Principles

[bilby]

Idiots like to shout as well.

You have no point.

Are you really oblivious to the fact that you presented an inflexible rule, and that the inflexible rule you presented was that inflexible rules are unfit for humans?

Do you not see the absolute buffoonery required to make such a statement?

Do you really have such a strong ability to ignore your own errors that you cannot even see them when they are explicitly pointed out to you?

Or are you just so dismissive of everyone else that you imagine that they will believe your bullshit when you say 'You have no point' to someone who just made their point abundantly and obviously clear?

Seriously, you need to seek professional help. Denial on this scale is positively pathological.

 

[untermensche]

I'll ignore all your ignorant insults for the sake of argument.

What rule applies to every circumstance?

I am making the claim there are none.

I am not saying there is a rule. I am saying there are none that apply to all circumstances.

To dispute it requiters more than large letters in red.

It requires a rule that would apply to all possible circumstances.

 

[beero1000]

What rule applies to every circumstance?

I am making the claim there are none.

I am not saying there is a rule. I am saying there are none that apply to all circumstances.

To dispute it requiters more than large letters in red.

It requires a rule that would apply to all possible circumstances.

Holy shit.

 

[abaddon]

Murder's a serious harm. Maybe a lie is and maybe it isn't. Two different things, so why bother looking for consistency in the use of labels between two entirely different things?

You call a murderer a murderer after one murder because he's a dangerous man, he's earned a "red flag" put on him. Persistent, pathological liars need one too. But everyone's an occasional fibber so why bother, if you won't also call them a breather and walker and other assorted needless labels?

 

[untermensche]

What rule applies to every circumstance?

I am making the claim there are none.

I am not saying there is a rule. I am saying there are none that apply to all circumstances.

To dispute it requiters more than large letters in red.

It requires a rule that would apply to all possible circumstances.

Holy shit.

You understand that what you are doing is pure ignorance?

You act as if you have pooped your diapers but can't explain why you are unhappy.

When you figure out to express your displeasure in words you should engage.

Until then you are a waste of space.

 

[beero1000]

What rule applies to every circumstance?

I am making the claim there are none.

I am not saying there is a rule. I am saying there are none that apply to all circumstances.

To dispute it requiters more than large letters in red.

It requires a rule that would apply to all possible circumstances.

Holy shit.

You understand that what you are doing is pure ignorance?

You act as if you have pooped your diapers but can't explain why you are unhappy.

When you figure out to express your displeasure in words you should engage.

Until then you are a waste of space.

Holy shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

 

[ruby sparks]

Murder's a serious harm. Maybe a lie is and maybe it isn't. Two different things, so why bother looking for consistency in the use of labels between two entirely different things?

Ok we're not necessarily looking for consistency. Because we (I'm suggesting) treat the two things differently, we could be looking for contrast.


So far, we have 'murder matters more', basically.

So...is that what's goin' on?

 

[bilby]

What rule applies to every circumstance?

I am making the claim there are none.

I am not saying there is a rule. I am saying there are none that apply to all circumstances.

OK, if that's the rule. When does that rule not apply? What is an example of an exception to the rule that there are no rules that apply to all circumstances? Under what circumstances is that claim false?

To dispute it requiters more than large letters in red.

It requires a rule that would apply to all possible circumstances.

You are contradicting yourself. Again. And appear to be genuinely oblivious to it. It's fucking hilarious, but at the same time, rather sad.

Thinking before you pressed the 'post reply' button could prevent this sad spectacle; But it is evidently beyond your abilities.

Just keep posting self-refuting declarations. I need a good laugh.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Murder's a serious harm. Maybe a lie is and maybe it isn't. Two different things, so why bother looking for consistency in the use of labels between two entirely different things?

You call a murderer a murderer after one murder because he's a dangerous man, he's earned a "red flag" put on him. Persistent, pathological liars need one too. But everyone's an occasional fibber so why bother, if you won't also call them a breather and walker and other assorted needless labels?

Exactly. Words are just labels. I can put a mustard label on a bottle with ketchup inside. So what?

 

[untermensche]

What rule applies to every circumstance?

I am making the claim there are none.

I am not saying there is a rule. I am saying there are none that apply to all circumstances.

OK, if that's the rule. When does that rule not apply?

It is not a rule. It is an observation that there are none that apply in all circumstances.

It is an observation about rules, not a rule.

To dispute it takes more than waving your arms and large red letters.

 

[abaddon]

Murder's a serious harm. Maybe a lie is and maybe it isn't. Two different things, so why bother looking for consistency in the use of labels between two entirely different things?

Ok we're not necessarily looking for consistency. Because we (I'm suggesting) treat the two things differently, we could be looking for contrast.


So far, we have 'murder matters more', basically.

So...is that what's goin' on?

Yikes, the forum's busy tonight... I'm used to having time to edit, and thought a contrast would help so added it. Then saw someone was asking for that contrast.

Here's my full point:

Murder's a serious harm. Maybe a lie is and maybe it isn't. Two different things, so why bother looking for consistency in the use of labels between two entirely different things?

You call a murderer a murderer after one murder because he's a dangerous man, he's earned a "red flag" put on him. Persistent, pathological liars need one too. But everyone's an occasional fibber so why bother, if you won't also call them a breather and walker and other assorted needless labels?

So one's considered bad sometimes and potentially even a good thing, and the other's considered bad always.

I don't see it as a matter of degree of "badness" between them. The main point is they're too different to be comparable. Only pathological, harmful lying is comparable.

 

[untermensche]

You understand that what you are doing is pure ignorance?

You act as if you have pooped your diapers but can't explain why you are unhappy.

When you figure out to express your displeasure in words you should engage.

Until then you are a waste of space.

Holy shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

You understand that what you are doing is pure ignorance?

You act as if you have pooped your diapers but can't explain why you are unhappy.

When you figure out to express your displeasure in words you should engage.

Until then you are a waste of space.

 

[fast]

Murder's a serious harm. Maybe a lie is and maybe it isn't. Two different things, so why bother looking for consistency in the use of labels between two entirely different things?

You call a murderer a murderer after one murder because he's a dangerous man, he's earned a "red flag" put on him. Persistent, pathological liars need one too. But everyone's an occasional fibber so why bother, if you won't also call them a breather and walker and other assorted needless labels?

I think I'm trying to defend against a false equivalency. Consider a person who never pays his bills on time versus someone who was late twice in the last 40 years. Neither one always pays on time, yet one is not as bad as the other.

So, if a politician gets caught in a lie or small scandal, is he thus without character and principles? We don't know if it's a one-off or pervasive, but doesn't it matter? Are principles like flexible guidelines or something of rules with strict rigidity?

If you hold firm that a person is without moral principles and you base that off a one time regrettable incident, are you therefore correct because of what it means to say of principles?

If someone says he's a liar and cheat and as bad as the rest, I might be inclined to say, no, he's just a a liar and a cheat for today and so not as bad as the rest, for he lives by principles--just not today.

I'm trying to figure out what side of this shiny coin I'm supposed to be on. He is not a man with principles (despite living by them) because of a short wrong path he took, or he is a man with principles (who has not lived by them 100%)

 

[abaddon]

I went back to read the OP again, to be sure anything I said was on-topic. And since I made responses already to the OP, I'll post them.

When we talk about someone that has principles, what are we saying? I'm especially concerned about frequency of deviation.

It's a convention that works, sorta, to label someone with a negative label if they're seen as dangerous somehow. We stamp a 'mark of cain' on some because we want others to know if he's killed, or hurt people with lies, or molested a kid, or whatever.

About principles... Everyone has principles. People who say "that person has no principles" are being sloppy with language. They might more correctly say "That person does things contrary to MY principles".

It has to do with frequency. How often there is an occurance.

I think it has more to do with how a behavior impacts someone in a relation to the "transgressor". No driver is an "idiot driver" until they've cut off some stressed driver and made him angry, for example. The label's more about the labelers; about their response to another person.

"The problem (or glaring problem) is that to be consistent, I'd have to deny that a person is a murderer unless he has murdered more than once or twice.

But why do you need the consistency? It's not the same. Let's say that I lie a few times a week. It might seem frequent to some, maybe. But let's say they're little lies and don't hurt anybody. So am I liar? To some maybe, to others a fibber, to others it's a non-issue and doesn't need a label. Again, it's whatever use that they find for the label.

There's no lasting essence in "me" that can hold this "property" through a lifetime. There isn't a point where whatever the "I" thing (the something-or-other that is supposed to possess "character" or "principles" ... or to lack them) becomes a "liar". NOT EVER. You or I or others will find some labels useful, in order to orient ourselves around a person. Or around whatever else we've got labels/descriptions for.

You can call someone who has raped once a rapist, but not call someone who has lied once or twice a liar. Because until you establish you're not comparing apples and oranges, not using an extremely tenuous connection like "it's all fruit" (or "these are all similar 'unprincipled' behaviors"), then there's no logical need for consistency in applying these labels.

I think an habitual liar is clearly a liar. Heck, even if there is no habit to it yet it's an often occurance, he's still a liar.

Because that's useful to you, when it becomes "clear" to you, to apply a label for your usage. Whatever he 'really is', it's vastly more than "liar".

Do we not now see what I mean by frequency of deviation? Must the sum of a transgression be zero on the nose? Over that and despite the frequency, conclusion: we're looking in the eyes of someone with no principles?

Frequency ain't got much to do with it. It's how bad the lie hurt that matters. You can lie a thousand times and never earn the label "liar" if they're all super-tiny lies. Maybe someone will think you're loose with the truth eventually. Lots of possibilities, it's dependent on the personalities involved. There's no simplifying it to rules we can all share.

There are no little-tiny murders though. A murder is always a transgression. But a "lie" ... well, depends on who you ask, right? So, apples and oranges.

----------------------

Ok, now from your most recent post:

I'm trying to figure out what side of this shiny coin I'm supposed to be on.

I side with the others who also don't see any way to make a hard and fast rule about it. And I think any label will miserably fail to describe a person. You fall on no side of a coin, unless you or someone put you on a side of a coin. What you described in the OP about what most people do is something I don't recognize. I've never seen a person say "You're a liar" about someone who lied only once. Not unless it was a very hurtful lie.

 

[humbleman]

Murder's a serious harm. Maybe a lie is and maybe it isn't. Two different things, so why bother looking for consistency in the use of labels between two entirely different things?

You call a murderer a murderer after one murder because he's a dangerous man, he's earned a "red flag" put on him. Persistent, pathological liars need one too. But everyone's an occasional fibber so why bother, if you won't also call them a breather and walker and other assorted needless labels?

I think I'm trying to defend against a false equivalency. Consider a person who never pays his bills on time versus someone who was late twice in the last 40 years. Neither one always pays on time, yet one is not as bad as the other.

So, if a politician gets caught in a lie or small scandal, is he thus without character and principles? We don't know if it's a one-off or pervasive, but doesn't it matter? Are principles like flexible guidelines or something of rules with strict rigidity?

If you hold firm that a person is without moral principles and you base that off a one time regrettable incident, are you therefore correct because of what it means to say of principles?

If someone says he's a liar and cheat and as bad as the rest, I might be inclined to say, no, he's just a a liar and a cheat for today and so not as bad as the rest, for he lives by principles--just not today.

I'm trying to figure out what side of this shiny coin I'm supposed to be on. He is not a man with principles (despite living by them) because of a short wrong path he took, or he is a man with principles (who has not lived by them 100%)

Perhaps principles are also subjected to who is watching you?

From movies, I don't know if the following is in accord to real life.

Gangsters.

Even gangsters have "principles".

They won't kill their enemy when he came out after mass service Sunday morning.

They won't kill their enemy when he is going to the cemetery to bury one of his family or one who belongs to his gang.

When one gangster breaks any one of these "principles", he knows he is in trouble, even his allies will reject such killings after mass service Sunday morning or at the cemetery.

Keeping principles appears as well portraying an image in front of the rest.

Like, being a honest and decent politician (sure, right) and be a crook behind walls (as usual).

Hard to read people's minds, hard to establish if principles stand firm in our minds.

 

[ruby sparks]

It's a convention that works, sorta, to label someone with a negative label if they're seen as dangerous somehow. We stamp a 'mark of cain' on some because we want others to know if he's killed, or hurt people with lies, or molested a kid, or whatever.

This seems to make a certain sense. We apply labels all the time, but sometimes it seems we apply them more readily when, as someone said earlier, it matters most (or potentially might matter most). We are a social species and have always lived in groups, so labels are arguably shorthand ways of predicting behaviour. A label is a reputation.

One thing though, being known as a killer isn't necessarily a bad label, especially if the killer kills out-group (is a warrior). Even in-group killers can be respected.

You can call someone who has raped once a rapist, but not call someone who has lied once or twice a liar. Because until you establish you're not comparing apples and oranges, not using an extremely tenuous connection like "it's all fruit" (or "these are all similar 'unprincipled' behaviors"), then there's no logical need for consistency in applying these labels.

There's no logic to capricious human behaviour, that's true, but we can still see patterns. When the label 'rapist' is applied after only one rape....why?

In this case it's not as if it's a 'potential life and death' issue, like murder. That said, it relates to reproduction, which in evolutionary terms is arguably at least as much of a priority as survival, if not more of a priority, since no individual will ultimately survive, so getting one's genes into the next generation is more important. Eat, survive, reproduce. The rest is commentary?

'Adulterer' used to be so damning that you could get stoned to death for it, especially if you were a woman (or are a woman, in certain cultures). In western culture, would we not nowadays think of a person who has committed adultery as 'a person who has been unfaithful' rather than have the label describe the essence of the person?

 

[Juma]

I like this question, and at this time I can't think of a consistent 'rule' that allows me to say that someone who lies only once is not a liar but also allows me to say that someone who murders only once is a murderer.


I suspect it's got something to do with informal linguistic conventions rather than a 'rule' but it is puzzling nonetheless and I hadn't thought about it before so now it's exercising my brain.

I gave you the rule.

Could you illustrate how you think it operates for both liar and murderer?

A mother could say lot of lies about her children (how smart they are, how beutiful they are) but you dont call her a liar because that is not what she normally do in other matters. Thus you never wouldnt catching her lie when she is at work etc.

A murderer has even for one murderous act gone beyond what we allow and thus is called murderer eveb when only killed one person: everyone needs to be warned.

Thus we call folk liers/murderes when it matters.

 

[fast]

I have a multitude of thoughts on the issue, and I'm going to give directional cues to indicate when a distinction is being made. Off to the right, we deserve to know if what's been said is true or not. Sure, to the left, we can examine what drives a person to say what they do, and yes, the driving force may indeed at times say more about the labelor than the labelee, but the left being what it may, we can seek to know if what's uttered is true just as we might seek to know if it's true a cat is on the mat.

Although I now recognize that there is a subjective element in what goes into making such a statement as "that driver is a jerk," we can nevertheless look to the right and see if in the objective sense whether the statement is true or false, and not merely treat it as a subjective issue as we would for whether one flavor of ice cream tastes better to some specific individual.

But, even as I look to the right, there's both a top and bottom perspective. Consider the statement "cats have four legs." Well, look up, generally they do; hence, in the top sense, what is meant is, "generally, cats have four legs." A looking down perspective of interpreting "cats have four legs" as all cats have four legs doesn't defeat the truth of what is generally true, as one who typically utters "cats have four legs" means not to claim they all do, allowing for exceptions, which gives rise to the statement that exceptions prove the rule, as opposed to disprove the rule.

Now, despite the left of why I might call one a jerk or a liar, we have two perspectives on the right: the top view which translates "he is a jerk" to "generally, he is a jerk" which might be false contrasted with the bottom view which translates "he is a jerk" to "he is always or was at least once or twice a jerk."

So, while there may be a driving reason for labeling a person a murderer, he is nevertheless a murderer. The serial killer is generally a killer, but the one time kill by one who has killed but only once is a killer but not generally a killer. Same holds with a person that lies in that there may be a specific harm that has wanting to mark the person as bad, it's still true or false that he's a liar. Either, he generally is, like a habitual liar, or else he's not a liar in the sense that he generally lies yet a liar in the sense he has done so at least once.

So, I guess, a person who generally holds tight to principles but made an exception is still a person who generally lives by principles while it's also true that he makes rare exceptions, which I suppose is better than one who rarely lives by them, in which case it's not true he generally has good principles if generally he doesn't.

 

[ruby sparks]

Thus we call folk liars/murderers when it matters.

In general, this seems to hit the nail on the head quite well, and a lot of things that other posters have said here would seem to agree. It is at least the best answer we have up to now, here in the thread. That is to say, that labels are to some extent situation-dependent.

So I guess the next question might be, 'when does it matter?' or 'how do we know when it matters?' or better still, since 'it mattering' is going to be a personal (and/or social) judgement, 'when do we feel it matters (enough to be applicable to the whole person as a label after just one instance rather than waiting to see if it's part of a predictable pattern)'?

I have suggested that survival and/or reproductive situations might feature prominently. I'm not sure how well that holds up and would welcome counter-examples.

fast, you gave an example of saying 'that driver is a jerk'. That could be said to be a life-or-death scenario, especially if we are using the same road as them at the same time, or they have cut across us, etc. In a lot of cases, we do not know the other driver at all, other than in their apparently dangerous driving, and yet have no hesitation in defining them with a one-word label. Because it matters. Were we to not apply the label (and for example allow that the driver did something completely out-of-character and could be given the benefit of the doubt until later evidence showed otherwise) this assumption/prediction could get us killed, by the driver, in that situation. Safer to apply the 'jerk' label, just in case.

You can tell by my underlining the word 'feel' above that I should not be surprised to find that there is often an emotional (or similarly heightened state of instinctive arousal) component to attaching such blanket labels, because....in some ways...it is..arguably...irrational to do so, because no one complex person can deserve to be encompassed by one label. By irrational I suppose I mean intellectually irrational. One could argue that it is emotionally rational.

 

[fast]

Thus we call folk liars/murderers when it matters.

In general, this seems to hit the nail on the head quite well, and a lot of things that other posters have said here would seem to be along the same lines. It is at least the best answer we have up to now, here in the thread. That is to say that labels are situation-dependent.

So I guess the next question might be, 'when does it matter?' or 'how do we know when it matters?' or better still, since 'it mattering' is going to be a matter of personal (and/or social) judgement, 'when do we feel it matters (enough to be applicable to the whole person as a label after just one instance rather than waiting to see if its part of a predictable pattern)?

I have suggested that survival and/or reproductive situations might feature prominently. I'm not sure how well that holds up and would welcome counter-examples.

fast, you gave an example of saying 'that driver is a jerk'. That could be said to be a life-or-death scenario, especially if we are using the same road as them at the same time, or they have cut across us, etc. In a lot of cases, we do not know the other driver at all, other than in their dangerous driving and yet have no hesitation in defining them with a one-word label. Because it matters. Were we to not apply the label (and for example allow that the driver did something completely out-of-character and was highly likely to drive well generally), this assumption/prediction could get us killed, by the driver, in that situation.

I should not be surprised to find that there is often an emotional (or similar heightened state of instinctive arousal) component to attaching such blanket labels, because....in some ways...it is..irrational to do so, because no one complex person can deserve to be encompassed by them.

Why or how important or whether it matters I call someone a jerk ought to have a truth value independent of both the questions and answers. So, discarding the question, I analyze the statement and find ambiguity leaving the truth dependent on the specific meaning intended on being expressed. I call him a jerk for whatever reason I might have, but in afterthought, one might ask, am I right? If I am intending to convey that he is now at this point in time being a jerk and it fits the bill given the meaning, then the possibilities are what they are, and if I am intending to convey that he is generally a jerk, then the possibilities are what they are to that claim. The key is in digging through the ambiguity to see just what the claim is in fact.