neither/nor wrote:
In order to grasp the true motivation behind the Nazis and rank-and-file German citizens you would have to be apprised of every possible point of view, in every possible circumstantial context. Otherwise, a crucial ingredient might be missed, right?

Unless we know in advance what it means for an ingredient to be crucial, then the issue of missing one doesn't matter. But if we do know what being crucial means for us, well, something that would make our problem impossible to solve if we take it into account would be something we ought to make sure doesn't become part of the problem. Since an infinite information overload would be to the detriment of our solving our problems, we ought not to overload our systems with infinite information. So the totality of information is not that important to solving practical problems.

Besides, if because I don't have access to that totality, I don't know what the Nazis', etc. true motives were, then *you* don't know what their true motives were, either. So you can't justifiably say you *know* that being True Believers in Morality was their ultimate reason for committing the atrocities that they did. So then in turn you can't based on that say that being a True Believer in Morality is more averse to conflict resolution than being your kind of existentialist or nihilist.

Erosopher wrote:
If we go beyond this we should start a new thread.

Don't worry, man, this thread's already way off topic. My OP was an argument that Ayn Rand and Immanuel Kant had a similar opinion about the nature of evil (that particular instances of it derive from general moral failures on our part). n/n and I aren't debating that at this point, though.

I say:

Whose ideals? Based on what arguments? And who gets to say they are constructive rather than destructive? Again, choose a particular moral conflict that has plagued us for centuries; then choose particular behaviors. Then embed them in what you construe to be an "ideal" said to be "constructive".

Szavieur responds:

It doesn't matter too much how I define constructive ideal here, except to differentiate its meaning from blind desires for self-aggrandizement or the pointless suffering of others.

I say:

What in the world does your rejoinder above have to do with my point? Really, I'm curious. How is your response in any way a substantive rebuttal?


[A KOE] is not something out there to be discovered. And it's not something a pure Kantian could ever singlehandedly construct. We have to adapt our position to the points of view of others (this is one of the maxims of reason, on Kant's theory) in order to bring them to the table on which we draw the blueprint for its construction in reality.

Yes, but this is still basically an academic speculation about what Kantians should do. On the other hand, what Kantians have already done in the 200 + years since Kant died is to establish exactly zero obligatory behaviors relating to the most important moral conflicts many of us are long familiar with.

And how is "adapting" to the views of others regarding the morality of abortion different from my suggestion that we pursue moderation, negociation and compromise in legislating prescriptive and proscriptive behavior that is able to accommodate shifting, changing circumstances that necessitate shifting, changing behaviors?

....my point is that inasmuch as people can (reasonably?) do things like this (await the return of Christ, pray for the moral stability of the future, whatever), then your arguments will be no more effective at getting anyone to negotiate anything than, say, me telling them that it's morally right to negotiate, etc.

My arguments are not necessarily more rational or effective, true. But that's my point. My arguments reflect only the pragmagism inherent in a world where obligatory behavior relating to social interaction deemed ethical or unethical is just a philosophical construct that bears little resemblance to the teeming ambiguities embedded in the countless existential variables that accumulate over the years so as to become our motivation for behaving one way rather than another.

Why do you seem to be assuming that if objective moral truths existed (or whatever), they would support capitalism, etc.?

I don't make that assumption at all. On the contrary, I often point out that those who possess all the economic and political power often rationalize capitalism in the name of Principle and Civilization and Freedom and Democracy. Or, per Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, in the name of God Himself. And where do they get the capital letters? Why from one or another rendition of the Enlightenment. And what did the Enlightenment provide us? Why one or another rendition of so-called sovereign indivdual rights [natural rights] said to be universally applicable to all.

And that intellectual tautology comes alot closer to Kant than to nihilism.


....you said there are hundreds of trillions of empirical contingencies that go into every problem we face. Nanosecond differences in length of time taken on acting relative to a problem are an example of some of those contingencies. But they're not that significant. So not every one of those hundreds of trillions of contingencies is that significant. Unless you can show that enough ARE important to the answers to any moral question so as to make the question unanswerable by us, just pointing out those contingencies' existence isn't going to be enough to prove that moral questions are themselves extremely complex.

Okay, true. Not everyone of them are significant. But with respect to the many, many moral conflagrations that ever plague us there are easily dozens and dozens of highly contentious disagreements that are not insignificant.

Or, with respect to abortion, take just one: is the fetus a human being? Isn't that an extremely complex question in and of itself? After all, what is a human being?

me [original post]:

Okay, suppose John says, "It is only natural that men have sex with women because only sexual relations between men and women can procreate the species." From this he leaps to the "moral assertion" that "we are then obligated to end homosexuality because it is 'unnatural'". How, as a Kantian, would you react to that? How would a Kantian approach homosexual behavior given John's leap of logic?

The way *anyone* approaches leaps of logic: pointing out that the argument is not valid. You don't even have to be a moralist or whatever to do that, though.

I agree---existentially. It reduces human sexuality down TO procreation. But that doesn't necessarily rule out the argument John makes. It is certainly not an irrational argument. He [and many, many others] think it is a valid argument. How would you argue that...necessarily...it is not?

....regardless of what my views would be, it would remain a fact that [Arendt's] views are correct and therefore that a sense of unyielding obligation was NOT the primary motivation among those who perpetrated the Holocaust, etc.

How would you go about demonstrating that her arguments are in fact correct? How would you be able to determine what in fact motivated those who pursued the Holocaust? What do you know of these men---personally, aggregately, objectively?

What is "a fact" with respect to human mental, emotional and psychological states?

I've said from the start that I don't think anyone has to be omniscient to figure out the right thing to do. And, "In order to grasp the true motivation behind the Nazis and rank-and-file German citizens you would have to be apprised of every possible point of view, in every possible circumstantial context," just isn't the case.

But you haven't demostrated in any substantial way [in my view] how one can possibly know the right thing to do unless he or she has access to all the variables pertinent to understanding a particular situation that particular men and women with particular conflicting moral values must grapple with in order to establish ground rules for behavior.

Instead [in my view] you tend to head for hills by nudging the discussion back "up there" where the dueling is done with abstractions by and large.

How is the moral question complicated? "Should I end my pregnancy?" has only 5 words in it, 4 concepts for those (of what should be done, of myself, of ending something, and of pregnancy). So I'm not sure why I'd be pressed to take into account more than 4 or 5 relevant considerations in coming up with the right answer to the question.

Well, maybe the moral question isn't complicated here but a moral question aimed at attempts to forge a rational consensus about obligatory behaviors revolving around reactions to abortion can be complicated as hell. To wit: Is the fetus human? Should abortion be illegal? Does it matter if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest? Is it reasonable that men should be excluded from moral negociations, given how only women can become pregnant? Should parents be informed when minors choose abortion? Is abortion a sin against God? Is viability of fetus outside the womb a reasonable demarcation in allowing abortion? What if the pregnant women is not a woman at all, but a child?

And on and on and on. These are complicated questions if for no other reason than the answers are always complicated.

You say:

Of course the people and situation are complex, but the question [of the role of government in the health care of its citizens] looks straightforward enough.

I say:

Since you can't separate the profusion of conflicting and contradictory answers from the question, the complexity necessarily involves the interaction of both when the time comes to choose behavior in and out of Congress.

Here's an....example from my day to day life of something I think is verifiably justified:

(1) I ought to respect the environment.
(2) Conserving paper is an example of respect for the environment.
(3) Using clock-in stations at my work that don't print my time slip conserves paper.
(4) Sometimes I can clock in at the appointed time on those stations.
(C) Therefore, sometimes I ought to clock in at the appointed time on those stations

Okay, score one for Kant! ; o )

neither/nor wrote:
What in the world does your rejoinder above have to do with my point? Really, I'm curious. How is your response in any way a substantive rebuttal?

My original point was that ideals of some kind can serve for the inspiration for successful campaigns of action on Earth. And these don't have to be "ideals" like making the world judenfrei.


On the other hand, what Kantians have already done in the 200 + years since Kant died is to establish exactly zero obligatory behaviors relating to the most important moral conflicts many of us are long familiar with.

What do you mean by "establish... obligatory behaviors"? If you're asking Kantians to prove whether abortion is always wrong, I don't think you're making a fair request.

And how is "adapting" to the views of others regarding the morality of abortion different from my suggestion that we pursue moderation, negociation and compromise in legislating prescriptive and proscriptive behavior that is able to accommodate shifting, changing circumstances that necessitate shifting, changing behaviors?

It's not. My point is that Kantians can just as well support negotiation, etc. as you can. This despite their belief that we're under obligation to negotiate and the rest.

And where do they get the capital letters? Why from one or another rendition of the Enlightenment. And what did the Enlightenment provide us? Why one or another rendition of so-called sovereign indivdual rights [natural rights] said to be universally applicable to all. And that intellectual tautology comes alot closer to Kant than to nihilism.

Before the Enlightenment there were continental massacres (and other massive cruelty), during it, since then. The principles of the Enlightenment aren't responsible for their perversion by contemporary men and women. And that movement, if it had succeeded more than it did, would never have inspired something as silly as the idea of "Jewish physics."

Okay, true. Not everyone of them are significant. But with respect to the many, many moral conflagrations that ever plague us there are easily dozens and dozens of highly contentious disagreements that are not insignificant.

How do you know that they're significant?

Or, with respect to abortion, take just one: is the fetus a human being? Isn't that an extremely complex question in and of itself? After all, what is a human being?

Okay, but then my reply to this would be to say that the nature of humanity, of what it takes for a particular chunk of organic matter to count as human, must therefore not actually be important to the question of abortion's morality.

It is certainly not an irrational argument. He [and many, many others] think it is a valid argument. How would you argue that...necessarily...it is not?

I mean "valid" in the formal logical sense. There's no trouble showing that John's argument doesn't meet the relevant standards. Let's represent it step-by-step:

(i) It is only natural that men have sex with women because only sexual relations between men and women can procreate the species.
(ii) We are then obligated to end homosexuality because it is 'unnatural.'

First off, natural is ambiguous. If John means "part of nature" by it, then he's equivocating in his conclusion, which equivocation contradicts the rules of deductive inference. If he means "contrary to the ends of nature," then the question arises as to whether we have an obligation to work towards the ends of nature. But even aside from that, "X is right," doesn't imply, "Not doing X is wrong." Only, "Doing something contrary to X is wrong," follows (as a matter of deontic logic). Now gay sex doesn't actually prevent any acts of conception, so it's not contrary to (the opposite of) straight sex. So there can be no valid inference from, "Gay sex is not the same thing as straight sex," and, "Straight sex is right," to, "Gay sex is wrong," pace John's reasoning.

Well, maybe the moral question isn't complicated here but a moral question aimed at attempts to forge a rational consensus about obligatory behaviors revolving around reactions to abortion can be complicated as hell. To wit: Is the fetus human? Should abortion be illegal? Does it matter if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest? Is it reasonable that men should be excluded from moral negociations, given how only women can become pregnant? Should parents be informed when minors choose abortion? Is abortion a sin against God? Is viability of fetus outside the womb a reasonable demarcation in allowing abortion? What if the pregnant women is not a woman at all, but a child?

I don't see how these questions count as difficult to answer, or even if difficult, why this tells against the solubility of every particular moral problem. Is abortion a sin against God? None of us knows what God wants us to do, and even if we did, since Euthyphro anyone able to devote (say) an hour of reflection would be able to figure out that God's will is not the absolute standard of right and wrong. Should abortion be illegal? Well, that depends on the purpose of the law. If that purpose is too difficult to grasp, it must be unimportant to the moral debate over abortion. Should parents be informed when minors choose abortion? That might be too broad to reasonably ask. "And on and on and on."

Okay, score one for Kant! ; o )

LOL, I'm not sure this one's for Kant, actually. His environmental ethics are different from mine (he thought we ought to respect nature indirectly as a means to respecting ourselves, not that nature itself had some kind of intrinsic moral value apart from us as individuals).

neither/nor wrote:

Isn't the rationality of [your] proposition entirely dependent on others accepting the definitions and the meanings of words of which it is comprised?

erosopher wrote:

The rationality of this is that the words I used refer to concepts which are determinant for certain experiences.

Yes, but the experience seems to revolve around choosing one word to defend and define another word rather than choosing yet another word instead.

Until the experience relates more to something we do in interacting with others, it is basically academic to me.

Words that are meaningful always refer to some object that is determined by that word. I know what 'rabbit' refers to, not because 'rabbit' must refer essentially, but because I recognize rabbits.

Well, if someone expresses the words, "we should all be free to hunt and kill rabbits whenever and wherever we choose" that is different from saying, "we should not be free to hunt and kill rabbits whenever and wherever we choose."

We are all familiar with the meaning of the words "hunt", "kill", "free" and "rabbit". But when we put them together in a proposition that includes the word "should", we recognize very different things.

....nihilism is that things-in-themselves do(or may) not have value, therefore there is no value. Nihilism can then be considered in a positive and a negative sense. In the negative sense (where things-in-themselves may not have value), nihilism states that we don't know about things-in-themselves and is a partial reiteration of Kant's concept of noumenon (which is only properly considered negatively [CPR B309]). We can take nihilism in the positive sense as saying that things themselves do not have value, to render this positive claim meaningful we would need to represent things themselves to us, but this is beyond our faculties, so strictly speaking this way of knowing is impossible for us (a priori false) rendering nihilism a concept of way of knowing something we cannot.

My own "nihilism" however suggests the "thing in itself" is an epistemic construct that has no substantial existential relevance and that the value we give to the words used to judge human behavior are always situated historically, culturally and experientially. Nihilism to me is...substantially...a relationship between particular behaviors in a particular circumstantial context. And how we evaluate and judge those behaviors as reasonable or not reasonable.

Now, if we do not take Nihilism to refer to things-in-themselves, but to object of experience, we have a proposition that refutes itself more clearly. nihilism of this sort would be to say that objects of experience do not have value. Then by the mere fact that we understand this statement as referring to the impossibility to comprehend anything, then nihilism is a priori false. There are innumerable examples of objects of experience having truth (being determined under concepts), having worth in themselves (such as beautiful objects which satisfy apart from any need of a concept of what they are), and we can't forget the problem in this thread - the moral judgment - where the goodness of an act is determined universally.

What object with respect to what experience?

And nihilism [again, my nihilism] is not about the "impossibilty to comprehend anything" but the manner in which we are able or not able to comprehend some things essentially or objectively.

Are YOU able to provide "moral judgments" whereby "the goodness of an act is determined universally"? What act?

(People fear the universality of Kant's ethics and take him to mean necessary. We must keep in mind that universal judgments are made by a subject still - subjectivity is not a form of a judgment like universality, subjectivity is the form involved in being able to judge at all. Universality grants that empirical concepts are involved, which means that one could judge otherwise if their representations were determined under different concepts. If moral judgments were taken as necessary, then it would be that all agents necessarily must judge in a certain way - this is not the case in Kant).

What I fear is the manner in which folks like Eichmann rendered Kant's categorical and imperative components of the Moral Law into a justifcation that all authoritarian personalities can use to pummel those who refuse to recognize their appointed duty and obligations as citizens.

That may be a butchered Kant, true, but what would you expect trying to interpret right and wrong behavior from someone who insisted that under no circumstance is a lie not immoral?

And if Kant does not require that we all judge in a certain way, how is his moral methodology all that different from mine? Or is this all something we can only discuss intelligently through an exchange of deductions.

Are you saying that, with respect to the moral conflicts swirling around, for example, human sexual interaction, all moral judgments and all human behavior are...are what exactly? Can or cannot Kant guide us to obligatory behavior with respect to, say, the sexual love between a man and a boy?

Existential nihilism would be to grant that objects of experience have meaning, and that even things-in-themselves may have meaning (even though we don't know), but that even given this, existence ultimately doesn't matter. Concern, that is, that things matter to us, is a part of our fundamental ontology because something mattering as a baseline is just our being lead into thought about it. Our concern for things is above zero necessarily to exist at all - this is why Heidegger says nihilism is a priori false

I think it is reasonable to suggest that, in an essentially absurd and meaningless world, human existence is essentially meaningless. Ah, but existentially, it is bursting at the seams with meaning. Yet until one is ready to deal with Camus's suggestion that the only real philosophical question revolves around suicide head on, one chooses to continue with this existence and therefore must choose behaviors when interacting with others. Behaviors that will be judged.

And Heidegger's nihilism is just that---his own. It was not nihilism-in-iteslf. Anymore than mine or yours is.

I have a lot to reply to you about neither/nor, but it would be best to carry that on in a pm or email when I have time.

But I will note, because it is a terrible interpretation that lives on for some reason - Kant didn't ban lying in any circumstance. In the essay where people suggest he makes that claim (On a Supposed Right to Lie From Philanthropy) note that it is an essay about right, and examine the footnote when he makes the specific claim under discussion where he makes it clear he is talking about duties of right and not ethics. Look in the lectures on Ethics, if you have the cambridge edition available look at page 203. You will see an example where one can lie.