Jokes about prison rape on men? Not a fan.

[Angra Mainyu]

That is a very big leap to make. I do not accept the unnecessary axiom that being pejorative of a common flaw in the system is unethical. Selfishness and tribalism are built into "human morality", too, and those are similarly bad.

That is not a flaw in the system. That is a key part of the system. It is a feature, not a bug. And it's not an axiom, it's an assessment. It's obvious both using one's own sense of right and wrong (if not damaged/blocked by ideology/religion), and by observing behavior of other human monkeys.

Morality is not ethics. Ethics are not morality. 0/2

immoral=unethical.
morally wrong=unethical.

You could go with another definition of 'ethics', like denoting the study of morality, etc., but then you would be equivocating.

begging the question.

Making an assessment.

By the way, do you realize that you're just making a claim that retribution is not just, not a part of human morality, etc.? I could tell you that you are begging the question.-

you are just assetring the premise here again, as part of your argument...

I'm just making an assessment again. For that matter, you made your assessment too. It was a false one, but regardless, the point is that with your criterion, you are asserting your premises that retribution for wrongdoing is wrong, unjust, etc.

Again begging the question. Are you going to actually provide reasonable arguments? No?

First, again I am making an assessment.
Second, you are making the claim that flies on the face of ordinary human moral experience.
If I point at a leaf that looks green to an ordinary human eye and I say it's green, but you tell me it's not green, well I would ask you to give the argument. I'm going with ordinary human moral assessments, as shown by observing how human monkeys behave. You condem ordinary human morality.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

M. A. does, and conflates punishment with revenge. You seem to accept that conflation. Do you? I don't think they're quite the same thing.

Who is M. A.?
If you are talking about me, of course I do not conflate them. Revenge can be just or unjust. Moreover, in a increasingly common use (in my experience), it is always unjust by definition. Just retribution is a form of vengeance in the non-negative (but neutral) sense of the term. But there are forms of vengeance that are not just retribution. Murdering the children of a rapist in order to punish him would be a form of revenge, but it would not be a form of just retribution. Beating the rapist up for raping would be just retribution (assuming rape for fun, or any other ordinary motivation).

 

[Jarhyn]

Misclick.

 

[Jarhyn]

That is not a flaw in the system. That is a key part of the system. It is a feature, not a bug. And it's not an axiom, it's an assessment. It's obvious both using one's own sense of right and wrong (if not damaged/blocked by ideology/religion), and by observing behavior of other human monkeys.

No matter how many bald assertions you make, those assertions will not actually make what you say true. You sound like Derec, Trausti, Metaphor, or Angelo.

"Assessments" without an argument behind them are what is known as an assertion.

Whine, kick, cry all you want over the fact that you have not justified your beliefs with reason, but you haven't. Is does not create ought. If you knew even the first thing about ethical philosophy you would understand that.

It's literally my job to look at systems and figure out what is going wrong, what adjustments they need, how they fall away from a functional model. Plenty of people operate on pure "moral intuition" and plenty of such people are complete and utter monsters.

"It's obvious"
"It's common sense"
HA!

You have done no such thing. If human morality was so functional, we wouldn't have needed ethical philosophy in the first place. Or laws. Literally NOTHING in the universe operates in the way our ignorant intuitions would immediately suggest. Not from the biggest things, to the smallest. We are always wrong either in subtle or grand measure. Always.

immoral=unethical.
morally wrong=unethical.

More bald assertions, equivocation, begging the question. As I have pointed out, it is ridiculous to think that a mechanism that sprouted from selection pressures in the Paleolithic, before behavior modification, psychology, before secure prisons, before education, before the written word, before formal logic, before math or even consistent spoken language is somehow an accurate model of what is best for us to do with regards to when people behave badly.

You could go with another definition of 'ethics', like denoting the study of morality, etc., but then you would be equivocating.

LOL. "Not equivocating is equivocating". Fucking fantastic.

Let me spell this out for you in a way you won't understand but a six year old probably would: there are two concepts at discussion here, morality and ethics.

Morality is the way we feel about "what is right". It is in fact a cluster of systems, a set of early believed concepts passed on in society and deeper emotional structures that provide a "suggestion" of how to act to solve problems with regards to interpersonal conflict. The earlier part comes from traditions and rules of a form our brains are "primed" to accept as truth, and the later comes from the selective pressures of the Paleolithic era. Note that evolution does not target optimal solutions, merely 'functional enough' solutions.

Ethics, on the other hand, are an academic and philosophical modeling of the optimal strategies for interpersonal conflict resolution and behavior.

A serial killer who feels sex is immoral and punishment is moral is acting in a perfectly "moral" way to murder prostitutes. But it isn't very ethical. He could use his reason to see why his action against the consent of others is not reasonable or rational, but he does not. He is a slave to his emotional morality that drives him to kill prostitutes, much like you recommend others act as slaves to their primitive, base moral instincts.

Of course, I fully expect you to say "well, their .orality is 'broken', but you won't provide me anything to justify that view, except an appeal to the mean. While I can, if you would like, actually point to the mechanism, a framework of principles and understanding that create a reason why asymmetrical ethical systems (and moral machineries) are a problem, and the underlying mechanisms of reality and how they imply, in the presence of a goal, a strategy to accomplish the goal in a way that is possibly symmetrical (as opposed to mere morals).

begging the question.

Making an assessment.

begging the question.

By the way, do you realize that you're just making a claim that retribution is not just, not a part of human morality, etc.? I could tell you that you are begging the question.-

You are the one making the assertion that there is nothing in ethics past "human morality". I point to the fact that "human morality" is an approximation (and a bad one, at that), of some real operant model.

It all really comes down to evolutionary strategies available to entities within a system. Darwinism systems create more pressure to permanent consequences for individuals, including execution. They heavily favor revenge

But humans don't evolve that way, not really. Our greatest gift from our darwinistic history is in fact that we evolved strong support for a new evolutionary model, and this new evolutionary model creates of each other peers. In this way, retributive justice is an artifact, much like a recurrent laryngeal nerve. Our game is not "evolve better, kill the weak or 'evil' to remove from gene pool". Ours is "try/invent/learn, test, teach." It's a different game in reality than the one that brought us the revenge drive, and it serves us all much better. Of course, the proof of that pudding is in the Nordic model, where these principles lead to lower recidivism, better outcomes for rehabilitated persons, and a more peaceful society at large.

you are just assetring the premise here again, as part of your argument...

I'm just making an assessment again. For that matter, you made your assessment too. It was a false one, but regardless, the point is that with your criterion, you are asserting your premises that retribution for wrongdoing is wrong, unjust, etc.

I am asserting the null hypothesis on your assertions. You made a claim: "revenge is just". I've been asking you to prove it with more than "I and my buddies really fucking like it!"

You have not.

In the mean time, I point to the reality of better outcomes when we use non-retributive justice, the reality of the implications of neo-lamarckian ethical game theory, the logic of utilitarian goal planning. If the decision is between having another person available oay call friend (at the expense of some work or deep discussion or some behavior modification regiment that they have accepted to undertake), I have another perspective against problems, and potentially a valuable one. Or I could hurt them for actions they felt "justified" to take to the same extent that I felt "justified" to hurt them, have them resent me for doing it, not learn anything, and get more revenge in kind.

Again begging the question. Are you going to actually provide reasonable arguments? No?

First, again I am making an assessment.
Second, you are making the claim that flies on the face of ordinary human moral experience.
If I point at a leaf that looks green to an ordinary human eye and I say it's green, but you tell me it's not green, well I would ask you to give the argument. I'm going with ordinary human moral assessments, as shown by observing how human monkeys behave. You condem ordinary human morality.

Of course I make claims that fly in the face of your bald assertions. Your analogy is cute, but has no bearing. I am doing nothing of the sort. You are pointing at a particle and saying "the electron is HERE, orbiting in this circle", and I am saying "elecrons are not in a location in that way, they are everywhere an nowhere in the probability curve defined by an election shell by a specific equation, though mostly in this area, in the same way that when I throw craps, you cannot say what number the dice are on until they have settled; the are not yet on the table though the probability curve falls around a mean of 7" and you say 'that flies in the face of how I and others understand things to exist at all, if the electron is real it must be somewhere and this is how it is" and I say "sorry, you are wrong, your understanding is wrong, your model is wrong, you can look at it in this way to see how you are wrong."

I absolutely condemn ignorant human morality because ignorant human morality is flawed, from the moment we pop out to the moment we end in the grave, in the same way I reject the planetary atomic model, and accept quantum mechanics as a system (among rejection of all other manner of intuitive but WRONG assumptions in society and human nature).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

No matter how many bald assertions you make, those assertions will not actually make what you say true. You sound like Derec, Trausti, Metaphor, or Angelo.

3 out of 4 are correct much more often than you are. The arguments I am using here are pretty different from any of the points I've seen them make - but often their assessments are clearly correct, and yours are clearly wrong. Well, 3 out of 4; 1 is usually wrong.

"Assessments" without an argument behind them are what is known as an assertion.

No, those are different things. But that is not the point. You seem to think argument is needed to back up any claims. Obviously, if that were the case, you would get infinite regress of arguments. There is such thing as the probability (not numerical, but approximate and intuitive) that it is proper to assign to a statement, claim, etc. When you make assessments that fly on the face of ordinary moral faculties, they are very, very improbable. And you are doing that.

However, I actually did give arguments:

1. I appealed to the moral sense of readers. Not yours, obviously, since it is failing due to ideology. But that is a human faculty they can use to assess what is just and what is not. That's a rational way of making moral assessments.

2. I provided empirical evidence from widespread human behavior. When people are morally outraged and demand justice, they demand usually that the perpetrators be punished for what they did. That is part of the human moral faculty. It's a feeling of moral outrage, which is accompanied by the intuitive assessment that what the perpetrators did was immoral and that they deserve to be punished accordingly.

Whine, kick, cry all you want over the fact that you have not justified your beliefs with reason, but you haven't. Is does not create ought. If you knew even the first thing about ethical philosophy you would understand that.

The human moral sense is what it is. And of course, oughts follow from is. It is immoral of you to try to destroy the human moral faculty (even if you fail to realize that you are doing that). It follows that you ought not to do that. Even if my assessment were incorrect (which it is not), that would show that a moral 'ought' follows from an is, at least as long as the 'is' is 'is immoral'.

But this is not a relevant matter. The point is that by assessing the matters normally, using their sense of right and wrong, humans reckon that some other humans deserve to be punished for what they did. You are going up against the human moral sense. The burden is on you. Again, if I point at a leaf that looks green to an ordinary human eye and I say it's green, but you tell me it's not green, well I would ask you to give the argument. I'm going with ordinary human moral assessments, as shown by observing how human monkeys behave. You condem ordinary human morality.

It's literally my job to look at systems and figure out what is going wrong, what adjustments they need, how they fall away from a functional model. Plenty of people operate on pure "moral intuition" and plenty of such people are complete and utter monsters.

Of course it is useful to think about a situation, who did what, consequences to be expected, etc. But in the end, the proper way of making moral assessments is to use one's intuitive sense of right and wrong. What else? Argument? From premises? How do you justify the premises? You put the cart before the horses.

You have done no such thing. If human morality was so functional, we wouldn't have needed ethical philosophy in the first place. Or laws. Literally NOTHING in the universe operates in the way our ignorant intuitions would immediately suggest. Not from the biggest things, to the smallest. We are always wrong either in subtle or grand measure. Always.

When a philosopher comes up with a theory, there is one way to test it: see whether its predictions are true, while assessing them by means of the human moral sense.

If human morality were so dysfunctional, then ethical philosophy would be useless, because we would lack the means to tell whether a theory is correct. Philosophers come up with radically different theories. If the human moral sense is not the tool to test them , then there is no tool to test them, barring internal inconsistency, or false nonmoral predictions.

More bald assertions, equivocation, begging the question.

No, that's a common usage of the terms. It's the most common usage. And in any event, it's what I meant by unethical. The same as immoral.

As I have pointed out, it is ridiculous to think that a mechanism that sprouted from selection pressures in the Paleolithic, before behavior modification, psychology, before secure prisons, before education, before the written word, before formal logic, before math or even consistent spoken language is somehow an accurate model of what is best for us to do with regards to when people behave badly.

As I have pointed out, the mechanism that sprouted from selection pressures in the Paleolithic, before behavior modification, psychology, before secure prisons, before education, before the written word, before formal logic, before math or even consistent spoken language is our human moral sense; we do not have access to moral knowledge without it. Furthermore, moral terms track what it tracks

Don't you realize? Monkeys have a moral sense, and some other faculties. Monkeys become smart enough to talk. So, monkeys use words to talk about what they care, which is the verdicts of their faculties. Like, they talk about illness and health, about colors, about females and males, and about justice and injustice, right and wrong, and so on.

Let me spell this out for you in a way you won't understand but a six year old probably would: there are two concepts at discussion here, morality and ethics.

Look at what you did. I used the word "unethical" and you then attacked my usage of the word. If you want to use them to mean something else, that does not affect my points.

Morality is the way we feel about "what is right". It is in fact a cluster of systems, a set of early believed concepts passed on in society and deeper emotional structures that provide a "suggestion" of how to act to solve problems with regards to interpersonal conflict. The earlier part comes from traditions and rules of a form our brains are "primed" to accept as truth, and the later comes from the selective pressures of the Paleolithic era. Note that evolution does not target optimal solutions, merely 'functional enough' solutions.

Ethics, on the other hand, are an academic and philosophical modeling of the optimal strategies for interpersonal conflict resolution and behavior.

I, on the other hand, do not use your terminology. I use "immoral" and "unethical" to mean the same thing, and that is what human monkeys mean by those words if they speak English and are engaging in moral assessments - or ethical assessments, which is the same, i.e., assessing whether something is immoral, morally permissible, just, unjust, etc.

A serial killer who feels sex is immoral and punishment is moral is acting in a perfectly "moral" way to murder prostitutes.

No, the serial killer in question has a malfunctioning sense of right and wrong, and is making a mistaken assessment. Usually, serial killers have other motivations by the way.

But it isn't very ethical.

Sure, it's unethical=immoral. He believes his behavior is morally praiseworthy and/or obligatory (I do not know enough about your scenario), but it is not.

He could use his reason to see why his action against the consent of others is not reasonable or rational, but he does not.

No, he could not, unless his sense of right and wrong tells him so. Aliens from another planet might visit the Earth and hunt humans for fun, and there is nothing irrational about it per se (it might depending on their own minds). The word "reasonable" already invokes a moral component. But the aliens might as well be amoral. And the serial killer is irrational because he fails to realize, observing the behavior of others, studying evolution, etc., that his own sense of right and wrong is failing.

He is a slave to his emotional morality that drives him to kill prostitutes, much like you recommend others act as slaves to their primitive, base moral instincts.

What you want is to destroy part of human morality. But you do not realize it.

Of course, I fully expect you to say "well, their .orality is 'broken', but you won't provide me anything to justify that view, except an appeal to the mean. While I can, if you would like, actually point to the mechanism, a framework of principles and understanding that create a reason why asymmetrical ethical systems (and moral machineries) are a problem, and the underlying mechanisms of reality and how they imply, in the presence of a goal, a strategy to accomplish the goal in a way that is possibly symmetrical (as opposed to mere morals).

The main goal of punishing the guilty is...punishing the guilty. It's an end in an of itself. There might be further goals, like protecting society. But it's still, on its own, a goal. Given by our own sense of right and wrong. Our moral sense. Whatever you mean by "assymetrical ethical systems", there is a human morality, and you are trying to break it.

Our game is not "evolve better, kill the weak or 'evil' to remove from gene pool".

Of course not the weak or "evil". But rather, kill the evil (no quotation marks), if he's evil enough to deserve execution. Else, beat him up, or imprison him, etc., depending on what he did and the availability of punitive means.

Of course, the proof of that pudding is in the Nordic model, where these principles lead to lower recidivism, better outcomes for rehabilitated persons, and a more peaceful society at large.

Of course, they too engage in retributive actions all the time, as they are humans. But when the do not, that results in injustice. Now, perhaps you could argue that injustice - in the form of letting the perpetrator get away with it and also prevent the victim and others from inflicting revenge - is still justified in order to protect the innocent. But that would be a very different argument.

You made a claim: "revenge is just".

Misquote, and gross misrepresentation of my claims. Retribution is a significant part of morality. But not all forms of revenge are just. Obviously.

I've been asking you to prove it with more than "I and my buddies really fucking like it!"

That is unreasonable. Imagine I point at a leaf that looks green to an ordinary human eye under ordinary light conditions and I say it's green, but you tell me it's not green, well I would ask you to give the argument. The rational assessment is that it is almost certainly green, barring significant evidence to the contrary.

Similarly, you are saying that all of the instances of retribution that look just to the ordinary human moral sense under ordinary social conditions, are unjust. The rational assessment is that your claim is vastly improbable. You would have to give evidence to the contrary. But you are just massively missing the point.

In the mean time, I point to the reality of better outcomes when we use non-retributive justice, the reality of the implications of neo-lamarckian ethical game theory, the logic of utilitarian goal planning.

No, you are not pointing to the reality of better outcomes. You are claiming that an outcome is better, without explaining why it is so (which, obviously, one can only assess by means of the moral sense!!). I can tell you in which ways it is not better: it is unjust. The very fact that people who deserve punishment are not getting punished is something that makes the outcome worse all other things equal. Now, you might argue it's still overall better. But that would not make retribution unjust.

Of course I make claims that fly in the face of your bald assertions. Your analogy is cute, but has no bearing. I am doing nothing of the sort. You are pointing at a particle and saying "the electron is HERE, orbiting in this circle", and I am saying "elecrons are not in a location in that way, they are everywhere an nowhere in the probability curve defined by an election shell by a specific equation, though mostly in this area, in the same way that when I throw craps, you cannot say what number the dice are on until they have settled; the are not yet on the table though the probability curve falls around a mean of 7" and you say 'that flies in the face of how I and others understand things to exist at all, if the electron is real it must be somewhere and this is how it is" and I say "sorry, you are wrong, your understanding is wrong, your model is wrong, you can look at it in this way to see how you are wrong."

No, that is not remotely what is happening. Humans do not have an electron-detecting sense. We do have a moral sense, as we have color vision.

I absolutely condemn ignorant human morality because ignorant human morality is flawed, from the moment we pop out to the moment we end in the grave, in the same way I reject the planetary atomic model, and accept quantum mechanics as a system (among rejection of all other manner of intuitive but WRONG assumptions in society and human nature).

Morality is human morality. Aliens would not have morality, as they would not have color vision. They might have an analogue color* vision, and morality*, but those would be different things (well, if the universe is large enough some will be like us, but that's not what should be expected in the observable universe, but different things).

The human moral sense, like human color vision, is not perfect. But it both informs what we actually mean by moral/color terms, and is our guide to finding moral/color truth. You are going up against justice. And you're also going up against the windmills. Again, barring massive genetic engineering, you cannot eliminate this feature of human morality. And you can't even suppress it barring a dictator AGI or something like that.

 

[ruby sparks]

Beating the rapist up for raping would be just retribution.

Naturalistic fallacy.

 

[Jarhyn]

Beating the rapist up for raping would be just retribution.

Naturalistic fallacy.

At this point, I think I'm fairly well justified writing AM off with the rest? I hate building such a collection. Like, what is it about conservatives assuming their premises?

It's like they have fallacy blindness. Which makes some sense, to me.

Like they claim all through this that it's tilting against windmills to expect people to be better when there are clear examples of people shifting to restorative justice rather than retributive justice functionally.

They can't seem to divorce culture from an issue. They cannot seem to understand... Much of anything beyond what they absolutely insist on believing.

Like, this person, with their idiotic posts, doesn't seem to understand that we use our reason to overcome our emotions all the time.

They don't seem to understand that we are not talking about how eyes or particular moral machinery works but rather about how math and systems of axioms work. Regardless, there's clearly nothing there beyond excuses. It's sad.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Beating the rapist up for raping would be just retribution.

how much justice is just, though?
If i rape one person, then i get raped, that seems just.
But if i rape three people, what's just? Each of my victims suffered one rape, one unit of mental and physical harm. Would my being raped once equal the harm i have inflicted on each victim? Or is it not just until i have been raped three times?
Or if i rape five people seven times? Where's the sweet spot for justice counter-rape?

And assuming that there are answers to these questions, how do the justice rapists know when they have achieved justice with justified rapes? When do they stop? Or do they just continue raping after justice us served?

Because that would be unjust, a justice raper throwing the scales to the rapist's favor, but they're both still in prison.

Or justice beaters.
Or justice bullies.
Or justice whatever we do

 

[laughing dog]

Yes. You have a "revenge boner". A lot of people do. In this case "revenge boner" is a pejorative description of the desire to consummate revenge and experience a drive relief. It is a pejorative for any aroused emotional drive. You get "horny" but instead of that horniness to rub your dick, it's horniness to see someone else suffer during an act of revenge. It is a base instinct and one that rational humans should learn to either overcome or redirect.

It is a pejorative description of a significant portion of human morality, and since you do that deliberately, it is unethical on your part to do that. It is also epistemically irrational on your part to fail to realize that this is part of human morality. Humans who are being epistemically rational will realize just retribution is, well, just.

I feel like I just heard you say that Jarhyn was unethical for saying that people who want retribution in the form of prison rape have a boner.

We’re talking about people who want to hurt other people in serious ways and the person who is mocking it is the bad guy in that equaltion?

I did not see that coming...

Clearly you have no idea what it means to be "epistemically rational". Apparently to the epistemically rational, that morality (redistributive justice") is part of our genetic makeup, so that we are "hardwired" to just brutal feelings. Experience, education and life experience cannot change our feelings.

Frankly, I find the argument that it is part of natural nature to handwaved defeatist nonsense. But then again, I am epistemically irrational.

 

[Rhea]

2. I provided empirical evidence from widespread human behavior. When people are morally outraged and demand justice, they demand usually that the perpetrators be punished for what they did.

I don’t think you really provided any evidence here, and I do not accept your claim that it is widespread. If revenge punishment was widespread, society would look very different than it does. Road rage is the exception that proves the rule: The fact that it’s an exception demonstrates that lack of widespread retribution is the rule.

As I have pointed out, the mechanism that sprouted from selection pressures in the Paleolithic, before behavior modification, psychology, before secure prisons, before education, before the written word, before formal logic, before math or even consistent spoken language is our human moral sense; we do not have access to moral knowledge without it. Furthermore, moral terms track what it tracks

This claim assumes that the conditions of paleolithic life are still present. They are not. There is significantly more security in life. There are many more ethical rules than then, No, you do not show that we are still compelled by the same reactions. Our urges are dulled by safety, no longer automatic, no longer unrestrained. Our moral sense is not the same due to the lack of stress and trauma - they simply do not express themselves, they are biologically not present, just like the domestication of dogs.

I, on the other hand, do not use your terminology. I use "immoral" and "unethical" to mean the same thing,

I thought it was weird that you’d say you don’t use those words the same way, so to double check I looked up how the rest of the english speaking world uses them...

While they're closely related concepts, morals refer mainly to guiding principles, and ethics refer to specific rules and actions, or behaviors. A moralprecept is an idea or opinion that's driven by a desire to be good. An ethical code is a set of rules that defines allowable actions or correct behavior.

You may want to develop your vocabulary in this area.

The main goal of punishing the guilty is...punishing the guilty. It's an end in an of itself. There might be further goals, like protecting society. But it's still, on its own, a goal.

For you, perhaps. But not for vast swaths of humanity. It’s a little chilling to have you express that you find this obvious and universal, indicating that you behave this way on a regular basis, while the rest of us do not. Do you have to fight with yourself daily to avoid punishing those around you in road rage or anti-mask abuse or workplae violence? Most of us do not. We simply do not feel the need to punish.. There is no urge, we do not have to fight it.

Now, perhaps you could argue that injustice - in the form of letting the perpetrator get away with it and also prevent the victim and others from inflicting revenge [...] Imagine I point at a leaf that looks green to an ordinary human eye under ordinary light conditions and I say it's green, but you tell me it's not green, well I would ask you to give the argument. The rational assessment is that it is almost certainly green, barring significant evidence to the contrary.

This response again assumes that your outlook is the norm. That your outlook is “ordinary,” and the rest of us are saying that grass is blue. Which, #1, can you tell me where you live so that I can never stumble across you? And #2, is shown to be false by how many people do not walk around in a rage of unrequited punishment.

 

[Bomb#20]

Yes. You have a "revenge boner". A lot of people do. In this case "revenge boner" is a pejorative description of the desire to consummate revenge and experience a drive relief. It is a pejorative for any aroused emotional drive. You get "horny" but instead of that horniness to rub your dick, it's horniness to see someone else suffer during an act of revenge.

What have you got against boners? "You no play-a the game, you no make-a the rules, Your Eminence." In what way is you trying to shame somebody out of revenge substantively different from a priest trying to shame somebody out of masturbation?

It is a base instinct and one that rational humans should learn to either overcome or redirect.

Let me translate that piety into plain English for you: "Your moral judgments are emotional; my moral judgments are unemotional because I feel they are."

It doesn't matter where in the brain this conceptual revenge penis lives. It is an evolved drive. It is an evolved drive to serve a purpose, perhaps badly, but "good enough for the Paleolithic". Lots of things were good enough for the Paleolithic. They just aren't good enough for now. No amount of hand waving and wishing will get you past is-/>ought.

Let me translate that piety into plain English for you too: "Your moral judgments mistake is for ought; my moral judgments are immune to the is/ought problem, because reasons."

You need a goal to get there, and then select the path from (situation) to (goal) that has the best outcome.

How do you imagine you are forming your opinions as to what "rational humans should" do, and what things "aren't good enough", and which is "the best outcome", other than by "aroused emotional drive"? You throw Hume at others, you're going to get Hume thrown at you. "Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions".

As Rhea stated, "rehab instead of punishment, and in cases when rehab is not possible, simply removal from public of the dangerous," is a much better model.

"Better", you say. Better by what criterion?

The only question is, do you think you can be more reasonable and rational than cave men. I joined these boards when it was still "freethought and rationalism discussion boards". "Letting my revenge boner steer me into revenge" is not a rational process, it is an emotional one.

Let's first see you show your hostility to boners is not an emotional process but a rational one; then we'll see if those you accuse of irrationality can meet whatever standard you hold yourself to.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Beating the rapist up for raping would be just retribution.

Naturalistic fallacy.

Do you have any argument to back up that claim? I mean, it is obvious to me that it is false, but without any argument to back it up, I do not know why you might believe it. But I will hope that you are interested in a serious discussion, so let me show you why your claim is false. In fact, while my claim is true, even if my claim were false, it would not be an instance of the naturalistic fallacy.

My claim is based on an intuitive moral assessment. I use my own sense of right and wrong. It can also be based on evidence regarding what the human moral sense normally says, by looking at other monkeys. So, I can add that as evidence as well, though it is not necessary.

Now let us take a look at the naturalistic fallacy, which of course is not a fallacy, as those committing the fallacy do not need to be making any sort of logical error.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#NatFal

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/53430/53430-h/53430-h.htm#Sec_14

‘Good,’ then, if we mean by it that quality which we assert to belong to a thing, when we say that the thing is good, is incapable of any definition, in the most important sense of that word. The most important sense of ‘definition’ is that in which a definition states what are the parts which invariably compose a certain whole; and in this sense ‘good’ has no definition because it is simple and has no parts. It is one of[p. 10] those innumerable objects of thought which are themselves incapable of definition, because they are the ultimate terms by reference to which whatever is capable of definition must be defined. That there must be an indefinite number of such terms is obvious, on reflection; since we cannot define anything except by an analysis, which, when carried as far as it will go, refers us to something, which is simply different from anything else, and which by that ultimate difference explains the peculiarity of the whole which we are defining: for every whole contains some parts which are common to other wholes also. There is, therefore, no intrinsic difficulty in the contention that ‘good’ denotes a simple and indefinable quality. There are many other instances of such qualities.

Consider yellow, for example. We may try to define it, by describing its physical equivalent; we may state what kind of light-vibrations must stimulate the normal eye, in order that we may perceive it. But a moment’s reflection is sufficient to shew that those light-vibrations are not themselves what we mean by yellow. They are not what we perceive. Indeed we should never have been able to discover their existence, unless we had first been struck by the patent difference of quality between the different colours. The most we can be entitled to say of those vibrations is that they are what corresponds in space to the yellow which we actually perceive.

Yet a mistake of this simple kind has commonly been made about ‘good.’ It may be true that all things which are good are also something else, just as it is true that all things which are yellow produce a certain kind of vibration in the light. And it is a fact, that Ethics aims at discovering what are those other properties belonging to all things which are good. But far too many philosophers have thought that when they named those other properties they were actually defining good; that these properties, in fact, were simply not ‘other,’ but absolutely and entirely the same with goodness. This view I propose to call the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ and of it I shall now endeavour to dispose.

and

Suppose a man says ‘I am pleased’; and suppose that is not a lie or a mistake but the truth. Well, if it is true, what does that mean? It means that his mind, a certain definite mind, distinguished by certain definite marks from all others, has at this moment a certain definite feeling called pleasure. ‘Pleased’ means nothing but having pleasure, and though we may be more pleased or less pleased, and even, we may admit for the present, have one or another kind of pleasure; yet in so far as it is pleasure we have, whether there be more or less of it, and whether it be of one kind or another, what we have is[p. 13] one definite thing, absolutely indefinable, some one thing that is the same in all the various degrees and in all the various kinds of it that there may be. We may be able to say how it is related to other things: that, for example, it is in the mind, that it causes desire, that we are conscious of it, etc., etc. We can, I say, describe its relations to other things, but define it we can not. And if anybody tried to define pleasure for us as being any other natural object; if anybody were to say, for instance, that pleasure means the sensation of red, and were to proceed to deduce from that that pleasure is a colour, we should be entitled to laugh at him and to distrust his future statements about pleasure. Well, that would be the same fallacy which I have called the naturalistic fallacy. That ‘pleased’ does not mean ‘having the sensation of red,’ or anything else whatever, does not prevent us from understanding what it does mean. It is enough for us to know that ‘pleased’ does mean ‘having the sensation of pleasure,’ and though pleasure is absolutely indefinable, though pleasure is pleasure and nothing else whatever, yet we feel no difficulty in saying that we are pleased. The reason is, of course, that when I say ‘I am pleased,’ I do not mean that ‘I’ am the same thing as ‘having pleasure.’ And similarly no difficulty need be found in my saying that ‘pleasure is good’ and yet not meaning that ‘pleasure’ is the same thing as ‘good,’ that pleasure means good, and that good means pleasure. If I were to imagine that when I said ‘I am pleased,’ I meant that I was exactly the same thing as ‘pleased,’ I should not indeed call that a naturalistic fallacy, although it would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics. The reason of this is obvious enough. When a man confuses two natural objects with one another, defining the one, by the other, if for instance, he confuses himself, who is one natural object, with ‘pleased’ or with ‘pleasure’ which are others, then there is no reason to call the fallacy naturalistic. But if he confuses ‘good,’ which is not in the same sense a natural object, with any natural object whatever, then there is a reason for calling that a naturalistic fallacy; its being made with regard to ‘good’ marks it as something quite specific, and this specific mistake deserves a name because it is so common.[p. 14] As for the reasons why good is not to be considered a natural object, they may be reserved for discussion in another place. But, for the present, it is sufficient to notice this: Even if it were a natural object, that would not alter the nature of the fallacy nor diminish its importance one whit. All that I have said about it would remain quite equally true: only the name which I have called it would not be so appropriate as I think it is. And I do not care about the name: what I do care about is the fallacy. It does not matter what we call it, provided we recognise it when we meet with it. It is to be met with in almost every book on Ethics; and yet it is not recognised: and that is why it is necessary to multiply illustrations of it, and convenient to give it a name. It is a very simple fallacy indeed. When we say that an orange is yellow, we do not think our statement binds us to hold that ‘orange’ means nothing else than ‘yellow,’ or that nothing can be yellow but an orange. Supposing the orange is also sweet! Does that bind us to say that ‘sweet’ is exactly the same thing as ‘yellow,’ that ‘sweet’ must be defined as ‘yellow’? And supposing it be recognised that ‘yellow’ just means ‘yellow’ and nothing else whatever, does that make it any more difficult to hold that oranges are yellow? Most certainly it does not: on the contrary, it would be absolutely meaningless to say that oranges were yellow, unless yellow did in the end mean just ‘yellow’ and nothing else whatever—unless it was absolutely indefinable. We should not get any very clear notion about things, which are yellow—we should not get very far with our science, if we were bound to hold that everything which was yellow, meant exactly the same thing as yellow. We should find we had to hold that an orange was exactly the same thing as a stool, a piece of paper, a lemon, anything you like. We could prove any number of absurdities; but should we be the nearer to the truth? Why, then, should it be different with ‘good’? Why, if good is good and indefinable, should I be held to deny that pleasure is good? Is there any difficulty in holding both to be true at once? On the contrary, there is no meaning in saying that pleasure is good, unless good is something different from pleasure. It is absolutely useless, so far as Ethics is concerned, to prove, as Mr Spencer[p. 15] tries to do, that increase of pleasure coincides with increase of life, unless good means something different from either life or pleasure. He might just as well try to prove that an orange is yellow by shewing that it always is wrapped up in paper.

I recommend reading the whole thing if you're interested, but despite Moore's lack of clarity in some passages, this so-called "fallacy" would consist in holding that by "good" (or some other moral term) we mean the same as "pleasure", or some other so-called "natural" property. Now, perhaps the natural/non-natural classification Moore is trying to make is just meaningless. Or maybe not. But either way, the "fallacy" - whether called "naturalistic" or not - is about identifying the meaning of moral terms with that of something that can be described in non-moral terms (where "moral" terms wold be defined by ostension, e.g., 'immoral', 'unethical', 'morally permissible', but not 'cat', 'green', etc. )

Obviously, I made no such claims at all in this thread. If you think I did, quote me.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

At this point, I think I'm fairly well justified writing AM off with the rest? I hate building such a collection. Like, what is it about conservatives assuming their premises?

People committed to an ideology/religion tend to see me as a member of the group they hate.
For example, most right-wingers I have debated believed I am a left-winger. Without justification, they attributed to me beliefs and intentions that left-wingers usually have but I do not, as well as beliefs that left-wingers usually do not have and I do not have but right-wingers usually accuse left-wingers of having.
For example, most left-wingers I have debated believed I am a right-winger. Without justification, they attributed to me beliefs and intentions that right-wingers usually have but I do not, as well as beliefs that right-wingers usually do not have and I do not have but left-wingers usually accuse right-wingers of having.

Here is an example of rape victims demanding that the perpetrators be punished. By your criteria, these victims are acting on their revenge boners, and being unreasonable, it seems.

It's like they have fallacy blindness. Which makes some sense, to me.

Of course, you have no reason to remotely suspect that I committed a fallacy. Of course, the naturalistic fallacy is not at all a fallacy. Of course, I did not commit the naturalistic fallacy. Of course, you will almost certainly never realize any of that. You will double down, trible down, cuadruple down. But I speak for readers, not for you, or just (hopefully) stop.

Like they claim all through this that it's tilting against windmills to expect people to be better when there are clear examples of people shifting to restorative justice rather than retributive justice functionally.

Obviously, that is not remotely what I claimed. My position is that you are trying to destroy an important part of human morality, which would make people worse, blind to justice, etc., though you mistakenly believe that that would make people better. And I also say that you're going up against human nature on this one, so even Woke power will not suffice.

Like, this person, with their idiotic posts, doesn't seem to understand that we use our reason to overcome our emotions all the time.

Like, you believe you remotely understand my posts, but you just go with ideology to condemn me. Of course we can use reason. But reason does not tell us what to do without goals. Reason does not give us ultimate goals, but only means to ends once we have our ends. And one of the things that gives us ends is our moral sense, which includes a sense of just retribution.

They don't seem to understand that we are not talking about how eyes or particular moral machinery works but rather about how math and systems of axioms work.

Of course, math and axioms will provide no guide to moral knowledge on their own. You need a human moral sense for that, or at least a sufficiently close one to some extent (as found in other species, some extinct).

Regardless, there's clearly nothing there beyond excuses. It's sad.

It is sad that you are intelligent enough to understand why you are so wrong, but you almost certainly never will. How do I make that assessment? I have already encountered a gazillion people - both leftists and rightists - who, like you, follow their ideology, grossly misconstrue what their opponents say (though, I grant, they believe what they say of their opponents), and remain in error for the rest of their lives. Some of their biggest errors is about what their opponents believe, intend, or generally are about. They attack caricatures.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Beating the rapist up for raping would be just retribution.

how much justice is just, though?
If i rape one person, then i get raped, that seems just.
But if i rape three people, what's just? Each of my victims suffered one rape, one unit of mental and physical harm. Would my being raped once equal the harm i have inflicted on each victim? Or is it not just until i have been raped three times?
Or if i rape five people seven times? Where's the sweet spot for justice counter-rape?

And assuming that there are answers to these questions, how do the justice rapists know when they have achieved justice with justified rapes? When do they stop? Or do they just continue raping after justice us served?

Because that would be unjust, a justice raper throwing the scales to the rapist's favor, but they're both still in prison.

Or justice beaters.
Or justice bullies.
Or justice whatever we do

Let us go through your points in detail.

If i rape one person, then i get raped, that seems just.

No, that seems unjust. The reasons are several, but mostly the person who rapes you does not rape you as a means of retribution for the rape you committed. Rather, he rapes you mostly for fun, or to show his power, or some such reason. Moreover, even if a person intended to punish you for the rape, he should realize that raping you is not an adequate means, as it is very difficult to control his own emotions and not make it for some reason other than retribution.

Fortunately, there is more than one punishment that is fitting for a crime, usually. For example, beatings would be okay, but so is imprisonment. In the past, there was no possibility of imprisonment due to a lack of resources, so beatings were the way to go. Nowadays, more than one just punishment is available. Of course, whether it is morally acceptable to inflict a just punishment depends on different variables, including consequences. But that is a different matter.

But if i rape three people, what's just? Each of my victims suffered one rape, one unit of mental and physical harm. Would my being raped once equal the harm i have inflicted on each victim? Or is it not just until i have been raped three times?

As I mentioned, there is more than one available punishment. In this case, more prison time and more beatings would do. But how do we assess that?
As is normally the case with ethical questions, we contemplate a scenario and use our own sense of right and wrong. We do this to assess, on a case by case basis, what is morally permissible, or impermissible, or what is just or unjust. Our sense of morality is not infallible, but normally and usually it is good enough. We can of course also get some evidence by looking at the judgments made, in that particular case, by other people.

Alas, finding general principles is extremely difficult. But it is not more so for what is just and what is not just than it is for what is ethical or what is unethical, reasonable or unreasonable, and so on. Fortunately, in normal and usual cases we manage to figure things out.

Or if i rape five people seven times? Where's the sweet spot for justice counter-rape?

It would not be counter-rape (see above), but apart from that, if you are looking for a general principle, you will likely not find it. It's extremely difficult. What we have is a system that works on a case by case basis.


Still, for your particular scenario, I would go with more prison and/or beatings.

And assuming that there are answers to these questions, how do the justice rapists know when they have achieved justice with justified rapes? When do they stop? Or do they just continue raping after justice us served?

Well, it would not be with rape. But other than that, as usual with ethical questions, we decide on a case by case basis using our sense of right and wrong. That goes for assessments of justice, or of moral obligation, etc. .

Or justice beaters.
Or justice bullies.
Or justice whatever we do

Or imprisoners. Or executioners. It applies to all of it. But the argument you give fails. An interesting point is that you are making a moral argument. You are trying to appeal to the readers moral senses. Your argument is not good, but the idea of appealing to another person's moral sense is the right one. That is how you argue morality, in principle. And that is so because we humans do have a built-in moral sense with which we can usually tell right from wrong, good from evil, just from unjust.

As for rape, when actual victims of rape demand that the perpetrators be punished, they are not acting on unreasonable revenge boners. They want revenge. But it is just. Those who raped them for fun or to make them suffer or both, deserve to be punished and suffer for what they did.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

While they're closely related concepts, morals refer mainly to guiding principles, and ethics refer to specific rules and actions, or behaviors. A moralprecept is an idea or opinion that's driven by a desire to be good. An ethical code is a set of rules that defines allowable actions or correct behavior.

You may want to develop your vocabulary in this area.

I used the word "unethical" meaning the same as "immoral". That is correct English usage. Jarhyn decided to attack me for that. If you do realize that "unethical" and "immoral" mean the same in what is by far the most common usage in English, then you should realize that your charge is unwarranted. If you do not realize that "unethical" and "immoral" mean the same in what is by far the most common usage in English, then you should realize that.

I will get to the rest of your points later.

 

[ruby sparks]

Do you have any argument to back up that claim? I mean, it is obvious to me that it is false, but without any argument to back it up, I do not know why you might believe it. But I will hope that you are interested in a serious discussion, so let me show you why your claim is false. In fact, while my claim is true, even if my claim were false, it would not be an instance of the naturalistic fallacy.

My claim is based on an intuitive moral assessment. I use my own sense of right and wrong. It can also be based on evidence regarding what the human moral sense normally says, by looking at other monkeys. So, I can add that as evidence as well, though it is not necessary.

Now let us take a look at the naturalistic fallacy, which of course is not a fallacy, as those committing the fallacy do not need to be making any sort of logical error.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#NatFal

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/53430/53430-h/53430-h.htm#Sec_14

‘Good,’ then, if we mean by it that quality which we assert to belong to a thing, when we say that the thing is good, is incapable of any definition, in the most important sense of that word. The most important sense of ‘definition’ is that in which a definition states what are the parts which invariably compose a certain whole; and in this sense ‘good’ has no definition because it is simple and has no parts. It is one of[p. 10] those innumerable objects of thought which are themselves incapable of definition, because they are the ultimate terms by reference to which whatever is capable of definition must be defined. That there must be an indefinite number of such terms is obvious, on reflection; since we cannot define anything except by an analysis, which, when carried as far as it will go, refers us to something, which is simply different from anything else, and which by that ultimate difference explains the peculiarity of the whole which we are defining: for every whole contains some parts which are common to other wholes also. There is, therefore, no intrinsic difficulty in the contention that ‘good’ denotes a simple and indefinable quality. There are many other instances of such qualities.

Consider yellow, for example. We may try to define it, by describing its physical equivalent; we may state what kind of light-vibrations must stimulate the normal eye, in order that we may perceive it. But a moment’s reflection is sufficient to shew that those light-vibrations are not themselves what we mean by yellow. They are not what we perceive. Indeed we should never have been able to discover their existence, unless we had first been struck by the patent difference of quality between the different colours. The most we can be entitled to say of those vibrations is that they are what corresponds in space to the yellow which we actually perceive.

Yet a mistake of this simple kind has commonly been made about ‘good.’ It may be true that all things which are good are also something else, just as it is true that all things which are yellow produce a certain kind of vibration in the light. And it is a fact, that Ethics aims at discovering what are those other properties belonging to all things which are good. But far too many philosophers have thought that when they named those other properties they were actually defining good; that these properties, in fact, were simply not ‘other,’ but absolutely and entirely the same with goodness. This view I propose to call the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ and of it I shall now endeavour to dispose.

and

Suppose a man says ‘I am pleased’; and suppose that is not a lie or a mistake but the truth. Well, if it is true, what does that mean? It means that his mind, a certain definite mind, distinguished by certain definite marks from all others, has at this moment a certain definite feeling called pleasure. ‘Pleased’ means nothing but having pleasure, and though we may be more pleased or less pleased, and even, we may admit for the present, have one or another kind of pleasure; yet in so far as it is pleasure we have, whether there be more or less of it, and whether it be of one kind or another, what we have is[p. 13] one definite thing, absolutely indefinable, some one thing that is the same in all the various degrees and in all the various kinds of it that there may be. We may be able to say how it is related to other things: that, for example, it is in the mind, that it causes desire, that we are conscious of it, etc., etc. We can, I say, describe its relations to other things, but define it we can not. And if anybody tried to define pleasure for us as being any other natural object; if anybody were to say, for instance, that pleasure means the sensation of red, and were to proceed to deduce from that that pleasure is a colour, we should be entitled to laugh at him and to distrust his future statements about pleasure. Well, that would be the same fallacy which I have called the naturalistic fallacy. That ‘pleased’ does not mean ‘having the sensation of red,’ or anything else whatever, does not prevent us from understanding what it does mean. It is enough for us to know that ‘pleased’ does mean ‘having the sensation of pleasure,’ and though pleasure is absolutely indefinable, though pleasure is pleasure and nothing else whatever, yet we feel no difficulty in saying that we are pleased. The reason is, of course, that when I say ‘I am pleased,’ I do not mean that ‘I’ am the same thing as ‘having pleasure.’ And similarly no difficulty need be found in my saying that ‘pleasure is good’ and yet not meaning that ‘pleasure’ is the same thing as ‘good,’ that pleasure means good, and that good means pleasure. If I were to imagine that when I said ‘I am pleased,’ I meant that I was exactly the same thing as ‘pleased,’ I should not indeed call that a naturalistic fallacy, although it would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics. The reason of this is obvious enough. When a man confuses two natural objects with one another, defining the one, by the other, if for instance, he confuses himself, who is one natural object, with ‘pleased’ or with ‘pleasure’ which are others, then there is no reason to call the fallacy naturalistic. But if he confuses ‘good,’ which is not in the same sense a natural object, with any natural object whatever, then there is a reason for calling that a naturalistic fallacy; its being made with regard to ‘good’ marks it as something quite specific, and this specific mistake deserves a name because it is so common.[p. 14] As for the reasons why good is not to be considered a natural object, they may be reserved for discussion in another place. But, for the present, it is sufficient to notice this: Even if it were a natural object, that would not alter the nature of the fallacy nor diminish its importance one whit. All that I have said about it would remain quite equally true: only the name which I have called it would not be so appropriate as I think it is. And I do not care about the name: what I do care about is the fallacy. It does not matter what we call it, provided we recognise it when we meet with it. It is to be met with in almost every book on Ethics; and yet it is not recognised: and that is why it is necessary to multiply illustrations of it, and convenient to give it a name. It is a very simple fallacy indeed. When we say that an orange is yellow, we do not think our statement binds us to hold that ‘orange’ means nothing else than ‘yellow,’ or that nothing can be yellow but an orange. Supposing the orange is also sweet! Does that bind us to say that ‘sweet’ is exactly the same thing as ‘yellow,’ that ‘sweet’ must be defined as ‘yellow’? And supposing it be recognised that ‘yellow’ just means ‘yellow’ and nothing else whatever, does that make it any more difficult to hold that oranges are yellow? Most certainly it does not: on the contrary, it would be absolutely meaningless to say that oranges were yellow, unless yellow did in the end mean just ‘yellow’ and nothing else whatever—unless it was absolutely indefinable. We should not get any very clear notion about things, which are yellow—we should not get very far with our science, if we were bound to hold that everything which was yellow, meant exactly the same thing as yellow. We should find we had to hold that an orange was exactly the same thing as a stool, a piece of paper, a lemon, anything you like. We could prove any number of absurdities; but should we be the nearer to the truth? Why, then, should it be different with ‘good’? Why, if good is good and indefinable, should I be held to deny that pleasure is good? Is there any difficulty in holding both to be true at once? On the contrary, there is no meaning in saying that pleasure is good, unless good is something different from pleasure. It is absolutely useless, so far as Ethics is concerned, to prove, as Mr Spencer[p. 15] tries to do, that increase of pleasure coincides with increase of life, unless good means something different from either life or pleasure. He might just as well try to prove that an orange is yellow by shewing that it always is wrapped up in paper.

I recommend reading the whole thing if you're interested, but despite Moore's lack of clarity in some passages, this so-called "fallacy" would consist in holding that by "good" (or some other moral term) we mean the same as "pleasure", or some other so-called "natural" property. Now, perhaps the natural/non-natural classification Moore is trying to make is just meaningless. Or maybe not. But either way, the "fallacy" - whether called "naturalistic" or not - is about identifying the meaning of moral terms with that of something that can be described in non-moral terms (where "moral" terms wold be defined by ostension, e.g., 'immoral', 'unethical', 'morally permissible', but not 'cat', 'green', etc. )

Obviously, I made no such claims at all in this thread. If you think I did, quote me.

I got my definition here:

"The naturalistic fallacy is an informal logical fallacy which argues that if something is ‘natural’ it must be good. It is closely related to the is/ought fallacy – when someone tries to infer what ‘ought’ to be done from what ‘is’".

Ethics Explainer: Naturalistic Fallacy
https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explai...naturalistic fallacy is an,done from what 'is'.

Now, maybe that's not the naturalistic fallacy, maybe the writer of that piece got it wrong. Maybe it's just not Moore's naturalistic fallacy. Maybe it's more like the is-ought problem. Whatever. It's what you're doing, and it's flawed. To go from 'it's natural' to 'it's right' is unwarranted. Save yourself another wall of text because I'm not especially interested in discussing it at length with you. Plus we've done it before, and I didn't buy it then. Not even slightly. Because it's very flawed indeed, imo.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I don’t think you really provided any evidence here, and I do not accept your claim that it is widespread. If revenge punishment was widespread, society would look very different than it does. Road rage is the exception that proves the rule: The fact that it’s an exception demonstrates that lack of widespread retribution is the rule.

I did provide evidence just by pointing to how people usually behave. But if you disagree, I suggest you take a look at how people behave.

That aside, let us take a look at your substantive claims.

For the vast majority of time humans have been around, there were no prisons, nor the capability to build them. What do you think was done to those who rape people for fun? To serial killers?
Well, survivors or friends, family members, etc. (depending on the case) wanted of course revenge. But so did others. There is a very strong punitive sentiment. There is a feeling of moral outrage at what someone did, and the desire that they suffer the consequences. Those including beatings, shunning, or execution.

Of course, those were small proportion of cases. Punishments for wrongdoings happened all the time, at a much lower scale, as those were much smaller wrongdoings.

What about the present?
Well, in the present time, there are prisons. But the vast majority of retributive punishments still happen, at a much lower scale, involving much smaller wrongdoings.

Now, when it comes to behaviors that deserve bigger punishments, of course beatings, executions, etc. are still deserved. But then, alternatively, imprisonment is also deserved. There are more possibilities. And a person should weigh whether the good that comes from doing justice (e.g., beating up a perpetrator) justifies the bad that comes out of breaking the law, potentially undermining social peace. That depends on the circumstances.

In present-day society, nearly all of the just retribution still happens at the hands of individuals and does not involve law-breaking (minor punishment for minor wrongdoings, like telling people they should not behave that way in a way that shames them in front of others, etc.), but most of the "big" punishments seem to happen at the hands of the judiciary. They are just as long as the judges remember they are doing it for the purpose of giving the perpetrators what they deserve, if not only at least as one of the purposes (and the main one). It becomes unjust when the retributive motivation goes away.

This claim assumes that the conditions of paleolithic life are still present. They are not. There is significantly more security in life. There are many more ethical rules than then, No, you do not show that we are still compelled by the same reactions. Our urges are dulled by safety, no longer automatic, no longer unrestrained. Our moral sense is not the same due to the lack of stress and trauma - they simply do not express themselves, they are biologically not present, just like the domestication of dogs.

No, it does not assume so. Our moral sense allows us to tell right from wrong, just from unjust, good from evil, and also motivates us. If the motivation to to good, justice, the right thing, etc., is weakened - I do not think it is -, well that is too bad, as morality has been undermined. But I see no evidence of that.

But let me try in a different way: when we have to assess what is just or unjust, what means do we have?
You can say we have reason. Sure, but that's not enough. Reason tells you what follows from what, or what consequences are probable given certain events. But it does not tell you what is just or unjust. You can only use reason to, say, predict consequences. But then, you have to use other means. The usual way is the human moral sense. If you think you have another, what is it?

Now, you say the moral sense is not the same. But what do you mean by that? Has the moral sense become less accurate at ascertaining whether some behavior is unethical, for example? If so, that is too bad. But why would I think it is so?

Maybe you think it has become more accurate. But how is it that it did? Further evolution? Let's go with that. Great! So, we have a more accurate moral sense. But the fact remains that the means that we have to assess what is good or evil, ethical or unethical, just or unjust, is our moral sense, and secondarily observations of judgments made by others using their own moral sense.

Otherwise, how did our moral sense get to work better (assuming it did)? Better living conditions? So, we are better at telling right from wrong, just from unjust, etc., than people who live in tribes in the Amazon for instance? Well, then good for us (I'm not saying that's the case, just considering options given your claim). But again, it is our moral sense the tool that it is proper to use.

I, on the other hand, do not use your terminology. I use "immoral" and "unethical" to mean the same thing,

I thought it was weird that you’d say you don’t use those words the same way, so to double check I looked up how the rest of the english speaking world uses them...

But I do use the words 'immoral' and 'unethical' the same way, so nothing weird.

While they're closely related concepts, morals refer mainly to guiding principles, and ethics refer to specific rules and actions, or behaviors. A moralprecept is an idea or opinion that's driven by a desire to be good. An ethical code is a set of rules that defines allowable actions or correct behavior.

You may want to develop your vocabulary in this area.

I do not know who these "English Speaking People" are. It is rather obvious to me that in a very common English usage (the most common one by far, at least in the cases I've encountered), "immoral" and "unethical" mean the same.

But regardless, let's say that I'm mistaken. Maybe I have encountered unusual cases. Then I what I meant is "immoral", "morally wrong", "morally impermissible", etc., and my substantive points go through.

For you, perhaps. But not for vast swaths of humanity.

No, for nearly no one. Many believe so due to their ideology/religion. But look at what monkeys do, not at what religious monkeys say.

It’s a little chilling to have you express that you find this obvious and universal, indicating that you behave this way on a regular basis, while the rest of us do not. Do you have to fight with yourself daily to avoid punishing those around you in road rage or anti-mask abuse or workplae violence?

First, obviously, the vast majority of wrongdoings are minor wrongdoings that do not justify the use of violence.
Second, I have no interest whatsoever in doing violence against anyone at my work place. They do not do unjust violence against me (or any violence, really), so it would obviously be unjust and immoral on my part.

We simply do not feel the need to punish.. There is no urge, we do not have to fight it.

You got it really wrong. There is abundant evidence all over all of these threads. You will see people attacking each other all the time. Despite their religion/ideology, they are often acting - and you should be able to see it - on punitive sentiments, even if often misplaced. But imagine instead what happens when people commit much more serious offenses than insults, mirepresentations, demonization, etc. in an online forum. Or better yet: do not imagine it, but take a look. Instead of looking for counterexamples to make your case, try to look at the evidence as a whole, at what usually happens.

This response again assumes that your outlook is the norm. That your outlook is “ordinary,” and the rest of us are saying that grass is blue. Which, #1, can you tell me where you live so that I can never stumble across you? And #2, is shown to be false by how many people do not walk around in a rage of unrequited punishment.

#1: It's already below my name: Buenos Aires. But beyond that, what you are doing is an unjust assault against me. What motivated you? Anger perhaps? Moral indignation? Are you punishing me? If not, then why would you ask something like "can you tell me where you live so that I can never stumble across you? "?

#2: Of course that is not remotely true.

 

[ruby sparks]

My position is that you are trying to destroy an important part of human morality, which would make people worse, blind to justice, etc., though you mistakenly believe that that would make people better. And I also say that you're going up against human nature on this one, so even Woke power will not suffice.

They used to have public hangings, and crowds would come. Now they don't have public hangings. I suppose you would say that's not a good thing, that it's made people worse, because people have been deprived of a natural behaviour.

You yourself are inclined towards retribution. Many people are, probably by far the most, to at least some extent. That doesn't make it right. Yes, it's probably part of our evolved nature, but our nature is neither static nor simple. It's made up of a lot of different things and is often situational, and can be nuanced. There are alternatives. Forgiveness for example. That's another functional component of our contradictory nature. You could not show that retribution is more right than forgiveness before, and you can't do it now, no matter how many examples of humans and other apes being retributive you cite. Forgiveness is always one of the flies in the ointment of your simplistic theory.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I got my definition here:

"The naturalistic fallacy is an informal logical fallacy which argues that if something is ‘natural’ it must be good. It is closely related to the is/ought fallacy – when someone tries to infer what ‘ought’ to be done from what ‘is’".

Ethics Explainer: Naturalistic Fallacy
https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explai...naturalistic fallacy is an,done from what 'is'.

Now, maybe that's not the naturalistic fallacy, maybe the writer of that piece got it wrong. Maybe it's just not Moore's naturalistic fallacy. Maybe it's more like the is-ought problem. Whatever. It's what you're doing, and it's flawed. To go from 'it's natural' to 'it's right' is unwarranted. Save yourself another wall of text because I'm not that interested in discussing at length with you what is already obviously the case. Plus we've done it before, and I didn't buy it then. Not even slightly. Because it's very flawed indeed. Maybe someone else will discuss it with you.

It is not the naturalistic fallacy (that is a technical term), which I explained and provided links to. But regardless of terminology, your accusation is both false and unwarranted. Let me point out that I do not claim that anything is "natural". The term "natural" seems to vague to be useful in these contexts. In particular, I do not argue that just because something is natural, it must be good. You really do not understand what I am saying. Which is okay. But it's not okay to misrepresent my words.