|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,258
Last seen: 9 hours, 19 minutes
|
|
Well, in that case, how are you separating warfare from decentralized governance?
You say that sedentism, centralized governance, and formation of cities all happened at the same time. We know that sedentism began around 10,000BC, cities began to form by 4-5,000BC, and we just assume the centralized government happened because a decentralized government would not go to war?
It seems that you are falling into the same trap my bow argument fell into. We have evidence of sedentism as far back as 11,700 BC, but the first evidence of centralized beaurocratic power structures appear around 6000BC in Sumer.
|
ballsalsa
Universally Loathed and Reviled



Registered: 03/11/15
Posts: 20,795
Loc: Foreign Lands
|
|
Chimpanzees wage war and they don't have agriculture, ranged weapons more advanced than thrown rocks or build structures around which to base a sedentary community. As far as I know, they don't have religion either although I'm not certain to what extent group decisions are made by consensus or dictated by a single powerful chimp.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
--------------------
Like cannabis topics? Read my cannabis blog here
|
Enlil
OTD God-King




Registered: 08/16/03
Posts: 65,470
Loc: Uncanny Valley
|
|
Quote:
Kryptos said: Well, when I say morality is relative, I mean the circumstances of the act change the validity of the act.
Morality must be viewed in light of all of the circumstances, sure. You aren't suggesting that morality differs from culture to culture or time to time?
-------------------- Censoring opposing views since 2014. Ask an Attorney Fuck the Amish
|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,258
Last seen: 9 hours, 19 minutes
|
Re: Cuba [Re: Enlil]
#28288545 - 04/21/23 03:56 PM (9 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
I am absolutely suggesting that morality varies both from culture to culture and from time to time.
|
Enlil
OTD God-King




Registered: 08/16/03
Posts: 65,470
Loc: Uncanny Valley
|
|
That's just ridiculous.
-------------------- Censoring opposing views since 2014. Ask an Attorney Fuck the Amish
|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,258
Last seen: 9 hours, 19 minutes
|
Re: Cuba [Re: Enlil]
#28288561 - 04/21/23 04:01 PM (9 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
Can you come up with a single action that is morally wrong in every case at all times, or a single action that is morally right in every case at all times?
|
Enlil
OTD God-King




Registered: 08/16/03
Posts: 65,470
Loc: Uncanny Valley
|
|
That question is irrelevant to my point. Circumstances surrounding the act do play into the morality thereof. Culture and date do not.
-------------------- Censoring opposing views since 2014. Ask an Attorney Fuck the Amish
|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,258
Last seen: 9 hours, 19 minutes
|
Re: Cuba [Re: Enlil]
#28288590 - 04/21/23 04:08 PM (9 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
Then we are discussing something else, like standards of justifiable action.
Morality is not worried about justification, morality dictates simply whether an act is right or wrong. Thou shalt not ____ type shit.
Unless you can come up with a specific moral principle that will hold true in all cases, then morality is just a fuzzy zeitgeist that society agrees on. This means it depends on the culture and time.
|
Enlil
OTD God-King




Registered: 08/16/03
Posts: 65,470
Loc: Uncanny Valley
|
|
That's just you defining morality for purposes of being right. That's not at all how morality works. An act, in isolation, is neither moral nor immoral. Only by viewing the totality of circumstances can an act be deemed moral or immoral.
Nonetheless, to answer your question. Having sexual intercourse with a 6 month old child is immoral under any circumstances.
-------------------- Censoring opposing views since 2014. Ask an Attorney Fuck the Amish
|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,258
Last seen: 9 hours, 19 minutes
|
Re: Cuba [Re: Enlil]
#28288632 - 04/21/23 04:27 PM (9 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Enlil said: That's just you defining morality for purposes of being right. That's not at all how morality works. An act, in isolation, is neither moral nor immoral. Only by viewing the totality of circumstances can an act be deemed moral or immoral.
Then morality is judged on the circumstance, making it flexible. Or are you saying that we judge morality based on the totality of circumstance, and once judged, that morality is deemed eternal, and completely unrelated to the circumstances that took place?
Quote:
Enlil said: Nonetheless, to answer your question. Having sexual intercourse with a 6 month old child is immoral under any circumstances.
Posting here is why I will never be a politician. Fuck.
If morality is not relative to time and culture, then this would still be true back when we were monkey looking things. Or however far back you need to go for six months to be mature.
Actually, we never would have made it past the single-celled stage. Probably have entire generations live and die in six days back then, let alone six months.
|
Enlil
OTD God-King




Registered: 08/16/03
Posts: 65,470
Loc: Uncanny Valley
|
|
Again, morality does not change with culture or time. It is judged based on the totality of the other circumstances, though. Humans do not decide morality. Humans try to determine the morality of things. Morality itself is fixed and constant. Human understanding of morality may change, just as our understanding of gravity changes, but neither morality nor gravity changes.
And a 6 month old child, by definition, is human. Having sexual intercourse with a 6 month old child is immoral regardless of the circumstances
-------------------- Censoring opposing views since 2014. Ask an Attorney Fuck the Amish
|
ballsalsa
Universally Loathed and Reviled



Registered: 03/11/15
Posts: 20,795
Loc: Foreign Lands
|
|
That would imply that morality is a thing that exists outside of the human imagination and that we can apply it to non-human creatures
--------------------
Like cannabis topics? Read my cannabis blog here
|
shivas.wisdom
בּ



Registered: 02/19/09
Posts: 13,423
Loc: Turtle Island
Last seen: 6 hours, 4 minutes
|
|
@Kryptos I'm not saying they happened at the same time - the archeological record doesn't offer that kind of precision. What it does reveal is that a gradual process of increasing sedentism, agriculture, societal stratification, and centralized political structure began roughly 12,000 years ago, which culminated in the bronze-age city-states at the beginning of written history; a marked departure from prehistoric human culture that continues today.
Those city-states didn't arise from nothing in the year 10,000BC - there was a gradual process of increasing social hierarchy throughout the neolithic era. This process is what I'm referring to.
I consider it significant because this time period closely correlates with the archeological evidence for organized war; with an increased presence in the record for war as the neolithic revolution transitioned towards metallurgy.
@ballsalsa I think we should be hesitant to draw too many parallels between chimp and human culture - we share a common ancestor, but we also diverged biologically. Just like the bonobos are significantly different, we will have our own unique flavours.
Don't think I'm arguing from some noble savage perspective. I'm sure prehistoric humans engaged in violent intergroup conflict, but organized war is less likely.
Consider the progression like this: hunting party > raiding party > professional army. The neolithic era brought about conditions that made raiding parties more favourable - Kryptos is correct to mention sedentism, I just think it's wrong to isolate that from agriculture and hierarchical social structures. This begins a process of increasingly organized warfare that culminates with the professional standing armies of the bronze-age. Maybe an oversimplification, but I understand organized warfare as the point where humans primarily support themselves via intergroup conflict.
--------------------
|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,258
Last seen: 9 hours, 19 minutes
|
|
Quote:
Enlil said: Again, morality does not change with culture or time. It is judged based on the totality of the other circumstances, though. Humans do not decide morality. Humans try to determine the morality of things. Morality itself is fixed and constant. Human understanding of morality may change, just as our understanding of gravity changes, but neither morality nor gravity changes.
So morality is a physically defined constant within the universe?
Quote:
Enlil said: And a 6 month old child, by definition, is human.
Wait, what now? Only humans can have 6 month old children?
Quote:
ballsalsa said: That would imply that morality is a thing that exists outside of the human imagination and that we can apply it to non-human creatures
Why would it not? We see animals making apparent ethical judgements of each other all the time. And of course we can apply morality to non-human creatures, that's the entire foundation of animal welfare.
Plus, we're all animals. Why would morality be any different?
Quote:
shivas.wisdom said: @Kryptos I'm not saying they happened at the same time - the archeological record doesn't offer that kind of precision. What it does reveal is that a gradual process of increasing sedentism, agriculture, societal stratification, and centralized political structure began roughly 12,000 years ago, which culminated in the bronze-age city-states at the beginning of written history; a marked departure from prehistoric human culture that continues today.
Those city-states didn't arise from nothing in the year 10,000BC - there was a gradual process of increasing social hierarchy throughout the neolithic era. This process is what I'm referring to.
I consider it significant because this time period closely correlates with the archeological evidence for organized war; with an increased presence in the record for war as the neolithic revolution transitioned towards metallurgy.
That seems definitionally correct--as societies centralized, warfare, being part of society, did as well.
Quote:
shivas.wisdom said: Maybe an oversimplification, but I understand organized warfare as the point where humans primarily support themselves via intergroup conflict.
Under this definition, organized warfare is probably common even back in nomadic times.
It kind of described banditry, more or less. That's always existed.
|
Enlil
OTD God-King




Registered: 08/16/03
Posts: 65,470
Loc: Uncanny Valley
|
|
Quote:
Kryptos said:
Quote:
Enlil said: Again, morality does not change with culture or time. It is judged based on the totality of the other circumstances, though. Humans do not decide morality. Humans try to determine the morality of things. Morality itself is fixed and constant. Human understanding of morality may change, just as our understanding of gravity changes, but neither morality nor gravity changes.
So morality is a physically defined constant within the universe?
I don't know. Is it?Quote:
Quote:
Enlil said: And a 6 month old child, by definition, is human.
Wait, what now? Only humans can have 6 month old children?
Yes.
"Child /CHīld/ noun
1. a young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of majority: "she'd been playing tennis since she was a child""
-------------------- Censoring opposing views since 2014. Ask an Attorney Fuck the Amish
|
ballsalsa
Universally Loathed and Reviled



Registered: 03/11/15
Posts: 20,795
Loc: Foreign Lands
|
|
Yet through the bronze age and beyond, nomadic pastoralist societies also engaged in warfare. Maybe it could be argued that the impetus for that didn't exist until the advent of permanent agricultural settlements worth raiding or feuding with over territory or water access.
--------------------
Like cannabis topics? Read my cannabis blog here
|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,258
Last seen: 9 hours, 19 minutes
|
|
Quote:
Enlil said:
Quote:
Kryptos said:
Quote:
Enlil said: Again, morality does not change with culture or time. It is judged based on the totality of the other circumstances, though. Humans do not decide morality. Humans try to determine the morality of things. Morality itself is fixed and constant. Human understanding of morality may change, just as our understanding of gravity changes, but neither morality nor gravity changes.
So morality is a physically defined constant within the universe?
I don't know. Is it?
It is what you are implying.
An interesting view. It is not one I share, it seems vaguely theological. Is there a way to experimentally verify this morality with universally repeatable results, Mr. dangerously-close-to-being-called-teapot?
Quote:
Enlil said:
Quote:
Kryptos said:
Quote:
Enlil said: And a 6 month old child, by definition, is human.
Wait, what now? Only humans can have 6 month old children?
Yes.
"Child /CHīld/ noun
1. a young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of majority: "she'd been playing tennis since she was a child""
Well in that case my modern morality deems this act immoral. Biblical morality may differ, as it was a product of the times.
|
Enlil
OTD God-King




Registered: 08/16/03
Posts: 65,470
Loc: Uncanny Valley
|
|
Quote:
Kryptos said:
An interesting view. It is not one I share, it seems vaguely theological. Is there a way to experimentally verify this morality with universally repeatable results, Mr. dangerously-close-to-being-called-teapot?
I don't see any theology in it. Philosophy, perhaps. Theology tends to be about rules set by some intelligent superior being. I'm not talking about that. It's also not a science, which seems to be what your last sentence implies.
-------------------- Censoring opposing views since 2014. Ask an Attorney Fuck the Amish
|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,258
Last seen: 9 hours, 19 minutes
|
Re: Cuba [Re: Enlil]
#28289109 - 04/21/23 09:20 PM (9 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
I see. Well, I have some vacation days saved up, would you happen to know where I could find this source of ultimate Morality? Or how I find go about detecting it? Or is it more of a faith thing, Mr. teapot?
|
Enlil
OTD God-King




Registered: 08/16/03
Posts: 65,470
Loc: Uncanny Valley
|
|
I recommend starting with kant and the categorical imperative. Read some Bentham and Mill after that. Toss in some Aristotle and we can discuss further.
-------------------- Censoring opposing views since 2014. Ask an Attorney Fuck the Amish
|
|