Bold Standard

I do think he defines morality with reference to a moral actor, just not with reference to a valuer. Good and evil aren't values for him--they're catagorical imperitives, ie, objective absolutes which hold in all contexts without exceptions. In his words, from Foundations for the Metaphysic of Morals it means, "I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should be a universal law." That means, never do anything unless it would be possible to act on the same principle in every concievable situation.. and, if it would be possible, then that alone qualifies the action as moral. Take dishonesty for example.. If everything that everybody said were always false, then everyone would know that everything everybody said was always false, and therefore would know to believe the opposite. So it would turn back into the truth.. In other words, it would be impossible for everybody to lie all the time, therefore lying in any context is immoral. But it's possible for everybody to tell the truth all the time, so that's what people should do. (According to Kantian ethics).

I'm not saying that the subjects were innocent in their actions.. But I do think the deception led in a direct way to the traumatic reaction of the subjects.. When the screams stopped, the subjects really thought that the people (who were really experimenters, but who the subjects thought were other subjects) had died, and that they were responsible for their deaths.. I think it's the gravity of that which hit them.. I think somehow they weren't expecting for that to actually happen, since the experimenters in the room with them kept telling them to go on, even though it was labeled as a lethal dose of electricity. Anyway, I don't think Milgram knew how much the experiment would harm the subjects psychologically, but it would be unethical now to repeat such an experiment, since we do know that it can do harm.

Yeah, the electrocution studies. Well.. How about this.. Suppose someone were going to do a study on the reactions of parents, after they are told that one of their children has been killed. Wouldn't it make an ethical difference whether these people's children had actually died, or whether researchers were making up that they had died, for the sake of studying their reactions? Well, that might not be a great example, becuase it's not the type of study people could really volunteer for anyway.. But my point is that it is possible to cause real psychological (and even physical, since it is directly tied to the psychological) harm to a person by giving him false information. I think it's unethical to expose subjects of an experiment to harm in that way. I believe your source was mistaken. I'll try and find some better sources when I have a chance..

I didn't intend my question to be insulting, but I don't withdraw it. It still seems like a contradiction to me. When Ramare says, "He should want me for everything I am," I interpret that as meaning he should be sexually attracted to her for everything she is, including her mind.. But then she says, "in the middle of sex, it ought to be all about my body." If the man "should" want her for her mind as well as her body, why shouldn't he think about her mind, and, for instance, the beauty of the spiritual connection between them, during sex? Is the implication that I'm a pervert for being turned on by thinking about these things during sex? I guess it's the "ought to" and the "all about" that I don't get--I don't think it would be bad or immoral to think only about a someone's body during sex (assuming that's not the only reason for having sex with that person) but I don't think it's wrong to think about other things either.

I love flamenco guitar music, too. There's something about those minor modes that really gets me, and the rhythms are so hypnotizing and seductive. My absolute favorite band ever is Cocteau Twins. I think their is unmatched for its (usually) unabashed benevolence, fragile sense of beauty, full range of emotions, and always fresh, innovative sense of independence and exploration. I also think they have some of the most inventive melodies, and the most perfectionist devotion to unique and interesting tones and sound production of just about any post-1950s music. Other post -1950s music I like includes Felt, Lush (God were their harmonies hot), My Bloody Valentine (sexy arrangements), Swallow, Altered Images (straight new wave, but good), sometimes Smashing Pumpkins (one of the only rock bands I like besides Led Zeppelin). But I'm a music fanatic.. I could go on forever with music I like, especially if I get started with older music (I like most 20th century popular music of the '50s and earlier).

I've never seen Jesus portrayed as a man of great self-esteem. He is usually portrayed as a man of great humility and meekness. But he certainly suffered from delusions of grandeur. He thought he was God. Whether that implies an abnormally low self esteem or is unrelated to self esteem is a question for a psychologist.. I'm not sure about it. [Edit: Ohh, hi, Gretchen! I just realized that's you.. I didn't know you post here. : )] Do you consider the writings of Thomas Aquinas to be relevant literature? (I think he would have disagreed with your view about the essence of Christianity, which seems to be the Augustinian interpretation).

That seems like a contradiction.. Is it everything you are, or all about your body?

LOL.. Plate of cheese? I'll have to remember antipasto next time I'm with someone who insists on dirty talk.

Welfare and income tax are immoral because they violate the property rights of the individuals being taxed. No group of people (ie, the government) should have the power to seize wealth that was earned by other people, and spend it to serve ends they have in mind (whether those ends are egalitarian, utilitarian, or nihilistic)--people are ends in themselves, not means to the ends of others. What welfare ends up doing is rewarding the unproductive while punishing the productive. That is an obscene injustice. (These are just some brief preliminary arguments against welfare statism. For more complete arguments, see Atlas Shrugged and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, for starters).

Charlotte, I think all this dirty talk has effected your grammar. : P (Themself is not a word!)

But there is no difference between f*cking and making love. These are two words, with different moral evaluations, of the same act. The only way that I could understand people being thrilled by specifically *dirty* talk, as *opposed* to sensual talk, unless they are depraved, would be because of some sense of irony.. As in, "I know this act is not dirty at all, but is beautiful, yet I'm going to call it low and dirty, just to emphasize how non-low and non-dirty it is." Or something like that. But I've never been into talking dirty during sex.. When women I've been involved with have tried to talk dirty to me during sex, I usually just try not to let them see me rolling my eyes.

Not necessarily (umm, unless you're just trying to be deceptive--but I think maybe you're getting deception confused with irony ; P).. Serious psychological harm can be done to a person by deceptive experiments in psych studies, as evidenced by the subjects of Stanely Milgam's controversial, deceptive obedience experiments (some were traumatized to the point of having seizures), and other similar types of deceptive psychological experiments, of the variety which is now usually considered to be unethical.

I know nothing about sororities or fraternities, but why would this be morally atrocious? Why couldn't a sorority choose its members by any criteria it pleases? Also, why isn't beauty a "personal virtue"? I could see that it would be immoral if a sorority or some other organization chose its members based on looks, when it claimed to be judging them based on some other criteria and not that, because then it would be dishonest. But I can't understand why it would be inherently immoral to choose members based on looks. I work in the catering industry, which is largely about presentation, and I know people in this business are often hired based on looks (it's probably not official company policy, but I know there are clients who specifically request good looking staff). Physically unattractive people who are hard workers and generally competent often get paid less [so I hear] than pretty people who don't do much besides stand around looking pretty. That's just the way it is sometimes--guests often care more that their server is sexy than that they were served from the left and had full wine glasses all night. ::shrug:: [edit: Of course, the ideal is always to have servers who are pretty *and* competent. But pretty is more important, because the other problem can usually be fixed, for one thing.] If this kind of policy can work for a profit seeking business I don't see why it couldn't be rational for some college social club. It's definitely not the most immoral thing I've heard being associated with sororities or fraternities.

I don't think Kant equates the good with a value (that would be the satisfaction of inclinations), rather he equates it with rational behavior (that's duty). [edit: And for him, rational behavior means that it must be universalizable.] As I understand it, for Kant, duty is an end in itself. Therefore, no answer need be given for why one should act from duty other than because it is his duty.

My sources on this are not scholarly, and I'm not sure how to verify it.. But my understanding is that "man" was initially non-gender specific, and that originally the term "woman" merely described the type of man who has a womb (I read that they derived from Norse originally). That seems plausible to me, but I don't know.

Hello. : ) May I ask what books you have read by Ayn Rand? That would help me to better understand the context you're coming from. I don't know what your favorite arts are, but a lot of art that I enjoy contains themes that favor individualism (and volition, benevolent universe, comprehensibility, etc); and much of it was not successful at first, but over the long term was significantly more successful than initially successful competition that failed to uphold those themes. An example would be Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, which eventually became an enormous success after being rejected by numerous publishers, and receiving very little press and advertising from its publisher initially. It became popular through word of mouth and now continues to sell over a hundred thousand copies a year, 60 years later. Or, with Atlas Shrugged.. I don't see how it could be shown that AS was what people *wanted* (at least, what they knew they wanted). It seems like all of the literary trends of the time leading up to it being published were in the opposite direction. But I know very little about the science of marketing, and you seem knowledgeable about it. So maybe you could have anticipated the receptivity to Ayn Rand's books, when it seems that it might be counterintuitive for them to have been so successful (at least, the publishers she solicited early on seemed to think so).

You must not have gone to a public high school..

Did you read the quote I provided, in which Kant says that happiness tends to "corrupt [the strict laws of duty] at their very source, and entirely to destroy their worth- a thing which even common practical reason cannot ultimately call good"? Is this not anti-happiness? Most of Kant's works are available as etexts--so even though you might not always get the specific translation you want, you can at least usually look up a page reference, just by doing a quick Google search, if you know basically what you're looking for. I find that references help--if someone can check your source, it makes it easier for him to understand your position, and also to learn more about the topic if it's interesting.

Oh, that's simple--it was just a priori synthesis of the manifold of pure intuitions. Duh, Mimpy! Actually, Kant's system and the ways he arrived at many of his conclusions place Kant's philosophy among the most tortuously complicated systems devised by a philosopher, IMO (at least, compared to philosophers prior to Kant). I don't know if this quote from Nietzsche is true, but it makes me laugh, and it might not be far from true: But I think it is important to read and try to understand Kant's system--as offensive and boring and seemingly arbitrary as it can sometimes be. In a letter to John Hospers, Ayn Rand said this once, and I think she's right: I don't think that means you necessarily have to read him in the original (at least, in English translations I've read, he can sometimes be almost unintelligible, without having to practically diagram the sentences in your head to figure out what he's trying to say), but at least the best, least biased commentaries and analyses of his works you can find. Quaint aphorisms aside, his philosophy isn't always something so simple as can be explained on a message board (just as Ayn Rand's philosophy isn't, but more so, because he's one of those philosophers who was influenced by geometry, and they always tend to be more complicated! : )).

Using that definition, I agree with you. If you defined egoism as self interest, and altruism as self sacrifice, he would be an altruist, but he clearly thinks that people should sacrifice themselves for the sake of duty, rather than for the happiness of others. Kant was explicitly anti-happiness.

Hello, welcome to the forum. Could you provide a reference for Kant refuting altruism in the second Critique (I assume you mean the second edition of CPR?). How are you defining "altruism" here? It is my understanding that the term "altruism" did not exist when Kant wrote CPR, and that the term was invented by Auguste Comte as a description of Kant's ethics. Is it your position that I'm mistaken about this, or that Comte was mistaken in his understanding of Kant's ethics (if so, in what way in particular?), or something else? If that is true, that's an interesting aspect of Kant's position that I hadn't understood. Can you provide a reference in which Kant discusses his reasons for holding the position that an action can only have one motivation? (If you've come to the conclusion that Kant held that view based on another scholar's interpretation of Kant, I would appreciate it if you would point to that, but a primary source reference directly to Kant would be the most preferable). Based on my reading of CPR, I believe you are correct about this. It wasn't until Hegel that philosophers began arguing for a thesis *and* its antithesis (what Hegelians sometimes refer to as the identity of opposites), which is an essential component of Hegel's dialectic process, in which [paraphrasing] the contradiction which does and doesn't exist between the thesis and antithesis is and isn't resolved into a synthesis.

In the early days of the church, there were many, many sects and cults attempting to reinvent Christianity in various ways. Once the church gained political power, anyone who took a non-canonical view of Christianity was considered a heretic, and often executed. In modern times, now that there is religious freedom, there are once again many sects attempting to reinvent Christianity. Mormonism and Rastafarianism spring to mind. The New Testament was never intended to replace the Old Testament, only, supposedly, to supplement it (much like the Book of Mormon was supposed to do to the New Testament). Christians claim not to have abandoned the Old Testament--Jesus said, in Matthew 5:17-18, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily, I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." ("The law, or the prophets" refers approximately to the OT).

When did Kant claim that the law of causality is false? Kant thought causality was a contribution of consciousness, but he argued that it was objective since all humans must perceive causally, just as we must perceive spatially and temporally, etc. I'll have to look up a reference for that; but I'm pretty sure. Hume rejected causality, but Kant *claimed* to uphold it, though he attributed it to consciousness rather than to ("neumenal") reality. I'm not disputing that Kant was guilty of hating the good for being the good, it's just that the way you put it before made it seem (to me) like you were suggesting he was explicit about that. He was explicit about a lot of pretty disturbing things, but that's one that I don't think he ever admitted to--he also never admitted that the Enlightenment virtues were true or good. I'm not sure if he realized that they were (if he did realize that, then that would make him much more evil, but I don't know how to verify that hypothesis one way or the other)..

I don't think Kant argued for (II). (I) seems more accurate. I think Leonard Peikoff's analysis of Kant's ethics in The Ominous Parallels is correct and nicely stated: But I suggest that you read Kant's The Metaphysic of Morals sometime and judge for yourself what he meant. Also, this passage in The Ominous Parallels is followed by a very revealing quote from a different work by Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, (which I haven't read yet, but looks like it will also be a good source on how Kant thought his ethics should be applied).

They are all required to get this vaccination, which is, by the way, 360$ a pop. Most medical insurance covers it; however, there are many, many uninsured families in Texas. Perry's friends are going to make a lot of money off of this vaccine.