>Not all political viewpoints across all topics are equally valid.
Who's validating or invalidating them?
Who's validating or invalidating them?
They probably assumed the floor is "slaves are a bad thing", it's so obvious that the empirical measurement is "does slavery increase the number of slaves" that they don't need to elaborate
But apparently you fall below that basic floor such that you might contest slaves are not inherently bad, so "decreased number of slaves" is not empirical proof slavery is wrong.
Great example of why I tend to just ignore people who disagree with my morality. Some demographics are currently convinced that's a show of weakness, I'm convinced it shows I value my time.
No wonder Socrates was hated 2400 years ago.
I said you bucked this person's assumption of "all people with morals believe a slave is bad"
Otherwise you could obviously moralize the more complex concept of slavery based on objective reality by observing "more slavery == more slaves"; slavery is bad QED
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Morality is concerned with examining if something is good or bad. So if all people with morals (regardless of what those are) find a concept to be either good or bad... then it might as well exist outside of the purview of morality for the purpose of debate. That's the metaphorical "floor of morality"
My point is normally you need nuanced examples to prove that things "on the floor" can still be moralized, like murder vs murder in self-defense.
What you proved is that there are also people willing to moralize concepts as simple as "slaves are bad" (vs "slavery is bad")
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In doing so you demonstrated why when someone tries to moralize things that I assumed to be "on the floor", or universally bad: I just discard their opinion without consideration.
If you ask me "why do you think slaves are bad", I'll mostly say "I just do, and I don't wish to entertain arguments otherwise". I see it as being pragmatic, but some may consider it fragile.
It's just, I'm a fairly introspective and have had a varied enough life that I trust my intuition that anyone who can't reach the floor of my morality is not worth convincing.
That attitude would harm the public space, where standards to discuss current and new issues would be really helpful.
You also think the choice of slavery is proof of people falling below your personal moral floor. To me, and I think to the OP, it's proof that even questions with obvious moral answers are beyond empiricism. Which is the point you're missing.
So we need to know on what basis we arrive at the obvious answer slavery is bad, because the we can use that basis for more complex matters. Shutting each other down just for talking is authoritarian, and the thing about that is if the guy on top is your guy that's great, but you have no control over who the guy on top is.
Actually there's more evidence that the public space could not exist without some sort of floor:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/evolution-morali...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...
MFT is highly debatable in terms of if it's the right definition of the floor, but it logically tracks that for society to evolve to the point where you can have useful discourse at all, individuals must be arrive at some floor for themselves.
> You also think the choice of slavery is proof of people falling below your personal moral floor. To me, and I think to the OP, it's proof that even questions with obvious moral answers are beyond empiricism. Which is the point you're missing.
You're confusing slaves and slavery: Slavery is complex enough that I will engage someone who wants to moralize it (after all, is it modern or historical? specific race? is debt-based slavery included? what about war? etc.).
But a slave is "a human owns another". I arrogantly consider it not worth my time to convince someone whether "a human owning another" is good or bad.
> So we need to know on what basis we arrive at the obvious answer slavery is bad, because the we can use that basis for more complex matters.
Nothing I said precludes logic to examining slavery: "Slavery increase the number of humans owned by other humans, so slavery is bad"
From there one might logically say: "Well what about economic cases, where technically I don't own you?", and then the logical next step might be to consider "at what level of penalties for a debtor does it start to become owned by the creditor?"
I'm a curious enough person that I'd accept discomfort to ensure my floor is low enough to allow deeply messy moral debate... but on the same coin, that reinforces my confidence that the precious few conversations that do get swept under it were probably not valuable. As always ymmv...
> Shutting each other down just for talking is authoritarian, and the thing about that is if the guy on top is your guy that's great, but you have no control over who the guy on top is.
Deciding not to convince someone of my point of view isn't shutting them down. This feels like a very messy attempt to force some sort of pro-authoritarian projection onto me :/
It doesn't matter how low your floor is, or what you specifically think is above or below it. You have to be able to explain how you set this floor in the first place to join the public discussion.
Unless you think convincing people of your personal morals is a replacement for respecting their freedom, you can stop clumsily forcing that angle...
Overall you seem lost. You think people owe you unendingly deep explanations to their personal morals to earn a place in public discourse and to argue policy, which is probably the first authoritarian take shared in this thread.
If it appears like that you should read what you replied to a little closer...
You're confusing not wanting to dissect the most basic tenants of your morals, with not being willing to dissect morals: I'll gladly debate the trolley problem with you, which involves killing people. But if in isolation you just ask "why do you think killing is bad", I'm not going to engage unless you have some complicating factor. I consider something that basic as an amoral (not immoral!) concept.
Similarly I'll debate the complex topic of slavery, but not the isolated basic concept of "a human owning another is not good". That still leaves room for someone to claim "well yes slaves were bad but the benefit was X and that outweighed the bad", but now we at least have some basic floor that we can start having infinitely more thought provoking discussion.
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What I just described is why you're more likely to grow as a person with a moral floor.
Instead of getting trapped debating concepts we all have the most sense of self attached to and least mental plasticity on, you can have meaningful debate on higher level subjects of morality underpinned by those concepts. With dialectic thinking you're able to independently consider not just the opposing argument, and what underpins that argument.
So now you considered the opposition to your underpinning, but you've done so with none of the inherent emotion and ego that would have been attached to directly debating that underpinning.
Not being willing to outwardly debate is not the same as not being willing to think on if you have strong dialectic thinking skills, and _that's_ where people need to start focusing on to get past the widespread division growing in society.
Absent total anarchy/libertarianism, freedoms will be limited in some form, including the freedom to poison a lake, and the freedom to own explosives, and the freedom to drive drunk.
These limitations must be able to be discussed and consensus formed. If one party refuses to engage in discourse then their only avenue is power.
It's the slave OWNERS I consider bad, not the slaves.
Questionable, given your volume on this thread.
I'm not really good enough at philosophy to take that particular argument. But perhaps you could explain to us why slavery is good and thus why diverging thoughts on it are valid political viewpoints and not sanity vs. delusion.
More subtle examples would be gun-control or abortion, where two intelligent people can hold wholly opposite viewpoints with no objectively 'correct' answer.
How would you respond to the accusation that climate change is happening but some scientists are purposefully manufacturing models that paint a pessimistic prediction of global warming to get money and support for their field? Can you really trust scientific institutions when fraud and political censorship run amok?
https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_da...
https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Climategate
(I'm kind of playing devil's advocate, my honest position is man-made global warming is a real alarming issue AND some scientists and journals engage in unsavory tactics to convince the public of it.)
I said some.
You also abandoned evidence and resorted to ad hominems.
Maybe (that was my point) truth is not as simple as science good right wing bad, and even people who dissent on basic facts can have valid criticisms of science and should not be put in a political "do not engage" box. Morality is not simply a matter of acknowledging a shared universal material reality.
I will list them.
>The facts are true, but the vibes and the feelings are off, so of course it can't be true.
No evidence.
>Do you have any non anecdotal sources that they are "manufacturing models" or that "fraud and political censorship run[s] amok"?
Yes. Both sources I posted are not anecdotal.
>No of course not, you "feel" it does because that is a narrative you have been fed.
Ad hominem.
What evidence should I provide? You concede that climate change is true.
> Yes. Both sources I posted are not anecdotal.
1. They are both the same source, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia emails.
2. Def of anecdotal: "(of an account or evidence) possibly not true or accurate because it is based on personal accounts". I would say emails are anecdotal if there is no evidence backing up that the claims made in the emails are true. My point is that these messages do not prove that models were manufactured, as your own source admits: "no direct evidence has been presented that indicates [Dr. Mann] fabricated the raw data used for his research" and "no evidence of inappropriately manipulated data". Maybe anecdote was the wrong word to use for this.
3. The emails provide no evidence that "fraud and political censorship run[s] amok".
> Ad hominem.
I would define Ad hominem as attacking a persons character rather than their positions. I believe that narratives can influence a persons position, and I am not commenting on your character, but how your position has been influence by a narrative.
I agree evidence is overwhelming on the side of scientific institutions, it's why I believe they're correct on this conflict.
I was making the best argument for that position because I believe you didn't.
I also don't think they shouldn't be listened to.
>What evidence should I provide? You concede that climate change is true.
You accused me of following a narrative? What narrative and why?
>The emails provide no evidence that "fraud and political censorship run[s] amok"
I agree. The strongest argument against that position is if it happened with University of East Anglia, why should you trust every other scientific institution?
Again, I know how to dismantle this argument (it's absurd this many actors with differing interests coordinating), I'm playing devil's advocate, because I don't think you can or should write off these people as completely irrational.
There's some valid criticism (some scientists and scientific journals are capable of unsavory actions) which shouldn't be completely disregarded.
>I would define Ad hominem as attacking a persons character rather than their positions. I believe that narratives can influence a persons position, and I am not commenting on your character, but how your position has been influence by a narrative.
That has no bearing on something being true or not.
The scientific method is a narrative, a belief that the material world holds truth. Language is not reality, it's a narrative (narration) of reality.
I never said or implied any of this.
> Morality is not simply a matter of acknowledging a shared universal material reality.
No, but without the shared reality is there even a point in debating morality?