"Joe Millionaire" finalist starred in bondage and fetish flicks

[Ben Kenobi]

Proof is absolute confirmation of the case in point, not the disproof of an arguement.

What makes your morality universal, and hence applicable to another?

Don't know if this is directed at me or Agathon, or both.

Mr. Baggins:

a) 1+1=2, everything else is personal opinion.

b) I am writing an opinion right now.

c) That opinion is shared by the entirety of the scientific community.

c has no merit. Why should we care about the entirety of the scientific community if this is merely opinion?

Secondly, c is not shared by the entire scientific community. Science plays no role in the realm of ethics or morality, although moral concerns define research ethics and funding patterns.

This does not mean that there is no ethics, just because science cannot prove or disprove ethical maxims. For this reason, there are different rationales behind truth claims in ethics, and truth claims in science.

Your question regarding moral absolutes is good. I'm interested to see how Agathon's answer differs from mine.

Christian ethics assume the existence of God, who is omnipotent, omniscient and good. As we are all creations of this God, violating his rules harms us physically and emotionally. While we may deny his existence, these harms remain to indicate our bondage.
In this sense, morality is absolute, and applies to everyone, even those who do not believe in God.

[JohnT]

True Apolyton: A thread about a porn actress gets turned into a debate about moral absolutes. On a Saturday night, no less!!

[Sirotnikov]

Great, I chose a proffesor to argue with

Look, let's talk about something I do remember from philosophy lessons - wasn't there a method established by Kant for judging morals?

(reworded)
Everyone should only act according to ways, which, if the whole of humanity acted the same, wouldn't cause harm or bring it extinct.

I don't remember the actual rule, and it doesn't matter - let's assume is this.


If everyone in this world had a fetish for smelly feet and hairy armpits, and would, in their spare time lick and smell them, what would have gone wrong?

Absolutly nothing. Which is just my point.

When a sexual activity becomes perversive, in the sense that it hurts the person, or others, then I agree it can be deemed immoral.

Children porn, or feet licking for that matter, is wrong because the child is made an active participant of something he doesn't udnerstand, and which can cause damage to his psyche (I'm assuming this according to popular views, perpetuated by psychologists on national TV).

However, if that girl was indeed tied and licked, or licked someone else who was tied up, whether for fun, or for money - how exactly is she morally bad?

And if you say that she is, without it actually having any actual bad effect, then I hereby proclaim this moral measure useless, since it doesn't apply to the real world.

To my understanding, you are inventing a scale of morality, which exists for it's own sake, and then judge people according to it.

If not - explain.

And please, instead of using only topic names, which I may or may not know or remember from my studies and readings, explain the ideas too.

[MrBaggins]

People misuse fact, truth and proof all the time.

Anything other than a mathematic proof in our observable universe is vague. It is not based on a finite system. Mathematics, ultimately is vague too... but thats jumping ahead.

God is an assumption... a Schroedingers cat... any 'absolute truth' thereof is tainted by that assumption.

Your or any one elses morals... are similarly vague... since ethics is not a finite science.

Our observable universe is vague too; demonstrated in the Uncertainty Principal of Quantum Mechanics, in the Casimir effect.

There actually is no universally discernable proof or truth in the universe... everything happens, everywhere, every instant. That is a Quantum Field effect. Practically its demonstrated in the study of Quantum Computing.

Since everything happens... everywhere... everywhen... all things are true and all things are false, and hence truth is relative and limited to your observable state, or 'your skin'.

Since the universe contains a null quantum field state... nothing is true... not even abstract concepts.

MrBaggins

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Agathon
Sounds like you've been reading John Stuart Mill.

Nope, never have. Must be my own genius.

I can agree that allowing perverts to fulfil their desires is unlikely to lead to the downfall of civilisation as we know it, without admitting that its morally acceptable (I seem you remember you saying you were gay - for the record I see nothing wrong with homosexuality qua homosexuality, if you were wondering about that).

So what's your boundary then, and why should your boundaries be the accepted norm? It's a rather subjective thing, after all. You may not deem homosexuality to be a perversion, but others clearly do. Why are you right and they wrong? What gives you the right to deem something perverted when it doesn't involve you?

I do however think that a society using the "live and let live" rule as the sole principle of organisation would quickly disintegrate. Our society doesn't because most people have internalised rules that go beyond it.

I am not sure how this applies to the real world, though. I never advocated such a society. But you seem to be on "thin ice" yourself in this argument, because you are setting up as an absolute something that is, without any theology involved, rather nebulous. What one person deems as immoral and perverted isn't necessisarily so to another.

I am willing to bet you that more people than not have sexual fetishes/kinks of some kind or another. That's just the nature of human sexuality. And they are, by and large, harmless. In fact, sexual therapists/psychologists think it is very healthy to indulge in fetishes, as it stimulates the sex drive. It is often recommended to couples as a means of revitalizing sex lives.

Do some people go overboard and turn their fetish into an obsession? Certainly, just as certain people become alcoholics or spend way too much damned time on the internet. Then the problem isn't the fetish itself, but the behavior of the individual in regards to that fetish. I am sure you know some people with pretty kinky fetishes, but you don't know about them because they indulge it in the proper way--in private, and in moderation.

So in short, let the foot-lickers alone.

[Demerzel]

Originally posted by obiwan18 Christian ethics assume the existence of God, who is omnipotent, omniscient and good. As we are all creations of this God, violating his rules harms us physically and emotionally. While we may deny his existence, these harms remain to indicate our bondage.
In this sense, morality is absolute, and applies to everyone, even those who do not believe in God.

Does your Christianity demand that you judge everyone else?

Bloody christians - I hate the ones that try to convert you 'cos they think that if you don't believe in God you're desperately unhappy and need their help. I also hate the ones that inflict their opinions & "Gods" rules on you as something you must live to regardless whether you suffer from their "religion" or not.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
Great, I chose a proffesor to argue with

Look, let's talk about something I do remember from philosophy lessons - wasn't there a method established by Kant for judging morals?

Yeah, but I'm not a kantian.

If everyone in this world had a fetish for smelly feet and hairy armpits, and would, in their spare time lick and smell them, what would have gone wrong?

It's unhealthy for a start. All I am claiming is that there are some unhealthy sexual obsessions.

When a sexual activity becomes perversive, in the sense that it hurts the person, or others, then I agree it can be deemed immoral.

Does turning someone into a sleaze count? The problem here is that psychic harm is less easy to quantify than physical harm. Even though that is the case we should be wary of it.

Children porn, or feet licking for that matter, is wrong because the child is made an active participant of something he doesn't udnerstand, and which can cause damage to his psyche (I'm assuming this according to popular views, perpetuated by psychologists on national TV).

Many people are active participants of things they don't quite understand, so that can't quite be it. In the case of someone offering sweets to a child so they can take nudie pictures of them it is not clear that the child is even psychologically harmed.

However, if that girl was indeed tied and licked, or licked someone else who was tied up, whether for fun, or for money - how exactly is she morally bad?

And if you say that she is, without it actually having any actual bad effect, then I hereby proclaim this moral measure useless, since it doesn't apply to the real world.

I'd say it's bad for her. It's not terrible in the way that necrophilia or coprophilia would be, but it is less than optimal. Would you think a person who continually stabbed himself was sane? I think this is the same sort of thing - people who enjoy coprophilia or fantasize over corpses are mentally ill.

If not - explain.

In short, I am a virtue ethicist. This means that I think morality is not merely about the way that one treats others (as some Kantians believe). I think this because I can't make any sense of Kantian morality, as to why we should believe in it. I can make sense of Aristotelian Virtue ethics because it seems to me that everyone has an interest in living well. While there can be some disagreement over what counts as living well we can agree that an alcoholic, a drug addict and a necrophiliac are not living well. Someone who likes being tied up and smelling people's feet is like this, but not nearly as bad - in short there is something wrong with them.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

So what's your boundary then, and why should your boundaries be the accepted norm? It's a rather subjective thing, after all. You may not deem homosexuality to be a perversion, but others clearly do. Why are you right and they wrong? What gives you the right to deem something perverted when it doesn't involve you?

So what if others deem homosexuality to be a perversion. I can't think of any reason why it stops a person living well. On the other hand necrophilia defintely does.

But you seem to be on "thin ice" yourself in this argument, because you are setting up as an absolute something that is, without any theology involved, rather nebulous. What one person deems as immoral and perverted isn't necessisarily so to another.

That's true, but unless there is some objectivity to ethics there is no sense in trying to uphold liberalism (for that is a moral thesis). I would say that when people disagree about this sort of thing, at least one of them must be wrong.

As for the theology - I don't need it. All I need is a notion of living well for a human being (which is something we all take for granted and only dispense with when we are trying to justify our liking of silly things). All I am really claiming is that human nature imposes certain limits on what is good for us - for example: too many donuts are bad no matter what we think. Since I don't believe we have a soul and that our minds are nothing more than physical I don't have any problem with making similar claims about "psychic health".

What you seem to be doing is taking wrong in the sense of "God would prohibit it, if he existed." I am trying to get away from this conception of ethics. Mine is simply, "It's bad for people." The benefit of my conception of ethics is that human welfare exists whereas God's existence, or the existence of reasons for accepting universal moral rules may or may not exist.

I am willing to bet you that more people than not have sexual fetishes/kinks of some kind or another. That's just the nature of human sexuality. And they are, by and large, harmless.

That's probably true. However, I think once we get to tying people up and smelling feet something has started to go awry - and when we get to sadism something has definitely flipped.

Do some people go overboard and turn their fetish into an obsession? Certainly, just as certain people become alcoholics or spend way too much damned time on the internet. Then the problem isn't the fetish itself, but the behavior of the individual in regards to that fetish.

Try this line of reasoning with necrophilia.

[Zero]

What's wrong with corpse f*cking?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
People misuse fact, truth and proof all the time.

Anything other than a mathematic proof in our observable universe is vague. It is not based on a finite system. Mathematics, ultimately is vague too... but thats jumping ahead.

I take it you have heard of Godel's incompleteness theorem then?

If there is no truth or justification then there is no arguing against anyone murdering foot lickers, so I can't see the point here.

I'd go easy on the science - anyone who doesn't think Dogs are canines is going a bit funny.

[Ben Kenobi]

Demerzal-

Does your Christianity demand that you judge everyone else?

Not our place. God can do that just fine.

I also hate the ones that inflict their opinions & "Gods" rules on you as something you must live to regardless whether you suffer from their "religion" or not

Do we not have a law written on our hearts, that we know wrong even if we do not know why? This psychic pain that Agathon refers to is one and the same as my physical and emotional pain. The presence of this pain is hard to explain, especially when people are raised to believe an action is morally right, yet they still feel guilty for doing so.

The content of this Natural Law is by definition limited. This will include things like, it is wrong to kill people, etc. Nothing that is unique to Christian faith is contained within these burdens.

Another problem is how disparate societies tend to form common ethical norms. One explanation for this is through Natural Law.

Mr. Baggins:

You'll reject my ethics just on the basis of no moral absolutes.

Do you believe that it is always wrong to torture babies?

[Agathon]

Here's another way of thinking about it.

Do people generally teach their children to "do what they like as long as it doesn't hurt others" or do they teach them a kind of virtue, like this: "don't eat unhealthy foods; don't be a sex maniac, be kind to other people; think carefully about what you do before you do it; don't get involved with drugs; etc.".

It seems obvious that the latter is the case most of the time.

Since parents really care about the welfare of their children they obviously want them to do well in life - that is, they think this sort of moral education is necessary. And it's clear that they want these good habits to be lifelong.

I have an alternative explanation to obiwan's (it's not God) but I agree with him that morality has to take this form - even if we disagree about some of the content.

[Ben Kenobi]

I have an alternative explanation to obiwan's (it's not God) but I agree with him that morality has to take this form.

Agathon, what's your explanation?

[SlowwHand]

Joe messed up when he said goodbye to Mojo.
She was the one.

The funniest part throughout this whole thing was Joe talking about one of the women and he says, "She made me feel like a million bucks.(burp) Not that I'd know what a million bucks felt like."

[Agathon]

Originally posted by obiwan18


Agathon, what's your explanation?

An extremely limited one.

Human flourishing is something that all human beings have an interest in - there may be various forms of it, but they are limited by our organic nature (that is, not just anything can count).

Thus, it's different for different species - for example, what counts as a good life for a dog won't suit us. Since we are irreducably human we cannot escape that some things count as good for us and others bad.

It does not consist merely in a subjective state of mind, rather it consists in the overall health of the organism, which has subjective aspects either as parts of or epiphenomena caused by the health of the organism.

Only this, human welfare, can count as an object for ethics because it is the only thing which human beings qua human have good reason to pursue, since our humanity places natural limits on what is good for us, and in fact we generally do pursue it (and it is recognition of this fact which is my main reason for endorsing the theory), although our pursuit is frustrated by moral weakness and ignorance.

Of course, this just raises more questions.