7 ms·

How do you empirically prove slavery is wrong?

BoorishBears 3y ago
See the mistake the person you replied to made is assuming there's some floor to morality. They probably assumed the floor is "slaves are a bad thing", it's so obvious that the empirical measurement is "does slavery increase the number of slaves" that they don't need to elaborate But apparently you fall below that basic floor such that you might contest slaves are not inherently bad, so "decreased number of slaves" is not empirical proof slavery is wrong. Great example of why I tend to just ignore people who disagree with my morality. Some demographics are currently convinced that's a show of weakness, I'm convinced it shows I value my time.
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  I asked how would he empirically prove slavery is bad (because I don't believe it's possible to base morality on "objetive reality") and you flipped out, assumed I'm "pro slavery" and gave up on thinking about it. No wonder Socrates was hated 2400 years ago.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    I didn't say you're pro-slavery so please don't martyr yourself. I said you bucked this person's assumption of "all people with morals believe a slave is bad" Otherwise you could obviously moralize the more complex concept of slavery based on objective reality by observing "more slavery == more slaves"; slavery is bad QED — Morality is concerned with examining if something is good or bad. So if all people with morals (regardless of what those are) find a concept to be either good or bad... then it might as well exist outside of the purview of morality for the purpose of debate. That's the metaphorical "floor of morality" My point is normally you need nuanced examples to prove that things "on the floor" can still be moralized, like murder vs murder in self-defense. What you proved is that there are also people willing to moralize concepts as simple as "slaves are bad" (vs "slavery is bad") — In doing so you demonstrated why when someone tries to moralize things that I assumed to be "on the floor", or universally bad: I just discard their opinion without consideration. If you ask me "why do you think slaves are bad", I'll mostly say "I just do, and I don't wish to entertain arguments otherwise". I see it as being pragmatic, but some may consider it fragile. It's just, I'm a fairly introspective and have had a varied enough life that I trust my intuition that anyone who can't reach the floor of my morality is not worth convincing.
    - seventhtiger 3y ago
      Trusting your intuition and blocking out people is great for you, personally, the owner of your space. That attitude would harm the public space, where standards to discuss current and new issues would be really helpful. You also think the choice of slavery is proof of people falling below your personal moral floor. To me, and I think to the OP, it's proof that even questions with obvious moral answers are beyond empiricism. Which is the point you're missing. So we need to know on what basis we arrive at the obvious answer slavery is bad, because the we can use that basis for more complex matters. Shutting each other down just for talking is authoritarian, and the thing about that is if the guy on top is your guy that's great, but you have no control over who the guy on top is.
      - BoorishBears 3y ago
        > That attitude would harm the public space, where standards to discuss current and new issues would be really helpful. Actually there's more evidence that the public space could not exist without some sort of floor: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/evolution-morality-and-the-fabric-of-society/6D18FCDDDF0ECE27FF8B55D8BC691D28 https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/evolution-morali... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886919304799 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918... MFT is highly debatable in terms of if it's the right definition of the floor, but it logically tracks that for society to evolve to the point where you can have useful discourse at all, individuals must be arrive at some floor for themselves. > You also think the choice of slavery is proof of people falling below your personal moral floor. To me, and I think to the OP, it's proof that even questions with obvious moral answers are beyond empiricism. Which is the point you're missing. You're confusing slaves and slavery: Slavery is complex enough that I will engage someone who wants to moralize it (after all, is it modern or historical? specific race? is debt-based slavery included? what about war? etc.). But a slave is "a human owns another". I arrogantly consider it not worth my time to convince someone whether "a human owning another" is good or bad. > So we need to know on what basis we arrive at the obvious answer slavery is bad, because the we can use that basis for more complex matters. Nothing I said precludes logic to examining slavery: "Slavery increase the number of humans owned by other humans, so slavery is bad" From there one might logically say: "Well what about economic cases, where technically I don't own you?", and then the logical next step might be to consider "at what level of penalties for a debtor does it start to become owned by the creditor?" I'm a curious enough person that I'd accept discomfort to ensure my floor is low enough to allow deeply messy moral debate... but on the same coin, that reinforces my confidence that the precious few conversations that do get swept under it were probably not valuable. As always ymmv... > Shutting each other down just for talking is authoritarian, and the thing about that is if the guy on top is your guy that's great, but you have no control over who the guy on top is. Deciding not to convince someone of my point of view isn't shutting them down. This feels like a very messy attempt to force some sort of pro-authoritarian projection onto me :/
- klyrs 3y ago
  > I'm convinced it shows I value my time. Questionable, given your volume on this thread.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    Maybe your existence outside the internet is so minimal that it can be judged by a comment thread... remember that's not universal.
    - klyrs 3y ago
      I didn't say anything about your existence outside of this comment thread. In this comment thread, you said that you don't find it worthwhile to converse with people of a certain mindset, to whom you have written considerable page-inches. I found that discordance notable.
      - BoorishBears 3y ago
        Sure thing.
plagiarist 3y ago
That isn't one of the objective reality ones (unless it's from a provably wrong basis like racial inferiority). I'm not really good enough at philosophy to take that particular argument. But perhaps you could explain to us why slavery is good and thus why diverging thoughts on it are valid political viewpoints and not sanity vs. delusion.
- Closi 3y ago
  They aren't saying slavery is good, they are saying it's an extreme example of something that isn't actually an objective fact. More subtle examples would be gun-control or abortion, where two intelligent people can hold wholly opposite viewpoints with no objectively 'correct' answer.
mattnewton 3y ago
It depends on your axioms. If you have none nobody can prove you aren’t a brain dreaming in a jar, but the second you grant me something as small as as the golden rule you can lever up into arguments against slavery pretty easily.
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  Of course, it's just silly to think "objective" reality infers the golden rule by itself when it is a (wonderful) liberal anomaly that's not even followed by most of the world now.
  - mattnewton 3y ago
    If it’s political bias that chatgpt seems to have read about the golden rule I hope the next version is even more biased. Seems like much ado about nothing.
    - hotdogscout 3y ago
      I hate how hypocritical it is trained with Islam and Christianity in regards to LGBT rights. It'll question Christianity's bigotry and subsequently support Islamic bigotry.
  - gopher_space 3y ago
    It's a useful starting point that everyone would understand. We've all been working on the concept for centuries. The conversation against the idea would be illuminating.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
svaha1728 3y ago
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?

See the mistake the person you replied to made is assuming there's some floor to morality. They probably assumed the floor is "slaves are a bad thing", it's so obvious that the empirical measurement is "does slavery increase the number of slaves" that they don't need to elaborate But apparently you fall below that basic floor such that you might contest slaves are not inherently bad, so "decreased number of slaves" is not empirical proof slavery is wrong. Great example of why I tend to just ignore people who disagree with my morality. Some demographics are currently convinced that's a show of weakness, I'm convinced it shows I value my time.

hotdogscout 3y ago
I asked how would he empirically prove slavery is bad (because I don't believe it's possible to base morality on "objetive reality") and you flipped out, assumed I'm "pro slavery" and gave up on thinking about it. No wonder Socrates was hated 2400 years ago.
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  I didn't say you're pro-slavery so please don't martyr yourself. I said you bucked this person's assumption of "all people with morals believe a slave is bad" Otherwise you could obviously moralize the more complex concept of slavery based on objective reality by observing "more slavery == more slaves"; slavery is bad QED — Morality is concerned with examining if something is good or bad. So if all people with morals (regardless of what those are) find a concept to be either good or bad... then it might as well exist outside of the purview of morality for the purpose of debate. That's the metaphorical "floor of morality" My point is normally you need nuanced examples to prove that things "on the floor" can still be moralized, like murder vs murder in self-defense. What you proved is that there are also people willing to moralize concepts as simple as "slaves are bad" (vs "slavery is bad") — In doing so you demonstrated why when someone tries to moralize things that I assumed to be "on the floor", or universally bad: I just discard their opinion without consideration. If you ask me "why do you think slaves are bad", I'll mostly say "I just do, and I don't wish to entertain arguments otherwise". I see it as being pragmatic, but some may consider it fragile. It's just, I'm a fairly introspective and have had a varied enough life that I trust my intuition that anyone who can't reach the floor of my morality is not worth convincing.
  - seventhtiger 3y ago
    Trusting your intuition and blocking out people is great for you, personally, the owner of your space. That attitude would harm the public space, where standards to discuss current and new issues would be really helpful. You also think the choice of slavery is proof of people falling below your personal moral floor. To me, and I think to the OP, it's proof that even questions with obvious moral answers are beyond empiricism. Which is the point you're missing. So we need to know on what basis we arrive at the obvious answer slavery is bad, because the we can use that basis for more complex matters. Shutting each other down just for talking is authoritarian, and the thing about that is if the guy on top is your guy that's great, but you have no control over who the guy on top is.
    - BoorishBears 3y ago
      > That attitude would harm the public space, where standards to discuss current and new issues would be really helpful. Actually there's more evidence that the public space could not exist without some sort of floor: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/evolution-morality-and-the-fabric-of-society/6D18FCDDDF0ECE27FF8B55D8BC691D28 https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/evolution-morali... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886919304799 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918... MFT is highly debatable in terms of if it's the right definition of the floor, but it logically tracks that for society to evolve to the point where you can have useful discourse at all, individuals must be arrive at some floor for themselves. > You also think the choice of slavery is proof of people falling below your personal moral floor. To me, and I think to the OP, it's proof that even questions with obvious moral answers are beyond empiricism. Which is the point you're missing. You're confusing slaves and slavery: Slavery is complex enough that I will engage someone who wants to moralize it (after all, is it modern or historical? specific race? is debt-based slavery included? what about war? etc.). But a slave is "a human owns another". I arrogantly consider it not worth my time to convince someone whether "a human owning another" is good or bad. > So we need to know on what basis we arrive at the obvious answer slavery is bad, because the we can use that basis for more complex matters. Nothing I said precludes logic to examining slavery: "Slavery increase the number of humans owned by other humans, so slavery is bad" From there one might logically say: "Well what about economic cases, where technically I don't own you?", and then the logical next step might be to consider "at what level of penalties for a debtor does it start to become owned by the creditor?" I'm a curious enough person that I'd accept discomfort to ensure my floor is low enough to allow deeply messy moral debate... but on the same coin, that reinforces my confidence that the precious few conversations that do get swept under it were probably not valuable. As always ymmv... > Shutting each other down just for talking is authoritarian, and the thing about that is if the guy on top is your guy that's great, but you have no control over who the guy on top is. Deciding not to convince someone of my point of view isn't shutting them down. This feels like a very messy attempt to force some sort of pro-authoritarian projection onto me :/
klyrs 3y ago
> I'm convinced it shows I value my time. Questionable, given your volume on this thread.
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  Maybe your existence outside the internet is so minimal that it can be judged by a comment thread... remember that's not universal.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    I didn't say anything about your existence outside of this comment thread. In this comment thread, you said that you don't find it worthwhile to converse with people of a certain mindset, to whom you have written considerable page-inches. I found that discordance notable.
    - BoorishBears 3y ago
      Sure thing.

plagiarist 3y ago

That isn't one of the objective reality ones (unless it's from a provably wrong basis like racial inferiority). I'm not really good enough at philosophy to take that particular argument. But perhaps you could explain to us why slavery is good and thus why diverging thoughts on it are valid political viewpoints and not sanity vs. delusion.

Closi 3y ago
They aren't saying slavery is good, they are saying it's an extreme example of something that isn't actually an objective fact. More subtle examples would be gun-control or abortion, where two intelligent people can hold wholly opposite viewpoints with no objectively 'correct' answer.

mattnewton 3y ago

It depends on your axioms. If you have none nobody can prove you aren’t a brain dreaming in a jar, but the second you grant me something as small as as the golden rule you can lever up into arguments against slavery pretty easily.

hotdogscout 3y ago
Of course, it's just silly to think "objective" reality infers the golden rule by itself when it is a (wonderful) liberal anomaly that's not even followed by most of the world now.
- mattnewton 3y ago
  If it’s political bias that chatgpt seems to have read about the golden rule I hope the next version is even more biased. Seems like much ado about nothing.
  - hotdogscout 3y ago
    I hate how hypocritical it is trained with Islam and Christianity in regards to LGBT rights. It'll question Christianity's bigotry and subsequently support Islamic bigotry.
- gopher_space 3y ago
  It's a useful starting point that everyone would understand. We've all been working on the concept for centuries. The conversation against the idea would be illuminating.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

svaha1728 3y ago

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?