stevestory
Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005
|
| Quote | 670
Steve Alten2
February 26, 2021 at 10:35 am
Kairosfocus,
>> In short, conscience.<>Of course, you imagine that conscience is socialised, that we are at birth tabula rasa, morally speaking — born amoral. Any adult who recognises that children from very early show moral struggle will reconsider that.>>
2. I never said that a newborn was a tabula rasa. They have a functioning brain with many reflexes built-in. But, yes, they are born amoral. Do you have any links to newborns showing moral struggles, or is this just one of your many unsupported beliefs?
3. Newborns have some very basic desires. Food, warmth, touch, etc. I doubt very much if they have any moral conclusions about lying, stealing, same-sex-attraction, premarital sex.
>>The onward implications of amorality, radical relativism and emotivism speak, too.>>
4. What does it speak to? All I have said is that our morality is something that develops as we grow and is the result of learning, repetition, negative and positive feedback etc.
<<For example, if we are tabula rasa at birth, why the high dudgeon over those conditioned to think slavery may be a misfortune but it is an ages old universal, perfectly legal institution, or that people of colour happen not to have faced the severe selection pressure that makes Aryans a superior breed [marked by skin colour conducive to harvesting vitamin D], or that the superior has a right to eliminate the unfit and along the way to subjugate and use such as a forced labour workforce.<>The amorality speaks for itself and its absurdity refutes it.>>
6. Not if morality is something develops and changes as we grow.
>> i repeat the regrettably real test case, with amplification: it is self-evidently evil to kidnap, bind, gag, sexually assault and murder a young black [v dark skinned in fact] child for one’s pleasure.>>
7. Really? Do you have any evidence that a newborn believes this? Or is it not more likely that our view of kidnapping and torture of the innocent is something that we can easily reason for ourselves based on our need to live amongst other people? The fact that you think that you need some universal objective moral value to draw the conclusion that kidnapping and torturing a child speaks volumes. And not in your favour. Remind me not to allow you near my granddaughter.
>>Nominalism, having explained away morality and overlooked the monstrous absurdity, one dismisses duty as a label for a psycho-socially conditioned guilt feeling.>>
8. No, guilt is real, and I believe that we are born with the capacity for guilt. However, what triggers a guilt response is the result of conditioning. If a young child never receives negative feedback for lying, they would never develop a feeling of guilt when they lie. Keeping in mind that this feedback is often very subtle and not black-and-white.
>>An attempt to duck having to explain away how a particularly common delusion can be pivotal to our thriving as social creatures.>>
9. Our moral values being the result of conditioning does not make them delusional. My parents and teachers and friends instilled in me the value of being honest. Because I live amongst other people, it provides a benefit to me. However, if I grew up alone, with no interaction with others, can you state with certainty that I would feel any guilt about lying to someone on the rare occasion that I interact with them?
>>Defensive projection by hasty, reckless generalisation.>>
10. Is it a generalization? I assume that you have children. Did they ever lie to you? Did they ever take a cookie without permission? Did your father every punish you for lying or for taking something without permission?
>>Notice, the appeal to first duties of reason. Sorry, that’s your potty training speaking, or else it is a sign of the precise inescapability you would dismiss.>>
11. Yes, I am appealing to your ability to reason, in spite of little evidence supporting it. I guess I am a hopeful individual.
>>You clearly are unaware of dutiful children who strive to be good and true beyond whatever forces may obtain in their surroundings.>>
12. As are you. An intelligent child quickly learns that they can benefit from pleasing their parents. And how do you please your parents? You publicly display the behaviours that they have taught you are good and avoid public behaviours that they consider to be bad. The Eddie Haskell approach.
>>Confirming the potty training fallacy in action.>>
13. Are you suggesting that learned behaviours can’t become deeply entrenched in our psyche? Even to the point where they can trigger feelings of guilt or shame? All of the experts disagree with you.
>>And again. Rather, it is hard to resist fashionable fallacies even when long past sell-by dates, but a responsible thinker will do so regardless of the determined voyage of folly.>>
14. What fashionable fallacies are your referring to? I suspect that they involve any opinion that differs from yours. Was equality for women a fashionable fallacy? How about inter-racial relationships? Inter-faith relationships? What about equality of opportunity for homosexuals? What about same sex marriage?
>>Of course, we yet again see appeals to first duties, with locus of failure to heed such projected to the other.>>
15. Calling something a first duty does not make it an objective duty/rule/obligation/requirement. Your appeal to what you refer to as your “first duties” is not a proof.
>>The self-referential incoherence should be manifest. Psychologism attempting to explain away morality as conditioning of children refutes itself.>>
16. Putting “ism” at the end of a word is a cheap and lame attempt to undermine an argument. And I have already stated that the sense that we label “morality” is real. Once we have a deeply entrenched moral value, it is very difficult for us to go against it. It has also been shown that doing so can cause very real and measurable mental and physical distress. What is up for discussion is how these individual values become “entrenched”.
17. Most western women would feel deep shame if they were caught topless in public. For them, not being nude in public is a deeply held moral value. However, most would not feel the same shame about wearing bikini at a beach. Something that would have been scandalous a century ago.
ps/
18. Numbering your sentences doesn’t make your arguments any more sound. |
LOL
|
