Conservative principle(s) of Justice. Are there any?

[Sava]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Depends on what you mean by creationism.

Are you talking about the young earthers?

I'm talking about the world being created in 6 days, and every human being descedents from Adam and Eve.... etc...

[Ben Kenobi]

but we have no reason to believe.

Christians make some testable claims, not all of their claims are untestable.

Secondly, they offer a better explanation for things than you can find elsewhere. One of them being the formation and creation of our conscience.

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm talking about the world being created in 6 days, and every human being descedents from Adam and Eve.... etc...

So, does Christianity claim that the world was created in 6 days?

As for Adam and Eve, how is that logically inconsistent?

[Sava]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


So, does Christianity claim that the world was created in 6 days?

As for Adam and Eve, how is that logically inconsistent?

I'm not talking about consistency... creationism is consistent... consistently ILLOGICAL.

And that's not even taking into account what we know now about genetics and whatnot.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Why does Ben bite at such poor trolls when it could have degenerated at a nice circle jerk thread with Ted and Aggie?

Why does DinoDoc never discuss the actual topics he just chimes in with indirect cutesy peek-a-boo responses?

[Agathon]

Secondly, they offer a better explanation for things than you can find elsewhere. One of them being the formation and creation of our conscience.

No they do not. The argument from design has been widely considered a failure since Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion was published.

A supernatural explanation for conscience requires us to multiply explanatory entities beyond need. Evolutionary psychologists can explain it more economically.

But this is besides the point. I asked Conservatives to provide principles of justice. Their manifest failure to do so is another mark of the intellectual poverty of conservatism.

[Agathon]

Why does DinoDoc never discuss the actual topics he just chimes in with indirect cutesy peek-a-boo responses?

Because he knows that liberals will pwn him.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Agathon


You know that it doesn't. Logical truth can be defined as tautology and valid inferences as tautologies. You've done philosophy, you know this.

But again, it is besides the point. I want a principle, or set of coherent principles that provide a benchmark from which to derive specific ethical imperatives.

The conservatives must be able to do better than this. Or perhaps their views have no rational basis.

The pursuit of efficiency could be such a principle. It could provides rules which once applied result in a state of justice.

[Fake Boris]

Sava, religion is not necessarily incoherent.

Any moral system relies on general axioms to make specific judgments about specific states of things.

It's quite easy to make statements coherent with religious axioms, but the harder part is actually providing a reason to believe in these axioms.

Acceptable axioms are very hard to define, and religion is certainly not the best effort that has been done in that matter.

[Fake Boris]

DinoDoc, don't be a wuss, and go discuss the foundations of your moral principles if you dare.

Aggie BAMs a lot, but more often than not that means he's already discussed the topic seriously in another thread and doesn't want to repeat himself.

[Agathon]

The pursuit of efficiency could be such a principle. It could provides rules which once applied result in a state of justice.

It doesn't work. Efficiency at producing what? Misery?

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Agathon


It doesn't work. Efficiency at producing what? Misery?

Whatever this society has chosen to produce : wars, crops, poetry, prostitution, science, or ... misery. All you need is a criterion which makes possible an assesment (wright or wrong) about any human action.

[Agathon]

Whatever this society has chosen to produce : wars, crops, poetry, prostitution, science, or ... misery. All you need is a criterion which makes possible an assesment (wright or wrong) about any human action.

The point is that the choices about the rest does all the real work. Efficiency is at most a weak normative constraint.

A society that is extremely efficient at producing rapists doesn't really cut it as a just society.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
Then it is useless. One can construct any number of theories which are logically coherent, but give us no reason to believe them. Coherence is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition in this case.

But you are also proposing coherent but unprovable theories

[Agathon]

But you are also proposing coherent but unprovable theories

How so?

The point of a theory of justice is to reason from examples that people accept to first principles and then revise your examples from that. God is not a first principle that most people are going to accept, so it's useless.

We have known this since Plato, who describes this process in the Republic.