[Starboy]

Quote by: Livemike Well let's see now, Ayn Rand (not all the time but she has some good points. Jeffrey Snyder's "A Nation of Cowards". is a must read, Objectivity and Truth by Ronald Dworkin http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/f...jectivity.html, and a piece whose authorship I'm not sure about but I think is by http://www.jim.com/moralfac.htm James A. Donald. Oh and anything by Lysander Spooner is good.

All I see here is a list of people that you like. So what? Why should their take on anything let alone morals be important? What criterion have you applied other than personal preference? It might as well be art.

I didn't say that. I said you weren't that smart if you can't figure out why it's real useful to know if the person you might be about to deal with someone who generally acts morally or not. So tell me, can you figure out why that's important? It's not a hard question and if you can answer it you should be able to figure out why moral philosophy is important and what relation it has to reality.

If you think that philosophy can help you make that distinction then you are the idiot. People who have actually studied human behavior would be the people that I would consult if I were concerned if someone would act appropriately. But let us say for the sake of argument that you are correct, in that philosophers are the fountain of knowledge in regards to proper behavior. It is not as if they all say the same things. What criterion should one use to prefer the teachings of one philosopher over another?

Which is one of the reasons why I recommend Ayn Rand (conditionally). She stresses the importance of the moral premise. If the philosophy is not consistent with moral axioms then it's wrong. If you can't figure out what the moral axioms are then that's probably not anyone else's fault.

The word “moral” is just another philosophy bullshit word, right in there with “truth”. One man’s morals are another mans sin. One man’s “truth” is another man’s lie. They are overused ambiguous terms that have come to mean nothing. If by morals you mean ‘how we should live and treat each other and everything else’ then why is Ayn Rand any better than any other philosopher other than because you just happen to like it. What will result from Rand’s take that would not be better accomplished by another philosophy and what makes you think the Rand’s take will accomplish anything that you would like at all? It is all just philosophical bullshit. The same as all other philosophical bullshit. There is no reason other then personal preference to think that anything Rand has to say is important at all.

It's not at all important to me what the majority of people paid to be philosophers and claiming to be proficient at it think. If it were any credible philosopher would point out that I'm committing a combination of the Argumentum ad numerum http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html#numerum and the Argumentum ad verecundiam http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism...html#authority. The fact is that some philosophers do check their conclusions against reality and others are crap.

The philosophers that do this cease to be philosophers. They then become scientists. But the tradition of philosophy is to eschew such practices. The mere fact that all the philosophy ever done is still all considered to be valid philosophy by philosophers should be more than enough indication that they have no method to prefer one philosophy over another and they have no method within the field to discredit and discard philosophies. The crap from 2,500 years ago is just as good as the crap that someone came up with last week.

BTW the people that post over at IIDB in the philosophy section are a bunch of wankers.

You're still being taught Newtonian physics aren't you? The humor theory of biology and medicine was rejected because it was wrong and dangerous. At least some of what the ancient philosophers wrote is not.

Sure. So what? Science is not about what is “true”. It is the human endeavor to honestly explore and explain reality. Newtonian physics is not taught because it is “true”, it is taught because it is useful. It can be shown to be useful. It is shown to be useful continuously. If something more useful comes along it will be discarded. Nobody in physics will tell you that Newtonian physics is the “truth” of motion. Nobody in physics will tell you that any theory of physics is the “truth” of anything. They just happen to be the best explanations to date. They can be shown to be the best explanations to date. That is how they become the best explanations to date. That is because science does have methods for preferring one explanation over another. But philosophers are more than willing to make “truth” claims all the time. Then they will deliberately confuse their “truth” claims with reality claims but will not require or even try to test those claims against actual reality. But they will still claim that what they say is “true”. Sorry, science is not about what is “true”. That would be philosophy.

The link you give clearly states that St. Thomas Aquineas didn't say "What he said" and point to Aristotle. He used Aristotle, Plato and others to form a philosophy which wasn't just "What he said". So why claim I'm a moron for saying what your post proves right?

Hey, you held up Aquineas as an example of a philosopher that didn’t play a game of “what he said”. You were wrong. Take your lumps. I bring it up to illustrate that because philosophy has no way to prefer one philosophy over another that philosophy is reduced to nothing more than a game of “what he said”. If there were other ways then philosophy could be introduced completely on its own merits because they could point to this other criterion as a basis for considering that particular philosophy as worth while. Just like in science. In science you can publish a paper that makes no reference to previous theories as long as you can present an experiment that everyone can reproduce to back up your claim. Hell you can even say in that paper that someone like Einstein appears to have gotten it all wrong. This can happen in science because it has something that philosophy will never have; an actual test against nature that is used to prefer one scientific explanation over another. Because philosophy lacks this all they have is “what he said”.

Ok, so it's idiotic to know if a person acts moral or not? Great. So when you're deciding who to have run your financial affairs you won't find out if any of the applicants acted in ways that might be considered immoral? You know a certain kind of people and their money are soon parted.

You seem to think that philosophy is the only method on the face of the earth that one can use to determine ‘what is the best way to relate to others and everything else around you’. It is not. There is science. It is chock full of useful information on behavior and its consequences. It is also a lot more useful in figuring out why people behave as they do and a hell of a lot more useful in figuring out what to do about it.

BTW by admitting that I'm more astute than the philosopher you claim is "most astute" you implictly admit that my philosophy makes more sense than his. And since I based that claim on an instance that very much relates to reality you implictedly admit that moral arguments based on realitycan be valid. Yet you still cling to the idea that none of it relates to reality. Why?

Not at all. You may think that all other philosophy except that which you espouse is nonsense. I agree with that and I also include the philosophy that you espouse.

Starboy