Except yours, presumably?Quote:
Of course I'm not saying that is the conclusion these men would come to. Human reasoning is always clouded by biases.
I'm pointing out the intellectual truths of the matter.
Except yours, presumably?Quote:
Of course I'm not saying that is the conclusion these men would come to. Human reasoning is always clouded by biases.
I'm pointing out the intellectual truths of the matter.
I never said what conclusion the 2 men came to. What they conclude has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I'm pointing out the truth of the reality.ramblin_ag02 said:I think you missed my entire point. Neither Avicenna's man on an island nor your 2 men on an island are supposed to have cultural preconceptions. That's part of the basis of the thought experiment. However, somehow your men and Avicenna's men both end up with the same conclusions as the originator of the thought experiment. What I'm saying is that no matter how hard you try, you and Avicenna both are imparting your own biases and presuppositions on your thought experiement. Therefore it is no surprise that when you and Avicenna disagree, then your island men disagree in the exact same way.Quote:
2 men alone on an island and have no memory, therefore no culture have no way to say with any reason that a god in fact exists and says one has the right to kill the other. Of course I'm not saying that is the conclusion these men would come to. Human reasoning is always clouded by biases.
It's like we are looking at this room. (presuming through a clear wall and that no part of the room exists beyond the camera)k2aggie07 said:Except yours, presumably?Quote:
Of course I'm not saying that is the conclusion these men would come to. Human reasoning is always clouded by biases.
I'm pointing out the intellectual truths of the matter.
This is a tautology. You're starting with your premise, that each person has rights that shouldn't be interfered with, and then showing how this should be obvious.Quote:
Those truths alone, absent of any empirical proof of a god, or a purpose for why they are there, are enough to establish an objective truth that neither has the default right to kill the other. Not as an absolute default right.
Quote:
I never said what conclusion the 2 men came to. What they conclude has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I'm pointing out the truth of the reality.
Quote:
Through reason alone, with what little they know, they can establish very basic rights.
They both have the right to life because neither one has the right, by default, to kill the other one, because there is nothing based on reason giving either one that right. Of course you can add on complications of situational issues that can give way to arguments for this right. For instance, if one were trying to kill the other, then one could argue the one being attacked had a right to kill the other in defense of their own life. Or if there were a known amount of resources to survive on the island and there was only enough to support one of them. However, by default, neither can make any reasonable claim to having a right to kill the other.
Logically they both would have the right to do do whatever they wanted so long as they did not violate any known rights of the other. Again, you can add complications and "what if"s, but we are speaking of default rights. Not situational rights.
Logically, if one of them had a right to own property, so would the other. Neither would have a default claim to ownership of anything on that island, so by default they can rationally arrive at a logical conclusion that they equally have the right to own property and then they can complicate it from there on how they agree to divy it up.
Sidebar to say - several Church fathers talk about this, that the intellect or the mind has a special ability that is completely different from sense perception. St Augustine talks about the numbers of judgment, St Maximos calls it a capacity to supranonknow. A way to perceive the metaphysical directly, without any physical intermediary...a way to beyond-know something that is beyond knowledge, because knowledge is gained through physical sense perception. I would hazard that our ability to operate in the metaphysical domain, purely in the abstract, is kind of evidence of this.Quote:
As far as I know, there is no other way for humans to interact with reality other than through our senses...at least, as far as it is up to us.
Seriously?Quote:
Point out where I ever said what they themselves conclude.
Quote:
Through reason alone, with what little they know, they can establish very basic rights.
They both have the right to life because neither one has the right, by default, to kill the other one, because there is nothing based on reason giving either one that right. Of course you can add on complications of situational issues that can give way to arguments for this right. For instance, if one were trying to kill the other, then one could argue the one being attacked had a right to kill the other in defense of their own life. Or if there were a known amount of resources to survive on the island and there was only enough to support one of them. However, by default, neither can make any reasonable claim to having a right to kill the other.
Logically they both would have the right to do do whatever they wanted so long as they did not violate any known rights of the other. Again, you can add complications and "what if"s, but we are speaking of default rights. Not situational rights.
Logically, if one of them had a right to own property, so would the other. Neither would have a default claim to ownership of anything on that island, so by default they can rationally arrive at a logical conclusion that they equally have the right to own property and then they can complicate it from there on how they agree to divy it up.
ramblin_ag02 said:
You literally said they made a conclusion. The rest of the quote is in the exact same vein, despite not using the actual word
Well you have to establish rights. That is the game. So you start from the fact that there is no proof of a god or a purpose to this world. So no one has any inherent rights. We are all equally "rightless". So how do we start giving rights? We have to do that to live together peacefully.Quote:
You just need to say - nobody has any rights, because rights aren't real. And so everyone just controls themselves, because they don't have the right to do anything else.
Property rights are not inherent from the start, true. However, to play this game we have to have property rights. Otherwise we are all stuck with no right to do anything with any property. So property rights must be established. For the 2 guys on the island, they would need to equally divy up the property of the island according to how they agree is most equal.Quote:
And it doesn't extend to property rights. The fact that I have no right to anything other than myself, and only because I happen to find myself animating a body that is mine, doesn't mean I deserve or have any "right" to ownership. Stuff near me is just near me. I don't have a right to stop you from taking it.
This is at the core of the entire understanding of objective rights from reason alone. It is not saying that all religion must be evil. If there is a god that gives us empirical evidence that it created the world and what our purpose is, then sure, it can establish what is right and wrong objectively. But without that proof, we must fall back to the basic reason founded rights.Quote:
I really don't understand this idea that only appealing to a deity gives humans the right to hurt other humans. Seems to me this is just a quirky way to denigrate religions in general as the Source Of All Evil.
Again, like with the 2 players in the game. If they do not know what the purpose of the game is, then they have no way to objectively argue that any ability is better than another.Quote:
But if reason is real and true, and people can come to know it, there's no reason that reason can't dictate a knowable, objective means to judge the quality of person. You may not agree with what that is, but you're just appealing to your own authority over reason at the end of the day.
Natural laws are not self-evident, in fact, people can't even agree on what they are. They are not immutable, as I demonstrated clearly earlier. And the notion that there is no evidence that maximizing utility for a few is nonsense on its face. Unless you purport to guarantee yourself a permanent spot amongst the lucky ruling few it's not hard to dismiss.k2aggie07 said:
If natural laws are only good insofar as they are efficacious they are not self evident and are not immutable. They're just strictly utilitarian. And further, there is no evidence whatsoever that maximizing utility should be done with consideration to all versus a few.
Again, you are using the word "human" in the same sense that I'm using personhood. It's a category that's not even remotely limited in concept to the human race. And whatever criteria you pick, DNA won't have much to do with it I'd guess.Quote:
No, Logos is not the same as person. It is a property, it is an activity that is evidence of the nature. We know that a human is a human because humans exhibit these properties. We can discuss what is the best arbiter of what is human, and I would certainly argue that the ability to reason is not a good one (kids are dumb and bad at reasoning but they're definitely still humans).
Quote:
And no, you've got this pretty well fouled up. Person is not a category. We don't say, how do you know it's a human? Because it's a person. We say, how do you know it's a person? Because it's human.
Quote:
A person is a specific instance of humanity. It is not a category of being, it is a specific unique physical instance of humanity.
Quote:
Now, we could say that other things besides homosapiens can have personhood. I'm fine with that.
Quote:
I think dogs have personhood. I know which dog is mine. She is particular and I could pick her out by her unique mode of being a dog, and no other dog is quite like her. But her personhood is in accordance with what she is, which is a dog. Just like my person hood is an instance of human-ness, provided you believe that I am a human and not AI. Which you probably do. Sucker.
And?Quote:
You're not following. I didn't say "a" social contract. I said "social contract," short hand for "the philosophical concept termed social contract."
Quote:
Your system has no foundation, at least not one you've defined other than simple utility.
Yea, we have to think about this whether or not we pretend we are doing god's bidding. Or else we substitute the dictates of a religion for these questions and dismiss them out of hand. Subjective morality is all there is and so we make due by agreeing to standards. No pretense of objectivity changes anything at a practical level at all.Quote:
As in, "the best government is that which governs best." But that just opens up to questions. What is best? And Lenin's famous "who? Whom?" Utility needs a reference in itself, and so we're back to even "what does happiness mean?" Because if it just means personal pleasure as defined by the individual, and our entire framework of what is right and moral and true is rooted in that, then in no way can we make categorical statements about "best" or "just" or even "utility."
I believe I am following you here. I believe in a Creator, but for the sake of this discussion, assuming no evidence of one, I think I can agree with the idea that we all "start at 0."Quote:
If you reduce the world down to its most basic form from the human point of view, it is a realm where we have no provable evidence of why we are ultimately here, or what purpose we have, if any. So then who has the right to decide what our lives should be about? All humans that are capable of reason have no claim above any other human on what life should be, because none have proof of a creator, which would be the only thing that could objectively give a purpose to this realm. Every human's take on what life should be can only be subjective. So then, the only objective view can be that no one has the right to define anyone else's purpose or life. We all start at 0.
I would say in the scenario you described above, there are no rights. I don't have the right to kill you, but neither do you have the right to expect that I will not kill you. Your scenario imposes no moral obligation upon any of the participants, and a right entails some sort of moral obligation. If you truly have the right to live, then I am morally obligated to allow you to do that. What in your scenario imposes such an obligation upon me?Quote:
Therefore, the only objectively right thing could be that each individual define, for their own selves, what their life's purpose is and what they can do with it and when you interfere with someone else's life by taking it or harming it, you violate their right.