Brain/lit/s can't even disprove UPB. Resort to ad homs and other NON-ARGUMENTS...

Brain/lit/s can't even disprove UPB. Resort to ad homs and other NON-ARGUMENTS. funny how people here think they're philosophers

I read a series of blog posts about a guy that did just that a few years ago. I'll see if I can find it.

me no like it so it no can be

Half of his book relies on assumptions. 'We know this behavior is preferred because well it is of course!'

Molyneux can't understand a concept as simple as an individual human being inextricably related to its environment. That is, not an island of causality capable of shielding their psyche and intentions from the world around them as to be a universe unto themselves somehow interracting with others and their environment. Once the interdependence of things is understood silly intellectual exercises such as might be presented in this book are infertile to begin with as the basis is not grounded in the soil of the most basic principle of reality.

Well, I don't know what this is all about but it is a no-brainer that a socially preferable behavior is one that intrudes on others the least.

Not fundamentally, at least not without God.

What do you mean? I don't know what the book is about.
I am not talking about morals. I am saying that this is simply what people would prefer when interacting with with other people at large i.e. in society. The assumption is that unless you already have some sort of investment in a given matter when dealing with it you would try to adopt a behavior that minimizes losses i.e. in the context of social interaction you would try to avoid conflict.

You can think of a society that likes to intrude on each other.

...

I gave the condition of "unless you already have some sort of investment".
I am not an expert of game theory, but I think one of its fundamental premises is that humans in general like to play it safe. The gamblers are regarded as abnormal.

Let me reword that

Molyneux can't understand a concept as the interdependence of an individual and their environment. A person is not an island of causality capable of acting with zero influence from their surroundings. Once mutual interdependence between a person and their environment is understood, silly intellectual exercises such as might be presented in this book can be seen as infertile, as it fails to recognize this simple principle.

Preferences can be contradictory. I prefer that Molymeme necks himself. He prefers not to. Whether or not Molymeme necks himself, his behavior will not be universally preferred.

>inb4 some example of a preference that we all supposedly share
Some people get off on being restrained, tortured, or killed.
Some people are suicidal.
Some people would like others to intervene in their lives; others wouldn't.

Even given a single individual, their preferences can change over time. My friend wanted to kill himself. I prevented him from doing it, by using force. At the time, he punched me and told me to fuck off, but now, he's glad I stopped him.

Molymeme's non-intervention meme is a meme.

The thing is that when we regard people as a group rather than individuals there are standards of behavior that are set for all by only a subset of that group.

>there are standards of behavior that are set for all by only a subset of that group.
Examples of this? And arguments for why this is a bad thing?

I refuse to read Molymeme because of the not an argument shitposting. I'm sure he has his merits but allow me this.

>Examples of this?
Pretty much anything we do. Social etiquette, manners etc.etc. From
>You have to say "Thank you" and "Sorry"
through
>Don't chew with your mouth full
to
>Don't go out in the street in your underwear
Also the "subset" I am talking about usually is the majority.

>And arguments for why this is a bad thing?
Have I implied in any way that it is?

Are you arguing for UPBs? Not trying to be rude, just curious what angle you're coming at my posts from.

As I said I haven't read the book and it's the first time I hear of it so I don't know what it is about.
Interpreting it literally, yes, there are certain behaviors that are more recommendable to follow, at least if you want to work in society. It's not a matter of good or bad. It's just that people tend to find some things acceptable and other things not acceptable. And that the things that they find not acceptable are in general things that try to intrude in their personal space and unnecessarily engage their attention and personal resources.
If you are fine being rejected you can do whatever you want of course. That is usually the price to pay.

Thanks mate. We pretty much agree with each other.

So what is the book actually about?

It's basically a blend of the worst parts of Rand and Kant. Molymeme asserts that a whole bunch of things are "universally preferable" or otherwise must be true, including:
>Truth is good
>Peaceful debate is the best way to find truth
>Lying is bad
>Murder is bad
>The non-aggression principle

Like Rand, he ought to dedicate an entire book to any one of these things, but instead offers a handful of flimsy arguments for each, then generalizes ethics to be the study of "universally preferable behaviors," and asserts that his own American Libertarian ethics stem from UPBs.

Like Kant, he tries to plant morality in logic. But he's not clever enough to do as good a job as Kant did.

>tl;dr — Bad arguments for the NAP.

Your writing is terrible.
Your writing is still terrible.

UPB is literally a copypaste of Kant.

You could argue that politeness is constructed by everybody in the group, not just a few.

England (example) is limited on physical space in comparison to the US, so it's in everyone's best interests to not piss each other off with their mannerisms too much or they'd be killing each other.

sure smells like an ad hominem from here...

So we can agree that it's preferable that none of us want to die. Even those of us who are suicidal would rather live if there is reason to (one that we may not see when depressed).

From there we can extrapolate to say that any action that causes conflict ending in physical pain to another party or yourself is detrimental to society and deemed a universally preferable behaviour.

>so it's in everyone's best interests to not piss each other off
Yes, that is what I was saying too. It's just that I was trying to account for individual differences.
Different things piss different people off. Just to be safe we try to avoid the things that are likely to piss someone off when we are in a group.

Even those of us who are not suicidal would rather die if there is reason to (one that we may not see when delusional).

I can't say that I agree about every single thing with Kant, but his way of thinking is correct.
>he tries to plant morality in logic
Morality requires free will and free will requires the ability to reason consciously.
Kant bases his reasoning on the assumption of a priori principles. Those principles are "universal" by definition but how you interpret the term "universal" is important.
They are universal not in the sense that they are valid for all subjects but universal in the sense that in relation to the subject they pertain to they are experienced as independent of/abstracted from time and space i.e ubiquitous.Something along those lines.

Lets look at the above example. I said that that you can do whatever you want if you don't care how other people feel about that. Still if you happened to care then doing as other people please would be an absolute imperative. Absolute imperative doesn't mean that you can't go against it but that doing so would always be to your personal harn regardless of the circumstances.

>any action that causes conflict ending in physical pain to another party or yourself is detrimental to society
That is quite the flight of logic.

>So we can agree that it's preferable that none of us want to die.
Nope. Suppose I, in a sober and unemotional moment, do some thinking, and decide I'd really like to kill myself. This has happened before, and will happen again.

>From there we can extrapolate to say that any action that causes conflict ending in physical pain to another party or yourself is detrimental to society and deemed a universally preferable behaviour.
This has nothing to do with a preference not to die. Consider chemotherapy, which is extremely painful to the patient, and takes an emotional toll on the doctor. Even if we assume your ridiculous "death-is always-bad" premise, your conclusion doesn't follow, because it rules out chemotherapy.

Molymeme is a mess.

Utilitarianism is for children. There can be no rational ethics.

In fact in order to make a moral judgement, just like with any other judgement, you would need to be able to reason rationally. So ethics and morals are rational by definition.

yet in all times of history, people who avoid intruding get pushed aside, and end up serving high chrisma, assertive (i.e emotionally intruding) individuals.

So not only it doesn't seem preferable in the sense of personnal interest, but neither is it prefered by other members of society

Wrong.

In what way?

Because moral judgements are not rational, they are sentimental.

There are no moral judgements.

Other members of the society would prefer you to not intrude on them. What you would prefer is an entirely different question.
Of course, anyone would prefer to intrude on others in their own best interest if they could do it unpunished.

A judgement is rational by definition.
Then what do you call a judgement that pertains to value?

>A judgement is rational by definition.
Wrong.

Sometimes ad hominems are perfectly appropriate, asshole.

In what way?

There is a difference between appropriate and logically sound.

Two things:

To discern a "Universally Preferable Behaviour". You would have to delve into extreme specifics and complexity. Actually, you'd need a comprehensive model on the whole of human behaviour, for starters. Otherwise any behaviour that you posit could be invalid or simply wrong, given its context and relation to other behaviours or actors.

To have any ethics you need a starting point and direction, which are subjective. So, these behaviours are not universal/objective, they're only objective within the confines of the system, the system itself is subjective...like literally every system. The book fails to prove any universality. For one who desires humanity to become extinct as fast as possible, starting point and direction, and subsequent ethics will obviously be very different to Molyneux's.

Why do you care about something being "logically-sound" when the book in question has logical fallacies on almost every page.

You are making no sense. You are probably mixing up your premises and mine.

My premise is that any book that presents a theory should use logically sound arguments. Pointing out that the arguments that a book uses are not logically sound doesn't contradict that premise.

Caring about something being logically sound is an initial premise of my argument and within its context it's an assumption that doesn't follow from any other argument. It bears no relation to whether a particular book is logically sound or not.

There is no reason I wouldn't are about something being logically sound just because a particular book is not logically sound.

Suicidal and self-harming people are not to be expected to enter agreements in good-faith so they're disqualified from the terms of UPB

ONE

FUCKING

DOLLAR

I'm assuming you're not OP. The individual you replied to obviously thought that you were as he was responding to a line in OP's post. I doubt he was trying to argue that ad homs are logically sound.

I guess I didn't even read OP. Sorry.