A Revolution in Thought: Part Two

[LadyShea]

There is a God given standard of right and wrong

No there isn't.

[Vivisectus]

This is where we hit the "It just works that way" territory. And miraculously, the only way to test it is to start a massive social engineering project. If you say "Prove it first!" then that means you are closed-minded and malicious.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

And you base this on your belief that it is so, not on any rational reason. The belief in turn is based on the fact that he was your father.

And actually, yes you can go by that. The "astute observations" require some knowledge about what makes people tick. There seems to have been none, as the book does not convince anyone. A good 50 years, two printings and an attempt to sue the president (lol!) should have been enough to gather at least a small following.

He had tremendous knowledge about what make people tick. You are off the mark as usual. You are making all kinds of false accusations. The world was definitely not ready for this knowledge back in his day. There was also no internet. There was very little distribution. But there was interest when he had the money to advertise. He would get orders for the book (the 84 page version) but this was still a drop in the bucket. Nevertheless, he would eagerly go to his PO Box to see if he got any orders. I found a check for the book after he died, and it was never sent or cashed. I feel bad for the person who was waiting for it. I tried to get in touch with the person but couldn't find them.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

There is no-one. Nor did the revolution happen in the last century, despite the prediction.

And yet we have to believe that he was able to divine human nature somehow?

He assumed people would welcome this discovery with open arms, which is why he made the prediction he did. He thought it would have been analyzed and confirmed valid in his lifetime, but it was not to be.

[Vivisectus]

[quote=peacegirl;1016565]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

And you base this on your belief that it is so, not on any rational reason. The belief in turn is based on the fact that he was your father.

And actually, yes you can go by that. The "astute observations" require some knowledge about what makes people tick. There seems to have been none, as the book does not convince anyone. A good 50 years, two printings and an attempt to sue the president (lol!) should have been enough to gather at least a small following.

He had tremendous knowledge about what make people tick. You are off the mark as usual. Your making all kinds of false accusations. The world was definitely not ready back in his day. There was no internet. There was very little distribution. But there was some interest and he would get orders for the book (the 84 page version). I found a check written to him for the book after he died, and it was never sent or cashed. I feel bad for the person who was waiting for the book, but I don't think there was an address.

So your rebuttal is that you once saw a single order for the book, and some people may or may not have read it? The fact remains that no-one was convinced, and a decade of internet has not made a difference. And you still have only your belief in your fathers genius to support this and nothing else, by the way.

His "tremendous knowledge" about what made people tick obviously did not include the knowledge about how to write a book that convinces anyone.

He assumed people would welcome this discovery with open arms, which is why he made the prediction he did. He thought it would have been analyzed and confirmed valid in his lifetime, but it was not to be.

So once again, he was wrong about how people work.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I have said you can't go by that. These forums are not the end all.

No-one is going by that. The point is that you cannot rationally dismiss as irrelevant the inconvenient fact that this man who was allegedly capable of deep insights into human nature has written a book that simply doesn't convince the people who read it.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

They get bits and pieces of this knowledge, plus they have a grudge against me because of his claim about the eyes.

If people have a grudge it isn't because of his claim, but because of your delusional faith-based rejection of any and all evidence against it.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

You may think that these observations regarding conscience are not proven, but I believe he was correct, not because he was my father but because I can see where conscience will be taken to a whole new level when these principles are put into effect.

Faith claim. Also circular reasoning and/or appeal to consequence fallacy. Either way, it is obviously not rational grounds for believing he was correct.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

He assumed people would welcome this discovery with open arms...

Did that turn out to be a true assumption or a false assumption, Peacegirl?

Why would someone with a "tremendous knowledge about what make people tick" make a false assumption like that?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

This is where we hit the "It just works that way" territory. And miraculously, the only way to test it is to start a massive social engineering project. If you say "Prove it first!" then that means you are closed-minded and malicious.

That isn't what makes people malicious; it's the things people say that make them malicious. This is not an unsupported work. A social engineering project, as you call it, could cause no harm, so there would be nothing to lose.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

This is not an unsupported work.

Yes it is.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

That isn't what makes people malicious; it's the things people say that make them malicious. This is not an unsupported work. A social engineering project, as you call it, could cause no harm, so there would be nothing to lose.

If it is not unsupported, then please provide the support. If not, admit you were mistaken. My bet is that you lack the honesty to do the latter even though you have nothing to do the former with.

The rather enormous social engineering project could easily cause harm. If only a few people decided to abuse it, the damage would be pretty catastrophic. In a world were no-one expects a person to be malicious, malicious intent could wreak unchecked havoc.

[LadyShea]

In a world were no-one expects a person to be malicious, malicious intent could wreak unchecked havoc.

We can learn so much from Demolition Man

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

No there isn't.

Fanatic religious people think there is.

[Vivisectus]

Funny how we are back to an appeal to God now. God supplies the standard of good and evil, whispers into out ear as a conscience, and God is the one who has a master plan for us. On the one hand it is a vague Spinozan god that represents the laws of nature, but at the same time this god has a plan. How can the laws of nature have a plan? And it is an anthropocentric plan at that - a plan that is specific for us humans, and does not have any salvation in mind for, say, the common whelk, or penguins.

Lessans "Astute Observations" seem much more like mystical revelations than anything else to me. They seem to have been very personal experiences: Lessans observed mankind as he understood it, and drew conclusions. He did not observe specific behaviours that we can observe for ourselves to see if we agree with his conclusions. Nor did he test his conclusions by making predictions (except on a macro scale, which requires full acceptance that everything is as he says) and then seeing if tests verified what he said.

This leaves us to decide if we consider him capable of accurately reaching such conclusions - to judge if we feel that he had some sort of direct experience of a grand truth that is not accessible to us.

But what reason do we have to assume this? His supposed vast knowledge about what makes humans tick does not seem to have enabled him to write a book that is very convincing. In 50 years, 10 of which with easy access over the internet, the number of people convinced remains 0. Not even your own close family have been won over.

What reasons do we have for assuming he was correct? Did he make any other predictions that we can test, except for the one where the revolution would be pretty well under way by now? How are we to judge if we consider him an authority on human behaviour?

[LadyShea]

Lessans observed mankind as he understood it, and drew conclusions. He did not observe specific behaviours that we can observe for ourselves to see if we agree with his conclusions. Nor did he test his conclusions by making predictions (except on a macro scale, which requires full acceptance that everything is as he says) and then seeing if tests verified what he said.

This leaves us to decide if we consider him capable of accurately reaching such conclusions - to judge if we feel that he had some sort of direct experience of a grand truth that is not accessible to us.

But what reason do we have to assume this?

peacegirl, this sums it up. This is the problem we are all having, and which you have been unable to address. It's either test with imagination or implement worldwide, one of which is not reliable and the other impossible logistically.

The one set of ideas that are testable, his ideas on sight and time, fail even a cursory investigation.

So we are left with confidence in you, and you don't garner it, frankly.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

You've completely missed the point, whether deliberately or not, it's hard to say. Saying just that all false beliefs about blameworthiness and moral responsibility will be removed in the 'new world' doesn't solve the problem, which is that our feelings of conscience and of blameworthiness proceed from the same judgments of moral responsibility, so removing the one removes the other, and retaining one means retaining both. You just agreed to a point (again) which completely undermines his entire argument.

No one is taking away our judgments of moral responsibility. The fact that we're not being blamed doesn't mean we are not making judgments of moral responsibility all the time, from which a guilty or clear conscience is derived.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

You're still completely avoiding the point. I didn't say anyone is taking away our judgments of moral responsibility. I said that our feelings of conscience proceed from the same moral judgments which are both necessary and sufficient for attributions of blame. We can't feel guilty for something which we would not consider to be blameworthy in others.

But it's not our job to decide what's blameworthy in others, which doesn't mean our conscience goes out the window. This is where you're completely off track Spacemonkey. We can feel just as guilty if we do something blameworthy (which is actually prevented, so there's nothing to feel guilty about) without using that same moral judgment against others in order to feel that guilt. In the world of free will it was our business to judge the blameworthiness of others in order to punish them for their wrongdoing, but we're being shown that by judging others, we are not getting the desired results. By following the corollary which states that we must not blame, we will get the desired results. You can't see yet why not blaming is better than blaming. You're far from understanding the two-sided equation which shows why the justification not to blame is much more powerful than the justification to blame.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

See? You can't do it. You can't even show that you understand what I'm asking. You are responding without any comprehension of what you're responding to. I've told you what his presuppositions were, and you still can't tell me what they were. You have no idea what I'm asking of you, do you?

So go over it again and list the presuppositions about conscience that you're testing me on.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

You're not letting me post without giving me a fit, so it's no wonder you're not getting your questions answered. There's no way I can explain the whole book in my own words.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

That's not what I'm asking you to do. You demonstrate again that you don't know what 'presupposition' means. By definition, nothing in his book can justify what is presupposed by what is in his book.

You're playing word games again. You're making what he is describing sound circular, and it's far from it.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

There is a God given standard of right and wrong but we can't see this truth as long as the world is mired in blame and punishment, since many cultural practices endorse the kind of behavior that justify retaliation, and it becomes a never ending cycle of attack and counterattack.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

That's one of his presuppositions about conscience. Note how you've merely asserted it instead of supporting it.

But these presuppositions come from accurate observations. You're looking for evidenciary support, which isn't necessary at this point.

You and he are assuming that conscience proceeds from an infallible and perfect God-given standard of rightness and wrongness possessed by everyone, and which is defeasible only by practices of blame and punishment which facilitate blame-shifting. What it rules out is the much more plausible possibility that conscience proceeds only from our own fallible judgments of moral responsibility, and is an imperfect and evolved aspect of our cognitive psychology capable of varying between individuals quite independently of our cultural practices of blame and punishment (which themselves are an integral aspect of the development and proper functioning of conscience).

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Given the above, why should anyone accept Lessans' evidentially unsupported account of conscience, or the non-discovery he bases upon it?

Can you at least acknowledge that there are two different accounts of conscience stated above? And that Lessans' account presupposes the falsity of the second? Can you not see that only evidence can distinguish which of the two is correct?

I don't see where it presupposes the falsity of the second. The latter implies that conscience is imperfect (which it is, but not due to the reasons given). It is true that our cognitive psychology plays a part in how our conscience develops, which only means our environment plays a huge role in the strength or weakness of our moral compass. But we're not born with different levels of conscience, which implies that everyone is different from an evolutionary standpoint.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

If it is not unsupported, then please provide the support. If not, admit you were mistaken. My bet is that you lack the honesty to do the latter even though you have nothing to do the former with.

The rather enormous social engineering project could easily cause harm. If only a few people decided to abuse it, the damage would be pretty catastrophic. In a world were no-one expects a person to be malicious, malicious intent could wreak unchecked havoc.

No way could malicious intent cause anymore havoc than what this world has caused with free access to the most dangerous weapons in history. Moreover, the police will still exist on a scale commensurate with those who would be capable of starting trouble. You're all convinced that the book is flawed so I'm not going to defend it anymore.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Funny how we are back to an appeal to God now. God supplies the standard of good and evil, whispers into out ear as a conscience, and God is the one who has a master plan for us. On the one hand it is a vague Spinozan god that represents the laws of nature, but at the same time this god has a plan. How can the laws of nature have a plan? And it is an anthropocentric plan at that - a plan that is specific for us humans, and does not have any salvation in mind for, say, the common whelk, or penguins.

The plan (which only means the direction mankind is headed) can easily be observed only when we understand that man's will is not free, for then the outcome of our choices, out of necessity, will eventually lead us toward a world of peace, which could not happen if will was free.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Lessans "Astute Observations" seem much more like mystical revelations than anything else to me. They seem to have been very personal experiences: Lessans observed mankind as he understood it, and drew conclusions. He did not observe specific behaviours that we can observe for ourselves to see if we agree with his conclusions. Nor did he test his conclusions by making predictions (except on a macro scale, which requires full acceptance that everything is as he says) and then seeing if tests verified what he said.

This leaves us to decide if we consider him capable of accurately reaching such conclusions - to judge if we feel that he had some sort of direct experience of a grand truth that is not accessible to us.

But what reason do we have to assume this? His supposed vast knowledge about what makes humans tick does not seem to have enabled him to write a book that is very convincing. In 50 years, 10 of which with easy access over the internet, the number of people convinced remains 0. Not even your own close family have been won over.

They were not mystical revelations. They were insights.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

What reasons do we have for assuming he was correct? Did he make any other predictions that we can test, except for the one where the revolution would be pretty well under way by now? How are we to judge if we consider him an authority on human behaviour?

I told you if people were serious about this work, it could be tested on a smaller scale, but I can't be the one to do it because I don't have the resources.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I told you if people were serious about this work, it could be tested on a smaller scale, but I can't be the one to do it because I don't have the resources.

And you don't really believe it, it's just a meal ticket that didn't work out.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

No way could malicious intent cause anymore havoc than what this world has caused with free access to the most dangerous weapons in history. I'm pretty much done though. You're all convinced that he is wrong and I'm not going to defend it anymore.

"Is not" response duly noted, as well as the "you are all just meanies and that is why I do not have any meaningful response" answer, once again.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

But we're not born with different levels of conscience, which implies that everyone is different from an evolutionary standpoint.

What makes you think we're born with a conscience at all? Perhaps we're only born with the potential to develop a conscience, just as we are born with the potential to use language and the potential to learn to read.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I told you if people were serious about this work, it could be tested on a smaller scale, but I can't be the one to do it because I don't have the resources.

How could such a test be set up that wouldn't cross ethical boundaries?

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I told you if people were serious about this work, it could be tested on a smaller scale, but I can't be the one to do it because I don't have the resources.

That is no kind of answer to the problem presented, which you simply ignore because you do not have an answer to it. Not very honest of you.

Your small-scale experiment could only ever confirm what you believe, not prove otherwise. If the results were contrary to your beliefs, you would simply say the experiment was wrong, and that you are not sure that there was not some influence from the regular world. You have done it to everything else, and you would do it to this.

The real question remains: why should we assume he was correct?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Did that turn out to be a true assumption or a false assumption, Peacegirl?

Why would someone with a "tremendous knowledge about what make people tick" make a false assumption like that?

Because no one knows what gives people greater satisfaction, but he found out very quickly that the people who would have been instrumental were not interested in learning about his discovery.

Decline and Fall of All Evil: Chapter Six: The New Economic World: pp.285-286

The economic system I just described is mathematically possible
— but only when all people understand what it means that man’s will
is not free. These principles are just as undeniable when thoroughly
understood as any mathematical equation; and when political leaders
of the world recognize that it is now possible to unite all nations in
such a harmonious agreement that the causes of war and crime can be
entirely eliminated not only without hurting anyone but while
benefiting all mankind, this knowledge will spread quickly throughout
the earth. Until then, we will be forced to live in our present world as
a lesser of two evils.

Remember, in conclusion, my prediction that all
war will come to a permanent end in the next 25 years is not like the
prediction that an eclipse will occur at a given time because the
astronomer has nothing whatever to do with the motion of these
bodies and the crossing of their paths. All he is doing is charting their
course. Mine, however, is equivalent to the one a philanthropist
makes that a certain university will receive a donation of one million
dollars on a given date because he is the one who intends to donate
this money on that date. I am donating to mankind this scientific
discovery that gives man no choice as to the direction he is compelled
to travel, once the principles are understood. Until that time, your
help, your willingness to learn about these principles and understand
them is needed.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

How could such a test be set up that wouldn't cross ethical boundaries?

You're talking about people who already have entrenched ideas that are inherently "unethical" such as the stoning of women, and other atrocities. It could be tested in a country where these human rights abuses aren't taking place to give people an idea of how these principles work on a micro scale.

[LadyShea]

Um, you can't run controlled scientific experiments on entire countries

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

What makes you think we're born with a conscience at all? Perhaps we're only born with the potential to develop a conscience, just as we are born with the potential to use language and the potential to learn to read.

Whether you say the potential for conscience, or born with a conscience is not important. What's important is how to bring forth a conscience (as the person interacts with his environment) that will not permit unprovoked harm to others.