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| Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'' (1445188) | |||
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Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'' |
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Posted by New Flyer #857 on Sat Jul 29 21:03:05 2017, in response to Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'', posted by Nilet on Fri Jul 28 21:40:13 2017. Just presume cars materialise at one point and desire to get to another, where they just as inexplicably vanish.Are they materializing / vanishing inside or outside of the system? It's an analogy. It explains a complex concept by way of appealing to a simple one; it doesn't need to be perfect. It would not need to be perfect if you did not say that the system represented everything in existence. But since you did, all possibilities and issues are seen as contained in it. It must address every issue because of the gravity you have assigned to it. Thus, I would like to know if the cars "appear" and "disappear" entirely within the system or if they actually approach / depart the system. A moral system that can't get buy-in will never work, and thus cannot be the "right" one. If most people rejected your traffic system analogy, maybe because most people at a given time are not sufficiently rational, would that make it the wrong one then? This is the implication I get from the need for buy-in for the system to be the right one. Unless you want morality to be reduced to fantasizing about the system that would be perfect if only it weren't completely impossible. I don't think of morality as traffic control. I don't propose any system. I think of it as guidelines for people in their decision making that are both good for them and good for the whole, because what is good for the whole is also good for them, because their individual desires are really not that important. If everyone desired what was good for the whole, there would be no traffic system. This is the ideal, and whether or not it is obtainable (actually. . .I don't think it's obtainable here) does not change the fact that it is the perfect system. . .never actualized. I think you are looking out for the good of the whole as well, hence your traffic system. As you can see, I am approaching it differently. If people don't leave their driveways, or at least leave their driveways focused sufficiently more on the good on the whole than on their own individual desires, the traffic control would become obsolete. What makes an action right? I define it by appealing to a system that everyone can support. And as you say, I don't. Everyone can easily be wrong. You appear to define it by appealing to some inherent virtue external to humanity, but can't define exactly what it is or why we should accept it. I appeal to a divinely-ordered morality. You may call it a system if you would like, but in any case it is an arrangement. I have spoken already a little about the unique type of authority involved that evokes acceptance. It doesn't matter exactly how the mechanism works, as long as it's objective— ie, pretty much anyone can use the mechanism and come up with exactly the same result. So. If there is a divine ordering that one can just know, authoritatively, then I'd love to learn what it is. That would be quite the breakthrough. How do I find out? What results do you expect I'll get? You may not be able to give me the answers authoritatively, such that I "just know" them, but you can tell me how to go through the process to get the answers. You can also tell me in advance what answers you got; once I've gone through the process and gotten an authoritative answer, we can compare notes. There is no need for it to be a mechanism, not just a mediation. There is also no need for everyone to have been exposed to it. One exposed to it, and to the extent that this person does not try to block it out when exposed, will become convinced of its authority. It integrates unto itself every truth such that one has the sense of having found Truth itself. One not yet exposed to it may seek it out, among all of the options out there (there are plenty of people / places / things in existence claiming to have authority of some kind so test each one out). In case it has not yet been obvious, I am a Roman Catholic. So as I see it, Jesus Himself is the center of the mediating form, and His Bride, the Church, continues to attest to that form. Laborious, yes, and I predict you will not be satisfied with this. Once again, I am not making any positive claim, though. Thus, I am not expecting governments to revise their constitutions to "Base everything on people who say they know the divine ordering." I'm just saying that you don't know that the correct ordering is to try to maximize people's desires. Furthermore, why I want to know if the cars approach the system from outside is that I want to know if these cars' "packages" are of equal value or not before approaching the intersection. If they are, then the "function" of morality should issue the same results. If x = y, then x' = y' (otherwise the function is a mockery of itself). If on the other hand, the cars are approaching with differently-valued packages, then you are prejudging the cars before they have arrived, labeling one as more important than the other. You seem to want to circumvent this issue by having the cars begin and end their existence in the traffic system itself. But that system is itself a function. A function requires examples of input and output for it to have any bearing on anything. You seem to just want to run the machine's motor to listen to it run. given the empirical facts that certain actions will help us achieve the goals we're trying to achieve, then performing those actions is the rational thing to do Fair enough, I was going off on a philosophical tangent. Then why do anything? The only reason to take any action is because you have some desire you hope that action might help you achieve. Yes, even I will admit that this is why I act. But that reasoning alone does not make my act objectively right. Obeying moral rules is moral because it produces better outcomes for everyone (including yourself) If the moral rules are the correct ones. Who really knows whether the outcomes are "better?" We don't because we still don't know what the best outcome is for everyone. We have no reason to think it is "everyone having their own desires met." If you allow one murder for an ill-defined greater good, you will allow others. Many of the people who are OK with the first murder will become victims of the later murders. As such, the people who stand to gain from the first murder actually lose overall if the murder is allowed; the only way they can protect their own lives is to demand that all murder be banned even when they stand to gain from it. This goes more to my objection on having a system primarily because it is a popular one. There is no reason you have given why "survival of the fittest," no matter how unpopular a system, and how chaotic it is, is not the right one. Why should we not live with unpopularity and chaos? Why should we live or not live with anything? These are the real moral questions, the "shoulds" that cannot be the "is-ness" of "facts." your desire to not pay taxes is perhaps the perfect example of a lesser desire that everyone will abandon in order to achieve something they want more. Right, and a skilled murderer should abandon the lesser desire to keep to your moral system in order to achieve something he wants more: power. |
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