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Old 20th June 2018, 05:42 AM   #121
Roboramma
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
What matters is appearing to care. But clearly, the best strategy is not really caring, but simply appearing to do so.
That depends upon the difficulty of doing so. It may be easier to care than the pretend to care, either in the sense of the amount of effort involved or in the sense of the likelihood of success at convincing others.
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Old 20th June 2018, 07:12 AM   #122
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
That depends upon the difficulty of doing so. It may be easier to care than the pretend to care, either in the sense of the amount of effort involved or in the sense of the likelihood of success at convincing others.
Certainly. I agree.

But this would require clear evidence that caring is easier.

Last edited by phiwum; 20th June 2018 at 07:13 AM.
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Old 20th June 2018, 07:28 AM   #123
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
Certainly. I agree.

But this would require clear evidence that caring is easier.
I think I lost the thread of the discussion. What would require clear evidence?
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Old 21st June 2018, 07:21 AM   #124
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
I think I lost the thread of the discussion. What would require clear evidence?
It was suggested that the self-interested position might be to actually care about others, rather than merely pretend to do so, since the pretense might come with significant costs.

Which could be so, but is not obviously so.
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Old 21st June 2018, 07:32 AM   #125
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
It was suggested that the self-interested position might be to actually care about others, rather than merely pretend to do so, since the pretense might come with significant costs.

Which could be so, but is not obviously so.
I think it would be very situation-dependent. And entirely subjective. I do not need to have conclusive objective evidence that caring is more self-interested. I only have to believe that is the case, and act accordingly. Ethics isn't about acting with evidentiary certainty. It's about making the best decision we can, based on the (always limited, often insufficient) information we have, according to the values we hold at that time.
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Old 21st June 2018, 08:10 AM   #126
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
I think it would be very situation-dependent. And entirely subjective. I do not need to have conclusive objective evidence that caring is more self-interested. I only have to believe that is the case, and act accordingly. Ethics isn't about acting with evidentiary certainty. It's about making the best decision we can, based on the (always limited, often insufficient) information we have, according to the values we hold at that time.
If your goal is self interest, then it isn't ethics.

Yes, I know that there's a pathological theory of ethics called egoism. But I think it's an abandonment of ethics.
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Old 21st June 2018, 08:54 AM   #127
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
If your goal is self interest, then it isn't ethics.

Yes, I know that there's a pathological theory of ethics called egoism. But I think it's an abandonment of ethics.
It sounds like you're firmly in the "moral value that transcends self interest" camp, when it comes to defending human rights.
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Old 21st June 2018, 09:29 AM   #128
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
It sounds like you're firmly in the "moral value that transcends self interest" camp, when it comes to defending human rights.
Only to the degree that there are transcendental rights.

Arguing that we ought to get along because it's in our interest to do so is fine, I suppose, but I don't think it works and it's certainly not a moral argument.
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Old 22nd June 2018, 02:34 AM   #129
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If transcends X means not entirely belong to X, then I think that life phenomena transects humanity.

In this case transcendental human rights are actually the right to live and let live, no matter what life form is involved.

Currently we know that evolution of life is developed mostly in terms of diversity (abstract or not), so by this awareness, transcendental human rights is actually developing the diversity of life phenomena.
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Old 22nd June 2018, 07:57 AM   #130
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That made absolutely no sense.
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Old 22nd June 2018, 08:52 AM   #131
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Originally Posted by doronshadmi View Post
If transcends X means not entirely belong to X, then I think that life phenomena transects humanity.

In this case transcendental human rights are actually the right to live and let live, no matter what life form is involved.

Currently we know that evolution of life is developed mostly in terms of diversity (abstract or not), so by this awareness, transcendental human rights is actually developing the diversity of life phenomena.
My parser broke!
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Old 22nd June 2018, 10:12 AM   #132
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Originally Posted by I Am The Scum View Post
That made absolutely no sense.
You are right, because of a speller's action that I have missed, so here it is again without speller's nonsense:

If transcends X means not entirely belong to X, then I think that life phenomena transcends rights beyond the point of view our life form.

In this case transcendental human rights are actually the right to live and let live, no matter what life form is involved.

Currently we know that evolution of life is developed mostly in terms of diversity (abstract or not), so according to this notion, transcendental human rights is actually developing the diversity of life phenomena.
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For more details, please carefully observe Prof. Edward Frenkel's video from https://youtu.be/PFkZGpN4wmM?t=697 until the end of the video.

Last edited by doronshadmi; 22nd June 2018 at 10:21 AM.
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Old 22nd June 2018, 10:29 AM   #133
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
Only to the degree that there are transcendental rights.
This seems like equivocation. You're clearly arguing for people having a moral value that transcends your own self-interest. Do you not believe that transcendental rights exist to at least the degree necessary to make your argument work?

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Arguing that we ought to get along because it's in our interest to do so is fine, I suppose, but I don't think it works
What makes you think it doesn't work?

Work for what?

Quote:
and it's certainly not a moral argument.
Is there a moral argument you can defend?

Do you believe there's a reason to get along, that transcends our self-interests? Can you tell us that reason? Can you make a rational defense of your belief?

You say there's more to morality than self-interest. So what more is there?
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Old 22nd June 2018, 10:38 AM   #134
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
This seems like equivocation. You're clearly arguing for people having a moral value that transcends your own self-interest. Do you not believe that transcendental rights exist to at least the degree necessary to make your argument work?


What makes you think it doesn't work?

Work for what?


Is there a moral argument you can defend?

Do you believe there's a reason to get along, that transcends our self-interests? Can you tell us that reason? Can you make a rational defense of your belief?

You say there's more to morality than self-interest. So what more is there?
I tend to think that morality must transcend self interest to be properly called so.

I have no good argument that there is such a thing. I tend to think so, but I can't find a good argument.

But I don't think that self interest is a basis for what I consider moral reasoning, which at its heart is a consideration for others. A consideration for self is not essentially a moral consideration.
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Old 22nd June 2018, 11:07 AM   #135
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
This seems like equivocation. You're clearly arguing for people having a moral value that transcends your own self-interest. Do you not believe that transcendental rights exist to at least the degree necessary to make your argument work?


What makes you think it doesn't work?

Work for what?


Is there a moral argument you can defend?

Do you believe there's a reason to get along, that transcends our self-interests? Can you tell us that reason? Can you make a rational defense of your belief?

You say there's more to morality than self-interest. So what more is there?
Oh, one more comment.

I just don't think that self interest is sufficient to justify what we regard as morality. Self interest requires that we look like we're behaving, but nothing more.
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Old 22nd June 2018, 11:22 AM   #136
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
I tend to think that morality must transcend self interest to be properly called so.

I have no good argument that there is such a thing. I tend to think so, but I can't find a good argument.

But I don't think that self interest is a basis for what I consider moral reasoning, which at its heart is a consideration for others. A consideration for self is not essentially a moral consideration.
Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
Oh, one more comment.

I just don't think that self interest is sufficient to justify what we regard as morality. Self interest requires that we look like we're behaving, but nothing more.
Thank you. Looking back through the thread, I am reminded that you and I are already in agreement on these points. I apologize for not remembering, and pressing you to re-hash the whole thing again.
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Old 22nd June 2018, 11:27 AM   #137
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
Thank you. Looking back through the thread, I am reminded that you and I are already in agreement on these points. I apologize for not remembering, and pressing you to re-hash the whole thing again.
No problem, no reason you should remember a random person's position.

You and I seem to be agreeing an unusual number of times recently.
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Old 24th June 2018, 12:26 AM   #138
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There is a suggestive-philosophical way to approach to the Human Rights.

Imagine you are part of a not very wide group of persons that have to decide how organizing a new society. You don't know what the other people are and what you would be in these new society. You even ignore if you would be a black woman, a chinese child or a white elder, a big capitalist or a slave in a coal mine --if slavery or capitalism were programmed, of course.

We can suppose that, apart from particular details, some basic rules would be decised that would warrant the basic conditions of existence below which human life would be a hell. Remember that your own life is at stake. In addition, other rules would be established in order to warrant that nobody could dammage the basic conditions previously arranged.

These rules are the Human Rights.

They are neither transcendental nor government-dependent, but "logical" exigences of human condition.

A secondary question is why these rules are not respected in facts. But this is another question.

NOTE: my example is a summary of John Rawls' "original position".
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Old 13th July 2018, 04:19 PM   #139
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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
I apologize for completely missing your point.
Why would you apologize for that?

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You may be right that there are situations in which encouraging egoism is in the interest of the egoist. I'm not sure how common that is.
I've been thinking about this in the back of my mind for a while and I gotta turn the question back at you: When is it not?

As an egoist my most immediate concern would be the appropriation of my own life. The societal conditions I find myself in are such that I am expected to work until about age 35 to produce sufficient value to cover my consumption (fair enough I guess) but am then expected to work another 30 years for free in order to enrich someone else. That's 40 hours per week for a good chunk of my life being commanded by someone else as to which actions I take, for no reward and solely to enrich someone else. Sure, as an egoist plenty of other concerns exist, but that one's by far the biggest one.

To give another example. When you first start driving trains you get an older traindriver (called a monitor) to train you for about a year. It used to be (and still was the case when I left a year ago) that we'd "steal hours" which basically meant that we arranged things among ourselves to go home 1 or 2 hours early, while of course still being paid for them. I started out in a cargo depot near the port of Antwerp, and my monitor told me about the history of the depot. At some point in the 1970s the bosses decided to install a time clock which would of course have meant the end of the practice of "stealing hours" (which is what they called it, though strictly speaking it should've been called "refusing to let someone else steal your hours").

It only took one day for the time clock to have been taken apart and sabotaged, at which point the bosses sent someone to repair and had it guarded for a week or so. The day after the guard left the time clock had been taken apart again. The bosses gave up at that point. Here's the thing, nobody (or at least not my monitor) knows who did it, and whoever did it was probably acting out of pure self-interest. Yet it was in everyone's self-interest to support whoever did it acting in their own self-interest.

Later I was assigned to Leuven passenger depot and a strike was called. The choice put to us was to either go on strike and not get paid, or go to work and get paid. But again, here's the thing, why would it be in my/our self-interest to limit myself/ourselves to the parameters set by those who act against my/our self-interest? So this was the system: everyone went to work to get paid and sat in the depot, the depot was about 20 minutes walk from the station. At some point the station manager (who was on the side of the bosses) called the depot because there was a train which needed a driver. So someone got up, took a slow and gentle walk to the station, took a good look at the train and said "I'm going on strike" and walked off. So the station manager called for another driver, who took a slow and gentle walk to the station, took a good look at the train and said "I'm going on strike" and walked off. So the station manager called for yet another driver, and to make a long story short, after an hour and 3 tries the station manager just gave up and almost all of us got paid because we technically hadn't gone on strike. And here again, each one of us was acting in our self-interest yet it was in our interest to encourage the rest to do so as well.

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I'd think that, if I could get away with it, teaching others to consider my well-being would be great, but we are not all as gifted as Creflo Dollar.
What does Creflo Dollar have to do with egoism? You seem to have this peculiar notion of egoism, I'd encourage you to read some egoist philosophy. The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner would be the goto text here, you can find a pdf through here.

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Anyway, I get your point now
I don't think you do to be honest.
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