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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (70989)	7/25/2003 9:13:08 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"My position is not the either or position that you suggest (and credit to me) and has not been from the beginning of this discussion" What you do not realize is that it IS an either/or position. Morality is either Absolute or it is not. It has been necessary to ride shotgun on you to prevent the array of logical fallacies you seem to so easily stumble over from suggesting false conclusions to the reader. Now, if all you wish to say is that reasonably true ideas exist (that is to say--ideas which fairly represent some aspect of our reality to the broad opinion of many), then that would not be remarkable in any way. Certainly, many people agree that every cell in the human body burns oxygen for survival, or that it is usually improper to drag people behind trucks until they are dead--and millions of other beliefs based upon science and common values. So if you only mean to state that there are relatively congruent ideas to reality, then fine. However, whenever you had given what (to you) seemed a reasonably true idea about the tendency of peple to share in certain beliefs and values, you had the annoying habit of attaching the word "Absolute" to the idea. This is petitio Principii. You know full well that the fact of a coherent idea has NOTHING to do with establishing that it was an extra-human idea--which was the entire question we were pursuing. In the context of meta-ethics, "Absolute" MEANS created outside of humanity, so for you to use the word "Absolute" when you only meant coherent or agreeable or something with human concordance is disingenuous at the very least. Apparently humans have these physical organs called brains in which they are capable of conceiving ideas both true and false (that is to say "conditionally" true or false as must ALWAYS be the case for ideas conceived in mortal brains). So when people DO share a general approval or disapproval of certain ideas, this bears no relationship whatsoever to where the ideas originate. We only know of ONE place where ideas originate and that is very well established. It would take an extraordinary demonstration to even suggest that some (or all) ideas actually originate in the brain of a supernatural entity apart from human brains. The Law of Parsimony argues against any wild attempts to distort what is so well-known (that we have brains and that they are the organs of thought). Again, when you use the word "Absolute" in the context of a meta-ethical discussion you are indicating to me the belief that the idea did not originate in the human brain. If you wish to make a link between: 1). Some ideas are more or less agreeable to the majority of humans as being factual descriptions of reality or human value (for instance, "most people do not like freezing to death") to 5). Therefore these ideas (not others) are Absolute (I.E. they originate in a supernatural mind). Then please fill in the missing premises. Do not simply state that coherent ideas necessarily imply an extra-human origin. Such ersatz implications are mere sophistry. "You couldn't handle the simple logic and so frequently went off on your phobias regarding extremist religious people in the world whom you apparently believe want to do something awful to you." This ad hominem attack degrades your credibility even further. One wonders: if you are so quick to invent slurs and misconceptions about my character, then what else do you invent, evade, and misrepresent in your "argument"??