Morality is fake and doesn’t exist

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qpXdEnaHCE[/youtube]

Essentially the left has no moral underpinning since they’re tolerant of everything except intolerance (claim of an absolute right and wrong). So the left is anti-moral, as it were. This was a line of thought I took to theorize why the left is more prone to violence while banning guns and the right chooses to own guns, but are less violent. The right is more dogmatic since they accept that a right and wrong exists and it’s not open for discussion; therefore they can’t initiate force against someone as easily because it’s impossible to justify it cognitively. The left is more open-minded and see the ends justifying the means, so they’re more likely to resort to violence to achieve a higher goal that they perceive as righteous. Because they know that about themselves, they naturally want to ban guns to prevent violence (since they have no internal mechanism). The right doesn’t seek to ban guns because they have a mechanism (unwavering dogma of right and wrong).

The left tends to be more educated due to the open-mindedness. The right tends to be “deplorable” due to the dogmatism. The right is trustworthy and the left is underhanded. So, pluses and minuses.

Basically, do you believe there is an absolute right and wrong or do you not? I think that’s the philosophy differentiating the two types of people. Everything seems to fall into place regarding the groups if you keep that in mind.

Well said!

“Do as I say, not as I do” :-"

I despise Stefan Molyneux, such a gigantic sense of self-worth and superiority with nothing but flawed arguments to back it up. Even Ben Shapiro is more sufferable than him, at least he has a brain.

I think the left fails to appreciate the point of the right - it’s so obvious to the educated and open-minded that the right are lacking in the intellectual domain, and that things could be improved in innumerable ways without them, that the value in what we have in the first place is forgotten. It’s a very human psychological strength and weakness that we tend to ignore what we take for granted, we don’t need to constantly worry about and be grateful of things that just seem to operate in the background without our knowledge. The right are perhaps more aware and fearful of these things, they also tend to be the ones most involved in maintaining them because more open leftist minds would rather create new things, not maintain old ones. But it’s a fact that we need to maintain what we have, and that it really could all fall apart if all we cared about was the future at the expense of the past and present. Just because notions of absolute moralities are a baseless infinite regress, doesn’t mean that treating them that way doesn’t solidify a robust way of behaving. Of course it isn’t always best to adhere to an absolute morality, but you’re still inadvertently adhering to it when you are simply acting normally without realising. I don’t think the left are necessarily amoral or anti-moral, just because they are in favour of thinking and acting outside of the box - their moralities are just self-made and fluid, justified by current experiences, not tradition, but they are probably more traditionally moral than they might assume through their day to day actions that they aren’t thinking about, as learned in a continuous process through the ages that can’t simply be “removed” and entirely replaced by something new and radical.

At the same time, it’s just as much of a fault of the right to not tolerate the potential of the left to improve and adapt current ways. Less ignorance and more appreciation of where the other “wing” is coming from would do everyone a favour.

That’s not what morality is. That’s how you define morality. Most people don’t define it that way.

Nominalism rose in reaction to Plato’s theory of forms. Plato had this strange idea that forms (i.e. universals) exist in a non-physical and a non-mental way. Nominalists responded to Plato’s confused language with their own version of confused language. They had to lose their common-sense in order to fight Plato. This common-sense is that some universals do exist. We say it all the time, “There is a table in my room.” It’s obvious. But nominalists had to deny this in order to deny Plato. They had to say bizarre things such as “There are no tables out there in the world, these are just symbols in our heads.” Completely unnecessary. So when you come along and say something like “Morality does not exist” you’re doing nothing but introducing unnecessary complications.

I agree. Hypocritical too.

I wouldn’t go that far. He makes some good points and does change his mind when wrong. I think one has to be a bit of a narcissist to be a youtube personality.

Molyneux is a jerk, hypocritical, and has a few undersupported arguments, but how can you believe he is stupid? Surely he has some value, if you can get past the former.

I can agree with that. Well said. I could add that traditions are questioned as generations lose sight of the reasons those traditions existed. For instance family values and why women need to be women and men, men. In light of all the technological and economic progress, it’s hard to see why gender identity is necessary and is increasingly viewed as oppressive. That’s the idea that leads to the meme: strong men make good times, good times breed weak men, weak men make bad times, bad times make strong men. Prosperity leads to its own destruction as generations lose sight of the traditions/ethics that led to the prosperity.

The forgetfulness principle works in the stock market as well since generations involved in losing substantial amounts of money will be hesitant to invest in stocks and generations that have never witnessed a bear market will be too brazen by not seeing the value in moderation and caution, which then leads to their destruction and restarts the cycle. Bubbles are built on the backs of the blind :wink:

Yes I agree, but every advantage has a disadvantage. Dogmatism has it’s perks and prickles. The people who drive me crazy with bullheadedness are the most trustworthy I know: they hold themselves to high standards and always keep their word. But if they believe, for instance, that microwave ovens cause cancer, a whole stack of science books isn’t going to change their mind.

Back to the problem of universals.

Here’s a down-to-earth description of the problem:

Of course, Tom is not much of a particular unless it’s a reference to some specific point in time. In general, we say that the person that existed yesterday is the same person that exists today. In other words, we treat prrsonal names as a kind of universals. There probably is no clear-cut distinction between universals (general descriptions) and particulars (specific descriptions.) Descriptions are probably only more or less specific/general, particular/universal and concrete/abstract. But that’s not the important bit.

The important thing is the question “Does man exist?” Pretty dumb question, isn’t it? What does it mean? It makes sense to ask “Do men exist?” That question is rather easy to answer - yes, they obviously do. But is that the question that is being asked? Probably not. What is being asked is does MAN-NESS exist where man-ness is not clearly defined.

We can say man-ness is a reference to the concept of man. The question whether man-ness exists can then be answered with a big yes: man-ness exists in the form of concept.

So there are men, instances of the class “man”, and then there is the class “man”, which is just a concept.

The same applies to moraility. There are behavioral instances of the class “morality” and then there is the class “morality”. Both exist.

Let me ask this for you as a moral relativist: If a moral was agreeable to any and every rational human being would you agree its a universal moral, and that morality was not in fact simply relativistic? (This is one of Kant’s definitions of morality… he has two)

Kant is – was – a walking lobotomy.

That is not what morality is at all. If that is the basis of your thoughts on morality, you shouldn’t expect anyone to take your stance seriously.

It’s not? But even if it weren’t, what do you think it is?
To be sure no morality that hitherto existed or was recorded stated that everyone should be his own judge and no one elses.

Be it the Ten Commandment or any other religious morality, or that of Humanism or Marxism, its always about some allegedly objective standards of right and wrong.
Moses, nor Marx nor Jesus nor any morality-creator came out with an argument overtly based on his personal values.

The only ones who did that sort of thing successfully were Dictators like Napoleon and some others, but they aren’t credited with being moral men.

You seem to have the idea that I’ve couched some claim to moral relativism or subjectivism in my previous statement, which isn’t the case.

Morality is subject dependent. People make value judgments based on both subjective and objective criteria. There are people who believe values are determined by external sources, but it’s always the people themselves who ascribe and act according to those values. Even people who act on the basis of being judged by an external source do so on their own accord in hopes of being judged favorably.

You can speak for all people in the whole of history? Does the quote “Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law” ring any bells? I don’t think that’s how morality works to be sure, but some people seem to have believed as much. People can be wrong in their value judgments and their actions regardless of what they believe. People can be wrong about morality.

Hello Statik
Let me give it a shot. Ill respond to three errors I perceive.

  • “Being judged favourably” isn’t a moral value.
  • That Liber 77 quote is a commandment from the outside, if you hadn’t noticed.
  • That people can “be wrong abut morality” implies that there is an objective wrong and right to morality.

Who said it was? The judgment would be based on adherence to particular values.

From the outside? What do you mean?

Yes, it does. The moment you point beyond yourself to justify a moral position, you are implicating objectivity in the matter.

You clearly imply it, in the first quoted statement.

C says “Do what thou wilt”, not “I do what I will”.
Whoever takes this commandment as a moral rule is taking this rule from the outside.
“I must do what I will”.

Which was Uruz’ point to which you objected.

I don’t see how. I don’t know what else to tell you.

The former implies the latter, no?

What’s the difference in this context? Either way, the subject does what he will and is his own judge.

No it wasn’t. His was a claim about appealing to a higher moral authority. Mine is about the criteria by which we make moral judgments. You don’t seem to see the difference. Using objective criteria does not necessarily mean you’re appealing to a higher power.

Objective criteria depends upon authority to exist. Objective “laws” of the universe require enforcement by an authority independent of all subjectivity or else the “laws” are merely regular happenings that are consistently observed subjectively, which could happen by chance or consequence rather than strict dictation. If there is objective law, such as morality, we certainly have no way of discerning it.

Serendipper has this one.

No, it doesn’t. Objective criteria depends on an authority only to recognize its existence, but things can exist without subjects observing them. That’s how we discover new things. We find things that existed objectively before we observed them subjectively. I never said anything about objective laws, but laws are based on subjective observation of objective phenomena. Again, subject dependent is not the same as subjective.

Also,

That is pretty much the definition of a law. The emphasis is on what you’re observing. Is it merely a matter of your opinion that it exists or not?

But we are not the only observer. If we discovered an atom, it doesn’t mean there was no observer before we first observed it. One atom can observe another through electromagnetic interactions, and gravity I suppose, so each is subject to the other’s object, but neither can make an objective observation because the observation is subject to the atom’s capability to observe.

However, in the case of objectivity, there can be no subject or it would be subjectivity. In the case of objectivity, the observer is virtual as in the example of imagining that the universe was smaller than an atom prior to the big bang inflation when there is no such thing as spacetime or any concept of “size” when viewed from outside the universe. By definition of “universe”, there can be no observer outside of it and therefore the universe is the only true “object” in existence.

Laws are objective by definition because the authority of a law is established independently from any observers of the law. In other words, if all observers (all those who could be affected by the law) were dead, the law would still be in force by the authority that engendered it.

Any observer can only offer subjective interpretation, so there is no need to distinguish into types of subjectivity. When you look at a cup, all you can perceive is a rather thin band of electromagnetic radiation emanating from it; therefore, you cannot say you know everything about the cup, but only what you’re “subjugated”/relegated to realize by virtue of your humble abilities as a human.

Here are two conditions:

  1. Speed limit set by the state.
  2. Speed limit set by mechanical attributes of a car (max speed of a car).

#1 is in force even when no cars are on the road, because: there is the sign that says so (authority).
#2 is only in force only when cars are on the road because the “law” is determined, not by authority, but by attributes of the car itself, and so the “law” is just an artifact/consequence/happening and not a law at all.

#1 is objective (does not depend on subjects in order for law to exist).
#2 is subjective (depends on subjects in order for the law to exist).

Existence is relational, but not a matter of opinion. In order to exist, a thing must have something to affect (be observed by).