/lit/ - Literature

>>20882502
>morals are objective because i dont like the idea that they arent
woah

>>20882599
It's best that people think they are objective even if they aren't.

>>20882613
hm.. well you used the word "best" there, which implies morality. using morality to justify morality is a bit of a paradox, no?

>>20882622
I am giving you my opinion. There is no morality beyond that. Which opinion prevails is the result of power struggle and has no relation to truth. I would like to see mine enforced on people.

>>20882626
Then say that instead of lying

>>20882626
that's fair enough, but the OP post claims it's impossible to refute objective morality w/o sounding psychopathic; it seems that we're all in agreement, however, that morality is not objective, and it doesn't seem like we're psychopaths (to me, at least).
i guess we can call it a day?

>>20882630
I will lie whenever I find it to be convenient. I have no obligation to tell the truth to you or anyone.

Did dosto think morality was objective? I can't tell. i know he was super christian and everything but idk

>>20882635
Lies dont work and nobody cares if you tell the truth and it’s not like you’re in a position to influence the world by lying about morality underage retard

>>20882502
>
Are these 'leftists' in the room right now?

>>20882642
>Lies dont work
This is simply wrong.
>and nobody cares if you tell the truth
If you don't care then stop crying about it.

>>20882651
i'm not him, but i suspect that you are not interested in any honest discussion about this. you seem to be more interested in flinging shit at people and having shit flung at you. that's fine, i guess; it's a little weird, though.

>>20882657
What is weird to me is that you have chosen to jump into this conversation in which someone has told me to stop lying, to complain that no one cares whether I lie or not. Time to fuck off now.

>>20882662
>to complain that no one cares whether i lie or not
but i did not do that. i told you, i'm not that guy. it's clear to me that you are very grumpy right now, anon. there are better ways to deal with anger than by arguing over the internet, but do as you please.

>>20882502
>morals are objective
What does that mean?

>>20882626
>There is no morality beyond that

That sounds like an objective statement

>>20882879
There are moral standards

>>20882944
It is.

>>20882955
The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

>>20882502
I think it only shows that thinking morals are relative makes you live a unhappy life amd you should convert

>>20882964
How come you decide what's objective or not? Does the world exist in your mind only?

>>20882998
I never claimed that there is no objective reality outside of my mind. Saying there is no objective morality is not the same as saying there is no objective anything.

>>20883012
So there's nothing morally wrong with me killing you if I felt like it?

>>20883027
No, why would there be?

>>20883040
So why haven't you started killing or torturing people that disagree with you yet if you want to see your opinion enforced on people?

>>20883057
>You don't live up to what you said in some arbitrary fashion that I made up neener neener
I bet you post in antinatalism threads too

>>20883073
I've never been in an antinatalism thread, but judging from your posts and unless your change your perspective it would probably be better for everyone if you hadn't been born. Anyway, Dostoevsky wins again. Have a nice day.

The crux of the problem is this: how is a moral obligation conferred upon a person? Morality entails obligation, either to do or to not do something. How is that a person becomes obligated?

>>20883163
good point. that's an interesting question and i'm going to think about it for a bit. if i come up with something i'll let you know

>>20882502
Morality is objective. It objectively doesn't exist. It's a fiction and always has been.

>>20883177
I'm going to ask a question and want you to know that I actually don't know the answer, I have not read any philosophy or anything and never come to this board because it intimidates me. I'm kind of interested in this though.
Anyway, the question is this:
>Is morality objectively "not real" in the same sense that something like "beauty" is not real?
I don't know how to explain this exactly, but it seems like there are like a million things that technically never actually physically happen IRL. Another example (I think) is something like "equality." I don't know if this question makes any sense actually now that I'm thinking about it.

>>20883196
P.S. please don't bully me you guys are scary

>>20883163
>how is a moral obligation conferred upon a person
A priori axioms. If you don't follow what is true then you reject the nature of everything including yourself. All other roads lead to nihilism.

>>20883322
>If you don't follow what is true
You're begging that question that "X is morally wrong" is true. Also X being morally wrong does not convey an obligation. If something is morally wrong I can simply do it anyway. Where does the obligation exist?

>>20883196
Beauty is real though.

>>20883384
This is why coomers will never understand art. Even the most promiscuous of artists knew that sexuality wasn't the sublime.

>>20883196

Your question makes sense.

One of way of thinking about it is that there is physical reality and abstract reality.

Physical reality would be matter, void, and energy. Abstract reality is all the magical stuff that our conciousness percieves. Are nations real, or just an imaginary entity inside the collective human conciousness? Is 'humanity' real, or is there truly nothing but atoms? It seems many things exist both physically and as an abstraction simultaneously.

As to whether morality exists, if God exists, morality is real. If God doesn't exist, then morality only exists as an imaginative / abstract concept created by our minds. But those concepts are generated by the molecules and energy in our brain, and those are physically real. It's a question of how 'real' you consider our abstract reality to be, as well as what the actual relationship between our conciousness and physical reality is.

From a more Buddhist perspective, you can also consider whether there is any barrier between physical and abstract reality at all.

>>20883677
Ok, I'm glad I was able to get the question across and that I'm not a schizo. I've been trying to put that to words since I was a kid and I didn't think it was something anyone had ever thought about (lol). Anyway, I think that if the abstract stuff is only in our heads (like how the U.S. isn't something you can look at, you can only look at soil and a flag with a label), then it must be that... uh I don't know actually.
I felt like I had something I wanted to say.
I think this is a very big idea though and it's frustrating because I feel like I'm not really grasping it fully. Like, the abstract stuff could explain the "real" stuff, it could be that the abstract stuff comes first and the "real" world is just the way it looks to us? Fuck

>>20883749
I can't think about this anymore it's scaring me I'm going to make coffee

>>20883749
Look up Bernardo Kastrup on youtube, particularly his critiques of materialism. What is happening to you is that your mind is starting to understand the flaws of scientific materialism, but society insists it is the truth so you are questioning your sanity.

Spoiler: materialism is false

>>20883831
Ok I will look him up. I will say that I'm very freaked out by the idea. I was making coffee and thinking about how all the bubbles are spherical and how they are all kind of the same. Like they are unfolding from one sphere that is outside of time. And my floor that is flat is just one flat thing, when there are actually a lot of flat things. Every time I see a flat thing I am seeing the eternal FLAT.
It feels like I'm that woman in the image with all the equations in front of her face lol

>>20882502
Ignoring the dumb bullshit that 'muh leftists' are somehow always against the idea of objective morals (theres this whole strand of orthodox Marxism that considers the proletariat as finally being able to objectively understand history and act accordingly), that is most definitely not what Dostoevsky is trying to do.

The point is precisely that Dostoevsky refuses to take an objective moral stance, but has the narrator follow Raskolnikov's thought process, making the least amount of moral judgement about it as possible. In the end Raskolnikov never is actually convinced of the moral wrongness of his great man theory, he only became resigned that he is not one of the great men. This ambiguity and refusal to accept an objective moralizing stance is precisely why he does not 'sound like a psychopath'.

The Norton critical edition even has Dostoevsky's notebooks where you can see he considered but actively rejected a narrator with an objective moral stance. And this is an important point of Doestoevsky's writing in general: his refusal to give simple moral answers is the core to his profound existentialism, which is par excellence not an objective but subjective stance. How does any of that 'make it impossible to refute that morals are objective'?

>>20884037
So the point of the book is that murder is not wrong. Who knew.

>>20884048
there is no simple moralizing point to the book you daft twat, that was my whole point. Surely you do not have to read 400+ pages to learn the groundbreaking theory that murder is bad, so unless you think the rest of those pages were a profound waste of time perhaps there might be something more complex going on.

>>20884084
No, I get it, Dosto thought the morality of murder was subjective and that there was no God or any such thing that might define such a matter. Thanks for enlightening me.

>>20884098
'you dont believe that crime and punishment is about how eating shit is bad, so you must believe that its about how eating shit is good'

>>20884114
Why shit-eating of all possible examples? There might be something deeply wrong with your mind.

To all the people shitting about morality in this thread: morality may not be objective (there's no way to 'prove' that it is) but isn't it true that there are certain actions that are always, in all times and places, wrong? Ex: walking into your best friends house and stomping his infant son to death. Even the most barbaric of peoples would shudder at the thought of that.

So it seems that while it would be difficult to establish a positive morality based on careful reasoning, we can construct a morality intuitively based on avoiding actions which are never okay.

>>20883961

What you are describing is similar to Plato's Forms. In the sense that instead of trying to comprehend a physical sphere you see, you're considering what the concept of 'sphere' itself is.

>like how the U.S. isn't something you can look at, you can only look at soil and a flag with a label

Yes, or how when you see a poster of a woman, the woman seems there but there is only paper. You can also consider this with money; it is only paper, the 'dollars' don't actually exist.

Those who have knowledge of these things are able to exploit others, such as the federal reserve printing money. People spend their whole life working so they can earn more of a thing that doesn't exist.

If we suppose a country is only a concept, then when soldiers fight and die, what do they actually die for? The story of 'the nation' which has been told to them? And who tells them the story that the nation exists? The politicians who benefit from their deaths?

Yet if people genuinely believe in the concept of the nation, and behave as such, acting in a way that benefits themselves and others for its benefit, then by believeing in it, it becomes reality.

To a certain extent, the nation is geuinely real, and to an extent, the nation is also not real. It's important to keep in mind that things exist as both shadow and light, and that things like these are often both true and false at the same time.

>>20884393
>Plato's Forms
Thank you for giving me the name, I was trying to find it just now. It's very weird that I was able to go so long through life without hearing about this already.. it feels like something that should be taught in primary school idk.
Anyway, you seem to already be pretty familiar with the whole deal, so I have a question. When you first learned about this, was it like.. scary? I feel like I've never encountered an idea like this (I'm a math/programming guy and never read books). It kind of feels like I could go insane if I thought about this enough, like full schizo. I'm a bit hesitant to dive into this because it feels like this is the kind of idea that has you and not the other way around.
Either way I'm going to read about Plato more. Is he hard to read? I haven't read a book in like 10 years.

p.s. this thing you said:
>or how when you see a poster of a woman, the woman seems there but there is only paper.
tripped me up more than I can describe. I know I sound melodramatic and everything, but I'm 28 and this random series of words I read on 4chan has caused me to lose confidence in everything I thought I knew yesterday. Shit's wild

>>20884467

>it feels like something that should be taught in primary school

Certains things, such as philosophy, are not taught in primary and secondary schools probably on purpose. Why would the nation encourage its children to question and disbelieve in its existence? On a more cynical level, politicians want their people to be easily controllable. Likewise, knowledge of subjects like banks, taxes and mortgages are essential life skills but intentionally neglected. People who are bad at managing money are easy to control. Schools provide us with critical learning, but they are also factories designed to produce obedient worker drones, and instil an easily-controllable mindset (look up 'slave morality'). Arguably, things are better this way.

To a certain extent, it's impossible to teach this to primary students because children can only think 2-3 'steps of consequences' ahead, and this requires a more developed mind to be able to reach such a level of abstraction.

I never found this stuff scary, but more thrilling, or prehaps hilarious. You have this subconcious sense of something that you can't put into words, that you just can't grasp, but then suddenly while randomly reading some philosophy they state it in simple and absolute precision and it becomes crystal clear and it hits you like a hammer of understanding. The joy of revelation.

However, there is a great deal of darkness in the world, and the more you are able to percieve, the greater the evils you become aware of. It does get depressing sometimes. It is said that ignorance is bliss, but King Solomon stated it in reverse; 'He who increases knowledge, increases sorrow.'

Maths is good example of Plato's Forms. He uses the example of a square. You've seen a million squares, but none of them are the true square, the 'idea of a square' that allows our minds to recognise what objects are or are not squares; defined by maths, we have the Form: four right angles with sides of equal length.

>the kind of idea that has you and not the other way around

Better than considering it an absolute truth, acknowledge it as possibility. 'Truth' is a very liquid thing, especially when it comes to abstractions.

You won't go insane, but you will feel disconnected from most other people, and most won't understand what the hell you're talking about.

Plato was written in ancient Athens, so because of the way society and language worked, they would frequently quote famous works or poems (in the sense that Christians today might quote the Bible) or from the stories of the gods and myth (in modern terms, if you used Marvel / Star Wars as an allegory, most people would understand you) in order to make a point.

If you want to go full dive, you can find a 'start with the greeks chart'. People disagree about the reading order for Plato, but I would read the 4 books that make up the 'trials' first. Republic is a bit thick, but just make sure to read it alongside a commentary or sparknotes or somethings.

Sorry for being offtopic, didnt know where else to ask
Im looking for 1st facsimile edition of "The Art Of English Poesie"
could someone please help me?
thank you so much

>>20884645
Thanks for spoodfeeding me anon. I have a lot of questions that I don't know how to ask. I ordered just Plato's "five dialogues." I hope that I don't end up learning that demons are real or something. I'm starting to suspect they are. That's a big fear of mine. Also It feels like god might be real too. Like the prototype of a prototype, the final abstraction. The big daddy of ideas. Not sure how to word that kek

>>20883495
This is a D-tier sculpture anon. The vatican could do so much bett

>>20882622
>the word "best" there, which implies morality.
Does it? Could be best in a preferential sense. Just like how any animal will rather live than die. Being living beings means we all have preferences. You could say these preferences are morals I guess, but really it's just semantics. Even if they are morals, that doesnt make them objective morals any way.

>>20884868
can't believe the papists got to him before he could even finish his post

>>20882630
How is it lying? If someone used 'good' s a placeholder for "I prefer this'. Than they just habe a different definition of good, with it meaning the latter. Nothing dishonest about that.

>>20884655
Try libgen

>>20884084
>Surely you do not have to read 400+ pages to learn the groundbreaking theory that murder is bad

Communists atheists will often not condemn murder if it is for a political purpose

>>20884886
Kek

I read C&P and thought it was good but underwhelming.
I recently finished TBK and thought it was a lot better and was pretty much a better version of C&P and also included some other ideas that weren't included in C&P.
Specifically, I think TBK examines the "exceptional man" idea and the related idea that "if God doesn't exist, nothing is forbidden" in a more fleshed out way than C&P does.
I suppose C&P focussed more on the internal feelings of guilt following the crime, being that it's basically a character study, but that one feels guilty after committing a crime is kind of obvious anyway before reading C&P.
Am I missing something?

>>20884824

Good luck. I'm 37, and I started serious reading when I was about 29. Read ten pages a day as habit and you'll be fine, and remember to read alongside summaries / academic comments on things. A lot of the meaning of works comes from context, and you can't get that by just reading the raw text.

I can't say whether god is real or not. If demons are real, then so is god; if that is indeed the case, then it's solidly in our favour.

>>20882662
K ek

>>20882879
After a lot of research and a lot of reading, I came to the conclusion that there is very little reason to believe the stories about Leprechauns.


The stories of many witnesses are quite vague and short and the stories of many witnesses can’t be backed up by records or contemporary documentation.


As far as I know, no one has been able to prove that the Leprechaun is real.

>>20883163
Because morality is based on the long-term survival needs of an organism, although it can be exceptional given sufficient short-term need. The obligation arises from the physiological necessity to survive, propagate, and thrive.

>>20882879
It would mean that there is a set of behaveours that are good always were and always will be wich in my opinion is a complete lie unless there is a supreme being call it god or allah or whatever but since it isnt prooved it s existance I will asume there isnt you do what you want follow a moral code made by some one or some thing or create your own. And yes every body follows some sort of a moral code because every one thinks that some thhings are good and others bad is a preference game pick what you like.

>>20885680
based illiterate Nietzsche enjoyer

>>20883012
So what you are saying is that your consciousness does not register pleasure and pain?

>>20885680
>morality is a preference game, just pick what you like.

>>20885693
But why? No like realy I havent read Nietzche yet and if it is for the wirttig sry boss Im from spain but still like to chat here.

>>20885708
I guess you can interpret it that way but in reality I find it quite liberating having the ability to decide what is good or bad and that the rest of people may have the same opinion.