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John Doe 4 years ago.
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I find the idea of a rational ethics or morality attractive; I probably first encountered the idea in the 1980’s as a teenager, reading Ayn Rand’s The Objectivist Ethics. But it goes back to the Scholastics who sought a rational foundation for Ethics.
It is interesting to compare all the different formulations of natural law. I’d never heard of Mark Passio until you brought him up; his formulation, is against carnism (meat-eating), on the grounds that animals feel pain
Historically, formulations of natural law going back to the ancient Greeks, have been profoundly Statist. So it’s difficult to agree with the idea of an objective natural law; the great Murray Rothbard formulated ‘The Ethics of Liberty‘ (you can read it free on Scribd, along with many other books), but it pre-supposes a certain value hierarchy — this formulation, of course, favors anarcho-capitalism. If you believe in another value hierarchy, your natural law will favor the elimination of private property. As discussed above, some formulations will be vegan, because they suppose animals have rights like humans, or at least, some sentience, and so should not suffer pain.
The basic idea is that man has a nature, that is unchanging, and can be known; and thus, objective morality is possible. If that’s the case, how can you have so many contradictory formulations of it? The answer seems to be, the formulators come up with a morality they favor, and then come up with a ‘nature of man’ to justify it, the opposite of what they claim.
Is there truly an objective nature of man and objective hierarchy of values? Or is natural law just ways we’ve found to live together in a society? e.g. murder is wrong because it will trigger more murders as payback, so we must forbid it, and provide some 3rd neutral party (justice system/judge/jury) decide the fate of offenders, rather than vigilantes? Most would agree with that; but there will be considerable disagreement on, say, private property. Sure, you can argue maximizing utility may be achieved with it; but what if that ISN’T at the top of your value hierarchy?
It is interesting to compare all the different formulations of natural law. I’d never heard of Mark Passio until you brought him up; his formulation, is against carnism (meat-eating), on the grounds that animals feel pain
Historically, formulations of natural law going back to the ancient Greeks, have been profoundly Statist. So it’s difficult to agree with the idea of an objective natural law; the great Murray Rothbard formulated ‘The Ethics of Liberty‘ (you can read it free on Scribd, along with many other books), but it pre-supposes a certain value hierarchy — this formulation, of course, favors anarcho-capitalism. If you believe in another value hierarchy, your natural law will favor the elimination of private property. As discussed above, some formulations will be vegan, because they suppose animals have rights like humans, or at least, some sentience, and so should not suffer pain.
The basic idea is that man has a nature, that is unchanging, and can be known; and thus, objective morality is possible. If that’s the case, how can you have so many contradictory formulations of it? The answer seems to be, the formulators come up with a morality they favor, and then come up with a ‘nature of man’ to justify it, the opposite of what they claim.
Is there truly an objective nature of man and objective hierarchy of values? Or is natural law just ways we’ve found to live together in a society? e.g. murder is wrong because it will trigger more murders as payback, so we must forbid it, and provide some 3rd neutral party (justice system/judge/jury) decide the fate of offenders, rather than vigilantes? Most would agree with that; but there will be considerable disagreement on, say, private property. Sure, you can argue maximizing utility may be achieved with it; but what if that ISN’T at the top of your value hierarchy?
There is so much to what you just said that isn’t true, that I don’t know where to begin. Firstly, if you actually watched the video concerning natural law, Mark Passio noted that natural law does not apply to animals because animals are not sentient beings intelligent enough to even comprehend the concept of morals. Natural Law only applies to sentient beings. At no point in time does he state that it is against meat eating. Secondly, the claim that natural law has anything to do with statism isn’t possible, since the state initiates violence on people, and therefore are in the wrong, in addition to the fact that they attempt to create rights (and wrongs) that are not natural. Natural Law is about as anti-state as it can get. If you had seen his presentation on natural law, you would have gotten that. It’s pretty easy to see that you didn’t even watch the full presentation. Everyone should. It’s a waste of time for *me* to explain natural law to you in this post, because quite frankly Mark Passio is much more effective at it than I, and since he already covered it in like a 6 or more hour lecture, I’m not going to sit here and type more than 6 hours of material, or an entire book to explain natural law to you. I recommend you actually watch his video. You will find that everything you just said is contradicted in the presentation. Natural Law has nothing to do with rulers. It’s a science, and quite a bit of it is backed by science, such as the law of cause and effect. Natural Law is no different than the law of gravity, and works on the same levels. Go to the philosophy section, and you can watch my posting of it there; otherwise you can just search Mark Passio Natural Law in Youtube and you will find it.
Here is the full version:
Frankone, you are an atheist, if I remember correctly. So I will come from the perspective of an atheist (I am not one).
If the material universe is the only level of existence there is, one which is guided by the laws of physics/chemistry/etc., then by default all our thoughts are a result of the laws of physics/chemistry/etc. If that is the case, then these laws not only forumated the idea of an object morality but also determine that people have a disposition to morality through the conscience. To put it simply these laws gave birth to the idea of a concrete morality, and in that respect they are natural.
Moral Relativism, is not a philosophy in itself, but a defiency of a concrete morality. If moral relativism was true, then in many cases there can be no conversation about morality at all because it would cease to exist. I guess one could say “well the idea of a morality is a lie”, but according to your perspective it cannot be as natural laws (physics/etc.) produce these things. The very laws of nature, which produced these things would have to be in conflict with themselves.
Moral relativity makes no sense whatsoever, and quoting the differences of morality does not give evidence as one would have to ignore moral universals such as:
The Golden Rule.
If you disagree with this moral code, then you have to not only disagree with a sense of justice but also the inability to place any value on anyone person or thing, which according to you is what defines morality.
Veniversum writes: There is so much to what you just said that isn’t true, that I don’t know where to begin. Firstly, if you actually watched the video concerning natural law, Mark Passio noted that natural law does not apply to animals because animals are not sentient beings intelligent enough to even comprehend the concept of morals. Natural Law only applies to sentient beings. At no point in time does he state that it is against meat eating.
Veniversum: First, there’s nothing wrong with being against eating meat; I learned this was among Passio’s views from a video other than that you posted, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07H73gm670I — very sorry, I should have noted that in my post — I watched some of his other videos to learn more about his views. If you go back to Enlightenment Deists and advocates of Natural Law, like Thomas Jefferson, he wasn’t a big fan of eating meat, either — though he ate it, sparingly. I had actually never heard the term ‘carnism’ before, and it was interesting to watch his video, even if I don’t agree with it. That, however, is a minor point.
The ancient Greek formulations of natural law were Statist in nature; I’m not just talking Plato and Aristotle here; I’m also talking more modern, the Thomists, and Leo Strauss. The point of that statement, is that natural law can be formulated to support anarcho-libertarianism/extreme freedom/individualism, as Murray Rothbard does, OR to support the opposite, Statism. That’s because man’s nature can’t be objectively defined. It isn’t clear cut, like the hard sciences — studying physics; we can all agree how fast something is moving, once ‘velocity’ is defined. That is, the nature of man isn’t objectively definable. This is a decent history of Natural Law: http://www.nlnrac.org/classical/plato — in Plato’s Republic, the individual is subservient to the State.
Is the individual to serve the Common Good (Statism)? The Natural Law formulation you come up with, changes with your axioms/nature of man assumptions.
Getting back to my original post, in non-violently competing with another business, and winning, I AM harming my competitor. His profits go down, he goes out of business, and must find something else to do. On net, society benefits because my cost of production/quality/delivery time/whatever is better.
But he is harmed. In not giving people who need money, but who are capable of earning it, I am harming them; should the State then compel me to give them money if I have excess? Personally, I would argue ‘no’, on the grounds that everybody’s productivity drops & it encourages people not to work. I confess, that’s a very utilitarian argument & isn’t as satisfying as ‘natural law’.
And very different from what Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and the Austrians argue. Then again, they historically, don’t use mathematical arguments, but instead, use deductive reasoning and praxeology, which is somewhat out of favor these days.
For the record, I’m very much against Statism for a variety of reasons. I’m in agreement there are laws that are good to have to allow us to live peacefully together in a society.
Survivor wires: Morality is the set of attitudes and behaviors that facilitate cooperative and mutually beneficial relationships. It’s not hard. And yes the downfall of of humanity is the erosion of this moral ingroup through transformation of bonds of trust into bonds of slavery.
A society degrades when the most powerful members use the institutions of society to further their own status as individuals rather than for the true good of the group
. With sufficient moral degradation the institutions of society become mere mechanisms of intraspecies predation.
The question is, how much cooperation should we have, and how much competition? If it’s ALL cooperation, we should have communism, and no personal property. If it’s all competition, we should have anarcho-capitalism. Those would be the extrema.
Now I would argue, you have cooperation in a competitive system. I cooperate with my work colleagues to achieve goals, while at the same time, competing with them for promotions, and competing with other firms for business.
I would actually argue, the decline in economic freedom, caused to a significant extent by entitlements, relates more to people wanting a free lunch, and not wanting a system that mandates a high degree of personal responsibility. Take social security. People like me, want to get rid of it, or at minimum, privatize it or allow me to ‘opt out’ — not pay in my payroll taxes, and agree to make no claims against it. No single leaders are getting rich off the payroll tax; it goes to fund general government expenditures. Sure, there is a Social Security Administration with some employees, and they benefit in a small way by this system (their jobs/pay).
But the public doesn’t want to make wholesale changes to the system. That is what causes it to persist, unchanged. This, to me, tells me they don’t want to take responsibility for their own retirements or savings.
Not everything wrong in society, is caused by oligarchs.
Survivor: You are absolutely right. Government may have a monopoly on force in the systems currently in force, but it is absolutely NOT the only way.
In an anarcho-capitalist construction, you can have multiple systems of competing Law that people voluntarily agree to abide by. Indeed, in such a society, some may freely choose to live on communes with no private property. Some may agree to have disputes between them resolved by a leader in their community, as the Amish do. Others may contractually agree to a different scheme of adjudication of disputes. I find this very attractive, in concept. It is very different than the ‘one size fits all’ modern State.
Seeing how I wish to reduce the size and scope of government to comprise 10% or less of GDP, including reducing the military to a truly Defensive role, legalize drugs and prostitution, and conduct an isolationist foreign policy, I find it strange you would characterize me as a ‘totalitarian’ — I favor representative democracy, albeit, I don’t favor ‘winner takes all’ election schemes.
I am quite familiar with cultures with concepts of ‘blood debt’. And I’m very much pro-gun rights, including and especially, concealed carry.
John Doe: I agree with the Golden Rule, a.k.a. ‘reciprocity’. It’s a good organizing principles for people to live in peace together in society. That’s why it’s been adopted for thousands of years in moral philosophies.
Moral Relativism, isn’t a deficiency of a concrete morality; rather, it is a realization that individuals have different concrete moralities.
I’d say 99.9% of the population would agree killing people for no reason is wrong, or killing them because they said something you didn’t like. And this is reflected in the laws that exist across nations and across the arc of history.
But what percent will say smoking pot occasionally is ‘immoral’? What percent will say prostitution is moral? What is the objective criteria to determine that? Is the high one gets while smoking a joint worth the damage potentially done to their health? How does one objectively determine this? Or, if I value ‘society’ over the individual, it’s surely immoral, since I’m taking time and resources away from activity better spent helping the community/others. In a natural law formulation, how does one objectively determine whether society or the individual is more valuable? Therein lies the reason for formulations with such different recommendations.
Veniversum: First, there’s nothing wrong with being against eating meat; I learned this was among Passio’s views from a video other than that you posted, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07H73gm670I — very sorry, I should have noted that in my post — I watched some of his other videos to learn more about his views. If you go back to Enlightenment Deists and advocates of Natural Law, like Thomas Jefferson, he wasn’t a big fan of eating meat, either — though he ate it, sparingly. I had actually never heard the term ‘carnism’ before, and it was interesting to watch his video, even if I don’t agree with it. That, however, is a minor point.
The ancient Greek formulations of natural law were Statist in nature; I’m not just talking Plato and Aristotle here; I’m also talking more modern, the Thomists, and Leo Strauss. The point of that statement, is that natural law can be formulated to support anarcho-libertarianism/extreme freedom/individualism, as Murray Rothbard does, OR to support the opposite, Statism. That’s because man’s nature can’t be objectively defined. It isn’t clear cut, like the hard sciences — studying physics; we can all agree how fast something is moving, once ‘velocity’ is defined. That is, the nature of man isn’t objectively definable. This is a decent history of Natural Law: http://www.nlnrac.org/classical/plato — in Plato’s Republic, the individual is subservient to the State.
Is the individual to serve the Common Good (Statism)? The Natural Law formulation you come up with, changes with your axioms/nature of man assumptions.
Getting back to my original post, in non-violently competing with another business, and winning, I AM harming my competitor. His profits go down, he goes out of business, and must find something else to do. On net, society benefits because my cost of production/quality/delivery time/whatever is better.
But he is harmed. In not giving people who need money, but who are capable of earning it, I am harming them; should the State then compel me to give them money if I have excess? Personally, I would argue ‘no’, on the grounds that everybody’s productivity drops & it encourages people not to work. I confess, that’s a very utilitarian argument & isn’t as satisfying as ‘natural law’.
Thank you for the reference Frank. He either did not mention that in his natural law seminar it’s self, or somehow I missed it. It is 8 hours long, so I could have easily been distracted long enough to miss it. I will have to watch this other video this weekend. I was a vegetarian for 3 years.
Statism cannot work with natural law, because in order to enforce the arbitrary legislation the state creates, it’s enforcers must initiate violence. The initiator of a conflict is violating someone else, and since we’ve already established that doing harm to someone is a wrong, the state cannot rightfully enforce a law. However, if attacked the individual can use force to defend themselves. You are correct though; any doctrine can be usurped or corrupted by psychopaths in order to attempt to obtain their desires, and they usually are. It doesn’t matter how good the original institution or teachings were, evil people will infect it to benefit themselves. However, the red flag of it is always the use of violence. When violence is used to enforce a teaching, then you know it is not adhering to natural law.
Thank you for reminding me about Plato; I have an audio book of “The Republic” but have not listened to it in a long time. I’m not entirely sure that the natural law he was speaking of, and the one that Thomas Aquinas referred to were one and the same. They may both have the words “natural” and “law” in them, but in Plato’s version I did not see the 7 principles.
In non-violently competing with another business, and winning, you are not harming anyone according to natural law. You have not stolen anything from the person, nor caused any physical injury. In that scenario you didn’t *steal* anything from that person, which is the only real violation of natural law: theft. However, if he or she were to go hungry, the source of any injury in the realm of finances is the legislation the state uses to coerce him into earning money to exist in the first place. Therefore, it is the state that is actually harming your defeated competitor, because if he or she were not mandated by law to acquire currency to exist in the first place, he or she could go to an empty piece of land and hunt, fish, grow their own food and live just fine in peace. There was a time when people lived just fine without using money. Again, even in that scenario the state is the violator because the only reason you need money is because independence is criminalized, and an artificial legislated cost has been added to sustenance. Clearly the state violates natural law by the theft of your wages or income, and threatens your safety and liberty if you do not allow it. It is not possible for the state to enforce it’s laws without committing a wrong. It initiates conflict under the color of the law.
In a natural law formulation, how does one objectively determine whether society or the individual is more valuable? Therein lies the reason for formulations with such different recommendations.
In natural law, the individual is more valuable. Again, it isn’t possible for the state to enforce laws without initiating violence, which is a wrong. That which is good for the microcosm, is good for the macrocosm. Principle #2
Fools!
The Roots of Cultural Collapse are:
1.) People
2.) Time(they also be directly proportional when measuring rate of collapse)
Veniversum writes: In natural law, the individual is more valuable. Again, it isn’t possible for the state to enforce laws without initiating violence, which is a wrong. That which is good for the microcosm, is good for the macrocosm.
Veniversum: What I was getting at, in some formulations of natural law, the primacy of the community or State takes precedence over that of the individual — e.g. Plato’s Republic, among others — the polis.
Further, what is man’s ‘nature’? Some men may be irrational, or violent. And thus we may want to constrain them since THEY initiated violence against others. Should natural rights then be based upon Charles Manson’s nature or rationality, or yours or mine? Therein enters subjectivity.
This is a good discussion of some of the criticisms of natural rights:
http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/faq/sp001547/secF7.html
David Friedman (Milton Friedman’s son) is a good example of an anarcho-capitalist who rejects natural rights. Consequentialist Friedman, ultimately reaches the same conclusions as Rothbard — against the centralized State — but from a different starting point. I guess my point here is, you can be against Statism, but not believe in natural rights.
Veniversum writes: In natural law, the individual is more valuable. Again, it isn’t possible for the state to enforce laws without initiating violence, which is a wrong. That which is good for the microcosm, is good for the macrocosm.
Veniversum: What I was getting at, in some formulations of natural law, the primacy of the community or State takes precedence over that of the individual — e.g. Plato’s Republic, among others — the polis.
Further, what is man’s ‘nature’? Some men may be irrational, or violent. And thus we may want to constrain them since THEY initiated violence against others. Should natural rights then be based upon Charles Manson’s nature or rationality, or yours or mine? Therein enters subjectivity.
This is a good discussion of some of the criticisms of natural rights:
http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/faq/sp001547/secF7.html
David Friedman (Milton Friedman’s son) is a good example of an anarcho-capitalist who rejects natural rights. Consequentialist Friedman, ultimately reaches the same conclusions as Rothbard — against the centralized State — but from a different starting point. I guess my point here is, you can be against Statism, but not believe in natural rights.
The “formulation” of “natural law” that Plato puts forth is not the same as that of Thomas Aquinas, nor the same as what Mark Passio speaks of. Unless somewhere he makes mention of the 7 principles, they are not the same subject just because they have the same words as a title. I should point out to you that natural law, as recognized by Thomas Aquinas and Mark Passio has nothing to do with “man’s nature”. It is objective. The principles would still exist even if man didn’t exist. Just as the law of gravity. Whether a man believes in the principle of cause and effect or not is irrelevant; if he generates a cause, there *will* be an effect. Likewise the principle of gender can be seen all throughout existence. Natural law is more akin to science than a religion or political doctrine.
1.) The Principle of Mentalism– This principle states that the universe and everything around us is a mental construct. We are all co-creating our perceptions of the world and everything around us.
That which man has invented, existed first in the mind. Every ambitious and brilliant mind who ever thought of something great was made fun of and ridiculed by the general public due to a lack of understanding. “You want to do what?? Go to the MOON? Surely you must be mad!”
2.) The Principle of Correspondence– This principle informs us that the microcosm is a direct reflection of the macrocosm and vice versa. It is from this principle that we derive the saying “as above, so below.” This can be seen all throughout the universe. Microscopic organisms mimic the same shapes and forms of galaxies.
Science is actually proving the relation of this in quantum physics. This is exactly why they built a Hadron collider. Scientists regularly study effects of particles at the microscopic scale in hopes of in the future, scaling up the effects for human benefit. Another theory in this realm is the ability to warp space for faster than the speed of light travel.
3.) The Principle of Vibration-This principle shows us that everything in the universe is made up of vibratory energy. We are at our essence, vibratory light energy.
Again… proved by Science. At the atomic level, *everything* vibrates.
4.) The Principle of Polarity-This principle exemplifies the natural duality that exists within nature. Hot and cold, light and dark, good and evil. Without an opposite, these expressions would lose their identity. All opposites are just varying degrees of the same thing.
The principle of Polarity is proven also by science, everywhere. Everything from the fact that darkness is just a lack of light, to the actual opposite polarity of neutrons and electrons.
5.) The Principle of Rhythm– This principle says that all elements in the natural world move in a rhythm. This can be seen in the animal kingdom as well as the cosmos. Everything fluctuates.
This is fact also. This Rhythm is called “frequency”, which is really just a measurement of the speed and amplitude at which energy travels. There are frequencies everywhere, and they are traveling all over the universe. I know this for a fact, because I was an avionics technician.
6.) The Principle of Cause and Effect– This principle demonstrates that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Everything we do has an effect on something. Once this concept is grasped, we see that what we do really does matter.
This is self evident
7.) The Principle of Gender– This last principle states that everything has masculine and feminine characteristics. We all have rationale (attributed to the masculine) and compassion (attributed to the feminine). A balance of these elements is essential to the completion of the individual. This is true in a physical sense as well in that when we are born, our gender is merely determined by a one chromosome differential.
Again, self explanatory.
Are you starting to see a trend here? This is not just a moral doctrine. These are the laws of the universe, no different than the law of gravity. They simply apply to human behavior as well. In truth, it matters not whether a person is secular or religious. The laws apply to everyone just the same as gravity. This is how natural law is different. The universe doesn’t care whether you believe in it or not, it responds with an effect proportional to your cause.
Look, I’m actually sympathetic to Natural Law; however, the choice to follow it, vs an alternative, let’s say, the alternative being, the precepts in some book of Revealed Truths, is a *subjective* human decision. Since that decision determines your morality, it is thus a subjective morality.
If moral relativism is basically individual choice.
And we are nothing but particles that operate through physics/chemistry/etc.
Then how can we have a choice? And if we have no choice how can morality be relative?I hate the way it’s basically demanded by people who don’t believe in it. It’s sickening.
Veniversum:
1.) I dislike the term ‘natural law’ and comparing it to physical law. Why? Because it isn’t a natural law like gravity; gravity cannot be violated. Also, the use of this term elevates one set of beliefs above others. ‘You disagree with Rothbard’s formulations; they’re based on Natural Law, that’s like disagreeing with gravity!’
2.) The first law, Mentalism, posits a single creator created the world and Universe. There’s no proof; it’s Passio’s subjective opinion. Similarly, it seems implausible to me we co-create a perception of say, a building in front of us, vs it existing independently of our perception of it. Regardless, there is no way to PROVE either alternative (reality existing independently of consciousness, or only in our minds). So that is what I mean by subjectivity.
2.) Correspondence is simply false as Passio describes it in his lecture. If I look at subatomic particles, they are described by a completely different mathematics than macroscopic particles; quantum mechanics vs Newtonian physics. If’ correspondence’ held true, this would not be so. There is no analog to the strong force on a macroscopic level. I could go on and on and on — essentially, this is an occult or spiritual formulation of natural law, so in that sense, very different from Rothbard or Rand. So much of this is complete pseudo-science. ‘structure of the atom similar to the structure of the solar system’? Well, does Mars jump huge distances in its orbit without being allowed to be in any location in between? Is its location a probabilistic smear like an electron, governed by the Uncertainty Principle? Of course not, because quantum effects are insignificant on a macroscopic particle, let alone a planet. You don’t use the Schoedinger Equation to calculation planetary orbits because it doesn’t work.
3.) Cause & Effect: I see plenty of scenarios where there are no negative consequences to the actor/perpetrator. Someone steals and is never caught.
I don’t see any issues with the rest of the principles.
I’d also say, the formulation is subjective on other grounds — ‘harming a sentient being’ is wrong — does that include animals? Is there an objective definition for sentience?
Is there an objective basis for property rights? Many would argue no — and instead say we should share land, housing, personal belongings — and have no private property rights — and that any other scheme is wrong. Furthermore, I’m not seeing how a belief in, say, individual property rights, is at all derived from the 7 principles.
1. We disagree. Whether you dislike the truth or not is irrelevant. Natural Law is how the universe works.
2. Mentalism primarily supposes that what we create first exists in the mind, which is absolutely true. I’ve already stated that every invention first existed as a concept of the human brain before the person constructed it with the material. Yes, the concept of a creator is in there, as was proposed by Thomas Aquinas, but even though I am secular I don’t have a problem with that. I still view the principle of mentalism for what it is: the ability of the mind to formulate ideas that can be made into a reality.
3. (which you labeled as a second 2) I’m going to call your bluff on this. I’d like to see a specific reference backing up your claim on this. You also misspelled the “Schrödinger” equation, which leads me to question just exactly how familiar you are with the material.“In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the wave function is the most complete description that can be given of a physical system. Solutions to Schrödinger’s equation describe not only molecular, atomic, and subatomic systems, but also macroscopic systems, possibly even the whole universe.”
^ Laloe, Franck (2012), Do We Really Understand Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-107-02501-1
No offense Frank, but I’ll accept the words and research of actual physicists over yours.
4.(which you labeled as 3) The effect may not be until later in the persons life, but it happens. Even Julius Caesar was murdered by his own best friend. When a person does enough harm, eventually the harm returns to them. It’s only a matter of time before someone retaliates. Harm is a cause, retaliation or social consequences are the effect.
As for property rights, if there weren’t any in natural law, then how can it forbid (and it does) theft? In order for someone to steal something from you, it first has to be owned. In fact, in natural law, stealing, whether it be health, life, or property is the only true wrong doing. All of those are forms of harm (theft). /RIP argument.
4.(which you labeled as 3) The effect may not be until later in the persons life, but it happens. Even Julius Caesar was murdered by his own best friend. When a person does enough harm, eventually the harm returns to them. It’s only a matter of time before someone retaliates. Harm is a cause, retaliation or social consequences are the effect.
Man, just to clear this up. I am not even sure that Julius Caesar actually had his best friend murder him because when he passed away, his son(or step son) Augustus Caesar then went out and killed every single enemy he knew his father had as a way to make sure that the person who killed his father would be murdered too. I don’t think I read up anything about Julius’s best friend being murdered because why would Augustus even do the things he did if it would all be in vain? I should check up on my history though because I remembered reading this stuff many years ago.
Veniversum, I am not discrediting your intellect though. At least verbally, you are probably even more smarter than me due to the way you write your posts in this thread. Keep up the good work.
"Question everything" - Albert Einstein
It’s true, historical examples from millennia ago might not be the best examples. History *was* written by the victors usually anyway, but eventually the subordinates become the subordinators. It’s a cycle that has repeated it’s self over and over. Now, with the internet, for the first time we get both sides of the coin. If cause and effect were false, history wouldn’t repeat so often. Something is causing it to happen. Something is causing wars, again and again.
Okay, I have a few questions for Frankone.
Lets assume all morality is relative. Any governmental authority that seeks order must establish laws through use of force. If all morality is relative then eventually the government with interfere with someones moral obligation of individual choice. So are all governments by default “tyrannical”?
Well then how are people suppose to act without a government/lawbody? How can a government enforce moral relativity without impeding on certain peoples rights and therefore being tyrannical?
If all of this can be solved through an advanced equation then people have no choice, because everything is preprogrammed, so how can their be any moral relativity?
People who assert moral relativism are usually control zealots.
.I think your post could have been just this. +1 For describing both moral relativism, and frank himself.
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