About 5yr. log retention

[Tom Vogt]

"James A. Donald" wrote:
> Tom Vogt
>  > all along we've been talking about "evil". suddenly, in your two
>  > examples above, the word doesn't appear anymore.
> 
> The word murder does appear.  Murder is defined as "wrongful killing.",
> hence is by definition a particular kind of evil.  Indeed it is the
> archetypal example of evil, the type specimen of evil.

weird, a couple thousand years of history disagree with you. until the
very recent past, pretty much everyone was sure that killing enemies,
unbelievers or other people isn't "evil". probably isn't even "murder".

ironically, you seem to agree somewhat that bombing a couple hectars of
an "evil nation" isn't murder, either...



> The point is that to know whether a killing indicates the killer is likely
> to kill me, I have to make a moral judgement of the killing, to determine
> that the killing is morally similar to killing me.

I never disagreed on the pragmatic point. however, there's still a vast
difference between "I'm afraid X might kill me, too" and "X is evil".
two examples: you can be afraid of becoming victim of a natural
disaster, but I don't think you'd label that evil. OTOH I'm fairly sure
that someone can earn the "evil" label without killing a single being.




>   James A. Donald:
>  > > Then they were wrong, just as they would have been wrong had they
>  > > called iron copper.
> 
>   Tom Vogt:
>  > but the point is that the one point can be settled, the other not.
> 
> Surely the events of the twentieth century settled the matter
> decisively.  Those who believe otherwise are monsters or fools, knaves or
> dupes.  When people die as a result of their error, others should learn.

nice, but old trick of passing judgement on someone in such a form that
it also invalidates his (possibly different) judgement on you. but it's
just cheap dialectics, not "truth".

remember that many more non-germans died in WW2 than germans. we really
shouldn't use body-count as a measure of truth.

during the invasion of poland, the polish casualties were several orders
of magnitude higher than the german ones. according to your logic, these
people died because they believed erreneous that they should defend
themselves against german aggression. according to your logic, they were
fools and others should have learned from their errors. france
definitely shouldn't have defended itself, should it? but they were
fools, according to your argument, and died as a result of their error.
others should have learned and stopped opposing the germans.


you can't judge history while it's still in the making. unfortunately,
history is pretty much always unfinished. some ancient greek ideas that
were burried 2000 years ago were resurrected earlier this century.

there's no "right" and "wrong" in history, only events. we are the ones
who put signs unto the events, blinding ourselves to the fact that
anything a subject does is by definition subjective.



>  > it's hard to maintain that iron is copper in face of all evidence.
>  > it seems to be very easy to continue believing that "only a dead
>  > indian/jew/arab/american/nip/whatever is a good one" even if the
>  > whole world is convinced otherwise.
> 
> If this was so, why do regimes that propagate evil ideas find it so vital
> to control all sources of information?  Their hostility to empirical
> evidence, their hostility to the mere act of paying attention to empirical
> evidence, shows that it is not so easy to maintain false moral beliefs in
> the face of the evidence, shows that most people can not only easily cross
> the is-ought gap, but scarcely refrain from doing so.

"evil regimes" aren't the only ones who try to control information as
much as possible. pretty much every corporation believes that it needs
an extensive PR machinery in order to control the flow of information
about itself.

"evil regimes" just couple this desire with the ability to actually
conduct an extensive control.

then again, I don't quite see your point here. you happily proceed to
define qualities of "evil", skipping by the very step of declaring
something evil that's the whole point of this discussion.



> Anyone who propagates false moral beliefs also propagates false emprical
> claims supporting those false moral beliefs -- hence for example the
> continual debates where Marxists claim that Marx's predictions are coming
> true.  If there was an is ought gap, they would find it unnecessary to so
> tightly couple moral and factual claims.

who decides what is wrong and right in moral beliefs? you ever had any
sex outside a marriage? not long ago, that was widely accepted as being
one of the worst sins imaginable.

there's no "right" or "wrong" in morals. there's just people who declare
certain things to be one or the other.

oh, and don't rest your points on anyone's predictions not having come
true. for every marx who made predictions that didn't happen, there's 10
non-marxs who did the same.



>  > > And evidence that they were wrong is that a great many of them
>  > > died of that error, for nazis killed more nazis than they did
>  > > commies, just as the commies killed more commies than they did
>  > > nazis, something that anyone could have foreseen had he recognized
>  > > that killing Jews was murder, that killing capitalists for being
>  > > capitalists was murder.
> 
> But they did not die for their beliefs.  Had they died fighting jews they
> would of died for their beliefs.  Instead they were killed by their fellow
> nazis.

your point is? that the percentage of "friendly fire" defines what is
right and what is wrong?


>  > but you're playing bait&switch again. you're moving from evil to
>  > wrong to murderous as it pleases your argument.
> 
> Evil, wrong, and murderous are not different categories.  "Murderous" is
> the classic example of evil, and when I talk of "wrong" I say that the
> Trotsky's moral judgements were in error.

sorry, I disagree heavily.

"1+1=3" is wrong, but neither evil nor murderous. then, there's a lot of
"sinful", "wrong" or "evil" things in every culture that have nothing to
do with murder. and there's even murder that is not regarded as wrong or
evil by lots of people, such as the death sentence.

these things may be related, but they're definitely not identical.


>  > so? I don't understand why you're arguing at length for something
>  > that's never been questioned. the point is that calling this "evil"
>  > is a subjective point and that there is no such thing as "objective
>  > evil".
> 
> Those who are aware of the existence of objective evil predicted that the
> nazis and the commies would murder friend and enemy alike.  Those blind to
> this obvious fact failed to make that prediction.

that's two broad categories and two broad predictions. you could just as
well write "that's just the way it is".


I'm tired of this, so let's cut it short: if "evil" is objective, there
ought to be a way to measure it. an objective test that says "evil" or
"not evil". name it.