Philosophy Discussion Forums

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 7:32 am

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 6:45 am

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 5:03 am

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 6th, 2022, 9:15 am

Here's the "truth"
You are confusing two completely different things. There is something that we can agree is "true", and then there is a vague and diffuse concept "eternal moral truth".
This phrase is effectively a oxymoron. Morality have everything in common with subjective values, whilst truth is a concept searching for the objective.

I agree that 'truth' means either subjective truth or objective truth or, if I confuse those, both objective and subjective truth.

However, I suggest both Sculptor and Eric psychologically while aiming at objective truths are doing so because their unspoken stance is towards objective truth. NB I would not claim that objective truth is definable. Nor would I claim that all men stand to face indefinable objective truth as some men psychologically prefer lies.

If you think that, then, with respect you are not following what I am saying.
I was very careful in my words; "truth is a concept searching for the objective." That does not imply that objectivity is attainable, except on the most mundane level of "oh look a cup".
Morality cannot be matched with eternal since we know that humanity, the bearer and inventor of morality, is temporal. Nor can is so easily be matched with "truth" except on the most basic culturally, historically, socially, and personally subjective way.

Morality is human and culturally relative. Objective , absolute, or eternal truth is not human and we know it only by attitudes towards it.
There are people who psychologically prefer their lies or others' lies even while they know they prefer lies. Obviously you and Eric prefer telling your separate truths.

And you think you can exclude yourself here?

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 8:39 am

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 7:32 am

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 6:45 am

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 5:03 am

I agree that 'truth' means either subjective truth or objective truth or, if I confuse those, both objective and subjective truth.

However, I suggest both Sculptor and Eric psychologically while aiming at objective truths are doing so because their unspoken stance is towards objective truth. NB I would not claim that objective truth is definable. Nor would I claim that all men stand to face indefinable objective truth as some men psychologically prefer lies.

If you think that, then, with respect you are not following what I am saying.
I was very careful in my words; "truth is a concept searching for the objective." That does not imply that objectivity is attainable, except on the most mundane level of "oh look a cup".
Morality cannot be matched with eternal since we know that humanity, the bearer and inventor of morality, is temporal. Nor can is so easily be matched with "truth" except on the most basic culturally, historically, socially, and personally subjective way.

Morality is human and culturally relative. Objective , absolute, or eternal truth is not human and we know it only by attitudes towards it.
There are people who psychologically prefer their lies or others' lies even while they know they prefer lies. Obviously you and Eric prefer telling your separate truths.

And you think you can exclude yourself here?

I include myself.

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 4:48 pm

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 8:39 am

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 7:32 am

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 6:45 am
If you think that, then, with respect you are not following what I am saying.
I was very careful in my words; "truth is a concept searching for the objective." That does not imply that objectivity is attainable, except on the most mundane level of "oh look a cup".
Morality cannot be matched with eternal since we know that humanity, the bearer and inventor of morality, is temporal. Nor can is so easily be matched with "truth" except on the most basic culturally, historically, socially, and personally subjective way.

Morality is human and culturally relative. Objective , absolute, or eternal truth is not human and we know it only by attitudes towards it.
There are people who psychologically prefer their lies or others' lies even while they know they prefer lies. Obviously you and Eric prefer telling your separate truths.

And you think you can exclude yourself here?

I include myself.

So here is the odd thing.
You accuse me of a "separate truth", yet I have not made any claim concerning ANY moral truth.
If you think I have then show me where I did.

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 5:04 pm

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 4:48 pm

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 8:39 am

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 7:32 am

Morality is human and culturally relative. Objective , absolute, or eternal truth is not human and we know it only by attitudes towards it.
There are people who psychologically prefer their lies or others' lies even while they know they prefer lies. Obviously you and Eric prefer telling your separate truths.

And you think you can exclude yourself here?

I include myself.

So here is the odd thing.
You accuse me of a "separate truth", yet I have not made any claim concerning ANY moral truth.
If you think I have then show me where I did.

I did not 'accuse' I credited you with your separate truth. Cultures of belief are more or less autocratic. I presume you can be objective about all cultures of belief including your own. As you will know it's one of the problems of anthropological investigations that the observer has an effect on the observed so you try to circumvent that by participant observation. Participant observation is a practical aim despite no foreigner can be 100% a native participant.

When we are doing not anthropology but philosophy participant observation does not apply and we are learning from each other(if we learn at all) by the adversarial method, which necessitates us speaking as if we are individuals. It's right to be sceptical about evidence from authority or popular opinion.

I have never noticed you being dishonest so I credit you with (perhaps unwittingly I don't know)with an unspoken respect for honesty, which is necessary in any search for truth.

Belindi wrote: ↑August 8th, 2022, 5:08 am

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 5:04 pm

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 4:48 pm

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 8:39 am
And you think you can exclude yourself here?

I include myself.

So here is the odd thing.
You accuse me of a "separate truth", yet I have not made any claim concerning ANY moral truth.
If you think I have then show me where I did.

I did not 'accuse' I credited you with your separate truth. Cultures of belief are more or less autocratic. I presume you can be objective about all cultures of belief including your own. As you will know it's one of the problems of anthropological investigations that the observer has an effect on the observed so you try to circumvent that by participant observation. Participant observation is a practical aim despite no foreigner can be 100% a native participant.

When we are doing not anthropology but philosophy participant observation does not apply and we are learning from each other(if we learn at all) by the adversarial method, which necessitates us speaking as if we are individuals. It's right to be sceptical about evidence from authority or popular opinion.

I have never noticed you being dishonest so I credit you with (perhaps unwittingly I don't know)with an unspoken respect for honesty, which is necessary in any search for truth.

Gaslighting?
What did you mean by this; "Obviously you and Eric prefer telling your separate truths."
That is not "giving credit". It is patronising at best.
Yet I am not promoting any truth here.

Belindi wrote: ↑August 8th, 2022, 5:08 am

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 5:04 pm

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 4:48 pm

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 8:39 am
And you think you can exclude yourself here?

I include myself.

So here is the odd thing.
You accuse me of a "separate truth", yet I have not made any claim concerning ANY moral truth.
If you think I have then show me where I did.

I did not 'accuse' I credited you with your separate truth. Cultures of belief are more or less autocratic. I presume you can be objective about all cultures of belief including your own. As you will know it's one of the problems of anthropological investigations that the observer has an effect on the observed so you try to circumvent that by participant observation. Participant observation is a practical aim despite no foreigner can be 100% a native participant.

When we are doing not anthropology but philosophy participant observation does not apply and we are learning from each other(if we learn at all) by the adversarial method, which necessitates us speaking as if we are individuals. It's right to be sceptical about evidence from authority or popular opinion.

I have never noticed you being dishonest so I credit you with (perhaps unwittingly I don't know)with an unspoken respect for honesty, which is necessary in any search for truth.

I am not in a position to patronise anybody.
It's fairly obvious that honesty is necessary though not sufficient to discover truth, if truth is to be discovered.

CIN wrote: ↑July 4th, 2022, 7:14 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑June 26th, 2022, 9:49 pm

CIN wrote: ↑June 26th, 2022, 7:11 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑June 24th, 2022, 12:33 am CIN seems to think that if we ignore someone who needs help then we are failing to treat them as an end in themselves. Rather, the truth is that when we ignore someone we are not "treating" them at all. We are not treating them as a means or an end.

You are failing to treat them as an object deserving of moral consideration. Since they do deserve moral consideration, your failing to so treat them is immoral.

Whether or not it is immoral, it is not failing to treat them as an end in themselves, and that is what we are discussing. As @Good_Egg rightly pointed out, failure to treat someone as an end in themselves occurs when we treat them as a means (and we usually think of this happening in an overtly selfish way).

I think we may have to abandon this discussion, because you and I cannot agree on what it means to treat someone as an end in themselves. I hold that treating someone as an end in themselves means taking into consideration the effect on them of our actions when choosing how to act. By my definition, you are failing to treat the five unhealthy patients as ends in themselves, because you ignore the effect on them of not taking the healthy patient's organs.

I would consider an alternative view, according to which treating someone as end on themselves means acting in their interests. In that case your position would still be wrong, because clearly if the choice is between acting in five people's interests or one person's interests, you should act in the five people's interests. What it would boil down to, on this definition, is that the surgeon cannot in fact treat everyone as an end in themselves, so he should treat as many people as ends in themselves as he can.

Frankly, I do not understand what you mean by treating someone as an end in themselves: it seems to entail that you advocate leaving people to die when you could save their lives. Suppose you were standing by the road next to a blind man, and he stepped off the kerb into the path of a speeding car. My view is that you should pull him back to safety. You apparently would disagree, since you do not seem to believe we have a duty to save people's lives when we can do so.

There is no controversy or ambiguity about what "treating someone as an end in themselves" means. What you are doing is redefining words willy-nilly, and this form of dishonesty is a sign that you are unwilling to engage in real dialogue. Thus the conversation was over long ago; approximately when you claimed that one can murder someone for their organs while simultaneously treating them as an end in themselves.

A means is something we do for the sake of something else. An end is that "something else" we are aiming at. See BBC - An End in Itself.

Murdering someone for their organs is a paradigm example of treating someone as a means rather than as an end in themselves. In that case the murderer is treating them as a means to the proximate end of organ harvesting, and to the remote end of organ transplants. I have explained all of this above, and I fully expect that you understand the point being made, despite all of your evasion.

Belindi wrote: ↑August 8th, 2022, 12:26 pm

Belindi wrote: ↑August 8th, 2022, 5:08 am

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 5:04 pm

Belindi wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 4:48 pm
I include myself.

So here is the odd thing.
You accuse me of a "separate truth", yet I have not made any claim concerning ANY moral truth.
If you think I have then show me where I did.

I did not 'accuse' I credited you with your separate truth. Cultures of belief are more or less autocratic. I presume you can be objective about all cultures of belief including your own. As you will know it's one of the problems of anthropological investigations that the observer has an effect on the observed so you try to circumvent that by participant observation. Participant observation is a practical aim despite no foreigner can be 100% a native participant.

When we are doing not anthropology but philosophy participant observation does not apply and we are learning from each other(if we learn at all) by the adversarial method, which necessitates us speaking as if we are individuals. It's right to be sceptical about evidence from authority or popular opinion.

I have never noticed you being dishonest so I credit you with (perhaps unwittingly I don't know)with an unspoken respect for honesty, which is necessary in any search for truth.

I am not in a position to patronise anybody.

As a mod you ought not to be, no.

It's fairly obvious that honesty is necessary though not sufficient to discover truth, if truth is to be discovered.

What do you mean by that?
How is that relevant, unless you are implying that untruths are being spoken?

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 11th, 2022, 5:49 am

Belindi wrote: ↑August 8th, 2022, 12:26 pm

Belindi wrote: ↑August 8th, 2022, 5:08 am

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 7th, 2022, 5:04 pm

So here is the odd thing.
You accuse me of a "separate truth", yet I have not made any claim concerning ANY moral truth.
If you think I have then show me where I did.

I did not 'accuse' I credited you with your separate truth. Cultures of belief are more or less autocratic. I presume you can be objective about all cultures of belief including your own. As you will know it's one of the problems of anthropological investigations that the observer has an effect on the observed so you try to circumvent that by participant observation. Participant observation is a practical aim despite no foreigner can be 100% a native participant.

When we are doing not anthropology but philosophy participant observation does not apply and we are learning from each other(if we learn at all) by the adversarial method, which necessitates us speaking as if we are individuals. It's right to be sceptical about evidence from authority or popular opinion.

I have never noticed you being dishonest so I credit you with (perhaps unwittingly I don't know)with an unspoken respect for honesty, which is necessary in any search for truth.

I am not in a position to patronise anybody.

As a mod you ought not to be, no.

It's fairly obvious that honesty is necessary though not sufficient to discover truth, if truth is to be discovered.

What do you mean by that?
How is that relevant, unless you are implying that untruths are being spoken?

People often tell deliberate lies usually because it's in their own interests to do so. The basis of all cooperation is mutual trust. Discovering the best truths is a communal effort at some points along the line.

Belindi wrote: ↑August 11th, 2022, 11:08 am

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 11th, 2022, 5:49 am

Belindi wrote: ↑August 8th, 2022, 12:26 pm

Belindi wrote: ↑August 8th, 2022, 5:08 am
I did not 'accuse' I credited you with your separate truth. Cultures of belief are more or less autocratic. I presume you can be objective about all cultures of belief including your own. As you will know it's one of the problems of anthropological investigations that the observer has an effect on the observed so you try to circumvent that by participant observation. Participant observation is a practical aim despite no foreigner can be 100% a native participant.

When we are doing not anthropology but philosophy participant observation does not apply and we are learning from each other(if we learn at all) by the adversarial method, which necessitates us speaking as if we are individuals. It's right to be sceptical about evidence from authority or popular opinion.

I have never noticed you being dishonest so I credit you with (perhaps unwittingly I don't know)with an unspoken respect for honesty, which is necessary in any search for truth.

I am not in a position to patronise anybody.

As a mod you ought not to be, no.

It's fairly obvious that honesty is necessary though not sufficient to discover truth, if truth is to be discovered.

What do you mean by that?
How is that relevant, unless you are implying that untruths are being spoken?

People often tell deliberate lies usually because it's in their own interests to do so. The basis of all cooperation is mutual trust. Discovering the best truths is a communal effort at some points along the line.

How is this relevant here?