/liberty/ - Liberty

What point are you trying to make?

>>61778

I believe this would be more pertinent for the Left which sees all that it does as being for the "greater good." The sacrificing of individuality for an assumed benefit of the whole. We know from Mises that the whole is nothing but individuals, something the Left forgets perhaps on purpose.

>>61778

>Moral ideals that pretend to above the total good are nothing but cults.

What is the 'total good'? What is that lets you have knowledge of what is good for other people rather than other people deciding for themselves? Also it's called the "common good", not the "total good".

>When action is restrained on behalf of the cult of morality, and a child dies, we may as well say that this child has been sacrificed to a moral cult.

That doesn't even make any sense, what are you trying to say? That in a libertarian society, people would just sit around and let their children die? That no charity would exist?

> The difference between a moral cult and a religion is this: a religious person may genuinely believe that his sacrifice pleases the gods and so this action actually serves the greater good. The moralist knows his sacrifice pleases nothing beyond the purely abstract sentiment of 'morality'- of course, it pleases nothing at all, because sentiments are not real gods which can be pleased. In the truest sense we may say the sacrifice has been to nothing; a sacrifice only to the benefit of the wind.

The rest of this post is even more gibberish. Just rhetoric without a point. You don't need a god to be moral, there is such a thing as deontological ethics. Open a book and read about them.

I'm genuinely curious though, if the "common good" (or total good as you called it for whatever reason) is something that is above morality, above principles then what is the "common good"? What is it that makes individuals irrelevant but groups larger? Afterall groups are nothing but individuals banding together, so where's the seperation? What is it that makes the idea of not committing acts of aggression against other people to be a hazard to the "total good"?

>>61779

The NAP is a spook; stop using morals as an argument

>>61780

The greater good is the most worthy goal there is. The fact that the whole is made up of individuals doesn't affect this

>>61781

Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's bad. Could you be any more obvious?

>pic

The attempt to salvage moralism by saying that 'abstract principles have real consequences' misses the whole point, which is that moralism cares about the abstract principles in and of themselves. There wouldn't be a problem if we understood morality just as a curious feature or 'phenomenon' of the human brain. The problem comes when we think the phenomenon has a significance 'beyond the material'

>>61783

The total good is the total good.

I never said I knew what is best for other people.

A NAP-following society may have charity but would not have evidence-based policy designed to help the global poor or prevent deaths.

The point is that being 'moral' without a god can lead to sacrificing children to nothing.

>>61785

>The total good is the total good.

That does not answer my question at all, it's just a circular answer.

>I never said I knew what is best for other people.

Then you cannot know what the 'total good' is. No one can, hence why the concept is a nonsensical one.

>A NAP-following society may have charity but would not have evidence-based policy designed to help the global poor or prevent deaths.

And this is based on what premise? Why would a society built on non-aggression be unable to prevent deaths? What implication is there that any society (NAP or otherwise) has any duty to help the "global poor", especially when most of them are in nations in which their governments have essentially taken complete control over the economy and may not even allow outside interference or may even manipulate outside interference to gain more power?

>The point is that being 'moral' without a god can lead to sacrificing children to nothing.

You don't even provide any empirical evidence towards this idea, all the while I can point to you hundreds of instances throughout human history in which people are sacrificed to a god or even multiple ones. This isn't even logical on a rational basis, if a society (say a Libertarian one) were to operate on the principle of something like deontological ethics, then children wouldn't be sacrificed to anything. Afterall, why would they?

>>61785

>The NAP is a spook; stop using morals as an argument

The NAP is an example of ethics; not morality. One's morals may coincide with it, but it is an ethical concept.

Further; you have not established how a concept's status as a "spook" constitutes a refutation of its logical validity.

>The greater good is the most worthy goal there is.

Please clearly define the "greater good". This requires you to establish in epistemologically-relevant terms what objectively constitutes "good" and how it may be quantifiably compared.

>Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's bad.

This same objection can be forwarded against your own propositions in this discussion. The fact that you don't like morality, or ethics, or the NAP in particular, does not mean it is bad.

>The attempt to salvage moralism by saying that 'abstract principles have real consequences' misses the whole point, which is that moralism cares about the abstract principles in and of themselves.

You have utterly failed to address the content of the image, which explicitly counters that objection, making it nonsensical for you to have raised it. And again; you are mislabeling ethics as morality. They are distinct concepts. Morality is indeed a subjective consequence of the mind, but ethics is something else entirely. Morality refers to our personal normative preferences, while ethics is the logical examination of normative premises. That means that while morality is subjective, ethics is objective, being a sub-discipline of logic, in turn making it a form of non-quantitative mathematics.

>The total good is the total good.

Tautologies are tautological. To be useful, your analysis must demonstrate how to extend beyond this trivial statement and into a meaningful insight. It is important in logic to identify the tautologies which underpin our knowledge, but to do so, we must be able to draw the connection between these otherwise-trivial statements and our broader propositions about the world.

>A NAP-following society may have charity but would not have evidence-based policy designed to help the global poor or prevent deaths.

Why not? What about the NAP prohibits cooperative action based on evidence? The fact that one cannot impose edicts does not mean that collective action is impossible; mankind observably organizes for larger projects, utilizing evidence, without necessitating aggression. I could go on about the evidence that non-aggressive self-organized systems have shown themselves to be the most effective tool for relieving problems like poverty, but that would be getting into empirical discussions which are somewhat beyond the purview of this screen name.

>The point is that being 'moral' without a god can lead to sacrificing children to nothing.

Sacrificing children violates consistent ethics in the form of the non-aggression principle. Your error here is rather akin in principle to accusing pacifists of being bellicose. Non-aggression necessarily excludes the permissibility of sacrificing others.

The greater hypocrisy in your argument emerges when you claim that what is ultimately important in determining what is good or bad (despite your rejection of moral or ethical judgment; a further self-conflict) is the material outcome of a given policy of action, but only after you assert that religious morality, in performing the very same action of which you would accuse adherents of non-aggression, is superior because of their immaterial intentions. What could be more of a "spook" than that? If you insist that outcomes be the determining factors of our judgment, then what does it matter whether one's motivation for performing a given action is secular or religious, given that you've already established identical outcomes?

And what precisely do you imagine motivates people to judge the NAP as a preferable standard of action to anything else? Does it not occur to you that a person's action is necessarily motivated by the outcomes they consider to be preferable, and therefore by what they consider to be the "greatest good" by their judgment? It simply cannot be any other way. With this insight, we see that even the secular "moralist" as you would call him is driven by a belief in some form of a "greater good", thereby making his judgment indistinguishable from the religious person's by the standard you yourself have offered.

Your position is in need of considerable amendment.

>>61787

You're unironically stupid, so I won't respond to you

>>61789

Morals are principles of right and wrong. There is no grand dichotomy between morality and ethics; even if there was, why do care so much about the word rather than what is meant?

You should know exactly what I mean by the greater good; it means the best outcomes, in terms of happiness, for the most people.

By terms of policy I clearly meant government policy; by sacrificing children I clearly meant 'failing to take action' rather than literally putting anyone on an altar.

So you have failed to respond to what I am actually saying: which is this; that by concerning oneself with means, in order to appease invisible and non-existent 'ideals', a person could end up sacrificing children to nothing

>>61785

>The attempt to salvage moralism by saying that 'abstract principles have real consequences' misses the whole point, which is that moralism cares about the abstract principles in and of themselves

But then you are talking about morals themselves, while in the meanwhile the NAP is concerned with real consequences. So you should also explain how the NAP sometimes becomes concerned only about the abstract principles too.

>A NAP-following society may have charity but would not have evidence-based policy designed to help the global poor or prevent deaths.

Wrong.

If altruist people(People like you, my fellow lost reader!) learned that a certain charity used evidence-based policy to help the global poor/prevent deaths, would you not be more attracted towards that charity than other charities which might be doing a worse job?

>>61790

>why do care so much about the word rather than what is meant?

Because you are using the word "morality" to talk about something that is decidedly not morality, then dismissing it under arguments that are directed specifically at morality. This makes identifying the distinction of central importance to the discussion. What you have done would be like classifying a bicycle as an automobile then complaining that as an automobile, it relies on gasoline; you've fundamentally mischaracterized what you're talking about in a manner which is central to the discussion.

>You should know exactly what I mean by the greater good; it means the best outcomes, in terms of happiness, for the most people.

So you have set for yourself the task of objectively quantifying the happiness of everyone. I put forth that you will find this an unachievable task.

>By terms of policy I clearly meant government policy;

And in making that distinction, you have not addressed the fact already demonstrated in this discussion that government action is not necessary for resolving the concerns which you have raised. You are fundamentally incapable of establishing the logical necessity of government action for those ends.

>by sacrificing children I clearly meant 'failing to take action' rather than literally putting anyone on an altar.

Then once again, you have egregiously mis-labeled an action. In fact, you have even gone so far as to compare literal active sacrifice of children as a religious practice against merely failing to take action for lack of such religious convictions, and you have asserted that the active sacrifice is morally superior due to the subjective intentions of the perpetrators (while at the same time rejecting morality).

>So you have failed to respond to what I am actually saying

No; I have responded precisely to what you have actually said, and when your position has been demolished in its entirety, you have attempted to rescue your wild assertions by expanding definitions to encompass contradictory concepts. You've attempted to expand the definition of "morality" to encompass ethics, and have failed to alter your argument such that it would address an objective study like ethics, preferring to continue to treat it as some subjective "spook" (and you still haven't established why being a "spook" is a problem). You have expanded the definition of "sacrifice" to equate action with a lack of action, which is a direct contradiction. You have altered the definition of "policy" to refer only to government policy but failed to address the criticism that underscored why your assertion was utterly divorced from reality. You accuse me of merely mincing words, but have dedicated your efforts to destroying any and all meaningful substance to the discussion, carefully developed by your interlocutor. All the while, you have failed to address the hypocrisy of the position you have advanced. You have even gone so far as to alter your initial comparison between secular and religious morality such that you are favoring an actively heinous act over what is at worst merely unhelpful. Add to that the fact that your assertions with regard to the outcomes of the ethics of non-aggression are not only utterly without any rational or empirical basis, but that they are in direct logical opposition to their very definition.

You are only digging a deeper hole for yourself. If you wish to be taken seriously, you would be best advised to improve your comprehension with regard to the concepts you hope to address.

>>61778

>the greater good

Yea, we done. Not discussing impossible to define concepts.

>>61798

Morality refers to right and wrong, so I was talking about exactly what I meant to.

Measuring happiness is difficult and contentious, but should still be the ideal. In the same way, a health service should try to maximise 'health' by providing various treatments, regardless of whether health can truly be measured.

Sacrifice doesn't always mean on an altar. It was partly a metaphor, although as partly true, in so far as people know that lives will be lost.

I'm against morality not established in ends. If people thought they were sacrificing children to save more children, then I see that as not even necessarily wrong, just misguided.

You didn't respond to what I said, since you thought I was talking about actions rather than government policies, and thought you were rebutting me by pointing out that libertarians don't literally put children on altars.

So you didn't react to my actual point: which is that by failing to support evidenced based government policies to save children, a libertarian may be sacrificing children to his ideals, which are really no more than wind

>>61839

>Morality refers to right and wrong

You continue to demonstrate zero awareness of how uselessly vague these definitions are. Further; your reply was controverted before you even gave it. It's been clearly spelled out (and I'm going to place visible emphasis on it this time so that it might not evade your notice) that the argument you offered specifically cites the subjectivity of morality as an objection, whereas ethics is necessarily NOT subjective, therefore making your criticism utterly irrelevant to discussions of the NAP. Until you can correct this error, you are only making so much noise.

> It was partly a metaphor, although as partly true, in so far as people know that lives will be lost.

So you openly admit that you are equivocating, and therefore that your assertion is meaningless.

>I'm against morality not established in ends.

No; you aren't. You specifically contradict this when your next sentence is this:

>If people thought they were sacrificing children to save more children, then I see that as not even necessarily wrong, just misguided.

This shows that you are more concerned with intentions, and therefore with subjective moral sentiments, than you are with the actual practical outcomes. You have asserted that actively killing a child is preferable than simply failing to save one from death, despite the fact that the end result is still one dead child and no actual gain. You have clearly and unambiguously established that you value people's subjective beliefs and expectations about outcomes above the actual outcomes themselves. Even Utilitarianism, as devoid of ethical principle as it is, at least purports to concern itself with actual practical outcomes. Your preoccupation with people's beliefs has utterly demolished any claim you may have had to objectivity or ontological superiority.

>You didn't respond to what I said

Saying that doesn't make it so. I have been unduly patient and thorough in my rebuttals.

>since you thought I was talking about actions rather than government policies

You mean since I answered what you actually wrote in your argument, rather than entertaining an argument which was false as presented? Or are you talking about the part where I pre-empted your amended position with a refutation but you still tried to forward it?

You won't prove any points by simply ignoring what has been explicitly spelled out. I've charitably answered every point you've raised; many of them even before you raised them directly.

For example:

>by failing to support evidenced based government policies to save children, a libertarian may be sacrificing children to his ideals, which are really no more than wind

This has been thoroughly refuted in previous posts. Such as when I said:

> you have not addressed the fact already demonstrated in this discussion that government action is not necessary for resolving the concerns which you have raised.

And to elaborate on that point:

>The fact that one cannot impose edicts does not mean that collective action is impossible; mankind observably organizes for larger projects, utilizing evidence, without necessitating aggression.

Thereby indicating that refusal to cooperate with a government program is decidedly not a failure to act to solve the actual problem. You would be impossibly hard-pressed to demonstrate superiority of government solutions to private ones for solving such problems.

And this gem:

>may be sacrificing children to his ideals, which are really no more than wind

Even if we were to accept this part at its preposterous face value, you still can't establish why this is somehow better than religious persons "sacrificing" children for their nonexistent ideals.

You haven't offered a single rational or empirical argument to back up any one of your assertions, and you have continued to go out of your way to actively avoid providing definitions for the terms you have used which would be useful in a rational discourse. Every attempt to clarify or nail down your meanings has been met with a dedicated effort to pervert those meanings and apply arguments to them which apply to wholly different definitions than which actually apply to the concepts you believe yourself to be addressing. I've even on a number of occasions pointed out precisely what you would have to support your position, but you have avoided following through on this entirely.

By equivocating, completely ignoring entire lines of discussion, and failing to substantiate any of your assertions, you have completely destroyed your own credibility in this thread. Nobody has any sensible reason to take what you say seriously, nor to entertain your further objections. You started with the benefit of the doubt, but by failing to observe even the most elementary aspects of rational discourse, you've reduced any further discussion to unproductive noise.

>>61839

>Measuring happiness is difficult and contentious

>but should still be the ideal

Do you ever come so close to liberating yourself form Utilitarianism and then cuck yourself anyways?

Other than that, I would like to prop up this: You're the one preaching morality(Unless utilitarianism isn't morality in your mind) which could be dangerous. In fact, I am a hundred percent sure it is dangerous, the mere mention that you need to do something to someone against their will when they have not initiated violence themselves is a big mark, and the chances are that the NAP is here to stop you, the thread OP.

So let me share something with you, thread OP.

Chances are that you'll be told to fuck off for being immoral yourself, because we do not need anyone doing their silly utilitarian shit where you claim to be morally right because you're stealing other people's stuff so you can use it "in a better way".

>>61847

It's not at all uselessly vague to say 'morality refers to right and wrong'. You are making a fuss about nothing, because you're an annoying person. They are often used interchangeably, as you very well know.

https://www.britannica.com/demystified/whats-the-difference-between-morality-and-ethics

>So you openly admit that you are equivocating, and therefore that your assertion is meaningless.

No.

>This shows that you are more concerned with intentions, and therefore with subjective moral sentiments, than you are with the actual practical outcomes.

What nonsense. Are you arguing that intentions are subjective, rather than objective realities? There is zero slippage into subjective moral sentiment when I say that I care if somebody has acted for the greater good, or acted for their self interest, in doing what they have done.

I would be very surprised if utilitarians hate the doctor who saves baby Hitler from bronchitis, and see him go on to murder the 8 billion.

>The fact that one cannot impose edicts does not mean that collective action is impossible; mankind observably organizes for larger projects, utilizing evidence, without necessitating aggression.

These are only your practical musings on the potentiality that government is not necessary to prevent deaths. But you are supposed to be a committed libertarian regardless of deaths. That's the point- even if it transpired that global warming, or starvation, would transpire from libertarianism, you would go forward with it any way, because your ideals (which are only wind) are more important to you.

>you still can't establish why this is somehow better than religious persons "sacrificing" children for their nonexistent ideals.

I'm suprise you couldn't find the answer to that one in my post. A religious person doesn't act for invisible ideals, but out of belief that his sacrifice saves more children, making it far worse not to act.

>>61847

By the way, I know the NAP claims to be an objective moral truth. But why is it alright to sacrifice to certain truths- even if they did exist- when they have no real life of their own and exist only to be beheld in the mind as what they are?

So even if an objectively true school of morality could be identified among the great number- which seems impossible- that school would still be inferior to pure concern with consequences, since it would put its invisible concerns above the common good.

>>61872

>>61876

Wow, this guy's literally insane.

>Set up fundraiser

>"If 200000 dollars are raised, I will pay them to a cancer ward and then rape the OP"

>OP cannot object

>Nasty anglo consequentialism showed its face again

>>61785

NAP can't be a spook because it is derived from first principles