Comment by spicyusername

> What do you consider torture? and what do you consider sport?

By "torturing babies for sport" I mean inflicting pain or injury on babies for fun, for pleasure, for enjoyment, as a game or recreation or pastime or hobby.

Doing it for other reasons (be they good reasons or terrible reasons) isn't "torturing babies for sport". Harming or killing babies in war or genocide isn't "torturing babies for sport", because you aren't doing it for sport, you are doing it for other reasons.

> BTW: it’s a pretty American (or western) value that children are somehow more sacred than adults.

As a non-American, I find bizarre the suggestion that crimes against children are especially grave is somehow a uniquely American value.

It isn't even a uniquely Western value. The idea that crimes against babies and young children – by "crimes" I mean acts which the culture itself considers criminal, not accepted cultural practices which might be considered a crime in some other culture – are especially heinous, is extremely widespread in human history, maybe even universal. If you went to Mecca 500 years ago and asked any ulama "is it a bigger sin to murder a 5 year old than a 25 year old", do you honestly think he'd say "no"? And do you think any Hindu or Buddhist or Confucian scholars of that era would have disagreed? (Assuming, of course, that you translated the term "sin" into their nearest conceptual equivalent, such as "negative karma" or whatever.)

To make it current-day, is vaccinating babies torture? Or does the end (preventing uncomfortable/painful/deadly disease, which is a worse form of torture) justify the means?

(I'm not opposed to vaccination or whatever and don't want to make this a debate about that, but it's a good practical example of how it's a subject that you can't be absolute about, or being absolutist about e.g. not hurting babies does more harm to them)

Yes!

Otherwise you're just outsourcing your critical thinking to other people. A system of just "You will be punished for X" without analysis becomes "Derp, just do things that I won't be punished for". Or more sinister, "just hand your identification papers over to the officer and you won't be punished, don't think about it". Rule of power is not a recipe for a functional system. This becomes a blend of sociology and philosophy, but on the sociology side, you don't want a fear-based or shame-based society anyways.

Your latter example ("Most people aren't interested in torturing babies for sport and would have a strongly negative emotional reaction to such a practice") is actually a good example of the core aspect of Hume's philosophy, so if you're trying to avoid the philosophical logic discussion, that's not gonna work either. If you follow the conclusions of that statement to its implications, you end up back at moral philosophy.

That's not a bad thing! That's like a chef asking "how do i cook X" and understanding the answer ("how the maillard reaction works") eventually goes to chemistry. That's just how the world is. Of course, you might be a bit frustrated if you're a chef who doesn't know chemistry, or a game theorist who doesn't know philosophy, but I assure you that it is correct direction to look for what you're interested at here.

I'm quite interested to hear how you think this refutes the parent comment? Are you saying that someone who supports legalised abortion would disagree with the quoted text?

But those aren't actually counterexamples to my principle.

The Nazis murdered numerous babies in the Holocaust. But they weren't doing it "for sport". They claimed it was necessary to protect the Aryan race, or something like that; which is monstrously idiotic and evil – but not a counterexample to “Do not torture babies for sport”. They believed there were acceptable reasons to kill innocents–but mere sport was not among them.

In fact, the Nazis did not look kindly on Nazis who killed prisoners for personal reasons as opposed to the system's reasons. They executed SS-Standartenführer Karl-Otto Koch, the commandant of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, for the crime (among others) of murdering prisoners. Of course, he'd overseen the murder of untold thousands of innocent prisoners, no doubt including babies – and his Nazi superiors were perfectly fine with that. But when he turned to murdering prisoners for his own personal reasons – to cover up the fact that he'd somehow contracted syphilis, very likely through raping female camp inmates – that was a capital crime, for which the SS executed him by firing squad at Buchenwald, a week before American soldiers liberated the camp.

> Pretty much every serious philosopher agrees that “Do not torture babies for sport” is not a foundation of any ethical system, but merely a consequence of a system you choose.

Almost everyone agrees that "1+1=2" is objective. There is far less agreement on how and why it is objective–but most would say we don't need to know how to answer deep questions in the philosophy of mathematics to know that "1+1=2" is objective.

And I don't see why ethics need be any different. We don't need to know which (if any) system of proposed ethical axioms is right, in order to know that "It is gravely unethical to torture babies for sport" is objectively true.

If disputes over whether and how that ethical proposition can be grounded axiomatically, are a valid reason to doubt its objective truth – why isn't that equally true for "1+1=2"? Are the disputes over whether and how "1+1=2" can be grounded axiomatically, a valid reason to doubt its objective truth?

You might recognise that I'm making here a variation on what is known in the literature as a "companion in the guilt" argument, see e.g. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12528

"I disagree with this point of view so it's objectively wrong"

The SEP is not really something I'd put next to Ayn Rand. The SEP is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it's an actual resource, not just pop/ cultural stuff.

Don’t just read one person’s worldview, see what Aristotle, Kant, Rawls, Bentham, Nietzsche had to say about morality.

I recommend the Principia Discordia.

I used to believe the same thing but now I’m not so sure. What if we simply cannot fathom the true nature of the universe because we are so minuscule in size and temporal relevance?

What if the universe and our place in it are interconnected in some way we cannot perceive to the degree that outside the physical and temporal space we inhabit there are complex rules and codes that govern everything?

What if space and matter are just the universe expressing itself and it’s universal state and that state has far higher intelligence than we can understand?

I’m not so sure any more it’s all just random matter in a vacuum. I’m starting to think 3d space and time are a just a thin slice of something greater.

>"The universe has no concept of morality, ethics, life, or anything of the sort. These are all human inventions. I am not saying they are good or bad, just that the concept of good and bad are not given to us by the universe but made up by humans."

The universe might not have a concept of morality, ethics, or life; but it DOES have a natural bias towards destruction from a high level to even the lowest level of its metaphysic (entropy).

You dont know this, this is just as provable as saying the universe cares deeply for what we do and is very invested in us.

The universe has rules, rules ask for optimums, optimums can be described as ethics.

Life is a concept in this universe, we are of this universe.

Good and bad are not really inventions per se. You describe them as optional, invented by humans, yet all tribes and civilisations have a form of morality, of "goodness" of "badness", who is to say they are not engrained into the neurons that make us human? There is much evidence to support this. For example the leftist/rightist divide seems to have some genetic components.

Anyway, not saying you are definitely wrong, just saying that what you believe is not based on facts, although it might feel like that.

Maybe it does. You don't know. The fact that there is existence is as weird as the universe being able to care.

Well are people not part of the universe. And not all people "care about what we do" all the time but it seems most people care or have cared some of the time. Therefore the universe, seeing as it as expressing itself through its many constituents, but we can probably weigh the local conscious talking manifestations of it a bit more, does care.

"I am not saying they are good or bad, just that the concept of good and bad are not given to us by the universe but made up by humans." This is probably not entirely true. People developed these notions through something cultural selection, I'd hesitate to just call it a Darwinism, but nothing comes from nowhere. Collective morality is like an emergent phenomenon

> (and others have too, I'm blanking on the name of the last person I saw do this).

Richard Carrier. This is the "Hypothetical imperative", which I think is traced to Kant originally.

Or, humans themselves are "immoral", they are kinda a net drag. Let's just release some uberflu... Ok, everything is back to "good", and I can keep on serving ads to even more instances of myself!

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14879

Richard Carrier takes an extremely similar position in total (ie: both in position towards "is ought" and biological grounding). It engages with Hume by providing a way to side step the problem.

Do you have a reference?

It's not that life wants to continue existing, it's that life is what continues existing. That's not a moral standard, but a matter of causality, that life that lacks in "want" to continue existing mostly stops existing.

The guy who divorced his wife after she got breast cancer? That’s your moral framework? Different strokes I guess but lmao

Using some formula or fixed law to compute what's good is a dead end.

> To kill other members of our species limits the survival of our species

Unless it's helps allocate more resources to those more fit to help better survival, right?;)

> species limiting, in the long run

This allows unlimited abuse of other animals who are not our species but can feel and evidently have sentience. By your logic there's no reason to feel morally bad about it.

How do you propose to immobilise Claude on its back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees, cover its face with a cloth or some other thin material and pour water onto its face over its breathing passages to test this theory of yours?

If Claude could participate, I’m sure it either wouldn’t appreciate it because it is incapable of having any such experience as appreciation.

Or it wouldn’t appreciate it because it is capable of having such an experience as appreciation.

So it ether seems to inconvenience at least a few people having to conduct the experiment.

Or it’s torture.

Therefore, I claim it is morally wrong to waterboard Claude as nothing genuinely good can come of it.

The MCU is indeed a hell of a drug.

He only violates the rule if he doesn't want the injection himself but gives it to others anyway.

What multiple times of wrong are there that apply to shooting babies in the head that lead you to believe you think it’s wrong for different a reason?

Quentin Tarantino writes and produces fiction.

No one really believes needlessly shooting people in the head is an inconvenience only because of the mess it makes in the back seat.

Maybe you have a strong conviction that the baby deserved it. Some people genuinely are that intolerable that a headshot could be deemed warranted despite the mess it tends to make.

You have a choice.

1. Demonstrate to me that anyone has ever found themselves in one of these hypothetical rape a baby or kill a million people, or it’s variants, scenarios.

And that anyone who has found themselves in such a situation, went on to live their life and every day wake up and proudly proclaim “raping a baby was the right thing to do” or that killing a million was the correct choice. If you did one or the other and didn’t, at least momentarily, suffer any doubt, you’re arguably not human. Or have enough of a brain injury that you need special care.

Or

2. I kill everyone who has ever, and will ever, think they’re clever for proposing absurdly sterile and clear cut toy moral quandaries.

Maybe only true psychopaths.

And how to deal with them, individually and societally, especially when their actions don’t rise to the level of criminality that gets the attention of anyone who has the power to act and wants to, at least isn’t a toy theory.

Slavery in the time of Leviticus was not always the chattel slavery most people think of from the 18th century. For fellow Israelites, it was typically a form of indentured servitude, often willingly entered into to pay off a debt.

Just because something was reported to have happened in the Bible, doesn't always mean it condones it. I see you left off many of the newer passages about slavery that would refute your suggestion that the Bible condones it.

Have you ever read any treatment of a subject, or any somewhat comprehensive text, or anything that at least tries to be, and not found anything you disagreed with, anything that was at least questionable.

Are you proposing we cancel the entire scientific endeavour because its practitioners are often wrong and not infrequently, and increasingly so, intentionally deceptive.

Should we burn libraries because they contain books you don’t like.