence. We certainly compare different metaphysics by how coherent they are. — Agustino

Give me an example of a "non-empirical first principle" other than a fundamental particle or force.

These are the only things necessarily constrained to having no underlying causal explanation. If you want to think of metaphysics in this way, that's fine, but scientists prefer to think of fundamental forces as observed brute facts which may one day be better understood...

Let's try not to argue about the semantics of metaphysics though, I care only about your teleological ethics.

They do work, but the theory is false. The reason for example why objects attract one another via gravity given by Newton is false. We now know that it's the curvature of space-time that accounts for gravity, with mass having the property of bending the space-time continuum. — Agustino

Newton didn't give a reason, he gave a description of the relationship of attraction. He charted it, he didn't give a reason or explanation of it's origin, and what he described still holds true (GR and SR add precision to Newtonian calculations involving masses of certain scales).

So the theory is true, because the theory is that the strength of attraction between masses is proportional to their masses and their distance squared. Do you understand this distinction?

"A good watch": Definition 1: A good watch is a watch which performs it's function well.

"A good watch" Definition 2: A good watch is a watch that satisfies my personal watch-standards.

"A good man" Definition 1: A good man is a man which performs his function well.

"A good man" Definition 2 : A good man is a man that satisfies my personal "goodness/morality" standards. — VagabondSpectre

I actually do mean definition 1 in both cases. A man who performs his function well is a moral man. That's what Plato illustrated if you read, for example his Republic, or if you read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. — Agustino

I know you mean that, but nobody else does.

Just because we know the designed or intrinsic function of watches doesn't mean we know the designed or intrinsic function of humans, or whether or not those intrinsic functions have moral gravity or importance, or whether or not different humans have different intrinsic functions, or whether or not the purposes defined by individual human will/desire morally supersedes those intrinsic functions.

I'm telling you that when I say "a moral man is a good man" I'm not trying to equate "objective morality" with whatever notion of "proper function" you cook up for yourself at that moment.

Give me an example of a "non-empirical first principle" other than a fundamental particle or force. — VagabondSpectre

Causality.

fundamental particle or force. — VagabondSpectre

These are empirical, sorry to disappoint.

He charted it, he didn't give a reason or explanation of it's origin, and what he described still holds true (GR and SR add precision to Newtonian calculations involving masses of certain scales). — VagabondSpectre

He actually did.

I know you mean that, but nobody else does. — VagabondSpectre

Suuuuure, nobody, just several philosophical traditions :s

Causality. — Agustino

Give me an example of a "non-empirical first principle" of causation which does not involve a fundamental particle or force.... ... ...

These are empirical, sorry to disappoint. — Agustino

I'm trying to understand what you mean then by "non-empirical first principle". If an electron is empirical, then so is the way a photon gets generated when electrons get excited... What's causality?

He actually did. — Agustino

What was the reason? Newton's theory of universal gravitation describes a relationship, not a mediating mechanism.

Suuuuure, nobody, just several philosophical traditions :s — Agustino

Several antiquated traditions which make no useful account of individuality...

Once again, stating that objective morality is objective human function because "good watches are watches that work" is an irrational leap based on equivocation which you then follow up by presupposing that your definition of "proper human function" is the correct one.

Notice: If no-one wants to talk about the OP anymore, this discussion is going to be closed.