User:EnlightenmentLiberal
I am a classical liberal, but I don't commonly call myself that because lots of people today completely miss the point of people like Locke and Mill (protip: if you think they are libertarians, you are wrong), so, rather than do an argument over definition at every meeting (always the worst kind of argument), I use this ambiguous awesome new name.
I'm also a capitalist, and I'm a socialist. If you think that's contradictory, then again I say you are wrong (on the definitions).
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[edit] My epistemology
What follows is is what I need to be agreed upon to have a meaningful conversation with someone.
- Basic Logic: We need to agree to avoid invalid arguments, to avoid logically-inconsistent claims and beliefs, to avoid circular justifications, and to avoid endless regresses of justifications.
- Existence of our shared reality: We need to agree that we experience a shared reality through our sensory experience.
- Theory of mind: We need to agree to the basics of theory of mind - I have mind just like you have a mind.
- No arbitrary factual axioms: We need to agree that we will not claim as axiomatic any specific arbitrary factual claims of our shared reality. For example, we will not claim "I was born on Thursday" as axiomatic, nor "a specific human born 2000 years ago was the human incarnation of god" as axiomatic.
- Intellectual honesty: We need to agree that we will only make non-axiomatic claims when we have good justification to believe that those claims are true. Furthermore, we need to agree that we will dismiss unjustified non-axiomatic claims as unsubstantiated. The burden of proof lies with the speaker making the claim. My time is finite, and I have better things to do than try to invent good arguments for other people's claims when there exist a potential infinite variety of claims that I might be able to invent good arguments for. (See Pascal for an example of someone who doesn't "get it".)
- No willful delusions: We need to agree that "if a factual claim were true, it would lead to desired consequences" is never a good justification for the truth of the claim. We also need to agree that "if I believed or pretended to believe that a factual claim were true, it would lead to desired consequences" is never a good justification for the truth of the claim. In other words, we need to agree that we will discuss what is actually and demonstrably true, and we need to agree to avoid willful delusion.
- Science works: We need to agree that science is a reliable method for determining the truth of factual claims of our shared reality.
- Only science works (for factual claims about things in our shared reality with material causal power): We need to agree that only sensory experience of our shared reality, aka evidence, when combined with logical induction and logical deduction, aka science, is the only kind of good justification for believing as true any factual claim about things in our shared reality with material causal power.
- Basic Morality: We need to agree that we will pursue policies that are calculated by science to achieve a society where people are happy, where people have self determination, and where we support the other values of humanism.
- Is-ought distinction: We need to agree to Hume's is-ought distinction.
[edit] Natural vs Supernatural
The distinction of natural vs supernatural is irrelevant and/or useless in my epistemology. If you can observe it, you can do science on it. If you can't observe it, directly or indirectly, then you cannot do science on it, and thus you cannot reliably say anything about it.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" - Girl Genius Webcomic
[edit] Physics Reductionism
I'm going to try to popularize a new term: physics reductionism.
We experience a shared "material" reality, ala the usual conventions and beliefs, and our sensory experience is accurate enough for the purposes of this conversation. All scientific (predictive) models must have their inputs and outputs be in terms of our sensory experience, or otherwise depend on other scientific models which convert the inputs and outputs to sensory experience. All of our direct sensory experience is easily describable in terms of the constituent elements of physics, and there is no other kind of direct sensory experience. (Sorry, we'll ad-hoc modify physics to encompass anything new you find. It's not goalpost moving. It's the definition of "physics".) Thus, there exists a reduction in the sense of formal computation theory from every scientific model to the model of physics. Physics reductionism is the following two claims: Every correct scientific model agrees with its reduction to the model of physics, and the rules of physics are agnostic to the kind of macro object.
What exactly is this claim? How could you prove it wrong? Find a case where physics isn't merely the application of microscopic rules on microscopic parts, aggregated to get observable classic results. Find me a rule of physics that "changes" depending on whether it's a rock or a star or a brain etc., and moreso than what would change due to the differing physics composition. Or find a case where an atom in a brain does something other than what physics would predict due to the interference of a "soul".
This claim is not axiomatic in my framework. It is the culmination of the best evidence we have thus far, distilled down to describe our materialistic, atheistic, uncaring, mechanical universe. Your brain is not "like a computer". It is a computer in every relevant way - it obeys mechanistic rules that govern the time evolution of the system, and these are the very same rules that govern the time evolution of a rock and a star. Thus dualism is either wrong or superfluous, wrong in the sense that it disagrees with physics, or superfluous in the very same sense as LaPlace's apocryphal "I had no need of that hypothesis".
[edit] JS Mill
The Harm Principle (when properly understood to include opportunity costs aka positive externalities as intended by Mill) is the guiding foundation of my moral framework. Of course, it's incomplete and thus not the only rule in my moral framework. However, if you have a suggested law or moral norm that violates it, then we shall have words.
[edit] Absolute and Relative Morality
Every proponent of objective morality, absolute morality, divine command theory, etc., break the Is-Ought rule. They all invariably claim that there is some special privileged fact about our shared reality which somehow informs us how we ought to behave. This is not an allowed move. This is the naturalistic fallacy.
Moral relativism seems to be commonly used in two senses: 1- the morals of different cultures are incomparable, and 2- any morality which isn't absolute. I disagree strongly with 1, but I am a moral relativist under definition 2 because I reject any bridge of the Is-Ought gap.
If you are divine command theorist, all I have to reply is Euthyphro's dilemma. In short, surely there is some method by which you can be convinced you are talking to god. What if god told you to kill your child to show that you love god more than your child? Would you?
- If you reply "but that's a contradiction - god would never tell me to do that!", then doesn't that mean you're a better moral judge than god? Didn't you just say god can't be wrong about moral issues? Didn't you just say he's absolute/objective/whatever good? Because that answer sounds to me like you have a moral standard that is not derived from god and which you apply to god.
- If you reply "no", then I don't see what god adds to the equation. You obviously have your own moral standard which you apply to god.
- If you reply "yes", then I'm afraid I have to end the conversation and look for immediate methods of self protection as I run away.
It scares me when I hear someone argue that "god made you, and gave you everything you have, and thus can morally do whatever he wants to you". This is arguing that you are an abject slave to god, and it deeply scares me when I put it in those terms, and people agree. I don't know what to say. I am not a slave. I do not want to be a slave. I do not want an eternal parental figure to micromanage my life for eternity, an Orwellian big brother, a proverbial North Korea. It is a defect of the mind, indistinguishable from Battered Wife (Person) Syndrome. Why do you want to be a slave? Why do you want to love and worship something that hurts you capriciously and maliciously? Why do you rationalize and make excuses for it?
If you ask "where does my morality come from?", I will ask "do you mean how do I decide what I should do?". If so, I will answer that I have certain moral axioms, such as self determination of me and others is good, and happiness of me and others is good. Also, I am my own standard. Even if I don't have a seconder, I'm enough. I am also willing to use appropriate preemptive violence to further these goals (such as taxes, violence in immediate self defense or defense of others, etc.). If you wish to call this moral relativism, so be it.
[edit] Arguments for a first cause god
I have yet to hear good answers to these questions. For those arguing for a first cause god - great - all of your work remains ahead of you to show the bible is true. Specifically, how do you know that god ever contacted humans? How do you know that a record was made? How do you know that the record survives to the present day? How do you know that the record wasn't modified by humans in the meantime? How do you know that the record is one of the popular religions instead of one of the obscure ones, or that the record is just a dusty obscure document no one cares about in a library somewhere? It is consistent to have a first cause god without an afterlife, and it's consistent to have an afterlife without a first cause god.
[edit] Abortion
Let me use some simple analogies.
Suppose you volunteer to donate a kidney to someone, a friend or stranger. This results in a sort of lock-in where the recipient will not look for backups, and is putting his/her life in the volunteer's metaphorical hands. If the volunteer later changed his mind without terribly good reason, I'd call the former-volunteer an ass because he backed out of a deal he made in good faith and put someone else's life in quite a precarious position. Having said that, I'm pretty sure / very sure that I want the terms of the contract to not be enforceable by a court, and I'm decently sure that I don't want monetary damages to be possible either. It's still a dick move. I see this as analogous to discovering that you're pregnant, not getting an abortion immediately and delaying the decision, only to later get one, with an aware conscious fetus, without good cause.
Consider the hypothetical event of someone giving a live blood transfusion (which AFAIK actually did happen), and in the specific situation where the recipient's life depends on the active blood transfusion, such as during a surgery (?). If the donor invoked his/her right of full bodily autonomy, and demanded the immediate death of the dependent person as a means to exercise his/her full bodily autonomy, we'd all look at the donor like he's/she's crazy. Instead, what would happen is the doctor would separate the two immediately, but with an approach that emphasized safety of both people (if possible), and also considered the cost, pain, risk, etc. (Likely, the needle would be safely removed from the donor, which may in effect result in the death of the recipient, but that's not the same thing, because other methods may be available to save the recipient.) Also, suggesting that you should be allowed any method of separation of the "parasite" is a dick move. In a hypothetical universe where forced birth or similar methods are cheaper, safer, quicker, less painful, etc., in the specific case of a viable fetus with a mind (if fetuses even have a mind - a scientific question), then I do not see how you can make an argument for the morality of abortion for these very specific cases.
Otherwise, consider me entirely pro-choice on abortion, for all of the usual good reasons.
[edit] One Issue Voter
I am an American. If there was a candidate that I could trust who said that their primary purpose in congress or as president was to reform the election laws to not be winner take all single district, I think I would actually be a one issue voter on this topic (or close to it). I wish we could raise this issue to prominence, because most if not all of our problems actually stem from this problem in our election system. See George Washington's Farewell Address.
[edit] SG-1 is the best television show ever made
This is important!