Philosophy God, Nietzsche, and Morality

[Certified_Heterosexual]

Let's talk about morality.

All of us have moral intuitions. Our sense of right and wrong feels like something bigger than us, something outside our own heads, more fundamental than any single person's preference. As we all know, however, there is big problem, most succinctly rendered by Hume's “is-ought” dilemma—there is no way to go from describing what something is to what it ought to be. This is why all claims of moral realism are unavoidably circular. The art of constructing an ethical system lies in playing a shell game with yourself. You start with three shells, and under one of them is the proposition you're secretly assuming from the start. You spin them around and spin them around until you are dizzy, and shout, “wait, how did that get there?”

There is only one way to win the shell game of is and ought: you can transmute is into ought if you frame it in the context of a goal. Since I want to accomplish Goal X, I ought to do Thing Y.

We can combine the observation that goals create oughts with a belief in an eternal omnipotent god. In this way, and only this way, can we justify a morality that is absolute and transcendent. A transcendent being has transcendent goals, and transcendent goals create transcendent oughts, binding on everything. This is said to “ground” morality. Morality is grounded when it is justified, an ought incarnated as as an is.

So that was theological morality. How else could we ground morality? Well, you can try the humanistic strategy: perhaps morality flows from some idealized conception of human desire. The greatest good for the greatest number. This falls into contradiction when we attempt to find a definition of “good.” How are we supposed to rank human desires? By means of some other desire? What about people with contradictory desires? Does the intensity of a desire affect its priority? If so, why? If not, why not? Any attempt to square this circle is another variant of the shell game: you're smuggling something in here, some axiom that doesn't belong.

And yet it still feels wrong to believe that things like rape and betrayal are only evil in a relative, limited way, doesn't it? Will your conscience allow this? When someone takes sexual advantage of a child, it is only bad because you personally think it's bad? Yet this is the bullet all seculars must bite.

But there is another way, a third place to look for the grounding of morality. This way is the Nietzschean way. It is unique among all moral arguments because it justifies itself—because Nietzsche, upon climbing the mountain and finding no god there, looks within. And what does he see? He sees only his own will, and he realizes that the grounding of morality is neither a theological nor a categorical imperative. He sees that in a godless world, there can be no Thou Shalt, there can only be I Will.

All this is to say morality is grounded in the will of the powerful, for the powerful man actualizes his will. His judgement and his good taste become for him the arbiters of all existence, which the world either matches or falls short. And if two men should disagree on morality? Then it is strength which will prevail.
And if a powerful man wills evil? Does it become good? In his own mind, yes; but there is no need for us to submit to his evil. The student asks, "if there is no god, then who decides what is evil?" The teacher replies, "you should." This answer was not flippant. Would you be shocked and scandalized to learn that I am a Christian? It is possible to be a theist and a Nietzschean, if you want. It's actually really simple—as the most powerful being, morality flows directly from God's will-to-power.

Believe in God or don't, even as a Christian I'm not offended. Though I will note that all rational arguments for God, like rational arguments for morality, are another variation on the shell game. Nietzsche's self-justifying morality is modeled on Christian faith, which also justifies itself. If you have a rational reason for your faith, then it's not really faith and you are missing the point. As with morality, faith in God flows ultimately from the power of your will; that is the only justification.

 

[Yinko]

All this is to say morality is grounded in the will of the powerful, for the powerful man actualizes his will. His judgement and his good taste become for him the arbiters of all existence, which the world either matches or falls short. And if two men should disagree on morality? Then it is strength which will prevail.

Nietzschean morality is like the realpolitik of ethics. It points at the fact that laws are followed due to force and fear and the habits they form, that the ultimate legitimacy of the state is the force it can bear upon all who would question its authority. A group may vote themselves separate, but if they cannot remain cohesive nor ward off attempts to absorb them, then their will is worth nothing.

It is possible to be a theist and a Nietzschean, if you want. It's actually really simple—as the most powerful being, morality flows directly from God's will-to-power.

God: biggest guy with the biggest stick enforcing his version of morality with force (see Sodom and Gomorrah).

 

[OliverCromwell]

So that was theological morality. How else could we ground morality? Well, you can try the humanistic strategy: perhaps morality flows from some idealized conception of human desire. The greatest good for the greatest number. This falls into contradiction when we attempt to find a definition of “good.” How are we supposed to rank human desires? By means of some other desire? What about people with contradictory desires? Does the intensity of a desire affect its priority? If so, why? If not, why not? Any attempt to square this circle is another variant of the shell game: you're smuggling something in here, some axiom that doesn't belong.

Gonna just quote myself here:

This may come as a surprise to you, but the Liberal tradition is not in fact made up of gibbering imbeciles who have spent the last two centuries ignoring the single most obvious, common, and puerile objection to their philosophical foundation that exists. Have you ever read Gauthier?

 

[Certified_Heterosexual]

Gonna just quote myself here:

Nah, sorry, if you want me to take you seriously you have to actually respond, not just pawn the question off on past thinkers.

 

[OliverCromwell]

Nah, sorry, if you want me to take you seriously you have to actually respond, not just pawn the question off on past thinkers.

My dude, the argument you're presenting here is such an incredible oversimplification of the modern debate about ethics that I honestly don't know what to tell you besides "read the fucking literature". There are more positions out there than fundamentalism, hedonistic utilitarianism, and Nietzscheanism, and reducing every single liberal and leftist belief to the second is such a pathetically basic misunderstanding of... almost all of them that it makes it rather hard for me to take you seriously. None the less, I'm bored, so I'll bite.

Even accepting the conceit that moral realism has to be true for some reason (which I'll note that you haven't provided any real argument for whatsoever), and that it necessarily has to arise from our moral intuitions (again, a gigantic claim that you haven't justified at all), giving rise to this idea that the only way to ground morality is through statements like "if I want to accomplish X, I ought to do Y", that still does not necessarily require theism, let alone the specific form of Christian theism that you happen to subscribe to. Gauthier provided a strong case for morality of this type grounded purely in strategic reason--that is to say, pursuing whatever preferences you have in the most optimal manner available to you to achieve them--and for that matter Hobbes did the same centuries ago.

Every human being obviously wishes to fulfill their preferences, since that's literally what the definition of a preference is. With the exception of an extremely marginal number of people, almost everybody is able to better satisfy their preferences through cooperation with other actors, through such means as bargaining and making agreements with each other and through the basic act of participating in society. Almost all people, for instance, benefit greatly from being able to participate in a mutual agreement with others to not kill each other, satisfying our very basic preference to continue being alive. We likewise benefit from being able to take part in a mutual agreement to not defect against each other in the Prisoner's Dilemma.

However, there are certain conditions that an actor must fulfill before another rational actor would be willing to cooperate with them--these include things such as "kindness" (don't initiate harm against others), reciprocity (if I do not defect against you, you do not defect against me), non-negative tuism (your preferences do not include actively causing me harm), and some basic concept of fairness (in its simplest form, the idea that cooperating with you will not leave me worse off than if I had cooperated, and beyond that, the idea that a division of goods that we arrive upon through agreement is a "fair" allocation of goods relative to our initial contributions, for some definition of fair. Not going to go further into the weeds about the minimax relative concession because I don't totally buy it and because, frankly, if you aren't willing to google David Gauthier to get a summary of what he wrote instead of moodily demanding that I waste my time summarizing intro-level contrarianism because you're too much of a special snowflake to read philosophy, you're probably not going to pay close attention to the specifics either).

Since a rational actor is able to recognize that others are also rational actors, they must come to the conclusion that the best way to maximally fulfill their preferences is through constraining their actions to adhere to these conditions, as doing so is the only way they will be able to cooperate with others and secure such basic benefits as not being murdered for no reason, to say nothing of various other benefits such as liberty, law, living in a society, receiving the altruism of others, etc. As such, to achieve that goal of fulfilling their preferences, a rational actor ought to abide by these conditions for cooperation--that which we call morality.

People like Skyrms, Danielson, and Axelrod have actually proven that this basic notion underlying contractarianism--that rational actors benefit from constraining their actions to abide by these basic principles of morality, because they are able to mutually cooperate with other actors who do so while actors who do not defect themselves to extinction--is true, and moreover biologists like Hamilton have likewise demonstrated how such dynamics could actually have led to moral behavior in animals, including the same moral intuitions you were talking about at the beginning.

In contrast, your notion of theological morality relies on proving all of the following:

1. The existence of the supernatural
2. The existence of an omnipotent god, assuming (1)
3. The correctness of Christianity as a particular interpretation of god, assuming (2)
4. The correctness of your particular interpretation of Christian canon, assuming (3)
5. And the correctness of your particular interpretation of the moral implications of said Christian canon, assuming (4)

You have, at best, in your entire history of posting, provided a mediocre argument for (2). You've done nothing to prove any of the others (especially not why, if we accept that an omnipotent god exists, we should believe that his commands about what is moral should exactly align with those found in your particular version of Christianity's canon), nor to disprove any of the many, many, many ethical theories which have attempted establish a grounding for morality other than your own. So why should we believe you?

 

[Deleted member 88]

My dude, the argument you're presenting here is such an incredible oversimplification of the modern debate about ethics that I honestly don't know what to tell you besides "read the fucking literature". There are more positions out there than fundamentalism, hedonistic utilitarianism, and Nietzscheanism, and reducing every single liberal and leftist belief to the second is such a pathetically basic misunderstanding of... almost all of them that it makes it rather hard for me to take you seriously. None the less, I'm bored, so I'll bite.

Even accepting the conceit that moral realism has to be true for some reason (which I'll note that you haven't provided any real argument for whatsoever), and that it necessarily has to arise from our moral intuitions (again, a gigantic claim that you haven't justified at all), giving rise to this idea that the only way to ground morality is through statements like "if I want to accomplish X, I ought to do Y", that still does not necessarily require theism, let alone the specific form of Christian theism that you happen to subscribe to. Gauthier provided a strong case for morality of this type grounded purely in strategic reason--that is to say, pursuing whatever preferences you have in the most optimal manner available to you to achieve them--and for that matter Hobbes did the same centuries ago.

Every human being obviously wishes to fulfill their preferences, since that's literally what the definition of a preference is. With the exception of an extremely marginal number of people, almost everybody is able to better satisfy their preferences through cooperation with other actors, through such means as bargaining and making agreements with each other and through the basic act of participating in society. Almost all people, for instance, benefit greatly from being able to participate in a mutual agreement with others to not kill each other, satisfying our very basic preference to continue being alive. We likewise benefit from being able to take part in a mutual agreement to not defect against each other in the Prisoner's Dilemma.

However, there are certain conditions that an actor must fulfill before another rational actor would be willing to cooperate with them--these include things such as "kindness" (don't initiate harm against others), reciprocity (if I do not defect against you, you do not defect against me), non-negative tuism (your preferences do not include actively causing me harm), and some basic concept of fairness (in its simplest form, the idea that cooperating with you will not leave me worse off than if I had cooperated, and beyond that, the idea that a division of goods that we arrive upon through agreement is a "fair" allocation of goods relative to our initial contributions, for some definition of fair. Not going to go further into the weeds about the minimax relative concession because I don't totally buy it and because, frankly, if you aren't willing to google David Gauthier to get a summary of what he wrote instead of moodily demanding that I waste my time summarizing intro-level contrarianism because you're too much of a special snowflake to read philosophy, you're probably not going to pay close attention to the specifics either).

Since a rational actor is able to recognize that others are also rational actors, they must come to the conclusion that the best way to maximally fulfill their preferences is through constraining their actions to adhere to these conditions, as doing so is the only way they will be able to cooperate with others and secure such basic benefits as not being murdered for no reason, to say nothing of various other benefits such as liberty, law, living in a society, receiving the altruism of others, etc. As such, to achieve that goal of fulfilling their preferences, a rational actor ought to abide by these conditions for cooperation--that which we call morality.

People like Skyrms, Danielson, and Axelrod have actually proven that this basic notion underlying contractarianism--that rational actors benefit from constraining their actions to abide by these basic principles of morality, because they are able to mutually cooperate with other actors who do so while actors who do not defect themselves to extinction--is true, and moreover biologists like Hamilton have likewise demonstrated how such dynamics could actually have led to moral behavior in animals, including the same moral intuitions you were talking about at the beginning.

In contrast, your notion of theological morality relies on proving all of the following:

1. The existence of the supernatural
2. The existence of an omnipotent god, assuming (1)
3. The correctness of Christianity as a particular interpretation of god, assuming (2)
4. The correctness of your particular interpretation of Christian canon, assuming (3)
5. And the correctness of your particular interpretation of the moral implications of said Christian canon, assuming (4)

You have, at best, in your entire history of posting, provided a mediocre argument for (2). You've done nothing to prove any of the others (especially not why, if we accept that an omnipotent god exists, we should believe that his commands about what is moral should exactly align with those found in your particular version of Christianity's canon), nor to disprove any of the many, many, many ethical theories which have attempted establish a grounding for morality other than your own. So why should we believe you?

Okay to summarize your philosophy is basically, "rational people cooperate and anything that diminishes this perfect equilibrium is immoral."

On what basis do they cooperate?

What grounds holds the community together, besides "wanton murder and theft will be the end of us all".

Which...even ant colonies or other relatively social animals abide by.

This tells us nothing about how man is live, except in peace with his neighbor.

This doesn't take into account say, when the interest of the individual or say the family unit is in contravence to the interest of the greater community, or situations where rational contractual ties are outright detrimental to say the health, of the individual or are imposed unwillingly.

Or what behaviors might have indirect detrimental effects on the community but are individually harmless or even profitable.

 

[Yinko]

There's also the problem that people aren't rational, and any theory of ethics that depends on human rationality is doomed from the start, and have before.

 

[Deleted member 88]

I mean if I can be a bank robber and get away with wanton murder and set myself and my descendants up as oligarchs why rationally should I not do so?

 

[Certified_Heterosexual]

@OliverCromwell also refuses to acknowledge that my arguments are not contingent on the existence of a god, since I explicitly said that objective morality is ultimately Nietzschean, which can also encompass divine command but doesn't have to. So proving the existence of my god is a complete non sequitur, and the fact that you keep harping on YOU MUST PROVE YOUR GOD TO ME FUNDIE shows that you're not participating in good faith.

Still, cool rant. 6/10.

 

[OliverCromwell]

Okay to summarize your philosophy is basically, "rational people cooperate and anything that diminishes this perfect equilibrium is immoral."

On what basis do they cooperate?

What grounds holds the community together, besides "wanton murder and theft will be the end of us all".

Did... did you not read the post? It's literally right there--they cooperate on the basis of strategic, rational self-interest, and the community is held together because of everyone's mutual interest in maintaining the cooperation from which they all benefit.

Which...even ant colonies or other relatively social animals abide by.

This tells us nothing about man is live, except in peace with his neighbor.

This doesn't take into account say, when the interest of the individual or say the family unit is in contravence to the interest of the greater community, or situations where rational contractual ties are outright detrimental to say the health, of the individual or are imposed unwillingly.

Or what behaviors might have indirect detrimental effects on the community but are individually harmless or even profitable.

I mean... yeah, no it doesn't? Welcome to liberalism 101, lol. That's for the people to decide for themselves, based on whatever particular preferences they happen to have personally and in their communities. Contractarianism demands that you be nice, be reciprocal, to honor your commitments, not wish harm on others, and a few other basic principles that allow us to live peacefully and cooperatively with each other, and which also underlie basically all of humanity's basic moral intuitions. The particulars of how society ought to be structured beyond that depend on the bargaining conditions and preferences of those involved, whatever those may be.

(If you want to get technical, Gauthier has a particular formulation of how people ought to resolve disputes with each other such as these that he claims to be grounded in reason, which he calls Minimax Relative Concession--I encourage you to read more about if you're interested in this subject. This is just his particular formulation, however, and not universally accepted even among contractarians--I don't totally buy it myself, which is part of the reason I don't feel compelled to defend it here.)

There's also the problem that people aren't rational, and any theory of ethics that depends on human rationality is doomed from the start, and have before.

Rationality here is defined as being "acting optimally to maximally satisfy one's preferences"--human beings aren't rational in the sense that we fail to do this, but it seems fairly obvious that human beings ought to be rational since rationality, again, is literally defined as acting in such a way as to get the most of whatever it is you want to get.

I mean if I can be a bank robber and get away with wanton murder and set myself and my descendants up as oligarchs why rationally should I not do so?

Dude, I literally addressed this verbatim the last time we talked about this.

@OliverCromwell also refuses to acknowledge that my arguments are not contingent on the existence of a god, since I explicitly said that objective morality is ultimately Nietzschean, which can also encompass divine command but doesn't have to. So proving the existence of my god is a complete non sequitur, and the fact that you keep harping on YOU MUST PROVE YOUR GOD TO ME FUNDIE shows that you're not participating in good faith.

Still, cool rant. 6/10.

Dude, I can read your other posts and see how the vast majority of it is ranting about the evil homosexuals and what not, something which has very little to do with Nietzsche and quite a lot to do with Christianity, which is why I feel compelled to point out that your worldview is a stupid belief held by dumb-dumb idiots. Go ahead and ignore that if I've somehow misinterpreted you, but that doesn't make any of the points I made in the entire rest of the post any less valid?

I mean, yeah I'm not participating in good faith lol. I came here to troll southerners about how they're a genetically and culturally inferior breed who ought to be rightfully occupied and civilized by the north, and came back to chase off The Name of Love because I got annoyed with him on a different forum. I only ever come here because laughing at stupid reactionaries is my greatest vice and the way I chose to pass my time for some bizarre reason, and occasionally I see someone so egregiously stupid that I feel compelled to dunk on them.

That doesn't make anything else I said any less rationally correct, though. Sorry you're too much of a special snowflake to take a little bit of spice with your debating.

 

[Deleted member 88]

Did... did you not read the post? It's literally right there--they cooperate on the basis of strategic, rational self-interest, and the community is held together because of everyone's mutual interest in maintaining the cooperation from which they all benefit.

Okay this doesn't take into account a variety of factors. Human irrational behavior, different religions, cultures, races and nerd fandom preferences...will seek to promote the interest of their group over others. This formulation may work in a homogenous society composed of people who share certain markers of identity but not as the world is actually.

I mean... yeah, no it doesn't? Welcome to liberalism 101, lol. That's for the people to decide for themselves, based on whatever particular preferences they happen to have personally and in their communities. Contractarianism demands that you be nice, be reciprocal, to honor your commitments, not wish harm on others, and a few other basic principles that allow us to live peacefully and cooperatively with each other, and which also underlie basically all of humanity's basic moral intuitions. The particulars of how society ought to be structured beyond that depend on the bargaining conditions and preferences of those involved, whatever those may be.

What happens when group A wants more money for schools and Group B wants more money for I dunno...other schools. Or when Person A wants a larger piece of the pie than person B who wants the entire pie. They can both take half, but neither will be satisfied and preventing one from taking all of it and slitting the other person's throat is external force(i.e. the state).

Dude, I literally addressed this verbatim the last time we talked about this.

I mean sure the community has an interest in me failing. So I have an interest in shattering the community and dividing it for myself and my immediate relatives. So either the community eliminates me or I destroy the community. Chimpanzees wage war-for access to females, resources, and so on. The same irrepressible dynamics apply to humans.

 

[LifeisTiresome]

@OliverCromwell

Hey. Not everyone here is a Southerner or from the US. Lol

@Certified_Heterosexual

You know. This Nietzschean morality thing you talk about I find interesting cause so many fictions have heroes that defeat villains cause they have become so OP instead of defeating them by proving them wrong or having them fail cause evil always fails. So heroes impose their morality or have their morality win through their strength of arms even if they say its cause of friendship or cause its right. Thats just the writers hiding the real answer which is their strength of arms which as you state is Nietzchean morality.

Have you ever heard of a Light novel and anime called Overlord?

It has these 2 quotes:

"The Sorcerer King is justice and weakness is a sin."

"Weakness without the drive to improve one’s self is a sin, everyone must strive towards the goal of becoming stronger."

 

[Certified_Heterosexual]

Dude, I can read your other posts and see how the vast majority of it is ranting about the evil homosexuals and what not, something which has very little to do with Nietzsche and quite a lot to do with Christianity, which is why I feel compelled to point out that your worldview is a stupid belief held by dumb-dumb idiots. Go ahead and ignore that if I've somehow misinterpreted you, but that doesn't make any of the points I made in the entire rest of the post any less valid?

You're a fucking moron if you can look at my output on this forum and think that. But you've as good as admitted you're a loathsome piece of shit who not only actively contributes to the degeneration of my society, but glories in it like a dog rolling in his own vomit. And you're not even funny, which makes it even worse.

So you've made it abundantly clear that conversing with you is a waste of my time. Enjoy being a genetic dead-end; I'm sure when you're dying of elder abuse in an underfunded nursing home, the memories of all those orgasms will make it all worth it for you.

 

[Yinko]

but it seems fairly obvious that human beings ought to be rational since rationality, again, is literally defined as acting in such a way as to get the most of whatever it is you want to get.

People still don't act that way, even with your looser definition. People act against their own self interests all the time, because consciousness is not a single cohesive algorithm but rather a group of mismatched algorithms. Because of that, it is fundamentally impossible for humans be be rational. The closest you can be is to have your squabbling algorithms in alliance for a time, to find a temporary stabilizing point of the mess that evolution has made of your mind before it inevitably returns to chaotic infighting.

This is part of the problem with Enlightenment philosophy, it stems from a Classical idea that the mind is the highest and most pure thing, that it is closest to mathematics and the divine, that materiality is what makes us emotional and impure. There is no basis for this idea in truth.

 

[Deleted member 88]

The enlightenment was a mistake.

People like @OliverCromwell are why 1789 ought to be seen as the death blow to civilization.

Liberalism has failed to address the deepest essence of man's existence and the reason for his state of being.

Cromwell actually believes we just need people to um be reasonable and all problems would disappear under the glorious trumpet of egalite.

In some ways, he's a fossil arguing for ideas which were proven wanting two hundred years ago.

 

[LifeisTiresome]

This is part of the problem with Enlightenment philosophy, it stems from a Classical idea that the mind is the highest and most pure thing, that it is closest to mathematics and the divine, that materiality is what makes us emotional and impure. There is no basis for this idea in truth.

There is also the issue that I would say pretty much all the Enlightenment thinkers are seen as evil cause white male and their books western dog shit that must be replaced by gender studies and lesbian dancing.

 

[Deleted member 88]

The enlightenment was good in the sense that encouraged man to question the world outside of the bounds in which he came into being, but it never understood why these bounds existed nor truly grasped the real consequences of destroying them.

The past two centuries alone have shown that if man can ascend to heaven by the glory of his mind, he will 99% of the time descend into Hades and the muck.

Or well possibly 100% of the time. Icarus keeps on flying too high and descends and dies.

 

[Certified_Heterosexual]

Imagine throwing around the word "reactionary" without context as though it's just inherently a bad thing.

No dude, if the car is progressing towards a cliff at 60MPH, you bet your ass I'm going to try and turn it around.

 

[Deleted member 88]

Technically the progressives violated the NAP, they acted first and reactionaries reacted.

 

[OliverCromwell]

Okay this doesn't take into account a variety of factors. Human irrational behavior, different religions, cultures, races and nerd fandom preferences...will seek to promote the interest of their group over others. This formulation may work in a homogenous society composed of people who share certain markers of identity but not as the world is actually.

They... bargain over the distribution of goods in such a way that best satisfies their respective contradicting preferences, while following the basic moral rules underlying cooperation listed above? You don't need to live in a homogenous society to have an interest in not being murdered, or in being able to cooperate with other people. As a result it's still in your interest to follow rules that enable cooperation with others even if their preferences differ from yours, and may even contradict in some ways. The whole point of contractarianism is that following these rules of cooperation are in your ultimate self-interest even if you may stand to lose some immediate amount of utility because you've constrained your actions so as to be able to cooperate with others whose preferences contradict with yours--again, Skyrms, Danielson, and Axelrod all ran experiments that have confirmed this,

What happens when group A wants more money for schools and Group B wants more money for I dunno...other schools. Or when Person A wants a larger piece of the pie than person B who wants the entire pie. They can both take half, but neither will be satisfied and preventing one from taking all of it and slitting the other person's throat is external force(i.e. the state).

They... split the pie? Again, dude, read the literature, almost all of it directly discusses this. Each party recognizes that the other party is also a rational actor that wants a larger piece of the cake, just like them. Therefore, they must realize that the other party will not accept a distribution of cake that is unfavorable to them. If the two have equal power to acquire the cake, they will therefore split it evenly--recognizing that a halfway division of the pie is the best division that it is within the power of an actor to acquire. If they do not have equal power to acquire the pie, the distribution may be unequal and instead proportional to their respective power, depending on your interpretation of what rational actors would consider fair bargaining.

I mean sure the community has an interest in me failing. So I have an interest in shattering the community and dividing it for myself and my immediate relatives. So either the community eliminates me or I destroy the community. Chimpanzees wage war-for access to females, resources, and so on. The same irrepressible dynamics apply to humans.

If the community as an interest in you failing you're fucked and would be fucked regardless of what ethical theory everyone followed, lol. As I mentioned earlier, contractarianism neither accounts for nor attempts to account for negative tuistic preferences where one wishes harm on others simply for that harm's own sake--fortunately, most people do not hold such preferences to most other people, and those rare few who do hold negative tuistic preferences against the rest of society are excluded from the social contract. The flip side of one not being compelled to be moral to others is others also not being compelled to be moral to you. A person living under such conditions is rather unlikely to prosper.

You're a fucking moron if you can look at my output on this forum and think that. But you've as good as admitted you're a loathsome piece of shit who not only actively contributes to the degeneration of my society, but glories in it like a dog rolling in his own vomit. And you're not even funny, which makes it even worse.

So you've made it abundantly clear that conversing with you is a waste of my time. Enjoy being a genetic dead-end; I'm sure when you're dying of elder abuse in an underfunded nursing home, the memories of all those orgasms will make it all worth it for you.

I mean, yeah, fair cop. I work on self-driving cars with the secret desire to destroy rural communities and economies and I masturbate to rural opioid death statistics. Not even going to deny it. But my dude, you're an unemployed English major who writes Star Wars fanfiction--the genetic dead end thing is rather the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it?

People still don't act that way, even with your looser definition. People act against their own self interests all the time, because consciousness is not a single cohesive algorithm but rather a group of mismatched algorithms. Because of that, it is fundamentally impossible for humans be be rational. The closest you can be is to have your squabbling algorithms in alliance for a time, to find a temporary stabilizing point of the mess that evolution has made of your mind before it inevitably returns to chaotic infighting.

This is part of the problem with Enlightenment philosophy, it stems from a Classical idea that the mind is the highest and most pure thing, that it is closest to mathematics and the divine, that materiality is what makes us emotional and impure. There is no basis for this idea in truth.

Well, yeah, sure? I don't deny that people don't always act according to their self-interest, but it seems rather obvious to me that people ought to act according to their self-interest given that it's you know, their self-interest, by definition the thing they want fulfilled. Contractarianism suggests that one ought to be moral because it's the way one can best act in accordance with their self-interest. It doesn't suggest that people are actually moral because they always do act in accordance with their self-interest in that manner. The latter is not required to say that objective morality can be grounded in rationality, in the same sense that people actually being moral is not required for morality to exist. That's kind of the whole point of moral realism, in fact.

The enlightenment was a mistake.

People like @OliverCromwell are why 1789 ought to be seen as the death blow to civilization.

Liberalism has failed to address the deepest essence of man's existence and the reason for his state of being.

Cromwell actually believes we just need people to um be reasonable and all problems would disappear under the glorious trumpet of egalite.

In some ways, he's a fossil arguing for ideas which were proven wanting two hundred years ago.

Psst. It's not liberalism, and it's not 1789. The same argument that's being had here was had in Song China when it was on the verge of proto-industrialization. It's the cities, and the cities are inevitable. You've already lost.

I'm not really a liberal in the traditional sense--in fact I suspect you and I would both agree that the essense of politics is defined by the struggle for power between conflicting groups, and by the distinction between friend and enemy. But my group is urbanity and your group is rurality, and for the same reason my group will inevitably win and your group will inevitably lose. I'm sorry it had to be this way--I genuinely am. But like you said, politics is defined by competition against the other, and the stronger will inevitably crush the weaker. My world will inevitably swallow yours.