• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Absolute Logic

dunno about that... YOU may accept it as a truism. i do not accept that " All premises in moral reasoning are based on emotion", nor would most moral philosophers. in fact, i would say that the most, perhaps ONLY truly legitimate moral reasoning is based on a rational understanding of what is beneficial.

And when somebody has an understanding of what is beneficial that you do not agree with, for sentimental reasons, you label them as "irrational". Why? Because you said so.
 
And when somebody has an understanding of what is beneficial that you do not agree with, for sentimental reasons, you label them as "irrational". Why? Because you said so.

i don't think so. i think i said that the statement "All premises in moral reasoning are based on emotion" demonstrates no reasoning. if i am mistaken, please feel free to lay out the reasoning.

consider, though, before you begin that "reason" and "emotion" are, themselves, entirely different intellectual operations. to deny that there is a relationship between the two would be a hard argument to support, but to suggest that you cannot think one way and "feel" another is simply not true.

if it WERE true, there would be a lot less conflict in our lives. and a lot less art. ask Hamlet.

geo.
 
ok... friday night... i have about an hour and a half... lessee if i can get a response out.

let me first make a distinction between 'religion" and "faith".

"faith" as is said earlier, it the acceptance as true of premises that cannot be shown to be true, either logically or empirically. another way of saying it is that faith (especially as faith in something particular, such as a faith in god) is a formalized expression of nonrational intellectual processes, which are innate.

religion (as a general term) is a formal ordering of a body of beliefs which may or may not be based on faith. A religion (as a specific practice) is essentially a political organizaion of people (ostensibly) based on beliefs.

that said, i do not think that either faith or religion is "based on wishful thinking", though either or both may include it. i think nonrational process are essential to our success. even logic relies on "leaps" which requires an acceptance without confirmation in order to understood - einstein had to accept the premise that the pull of gravity was essentially the same as the pull of an elevator or he could never have investigated the possibility of its factuality (not really a word... but useful anyway) - he had to accept the premise without evidence in order to pursue the evidence.

faith bridges the gap in understanding providing a sense of understanding and it seems to me that the sense of understanding has proven to of greater value in our success than understanding itself.

somewhere in this thread, i believe i tried to make the point that in debating, reason is the better tool, so of course, there i agree with you. as much as 'passion' may fuel our arguments (and indeed, i suspect, that without the passion we would not bother), policy that does not extend from reason is likely bad policy.
If I lose my car keys and I can't find them. . .
recalls the old vaudeville gag about the fella looking for his keys half a block away from where he lost them because "the light is better here". a perverse sorta reason in that. probably not as much as he would need to find them, though.
Virtually no one has an emotional investment in claims of leprechauns to be true.
you would be surprised... many people really do believe in "the wee people"... the Daoine Sidhe, an ancient people of ireland.
That didn't make the claims about them any more reasonable then than they are now, nor does it make claims about gods reasonable today, just because they are widespread
again, the claim that something is not based on reason does not mean that believing it is not reasonable. if believing in pie in the sky allays your fears of dying and simply NOT being anymore, the content of the belief may not be rational, but holding the belief may be entirely so.
It doesn't matter how it makes someone feel, it doesn't matter how emotionally invested they are in the idea
certainly it does. why would how a person feel NOT matter? how your wife, child, neighbor feels about you... how you feel about them? does that NOT matter? no, that does not determine the facts, but what is factual only matters to the degree that the issue itself matters. i think we are getting close to belaboring this point.

sometimes the certainty of facts matter, sometimes they do not. i would not teach a child of mine that Santa Claus would bring her presents, but if, as would almost certainly happen, she acquired the notion elsewhere, i would not attempt to dissuade her belief, either. Telling my daughter a lie... is a bad idea. But allowing her to maintain fantasies is not. The facility of 'magical thinking' has both purpose and benefit, which is hwy we have it.

When it comes to managing our common good, then that benefit diminishes. i take it as a personal mission, for instance, to do what i can to refute the myth of the "invisible hand"... not much luck so far.
it is not understandable why anyone would continue to do such a thing when we know better
that may depend on your willingness to understand. tradition is important to people and is perfectly understandable. you identify as 'conservative'. the entire merit of 'conservatism' in its most literal sense is to retain what we are already comfortable with. a desire to not be uncomfortable is not difficult to understand.
There's no such thing as value neutral so long as the belief goes beyond the believer and invariably, it always does.
triple proviso! sure there is 'value neutral', but no, not when it affects others in meaningful ways and no, it does not always, at least not in ways that others have any legitimate right to attempt to regulate. how someone votes... is and is supposed to be entirely a personal matter. tea leaves, ouija ...

dunno... i fail to see how slaughtering pigs so that they will not be eaten is any different than slaughtering pigs so that they can be eaten. Slaughter MY pigs? yeah... yer right... that is NOT value neutral.
Take the fundamentalists
nah... you can have 'em (joke). it is not the belief that is harmful, it is the imposition of the belief. again, it is not belief, as such, but imposition that is wrong... it is JUST AS WRONG to impose rational and fact based practices on others.... it is the IMPOSITION that is wrong, not the reason.
When you have a church which demonstrably protects . . ,And you think it's irrational to criticize that?

as i said.., "Criticizing a Roman Catholic adherent for attempting to impose his nonreasoned religious conclusions as policy for others is perfectly rational". but allow me to rephrase that a bit.

Condemning a Republican (democrat, communist, existentialist, botanist....) for attempting to impose his conclusions as policy for others is perfectly rational.

(the statement should have been 'condemning' from the start. 'criticism' in its most literal sense is always justified. condemnation is not)

whew.... 75 mins... time to refill coffee before going home. i will likely be away all weekend... lots of studying to do. of course, i usually manage to cheat, so...
geo.
 
i don't think so. i think i said that the statement "All premises in moral reasoning are based on emotion" demonstrates no reasoning. if i am mistaken, please feel free to lay out the reasoning.

It's the is-ought problem. Everything that is can be proven, or at least independently verified, but it cannot tell us what ought to be. Moral philosophy is the study of how people ought to behave, order to bring about the world that ought to exist. This is wholly subjective; it's a matter of personal preference. Once you've got an idea of how the world ought to be, you can use moral reasoning to figure out how to get there, but you have to supply your own ideals. The best you can hope for is for other people to agree with your ideals, and follow your reasoning, because if your ideals are questioned your only "logical" arguments to support them are further regression or logical fallacy.

Most people don't even get this far. They take their existing prejudices and work backwards to develop premises that support them. Because they already agree with the conclusion, they accept any argument that supports their conclusion and reject or outright ignore any evidence or argument that refutes it. That's why more people listen to televangelists than theologians.

consider, though, before you begin that "reason" and "emotion" are, themselves, entirely different intellectual operations. to deny that there is a relationship between the two would be a hard argument to support, but to suggest that you cannot think one way and "feel" another is simply not true.

I reject this argument entirely. Reason and emotion are inextricably linked. It is impossible to reason without emotion; emotion is the source of motive and priority.
 
It's the is-ought problem. Everything that is can be proven, or at least independently verified, but it cannot tell us what ought to be. Moral philosophy is the study of how people ought to behave, order to bring about the world that ought to exist. This is wholly subjective; it's a matter of personal preference. Once you've got an idea of how the world ought to be, you can use moral reasoning to figure out how to get there, but you have to supply your own ideals. The best you can hope for is for other people to agree with your ideals, and follow your reasoning, because if your ideals are questioned your only "logical" arguments to support them are further regression or logical fallacy.

Most people don't even get this far. They take their existing prejudices and work backwards to develop premises that support them. Because they already agree with the conclusion, they accept any argument that supports their conclusion and reject or outright ignore any evidence or argument that refutes it. That's why more people listen to televangelists than theologians.



I reject this argument entirely. Reason and emotion are inextricably linked. It is impossible to reason without emotion; emotion is the source of motive and priority.


Hmmm.. This is an interesting debate you two are having. I'm enjoying it.


Tim-
 
It's the is-ought problem. Everything that is can be proven, or at least independently verified, but it cannot tell us what ought to be. ...
ok. so you think that all moral reasoning SHOULD be based on emotion. that is fine. i disagree, but more importantly, that is not what you said.
I reject this argument entirely. Reason and emotion are inextricably linked.
so are respiration and circulation... but your breathing is not "based" in your bloodstream. we may be arguing a nonissue.

It is impossible to reason without emotion; emotion is the source of motive and priority.

now, THAT we know is not true. i said earlier that without your emotions you might find little cause for using reason, but you would still have the capacity. yes, your emotional and rational 'selves' ARE linked, but not inextricably - they reside in separate parts of the brain; emotions in the "mammalian" brain (or Limbic system, which we share with other mammals that can feel emotions) while our unique reasoning abilities reside in the Cortex.

I can crack yer skull (figuratively speaking) and carefully remove your fear by cutting out the amygdala and your reasoning abilities would remain untouched. in fact, just this sort of thing HAS happened, either by accident or illness. after such an irresponsible surgery, you might see the bear, know that it is a danger but stand and watch with interest as it tore you to bits, unable to experience the terror.

such an extreme is not entirely necessary to make the point, though. With a healthy brain, your emotions are certainly going to be involved as you reason, but they do not not necessarily form the basis of your reasonings nor of the conclusions you draw from them. you CAN arrive at rational decisions that might well repulse you emotionally.
remember a time when you really wanted to do something, but you knew you shouldn't? The most illogical or irrational "wants" we have probably derive from older parts of our brain, while the understanding of smart versus dumb choices comes from the newest part.
- Psycheducation.org

the site has a link to a very nice essay... i recommend it.

hey Tim,
geo.
 
Last edited:
ok. so you think that all moral reasoning SHOULD be based on emotion. that is fine. i disagree, but more importantly, that is not what you said.

No. What I said is that problems of morality are matters of what should be, and are thus matters of personal preference. Hence, emotion.

now, THAT we know is not true. i said earlier that without your emotions you might find little cause for using reason, but you would still have the capacity.

I'd love to see how you would go about testing that.
 
It's not an argument. It's a truism. It's just like a little kid asking "Why?"; every moral argument can be regressed indefinitely until someone breaks down and answers "because I said so" or "because God said so", which anyone who cares about logical arguments should recognize as not being logical arguments.

If at the root of all logical arguments is "because I said so", then I would deem that an important issue. No one can concretely prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt; thus I prefer bringing other users to that point to observe their internal reasonings.

Truism.. I must look more deeply into this.
 
If at the root of all logical arguments is "because I said so", then I would deem that an important issue. No one can concretely prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt; thus I prefer bringing other users to that point to observe their internal reasonings.

This, I certainly agree with. The application of logical reasoning to moral values is a worthwhile pursuit. What I am arguing against is the folly of convincing yourself that your own moral values are "logical" because you agree with them.
 
What I am arguing against is the folly of convincing yourself that your own moral values are "logical" because you agree with them.

now, if you had simply said THAT to begin with, we cudda saves a lotta time.

geo.
 
I don't know what the OP thinks he means by "absolute logic" but he paints a false dilemma. Logic is a system by which we can evaluate the reasonableness of conclusions by evaluating the supporting evidence for those conclusions. Despite what some hard core trekkies might like to think, logic does not have anything to do with the dispensement of emotions, and "being logical" does not entail ceasing to be emotional.

It's interestingly ironic that the scenario the OP offers actually demands an answer that illustrates his false dilemma between logic and emotion. The "correct" answer is that one must evaluate one's own emotions, and come to a prioritization. On one hand, you love your mother, you don't want her to die, you don't want to give up on her, you don't want to dishonor her even if she does die, you probably have a strong emotional aversion to cannibalism, and probably an even stronger aversion to desecrating your mother's dead body. On the other hand, you are afraid to die, you might be unwilling to let your mother's death be in vane, you might also feel convinced that your mother might actually want you to use her body to survive so you might be adverse to dishonoring her dying wish even if it's unpleasant for you. The decision you must make is an emotional one. You must choose which set of emotions to sacrifice in favor of the other set.

In making such a decision, you're likely to use your logical fallacies. You might say to yourself "If I have to cannibalize my own mother to survive, the pain and trauma I'll forever suffer will make life itself too unbearable." If that's how you feel, then it would be illogical to proceed with such a plan.
 
Logic cannot function without premises. All premises in moral reasoning are based on emotion.

True, but there needs to be an emotional situation (premise) where moral reasoning is needed.

From what I can tell, I have five levels of my emotions...


Level One. An indistinct feeling, hardly noticeable.

Level Two. Same as level one except something gets my attention.

Level Three. Same as level two except that I'm fully aware of the cause.

Level Four. Same as level three except that something someone says or does puts me on the defensive.

Level Five. Something or someone threatens to harm or kill me.

All feedback welcomed.

ricksfolly
 
Back
Top Bottom