[SPLIT from Sexual Lifestlyles] Nietzsche and moral facts

[SuuT]

Depends what kind of consensus and in what age.

This is interesting insofar as it is a fact that Morality shifts, sways and buckles. However, taken too far, it would result in an entirely unnecessary complication of the matter. - The changes in moral schema are not so much perennial as they are violently abrupt within perennial phenomena. Therefore, it may be said that whilst morality vibrates, it is stable at the points at which it is held taught. Further, that the appearance of moral relativism is epiphenomenal to the larger dynamic of finite moral potentialities within infinite time. In short, that rape was okay at point x, but is not okay at point y, does not neccessarily indicate anything at all relative about the truth of rape, or that point y does not indicate a superiority over point x that most rational observers would come to a concensus on, thus fulfilling the Social Contract paradigm.

More importantly, "rape" is itself a "loaded" term, loaded with the presupposition of there existing such things as personal rights, personal property and "rightful belonging", which can be violated.

Cf. Social Contract.

If one does not affirm the legitimacy of those "rights" (e.g. the right to have personal liberty and authority over your body, or the right to property), one cannot actually "rape" anyone in the loaded sense, since it implies a violation, a violation which can only exist insofar as there are "rights" to violate in the first place.

One can fight the authority of the Social Contract, but one will 'lose'. More importantly, Morality finds and establishes itself in practical everday human interaction, not in largely academic thought experimentation; a human being is only capable of vibrating the moral sting - it cannot be snapped. For example, if I were to today rape your mother in the ass and make you watch while you make me a sandwich, I have nothing but the double-edged, razor-sharp implement of Nihilism to base my argument upon to you that it was right because rights do not exist: Nihilism destroys me too, and the act becomes another empty occurance - temporal flatulence, if you will, bereft of any significance outside of itself.

"Violations" and such involve and engender the interest of the moral agent. They are not concepts existing only to pull-out of the aether and spin in the mind. Therefore, whilst I cannot go outside and build a 27- meter-tall set of "rights", I can show you rights-in-action as they stem from the Social Contract.

There is no universally shared set of interests to base moral constructs on. Different people have different skills, limitations, mindsets and behaviours and hence, different interests. We can start organising our lives after a categorical imperative or simply realise that what is useful for society's members as a whole is not the same as what is useful for me in individual situations.

It is indeed, as I know first hand, possible to contemplate one's self right into sociopathy. I believe that the true philosophers, Nietzsche's Philosopher's of the day after tomorrow , are the one's who dive into Nihilism face first, learn to breath the rarified air and discover - after however long it takes - that it was that which was never there to begin with.

[Lutiferre]

In short, that rape was okay at point x, but is not okay at point y,

I think the more significant point of moral discontinuity is the placement/distribution of the rights and property, and the criteria for what constitutes violations like rape. Modern individual "personal" rights do not resononate at all with the original meaning of the illegality of rape; which was a matter of property and rightful belonging, not of personal rights. That is, rape was a violation more of whoever the woman is married to (or her father) than the women herself and her personal liberty.

One can fight the authority of the Social Contract, but one will 'lose'.

I agree of course, and I didn't actually attempt to "fight" it. All I fought was the absolute assertion that "rape is always wrong", due to it's exaggerated character. Even if we were to concur that rape is mostly wrong, we could always find exceptions. If Hitler were a woman, most people would hardly find it too much punishment for him to be raped, if such punishment were possible.

More importantly, Morality finds and establishes itself in practical everday human interaction, not in largely academic thought experimentation;

My point was not to deconstruct morality as a practical phenomenon, but simply to wipe it off the table as an absolute rational and dogmatic imperative. Whereas in truth, it's function lies in egoistic human societal and individual interests and is reducible to arbitrary will and subject to it's consequent fluidity.

a human being is only capable of vibrating the moral sting - it cannot be snapped.

I agree.

"Violations" and such involve and engender the interest of the moral agent. They are not concepts existing only to pull-out of the aether and spin in the mind. Therefore, whilst I cannot go outside and build a 27- meter-tall set of "rights", I can show you rights-in-action as they stem from the Social Contract.

Indeed, or rather, rights-as-consensus, and rights as constructed protectors of human interests.

[SuuT]

I think the more significant point of moral discontinuity is the placement/distribution of the rights and property, and the criteria for what constitutes violations like rape. Modern individual "personal" rights do not resononate at all with the original meaning of the illegality of rape; which was a matter of property and rightful belonging, not of personal rights. That is, rape was a violation more of whoever the woman is married to (or her father) than the women herself and her personal liberty.

Thus the construct changed in degree but not kind: Whereas once the property owner had his right to the property and person of his wife or daughter, the ownership now cedes to the marriage contract or the sole nature of parentage; in which, the personages of the couple are owned respectively in instances of marraige, and the daughter is the sole responsibility of both of it's parents.

It is still in essence a matter of Creditor and Debtor and their respective rights. That rape was once seen as wrong or an afront because of a, and now is wrong or an affront because of b, does not affect the moral truth of rape.

My point was not to deconstruct morality as a practical phenomenon, but simply to wipe it off the table as an absolute rational and dogmatic imperative. Whereas in truth, it's function lies in egoistic human societal and individual interests and is reducible to arbitrary will and subject to it's consequent fluidity.

Morality is a biological imperative if not an entirely biological phenomenon that we dress-up in flowery metaphors and therefore cannot be arbitrary. Nor is Morailty fluid as a consequence of a perceived arbitrary-ness: The sting vibrates - it does not break.

[Óttar]

I can't find any reason for why rape isn't always wrong. I doubt any amount of convoluted omphaloskepsis is going to change that.

[Lutiferre]

I will reply later. Heading for school now.

[Lutiferre]

Thus the construct changed in degree but not kind:

I disagree. Personal rights to authority over your own body and personal liberty and choice as a universally accepted moral code is a different kind of rights and morality than one in which persons external to yourself have an ownership over you - which is itself a contradiction of the former kind of morality.

That rape was once seen as wrong or an afront because of a, and now is wrong or an affront because of b, does not affect the moral truth of rape.

First, it is not a matter of "moral truth", but of an accepted moral attitude - which only proves it as a matter of "truth" or fact if you accept some academical "consensus" herd epistemology, which is itself not constructed by consensus, but is an esoteric construct.

Second. Rape is not wrong in sense B (personal rights being violated) if it is wrong in sense A (e.g. property violated) because sense A explicitly contradicts the personal rights of sense B.

In both cases, "rape is wrong", but the very meaning of "rape" is altogether different, making it semantically uncritical to simply claim they "agree" because they both forbid their respective definitions of "rape".

Morality is a biological imperative if not an entirely biological phenomenon that we dress-up in flowery metaphors and therefore cannot be arbitrary.

I am speaking of arbitrary as in reducible to will, but of course not an "arbitrary will".

To the contrary, generally a will driven by its own interests and in any case, it's respective dispositions.

Will is simply a simplistic word for the dominant dispositions of our psychology. I can construct, accept or violate any moral "imperative" by an act of will, and have done so numerous times.

Meaning it is not an immutable, absolute, objective or self-given imperative, but one which we must ourselves create, accept, deny, which we do according to our own interests both as groups, societies and individuals through history.

If at any point we no longer generally act after and construct morality according to self-interest both as groups and individuals, either because we are incapable or have an unhealthy self-destructive disposition, we will simply die out as subjects of natural selection. Whereas whoever does act after what is in the interest of their survival and expansion, will survive and expand with the moral attitudes which made that possible and easier.

Thereby I don't claim that we have "arbitrarily created" all morality; I don't believe we have so, I believe it has been created us in an unconscious sense of emerging from our social interactions and psychological drives and development; and it can consequently be denied by that same human psychological and social activity.

[Lutiferre]

I can't find any reason for why rape isn't always wrong. I doubt any amount of convoluted omphaloskepsis is going to change that.

That's a reversal of the burden of proof.

You simply accept and claim that "rape is wrong (always)" as if it was a fact, without substantiating why. And then, without having produced any positive case, you demand that I disprove something with negative reasons, for which you have no positive proof.

But it is not a moral fact just because you think it is. It is a fact of your will and psychology, your disposition. You can accept it, but that doesn't make it a fact.

[SuuT]

That's a reversal of the burden of proof.

You simply accept and claim that "rape is wrong (always)" as if it was a fact, without substantiating why. And then, without having produced any positive case, you demand that I disprove something with negative reasons, for which you have no positive proof.

But it is not a moral fact just because you think it is. It is a fact of your will and psychology, your disposition. You can accept it, but that doesn't make it a fact.

^You've not proven an instance in which rape is right - you have illuminated instances within a historiographical framework in which rape was wrong for reasons other than those agreed upon today. Ergo, while your assertions have been lengthier and more in-depth, his stands as equally substantive.


I am replying to your other post presently.

[SuuT]

I disagree. Personal rights to authority over your own body and personal liberty and choice as a universally accepted moral code is a different kind of rights and morality than one in which persons external to yourself have an ownership over you - which is itself a contradiction of the former kind of morality.

Then you must show how the *expansion* of the Liberty concept to a greater number fundamentally alters Liberty, itself. To be free is to be free.

It is not the concept of Liberty (our kind), but the pulling and centering of the concept towards equitablity. As a result of this, in can be argued that more human beings are owned by more human beings now than in any other point in history: A wave in the flux; an intensified vibration of the moral string.




You fail to see that Freedom, Liberty, Rights etc., can be achieved in no other way but through practise and application, which are first understood through concensus, which is first understood as per the group Social Contract as the repository of truth.

[Osweo]

Heading for school now.

Conscientious bartenders have the right and duty to refuse to serve a man who in their estimation has 'had too much'. If only teachers realised their analogous duties...