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1·18 hours agoI don’t believe all pointless killing is bad
In the example you gave, the plant killing wasn’t “pointless” (meaning unjustified). If a person is pulling up weeds because they like how things look without the weeds, that’s potentially justifiable.
A reason is a fact that counts in favor of some belief or course of action. The reason that you like something could be such a fact. But the reason that it might cause suffering or end an innocent life would be a countervailing fact. Human beings are capable of rational judgement. We do this all the time in science, and we have to assume that our judgements aren’t arbitrary, or we descend into nihilism, which would undermine your capacity even for logic (whose axiomatic structure is also based on intuitions).
This is why nihilism is not a position any serious philosopher defends. It’s self undermining. You would need to reason your way to the conclusion that nihilism is true in order to conclude that reasoning is impossible.
You understand an intuitive belief can exist for all of those things right? (Nationality, race, speciation.)
The meaning of the word “intuition” in philosophy is a bit different. It’s an intellectual given, part of a web of belief that would ideally be free of contradictions. Your belief that 1+1=2 is an intuition.
We don’t think of people as having an “intellectual given” that being a different nationality is morally relevant. We think of them as having a bias (or a prejudice), because the whole concept of a nationality is made up, and any intellectual examination of nationalism will reveal it’s not an intellectually coherent category.
Even if it were, it would be a very weak intuition, because the whole concept of nationality is made up. Race and speciation are like that. We made up these categories out of convenience and they have no real meaning.
Suffering is not made up. The goodness of life is not made up. How do I know that? Because I have suffered and I have lived. I am in direct contact with these phenomena.
No I actually don’t. I am very worried that Trump will win because she’s a little bland. IMO, she is more progressive than Biden and likely to make better decisions. I’m just stressing that she might be a little… bland for the American horde. They tend to expect an entertainer.
For an American president? I mean, yes, hence my complaint. But to be clear, that’s not something the presidential job of making good decisions technically requires, except insofar as electing an American politician has become tantamount to choosing a babysitter for the masses.
Your morality isn’t arbitrary?
This is literally nihilism.
I’m genuinely happy to discuss metaethics, but I’m getting a sense that you don’t actually care about ethics very much, given your nihilism.
Ex Falso Quodlibet. Your moral reasoning is inconsistent, which means that you’re either a nihilist or an idiot. I thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt.
“Murder” is an illegal killing. I don’t oppose murder; I oppose immoral killing. That’s different.
If you simply claimed that you’re against pointless killing I wouldn’t consider that arbitrary, since I share your strong intuition that causing meaningless suffering is deeply wrong. That is, in fact, precisely why I find it confusing that you would violate this intuition.
An arbitrary moral distinction would be like claiming that you are against ending innocent lives, unless they’re a different race, gender, species, nationality, or color than you, given that none of these factors have any moral relevance.
What is the moral significance of a creature’s nationality or species? Moral philosophers consider this question fairly settled, so let me know if you have some novel insights.
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Unironically better candidate.
There’s a shitload of time. We’ve been conditioned to think it takes 2 years to run a presidential campaign. Nonsense.
Harris might be a disaster. I’ve no problem with her whatsoever personally, but she has no charm and zero leadership skill. I wish these things didn’t matter but they do.
So your morality is arbitrary, and at least we can both agree that the chicken has more reason to live than you do.
Since human beings are also just animals, I assume you have some non-arbitrary reason for favoring one species over another?
Keep in mind that speciation is technically arbitrary, and that we can just as easily decide that you and I are not the same species. Go ahead, explain to me why I’m entitled to farm and eat you. I can’t wait to hear this.
I am not a nihilist.
Your words say one thing, but your other words say another.
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Are you serious with this question?
You know what, I’ll help you out. Why not. We put down rabid dogs for two reasons. They pose a danger to everyone around them, and we can’t cure them. Psychopathy has these same relevant features. If you want to defeat this argument, your goal should be to attack the dog-human component of the analogy, not the disease component. Why? Well, because even if I granted that rabies and psychopathy do not share the relevant features of being incurable and dangerous, we would just be back to square one, when I point out that:
- We put down dogs that attack children. And since dogs and humans are both animals, we should put down humans who attack children, too.
If you follow my advice and instead attack the human-dog comparison, you stand a better chance of defeating this analogy. Spoiler alert though, your efforts will fail. This is a really good analogy.
To succeed you’ll need to abandon your focus on moral justification and turn instead to the practical matters of administering a government. Why? Well, because despite your own feelings on the matter the vast majority of people have a strong intuition that evildoers should be destroyed, and you’ll have a better chance convincing them to get rid of the death penalty by pointing out that killing dangerous psychopaths is impractical rather than immoral.
You’re welcome. Don’t bother responding, because I blocked you.
They defend journalists from having all their limbs.