You are more than welcome to speak for yourself. I am back to what I almost invariably get back to: self-evident truth. So you may wish to save such puerilities for those who are fool enough to allow themselves to be irritated by them. This is called grasping at straws. To bad you couldn't pick up on any spelling or grammatical errors to go with it, huh? Since I haven't contradicted myself in the slightest, your admonition is pointless. No other words are necessary, as to that. It certainly does a wonderful job of exposing your position as intellectually bankrupt. I'm afraid it's a helluva lot worse than imperfect. Something tells me your ideal definition would never end.
"It can't be true because it is hard" isn't an argument. Besides, was there somewhere where I said that harm defines morality?
Right, you are back to labeling your points as "self-evident" in order to avoid discussion and debate. You are treating your affirmation as if it alone were proof and providing no other evidence or argument to back it up . . . hence, yuh-huh. Slapping a "self-evident" label on just-so arguments is nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig. If I were using it as an argument, yes, it would be grasping at straws. I'm not. I'm not ridiculing you for altering my quotes. I'm not saying you are wrong because you altered my quotes. I'm not calling you a bad debater for altering my posts. I'm asking you not to alter my posts. Asking you to obey the rules of the forum should not be cause for such defensiveness. So you've already forgotten about doing this to me? No, I don't pick apart people's arguments based on spelling or grammatical errors. That would be as ridiculous as trying to a win a debate through semantic arguments about cursory definitions. You claimed that your argument disproved the definition while also claiming that your argument can't be proven. You want it to be proof, but it can't be proven. You have yet to address my position in the slightest. You are too busy your imaginary atheist to discuss the morality of the actual atheists on this forum. And something tells me that you only care for definitions that service your semantic arguments. You could start with Wikipedia. It does a pretty good job. Oh wait . . . You are only open to one internet dictionary definition that suits your semantic argument. I wish we could find the mystery atheist that is out there using that definition as their sole basis of morality. You've assured us there are several of them.
You're half right: understanding that discussion or debate which is held absent cognizance of a relevant self-evident truth can only lead down an intellectual road to nowhere, I refuse to participate in such discussions and debates. No, I'm treating it as if it's true. Which it is. Doesn't matter, it's obviously passive-aggression employed in hopes of confusing the issue. I don't give a damn, so go snivel about it to someone who does. I don't remember doing it to anyone, other than people who made such mistakes as they tried to go all grammar nazi on someone else. If you refer to the self-evident truth I enunciated, it does. Then surely proving that's a contradiction will be child's play. How very amusing.
So if harm is not the boundary that separates an action from immoral action what in your opinion is the boundary that separates action from immoral action?
If I may interject, your argument is interesting but in your view is a "self evident truth" relative to the individual or universal to all humanity... especially on the topic of the philosophy of morality?
LOL. Isn't it obvious? You know what my answer is. In case it's not so obvious to you, then my answer is God. God is my reference to morality, and therefore, the commandments he's written on my heart show me what's right from wrong without needing to cross check whether or not my actions, or inactions, are moral or immoral. Saying that harm is the boundary that separates moral and immoral actions/inactions is short-sighted. Everyone harms another through both their actions and their inactions. It doesn't automatically make that harm you've caused immoral. If a fat kid is screaming for ice cream and you say "No!". The harm that child faces doesn't automatically register as immoral. If you spank your child because he or she has consistent bad grades in school, the harm you inflict doesn't suddenly become immoral. If a woman slaps her husband/boyfriend over something she disagreed with, it doesn't make her actions immoral because she caused harm to her significant other. I can keep going on and on with this.
Thus the axiom of your morality. Nor have I implied otherwise. Not all harm is immoral such as a surgery when harm has to be caused to facilitate healing... or those who participate in BDSM... or the taking of a life in the defense of another life. So in the above case how is the child harmed? Being denied ice cream does not cause any physical, psychological, or material harm to the child. At best they may be grumpy because they did not get what they want but that does not constitute harm by my measure of harm. The above is immoral by my measure of morality because spanking should be a last resort and only used to curb behavior that is of an extreme nature... thus there are very few cases where a child should be spanked and certainly not because of bad grades. I think there are potentially better ways to handle that than a beating. I think kids who get better grades after being spanked would be the exception and not the rule and making others do something out of an intense fear of physical pain can cause lasting negative psychological effects especially on children. Yes, slapping someone because one disagree with them is immoral as it causes unwarranted physical pain and is an ineffective problem resolution strategy and in some cases will be met by an elevation of violence. Please do.
So, you admit that it's by your own measure. Which makes your morality relative. There are atheists out there who say objective morality is based upon harm. So, you inadvertently proved my point. Pfft. Seriously? A woman slapping a man because he decided to call her a slut is not immoral? Honestly, it doesn't matter. You've proved that basing morality on "harm" simply makes morality subjective and not objective. Which was the point I was trying to make.
I never claimed that morality was anything but relative to the individual. I agree that objective morality is based upon harm, but I also understand that my objective morality only applies to me thus the subjectivity of morality being relative to the individual and not universally agreed upon by all humanity. An objective moral truth to me may be anything but objective, moral, or truth to another... thus the subjectivity.
I didn't say it was their specified definition that was in effect, but the interpretation they were using. That being said, you'd be well within their right to request a specification, as I have pointed out, but that's not what happened. Again, see my orange example. Asking whether the first person meant the fruit or the colour would not be unreasonable. Assuming that it refers to any specific one, especially the unreasonable one, would be. Orange as a fruit is in the dictionary, you still can't assume it's the definition in effect when someone say's they've painted with it. I don't see that that resolves it, but I'm willing to listen to a clarification. The point of the argument is that without empathy, you may, and indeed are very likely to, produce a morality that might leave its subjects mistreated. The empathy that is required to address this is, to the best of my knowledge, included in the "vicarious experiencing" that is mentioned in the definition you gave. As I've already mentioned, I agree that this does not make empathy fundamental in morality, even if in practice a very good cross check. The common argument is about moral epistemology, how we know what morality is, rather than what makes it moral.
Not sure what you're referring to. I'm sure one could argue the decisions were based in empathy for Germans or whatnot, but the line of thought which often brings up empathy would focus on the failure to empathise with Jews, handicapped people, political dissidents and so on. Not sure if your post addresses the issues I have brought up and if so how.
Just try answering the question with a straight up yes or no, and you may begin to get the idea. I don't suppose it occurs to you that, had Hitler empathized with the Jews, he would have failed to empathize with Jew-hating Germans.
Just making sure I'm not misunderstanding the question. As I've mentioned earlier, empathising with someone is not the same as giving in to the feelings you empathise with. Empathising with the Jews' feelings towards getting gassed is not the same as failing to understand the concerns, fears, dislikes and other feelings of the anti-Semites. However, it might mean that while understanding the issues and making honest attempts at solving them, one might understand that gassing people isn't the appropriate response. Hitler's ability to empathise with the anti-Semites was an important check for the morality of the policies he made (for instance, he could have decided to kill all anti-Semites instead, but that also would not be in keeping with empathy) but it is not enough. Again, it's not the mere presence of empathy that does it, it's the fact that it can keep decisions from mistreating people. Since the Jews got mistreated, I think it's fair to say there wasn't enough (or maybe rather not appropriately distributed) empathy. But let's have a look at the question which you ignored all my points to make and then got annoyed when I didn't answer in the exact form you wanted (I point this out because the resolution of the question derives from the ideas I've presented in the answers you didn't respond to). Just reading it, it seems to ask whether I think the actualisation of Hitler's ideas would depend on their basis (unrelated to the details of the ideas), to which I would answer that it would be possible (so yes). However, reading the question in the context of the discussion and the posts that followed it, I'm inclined to believe that what you actually want answered is whether I think not empathising with the anti-Semites would give rise to the same ideas in Hitler, which I don't believe (so no). The ambiguity of the question is the reason why I can't just blurt out an answer without clarification of what I'm responding to. That being said, the point I've been making for some time that it's not enough to empathise with anyone in particular, you have to empathise with everyone who might be affected by the decision makes this question irrelevant.
Actually all indications are to the contrary. Who the hell said anything about that in the first place? It is, however, failing to empathize with them. No, it was motivation and justification for the immorality of the policies he made. Not without wrecking his own despotic designs, he couldn't. I have better things to do.
I did, in order to make my point. If you refuse to consider my points, then of course I can't resolve your question for you. Well, that depends on the definition of empathy in effect, a question we were pinning down until you discontinued the line of thought. That too, but that has no impact on the fact that he still failed to empathise with the Jews and thus produced policies which did not take their wellbeing into account. I'm having a hard time understanding what of this isn't coming across. The argument that is being made is that Hitler should have considered the position of the Jews and thought that he shouldn't gas them because he understood how little he would have liked to be gassed. Anything beyond that, who else he might have empathised with, whether Hitler was actually the person who called the shots, whether he would have been fired if he had suddenly changed his mind, whether he would have ended up in charge if he didn't hold the views, whether you would call that action empathy, whether someone else might have called that empathy and so on is neither here nor there. The argument is neither more or less (with reservation that my phrasing might not be perfect) than it is.
Like Hell we were. I pinned it down over a week ago. Of course it does, because it's the very thing that made it unthinkable to acknowledge their humanity. Dunno who's making that argument, but it's not me. My argument is about what he could have done given his motivation, not what he should have done. If you believe that, you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
You didn't "[pin] it down", you made ridiculous demands that your account of empathy be the only one considered for this discussion. You established a straw man, not clarity. The people here defending empathy have a more robust account of it than the account that you are demanding we adhere to. No one is defending your account of empathy as a suitable basis for morality.
If you cannot see the fact that one word can stand for different things, how do you resolve my orange example? Well, alright, I didn't mean to say it does not matter at all, but it does not matter for the argument I was making. Who said it was your argument? Why would I try to explain your argument to yourself? I was referring to the argument which you were alluding to here: The argument which you refer to in this quote of your OP is the one I was elaborating. Sure Hitler could use empathy with anti-Semites for motivation. That is not an counterargument to the point you alluded to in your OP.
I had missed the "in depth" part of the OP before. How are we supposed to explore this "in depth" if an explanation of the term itself and breadth of meaning is off of the table?
I didn't demand a damn thing. I merely set boundaries for such discussion as I am willing to entertain. I did no such thing, obviously. If you don't buy into the argument countered by the OP, you have nothing to complain about. Please, your "account" of it is, as previously demonstrated, hopelessly idiotic. The premise being a figment of your imagination... ...there is no need to bother with this. Of course it is, because it demonstrates that empathy per se is morally neutral at best. If anyone's mind is closed to such a discussion, it's yours.
Well, for starters, empathy does not need to be unambiguously morally good in order to be useful in the pursuit of morality. A screwdriver is able to screw a screw in or out and can be regarded as neutral for the purposes of screw direction. That does not make it useless in screwing in a screw. (This isn't so important to the discussion at hand, but I am critical of the idea that there are concepts which you can just slap a "moral" sticker on and then not worry about its implications any more). Similarly, the argument you alluded to in the OP is not that any time empathy is applied, good comes out of every possible outlet. If it were, whoever made the argument would be as silly as you accuse them of being. However, that's not what they're trying to say. They're saying empathy can be a useful tool in moral epistemology. By empathically considering the effect on others, one can notice if an action is immoral. That fact is not discredited by the fact that you can also phrase Hitler's ideas in terms of empathy. Empathy can be used for both purposes, just like the screwdriver can be used to screw the screw in as well as out. The argument you seem to be addressing only claims that it can (and maybe should) be used in the let's-not-kill-the-Jews way. It does not address the fact that it can be used for the opposite, which is not the same that saying "because it should be used in one way means it cannot be used in the other way".
You set boundaries without involving the people that you were supposedly interested in having a discussion with, insisted these boundaries represent the opinions of atheists, and then and insisted that they adhere to these boundaries in order to refute your claim. I'm not sure if I've seen a more demanding "conversation" on this forum yet. Then you don't understand the complaint. If I started a thread that said, "Man, to hear theists talk about it, God is some literal bearded white dude in the clouds. That's ridiculous. I mean, a plane would have spotted him by now. And don't define God any other way. It isn't up for discussion," theists would have something to complain about. You are doing the exact same thing. You are inventing a position, claiming that it belongs to some mystery atheists out there (who you still haven't managed to find), claimed that these same atheists have not explored the subject in depth, and then you try shutting down discussion when atheists do try to come in and talk about the subject in depth. I keep holding out hope that one day you will actually be interested in debate and discussion in a debate and discussion forum, rather than your usual childish, schoolyard name calling and blind assertions. You haven't touched my account yet. You've only fixated on semantic nonsense involving some strange psychological theory that you have involving the first two words of an admittedly cursory definition I provided. If you are actually interested in a discussion of my account and you aren't just flamebaiting again, then try post #58, where I explicitly stated my account of the relationship between empathy and morality. I won't hold my breath.
