Compassion is an optional Cutecoot. Go to the nihilism page of Wikipedia. He has decided to switch off the interplay of interests which anyhow are based on unproveable assumptions. He does not feel their pain... and they (humanity), being in the dark, do not / cannot feel his ambition.CuteCoot wrote:IoshkaFutz wrote:He is your son, you know him and he knows you, both he and you have expectations. You've probably talked over the phone.
But hey, a Mrs. Vigilotti who lives in Greenland is also cooking dinner for your son. This is closer to the scenario. Is there Interplay? Your son has never met Signora Vigilotti. If so, please describe it.
More nonsense. You admitted that Smith has been living a normal life as a member of his community, shopping, discussing the weather, etc. So he does know his community and his community knows him. He might be technically alone right now just as I'm technically separate from my son but the interplay of interests has not changed one iota for that.
It's not bleeding obvious despite your statement to the contrary. Is it bleeding obvious that people feel each other's pain? Refer to Huxley's own Avatar... it's a proud statement to the contrary.Is it some sort of Universal "hum" or "vibration" that the stone-out hippies used to rap about? Is there some sort of "dinner-for-Cutecoot's-son-DOM" tha exists and INTERplays.
As I wrote above, it's bleeding obvious and doesn't require any special hum.
Did that offend you? I would say SORRY... but I'm not. There is even jaunty enjoyment. There is no objective "ought"... something is prescriptive only if it has been prescribed, not because it is right, good, etc. Those that prescribe are those in power (tyrant, community, law, etc.).
In my scenario all the power is on one side. Therefore Dr. Smith prescribes. He is the sole arbiter. The pain he should feel (for others) is entirely up to him.
Awareness does not automatically presuppose care. Please tell Dr. Smith why he should care in a normative way, outside the atheists' view of morality. Good luck. I saw not a trace. I saw why under more normal circumstrances he could be MADE to care, or at least to SUBMIT, but those circumstances are gone. Now the ball is entirely in his court. There is no community, no preponderant force, no consensus, except his interpretation of them... his willingness to sacrifice his overwhelming power... in the name of what? It doesn't matter, because whatever the reason, it will be "life." It might be something we deem noble, like the "happiness of humanity" or it could be something selfish, like his love of strawberry ice cream.Unaware interests interplay. Fine.
Smith is not unaware of others' interests. He can see the bleeding obvious even if you can't.
I am an absolutist obsessed with transcendental notions? For wondering how and by what right one can call the wanton destruction of the world on the part of someone who is not an absolutist but a moral relativist, "immoral?" This is rich. I think anyone of any human philosophy can lack love. As a matter of fact, I think the moral relativists are far deeper into that bog. They don't have any Corinthians harping at them. They have no one or anything higher than themselves. No sense of the sacred. I am not nearly as free as they.But I say that the interplay, of interests is in the mind of the perpetrator. For instance, I want to build a dam to provide drinking water to a community. I imagine the interests, the "good" of the community, meaning even the unborn, and I operate in this imagined interest. The unborn are not Interplaying with me. Notions of right and wrong, harmful and beneficial are interplaying in my mind.
Well, the interplay would be in his mind. And in my view there is a real sense in which the unborn are indeed interplaying with him (though this may not be nor does it need to be Hux's view). Well, if all that *is* interplaying in your mind are mere notions then it may be because you lack any love whatever. It's also very likely that you're an absolutist as experience has taught me that absolutists tend to lack love (compassion) for their fellow creatures since they are instead obsessed with transcendental notions.
God's law? What God? God doesn't exist Cutecoot. That should be bleeding obvious. (so we're told).If an ecological group - say - "Friends of the Earth" objects to my plan and calls for changes or alternatives, then one may speak of Interplaying. Otherwise, my plan for the dam is INTERplaying with ALL opinions near and far, pro and con, serious and facetious... a "hum" a "vibration"... Please don't bogart the joint,
Inside your head, your plan for the dam is interplaying with those opinions you're aware of and that is all. You may be aware of the objections of "Friends of the Earth" but just not talking with them right now. So their objections are in play in your head. However, ignorance is no excuse before the law. Certainly not before God's law.
SHOULD. Our friend Huxley and prescriptions again. Please don't use that word. SHOULD is not accepted. It is sent back to the sender.Before taking such drastic action as anihilating the entire planet you should have done a little research regarding a wide range of interests. Including, in this case, potentially ALL opinions near and far, pro and con, serious and facetious.
I think it boils down to that. All the "processes" described by the atheists here have been made moot. Talk of community and consensus are just code words for "power"... That power has been totally neutered. Now - in my scenario - the need to sacrifice power and include compassion, to feel "shoulds" as normative in and of themselves is the only means of calling the act immoral. The atheists' description of morality (what it is, how it works, etc.) simply cannot apply to Dr. Smith, short of going uncharacteristically spiritual.And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether Smith knows or cares about what he is doing. If he does destroy us all, he will have acted immorally, that is, against all of our interests.
At the end of the day "should" might need to be accepted in a way that the atheists are loathe to admit. Or at the end of the day, Dr. Smith's action is just meaningless... but that raises a question: "Why bother to talk of morality at all... if even the wanton destruction of every living creature cannot be called immoral?
So don't say "should." Don't talk about "God." Go right ahead and talk about prescriptions being only prescriptive if prescribed. Sing to me about communities and consensus. Once again insist on mediation of conflicting insterests. And all the rest.
They present morality as a process. That they can do. But as soon as they dare tread on what is actually moral, their pretty little schemes fall apart. And in the biggest mama-whopper of all immoral acts imaginable... they've got nothing to say unless they break out of their definitions.