Materialists Are Rarely This Candid About Their Evil

To find out how subjectivity works, one need to look at the structure of common discourse. How is the statement "the painting is beautiful" arrived at? You do not have to first read the bible to deconstruct how it works, nor do you have to investigate the brain with a brainscanner. The logic of it is readily apparent in common discourse. mohammadnursyamsu

eigenstate

The latter, of course, if you’ve read any of my posts above or on this subject (now spread across several threads it seems).

It is your position, then, that air and water have no objective value. They only have subjective value, meaning that they are valuable only to those who can assign value to them. If follows, then, that air and water have no value for a one-month old baby. It would also follow that the body's vital organs have no value for a one-month old baby. Is that a fair summary of your position? StephenB

@StephenB,

Do air and water have objective value, that is, do they have value independently of what we believe about them. Or do they have value only when we assign value to them?

The latter, of course, if you've read any of my posts above or on this subject (now spread across several threads it seems). To value requires a mind, assignment of value is mental action. Which means if you have no minds to value this or that (a rock, doesn't matter what it is), you cannot have value. To have value is to be valued by a mind (or many minds). Maybe that is a clearer way of putting it. eigenstate

eigenstate

Moral judgments are like valuations (e.g. currency as currency), and semantic meaning in that they are all subjective exercises, but they should not be confused, and they are not interchangeable.

Is all value subjective and no value objective, that is, is a thing valuable only when we assign value to it: If so, I have a question: Do air and water have objective value, that is, do they have value independently of what we believe about them. Or do they have value only when we assign value to them? StephenB

@barry Your history of the holocaust is false. As you can see in the youthbook for the hitler youth, it starts out with "a factual outlook on life". The schoolbook then proceeds to differentiate what the spirit and mental disposition of different people in "fact" is on racial terms. It's perfectly easy to see how destroying subjectivity outright intellectually would result in sabotaging of conscience. Would make emotions become irrellevant, and would result in the typical coldhearted calculating nazi that we are familiar with. Your idea that we can just set the worth of a human being as objective fact and can then calculate with that objective worth, is nonsense. mohammadnursyamsu

How subjectivity works is by choosing about what it is that chooses, resulting in an opinion. People who say to accept free will is real, should not complain about a procedure of reaching a conclusion about what is real by choosing it. What good is freedom if it is wrong to choose? Subjectivity applies to the spiritual domain, the agency of decisions, and objectivity is still perfectly safe, applying to the way decisions turn out. The way it is with subjectivity is that one can change their opinion all the time. One can for years have the opinion that you are in love with your wife, and then later decide that the love was not real. Then later you can change back again deciding it was real after all. None of you knows anything about how subjectivity works. Religious here and materialists alike, you all have no clue because of you are all focused on what is objective. mohammadnursyamsu

Barry Arrington:

Carpathian: They are controlled by matter or energy, ( e.g. chemical interaction or electrical charges), while the symbolism comes from the observer.

Barry Arrington: You do yourself an injustice. After reading that comment, I would never say you are a person of average intelligence.

Seriously? If what you say is true, you should be able to change an OR gate to an AND gate simply by changing the schematic but leaving the circuit unmodified. I'd like to see if kairosfocus agrees with you. Carpathian

Carpathian comments in a thread to another post:

Systems are not controlled by symbols. They are controlled by matter or energy, ( e.g. chemical interaction or electrical charges), while the symbolism comes from the observer. You can test this by changing the symbols in a system and watching to see if its operation changes.

In this thread:

Speaking as someone with average intelligence . . .

You do yourself an injustice. After reading that comment, I would never say you are a person of average intelligence. Barry Arrington

Carpathian:

Every time I have been sure that I was the smartest guy in the room, I found out I wasn’t.

I'm stunned. Surely that cannot be. In all seriousness, eigenstate is a fool. He comes onto these pages and argues he is not conscious. He argues that he has no mind. He argues that under certain circumstances killing millions can be defined as "good." For such as he, no ridicule is too harsh, no rejoinder too sharp. Barry Arrington

Barry Arrington:

Eichmann thought he was an “intellectual” but he, like eigenstate, was really quite stupid . Like Eichmann, eigenstate spews hackneyed pseudo-intellectual drivel and preens himself about his intellectual superiority over those who naively believe evil is a real force in the world and that force was at work when millions of innocent men, women and children were killed.

Why would you write such personal insults? What you are implying is that you are smarter than certain people. Every time I have been sure that I was the smartest guy in the room, I found out I wasn't. Speaking as someone with average intelligence, you come across as someone with average intelligence. No more, no less. If you want civility on this blog, you should show some leadership by practicing it. Carpathian

evnfrdrcksn, Are you suggesting there are no dangerous opinions? That would be news to the 6,000,000 Jews who died because it was Hitler's opinion that Jews needed to be exterminated. Barry Arrington

Which is more frightening? 1) Someone with an opinion 2) Someone who believes there are "dangerous opinions" evnfrdrcksn

Seversky, I do not believe evil is a "force." You read my comment much too literally. Barry Arrington

as to: "The view that evil is a force like The Dark Side in Star Wars is naive and simplistic, in my view." Which is not a surprising claim coming from a person who champions the 'simplistic' materialistic/naturalistic worldview that denies the reality of his own person-hood:

"What you’re doing is simply instantiating a self: the program run by your neurons which you feel is “you.”" Jerry Coyne https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/eagleton-on-baggini-on-free-will/ The Confidence of Jerry Coyne - January 6, 2014 Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary. http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?_r=0 Faith and Science - Dr. Raymond Bohlin - video - (2015) (48:46 minute mark) https://youtu.be/vTIp1kgSqzU?t=2552 Who wrote Richard Dawkins's new book? - October 28, 2006 Excerpt: Dawkins: What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do.,,, Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views? Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/10/who_wrote_richard_dawkinss_new002783.html At the 23:33 minute mark of the following video, Richard Dawkins agrees with materialistic philosophers who say that: "consciousness is an illusion" A few minutes later Rowan Williams asks Dawkins ”If consciousness is an illusion…what isn’t?”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWN4cfh1Fac&t=22m57s at 37:51 minute mark of following video, according to the law of identity, Richard Dawkins does not exist: (the unity of Aristotelian Form is also discussed) Atheistic Materialism – Does Richard Dawkins Exist? – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCnzq2yTCg&t=37m51s "that “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.” Francis Crick - "The Astonishing Hypothesis" 1994 “We have so much confidence in our materialist assumptions (which are assumptions, not facts) that something like free will is denied in principle. Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I don’t really know that. Either way, it doesn’t matter because if free will and consciousness are just an illusion, they are the most seamless illusions ever created. Film maker James Cameron wishes he had special effects that good.” Matthew D. Lieberman – neuroscientist – materialist – UCLA professor "Hawking’s entire argument is built upon theism. He is, as Cornelius Van Til put it, like the child who must climb up onto his father’s lap into order to slap his face. Take that part about the “human mind” for example. Under atheism there is no such thing as a mind. There is no such thing as understanding and no such thing as truth. All Hawking is left with is a box, called a skull, which contains a bunch of molecules. Hawking needs God In order to deny Him." - Cornelius Hunter Photo – an atheist contemplating his mind http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H-kjiGN_9Fw/URkPboX5l2I/AAAAAAAAATw/yN18NZgMJ-4/s1600/rob4.jpg

bornagain77

"Good" and "evil" are as much value judgments as beauty and ugliness. The view that evil is a force like The Dark Side in Star Wars is naive and simplistic, in my view. The horrific thing about the Nazi Holocaust was not just what they did, although obviously that was bad enough, it was the reminder that the seeds of such evil are in all peoples and all cultures just waiting for the right conditions to germinate. The evidence is that such evil has happened in many places around the world and at many times to varying degrees. Jews suffered oppression and atrocities at the hands of Christian peoples for over a thousand years in Europe. Then you have the suffering of the native peoples at the hands of the Spanish Conquistadores in South and Central America, the treatment of slaves and native peoples in North America, the treatment of the Aborigine and Maori in Australia and New Zealand, Stalinist Russia, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia and, most recently, ISIS in the Middle East. To attribute this to some evil Force to which human beings are helpless pawns smacks too much of an attempt to displace the blame from where it truly belongs, with humanity, with all of us. Until we come to accept that we are all potentially capable of such behavior and learn the lesson of humility from it, until we stop believing we are somehow immune because we are born in a particular country or follow a particular ideology or adhere to a particular faith, these things will keep happening. Seversky

eigenstate holds morality to be merely subjective and illusory whereas Theists hold that morality objective and real. Dr. King puts the Theist's position as such:

“The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws.” - Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

If morality is objectively real as theists hold, and is not illusory and subjective as materialists hold, then there ought to be some way to test this claim scientifically and see if it holds water. And indeed, we find much evidence to support the Theist's claim that morality is objectively real. The following study establishes the objective reality of morality by showing that 'Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional':

Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows – November 29, 2012 Excerpt: People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-moral-instant-emotional-brain.html

Although that is pretty good as far as it goes, Kant's requirement for the moral argument to be considered valid was that influences could arise from outside space-time. Dr Suarez explains Kant's requirement in this following video, and shows that Kant's requirement for the moral argument has now been empirically met in quantum mechanics:

God, Immanuel Kant, Richard Dawkins, and the Quantum - Antoine Suarez - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQOwMX4bCqk

Moreover, the following study actually shows that our moral intuition itself transcends space and time:

Quantum Consciousness – Time Flies Backwards? – Stuart Hameroff MD Excerpt: Dean Radin and Dick Bierman have performed a number of experiments of emotional response in human subjects. The subjects view a computer screen on which appear (at randomly varying intervals) a series of images, some of which are emotionally neutral, and some of which are highly emotional (violent, sexual….). In Radin and Bierman’s early studies, skin conductance of a finger was used to measure physiological response They found that subjects responded strongly to emotional images compared to neutral images, and that the emotional response occurred between a fraction of a second to several seconds BEFORE the image appeared! Recently Professor Bierman (University of Amsterdam) repeated these experiments with subjects in an fMRI brain imager and found emotional responses in brain activity up to 4 seconds before the stimuli. Moreover he looked at raw data from other laboratories and found similar emotional responses before stimuli appeared. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/TimeFlies.html

Thus, Kant's criteria for accepting the validity of the moral argument has now been met. Firstly it has been met by showing that there are indeed influences arising from outside space-time, and secondly, and more importantly, it has been met by specifically showing beyond space and time moral influences on humans. Obviously, there is simply no coherent explanation that a materialist/atheist can give as to why morally troubling situations are detected prior to our becoming fully aware of them. Much less can the materialist explain why they effect us before they even happen. And, as should be needless to say, this is empirical confirmation for the Theist's belief that morality is objectively real and is not subjective and illusory. Also of interest to the Intelligent Design vs. Darwinism debate, since unguided Darwinian processes have never shown the origination of a single gene/protein,,,

Stephen Meyer Critiques Richard Dawkins's "Mount Improbable" Illustration - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rgainpMXa8

,,,since unguided Darwinian processes have never shown the origination of a single gene/protein, then it is very interesting to note that the genetic responses of humans are designed in a very sophisticated way so as to differentiate between hedonic and ‘noble’ moral happiness:

Human Cells Respond in Healthy, Unhealthy Ways to Different Kinds of Happiness - July 29, 2013 Excerpt: Human bodies recognize at the molecular level that not all happiness is created equal, responding in ways that can help or hinder physical health,,, The sense of well-being derived from “a noble purpose” may provide cellular health benefits, whereas “simple self-gratification” may have negative effects, despite an overall perceived sense of happiness, researchers found.,,, But if all happiness is created equal, and equally opposite to ill-being, then patterns of gene expression should be the same regardless of hedonic or eudaimonic well-being. Not so, found the researchers. Eudaimonic well-being was, indeed, associated with a significant decrease in the stress-related CTRA gene expression profile. In contrast, hedonic well-being was associated with a significant increase in the CTRA profile. Their genomics-based analyses, the authors reported, reveal the hidden costs of purely hedonic well-being.,, “We can make ourselves happy through simple pleasures, but those ‘empty calories’ don’t help us broaden our awareness or build our capacity in ways that benefit us physically,” she said. “At the cellular level, our bodies appear to respond better to a different kind of well-being, one based on a sense of connectedness and purpose.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130729161952.htm

All in all the Theist has a very strong empirical support for his claim that morality is objectively real and is not merely subjective and illusory.

The Moral Life of Babies – May 2010 Excerpt: From Sigmund Freud to Jean Piaget to Lawrence Kohlberg, psychologists have long argued that we begin life as amoral animals.,,, A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.,,, Despite their overall preference for good actors over bad, then, babies are drawn to bad actors when those actors are punishing bad behavior. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Verse and Music:

Matthew 22:36-40 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” The Allman brothers Band - Soulshine - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L3BYTS8uxM

Supplemental Note:

ABC News – The Science Behind the Healing Power of Love – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t1p-PwGgE4 Social isolation and its health implications January 2012 Excerpt: Studies show that social isolation and/or loneliness predict morbidity and mortality from cancer, cardiovascular disease, and a host of other diseases. In fact, the body perceives loneliness as a threat. Research from the University of California suggests that loneliness or lack of social support could triple the odds of being diagnosed with a heart condition. Redford Williams and his colleagues at Duke University directed a study in 1992 on heart patients and their relationships. They discovered that 50% of patients with heart disease who did not have a spouse or someone to confide in died within five years, while only 17% of those who did have a confidante died in the same time period.12 http://www.how-to-be-healthy.org/social-isolation-and-its-health-implications/

bornagain77

eigenstate @ 8 Blah, blah, blah . . . Here, dear readers, we have a fine example of what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil when she reported on the trial of Adolph Eichmann. Eichmann thought he was an "intellectual" but he, like eigenstate, was really quite stupid. Like Eichmann, eigenstate spews hackneyed pseudo-intellectual drivel and preens himself about his intellectual superiority over those who naively believe evil is a real force in the world and that force was at work when millions of innocent men, women and children were killed. This is not to say that eigenstate's views (like Eichmann's for a while) might not prevail. That is why he and Learned Hand scare the hell out of me. I fully expect the oven doors to swing open again in the not-too-distant future. And people like eigenstate will be there herding us undesirables into our new very short term accommodations. God help us. Barry Arrington

@Barry,

And he is saying that “valued” and “good” mean the same thing.

No. Did not say such, or imply such. Moral judgments are like valuations (e.g. currency as currency), and semantic meaning in that they are all subjective exercises, but they should not be confused, and they are not interchangeable.

Therefore, if killing Jews, homosexuals and disabled people is valued by a society, then in that society killing those people is good.

You keep referring to "good" in an unqualified or absolute -- and therefore incoherent -- way when discussing materialism. If a society values killing Jews, then, uncontroversially by tautology, they value killing Jews. If we were to agree, arguendo that such a societal value would a practical manifestation of that that society things is "good", then again, by definition, that society would think such horrors "good". Even in such cases, though, there is no monotonic disposition for "society"; there are as many value systems and subjective viewpoints as there are people, and all kinds of diverse opinions obtain. In Nazi Germany, many were militant critics of the persecution of the Jews and gays an others, and were convinced not that just the practice and pogrom was wrong, but that whole power structure that made it a reality needed to be overthrown. Those critics were part of that society, just at odds with the political views and actions of those who had power at that time. All of which to say that while there's useful information in "German society embraced a political regime that created the Holocaust, which many willingly participated in", it should be understood to mean that there is some kind of unanimous conviction, or that wielding political power settles anything ethically. The critics thought it was evil, the Nazis thought they were doing a good thing.

It is an unspeakably evil philosophy. And LH is evil when he defends it. You are both disgusting little proto-fascists.

It's not a moral question, itself. You might as well condemn a description of gravity. There is no "non-evil" alternative, even if we are to be so gracious as to indulge your misnomer. It can't be otherwise in this universe anymore than gravity can. There is no referent for "objective good" or "objective evil", such moral descriptions are transcendental upon the subject issuing them. eigenstate

M 6 "So, I have to agree with the “good is good” crowd. Proper social behavior is entirely dependent on culture, and culture changes over time." So ISIS religious & cultural justification for reinstating slavery and rape of young girls is proper social behavior? anthropic

Tacitus, whilst describing the "Germans" (those people the Romans found living east of the Rhine), says that one of their standard practices was to take any man they found having sex with another man, bind that man in a wicker basket, lay the basket in a muddy stretch of river, and have the entire village walk over the basket and man pressing them both down into the mud. This was considered honorable and correct and morally good by both the Germans (who may in fact have been Celts) and the Romans. This is of course completely in agreement with the Hebrew bible's statement that "For a man to lay down with another man is an abomination before God." So, I have to agree with the "good is good" crowd. Proper social behavior is entirely dependent on culture, and culture changes over time. One or the other of the Jewish kings, perhaps several of them, had some large number (1,000?) female slaves. These slaves were in addition to some number of legitimate wives. Note that in addition to the sex slaves, the number of wives was greater than 1. Is there some constant moral distinction between having sex whenever you wished with more slaves than you can count and "pornography"? Also note that the Sin of Onan was Onan's refusal to have sex with his dead brother's widow in order to "give her sons". This of course meant that even if Onan had sex with her repeatedly but produced a string of daughters, Onan was obligated to keep doing the sister-in-law for the rest of his life. I understand that there are tribes in Africa that still practice this custom. So is it universally and forever morally good or bad to have sex with your sister-in-law when you are still married to your own wife (or wives)? Oh, a final thought, Wikipedia gives the original text of the "Hippocratic Oath" as including the line "I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child." This was dropped from the modern version of the oath because abortion became popular and reasonably safe (at least for the mother). In the USA alone, more than 40 million babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade. So considering that even the ancient Greeks considered abortion immoral, isn't abortion the greatest moral evil of the 20th century? After Communism, of course. Although abortion is a common feature of Communism. mahuna

LH @ 4:

He’s saying that if it’s no longer valued by society, it’s no longer valued by that society.

And he is saying that "valued" and "good" mean the same thing. Therefore, if killing Jews, homosexuals and disabled people is valued by a society, then in that society killing those people is good. It is an unspeakably evil philosophy. And LH is evil when he defends it. You are both disgusting little proto-fascists. Barry Arrington

Eigenstate is saying “good” means nothing more than “valued” and that if something is no longer valued by a society it is no longer good. He's saying that if it's no longer valued by society, it's no longer valued by that society. Not only is that a truism, it's something I think every person reading and writing in this debate would agree on. Individual people will have various opinions on whether something is good, just as they almost always do. Learned Hand

LH @ 2:

Eigenstate is merely saying that it’s a tautology to say that what someone believes is good is what they believe is good.

Eigenstate is saying "good" means nothing more than "valued" and that if something is no longer valued by a society it is no longer good. He admits that under his view whether the Holocaust is evil is a collectively subjective assessment no different from whether the Zimbabwean dollar has value. And that is evil and dangerous. You hold the same view. The only difference between you and Eigenstate is that he is more upfront about his evil and dangerous views than you are. Barry Arrington

Another example of the elision Barry likes to use. Let's correct it: "Killing Jews, homosexuals and the disabled is evil now because we don’t value those practices. If we did value those practices, according to eigenstate that would make them good [in the eyes of the people who do value those practices]." Remember that he's assuming subjectivism for the purposes of the statement: there is no objective "good". Just good from the perspective of the actor. Eigenstate is merely saying that it's a tautology to say that what someone believes is good is what they believe is good. Is Barry intending to state a tautology? I'm not sure. If not, he must mean something other than the subjective "good" in his restatement. But that would make it no longer an accurate attempt (or any sort of attempt) to state what subjectivists believe. Learned Hand

The view "What we value is what we value, tautologously." is far more useful to those who wish to murder, maim, rape, destroy and steal, and suppress civil liberties, than it ever has been to anyone else. News