joe: [civil comment]
bob: [uncivil response]
joe: [uncivil response]

symmetry or no? they both said something uncivil to each other.

answer is no. none at all. bob responded to something civil with something uncivil. joe just responded in kind.

example dialog:

joe: nice weather, isn't it?
bob: what would a fucking jew know about weather?
joe: fuck you

see? joe's uncivil comment is totally justified by bob's which isn't justified. "who started it" makes all the difference (no matter what some leftists and teachers would have us think) (not to imply that more than 1% of teachers aren't leftists)

note also that joe doesn't "lose the moral highground" or "lower himself to bob's level" when he says something uncivil. doesn't lose highground b/c he's acting just fine and bob is acting badly. not lowering himself b/c what he did is diff than what bob did. the misconception there is the bad thing is uncivil comments. it's not. it's using them at inappropriate times, for example in response to a perfectly civil comment. shouldn't be an ass to someone who's being friendly. being an ass is fine other times.

Frank (IMAO) joked that Rachel Lucas was dead. He then asked if he'd gone over the line. In comments, Emperor Misha I said in effect: Frank should not have made the joke because it distressed me. Even though I knew it wasn't true, I care about Rachel, so it was distressing to imagine her hurt.

The problem with this analysis is that it just assumes Misha's distress was right. But was it? He shouldn't find it distressing when he knows it's not true. That's irrational!

And if the distress was irrational, then we can't blame Frank. And if Frank's not at fault, then the whole basis for objecting falls away.

PS Note that Frank's joke was a *cause* of the distress, but was not responsible for it.

PPS Note that the word "responsible" refers to morality.

update: I misinterpreted Misha. See comments.

What's an obligation? Well, it's something you have to do. So is not killing George Bush an obligation of mine? No, that's just morality. Why isn't it an obligation? Nothing you did makes it wrong to kill Bush; it always is. But that's not true! We can imagine some life I could have led where it would be right for me to kill Bush. (Am taking the liberty of having Bush have done some things differently in the counter-factual, but that's necessary regardless because what if the new life for me involved talking to him.)

Alright, let's try again. What's an obligation? Obligations are changes or differences in the moral landscape. The idea here is no one alive is justified to kill Bush, so my not being justified in killing him is not a change or difference. But if I agree to meet someone at the park Sunday, that is an obligation because the requirement to show up is different from what other people have to do Sunday. Sound good?

Sorry, nope, that one is incoherent too. Additionally, it's ambiguous, so I'll go over both possibilites.

One possibility is obligations are changes in the moral landscape compared to the average person in our society (can't be compared to everyone, because on any issue where there isn't total agreement of every last person (that isn't us), we couldn't compare). But what's an average person? Mean, median, or mode? Well mean (add all values, divide by total number of values added) is right out. You can't just mix views and expect a coherent result. The mode (whatever value comes up the most) won't work either, because all worldviews are unique. And the median (arrange data on a number-line, count in from both sides at equal speed, and thus find the middle one) won't work either because we can't just line theories on a number-line -- they don't compare that way.

Alright, so we're not comparing obligations to some sort of average in our society. The other possibility is we are comparing to the default. By default, it's wrong to kill George Bush; this is always true unless something happens to change it. Sound good?

Sorry, no. Here we are picking one moral landscape (named "default") to compare everyone to. Any differences are obligations. But society has changed drastically in the last 2,000 years. Could we really have used the same default then as now? How could the 2,000 year old one have mentioned not to kill Bush?

Well, it can't. It would have to say something more like "By default, don't kill innocents." But then to determine obligations, we can't just compare with the default moral landscape, because it doesn't have answers to all propositions. It doesn't have {Kill-Bush=No, Kill-Nader=No, Kill-IMAO=No, etc}

But it's worse than that. Is the default moral landscape supposed to correspond to a default life? If not, How would we decide what goes in it? But if so, what's a default life? The truth is there's no such thing. There are as many ways to approach life as there are people.

Anyway, the point is obligations are incoherent. Not just a little fuzzy and misunderstood, but incoherent beyond rescue. They make no bloody sense. They don't exist.

This doesn't mean you can now cheat on your girlfriend. It just means technically what's stopping you is contained in morality and your choices, not in an "obligation".

But wait, Elliot. What if you agree to meet a friend at the park Sunday, then another calls and wants to do something else Sunday? What do you tell him? Wouldn't you say you had to do something else. (Yes.) And isn't "I have to do something else" equivalent to "I'm obligated to do something else." (Yes, again.) So what are you doing talking in incoherent terms like obligations?

Well I figured out what they're good for! They can be used to express (emphasise if you like) a difference between your view of a moral landscape and that of the person you're talking to. In my view, it's right for me to go meet the first friend at the park. But the second friend doesn't. Thus I say there is an obligation to express the difference in our views.

A close variant is that obligations can actually be used to express the difference between your view any other you choose. For example you might acknowledge an obligation not to cheat on your girlfriend. This is expressing a difference between your view and any view from the class that does allow for cheating.

So to sum up, speaking of obligations is useful to express or emphasise the difference between two moral landscapes (or worldviews, or problem situations, same difference). But obligations don't exist anymore than "bigger" exists.

General rules, even ones that are flawed, facilitate behaving rightly, because they allow a low-resolution look at morality with very minimal effort.

Let's pretend moral propositions are dots on a 2-D graph, and rules are lines (infinitely long). To keep it simple, rules only run horizontally or vertically. And the way to analyse the morality of a proposition (a point) is to figure out the closest rules in each direction (above, below, left, right) and which side of each of the rules the point falls on.

So if we wanted to analyse the moral proposition (3,6) we'd just go in each of the four cardinal directions from (3,6) and figure out which 4 moral rules we ran into, and which side of them we're on.

But moral rules aren't perfect! Some are even highly inaccurate. So how can these rules be a good idea? Well the point is if we're analysing (3,6) and we're checking for vertical lines and find them at X=1 and X=66, we know even if the X=66 line was so flawed as to be accurate within plus or minus 40, we'd still be left of it. On the other hand, we can see we're very close to the X=1 line, so even if it's highly accurate, we still need to use a more accurate technique to check the morality of that issue.

Many propositions fall significantly distant from all lines (moral rules), and thus can be analysed purely from a quick, low-resolution look that's quite accurate even with faulty rules.

Israel: Leading By Example

Martin Luther King wasn't just Christian, he was a pastor.

Dan thinks we should mostly credit atheists not Christians with liberalisation in the US. let's see about that. lets start with the biggest, greatest, most important bit of liberalisation: freeing the slaves.

a quick google search and here's some info

Hmm, apparently there were religious arguments against slavery. I wonder who made them...

So sounds like most Northerns thought it was a sin. Anyone who thinks it's a sin is A) religious B) pro-liberalisation on this issue

pro-slavery laws were opposed because they were unbiblical and unchristian. QED?