Why ending a life is morally neutral

[Terxpahseyton]

I dunno beauty seems like a reasonable alternative that's not overly tainted with religious woo.

You act like beauty was a thing. That is terrible. Just terrible.
Very sad.
SAAAD
It is like Detroit.

Look - beauty is an emotion. You are emotions like pictures tagged to a line that is your life.
I ask you to recollect those pictures and realize: this is all you are. The line, shapes the projections - it is all just shape. The only thing real: the emotions. The pictures. And we all know them.
I believe this to be a self-evident truth, just like a true English Gentleman.

Are you disagreeing?
Are you?
Does any color, any shape, any face.... does anything have a true meaning not only special but unique to you? Are you some kind of god of experience? Or are you the same dog as the rest of us, experiencing the same shaded figures of feeling, just projected on different hollow paper figures.
This is the question you have to answer. Just as we all did before. As the Matrix did. As all philosophers did. As anyone did asking the simple question: What is going on? His or her path lead to emotions. And weather this was the universal bond ship of reality.
Is it yours? Or are you.... special? Like we all wanted to be? Is it that?

 

[Hygro]

Life is Good.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Well Hygro I have to say I very much welcome your contribution

But I want moar.

 

[Hygro]

That's the fundamental axiom. life is good. We're on Earth team, so Terran life is especially good. We're on human team, so human life is especially good. We're on individual team, so my life is especially good. But I recognize my particularity in spacetime. Life ending is morally neutral. Ending a life is evil. What comes from ending that life can be good. Such is the yin-yang and synthesis.

In the end, we're all food for each other. We must grow and love each other.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Well.... good it works for you.
But this is about truth. Since you do not seem to care about that, at all, but more like, a workable philosophy, fine by me - there is the door:_______
(hate to be like that - but I fought I would be more disdainful by keeping my disdain for myself? No it..ahhh... I do not know what I am doing. That is what is nice about truth. You can be a total jackoff and still feel good about yourself. Sorry to be disdainful)

 

[Timsup2nothin]

There is no truth, just agreement...and I tend to agree with Hygro on this one.

 

[Hygro]

Well.... good it works for you.
But this is about truth. Since you do not seem to care about that, at all, but more like, a workable philosophy, fine by me - there is the door:_______
(hate to be like that - but I fought I would be more disdainful by keeping my disdain for myself? No it..ahhh... I do not know what I am doing. That is what is nice about truth. You can be a total jackoff and still feel good about yourself. Sorry to be disdainful)

I presented you truth. Up2u2c.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Hey man that is my tac line!
Also I feel like hugging you all

 

[Perfection]

In the case you describe it is a product of agreement, not truth, which makes it still subjective.

I disagree with your no truths just agreements idea. Here's why:

Let's say 50 people measure a box (using various methodologies) and they arrive at the same measurement of 350mm. Why do all the measurements agree?

If you're unwilling to accept the idea that there are truths how are you going to entertain the idea the box really is 350mm?

Note that I'm not saying you have to be 100% certain here. I'm a fallibilist*. But I think there are truths and that we can come to know them, even if there is always some uncertainty.

*mostly - I'm less certain about mathematical truths

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I disagree with your no truths just agreements idea. Here's why:

Let's say 50 people measure a box (using various methodologies) and they arrive at the same measurement of 350mm. Why do all the measurements agree?

If you're unwilling to accept the idea that there are truths how are you going to entertain the idea the box really is 350mm?

Note that I'm not saying you have to be 100% certain here. I'm a fallibilist*. But I think there are truths and that we can come to know them, even if there is always some uncertainty.

*mostly - I'm less certain about mathematical truths

All the measurements agree because all the measurers have agreed on a system of measurement. They've also agreed on what they mean by the word box. The object "really" is an object, and it "really" is whatever dimensions it is. No amount of measurement or parsing out definitions can change that. But that isn't truth, it is just objective reality. And "350mm" or "it's a box" are just agreements, not truths either.

 

[Perfection]

All the measurements agree because all the measurers have agreed on a system of measurement. They've also agreed on what they mean by the word box. The object "really" is an object, and it "really" is whatever dimensions it is. No amount of measurement or parsing out definitions can change that. But that isn't truth, it is just objective reality. And "350mm" or "it's a box" are just agreements, not truths either.

So do you agree that the box really has some dimensions out there in objective reality? Why can't we refer to those as the true dimensions?

 

[timtofly]

Perhaps there are enough people who agree on truths, and one's disagreement only hampers the one and not the rest?

My point would be we are still as humans internally agreeing, and that hardly makes a truth, much less so, can deny a truth.

Timsup2nothin just decided to deny himself any truth.

 

[Perfection]

Perhaps there are enough people who agree on truths, and one's disagreement only hampers the one and not the rest?

My point would be we are still as humans internally agreeing, and that hardly makes a truth, much less so, can deny a truth.

Timsup2nothin just decided to deny himself any truth.

My point is not that truth is easy and straightforward (getting the truth is a pain in the butt!), but that it exists.

 

[Perfection]

Look - beauty is an emotion.

I don't see why it has to be an emotion. It could be another sort of abstract thing like memories or genes or reproductive fitness

Does any color, any shape, any face.... does anything have a true meaning not only special but unique to you? Are you some kind of god of experience? Or are you the same dog as the rest of us, experiencing the same shaded figures of feeling, just projected on different hollow paper figures.
This is the question you have to answer. Just as we all did before. As the Matrix did. As all philosophers did. As anyone did asking the simple question: What is going on? His or her path lead to emotions. And weather this was the universal bond ship of reality.
Is it yours? Or are you.... special? Like we all wanted to be? Is it that?

The heck does that have to do with with whether or not beauty is emotion?

Still waiting on where your definitions of emotions in the OP came from.

 

[Berzerker]

This goes back to the missing definition of "morally neutral." I'm still using the idea that if the only way to assess whether an act is moral or immoral is by the context, then the act itself is morally neutral since you cant say "this act is unequivocally moral (or immoral)." That did lead to the question 'what then, if anything, is not morally neutral?' But no one has really stepped up with a definition of 'morally neutral' that works better, so...

Seems like a good definition. Could mass murder ever be moral?

 

[Perfection]

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Seems like a good definition. Could mass murder ever be moral?

I went with planetary extinction as invariably immoral. I'm certainly willing to back that down to "ordinary" mass murder...as long as it is really murder. Killing a bunch of people....even a whole bunch of people...in the furtherance of some sort of cause would have to be assessed in terms of the cause rather than the act. Murder, as in killing just for the sake of killing, I would say is genuinely immoral in all cases.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

So do you agree that the box really has some dimensions out there in objective reality? Why can't we refer to those as the true dimensions?

Objective reality is not subject to agreement, truth, or falsehood, it just is. "True" is always subjective. It might have such widespread agreement as to be inarguable, but it is still just agreed on.

 

[Perfection]

Objective reality is not subject to agreement, truth, or falsehood, it just is. "True" is always subjective. It might have such widespread agreement as to be inarguable, but it is still just agreed on.

I disagree. If everyone agrees that the world is flat doesn't mean it's true, it just means everyone thinks it's true. These people are wrong, the world is in fact round. What people agree as "true" and what is really true are two different things.

We have beliefs, sometimes they correspond with objective reality, sometimes they don't. The ones that do correspond are the true ones. That's the basic idea of what truth is.

Before you dismiss my insistence as mere hardheadness please note that I believe there are stakes here. Without some notion of Truth we don't have a means of evaluating the correspondence of our beliefs to objective reality. And since objective reality seems to have some important impacts on our lives, I think we ought to have a system to create and evaluate beliefs about it. Turns out Truth is important.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I disagree. If everyone agrees that the world is flat doesn't mean it's true, it just means everyone thinks it's true. These people are wrong, the world is in fact round. What people agree as "true" and what is really true are two different things.

We have beliefs, sometimes they correspond with objective reality, sometimes they don't. The ones that do correspond are the true ones. That's the basic idea of what truth is.

I didn't say that objective reality was subject to agreement. I said that truth is. If everyone agreed that the world was flat, and you started saying that it was round, would that somehow be "the truth"? Would this telling of truth have any effect on anything? Of course it would. You would be deemed a liar, a madman, or both. Because truth is what is agreed upon, and saying something else is not speaking the truth, even if it is somehow a "better" representation of objective reality.

By the way, the world is shaped, roughly, like an oblate spheroid. Everyone agrees on that.

Another by the way, those people saying the world is flat aren't wrong either, because right and wrong are also a matter of agreement and have no bearing on objective reality.