Sentient Logic ??

Harte

Senior Member
Messages
4,562
I put no words into your mouth. I asked you a question that apparently you didn't want to consider the answer to. That, by the way, is quite revealing.
I am only forcing to see that good and bad are relative. I did this by providing examples. The examples I provided are the same ones offered in any first-year ethics course, it's not some weird idea of mine that I'm trying to "force" on anyone.

What's good to one person can be utterly evil to another person.
That's what "relative" means.

Harte

I know this game. This is where every response i give gets shot down and the words "revealing and reflective" is used. This is to make the other person extremely conscious about what they write next. i have been writing for thousands of forums as i find it awesome to read what others write. But to be pacified is never fun. But your response i think was also interesting.

Good and bad is not relative. If it was it can be argued that every criminal should be free because based on their perspective they where justified. An action isn't relative it is an action. As far as actions go it is pretty simple and self explanatory. When a car crashes into a wall forces spend energy. You are left with a crashed car. Thus the fact that the car has crashed into a wall is now a absolute.
Is stealing food for your starving children bad? You can be convicted for it. It's relative.
Is a car crashing into a wall good or bad? How would you define that?

When a criminal goes into a home and take the victims belongings then wishful thinking does not change the fact that the belongings are taken. Why the criminal took the belongings may effect his case in court but it doesn't change the fact that a physical happening occurred.
Is the justice system the final arbiter between good and bad? That's certainly not their goal.

What i find interesting is you have yet to give a counter argument as to why good and bad is a perspective. My argument is, it is not a perspective it is not relative because when something enters into the physical world it becomes fact.
"Relative" doesn't mean not factual. And I've given many arguments - all as examples - in basically every reply I've made (including this one.)

You see motive becomes irrelevant when it comes to a the actual action. Motive is relevant as to why the action took place but it does not change the fact. It may support the fact or even go against the fact but it cannot change the fact.
Motive has no part in whether an act is good or bad?

good and bad isn't just a emotional construct on human perspective. When a individual is wronged emotionally and or physically it is because that person experienced the situation on a physical level. Not only did the individual experienced it, the body experienced it on a Biochemical level.
What has that to do with it?

Now you wish to tell me that it is perspective and relative. Well sorry no... It is not. It is physical. Even in cannibal cultures people got upset when it was people that they care about become a victim. They still do to this day. Please do the research yourself. You will find that in cannibal cultures people do fight to protect themselves and the people they care about. It is well documented.
Sure - and that is a bad act from the position of the one doing the cannibalizing, assuming cannibalizing is done to keep from starving.

Harte
 

label

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320
To be clear justification of an act is relevant in the court of law. It does not change the action that took place. That is the point i am making here. Not sure how much time you spend on each of the above but lets consider a few things.

Consider why things are labeled good or bad. Harm is normally considered bad. Can you argue that if someone lets say a criminal does harm to you willfully and actively to a degree that the harm inflicted creates discomfort pain and or even more severe conditions. Would you accept it as a good or bad thing?

See the justification of why the person is inflicting harm becomes irrelevant because it is your body that is damaged. In general this would be considered a bad thing. Now the question here is; Why must i now fight and argue about calling it a bad thing?

Can it be that the argument/debate is meaningless because to harm someone is bad regardless of the motivation? Can you justify a criminal torturing anyone? Does the criminal's perspective/justification count?

Sadly some things are just good and others bad. Interpretation and perspective does not change facts.It may change justification but it doesn't change the facts.

Where i live "third world" people steal all the time. To feed their families and or addictions and or greed. i am sure it happens in the first world as well. The question now remains. Was an item stolen? Yes a item was stolen. That is the action. Why was the item stolen? To feed someone's starving children. Was the action of stealing good or bad? The action of steeling was BAD. The fact that someone ate afterwards was GOOD. But it doesn't change the facts that one action was BAD and the other action GOOD.

i am really sorry that you do not wish to understand this. i am really sorry that you find my point of view upsetting irrelevant and or stupid. That said consider what the victim is experiencing physically mentally and chemically. Then consider what the criminal is feeling physically mentally and chemically. Each share a different perspective but the actions remain. Hence why some actions are considered good and others bad.

It is not a question of relativity it is a question about absolutes. How those absolutes are justified doesn't change the absolute.
 

Harte

Senior Member
Messages
4,562
Neither good nor bad are absolutes.
For every example you can come up with of an absolute good or bad, I can offer 3 that are relative.

Your original argument wasn't about personal harm to me.
I say no. There is no need for them to hide from us. Unless there motives are bad.

If they are GOOD and have only GOOD intentions why are they hiding? Why not share with us their technology and wisdom?

But even if it was, what if the aliens want to take over our planet in order for their species to survive?

Bad for us, good for them.
Their extinction would be an irredeemable bad thing - our extinction would also be an irredeemable bad thing.
Their species survival would be nothing but a good thing. Our species survival would be nothing but a good thing.

If the survival of either species was mutually exclusive, you have your example of relative good and bad right there.

See what I mean?

As I stated, this is not just some idea I came up with - it's part of an entire school of philosophy and my examples are analogous to examples used in a first-year ethics course.
Some light reading for you:
The Relativity of Good and Evil

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bits...d=787E32C0A644FE358FB19D713A295733?sequence=1

Spinoza's Psychological Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Harte
 

label

Member
Messages
320
yes... yes... yes... part of a entire school... bla bla bla... i MUST conform to your concepts and ideas. Mine must be flushed down the toilet. Cruse you smelly socks you led me down the wrong path!!! How can i ever redeem myself!!! Woe is me!!!!

i get it i really do. You got this idea that hurting others is a good thing because the one doing the hurting is benefiting from it. Congratulations on that, i personally always felt if someone attacked me for no reason that 'that' individual must justify the action and or by the very least being kept responsible for their actions. How very wrong of me to think that or assume that.

C'est La Vie...

Somehow rationality didn't make it into the debate/argument. Universally hurting someone to benefit another is considered a bad thing.But somehow that changed... How i wonder. Maybe i am just that old?

It makes me question humanity i would say that much. With this mindset yea... Yea... Again it just showed that science has truly lost its meaning.

See if alien beings evolved as they did... But they couldn't overcame their primal need to dominate and or exterminate. As earth is finding this out the hard way. When it comes to war no body wins. Take a little bit from the Matrix. We messed up the sky so badly that highly evolved supper powerful robots couldn't clean the sky. i guess that is also 'relative' but because it is fictional i digress.

However the same rule applies in your argument. If aliens want this world. Do you honestly think we would just let them take it? If we are facing a extinction level event then surly you could see us using our primitive single brain cell to make sure there would be no benefit for them or at least try to keep them from benefiting.

It is my thinking that evolved beings should be able to consider other aspects like integration. But somehow aliens never got that far and all they want is our spines displayed on their walls. But it is all relative right... i think from today forward for 2018 i am just going to call everything relative because that is how arguments are won. Facts and absolutes it seems has no place in modern thinking.

What i am getting at here is that if a extraterrestrials are truly evolved then they should be more sensitive to the fallout of conflict. Hence why i never really considered them in that light. In all the movies it is nearly always conflict. i guess it is because violence is popular. But if extraterrestrials are real. Are they that violent? If so why haven't they just showed up and turned us all into wall decorations?

See the fact that we are still around, allowed me to rule out that their intent is violent. See by any stretch of the imagination we can agree that extraterrestrials should have the ability to turn us all into dust. But yet... here we are... strange isn't it...

Cheers dude see you in the relative future...
 

Harte

Senior Member
Messages
4,562
You are projecting your own beliefs on an alien species.
There's no way to know what they would consider to be moral. That's the entire point of my argument.

If they even exist and are coming here.

Harte
 

label

Member
Messages
320
You are projecting your own beliefs on an alien species.
There's no way to know what they would consider to be moral. That's the entire point of my argument.

If they even exist and are coming here.

Harte

If anyone is projecting anything it is you. Seriously do you honestly believe what you wrote here?

At this point in time i honestly don't care. Really you lost me when you justified genocide as a point of perspective. There is this cool song and the one bit speaks volumes. "The future will view all history as a crime" See some of us don't mirror our believes or project them onto a unknown. The facts are real. But a choice was made to ignore them.

The moment good and bad was deemed relative humanity lost it all. There is no coming back from that. What is worse people will believe that enforce that as seen here and not consider truth or fact. That also speaks volumes. Also it shows the successful integration of the sheep mentality. Facts are not facts because institutions say so. Facts are represented in many forms and shown in many ways. Ignoring them doesn't make them false it just make people ignorant.

Well if there is a evolved nation and they actually still understand the difference and importance of right and wrong then i do see why they don't make contact with humanity. Humanity has a long long way to go before they realize the connection we share with everything.

C'est La Vie...

Whatever gives you joy...

cheers
 

Harte

Senior Member
Messages
4,562
You are projecting your own beliefs on an alien species.
There's no way to know what they would consider to be moral. That's the entire point of my argument.

If they even exist and are coming here.

Harte

If anyone is projecting anything it is you. Seriously do you honestly believe what you wrote here?
Of course. As I said, it's the entire point.

At this point in time i honestly don't care. Really you lost me when you justified genocide as a point of perspective. There is this cool song and the one bit speaks volumes. "The future will view all history as a crime" See some of us don't mirror our believes or project them onto a unknown. The facts are real. But a choice was made to ignore them.

I see that you cannot bear the least criticism of your erroneous thought process. I have "justified" nothing at all. I've merely pointed out that what's an evil for one group can be a good for another.
This doesn't justify criminal behavior. After all, there are these things called "societal norms" that we go by.

Problem is. ET isn't in our society.

Ergo, you are projecting your own societal norms on a group you have never seen and know completely nothing about (and may not even exist, I should add.)

The rest of your post is simple vanity.

Harte
 

label

Member
Messages
320
You are projecting your own beliefs on an alien species.
There's no way to know what they would consider to be moral. That's the entire point of my argument.

If they even exist and are coming here.

Harte

If anyone is projecting anything it is you. Seriously do you honestly believe what you wrote here?
Of course. As I said, it's the entire point.

At this point in time i honestly don't care. Really you lost me when you justified genocide as a point of perspective. There is this cool song and the one bit speaks volumes. "The future will view all history as a crime" See some of us don't mirror our believes or project them onto a unknown. The facts are real. But a choice was made to ignore them.

I see that you cannot bear the least criticism of your erroneous thought process. I have "justified" nothing at all. I've merely pointed out that what's an evil for one group can be a good for another.
This doesn't justify criminal behavior. After all, there are these things called "societal norms" that we go by.

Problem is. ET isn't in our society.

Ergo, you are projecting your own societal norms on a group you have never seen and know completely nothing about (and may not even exist, I should add.)

The rest of your post is simple vanity.

Harte

criticism i can handle all day every day. Most of my day i am heavily medicated rest of my day i am asleep for maybe an hour or two. So your argument just lost whatever category you tried to label me with. Anyhow as i said before to justify genocide wasn't your strongest idea. A great many people that live in situations where oppression is real desire to be free from it. But for your own argument you made a choice that these very real people do not exist. Why? Because you said so... Now if i was a sore loser that you made me out to be i wouldn't wish you peace and leave it at that now would i?

All i am saying is, as smart as you are. As clever as your argument is, it is not the rule it is a symptom of the sheep mentality. Like it or not you pointed at that research and all the rest. i just thought it would be fun to figure out if outer-worldly life are actually happy people with good intentions.

i still think outer-worldly life is happy people with good intentions.

i say this because we are still alive... if outer-worldly life wanted us dead, we be dead. Lets face it our tech isn't as evolved as movies showed it to be. It might be one day but for now we are fish in a barrel. Again you cannot accept this because you wanted a argument. Thus i stopped caring. There is no point in debate if this is the mentality at play.

So cheers, i hope you find peace and i hope that you can see that there are people that want good things to be true, work towards good things so that it can become true and move forward with good things so that all can benefit from it.

enjoy :)
 

Harte

Senior Member
Messages
4,562
There is the problem of aliens reaching us here, and having any reason to even try to reach us here.
Because of this, using the fact that we are alive as evidence of their "good" (to us) intentions is a non-sequitur.

Harte
 

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