this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2025
83 points (91.9% liked)
Asklemmy
50325 readers
489 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think all moral reasoning should be outlawed and philosophers should be shot.
This will lead to a significant increase in life, prosperity, happiness and/or bring about the messiah. Either way it's the right thing to do.
things carnists say
Yeah that's not what I was thinking about.
The way moral reasoning works is this: You have something you want, be it is your material interest or it is due to your belief or feelings. If this is to become a norm or law or widely adopted in some way, you're not supposed to argue that way though. You have to do a whole derivation down from Universal Valuesβ’, meaning you're now not arguing from your own POV, but from some common good, and, in practice, especially the interest of the ruling order that you want to adopt your position. This means you're already inclined to compromise your position before you've even voiced it.
This is why ruling institutions encourage moral reasoning, they teach it in school, on TV etc. It makes you argue from their POV--that of the nation, the state, the existing order--instead of your own.
It also means that your moral argument is sophistry--motivated reasoning--if you have constructed it for a position you hold for a completely different reason, which is not conducive to clear thinking.
dude that's not how philosophy nowadays works, like, at all.
reasoning played a huge role during the 19th and 20th century, which makes sense because it enabled technological progress and real economic growth. there's a lot more to philosophy than that, though, including long-term thinking, philosophy of consciousness and such.
We are social animals. We must necessarily take a wider view than our own personal consequences as a matter of survival. Anyone who cannot grasp that is a threat and an enemy of humanity.
Oh come on, I can recognize my common interest with other humans without mediating this through overly abstracted "values" and then arguing from that. Plus, you know, little kids and even many animals show empathy and they're not doing any moral reasoning or have any concept of a moral value. It seems to me that, more often than not, moral reasoning is employed to rationalize away empathy.
It would also be nice if you could not imply that I'm a threat to humanity. My comment about shooting philosophers was clearly a joke as should be obvious from the rest of the comment, whereas yours strikes me as deadly serious.
Also you didn't actually argue my points about how this benefits existing authorities, nor about how this incentivizes motivated reasoning.
I said that people who cannot grasp that they are social animals living in a social environment are a threat to humanity. If you want to wear that, fucking do it. If you don't, that's even better. But what I said is true and if you don't like it, that's a you thing.
Your gut is not smart enough to just tell you the right moral thing to do at all times. That's a stupid thing to say and you should be ashamed. Or maybe you are once again using irony and will be offended that I took you at face value.