My reading comprehension is good enough to notice you changed what you actually said.
So you really didn’t notice the difference between what I actually said and what you claimed I said? And yet* I *have the reading comprehension problem and I’m making the ad hominem attacks? I’ll give you points for doggedness but none for perception.
I’m politely waiting for you to go first. My patience does have limits though.
For the love of Og man, do you really not see what you’ve been doing? My guess is you do and all the sarcasm and snide personal comments are some sort of debate technique you think is effective. They are not a substitute for a real argument. I told you several posts ago that all both out arguments amounted to was “You’re full of crap” and *nothing * has changed since then. That’s not a debate sonny.
Here’s a good place to make another attempt to explain.
For my particular *philosophical theory *I start with the axiom All lies , all dishonesty have some negative impact on the person who is dishonest and society at large. This is not to say all acts of dishonesty are equally negative. Intent matters. The truth does not exist in a vacuum and we have to weigh other factors in trying to determine a course of action.
That means the negative of lying to spare someone’s feelings or to save a life is tempered with the positive of compassion so the the end may be a net positive. What I said that you then misrepresented as some sort of concession was,
“My position is perfectly compatible with am ultimately positive outcome in a situation in which a lie is involved.”
Adding a minor negative with a stronger positive results in a net positive.
One might ask, if the net result is a positive then what freakin difference does it make? The difference is, by making a continued effort to be more positive concerning honesty we begin to look at ourselves and situations differently and find ways to deal with situations and ways of communication that are more truthful. That inevitably results in more positives more often.
Because my concept and yours are two ways of looking at truth and untruth as a philosophy there is no objective proof to show either of us is absolutely correct.
You said there’s no reason to assume lies are inherently or magically evil. Let’s use negative impact because it’s more accurate to my position and I find your constant sarcasm boring and petty. I now have a reason because I started with an axiom as a philosophical theory and my long term experiments and experience has shown it to match observable reality and yield positive results. That doesn’t mean I think I’m absolutely correct. It’s possible your take on it is correct and intent makes some lies positive rather than negative. I can see how that could appear to match observed reality as well. There’s nothing patently obvious about it so you choosing that phrase is meaningless. The thing is you’ve offered nothing of any weight other than a personal opinion so I’m inclined to take my personal experience over that. All your attempts to rephrase and repeat and offer analogies amounts to the same thing, You seriously disagree with me. Yeah, I know, and so fucking what? We have two philosophical concepts neither of which can be “proven” in any meaningful way. I have no idea why you have such a hair across your ass in insisting you’re correct and have won the debate and honestly, I don’t care.
Finally! an honest response.
As I’ve already said, I’m offering a philosophical perspective. I haven’t insisted yours is incorrect or inferior. I’ve said you haven’t offered anything convincing.
As I just explained. A positive outcome in which a lie is involved does not prove the lie itself was positive. Your position is possible but not compellingly so. Mine also fits the scenario and based on my own experience I prefer it over your reasonable but non compelling opinion.
Completely wrong.
Still over simplified. Unless one makes the effort to try the alternatives how can you know the relatively positive outcome that includes a lie could not be made more positive by learning to use the truth? Do you think just repeating the term benign lies over and over again makes it a convincing argument?
The flaw isn’t in your concept of some lies being benign. *Maybe *that’s true. The flaw is you thinking you’ve demonstrated it is true and somehow just rephrasing and repeating your opinion is a superior argument. There’s no compelling argument contained in needless sarcasm and repetition.
First make an argument that has more content than a needlessly elongated and nasty version of “I disagree” You won’t because that’s all you got. That’s all I got to but at least I know it. Rage? You’re giving yourself far to much credit.
I never thought of you as a big man. Honest. I also never considered you had torn anything apart of kicked any knees, despite your desperate need to think I’m being dishonest about how wonderful your arguments were. I just got frustrated and tired of your inability to see and admit that all you had was an opinion on the subject. I’m not here to win arguments but to exchange different and interesting concepts, and to have intelligent discussions that offer perspectives that challenge me. That ain’t you in this thread. If you think my concept is a load that’s fine. Your prerogative. If that’s essentially your only argument that ain’t interesting or challenging.
No *that *doesn’t suck. What sucks is you not being able to tell the difference. I never wanted unquestioning respect or unthinking agreement. I always hope for a modicum of respect and try to offer the same. I also hope for a discussion that involves some thinking. Often you offer that but this thread is the exception to the rule. All you offered was a redundant sarcastic rephrase of “I’m right you’re wrong” and then “But I know I’m right and you’re wrong” and then “Why won’t you admit I’m right and you’re wrong” topped off with “I’m really really sure I’m right and I’ve proved it by saying it over and over again”
completely uninterested is more accurate.
I said several posts ago the thread was nothing more than elongated versions of “you’re full of crap” I hung in a few extra posts to see if that changed. It didn’t. That’s not a debate by any definition. What you won’t accept is that* you’re* not arguing you’re position. You’re simply rephrasing it and seasoning it with nasty comments. That’s not what I want out of GD.
The original post is still there you know. You’re not going to fool anybody. (And you’re the guy supposedly arguing for complete honesty! :mad:)
You see, the problem I’ve had is that you haven’t been bothering to explain why you think my arguments are crap, instead resorting to just saying that I’m full of crap. Those tactics can be used to deny anything and are not real arguments against my position. Or for yours. Sonny.
Firstly, as I noted, that axiom of yours is the main point of difference in our positions. Further, it is basically the critical flaw in your position in this thread. Look at the title of this thread. Then look at your axiom. You are assuming your conclusion. Your axiom is inherently antithetical to debate in this thread. As long as you hold it axiomatically, and give nobody else a reason to hold it axiomatically, debate literally cannot happen because you are not bothering to give the necessary arguments to defend your side (since you consider it axiomatic) and since you are facilely dismissing all arguments that try to point out that this position you are holding might be wrong (since such arguments are ‘disproven’ by the axiomness of your axiom).
Now, one presumes you have reasons why you started accepting this conclusion-assuming axiom, and one (well, this one, me, specifically) has attempted to point out that your reasoning in assuming it is perhaps less than solid. (Based on my best guesses as to what those reasons are, anyway.) So far you’ve just responded with accusations that I’m just telling you that your position is crap…entirely missing the point of what I’m saying.
So I’ll save myself some time and try another tack: your position is wrong becuase it is unsound. Your premise, your axiom, is not known to be true, and there’s no reason to think it is. You don’t like that fact? Provide arguments to convince us to accept your axiom as true. Until you do, you are not debating. You are witnessing. Uncompellingly.
I disupte this, as it does not speak to the case under discussion, and in that case, it is not true. When compared against skeevy conmen who lie for the purpose of selfishly ripping people off, yes, finding ways of communication that are more truthful is inevitably* more positive - but that’s not the situation you yourself are discussing.
You are, in this very quote, specifically and explicitly, talking about the difference between truth and lies that only have a positive effect. Which means that the benign liar is having only a positive effect. Let’s repeat that. The lies have a positive effect - you’re explicitly assuming this for the sake of argument.
Now, let’s put aside that you have not even shown that the truth always has a positive effect (and I can easily show it doesn’t always) - putting that aside, you have yet a higher bar to achieve. Because it’s not enough to show that the truth is positive - you have to show it’s more positive, consistently, then the positive effect of those benign lies.
Needless to say, you haven’t shown this. You don’t have to, see, you have this axiom that lets you avoid having to make arguments like that, because you don’t actually accept that lies can have positive effect. No wonder this “debate” isn’t going anywhere.
You’re the one with the axiom; it’s your responsibility to show that it is absolutely correct. (If it’s not, it’s not an acceptable axiom, pretty much by definition.) The burden of proof here is yours.
I can quite easily propose scenarios where lies have a more positive effect than the truth. Some of these situations aren’t even uncommon. This is objective evidence that lies are not always inherently negative. And given I’m not arguing from an undefended axiom, it’s all the evidence I really need.
I cut out your snark. Now, let’s look at this. I say there’s no reason to assume your axiom. You (oddly) try to restrict the argument to negative impact…despite that explictly not being the kind of lies the debate is about, and then throw out an ad hominem…
I missed some snark. Okay, let’s start over with your the next sentence. You have assumed the truth of your axiom and then found under experimentation that telling truth* all the time yields more positive results…than telling lies with negative impact. This, of course is the expected result, switching from negative lies to positive(?) truth…but it doesn’t support your axiom. Your analysis suffers from an (explicity!) excluded middle; you have neither tested nor examined the case where you tell no negative lies, but only lies where you have reasonable certainty the lie will have only positive effects.
It’s trivially obvious, and supported by your experience, that negative lies have the greater negative effect over truth*. But that’s not what your axiom is! Your axiom is this overwide brush that is broadbased to a degree that is not supported by anything. Not logic, not comparison of negative effects, not your personal experience, not anything.
Which is kind of why I’m not accepting your axiom, and until you convince me to (or I can convince you to drop it), this debate can’t really progress or come to a satisfactory conclusion.
Because no, I’m not going to tell you that holding axioms without sufficient reason is a fine and dandy thing. That would be a lie, so you wouldn’t want me to do that, right?
well, benign truthy statements, specifically - even if you have to kind of stretch the analysis of the question to do it. (Though one man’s stretching is another man’s intuitive approach, apparently.) I think it’s fairly clear that you are not including truths with negative effects into your equation…even though of course you should, since your axiom includes all lies in that same manner.
Nothing will convince a man who has an axiom to reject his axiom. It’s logically impossible!
You’re one to talk - have you tried the alternative of living a life that includes only benign lies and no negative ones?
Again, this is ridiculous - you are denying the ability of humans to judge the effects of, well, any action. Your analysis here applies equally well to all result-based morality, not to mention deciding wether or not it was a good idea to buy a can of soup - it can’t have been a good idea because perhaps you would have been benefitted more by that can of beans or by just starving! You can’t know because you didn’t try every possible option at once!
Sorry, no; I am not inclined to utterly dismiss the human ability to assess things. And the fact that defending your axiom pushes you to such extremes should tell you something.
Here’s the content - you’re the one with the axiom, so you’re the one with the burden of proof. Rejecting the axiom is the correct position by definition, if there is not evidence supporting it. (And your experience doesn’t support it; excluded middle.)
And I’m sure you’ve been on the ad-hominem-level attack because you’re blissfully happy and thinking thoughts of birthday cake and butterflies.
No, really, I am. But to my credit, I’ve adjusted my diet now, and working on the problem.
Of course I know it’s still there. Technically the words are different.
“I said was patently obvious was that some lies have positive results.”
and
“I think that it’s patently obvious that there are situations where lies have beneficial effect”
but I concede upon review that the subtle difference is not the difference in meaning that I thought it was.
My thinking is that a situation in which we decide to lie for what we see as benign reasons, such as we want to spare someone’s feelings, or in the rare case of saving a life, is a coming together of several factors. Judging our own intent can be tricky. What we tell ourselves is concern for someone’s feelings might be influenced by a selfish desire to avoid an awkward situation. In that case selfishness would be a negative, while true compassion is a positive. This coming together of factors and our own social concepts of what is good and bad determines a final outcome.
The final outcome may be read as positive but that does not mean conclusively that all the involved factors are positive. So, a situation in which a lie is involved does not conclusively mean that the lie itself was completely benign or positive. The difference being, while I agree there are situations in which a lie was involved, as one of the contributing factors, that apparently have a positive outcome, I disagree that there is anything patently obvious about the lie itself being positive.
That’s the concession I never actually gave.
I did try to explain. You dismissed it out of hand by declaring your assertion obvious and mine incorrect. Your assertion was merely your opinion vs mine and when you refused to acknowledge that we’re reduced to “is not” and “is so” That’s not very interesting is it? It wasn’t your position that I thought was crap. It was your out of hand dismissal of mine and your declaration that your opinion was “obviously” superior. That doesn’t leave much room for an interesting discussion.
Yes I know.
I don’t agree it’s a critical. flaw. I thought my philosophical theory was relevant to thread title so I offered it for consideration , not to show everyone how right I am.
Well duh! Yup I am. Isn’t that what you did? Isn’t declaring something patently obvious your own axiom? The title of the thread invites people to offer and discuss their personal opinions about the nature of truth and lies and morality. That’s what I did.
I acknowledged that it was a philosophical theory several times. Perhaps premise would be a better term than axiom. The way I often work is to propose something as true and then look at the evidence of experience and results to see if my proposal stills holds true. I’m willing to adjust , change or abandon an axiom or premise where clear *evidence *and personal experience shows it to be false. I don’t change it simply because someone says. " You’re completely wrong." but can’t demonstrate the truth of their opinion. In this case my own experiments and experiences showed me the premise was still sound.
I don’t think I’ve missed the point. I’ve tried to express to you that what you’ve basically done is declare I’m wrong, you’re sure I’m wrong, and in your not so humble opinion, it’s obvious I’m wrong. That’s not a logical argument I can respond to , it’s just a declaration of an opinion that . When I tried to explain you dismissed my explanation with another declaration and added that my honesty wasn’t real honesty {also just your opinion} I don’t see an interesting debate springing from that.
As I’ve tried to explain, we’re talking about the nature of truth and lies and morality. Philosophy is largely a matter of opinion because of it’s subjective nature. I realize my premise isn’t known to be true. I’ve also explained that from a starting point and because of real time and effort put in I’ve found it to be sound and still hold it to be true. That doesn’t mean I’m opposed to new evidence and information that is relevant and will honestly consider it because that’s the point of the experiment. However, an opposing opinion without any evidence isn’t a compelling argument to me when compared to the time and effort I’ve put in. I think you can understand my reaction to your off hand dismissal of my efforts. I have zero reason to elevate your opinion over my efforts, just as you have no reason to unquestioningly accept my premise.
I don’t expect to convince somebody that my opinion is true if it’s obvious they don’t agree, or in your case strongly disagree, because I realize my personal efforts and experiences are not transferable. I tried to explain but your casual dismissal of my explanation led me to conclude further elaboration was pointless.
I was offering a relevant opinion for consideration. If you choose to describe that as witnessing that’s okay by me. It’s also okay if you don’t consider it at all. It really doesn’t matter. What you don’t seem to see is that by that definition, you were witnessing as well. You declared your opinion to be true by claiming it was patently obvious and refusing to consider it was wrong.
In my experience what is often justified as consideration for others turns out to be selfishness. True intent is hard to measure. By adjusting the intent from “be considerate {a positive} even if it means a lie”, to “be considerate but tell the truth” we increase the positive for the individual and society because we learn how to express truth in considerate ways, and we remove the justification to lie which inevitably results in selfishness being labeled unselfishness.
I don’t think I am.
I’m saying in some situations, which I maintain are hard to judge since we’re talking about intent, the end result may be positive because we’re using a minor negative balanced with a stronger positive, just as a -2 + 6 equals positive 4. The 2 is still negative.
You seem to be claiming that because the end result is positive the lie itself is positive/ That’s reasonable because all we see is the end result {and even that is a matter of subjective judgment} , but it’s not patently obvious.
Maybe my position looks solid to me because in most cases lying is negative and the cases where it’s truly benign are rare. That’s maybe. Since both your position and mine fit the view of the end result both are possibly true. That’s where it becomes unknowable and a matter of opinion. I don’t dismiss your opinion as inferior. I also don’t hold it as obvious or superior simply because you declare it to be so.
You haven’t and I don’t believe you can because of it’s subjective nature. My position considers immediate results and long term. While an immediate result may appear positive the long term result may be negative in that individuals and society continue to justify dishonesty rather than making the effort to be more truthful.
Because of it’s subjective nature I don’t expect to shown this and I dispute that you can show your premise is true, or have in any way even though you seem to think so.
I believe I previously said I don’t think it’s knowable in an absolute sense.
We have a situation in which we have to choose between a lie and the truth. We may choose to lie and the immediate end result may appear positive. The question I see from our two positions, is this. Is the positive result a combination of of a minor negative and a greater positive{my position} , or two positives {your position?} Does the consideration make the lie a positive or does it merely outweigh the negative? I don’t see any way of knowing and continued assertions don’t resolve anything. You really haven’t offered any argument to answer this question. You’ve simply asserted your opinion is true and repeated the assertion. I don’t see that as a superior argument.
I’m not playing that. I have no such responsibility. I offered it for consideration and that’s all. Your demands I “show it’s absolutely correct” don’t mean anything to me. Furthermore I think even considering something as subjective as this subject matter can be “proved” in any meaningful way is pretty questionable if not downright silly.
Given my actual position as I just explained it, I doubt that you can. I admit I can’t explain extreme situations such as “Jews in the attic” or the one described earlier where pretending to support a brutal regime seems necessary for survival. Not having ever been there it’s difficult to judge and I find speculation unproductive. I could say that in the case of civil rights in this country, some people were willing to suffer and die for the truth of equal human rights. Was it worth it for them individually, and/or society as a whole?
I’m confused. My premise is that the truth is always positive but since it does not not exist in a vacuum it must be tempered and expressed with good judgment, including consideration and compassion for others. I further propose that all lies have some , but not equal ,negative impact, and in some cases the positive of compassion may outweigh the negative of the lie. That seems relevant to the discussion. I’m not trying to restrict the argument other than that, and possibly the use of excessive sarcasm.
I acknowledge that you have no reason to accept my axiom at face value. I explained that I do because what started out as a thought proved reliable and valuable in practice. I further acknowledge that my personal experience is not conclusive evidence and needn’t be compelling for you. I think you can understand that is is more compelling to me than you expressing a strong disagreemnt.
I admit it’s not conclusive. You want me to test something that I don’t think exists?
I think I have allowed for that by recognizing that at rare times consideration outweighs the negative of a minor lie and intent matters. IMO and experience trying {not always successfully} to avoid all dishonesty provides more benefits than accepting the occasional lie.
Now you’re asserting what my personal experience means, or should mean to me? Pardon me while I dismiss that. IMO with due consideration of what we can and can’t know about a subjective subject my position is logical. It may or may not be true given our limited knowledge but I prefer to hold it as true since it works for me.
Which is why I was inclined to drop it several posts ago. It’s obvious that you disagree and it’s obvious to me at least, that your argument consisted of repeating your personal opinion in the form of dismissing my statements with added sarcasm. Your personal opinion , no matter how strongly you feel about it or how often you rephrase it, will not be compelling to me. It’s amounts to " I strongly disagree" OKay so be it. I’m alright with that.
That’s right I wouldn’t. The mistake is that you think it’s within your power to accurately declare I don’t have sufficient reason, simply because you say it’s so.
That’s true but note that I specified that not all lies have equal negative impact. The lie that got us into Iraq has much more negative impact than say Clinton’s lie about a blow job. I’d be willing to discuss only lies you see as completely benign if you’re willing to do it in the same tone as this post.
I’m not sure that’s true but if it is then I misused axiom. You’ll note I described it as a philosophical theory several times which indicates a work in progress.
That’s not an answer to the question. I’d say it’s reasonable to assume that since I try not to lie at all and have confessed to not being completely successful at it, I have sufficient experience with the lies you describe as benign.
I’m not denying humans ability to judge anything. I’m saying the ability to judge is imperfect. Would you agree that’s obvious? If you do we can do the agreement dance of joy.
I’d say it’s more like having a goal of eating only nutritious food and having to make an effort to learn what is nutritious and what isn’t while also dealing with the temptation to eat food we like that we know isn’t nutritious. The individual and society at large is better served by eating nutritiously.
end part one because it’s too long.
Whew, off to work.
Well, I’m human and I think I can assess things but you’re inclined to dismiss it. I don’t think this point is valid since I’m not dismissing anything.
I think it’s unreasonable to ask for proof of something that’s subjective and unknowable. I reject your excluded middle argument because I think my premise allows positive outcome for it with a different approach.
Call it what you will. I was trying to show you that your argument was only your opinion and wasn’t as compelling as you seemed to think it was. I was also expressing frustration with the overall tone.
I know what you mean. If you’re successful let me know if I can purchase any diet discipline. I seem to have run out.
Well, it occured to me that unless we reduced the snark level around here some, 1) neither of us is going to find any content in each other’s posts, and 2) some helpful mod might come shut us up. Neither of which seems like it would be helpful to the discussion, I’m thinking.
And, holy crap you wrote a lot. This may take a while, and I may condense or cross-reference answers where helpful here.
I think we can write the argument here as mostly miscommunication - and frankly the ‘concession’ I was actually extracting from your statement was pretty weak; merely that you ‘admit’ the existence of lies with postive effect. That’s interesting to my side of the discussion, 'cause for me, the existence of those types of lies is the bedrock of my case. (Without them, I’m sunk. )
The extended response here is interesting because of how it clashes with a theory of my own that I’ve developed from years of observation and experience: that all human actions are driven by selfish desire. Without exception. Every single last one.
The reasoning underlying that (part one) is that people are, at conscious and unconscious levels, subject to self-comparison with their own morality. That’s where guilt comes from, of course, for large ‘infractions’ against the self-image a person creates for themself, but in addition to self-punishment afte the fact this consideration also directs our actions as we perform them. So, to my thinking, when a person gives a fiver to a homeless person, the thought process inevitably includes the consideration “Doing this is something good people do and (this proves to myself) that I am a good person”. Altruistic acts reinforce the positive self image, and thus, “feel good”. If a person did not compare the act against their moral code and self-expectaions and find it necessary for their own self, at some conscious or subconscious level, they simply wouldn’t do it - as demonstrate by the fact that people with different moral codes that do not include such acts simply don’t do them, unless overtly compelled by external persuasion like peer pressure.
The second underlying bit of reasoning covers the other alternate sort of motivation for ‘nice’ deeds: sometimes you do nice things for people because you care about them. (You usually can detect this when your behavior varies depending on who will be effected by the act.) In this case, I conclude that such acts are selfish based on my own assessment of the mechanics of love and caring - as best I can tell, after observation and analysis, when you care about somebody your emotions are effected by your opinion of their emotions - if they are unhappy, you become unhappier; if they are happy, you become happier. Thus when you do things that make that person happier you get a direct positive for yourself personally…which is, in my opinion, why you keep doing nice things for them. Which, in my opinion, makes such actions technically selfish, despite being mutually beneficial.
So, in my assessment, all altrustic acts are driven by selfishness, and all acts of love are driven by selfishness - even if by all other considerations they are completely unselfish. Which kind of makes singling out lies as having this property kind of amusing to me.
Okay, now you know why I’m smiling knowingly, but enough of the digression. Now I’ll tell you why your assessment is wrong.
Your assessment, as best as I can tell is based on the assumption “all selfishness is bad”. Absent that, we have to assess the selfishness based on its merits. To review, you gave the example: “What we tell ourselves is concern for someone’s feelings might be influenced by a selfish desire to avoid an awkward situation. In that case selfishness would be a negative, while true compassion is a positive.” First, ha ha on “true compassion” - that’s driven by the selfish desire to maintain the self-image of a truly compassionate person. But more to the point…why is it negative to avoid enduring an akward situation? Would “We lie out of concern for someone’s feelings despite a burning desire to pour out our feelings which will torment us if we don’t release it” be better somehow? Oh, yes! Martyrdom is wonderful! The more we can make ourselves suffer while doing good, the better! (I’m totally picturing some dude with face upraised, imagining a halo, totally revelling in a selfish self-image as this awesome martyr.)
Sorry, no, that’s nonsense. The self is among the people whose well-being must be considered when assessing the morality of an act. So, if telling the lie saves the other guy concern and saves you an akward situation, it’s a good thing on both counts. Self-flaggellation is not a virtue, and avoiding trouble is not a sin, after all.
Hopefully this isn’t too blunt, but I think your assessment of the morality of selfishness is broken. When properly tuned, selfishness is only considered bad when it causes you to act to another person’s detriment in the pursuit of your own benefit. Mutual benefit, though selfish, is not a bad thing.
Which seems to dissolve this objection of yours against benevolent lies, bringing us back to assessing the merit of lies based on their consequences (or, at the point of the making of the decision, their expected consequences), which has the result of concluding that lies with positive results are moral.
Seriously, if you think I’ve said nothing but “is not/is so” and given no arguments to back up my position, all I can say is that you should go back and reread what I’ve written. You may think this is a battle of opinions, but that’s seriously not the game I’ve been playing.
Witnessing is fine, this is the forum for it. But I’m not witnessing back, I’m debating against your witnessing. That’s allowed, you know; and you may argue back or back away at your leisure, I suppose…but it’s more fun if you defend your position by refuting my arguments.
Premise = axiom, so don’t bother with that.
And, perhaps you’re not aware, but your approach to testing theories is flawed. Your theory is that all lies are inherently bad, so to test that, you not only have to test that truths have good effects, but whether all types of lies have bad effects. If you fail to do the latter your testing methodology does not support your conclusion.
Given that I have not merely declared that you are wrong, but instead actually presented arguments disuting your assertions…I’d say it’s clear that you have missed my points. Every single one of them, apparently!
I’ve argued that your testing doesn’t cover all the bases.
I have offered an argument that a slippery slope does not correctly describe the observable distribution of lies and truth.
Should I keep going?
Look, we just covered this, I didn’t say my opinon was patently obvious, I said that the existence of lies with positive effects was patently obvious.
And it is irritating when you misrepresent my position as contentless. The fact that you do not rebut my arguments doesn’t mean I didn’t make them!
Meh, all unselfishness is mislabled seflishness. This argument treads no water.
And I already argued that the mere existence of kindly lies proves that those liars already know how to express themselves in benevolent ways, which elimiates your argued benefit to honesty, and I already made the argument demonstrating that, no, there is reason to believe that there is a slippery slope that “inevitably” happens making progressive lies eviller. It’s all there earlier in the thread.
Sigh. You were indeed in that quote restricting yourself to lies that have a positive effect, just as i said you were. This, of course, would include -2+6 lies. You need to stop just disputing everything I say, just because I said it.
I am claiming that lies with positive effects have positive effects, and that you have not shown, not given arguments for, and heck, not even argued a reason why lies would have an inherent negative value. The closest you’ve come is to point out that sometimes the lies also benefit the liar, in addition to everyone else…and then neglected to give arguments for why that’s immoral.
I mean, I could assert that the act of feeding your children was ‘inherently’ as immoral as cutting their throats, and depite there being some positive moral effect from the children not dying, the overall total morality was still negative. But if I did so, you would rightly ask me to defend that outrageous claim of ‘inherent’ immorality. That’s all I’m doing with you.
(There’s a limit to the length a post can be? What the heck?)
Oh, come on. I said “you have not even shown that the truth always has a positive effect (and I can easily show it doesn’t always)”. I can trivially show that the truth sometimes has a negative effect. Easily! “Actually, dear, it’s your fat that makes you look fat.” “Actually, I am hiding jews in the attic!” “Kid, your drawing sucks. The only reason I don’t rip them up is to make you feel good.”
You really should choose your battles a little more carefully; you’re not actually obligated to dispute everything I say after all, especially if doing so makes you look foolish.
What “premise” do you think I have, by the way? Because to the degree I have one, it’s “If lies are not inherently-bad-full-stop-end-of-argument, then we should assess their merit based on their effects.” Note that it’s a conditional, so it not only doesn’t contradict your axiom, it doesn’t even apply if your axiom is true.
I am also making arguments that seek to demonstrate that your axiom isn’t true, but those arguments aren’t from axiom.
I have SO offered arguments!!! I’m getting irritated at your repeated assertions that I’ve done nothing but make assertions. Am I arguing into a vacuum chamber here? Is your computer filtering 90% of the text out of my posts?
Let me repeat - I’m presenting arguments that suggest your axiom is false. These arguments do not magically turn into assertions just because they dispute your axioms - despite the fact it would make it easier for you to reasonably dismiss them if they were baseless assertions.
Cut that shit out.
And no, it’s not impossible to make arguments about this. I do not buy the “it can’t be known, so cosmosdan’s theory is true” argument.
Amazing how I seem to be successfully eviscerating your position, then - so badly that you apparently have to pretend my arguments don’t exist.
The thread is riddles with such examples…and “I can’t explain how you could be wrong, but you just are” is pretty damned flimsy.
I dispute your ability to restrict the conversation to prevent disagreement over what constitutes a lie, or especially to restrict people to agreeing with your unproven, unsupported, discussion-ending axiom.
And sarcasm is, occasionally, an effective rhetorical tool. It’s usually more edifying for the audience than the person you’re talking to directly, of course.
Based on the thread so far, I’ve disproven your axiom with arguments. That’s compelling enough for me so far, though you are invited to actually make rebuttals and counterarguments at any time.
Lord, yes. This is the difference between science and “making crazy stuff up and believing it because of confirmation bias”.
Nope. That doesn’t make up for a failure to test properly. (And, “rare times”? “more benefits”? You’re pulling this out of the air - it’s laughable.)
Oh, come on. Are you saying that your experience has not indicated that the truth can be better than horrifically evil selfish and damaging lies? Do you feel compelled to dispute everything I say, line by line?
And nobody’s trying to get you to lie more. The question is, “Are there any circumstances in which lying is a moral good (or even neutral)?” Even if it’s true, it’s not an indictment of your approach. (It’s actually the other way around - your theory is an indictment of it.)
Perhaps if you actually read what I wrote you’d have some damn clue what my aguments actually consist of.
You forgot all those arguments I’ve been making that you’ve been ignoring. They give me that power.
The stated topic of the thread is lies that are potentially moral.
But you discuss what you like.
The way you’ve been using, it’s an axiom - though if you’d like to cease assuming its truth and subject it to arguments and debate the matter, there are a few lying around, if you look for them.
I wish you’d make up your mind as to whether benign lies exist. You toggle back and forth from paragraph to paragraph, whichever way is better for your argument at any given moment.
Depends. Does the imperfection of judgment utterly invalidate the human ability to make reasoned decisions, like you were arguing? If not, then prepare to dance!
Heh, people keep telling me to occasionally eat things that are bad for me (you know, selfish things), because otherwise the diet fails. Good analogy!
The point was relevent to the statements it was actually it was responding to. Look at them.
And I’m not denying your ability to assess things - I’m disputing that this assessment, this time, is correct. (My bet is it’s based in confirmation bias.) I’m just asking for you to consider the possibility, when presented with multiple arguments disputing your position, that yous ability to assess things ight be imperfect. You know, like you said humans are?
It’s unreasonable to present axioms without proof and expect them not to get shoved back down your throat, that’s what’s unreasonable.
And bwuh? “Positive outcome for it with a different approach”? What does that even mean? The excluded middle is that your experience failed to test for the middle case of telling no lies except benign lies. That’s not complicated.
The tone has been sucking - but then again it’s hard to stay civil with you pretending I haven’t made any arguments!
Cut it out!
I’m told that telling the occasional benign treat can help shore that diet discipline right up. (Though seriously, I’m only three weeks into this. Gimme a few more months before coming to me for surplusses of anything.)
I’m going to try to condense to highlights. If I miss something essential let me know.
I *don’t *concede that, which was the point I was trying to make. It’s a semantic difference that is important to my point. Lies don’t have a positive effect. They may be involved in a situation in which the outcome is subjectively viewed as positive but there’s no way of knowing if the lie itself was positive of whether the positive of compassion and consideration outweighed the negative of the lie. This is important to my premise because it relates to long term and short term positive. The short term may seem positive but IMO the individual and society are better served by learning to be more truthful more often and tempering our honesty with consideration and compassion.
This is also the point at which I think it boils down to opinion. There’s no way for me to prove my premise and I don’t accept that you have done anything to disprove it.
<snip for brevities sake>
Interesting. I don’t agree completely but it’s interesting. It’s no wonder you disagree with me.
It’s an interesting topic for another thread but I’ll refrain from the tangent here. I appreciate the explanation.
Do tell
Nope. Depending on your definition of selfishness, I don’t think that. We are primarily responsible for ourselves so ultimately taking good care of ourselves can also be of benefit to society as a whole. When I was in commissioned sales I worked hard and talked to a lot of customers. When I was way ahead of the other salespeople they thought I was either stealing their customers or being a selfish ass. Neither was true. They had an equal opportunity to make sales and if they didn’t it was their own lack of focus that was to blame. In fact my assertiveness was a good example for them to follow if they could manage to see it that way.
The point here is personal dishonesty which compounds the lie. I can appreciate the “honesty” in your position of lying and acknowledging it.
I’m not sure why you go to these extremes.It’s not the first time. It’s unnecessary and does nothing to further the discussion. It’s certainly not an accurate representation of my position.
Sure it is, but it isn’t my nonsense.
<snip>
Mutual benefit. I agree. My theory is about promoting mutual benefit. I think learning how to communicate more honestly while remaining considerate of others is a win win.
That’s just not the conclusive argument you think it is. We have to consider short and long term affect.Sure within the context of a couple of minutes we *might *categorize it as win win. How do we know conclusively that avoiding an awkward situation with a lie, and allaying the others concerns {perhaps temporarily} is a win in the long term as well? My experience tells me that learning to be truthful tempered with consideration is a bigger win for the long term for both people and that makes it a better choice for the short term as well.
I accept that wasn’t your intention. I just think you haven’t realized that reality. This post is a good example. Wouldn’t you say morality is largely subjective? You just stated an opinion about the moral situation in which the lie is positive {IYO} and concluded that your opinion dissolved my objection. Not so, and not even close says I. How is that not an opinion on both our parts? Tell you what. I’ll post this for now and go back and read your other posts.
I just learned that myself when my post was forced into two parts.
In your first response to me in post #45 you led with
That indicates an opinion to me and perhaps recognition that the subject matter is pretty subjective.
2nd response post # 48, you described some possible benign lie situations
And said
Here you present your personal theory about white lies and refer to it as fact even though that hasn’t been and still isn’t established. That’s an assertion of your opinion as fact.
I tried to explain in post 50 how an effort at being honest leads to better communication and in post 54 you claim my honesty is actually dishonesty that supports your own position. That’s okay except that that’s still an unsupported assertion and opinion which you identify in that same post.
Since it is your opinion, it doesn’t actually prove anything.
In post 60 you make this comment.
This is also where I began to lose interest. You dismiss my own description of my own honesty as” weasel words without any objective reason to believe it”. What I’ve said is , that’s true,{the objective part} I don’t expect you to blindly accept my explanation and I know my experiences are not transferable because of their subjective nature. There’s isn’t any objective reason to believe it because of the subjective nature of the subject. That nature applies to your assertions as well because they have no objective reasons either. That’s the part you don’t seem to accept. No matter how many words or assertions we use the argument boils down to our opinions about the nature of truth and lies and their effect, for which there is no objective proof. That remains true no matter how strongly either of us believe in our respective assertions. IMO you’re doing exactly the same thing you accuse me off. You’re assuming things as factual and blatantly obvious because they support your own pet theory.
I hope you can understand my dismissal of your opinions about whether I’m actually being honest of have some emotional need to pretend I’m an honest person. I now can see why you concluded that. It supports your own personal theory about selfishness. The one which you have no objective proof for.
In post # 60 you also make a comment about my assertion
“I think the higher good of personal and societal growth are better served by a commitment to honesty. Not only for the sake of honesty alone but for what the effort brings to us”
you said
I don’t disagree with that. I think it also applies to your own pet theory and I was hoping you acknowledge that. The fact it isn’t known or knowable doesn’t make it false or true. It remains a viable possibility unless you can demonstrate otherwise. You haven’t. I’ll explain that in another post.
Post 70 consisted of more dismissal of my opinion and assertions of your own, for all its length. I tried to explain and make my points and you dismissed them with snide comments about me really being dishonest, while asserting you must be right, failing to recognize your own assertions were no better than mine.
This is interesting in 70
You said
The thing you fail to recognize is that’s just what I’ve done to come to my theory. I’ve weighed the anticipated effects for all effected parties including myself and come to the conclusion that the most positive situation for all concerned is to avoid lying altogether. Although your conclusion obviously differs it’s not inherently better.
Still later in 70 you make this assertion
Here you’re basically saying that since you dismiss my arguments and my claims at honesty you must be correct? That’s not objective evidence is it? You may sincerely feel your opinions and arguments are vastly superior but I disagree and it is after all, just your feeling rather than facts. Sorry that irritates you.
That’s where I decided to bail since it was an unresolved and unpleasant battle of opinions.
Let’s be quite clear - when I speak of (some) lies as having a positive effect, I am speaking of the sum of all observable effects, on onesself and other, short-term and long term.
So, for example, a lie that saves Anne Frank’s life would be presumably assessed as having a positive consequence, based on its consequences. This would be true even if lies actually do have some inherent ‘magic negativity’, divorced from the summed merit of their effects, so long as that inherent ‘magic negativity’ was not worse than the value of a life.
You seem to fluctuate wildly on wether lies with a positive summed merit exist. (Enough so that it has lost weight when you deny it.) So, for the sake of peace, I will concede that you never, ever, admitted anything of any kind on any subject whatsoever - and immidiately resume resting on the library of examples of lies with positive effect (starting with the Anne Frank example and going on down) and presuming that their existence proves that lies with positive observable effects exist, beyond all reasonable doubt. Denials of this are denials of reality.
Now, you are of course free to declare that in addition to observable effects, lies also have magic effects, and that these effects make all lies immoral. I will give these unobservable effects the same consideration I do with other mystical things that are postulated to exist without a shred of evidence or logic supporting the theory.
Now, this ‘long term’ business. I’ll start by stating that it looks to me like a baseless smokescreen; in my observation the vast majority of benign lies have no subtle long term effects at all - just the obvious short term effects. (Malicious lies can have more visible permanent effect, as they will sometimes do real damage - benign lies tend to barely ripple the surface of things.)
It seems here like, rather than arguing for a trend of readily observable negative consequences, that you’re instead arguing for the existence of ‘butterfly effect’-type consequences, which you are rather inexplicably and unsupportedly assuming will be on average bad. Of course, the thing about ‘butterfly effect’-type consequences is that they are truly unpredictable, and thus there can be no basis for assuming anything about them whatsoever. So assuming their effects will be bad is certainly wrong to do.
Of course, the other, more problematic thing about butterfly effect consequences is that everything has them. Not just lies - compassionate truth also may have unintended unpredicatable long-term consequences. The same thing goes for buying the can of peas instead of the can of beans. Any decision or action may have unexpected negative consequences - or unexpected positive consequences, or some mix, or no unexpected consequences at all.
And so we find that you have again made an argument that essentially says that it’s impossible for humans to assess the merit of things or make any kind of reasoned decisions. Perhaps you do this to try to support your claim that this is a realm of opinion (perhaps to abrogate yourself of the usual reposibility to defend your position with arguments).
Of course, the possibility of ‘butterfly effect’-type long term consequences is nothing new to decision-making and discussions of morality…and as far as I can tell the general concensus is they don’t matter. Yes, by telling that compassionate truth you might be setting into motion a chain of events that will cause the destruction of humanity in six thousand years. So what? No action you can take is free of that possibility. So no action you can take is superior to any other due to that possibility.
Which is not to say that you shouldn’t avoid actions where you can discern an expected negative long-term outcome. But the unanticipable unintended consequences are irrelevent to the decision-making process…and the assessment of the morality of compassionate lies…and to this discussion!
The fact that compassionate truth is selfish as well (and probably based on exactly the same motivations as compassionate lies, if you think about it) does seriously undermine the ‘selfishness’ angle for arguing that compassionate lies have inherent magic negativity.
I can’t parse this. The lie is the dishonesty; how does it compound itself? No other dishonesty was present in the scenario you presented. (And the last sentence loses me completely. ‘My’ position?)
Isn’t it? You have stated that the thing that makes lying bad is because (in some cases) it is motivated by a benign selfish desire in addition to the desire to be kind. This implies that the compassionate lies would be okay if they were based in self-destructiveness (the opposite of selfishness). That is martyrdom. Any other way of reading it drains the selfishness of negative value, which disintegrates the argument.
I’m not inventing these extremes, they’re directly implied by your arguments. And I show them to you so you can realize the error of these arguments you are presenting.
Well, you have two theories actually. One is that honesty + compassion is a good thing (so long as the consideration is the more significant factor, apparently). The other is that lies have an inherent negativity, independent of their compassion or consequences.
I have no beef with your first conclusion, other than the fact you are incorrectly concluding that it supports your second conclusion. My position isn’t that telling the truth is inherently negative, after all.
To be specific, your error is in presuming that in honesty + compassion = positive, that the positivity is coming from the ‘honesty’ part. I’d say that it’s pretty easily demonstrated (and pretty intuitively obvious) that the positivity is coming from the ‘compassion’ part of the equation. I mean, it’s pretty easy to demonstrate harsh and damaging truths, just as it is easy to demonstrate both constructive and damaging lies. In my observation, the positivity correlates much more closely to the compassion than the truth/falsehood difference.
Given that, the positive effect of compassionate truth does not imply a negativity to compassionate lies. Quite the opposite, really.
Correction - talking about a moral situation where the effect of the lie is (objectively) positive, I then analyzed your reasoning for why the lie was nonetheless inherently negative (specifically, that it had some selfish motivations), and then presented you with the fact that your reasoning led to conclusions that, I suspected (rightly) you did not intend, and that those extreme conclusions demonstrated that your attribution of negativity to benign lies due to the existence of some selfish motivations was an untenable position. That dissolved your argument. (At least until you can show that negativizing benign mild selfishness is not a positivization of martyrdom.)
This is debate. Not an opinon.
I see you responded, and reading I have one thing to say:
Are you seriously unable to detect and identify verbal qualification so soften delivery?!? You can’t tell that apart from simply stating opinions??
You know, as far as I can tell, 1 + 1 = 2.
And When I say “In my opinion, this proves my point”, the point is in the argument above! I’d think that should be obvious!
And I have stated that “you have given no argument that does even a passable job of demonstrating, or even hinting, that all lies are negative”…because you haven’t! I’ve refuted each of the arguments you have presented, and you have failed to refute my refutations. The problem here isn’t my opinions - it’s that you have indeed not managed to rebut my arguments that refute yours!
That’s the difference between a debate and an exchange of opinions - in a debate, you are expected to answer refutations. With other refutations. That’s how it works, see. As far as I can tell. In my opinion.
Since the order of the day appears to be paired posts, now that I am past my shock and outrage that you would erect my verbal qualifications as a shield against having to respond to my actual arguments, allow me to clarify what the actual purpose of such statements are.
They’re invitations to debate.
Suppose I were to make a statement like, say, “Lies don’t have a positive effect.” Note the lack of qualifiers - this is a statement of certain fact. Spoke straight from lips of God, as it were. By presenting opinions as facts in this matter, I would be forcing my opposition to make similarly stark unadorned rebuttals, if nothing else to clear the way for a more nuanced argument to follow. Thus I would be forcing my opinion to the forefront in a manner as though I would be trying to stifle debate with my unquaified rightness.
I do this rather a lot.
But on occasion I will decide to present a statement in such a way as to not deflect argument, but invite it. I will wrap my most certain statements and suffix my strongest arguments with expressions of opinion and uncertainty. In this manner I positively open the door and invite in objections and refutations, without presenting the confrontationality that would suggest to the opponent that they need to take a mirroring confrontational position. In doing so, I hope to encourage reasoned debate, and hope to bring the tone of the discussion down some to compensate for where I escalate it with arguments untactfully demonstrating the absurdity of the opponent’s positions.
Usually I find this works pretty well. Only once have I encountered someone who focused on the qualifications and ignored the arguments they adorn.
In thinking about this while out running errands it occurred to how odd it is that you make a statement like this after mocking me for being an extremist. Pot, Kettle wouldn’t you say?
and now on we go, still trying to condense when appropriate.
Semantics IMO. When you make assertions as factual that you can’t prove are factual that strikes as either witnessing or just opinion.
Theory it is. My point is my starting with an assumed truth does not mean I’m not open to new information if it is convincing
The latter was included. I said I wasn’t always successful right? That means at times I was less than honest for various reasons and had to examine the results of those times. The question was, in that situation where I was less than honest for whatever reason was there a way to be honest and still have a positive outcome or even a more positive outcome. If the lie turned out to be the best solution my theory would have been shot down. That didn’t happen. So much for excluded middle. Argument dismissed.
IMNO your arguments consisted of claiming that mine weren’t true, {an assertion of an opinion as fact} and yours were. {ditto}
Just refuted
IYO, No evidence, just assertion of your opinion and dismissal of mine.
I think something you say in a more recent post clears something up so I’ll respond to this there.
Maybe it felt something like your arguments were being dismissed without reasonable consideration? I feel ya.
If your own extreme position is correct. Gosh that’s a big if ya got there.
You didn’t demonstrate anything. You asserted it as true.
Let’s say we have a moral person who only lies when they truly feel it’s the best solution to achieve a positive result. Can we say with absolute certainty that such a person could not achieve a result just as positive or even more positive by trying to be truthful with consideration? If we can’t the benefit of honesty is not eliminated.
As I said earlier. There may be a misunderstanding in semantics.
IMO a lie being a negative involved in a situation that has a somewhat positive outcome {my math example} does not mean the lie had a positive effect. That’s an important difference in understanding my theory.
And I already said I did give arguments and reasons, which you dismissed offhandedly by what amounted to “Is Not” I offered real life long term efforts as evidence and arguments which you summarily dismissed. Now you’re bitching when a similar thing happens to you. Doesn’t feel good does it? Would you characterize your own complaints and expressions of frustration with Whaaaaaaa?
No, seriously? Or are you arguing that people who are altruistic do so against their will? They’re all like, “God, no, don’t give that poor guy money! Arm, stop moving! Don’t reach out there and hand it over, I’ll hate myself if you do! Aaauuugh!”
Oh, dear, I’m presenting your position in such a way as to show its inherent absurdity again, aren’t I? I should be ashamed of myself.
Good thing I made ARGUMENTS then, huh?
And you immidiately dismiss or ignore anything that conflicts with your axiom. Wow, funny how nothing is even remotely convincing to you, isn’t it? What a coincidence!
How do you know it didn’t happen? Have you been traversing alternate future timelines to compare results again?
Or just letting your preconcieved notions do your arguing for you, perhaps?
You just keep telling yourself that. It’s not like the arguments are still all written out in posts in the thread to disprove your words, or anything.
Which of your arguments have I not disputed with an actual argument against? I admit I may have missed something; I am fallible. (Not fallible enough to be fooled into thinking I never actually made any arguments, though.)
If you have anything you think has not been sufficiently argued against, feel free to repeat it. I would hate to have missed anything.
Dude, this very argument cuts in the reverse direction to slice your position off at the knees. If you can’t know which is better with “absolute certainty”, then you can’t know that honesty is better! (Unless you’re fallaciously and foolishly arguing from unproven and unsupported axiom, that is.)
You should be more careful swinging those double-edged swords. You don’t seem to realize how morally similar lies with positive intent and effect are to truths with positive intent and effect - virtually any argument that can be used to criticize one is equally applicable to the other, simply by swapping the words ‘lie’ and ‘truth’. About the only one that doesn’t work with that is the slippery slope…which isn’t supported by reason or observable reality.
And by the way, who gives a flying crap if it’s the “best” solution? There is not just one moral action in any given situation. If the lie is positive in intent and effect, then it’s moral (presuming a connection between positivity and morality), regardless of whether or not there was some other lie that might have given an even better result.
So lies that do have positive outcomes/effects, do not have positive outcomes/effects, according to your theory.
That’s a kind of cognitive dissonance that can’t be learned, folks. It has to be learned.
Actually I’m bitching that you’re continually saying misrepresenting my arguments as “amount[ing] to “Is Not””, when that is a complete load of fetid shit that no truly honest person could ever bring themself to post. (And no sensible liar would either - the prior posts are still there, after all.) How you can bring yourself to argue the side favoring complete honesty is a complete mystery to me.
And there is nothing similar between our two argumentive styles. Don’t insult me like that - there’s no way I would stoop so low as to claim that you did not make arguments.
You have made arguments. Just none that stood up to examination.
Funny , I don’t feel foolish. I think in some areas we’re talking past each other and disagreeing because of semantics rather than real content. I’ve said repeatedly that a decision to lie or tell the truth does not exist in a vacuum. In the same way I tried to explain how a lie can be negative but part of a positive outcome, truth can equally be positive but part of a negative outcome when we do not temper it with wisdom and consideration. The +2 of truth added to the negative -3 of ignorance and the negative -4 of a lack of compassion is a positive -5. So the person telling the truth may conclude, “Dam I told the truth and it wasn’t worth it”, unless they are as smart as me Then they realize the truth is good but they need to improve other aspects to make it more positive.
I have a hard time relating to the Jews in the attic but let’s use racism in this country as an example. White people in the south honestly felt they were superior and entitled to more rights than blacks. In view of a greater moral truth they were wrong, but many sincerely felt they were right. Some black people out of a desire to avoid a confrontation that they believed would end badly, went along with he lie. Some white people afraid of rejection and condemnation by their own race kept quiet when they felt deep down it wasn’t correct. Were the black people who accepted racism in order to get along in relative peace getting a positive result from their lie? Were white people who caved to peer pressure benefiting from their lie? The short term answer might be yes. Still, in order to move in a more positive direction towards equality there had to be a confrontation between the lie of racism and the truth of equal human rights. That lie cost a bunch of people their lives. Was it worth it. Was the outcome more positive or less positive? I feel certain it was more positive and I also feel that the principle applies to lies and truth in general, even the much more mundane type.
“White lies can be the lubricant that keeps the societal machine running smoothly” and “The time when it is moral to lie is when (to the best of your ability to determine) telling the lie results in the most positive situation for all concerned"
both prongs of the same premise.
We obviously see your arguments differently. It seemed reasonable to dismiss yours in a similar fashion as you dismissed mine.
That’s an argument I’ve never made so cut that shit out.
Uh huh I’m not pretending anything. I’m saying yours are no more valid than mine. If mine can be dismissed out of hand turn about is fair play.
I guess if you’re only trying to convince yourself and not me then your work here is done. Personally I don’t think you’ve disproven anything.
Hmmmm I don’t think so. Perhaps you have a cape or a ring you haven’t mentioned yet.
Snap out of it. The thread title is a question asking for opinions. I answered with “No I don’t think so” You must be making this up because I’m sure you’re not that dense.
I can only assume you’re saying this because a. we’re talking past each other with a misunderstanding in semantics, or b, you don’t actually understand my position which would also explain why I think you haven’t disproven anything and you keep insisting you have.
Clearly some of the discussion here is resulting from ‘assumed qualifications’ - saying ‘truth has a positive effect’ without actually qualifying it as referring to truth-value-not-counting-effects or truth-value-counting-effects leaves open the possibilty (probability) of you meaning the former and me reading it as the latter.
As for the provided example, we’re back to the fact that, assuming that truth or falsehood has any inherent magic positive/negative value at all, it’s so insignificant that it is inevitably overridden by the overt positivity or negativity of the positive or negative intents and effects.
It seems the only case where this inherent magic positive/negative value could possibly be relevent is in cases where both the lie and the truth are perceived as having equally beneficial effect (and equally benevolent and equally selfish motivations, keeping in mind that selfishness is only bad when it is done to the detriment of others).
I do not expect you to agree with the above two paragraphs.
I suspect your difficulty in relating to the Jews in the attic scenario is the fact that it is not possible to prevent it contradicting your theory, being as it lacks long-term negatives to counter the short-term positives.
As for the racism, the issue there isn’t lying so much as oppression and wether it is productive or wise to confront oppression. (Some wordplay there is required to relate it to truth and lies at all; you are not referring to individual honest/dishonest statements.)
The question of whether to fight against oppression is, like the unrelated issue of whether to lie, a moral issue that relies on both short and long term consequences, and what the consequences are for both the self and others. Like lies that have complicated effects (such as deciding whether to tell someone about an unavoidable tragedy in their future), determining whether the short term benefits outweigh the long term benefits, or whether the individual costs outweigh the long-term costs, can be a complex issue.
Which is probably why I don’t choose lies with demonstrable long-term negatives to make my argument. I’ll just stick with the ones with only positive discernible effects, short and long term, thanks.
The last one is actually a conclusion, based on an argument based on how we dermine whether anything is moral (if not the very definition of the word “moral”). And I of course provided support for the former with numerous examples. I ask nobody to accept either statement axiomatically.
But that doesn’t mean they aren’t premises, especially in other arguments, so I concede these as indeed being premises I’ve stated.
If only the fashion we were dismissing each others arguments with were similar! I say “Your argument has this problem: [insert argument here] - therefore I dismiss it (pending your refutation)”. You say “You never made arguments, you just asserted your opinion with no supporting arguments at all.”
If you dismissed my arguments the way I’m dismissing yours, this would be piles more productive!
Parahprasing: “We can’t possibly know with absolute certainty - *so the benefit of honesty cannot be elimiated.”
What benefit of honesty? Why, the benefit of honesty that cosmosdan is assuming of course! Why yes, this is the “it can’t be known, so cosmosdan’s theory is true” argument. And it’s the point of all your repeated “I don’t think it’s knowable in an absolute sense” arguments - that we can’t be certain, so I don’t get to argue, but you still get to make unsupported assertions unswayed by the fact “it’s unknowable in an absolute sense”.
And I still don’t buy it.
You really have no clue the difference between making rebutting arguments and “dismissing out of hand”, do you?
Arguments against dogmatically held beliefs unsupported by evidence or reason are always done for the benefit of the audience, for the argumentive practice, and for the fun of it. Nobody expects to convince somebody who is more dedicated to their axioms than the reality.
I see. I don’t get to be sarcastic, but you do. Got it.
(My sarcasm usually addresses the point actually under discussion, though - perhaps that’s why it’s disallowed?)
Welcome to Great Debates!
I think Great I Get To Make Assertions And Not Have Them Argued Against is on the next forum over.
Actually I said it because you said you had experience with benign lies, which would be quite a trick if there’s no such thing, which you also occasionally assert.
Presuming we’re miscommunicating, I’ll restate: “I wish you’d be more clear in your mention of general terms which require clarification, qualification, or additional description to prevent ambiguity.”
I’m going to try and wrap this up in this post. I don’t really have the time or, after reading the last three posts, the interest.
This is what I was speaking of in previous posts that leads me to believe you really don’t understand my position and we may have been talking past each other.
If you grant the possibility of inherent negativity then you’re agreeing with my position not disproving it, even granting an apparently positive outcome.
No I’m not, and this shows even more that you don’t actually understand the argument you think you’ve destroyed. Either that or you’re purposely misrepresenting my argument in order to declare some imagined victory.
In my very first post I said
“In rare cases, like the Jews in the attic thing, the choice may sometimes be between the lesser of two evils, and lying may be the lesser.”
Thus recognizing a positive summed merit in my very first post and still consistently referring to lying as negative. I’ve acknowledged several times and been consistent in claiming that although the outcome may be seen as a positive the lie itself remains a negative as in the math example. The fact that you keep repeating this as if it shows a flaw in my theory indicates you didn’t get it. My objection to your choice of words semantically is when you refer to the lie as positive or indicate that the lie was the most positive choice. I haven’t fluctuated wildly.
It’s perfectly obvious. Someone lies in order to “spare someone’s feelings”. That’s lie one. They tell themselves they were being considerate and concerned about the other person when actually they were just looking for a quick and easy out for themselves. That’s the 2nd lie that compounds the negative effect of lies. The effort to be more honest must contain personal honesty about our own feelings and motives.
You asked that I go back and reread your arguments and I did and posted about it. regardless of phrasing it still relies on your analysis which is basically, your opinion, evidentially based in part on your own extreme position as you mock mine. That’s funny. You’ve never demonstrated anything and I now suspect the reason you think you have is that you didn’t really understand my position as well as you thought you did.
Here’s why it boils down to our unprovable opinions. {something else I’ve expressed more than once}
There’s no way for either you or I to prove to the other in any meaningful way, that the lie is positive or negative , even in a situation where the outcome is apparently positive. That comes down to , I think the lie is a negative, but can’t prove it, and you evidently think it isn’t, and also can’t prove anything. Regardless of all the arguments you mistakenly think have destroyed this or proved that , that’s what you have. In any and every example and analogy you give that remains the essence of the disagreement. All the extra crap you threw in about excluded middle and how it’s my obligation to prove something very subjective is meaningless because it all comes down to that central issue.
Holy fuck is this a serious question?
You repeatedly mock my theory about **all **lies have some negative effect as a ridiculous extreme and then say this
The bolded parts indicate the extreme bits. Note their similarity to the language in my own theory that you mocked repeatedly. It would be funny if I didn’t think you were serious.
I think you should be, but not for the reason you stated. THat never happened.
My posts show this to be a falsehood.
I examined the possibilities and decided a positive truthful answer was available. The next time a similar situation came up I tried the truthful answer and discovered it was indeed more positive. No time travel required.
Dude that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to point out to you and why , as I just explained again, it boils down to opinion. I can’t know with absolute certainty{and neither can you } but since my theory and my personal efforts and experience match my theory to observed reality I will continue to hold this theory until my experience and a* decent* argument presents a more likely alternative.
My theory is concerns personal and societal growth so the best solution is clearly something we should be concerned about. When you set a goal wouldn’t you choose what appeared to be the best solution, even allowing for a margin of error?
This is on the edge of a personal insult and one of the main reasons this will be my last post. Because we don’t agree you assume I’m pretending and not arguing in good faith. Being in retail I’m quite used to people assuming I’m not honest. It only matters if I truly value their opinion. I think if you questioned your own motives as seriously as you questioned mine you’d solve the mystery but clearly YMMV.
I **have not
** made the argument you stated. “Since you can’t prove I’m wrong I must be right.” for you to say I have is a gross misrepresentation of my position at best. What I’ve said is that because of the subjective nature of the topic the possibility I’m correct remains open as well as the possibility you’re right. That’s a perfectly reasonable statement. That kind of thing occurs regularly in objective fields when there is insufficient data.
And that’s a wrap, with peppers, onions, and extra cheese.
If you decide to start a thread about about your own extreme position concerning selfishness I’ll be glad to stop by and mock, er I mean discuss it.
Nonsense - I don’t have to agree with your axiom to point out that even if it was true, it is demonstrable that it would still be utterly irrelevent to all actual moral decisions, since actual results actually matter.
Option three: you are at least as bad as I am at clarifiying wether you are referring to a lie’s “inhererent magic negativity” or its “negativity as assessed by the sum total of all effects”.
I feel I’ve been fairly consistent in referring to the former as, specifically, “inherent magic negativity/positivity”, and the former as “benign/destructive lies”. I have probably ommitted this clarifying commenting on occasion. You certainly have, and you certainly have responded to comments using one term as though it discussed the other.
Your accusations of deliberate misrepresentation are nothing but poisoning of the well, and are scummy shit tactics unworthy of a moral human.
Would you like me to tell you what your position is? It’s really simple, and I’ve understood it the entire time, though you have said things that on a plain reading contradict it in places.
You believe that lies have inherent moral negativity, caused by nothing and based on nothing, since it’s separate from intent and consequences. It’s just there.
You recognize that intent and consequences can have much more of a positive moral effect than your imagined inherent negativity. You try to pretend this happens only rarely or never, to validate your position.
You assert that lies with only positive detectable consequences must have stealthy secret negative consequences. You don’t give arguments supporting this conclusion.
Am I with you so far?
Oh, I see why I didn’t understand it - it’s ridiculous nonsense. People who are telling benign lies know exactly why they’re doing it. They might lie to you about why they’re doing it, but that doesn’t mean they have some sort of mental confusion about their own motives - and if they did, then it wouldn’t be a lie for them to think that they did it out of consideration!
And I gotta say, this was hilarious coming from a guy who tells himself that his kid was really asking if daddy is appreciative that the kid bothered to give him anything at all. I was letting that drop, because your own personal approach to honesty is really irrelevent to the general discussion of it, -but the irony here is priceless.
I get the point, your reading comprehension drops to zero when you read things that puncture your position. You demonstrated that amply by selecting a statement that immidiately followed an argument and responding to it rather than the argument, using it as proof I don’t make arguments!
Selective hearing, reading-style, as it were.
You probably think that it’s up to the skeptics to prove that each individual claimant wasn’t abducted by aliens, too.
The nifty thing about this is, that morality is presumably caused by something. I assert that it’s caused by intent and effects. You are asserting it’s caused by something else…which has no apparent mechanism for happening. (You’ve proposed some potential causes, I’ve put holes in them, you’ve stuck your fingers in your ears and said la la la really loud.)
Occam’s razor suggests that there are problems with your position.
Couldn’t think of an argument against it, eh? It’s bugging you, isn’t it?
What is funny is that you had to lop out the subsequent argument in order for this pathetic textual comparison attack to even pretend to hold water. If you had a real rebuttal to this postion, of course, you would have argued against the actual argument.
Riiiiight. Suuuuure it didn’t.
Given your conduct in this thread, your censure isn’t very stinging.
Your posts are all still here, too, you know.
You do realize that the number of factors here, and more significantly selective memory and confirmation bias - and your bias is obvious- make comparisons like this spectacularly shaky, right?
That didn’t even come close to saying that it boiled down to opinon. It said that when you criticize lies told with benign intent you are criticizing truth’s twin. Morally speaking there is barely any way to tell the positions apart, and that fact is underscored by the fact that any argument you make against benign lies turns back around and skewers your own position. (Except that ridiculous imagined slippery slope, as I mentioned.)
And the only reason you are arguing that it boils down to opinion is because your theory doesn’t stand up to facts or logical examination. And I’d give your claim of being suseptible to “decent” arguments perhaps a shred of credibility if you weren’t so desperately failing to even counter the arguments I present. Which an honest debater would…or be forced to admit they’re decent!
Because the discussion isn’t whether the truth is best (which you haven’t shown), it’s whether lies with benign intent and effects are moral. Wether or not chocolate is tastiest is completely irrelevent to the question of whether or not grapes are tasty.
God, look at the hypocricy. You persistently pretend I’m only stating opinions and not presenting arguments, complain that I’m questioning your motives, and then immidiately turn around and question my motives.
You’re amazing.
Yeah, you sure stated that your theory was uncertain in the quoted post. Or anywhere else when you’re not explicitly playing the “it’s not my responsibility to prove esp is real; it’s your responsibility to prove it isn’t, and since nobody can be sure, believing in esp is exactly as valid as believing rocks exist” card.
By what mechanism did lies with benign intent and effect acquire their inherent magic moral negativity again, by the way? Morality fairies?
Yes, because you can’t find any flaws in it, so you couldn’t actually argue against it. If you could, you would have done so already!
I realize that this thread has evoked a lot of passion, but you need to stop getting quite so personal in your responses. (In general, I think that you and cosmosdan have both come pretty close to attacking the poster rather than the post, but you have stepped closer to the line with these comments.
If you guys feel the need to continue this discussion, I would suggest that you each avoid attacking the other’s method of argumentation and stick to trying to resolve the logic (or failure of logic) in the arguments. I would strongly suggest that both of you, (and everyone else), refrain from using the words “you” and “your” from here on out. Stick to the third person, (“one,” “one’s,”) for references to the actors in a scenario and just do not even address the other’s presumed position.
)
(Though seriously, I’m only three weeks into this. Gimme a few more months before coming to me for surplusses of anything.)
I just learned that myself when my post was forced into two parts.