tar

5 minutes ago, Silvestru said:

 

 

Your family also has no obligation to please you.

They absolutely do.  What planet are you from?

10 hours ago, zapatos said:

There is a big gap in your understanding of people who aren't you.

Zapatos,

Granted.  But I know that.  I can only guess what makes other people happy.  I can not understand why someone would do something I would not do, yet I allow them to do it, and look for the reasons why they might do it.

Personally I am against my daughters ever being strippers or nude models or porn movie actresses or prostitutes  or escorts and against them getting into any abusive relationship.   But I let them live their lives, with only the knowledge that they know what would please me or displease me.

The rest of the world has no obligation to please me.  I can suggest a woman should not become a porn star, if she does not want to be a sex object, but if she becomes a porn star and somebody looks at her breasts while she is walking down the street, she has lost quite a bit of credibility when she comes over to me and slaps my face, for being a male pig.

My daughter has come to us with complaints about workmates and bosses, not harassment complaints, complaints about how someone is not doing their job, or about asking her to do something she does not think is the way she would do it.  We normally tell her that that is the way it is.   You have to put up with inept people, and just do your job, and you have to put your ego in your back pocket when it comes to your direct supervisor and the owners of your business.

iNow,

The article you posted talked about how a woman has to always smooth things over and take the non-confrontational route, and this is exactly what we all must do, all the time.   Males often work for males, and have to suppress their testosterone appropriately and take orders.  I would be very afraid in a prison of the big muscled  dude that wanted to make me his sex slave.  So I make sure I never wind up in prison, bunking with a big muscled dude that wants to make me his sex slave.

SwansonT,

I do not now or ever condone bullying or sexual assault or spousal abuse with a "wink".    I do however believe that people can put themselves in high risk situations for certain inevitabilities and need to make their own risk reward calculation as to whether they should be in the situation.

I know people who do drugs.  I do not.  I think it is stupid that they do, because of the risks.  I used to drink, I gave it up.   I used to smoke and gave it up and now think it ill advised that my wife continues to smoke, and a close cousin drinks too much wine.  But they can do what makes them happy.  They know the risks.

You often berate me for conflating ideas, but in the case of sexual harassment, it is society that is currently confused as to what they are trying to say, and they are conflating rape with me enjoying a pair or breasts on a young lady, and confusing a boss demanding sex for a raise with me telling a dirty joke or telling a woman that her dress was my favorite color and looked very nice.

During the election cycle Hilary made a big deal about how sexist Trump was, because he called a winner that let herself go, fat.   To me, everybody missed the objectifying women boat completely and continue to miss it.   The fact that women were parading around in swimsuits and  beautiful dresses was the institutional objectification.   And it is too ingrained in our society that we don't even see it.   Well look.   Look at news show where four people are sitting in full view on a stage.   The two men will be in suit and tie with their legs open and the women will be in dresses with their legs crossed.

Looks matter on TV.  The ugly and fat are usually seen as ugly and fat and the thin and beautiful are seen as thin and beautiful.

I am thinking that Weinstein and Redford would not have received the same outrage for the same transgressions.

Zapatos,

Additionally I do not understand why people watch devil movies, and movies with gratuitous violence.  I am somewhat disgusted with our society when I flip though the upper channels, looking for a good movie and see scene after scene of torture and murder and depravity.  I am somewhat bewildered when a commercial for some stupid things come along and the next week everybody has one.  So yeah, there is a big gap between me knowing what other people are thinking, and what makes them happy, and what I think they should be thinking and what I think they should be doing to make other people happy,  but that piece of paper has two sides.  You neither know what motivates me, what morals I hold, what disgusts me and what fills me with joy.  

Regards, TAR 

5 hours ago, iNow said:

Tar - I'd like to hear your thoughts on this article. Please read it all the way to the end before you offer comment. 

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/gretchen-kelly/the-thing-all-women-do-you-dont-know-about_b_8630416.html

iNow,

As much as you would like to think I am a child rapist or something, I am nothing of the sort.   I am a regular, well raised, polite guy with a happy wife and two grown daughters. 

In raising my daughters I used to tell the joke that raising a boy was easier to do than raising a daughter.  With a boy you had to be concerned with where one penis was.  With a girl you had to worry about where every penis in town was.

I understand the article to some extent, but do not think it is accurate to say a woman is at a constant disadvantage.  There are dad's like me around that would and did protect my daughters from "people like me" and the power thing is not unique to women.  I am just as scared of a big hairy rich and powerful brute like Weinstein having his way with me as you are.

I am actually not afraid of that at all, but If he was my boss, I would not want to cross him.   Not afraid of being sexually assaulted, but afraid he would make my job miserable if I crossed him.

When I was at my last job, I had for many years found fault with my company's president's agenda.   After I got laid off and rehired I changed my tune and decided that whatever my president's agenda was, was my agenda.  It is not so much courage, but stupidity that causes one to bite the hand that feeds them.

Power in this country might very well accrue to more old white males than any other demographic, but you have to do some work, take on some responsibility, have some education and talent, be trustworthy and capable to get into the leadership positions and the industry leadership positions, where wealth and power can accrue.  Or steal it or inherit it, or back into a good spot somehow.

For women that get into an industry where naked lineup auditions are possible, should give them a hint for what it is they are in for.  I am not saying that anybody that gets raped is asking for it, I am saying that sex and money and power is a two way street, and women that use their sexuality to make money and accrue power, are not innocent victims of a bias system, they are willing participants in the game.

My main thesis these days is that humans like to please each other.   I like looking at a pretty girl, and a pretty girl likes me looking at her and gets pleasure from it.  I have this theory, because girls like to look good for young men.  Maybe not old guys like me, then I am a dirty old man, leering at them, but when I was a chiseled stud coming out of the Army, girls enjoyed my attention and complements.  I remember swimming in a pool at a conference where several of the women in the group where watching me swim.  Later I found out that the suit I was wearing was sort of flesh tone and thin and it looked somewhat like I was swimming naked.   I wore the suit again the next night and enjoyed the fact that women enjoyed the fact.

Regards, TAR

Airbrush,

Much of the rules on sexual harassment have to do with "unwanted" sexual contact and even the mention of sex where it makes someone uncomfortable.  Crude jokes are considered sexual harassment, and are lumped in with a boss demanding sex or you facing dismissal if you reject the advance.  A person in a position of wealth and power often uses that wealth and power to get what she or he wants.  A dominated person is dominated because they have submitted to the  other's power.   Rock stars have groupies because the groupies are attracted to the celebrity.

You are not in a position to say that everybody that Trump ever made a sexual advance toward, rejected the advance.  Or to say, that he ever proceeded after being told to stop.

 One accuser I remember from the election cycle, said the flight attendant told her Trump was in first class and had found her attractive, and want to know if she was interested in sitting with him.   She went up and he fondled and kissed her...for a rather substantial period of time.      Which part of that story sounds like a  sexual assault to you?  Now she can say it was.  Then she could have not gone up, or could have stood up and gone back to her seat at any time.

Regards, TAR

Airbrush,

I understood Trump's "locker room talk" apology, having been in many locker rooms and having been in the Army.  The access Hollywood tape was from a decade ago, when he was not on the road to the presidency but an entertainer.  He after all, did not grab anybody by the privates that did not want to get grabbed by the privates.  He just said that since he was a star, people would let him do that to them.   

Everybody here knows the stories about couch casting.    Sex is for sale in Hollywood.   I saw a very crude show on cable about the porn stars awards, best this kind of sex that kind of sex awards.  The recipients were scantily clad and spoke very crudely.   It would be almost a badge of honor for one of these folks to suggest they were so desirable sexually as to have used that power to get a leg up in the industry.    The main stream Hollywood culture is only a little bit North of this kind of standard.  After all, sex sells, and in the magazine and advertising and film industry, the better looking get the jobs.

If two young ladies had identical looks and identical acting prowess and one put her hand on the casting director's shoulder and the other stood 6 feet away, the approachable one, might have an advantage in the hiring decision.

Or consider casting for a movie with a sex scene and one candidate bears her shoulders and the other puts on a thick sweater.

If you are a starlet  and you purse your lips and show off your figure, are you not asking to be the object of desire?

Regards, TAR

And Hillary's outrage at having a powerful man in the oval office using his power to gain sexual favors, is addressed at Trump's access Hollywood talk, when it   more appropriately should be aimed at her husband's actual acts.  In the actual Oval office. With the power of the presidency being overtly used to get a blow job.

Eise,

I read the article in between doing other things over the period of a few days,  and like always read it with my own colored glasses on.  As I made the assumption that the OP had read a work celebrating gay scientists that had Nietzsche in it, and did not know the work was BY Nietzsche and had nothing overtly to due with being gay, I am obviously prone to taking a fact and carrying it forward, when the fact is not even true.

So a point by point discussion on the article is hard for me to recount, because I took it in the context of the thread, which I already had possibly misunderstood Nietzsche's and the OPs intent, but you suggested the article was another take, and I saw some of the same arguments against God, that I saw in Nietzsche and the OP and in the arguments on this board against faith and belief and I think them all weak arguments, or unrequired and contradictory.  Here is why.  If there is no god, then when we follow our conscience, it is not because we wish to please god.   If it is, then it is our image of God that we wish to please, which cannot be an anthropomorphic guy sitting in the clouds, because we have looked and he is not there.  So this unseen other that we wish to please has to be some conglomeration of actual beings in objective reality, that would live or die, be happy or sad, depending on our behavior.   Since ideals, are game, but need someone to hold them, we only have, as our potential judges, other living things, and a general godlike agency that might care if we grow a garden or blow the place up. 

So to argue that there is no god, or that god is dead is unrequired.  I already am proceeding with the non existence of god as a stipulation.

But that leaves, still the whole rest of objective reality to please.  The whole rest of the world to aim to protect and agree with, be responsible for and responsible to.  Your conscience is still extant, whether there is or is not a god to enforce any rules, because there is not a god, and the rules stlill need enforcing.   A police force  cannot watch every citizen, all the time.  Every citizen needs to police themselves.  So where the intellectual conscience is not logical is to pretend that  somebody, anybody, smart as they are, artist that they are, philosopher that they are, can arrive at a set of morals that pleases only their own internal model of the world, and discounts ALL else.   So a humanist cannot say they are following an ideal principle of proper behavior, while at the same time saying that the way everybody else is behaving is wrong.  This, because, the only place to get proper behavior is from the world around you.   It cannot spring forth magically  from a dream or insight.  

Regards, TAR

indeed, sorry

I took the headline and extrapolated from there.   It was that flowery talk and passages like this

How repulsive pleasure is now, that crude, musty, brown pleasure as it is understood by those who like pleasure, our "educated" people, our rich people, and our rulers! How maliciously we listen now to the big country-fair boom-boom with which the "educated" person and city dweller today permits art, books, and music to rape him and provide "spiritual pleasures"—with the aid of spirituous liquors! How the theatrical scream of passion now hurts our ears, how strange to our taste the whole romantic uproar and tumult of the senses have become, which the educated mob loves, and all its aspirations after the elevated, inflated, and exaggerated! No, if we convalescents still need art, it is another kind of art—a mocking, light, fleeting, divinely untroubled, divinely artificial art that, like a pure flame, licks into unclouded skies. Above all, an art for artists, for artists only! We know better afterward what above all is needed for this: cheerfulness, any cheerfulness, my friends—also as artists: let me prove it. There are a few things we now know too well, we knowing ones: oh, how we now learn to forget well, and to be good at not knowing, as artists!

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

You seem to be missing my point(I never thought I'd ask this of you) please elaborate.

dimreepr,

A human being cannot do being human wrong.   That is a perfect way of saying one person is hardly in a position to suggest another person is doing it wrong.  This goes directly to the OP in both directions.   It is not correct to say that one who inspects someone else's behavior and finds it lacking is operating on a higher than human level, like Nietzsche and the OP suggest is the case when one philosophizes correctly and arrives at a synthesized morality.  Nor is it correct to establish morality for someone else, based on dogma and the ire or love of an imaginary judge.

The OP read  Nietzsche in the context of celebrating gay scientist's thinking.   To me, this implies a we vs. them attitude, where it is important to please Nietzsche and gay scientists, and find fault with anybody other,  especially those who would not be pleased by your being gay.   I do not even know if Nietzsche was gay, I am merely going by the idea that if your morality goes against the churches morality, it is OK because the churches morality is bullocks and one can be good by manufacturing a set of rules and following them.

I have no problem finding fault with the Bible and its edicts.  It is a work of literature, written by man, for man.  It is antiquated in many regards, yet timeless in others and should not be discarded out of hand, just based on the fact that god is dead.   

I operate on the basis of the understanding that God is an anthropomorphized universe.  I operate on the understanding that when I talk to god, I am just doing it figuratively and am really talking to objective reality, in reality.   Sometimes its the weather, sometimes its the stars, sometimes its nature and plants and animals I associate with, and sometimes its the order and beauty and workability of the  place that pleases me...but most of the time, the part of objective reality that responds to me directly and acts most like me, is other people.  So I look to them to do this existing thing with.  To please them and utilize the many many things they have done for me over the centuries, to allow me to be comfortable and happy and fulfill my needs.

Saw a commercial last night, I know not what it was for, but it had the line that you don't realize how many people care about you.

It is other people that we are wired to please.  And this is good for us, and good for them.  You therefore cannot logically synthesize a morality that puts you by yourself, above and separated from those wicked, uninitiated humans.  You can't do it in a cave, or while you are sleeping.  Morality has to be constructed as a team sport.

Regards, TAR

Eise, 

I did read the article, and I understood his arguments and the arguments of Derek Parfit.  My comments came after understanding, and finding weaknesses or contradictions or unrequired lines of reasoning, in their arguments.

Much of what is discussed on this board in terms of religion and politics leans in the direction of finding a rational alternative to God.  I get the arguments, but they are not required in my case, or to fit my worldview, because I have already become an atheist and I am not good because I fear boiling oil if I am bad.  I am good, because I want to please you, my dead grandfather, my dad, my wife, my daughters, my mayor and president, my friend who is a philosopher, my friend who is a real estate agent, my friend that is an elderly catholic woman...etc.p

To me, this is enough.  Those people are objective reality to me, and to you, and to everyone else on the planet.  My philosopher friend is a scholar in residence at a university that hundreds of thousands of people have attended.  He taught me logic and how to think and the Socratic method.  He has taught countless others how to think. 

 There is no danger of me falling into the pit you describe, I don't even have the definition of factually true that you have, as I am not on one side or the other of the science denier arguments.  I am on both sides in most debates, because I look at where people are grounding their arguments, and enjoy seeing where they find footing in the same places I do, and I enjoy pointing out the chasms people should avoid, and the bridges they can use to get across chasms I have encountered and mastered.

I am personally very much guided by the thought that even if I find nirvana, or the secret to life, or become one with Jesus or find the god particle, or derive the mathematical law that governs all interactions...the rest of the world will go right along pretty much undisturbed by my findings.  That is because what happens in my head does not affect the waking world, until I do something about it, or say something about it.   That is the realm of subjectivity.  It applies equally to Krauss understanding what the universe will be doing in 600,000,000,000 years, or Mohammed listening to the Angel Gabriel.    Subjectivity in my definition, has to do with having an insight.  Objectivity has to do with sharing it.

Moral judgements require a judge.  It is fairly simple, when you think it through, to get to the bottom of your conscience.  You just have to ask yourself who you are trying to please.

Regards, TAR 

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

How can a human do being human, wrong? 

 

exactly

a guru on a mountain top can reach nirvana and be one with the world, with involving me, who actually is part of the world this guru feels he is now one with

To love humanity you have to love all, including all those people who are doing it wrong in your estimation.

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

What makes you think that?

I read a take on German philosophers of the time, including him, that quoted him indicating that he had this obligation to do the thinking for others that they could not do for themselves.

47 minutes ago, DrP said:

Well in my house they need to make me happy by staying out of my way. I try to use a glass to put them out, but can't always practically do it...  but it's evolution - the ones that stay hidden are the ones I want to select for reproduction - the ones that come at me boldly can be removed from the spider gene pool.

I swear they are getting bigger and bigger each decade.  I have had 2 or 3 in the last couple of years that would not fit onto a poker sized playing card!

DrP.

yeah, those wolf spiders are rather awe inspiring, dropping off the ceiling and making a thud on the bed or rug

I must admit I was always taught to leave spiders alone as they ate more bothersome flies and biting insects, but I squished one (dime size) that fell to the slate on my front porch after I detached her web from the window near my front door my wife called me over to be creeped out by.  "Should" have left her as a Halloween decoration for the trick or treaters in a few weeks.

Regards, TAR

5 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

It's not a matter of me being correct, it's a matter of my accepting that no one is and everyone is.

I didn't say others need fixing, I said there's something to be taught.

 

I know dimreepr, but I am following the idea that the OP and Nietzsche felt they were of a higher order of human, able to philosophize in the proper manner to arrive at the "right" way to be.  And I am thinking that this elitism is not directly compatible with attempting to please others with your behavior.  In my efforts to address the opioid crisis in my town and county, I have run into a lot of people that feel they know how to fix other people, what other people are doing wrong, that they would not do.  What other people "should" and should not do.

Few have made the realization that I have made, that we all want to feel good, and normally dopamine does the job, because it flows when we do it right, when we match the world, when we we win, when we survive, when we bring pleasure and comfort to ourselves and our loved ones. And that drugs that simulate victoryk and feeling right and feeling alive, are making us feel that way, without the reason.

But if my theory is correct, morals are based on engaging in behaviors that please an unseen other.   This conscience is not anything in and of itself, but is tied completely to pleasing objective reality.   Therefore it is not up to you to tell other people how to do it right, it is up to you to seek the behaviors that will please those around you.

That is, if we are talking about morals, and what one should do, what one ought to do, and on what basis one should do it, it is probably better to find out what would make the other happy, rather than to think you can teach them to be happy your way.   Not that your way might not indeed work for them, but it is not your happiness we are after here, it is the unhappy person we should be looking to find a way to please.

Regards, TAR

dimreepr,

I don't think, in general it is a good stance to think you are right, and other people need fixing or teaching.

Goes back to the idea, that the more things that would need to change in order for you to be right, the more likely it is that you are trying to make the world match you, rather than attempting to behave in such a way that pleases the world.

You usually have good indications of whether another individual, or group of individuals, is for you or against you.  This creates a situation where all of humanity is not a singular person that you can behave in such a way toward that pleases everyone, all the time.

Regards, TAR

dimreepr,

Well yes, but what of those humans you wish to displease?

There are 7 or 8 billion humans, currently alive, each with a different will, different background, different favorite teams, different family members, different religions, philosophies, associations, companies, nations and rules.   They are not all doing stuff that pleases you, some are in fact displeasing you actively.  North Koreans want to kill Imperialist Americans for instance.   How do I get them on my team?

Regards, TAR

14 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

What if god is just a teaching aid to convey the objective truth of the value of a good moral compass?

When one understands why god is no longer needed, the unseen other is oneself, that said I think humanism has a little way to go yet.

dimreepr,

Well agreed.  But putting yourself in the shoes of an unseen other, might occur in the rTPJ, in your head, but this does not mean the unseen other is you.  There actually are objective judges to please.  Me, you, Area54, iNow, CharonY,  dead philosophers, prophets of gods, scientists, mathematicians, Trump, Hillary, Sanders, Putin, some guy drinking wine in France and some woman washing her clothes on a rock in the Ganges.  Objective reality is replete with humans, dead, alive and imaginary that we "should" please or displease, depending on the membership of the teams we are on.

Regards, TAR

Eise,

I read that long article over the last couple days, and find there is a recurring need in humanists to discount god and bolster objective reasons to be moral.

Funny to me, that a humanist is in possession of the answer, yet still looks for some objective verification.  Some ideal residing in Plato’s heaven,  or derivable from logic.  The answer is, in my mind , grounded firmly in one’s need to make those they care about, happy.  In the case of humans, those unseen others that one desires to please, are human like, whether dead, alive, to be born or fantasies.  And since we know what makes us happy, it is not difficult to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, and make a good guess at what would make them happy.

This morality is easy to trace from family to tribe to nation.  And as nations grew the religion and law and ethics grew with them.  

It is fool hardy, in my estimation, to consider religion has done it wrong, and another framework will do a better job in making each other happy.  Since it is pretty obvious, that there is no God writing the laws, that Moses brought down rules from the mountain that would serve to make us treat each other better, was already a humanist manifesto.

But, thinking there is a judge, that is not human, that would seek to make humans happy, is not likely.  There is no particular need a spider has to make a human happy.

So I reject arguments that seek to prove that morality is objectively true, without God, because God is just, in one take, the putting of our individual judgements into a collective basket that we can refer to as a human, an unseen other, that we wish to please.

Example.

I was watching a famous atheist talking about the irrationality of belief in God, and what he was saying was visibly hurting an elderly woman in the audience.   Little did this famous atheist know he was breaking the primary humanist law, that one should seek to please humans on your team.  It is the grounds upon which morality is built.

Regards, TAR

Dave Moore,

I don't think your ,infallible logic is correct.  Might be personal preference, but to think there is no outside reality, and its all constructed in your mind is stupid, in my opinion.  Makes zero sense, especially since you are talking to members of your objective reality on this board. What for instance is your mind made out of, and where is it located, when did it begin and when is it likely to end?   To have an answer you need objective reality to provide you with a time and place to be, which implies immediately that there are times other than now, and places other than here, that exist, regardless of what we think about those other places and times.  Objectively true stuff is what our universe is made out of.  Our point of focus consciousness sees it all and hears it all, and smells it all, and feels it all and tastes it all, as it come to our senses, and we build an analog model of the place, its history and present, and forecast its future behavior within the synapses and folds of our objectively real brains.  Your infallible logic might unearth the fact that the universe does not actually exist within you brain, (the brain does not have enough space for the whole place) but that there is a world to internalize is obvious to me, and to you, and I know for a fact you have not generated the planet I am sitting on, so you can not possibly logically prove the place does not exist, for me, with or without your involvement.   Try this.  Imagine your great great grandfather thought the world existed in his mind and there was no actual universe outside his head.  Then he died, and the world is still here for me and you and the others on this thread.  Your base philosophy is sorely lacking, not made of infallible logic, but so full of logical holes as to be  a stupid, unworkable, unrealistic worldview.

So you might have some trouble understanding that morals, and morays and expected behavior are BECAUSE we want to please objective reality.  First you have to adjust your worldview to allow that you have someone other than yourself that you wish to be in agreement with.

Regards, TAR

On ‎10‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 4:09 PM, CharonY said:

The author of the blog seems more concerned about his own thoughts rather than Nietzsche's which is rather telling. Also for translation his use of Gewissen for conscience and Gut und Boese (good and evil, rather than bad) clearly have put his thoughts into the realm of morals.

 

CharonY,

Interesting to me, in regards to the OP's desire to read various translations but not read various takes on the translations and not consider Kant's ideas and the various ideas circulating at the time, is he did not go on to say that the best understanding of Nietzsche might be gained by reading his works in the German he wrote them in,  or in discussing Nietzsche with a trusted thinker who has read his works in German.  I have the luxury of knowing a philosophy professor that has read Nietzsche in German, whose take on his thinking, and the relationship to the thinking of the day and to today's thinking would be far superior to any take I could generate by reading several translations and not looking to anybody else for understanding.

I did read the other day, while thinking about this thread and your above comment, that Nietzsche and other thinkers of the day, had a certain feeling that they were a higher order of human, and that they were needed and looked toward to pull everyone else up to their level.  There is a certain aristocracy or elitism that I feel is a piece of this morality picture.  That it is "better" to please the king, than to please yourself, so to speak.

The difference between bad and evil is important.   Bad, displeases the king.  Evil displeases God.

Regards, TAR

Dave Moore,

I gave you an up vote because I like your general thinking.  However, I would like to offer some answers to questions you raise as unanswerable, and offer a general objection to your conclusion, that the question is just not a scientific question, or one that can be answered by objective inquiry.

While there is obviously not a morality particle that we can capture and study, weigh and measure and predict the behavior of, there is a human brain, and brain chemistry, that can be looked toward, to see certain predictable behavior. Not that our morality is determined, but that the pieces of our personal behavior, build up, over time to create larger things.  Things emerge when groups of living things interact.  In the case of birds you might have flocks, or fish you might have schools, or antelopes you might have herds, or humans you might have clubs and associations and churches and universities and businesses and a world court, with rules of behavior attached.

In the case of the bear and her cubs there is not an over arching "good" and "bad" that puts the life of her cubs ahead of a human life.   We as humans are served by killing the bear that has eaten a college student (which actually happened a few miles from where I type this.)

It is actually "good" to maintain your way of life, and support those who support you.  From this simple fact, a morality actually can be derived.   It actually has been derived, as is evident from the Bible and the Koran and the ancient Chinese writings, the constitutions of the nations of the Earth, and the mission statements and company charters that go with every club and association and school and business that we have.

Ethical standards are what one member expects of the other.  And these expectations can be agreed upon for "good" reason.

Regards, TAR

scherado,

The treatment had the same logical flaw that I am trying to point out in recent posts.  You can't at the same time say that only a few people are capable of intellectual conscience,  and that it is a flaw, to be devoid of  that desire to be certain based on agreement with yourself...while you are suggesting that the world would be a better place, if everyone thought like you.

You are dismissing the 90 percent of humanity that are not within the 10 percent.   No, worse than that, you are saying only one in a hundred are capable of philosophizing in the proper fashion that everyone "should".   It is logically inconsistent to look to others for agreement on how one should be, at the same time that you are discounting their ability to be that way.

An intellectual conscience is useless if it serves only you.

Regards, TAR

There is a general side rule I go by, to determine whether a thought of mine is true and valid and consistent with the world, or whether it is primarily fancy on my part, and occurring primarily in my own head.  That is, how many things about the world would have to change, in order for you to be right.   If the number of things is huge, then your idea is not reflective of the world, but true only within your own mind, which is not subject to the rules of objective reality.

It is strange to say that democracy can only be saved if you are king.

scherado, 

Simple, but a little complicated in terms of what was given to you, to think about.  I am not sure, in the realm of ideas, that one can think, without language and the meanings and definitions of words, what they stand for, the ideas they represent are given to you, by common usage and the dictionary and the explanations of others.

Point of fact is that I was very happy to take CharonY's ideas and run with them, until you said "Nope".    Then the critical thinking, about what Nietzsche meant by intellectual conscience and what intellectual conscience must mean to TAR, begins anew.

I am somewhat guided by the additional fact that you read works of Nietzsche framed in a work about gay people's morality, that one can come up with a rational to be gay, even if the historical rules about that say "nope".

This was an idea I had when first reading the thread, and I conjoined the idea with the way atheists on this board, including myself, take a certain stronger listening to one's own rational, than to the edicts of others.

But this is an interesting conundrum that we establish for ourselves, standing firm on our own constructed "intellectual morality, intellectual conscience, intellectual ethics", because we are human, and we look to others for verification and acceptance.   

We have, in my critical thinking about the situation, only three basic possible judges to look toward, to attempt to please, to establish our conscience  with.   God, other people, or our self.

And breaking this down, critically, we have basically objective reality that we wish to please, that we wish to be right, in relation to.   God is, in my mind a figurative image of objective reality in total, so we build our conscience to satisfy this general judge.  Whether we are humanists or believers in Gaia or Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, Zeus,  Allah,  God,  or Jesus we seek to please objective reality.  And when we seek to please ourselves we are attempting to please that one piece of objective reality that remains always associated with one particular body/brain/heart group objectively known as a human with our name.  And this human is completely constructed of objective reality stuff, and even the internalized images and ideas are analog representations of stuff "given" to the self by objective reality.   Analogs of, symbols for, stuff of objective reality.   So both God and our rationality are about objective reality.  So, wanting to please other people, is what our conscience is most likely about.    We want to be good, we want to be right, we want to be victorious in the eyes of our family and friends,  countrymen and allies.

This is my critical breakdown, of where our conscience comes from, and why.  We want the dopamine to flow in us, and we want to make others happy with us.

Kant came to his rational ethics by asking himself, before he did a thing, whether he would want everybody to do this thing.  If the answer was yes, than do it.  If the answer was no, then don't do it.   Jesus says to do onto others what you would have them do unto you.   So both ideas, and mine are grounded in the soil of pleasing an unseen other, a judge, made of human stuff, that is going to be happy if you behave well, and unhappy if you behave badly.

To construct an intellectual conscience that laughs in the face of other people's feelings, is contrary the idea of what ethics is, in the first place...in my critical breakdown.

Regards, TAR

8 hours ago, scherado said:

The second post is missing an explanation. My apologies; it has nothing to do directly with the OP.

The Use And Abuse Of History, translated by Adrianne Collins, is my favorite work of Nietsczhe's.

 

When a friend told me he was going to participate in a rally earlier this year in Virginia to protest the removal of Civil War era statues, I sent him an html copy of the Collins translation, The Use and Abuse Of History. This rally preceded the one in Charlottesville where that guy rammed people with his car.

 

I never interpreted the phrase to be associated with ethics. There's no reason to do so. The word "conscience" is, when employed typically, related to moral considerations; ethics.

The "intellectual conscience" is related to the ability to distinguish right from wrong with respect to the truth-value of a subject. When Nietsczhe laments that "[n]obody even blushes when you intimate that their weights are underweight," he is referring to cognitive function.

Scherado,

There is indeed a moral dilemma happening in the American "conscience".  It is important to me for people to understand that their own pronouncement of another person's lack of correctness in moral stance is a rejection of the need to morally please that other person.  That is, in the case of Charlottesville, the country yelled at Trump for stating that there were good people on both sides of the protest.  This was unfortunate in my mind because the definitions put anybody that wants to see statues stand, as evil racists, and discounts that fine, upstanding citizens in the South, have grandparents and greatgrandparents that served in battle under the command of the generals sitting on the horses and the statues are part of their collective moral world.  That the white, Nazi groups usurped the protest to advance their own agenda, does not mean I, as a Yankee can not see fine moral standing in the hearts and minds of the people of the town that want to see the statues stand.

That is, ethics and morals are, in my mind synonymous with conscience.   To have an intellectual conscience, given to you by a political party, is NOT being critical, or using critical thinking.  It is merely an unworkable decision to demonize everyone and all about everyone that goes by a slightly different set of rules, or has a different take on religion, or race, or sex or taxes or government transfer payments than you do.

Important to me, politically is that we have the same 320 million people after the election as we did before.   Nobody got suddenly evil or good.  The good people are still here.  The bad people are still here, and it is crucial to our society to continue to allow each other to have different rules we each go by, and different gods we each worship, as long as we look to please each other in the most important consideration of pledging our honor and our wealth to the union. 

We are NOT as deplorable as Hillary would have you think.  We are not as misguided as Fox news would have you think.  But I believe, human nature has a person trying to please as many people as possible.   That is, our conscience is derived, as Area54 says, from a whole collection of history and literature and we aim to please Socrates and Moses and Jesus and Einstein and Dawkins and Mandela and Hilary and  Marx and the Koch brothers...depending on who we are.   There is not, in my estimation, a way to come up with a set of rules, based on critical thinking, that does not also allow that you have chosen sides in some historical  philosophical or ethical battle.

Regards, TAR

15 hours ago, Area54 said:

Regarding your OP, for your second post seems unconnected with it, Nietsczhe appears to be saying "I deplore the fact that most people never bother to derive their ethics."

To which I would reply, were Nietsczhe here to hear me "People are animals. Most of them never get over it. Perhaps you should."

Area54,

You are suggesting that people are animals and most of "them" never get over it, and you are saying that the OP should perhaps try and get over being an animal and derive his ethics like you and Nietzsche.  You did not say us, you said them, like you were somehow on another plane of existence.   This thought, that you can derive your own morality, is not correct.   I take exception to you thinking it is possible and Nietzsche thinking it is possible, and iNow thinking it is possible.   Anti-religious arguments on this board always suggest that the way to certainty is through the scientific method and the abandonment of belief and faith.  This might be useful, pertinent advise when taking a scientific measurement, or curing a disease, but its efficacy is somewhat in question in the realm of morality.

In the realm of morality, we talk to unseen others about the situation.  We tend to want to please others we consider on our side, on our team, and demonize those losers who are not like us.

We like to have other people's OK about things.  We need to know we are doing it right.  It is a human need.  An emotion.  A matter of evolution and brain chemistry.  We CANNOT rise above this need.  

Atheists have a hard time explaining who it is they are trying to please.   It is not a literal God.   It is a figurative god.  Humanity.  Science.  Truth.  But I think, it is objective reality, that people are trying to please.  Where a conscience comes from.  One knows the right thing to do, even if no one is watching, because we know what others expect of us. The "right" thing to do, comes from a derivation of all judgements we have watched others make throughout our life.  We need the verification that we are doing it right, that we are good and not bad.

So Area54, please expound upon the morality that you have derived from the recesses of your own rational mind, that has nothing to do with animal desires and religion and law and what other people believe is right.   You won't.  Not because I am on ignore, but because you cannot.  

I think the "intellectual conscience" is a flight of fancy occurring in one's own mind, that is as baseless and ungrounded as Mohammed listening to the Angel Gabriel in a dark cave.

You cannot find "certainty" within.  Well you can think you have it, but you are only pleasing yourself and not checking with objective reality for verification.

TAR

Area54,

It was me.

I thought you might glean that from my post.   I think you are wrong to take the stance that you are not an animal, and the rest of us are.

TAR

Area54,

I would have to put you in the third, critical camp .

Have you derived your own ethics?    Care to expound?

I am not thinking someone that thinks they are not an animal has understood a darn thing about life.

According to my muses, one has to side with their team to exist in this world.  A lone passer is absolutely alone.  To that, the antiquarian is important to listen to, because it is the wisdom of the ages that is passed to his or her understanding.    The monumental is kin to me, because it glorifies the unique nature of each of us doing it right, for the first time.    Everybody, when they look into the eyes of their newborn daughter, knows they did something important and unique.  The critical is just that.  A high horse opinion, that pretends one is above the fray.

I am of the opinion that we need our history, to guide our decisions, and the judgement of others, in total is more important to our happiness and success, than listening to someone who has arrived at their ethics by themselves.  

TAR

scherado,

I think the intellectual conscience is somewhat overrated.   To come up with an ethics, by yourself, is contrary human nature and the desire to please an unseen other.   If the only individual you wish to please, is yourself, then, you are alone.    And a person can not achieve much by themselves.   Look at Socrates.  He was sure he was right, and everyone else wrong, and everybody else made him consume poison and die.

I have always marched to the beat of a different drummer, I have always been in the top 10 percent of strength,  looks,  intelligence, education, and circulated with the elite in every situation I have run across, but it is foolhardy to think one can achieve success without the other 90 percent also achieving success. 

The rules of life should not be imposed upon the masses by the elite.  The elite should use their advantage to the benefit of all, not to take advantage of the situation.  My code requires that I work toward the success of the teams I am on, on not calculate my advantage.

I am thinking Nietzsche and Area54 should have let the rest of the place judge them, rather than discard the judgement of the masses in favor of their own intellectual conscience.

Regards, TAR