I think this thread will inevitably hit a wall in terms of originality because the general consensus has already pretty much been summed up. There are social guidelines and rules that we all have to fall into to attempt to keep everything calm, cool and collected and if we don't then we're plucked from society for what we've done wrong.

Obviously individuals will have different morals and beliefs that often push and break those "contractual" aspects of society, but you can't change the way some people are. Taking myself as an example, I don't have any problems with stealing. From big businesses, mind. Never directly from someone or from a small business. Just places like Virgin, Tesco, HMV, etc. Obviously not something that would be smiled upon but I couldn't really care less. It's easy and it's monetarily beneficial so I do it and wouldn't make any apologies for it... All six-odd billion of us can't all think and act the same way.

Yes, but....what if you get caught? Are you willing to accept the consequences?

The consequences to any so called "immoral" action is again nothing more than an opinion and no not in my current frame of mind I would be be willing or want to accept the consequences. The whole point of it again was just to make it aware that just because we have agreed upon something by majority does not make it true or right.

I think this thread will inevitably hit a wall in terms of originality because the general consensus has already pretty much been summed up. There are social guidelines and rules that we all have to fall into to attempt to keep everything calm, cool and collected and if we don't then we're plucked from society for what we've done wrong.

Obviously individuals will have different morals and beliefs that often push and break those "contractual" aspects of society, but you can't change the way some people are. Taking myself as an example, I don't have any problems with stealing. From big businesses, mind. Never directly from someone or from a small business. Just places like Virgin, Tesco, HMV, etc. Obviously not something that would be smiled upon but I couldn't really care less. It's easy and it's monetarily beneficial so I do it and wouldn't make any apologies for it... All six-odd billion of us can't all think and act the same way.

Yes, but....what if you get caught? Are you willing to accept the consequences?

The consequences to any so called "immoral" action is again nothing more than an opinion

Hmm, depends what the action is and where you are. Having your hand chopped off for theft, for example, is a bit more than 'an opinion'.

Leechy, thieving CDs from HMV may be monetarily beneficial to yourself, but it is to the monetary detriment of the rest of us who shop there as the store factors their losses from theft into their pricing model. Also, depending on the accounting method of the record store (or whatever they are called now) you are potentially robbing the artist of royalties, and certainly of sales figures/chart positions etc. And your motive is simply greed. This is not a loaf of bread you are stealing to feed your starving family here.

I think this thread will inevitably hit a wall in terms of originality because the general consensus has already pretty much been summed up. There are social guidelines and rules that we all have to fall into to attempt to keep everything calm, cool and collected and if we don't then we're plucked from society for what we've done wrong.

Obviously individuals will have different morals and beliefs that often push and break those "contractual" aspects of society, but you can't change the way some people are. Taking myself as an example, I don't have any problems with stealing. From big businesses, mind. Never directly from someone or from a small business. Just places like Virgin, Tesco, HMV, etc. Obviously not something that would be smiled upon but I couldn't really care less. It's easy and it's monetarily beneficial so I do it and wouldn't make any apologies for it... All six-odd billion of us can't all think and act the same way.

Yes, but....what if you get caught? Are you willing to accept the consequences?

Yeah, obviously.

Leechy, thieving CDs from HMV may be monetarily beneficial to yourself, but it is to the monetary detriment of the rest of us who shop there as the store factors their losses from theft into their pricing model. Also, depending on the accounting method of the record store (or whatever they are called now) you are potentially robbing the artist of royalties, and certainly of sales figures/chart positions etc. And your motive is simply greed. This is not a loaf of bread you are stealing to feed your starving family here.

Don't steal CDs from shops. No point in taking the risk when I just download em instead. If I really like the artist and can get the CD for less than €20 I'll buy it. Thing I mostly nick is food. Haven't taken anything from anywhere else since... probably before last summer. Used to steal CDs and DVDs a lot more when I was younger and didn't know about downloading. Now it's primarily food. And I'm not saying I do it because otherwise I'll starve or whatever. It's just, as I said, monetarily beneficial as I then have money for other things.

Why do so many people really think that there is such a thing? It's amazing the amount of ignorant people I have to work with and be around each day .

So in what situations do you have to work with them & how?

You may not be able to and neither can I but its ignorant for either of us to say that someone in the world couldn't justify it. We so blindly assume that everyone in the world shares the same moral code that we do.

"Once the variables of divergent culture, religion, and personal circumstance get tossed into the equation the analysis of moral rights and wrongs will produce an infinite list of possible values"

Again, I said I cant think of a way to justify something such as cold blooded murder. But please, find me someone who can who is in a sound state of mind. No Ted Bundy's please.

Imagine it's 1933, you have a historybook of 1965 in your pocket and a gun, and you meet Hitler on the loo.
Would you hesitate or shiver?

You may not be able to and neither can I but its ignorant for either of us to say that someone in the world couldn't justify it. We so blindly assume that everyone in the world shares the same moral code that we do.

"Once the variables of divergent culture, religion, and personal circumstance get tossed into the equation the analysis of moral rights and wrongs will produce an infinite list of possible values"

Again, I said I cant think of a way to justify something such as cold blooded murder. But please, find me someone who can who is in a sound state of mind. No Ted Bundy's please.

Imagine it's 1933, you have a historybook of 1965 in your pocket and a gun, and you meet Hitler on the loo.
Would you hesitate or shiver?

Immanuel Kant would probably try to find another way, like talking him out of it

The killing & stuff I mean, not the loo.

I think there were others, going not quite as far into a philosophical cloud as Immanuel Kant that unsuccessfully tried to appeal for good sense, reason or intelligent discussion with Hitty-poops. The result is known. Gangsters need what gangsters offer: A richt good one in the mush.

I´ll give an on-topic post a go:
I´ve not payed much attention to Interviews with Devy until lately, to find we hold similar oppinions at some points. That´s about believeing in nature.
Not in a silly shamanistic "Oooh, I feel the energies of the unvierse floating through my bum!"-way, but a one where you start taking laws of nature as a starting point for thoughts about what´s good or evil.

I had that thought quite a couple of years ago, and the first thing I found was that the biblical terms of good and evil are among the first that fall, as they are entirely based on the choice of that being that no one can see, only feel inside. See my point about shamanism here.

"Get to the point, dude!"
Okay, I will.
I think it merely takes a very simple switch of thinking from Good versus Evil to Constructive versus Deconstructive to make a vast step towards a universal system of moral. Constructive meaning building and maintaing complex structures versus the deconstructive forces that lessen the complexity and living powers of a system.
Bubba. Almost a one liner.
While goodness and Evil are left to the decision of some kind of authority the impact of actions to a system is accessible to objective judgement.

Our understanding of nature says that all creatures live with the same frame of natural laws, share many biological functions with us and some even the vast majority of genetic code in their genoms. On the German/French channel Arte a biologist said in a programme about anthropology that claiming to be humans ape descendants wasn´t exactly right. Calling humans a strange species of apes would be more to the point. That´s creation´s crown taken further off the heads of mankind.
I think a universal moral system has to include the fact that it´s not just there for humans, but for all of life. As humans merely are a tiny share of it.
Philosophers like to quote ancient greeks etc. for words of wisdom. That´s like quoting Ford Model T for questions of modern car design.
Some of them were convinced that a coach with two horses pulling it would go twice as fast than one with one horse pulling it. That´s ~200 horses for the sound barrier?
Those old ones did the first steps, but a lot of what came out has to be considerred nonsense nowadays.

So what does nature do to have things running to the best for all life?
-It provides environment that grow in complexity by themselves. Stuart Kaufmann was one of the first to have access to powerfull computers and did early experiments with life simulations which quickly showed that even with very simple environmental rules and conditions structures in the virtual life tended to shape themselves into steady states while others were transitional states that vanished quickly, many of them producing steady states. Complex mollecules do the same, they even replicate and shape complex structures around themselves that increase their chance of maintaining and spreading.
They need chemical energy flowing through the systems that maintain them. A fact that´s true for all life, simulated or real: Energy has to flow through them, chemical or electric.
With all life being granted the same right for living we have to admit all life the chance of survival as ourselves. We need to consume other life to maintain ourselves, so does other life. Our metabolism can handle meat and herbal substances. Others can´t.
Cats, for example. Making cats herbivours is against their nature, thus I´d consider that imorallic. Such cute cuddly creatures like mouses suffer pain when being their food? Wait and see what happens to a human body if it´s exposed to mice. Let´s say there´s a disabled who can´t defend himself person in a room with mice or even rats. You won´t like what you get to see there. It´s only our human social instinct that rebels at the mere thought of that.
By the way, Mad Cow Dissease would never have become a problem if we humans hadn´t made herbivores eat meat of sheep that had those prions in it.
We humans are social beings that stick together like s*** and refuse to give up one of ours to predators etc. That´s part of our being a success despite all our bodily shortcommings in comparison to other mamals. Humans have to be granted that right as part of their lifestyle.
That being said, just see what happens if there are enough humans around to spare one or two. Not enough ellbow space for some of them is a good reason to remove all redundants. There always will be a good reason for the cause, and many times that reason will be found in old books. Overpoppulation offers the dancefloor to intollerance and primitive huam instincts to start war against what seems to be so different, yet is just the other buttock of the very same bum. Konrad Lorenz wrote about this tendency in his book Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins he very nicely makes that point clear.
(A rather detailed sumarry to my fellow doitsh(That´s Tsherman)-speakers on Wikipedia clickable here!)

"Get to the point, dude!" -Okay, I will.
I think it merely takes a very simple switch of thinking from Good versus Evil to Constructive versus Deconstructive to make a vast step towards a universal system of moral. Constructive meaning building and maintaing complex structures versus the deconstructive forces that lessen the complexity and living powers of a system.
Bubba. Almost a one liner.
While goodness and Evil are left to the decision of some kind of authority the impact of actions to a system is accessible to objective judgement.

Sadly, judging by the way things are human´s unsatiable need for reproduction and the connected need for resources to maintain that bring the entire system severe losses in complexity and already took many eccological spheres to tip over and fall. I think it´s way past time we learnt out off the damage we humans do and skipp the inane good/evil scheme to a more naturalistic way of thinking, using senses and intellect that were grown to that stunningly successfull, social and in a healthy environment absolutely wonderfull human species.
Some twenty years ago a program on German telly told a story archaeologists found in the northern american soil. The very early native americans, the Clovis Culture, were responsible for the extinction of several species after their arrival in the seemingly endless landscapes.
If one looks at how these cultures developed a deep respect for the balance in nature one sees how they understood that need for balance. A lesson they learnt that all other cultures should understand.
For one of the reasons of the vast success the strange naked apes have become is that they are able to learn by understanding what their peers do and understand the results of that. Looking at the sad state of many parts this earth and human cultures are in in many parts it seems to me the babylonian demons and monotheistic cults have failed badly.

Yes, that post took as long to write as it looks like. See you lot later.

If I understood correctly you mean that humans ought to do what is healthy for them and the environment?

In a nutshell, yupp.
Most of what we understand as being good follows that rule anyway. I think that´s been the fundament of all societies at one point.
I don´t think the solutions are so difficult unless one wants them to be, as to write thick books about it.
Simplicity is utterly unposh from an intellectual point of view, but simplifying things has worked as a trick in science for about ever, so I think it should work with basic rules for interhuman understanding.
A set of rules for daily life that require Johnny Common to see an expert (i.e. Priest) and ask him what Johnny is to think is useless, I´d say. Not least so as that would prevent Johnny from being a free man and making his own decisions and being his own self.

I'm getting a feeling you don't think too highly of philosophers

Ooops..

Well, I think everybody should have one. Pet philosophers are good for kid´s education.

Honestly, I think it´s more a discipline of mental sports than serious science they do. Interesting, but they tend to end up considering a real serious mindfuck a deep discovery. I heard philosophers that delivered smashingly brilliant and utterly useful ideas for actual solutions of real problems.
..as soon as they used results of other disciplines of science that don´t merely quote composted geniuses.

Edit:
There are more sensible thoughts about philosophers elsewhere:
[youtube]m_WRFJwGsbY[/youtube]

The reason why people quote dead (or sometimes possibly even living) philosophers is that they want to point something out about what has been said, while giving credit of the idea they are pointing out to the philosopher who (at least to public knowledge) was first to notice that idea. This way the credit for the idea probably goes to the right place, and the person pointing something out does not have to go through the whole thing, he can just say a couple of phrases and everyone, if they have any philosophical education, should know what's being talked about and pointed out. Of course that cuts out people who don't know that stuff out of the conversation.

I think it's silly you underrate and ridicule philosophers and yet you share your own views on philosophical questions, views that aren't even new.

You made definitions for what is good and what is bad:

I think it merely takes a very simple switch of thinking from Good versus Evil to Constructive versus Deconstructive to make a vast step towards a universal system of moral. Constructive meaning building and maintaing complex structures versus the deconstructive forces that lessen the complexity and living powers of a system.

And on the grounds of those definitions you say what ought to be done and what not, to reach the desirable state in which we have lots of what you defined good.

Your approach to "what ought to be done" is called utilitarianism. One of the most significant contributors to that way of thinking was and still is philosopher John Stuart Mill. He was born over two hundred years ago. Among other things he pointed out - in a book he wrote in 1848 - that the quality of life will greatly suffer if the environment gets destroyed from excessive straining. There is nothing "cloudy" about his reasoning, I'm sure you would agree very much with his thoughts.

But I don't think there is anything cloudy or "mindfucky" about Kant's thought's for that matter. He is one of the greatest philosophers who lived. He is quoted often in philosophical context because he pointed made sense of so many things people back then didn't have no idea. Among other things he brought an end to the fight between rationalists and empiricism by uniting them. If you think Kant's stuff is cloudy, that might be because he focused much on ethics, epistemology and stuff like that. Very theoretical.

You pointed out that there have been some silly philosophers:

Philosophers like to quote ancient greeks etc. for words of wisdom. That´s like quoting Ford Model T for questions of modern car design.
Some of them were convinced that a coach with two horses pulling it would go twice as fast than one with one horse pulling it. That´s ~200 horses for the sound barrier?
Those old ones did the first steps, but a lot of what came out has to be considerred nonsense nowadays.

Well you don't hear anyone quoting those horse-carriage philosophers, since they weren't very _SUCCESSFUL_ philosophers. You'll hear people quoting philosophers like Socrates, since the stuff he came up with is not just bullshit even today. One can say Aristotle invented science, since he was a pioneer of the scientific method. Sometimes an old philosopher is quoted just as you did, to point out some error, and then it is done to point out a lesson and what not to do again.

But that horse problem is not even a simple thing. It was a pretty good guess. Those people over two thousand years ago didn't have all the research we have today backing them. It is very likely that they didn't know anything about sonic speeds (or the speed of light and it being the maximum speed of anything known today and anything with mass trying to reach it will need endlessly growing amounts of energy). They were dealing with speeds a horse can pull carriages. In that area their law sort of holds, since two horses pulling can pull twice as hard as one horse, thus the acceleration is twice as big.

If there is friction or other forces opposing the motion, the overall acceleration will be four times as big, and thus the max speed will be four times as big, but unless you figure out why that is so yourself, you are in no position to make fun of those old Greek philosophers. (I think you wouldn't be anyhow)

I didn´t say anything against philosophers, did I? I said everybody should have one after all!

Well, seriously:
I tried to read Kant. I don´t deny his briliancy, I´m not quite as daft. But even admitting that in his days complex endless sentences were kinda posh style, his statements were so utterly *bluergh* a kind of a read, I got so unnerved that I decided to read about Kant.
I admit I let things lie there so far and went for Stephen Hawking. Richard Feynman is a great writer as well. Or Stuart Kaufman. After such reads you can lean back and try to get the picture the book gave you into a sentence. For Kaufman´s At Home in the Universe" I got "Life is a characteristikum of complex systems of matter." -Unmistakable, clear, and most likely very true.

You may notice that I *am* interested in such questions. The value of knowledge about ideas that were already developed of course is of value there. I only feel that many times the forest gets hidden behind all those trees when philosphers have their flow of words gaining momentum. I feel it´s a bit of "Big books sell for good dough and make a big reputation!". It´s like "Oh, wow, I am good at answering that question, I´ll make a living out of that!" (And why the heck do I give my ideas away for free? Gah!)
This of course is a caricature to make my view clear, I don´t imply the renown philosophers actually did so.

All I´m saying is that I find it essential to have a very close look at what we objectively know for sure about nature as a basis for answering the question of how to establish a universally true, fair and usable morality.
I will have to take more time than I have right now to get my head around whether or not the ideas I have there really match with the term utilitarism, I don´t quite feel so as apparently the utilised moral is merely meant to produce a state of feeling well. Me, I accept that individuals will have to make compromises between their own being well and the healthyness of the entire system-A different thing from my point of view.

The only thing I think I´ll insist on is that all should have their philosopher. I´ll have an Aristotle action figure, please.

Maybe you didn't say anything directly against philosophers but I got the impression that your attitude towards them was like "They think too much and don't get anything actually done". And I hate that. Especially when people are taking part in a philosophical question, giving their side of view and then saying the others are just too high on needless pondering and their thoughts are just nonsense. But I might have been a little biased to think thats the case with you. I just get that kind of attitude from so many people who value nature, perhaps a little too much.

They'll be all "I know I'm right and the rest of you who think otherwise are just stupid, I have science to prove it."
"Well in philosophical context you can't-"
"PHILOSOPHERS JUST HAVE THEIR HEADS UP THEIR ASS AND THINK THEY'RE ABOVE SCIENCE".

That's what I hate. That doesn't help getting the message through to other people. That doesn't help anything. Others with different views wont want to listen to that kind of mockery. It's the same thing extreme religious fundamentalist do. They know they're right, and they won't have any other way except their way. I'm not saying you, eotunun are like this, I just got worried about the way you seemed to think about philosophers.

In light of philosophical skepticism, science can be seen as just another belief system among others, it cannot be absolutely, completely, perfectly justified as the best one. It seems only to be the best one to describe the physical reality, but everyone isn't even interested in that physical reality. Because of that, there can be other justifiable belief-systems. And according to Murphy's law (in it's mathematical context) there will be other justifiable belief-systems. And because of that you will see different religions and philosophies and stuff in the world, and science will have to just co-exist with them.

I am not trying to convert anyone into anything. I personally think science is the best way to comprehend reality because I have no experiences of other realities than the physical one and because science works. Science is pragmatically the best way of viewing the physical world. But I still think people should remember to "think outside the box". There wouldn't perhaps be so many conflicts about who is right and what to do and more people could get more stuff done if they could comprehend what I wrote above.

When I said you shouldn't make fun of philosophers, I meant that you shouldn't laugh at their attempts at comprehending the world and just think they were stupid (I'm not saying you did so, but that's what I meant that shouldn't be done since I think it's just ignorant). I don't mean that it should be forbidden to make any fun at all of them. I think its just healthy to make fun of stuff so that no-one gets seriously offended. People should be able to laugh at themselves a little too. I found your video amusing, I had never seen that one before. And I rarely have laughed as hard as I did when I first saw this: [youtube]ur5fGSBsfq8[/youtube]

I've always wondered what they are trying to say with having Confucius as the referee