Haven’t many philosophers in the past basically done the same? From Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Kant to the Libertarians and the Ayn Randroids today.
What makes a behavior moral for many is precisely because it is seen by them to be a rational behavior.
Cite some examples from your own life of behaviors you have witnessed [your own or others] that you deemed to be both reasonable and unethical.
Instead, there are any number of circumstantial contexts in which William Barrett’s “rival goods” present themselves. One side cites what they construe to be reasonable arguments for choosing one set of behaviors in reacting to the coronavirus, while another side cites what they construe to be more reasonable arguments. Or the most reasonable arguments of all.
Who then gets to connect the dots between rational and ethical behavior and rational and unethical behavior here? What might some examples be that philosophers and ethicists can all agree on?
From my frame of mind, no God, no vanatage point [philosophical or otherwise] able to pin this down. And, from the vantage point of some, no God, and “the right thing to do” ever and always revolves around what they deem to be in their own best/selfish interest. In fact, I suspect you’ll bump into these folks more and more if the coronavirus pandemic really begins to spin out of control.
Again, we clearly make a different distinction here.
And I try to point out the parts embedded in an actual instance of stealing that, from my point of view, revolve around dasein, conflicting goods and political power. And here there is definitely more than rationality involved.
There is, in turn, varying degrees of ambiguity, ambivalence, uncertainty, confusion, bewilderment and perplexity. Unless, of course, as an objectivist, all of that is subsumed in one or another intellectual contraption, moral narrative or political agenda.
Huh? Isn’t that basically what you come back to in regard to the Communists? Or what others point to in regard to one or another religious denomination’s rendition of sharia law?
On this thread I’m just curious to explore how close or how far Buddhists come to this when they connect the dots themselves between enlightened behavior here and now and sustaining “I” beyond the grave.
Sure. But that doesn’t mean it makes any sense to reduce it down to rational and irrational.
Stealing is rational for an individual - he gets stuff for nothing. But it’s damaging to a society to have people stealing. It’s considered unethical in practically every community. (Yeah, some communities consider it okay to steal from those outside the community but within the community, it’s a wrong.)
Ethics is about groups of people.
For an individual, there has to be a balance between self-interest and group-interest. You could say that someone who steals has too much self-interest, he’s misjudging, he doesn’t see the benefits or consequences, but you can’t say that it’s irrational.
Yeah, it’s not irrational or unreasonable.
What “actual instance” did you present??
No.
I’m not on a crusade against Communists. I’m not demonizing or stereotyping Communists. I’m not complaining about them in this forum or any other forum.
I doubt that actually. They might see it as a necessary condition, but harldy a suficient one.
Well, that doesn’t really work for me, but most people when applying their morals to the behavior of others consider the rationality of a choice to be insufficient as a criterion. In fact there can be many rational choices - which means one looks at the situation and reasons one’s way to consquences and chooses according to one’s desire, perhaps - but often only one moral one.
Well, there you go. You obviously see the answer to your own questions and should be agreeing with Phyllo instead of appealing to the authority - and not well - of some dead philosophers. You obviously know yourself that different moral conclusions and behaviors can be arrived rationally by different people. Why? Because the moral axioms (at least) are different. Something is not moral simply because it was arrived at via rationality to MOST people. You also have to have the right values.
So you’re incredulity in the face of Phyllo’s pointing this out is not only contradicted by what you write and have written thousands of times but does not fit what people beleive out there.
It makes no sense to conflate rationality and morality when referring to most people. And that’s not a dig at most people. It’s just pointing out the obvious.
Phyllo:
Notice: THE DANGERS.
Not: things that he doesn’t like. THE DANGERS.
If objectivists are in power they are able to enforce their objectivisms and this is bad. It makes no sense to take this paragraph as anything other than an objectivist evaluation of the bad things that happen if objectivists have power.
This hash been pointed out to him before. What he tends to dois say things like ‘I have repeatedly said that my own veiwpoint is just another one made by dasein…’ But it makes no sense to year after year no stop making objectivist statements if he thinks objectivism leads to bad stuff. Here he is talking about THE DANGERS - that is a term referring to objectively bad stuff. He’s a hypocrite who occasionally is blunt about his hypocrisy. We should applaud him when he’s honest. We won’t work up a sweat, but it’s a fair thing to do.
As decided by the democratically elected government, businesses are shut down, assembly is forbidden and we are in isolation in our homes.
If those decisions were made by objectivists, then how would anything be different if the non-objectivists were in charge?
Or were those the decisions of non-objectivists?
But isn’t that precisely what any number of the moral and political objectivists do? You’re either reasonable and think like them or you’re not and don’t.
But we still need a context. What is deemed reasonable and unreasonable in a particular set of circumstances? And how do individuals then connect the dots between things deemed rational to them and things deemed ethical?
How do you do it?
Or, for any number of religionists, the connection is made between behaviors deemed sinful or not. Through God.
Or, for Buddhists, things deemed enlightened or not. Through…what exactly?
But how does that change the unimaginably vast sets of circumstances that any particular individuals might find themselves in that shaped and molded their thinking and behaviors in regard to stealing this particular thing in this particular situation? You can pile up your “general descriptions” of human social, political and economic interactions but where are the philosophers/ethicists able to come even close to the role that God/Enlightenment plays for the religious here?
Or what of those who argue that property itself is theft? Those who insist that the capitalist system is inherently immoral. That “stealing” can all be perfectly legal if the laws sustain only the interests of some and not others. Or considerably more the interests of some than others.
Or those who scoff at all of these “intellectual” scrapes and are quite content to go on acting out only that which they construe to be in their own selfish interest?
And then those “here and now” about to gobble up the biggest slices of pie pork as the federal government here in America doles out billions trillions to “the corporations” as the coronavirus wrecks the lives of millions that don’t have access to connections on K Street.
Cite some examples from your own life in making this distinction.
Instead, from my frame of mind, it is straight back up into the clouds…
Insufficient in regard to what set of circumstances? And how might a moral nihilist, a moral objectivist, a Christian or a Buddhist describe their own reactions as more or less sufficient given that set of circumstances?
The coronavirus for example. If the rationality of any particular choice is insufficient as a criterion for judging the behavior of others, what might be more sufficient? Or sufficient enough. And if the assessments here come into conflict, what then?
From my point of view, “I” here is either more or less “fractured and fragmented” in any context in which value judgments clash.
In other words…
I am still entirely unclear as to how Phyllo manages to intertwine objective morality and God in his reactions to the behaviors of those who also intertwine objective morality and God but come up with completely conflicted sets of behaviors that are deemed to be either right or wrong.
How is he not fractured and fragmented here as “I” am? How is this…
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
…not applicable to him?
Or not applicable to you.
That’s all I can really do here is to continue to probe the arguments of those who don’t think like I do.
Yes, but the moral objectivists subsume rationality along with everything else in one or another God, political ideology, or deontological bent. MOST people don’t think these things through as “I” do. MOST people aren’t stumbling around juggling their fractured and fragmented selves.
We’ll need a context, of course.
Again, a discussion regarding how we react to a particular set of conflicting behaviors in a particular situation. Then as my points unfold you can note specifically when I do these things.
Literally, these responses to my post consist only of questions! That’s it … only questions. 
Pshh that’s nothing. Ever read one of kropotkin’s posts? That guy will hit you with 17 questions in one post. That thread of his is like the Spanish Inquisition. I feel like I’m in one of those interrogation rooms and Pete’s standing above me at the table holding the light in my face. I’m wondering if I should call my lawyer first before I click on a post. ‘what do YOU value? how will YOU create meaning in your life? start talking, buddy. I’ve got all night and you ain’t goin nowhere’.
Good catch.
Not that I noticed any answers. 
In online marketing this procedure would be called clickbait. You click and often get somewhere to click again, thus tallying up ‘customers’ but serving no one.
The distinction between necessary and sufficient? You don’t know what those terms mean?
It might be rational to not covet your neighbor’s wife because he’s a big guy and if he even sniffs you staring at her he might preemptively beat the shit out of you. I lived next to a guy like that. They exist. They consider women their property. It is rational to not covet her. That doesn’t make it moral. You have to have a certain attitude. Get it (the behavior is rational, and that’s necessary for most people’s conception of moral behavior ((or lack of immoral))) but it is not enough, you also have to do it for the right reasons. Or when the skinny little guy comes along with the hot wife, you will be immoral.
Further there are rational reasons for stealing as Phyllo has pointed out: do I need to hold your hand through that also? A behavior being rational - that is you effectively move towards a goal through it, arriving at your behavior through logical analysis - is insufficient to make it a moral behavior. Stealing, to most religious and even most secular people, is not moral, though it can be seen as rational by many.
Not insufficient in relation to circumstances. Insuffienct as a criterion for moral. To be moral you generally have to be good.
I swear, you gotta be just playing dumb to torture. I can do the time crossword and use, on some of the questions, rational deduction to come up with the answers. That doesn’t make it a moral act. And if my wife was suffering in the bedroom and asking for water, most religious people would say that while I approached solving the puzzle rationally I did not act morally by ignoring her calls. It might even be rational for me to do this. Perhaps I stand to inherit big bucks and I am an unloving ass and her dying in there benefits me. But that ‘being rational’ is insufficient to meet the criteria of being moral.
Now you are just muddying the waters and throwing a bunch of unnecessary things at me. Take small steps. Resolve one issue, if possible, move to others.
Exactly what I said above…
Now I am supposed to solve conflicting goods. What have I told little iamb about that? Hm, remember?
Right now we are discussing if rationality is a sufficient criterion (as opposed to a necessary one) in most moral systems. It’s not. And regardless of whether one can solve conflicting goods, it’s not.
You can’t follow simple arguments. You have the entire edifice of your position with you at all moments. So when we are focusing on a specific issue, you drag the whole house in so nothing gets anywhere.
It’s an illness. We could, for example, have dealt with how being rational is not a sufficient criterion for being moral (as morality is conceived). Then moved on, in small steps. But you flood every interchange with the whole ball of wax as if any argument that does not immediately solve the entire thing solves nothing.
REmember the Tylenol thing, where some guy poisoned the batches. There were rational arguments in a number of directions and the CEO decided that the moral response was to recall all Tylenol. And it turned out to be a great long term strategy even though it cost them terribly for a while. One could have made and one did make rational arguments for many approached. In addition to the rationality were moral criteria. The rational arguments were inssuficient to be moral ones, in most people’s sense of morality. He felt that taking care of the customer’s safety was THE Priority. Regardless of how this affected the company - as it turned out even that went well, but his decision was based on rational argument plus a moral value. And generally - here’s a hint - religious morals tend to ask people to put aside self-interest, especially on certain issues.
Now I know what you want to do now. You want to find out how to resolve conflicting goods. Jump right from this to pointing out how other businesses do not act like that or how do we know which value to prioritize and so on.
A simple bit of advice. Take small steps in a conversation. You have a habit of inserting the entire project into posts when a small issue is potentially being dealt with.
It muddies the water.
It is ‘as if’ anything I said, for example, solved conflicting goods.
It is for the moment irrelevant. Imagine…
we agree that most morals consider rationality to not be a sufficient criterion for a behavior. We find a way to have that small successful shared conclusion.
THEN
you can slowly reintroduce the other issues, step by step.
If during an exchange of posts we do not agree IT STILL DOES NOT HELP.
Keep a focus. You are being extremely rude when you do otherwise.
The frowning upon describing ultimate reality by words is common to all teachings of the Buddha.
Beyond true and false
Buddhist philosophy is full of contradictions. Now modern logic is learning why that might be a good thing
Graham Priest
Certain things? How about actual things in particular? Things which through the language of philosphy or religion can be described as both “simultaneously true and false”. And then demonstrated to be so. For Buddhists, in regard to either karma and enlightenment here and now, or reincarnation and Nirvana there and then.
What on earth are they talking about?
How might one then connect the dots here between Plato and Buddha? Or is there an “ultimate reality” inside the cave as well as outside of it?
Okay, let’s go there. But only in regard to a particular set of circumstances. And only in regard to things we think and feel are true about the situation are able to be demonstrated to others as in fact true for all of us. How far would that go?
Really, “serious philosophers” here, like Buddhist theologians, can go on and on and on discussing this sort of thing in intellectual contraptions such as these.
And all I can do is to challenge folks in places like this to bring them out into the world that they live in and explain how these ideas are applicable to the lives that they live.
Especially in regard to contexts in which value judgments come into conflict…precipitating discussions about here and now and there and then. Before and after we die.
On the contrary, any number of religious folks, citing the Ten Commandments, do in fact construe such behavior as immoral. As a Sin against God. Punishable [for some] by eternal damnation in Hell. Just as secular objectivists like Ayn Rand considered it entirely rational [and thus moral] for Nathaniel Brandon [married to Barbara] to sleep with her. Indeed, he was morally obligated to because she construed herself to be the highest form of woman.
And it’s one thing for men to deem women their property from the perspective of might makes right. But what of those like Satyr and his clique at KT who insist that this behavior is entirely in sync with that which nature compels. This then becoming their own “philosophical” rendition of right makes might.
Now, on this thread, what I am interested in exploring is how individual Buddhists react to coveting their neighbor’s spouse. And then acting on it. And then configuring this behaviour “in their head” as it relates to their understanding of enlightenment and karma, as that is connected to their understanding of reincarnation and Nirvana on the other side. In other words, given their religious values what are the actual consequences – here and now, there and then – of the behaviors they choose.
Also, my point is that the “attitudes” that particular individuals acquire here is rooted as much or more in dasein as in anything they might come to conclude as philosophers or ethicists or religionists.
Again, in any particular context where stealing becomes a matter of survival, it can be rationalized as acceptable behavior. But, for some, that doesn’t make it any less immoral. And what of those who couldn’t care less about pinning down the behaviors they choose as either right or wrong. They do what they do because it furthers their own self-interest. Period. You’ll see that more and more if the coronavirus crisis really begins to deepen. Assessments of rational/irrational, moral/immoral, sufficient/insufficient behavior will begin to blur more and more. It will depend on the context perceived in a particular way.
After all, why on earth do you suppose hundreds of millions of men and women turn to one or another religious narrative in the first place? With God all of these conflicted distinctions are resolved on Judgment Day.
It’s just that with Buddhism, there appears to be no God and thus no Judgment Day. So, how does it work “for all practical purposes” when the rubber meets the road…when conflicting assessments of enlightened behavior here and now are reconfigured into reincarnation and Nirvana there and then.
One can go on and on and on making these technical distinctions between rational and sufficient reasons. But where does that get you on the day you die? What does it mean – philosophically, theologically, spiritually – to have thought that through correctly?
Then we think about this differently. Given the context above there are those who will insist that the husband has a moral obligation to his wife. They might cite God or the Golden Rule or one or another deontological assessment of human interactions. They might quote some ideological manifesto or claim that it is natural to behave in certain ways. They might link rationality and morality as any number of philosophers have down through the ages.
But the bottom line is that for one or another reason the husband is morally obligated to respond to her calls. And, if he chooses not to, he will be punished. By God. By those mere mortals who learn of his behavior and shun him, reject him, evict him or even beat the shit out of him.
What I focus in on instead is why, in any particular context, the man chooses to do what he did. When others might choose something else. How is that related to the particular sequence of experiences, relationships and access to ideas in his life that predisposed him to act in a way that another’s collection of existential variables do not. And, given all of the different historical, cultural and experiential contexts there have been down through the ages, is there a way for philosophers to pin down the most rational behavior or the only rational behavior.
As you point out, given sufficient reason, ignoring the wife can easily be rationalized by any particular individual in any particular set of circumstances. That’s the whole point of moral objectivism – to make situational ethics go away. Some through God and religion, some through No God and religion.
Why don’t you stick to noting the distinctions these folks are likely to make given the context you noted above.
Ditto regarding my reaction to that above. We think about these things differently. It’s just that the way I think about them leaves me “fractured and fragmented” in a way that either does or does not resonate with you.
Ought I to respond to someone’s cries for help? Am I obligated to as a rational and virtuous human being? Even in a No God world? That’s all buried in dasein, conflicting goods and whatever the consequences might be when others react to the behavior that “I” do choose.
The rest is basically just you taunting me, for, among other things, not being able to follow your simple arguments. Me being “dumb just to torture you”. Me being the “asshole”, here.
And, then, of course, what I suspect is behind that.
Indeed, there is only so far that words can go in describing enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana.
On the other hand, once they have served their inherently circumscribed purpose, what then is left by way of demonstrating they are in fact ultimately real things.
Especially when, in acting out what you think they mean by the behaviors you choose, those behaviors themselves come into conflict with the idealized choices of others.
Let alone going beyond words to make the stuff after we die more tangible.
Mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.