3RU7AL

You made the claim that someone who is molesting young children would not generate seretonin by doing so which is a claim awaiting evidence.

Our brains have natural levels of seretonin. How did you come to the conclusion that a molester, who enjoys molesting children, "does not generate seretonin" by doing this?

A self-evident truth, like an axiom, has no effect on the framework you've put forth to determine moral or immoral behavior. All that matters, under your framework, are seretonin and dopamine levels.

No, I'm referring to an infant or young child. Sexual abuse has many forms and not all of them are physically harmful.

If "morally good" is defined in terms of having certain brain chemicals that make you feel good, then my point was that if someone were to sexually abuse young children, provided the young child had had no negative brain chemicals and the abuser had positive brain chemicals resulting from it, this would BE morally good under this framework.

If there's no God, then human beings are just the byproduct of a mindless process and have no inherent aims or goals. This would mean that what we should or shouldn't do is completely undefined. That means that what's morally right or wrong would wholly depend on human opinions 

So sex is evil? Loading up on antidepressants is morally good?

Supply evidence that supports this spurious claim.

True Religion has existed since the beginning.

That doesn't seem practical. If someone were cheating on their spouse, during sex while they felt pleasurable [EVIL DOPAMINE], it follows that they would believe that they're doing something morally good. In the guilt that follows, let's say the day after, they would believe that what they did was morally wrong. What makes more sense is acknowledging that what they were doing was wrong all along but also acknowledging feeling pleasure and guilt.

Morality is the subjective manifestation of the objective dopamine/seratonin level in our brain.

There are actually a lot of writings from monastics who are recognized as saints in the Orthodox Church who say very similar things.

Unless one or the other combatants can establish something is a fact, or at least reasonable to believe, their argument is weak, just an opinion. Something that is a fact is objectively so, meaning it is the case.

It is just common sense.  (^8

What makes something a fact? 

If I told you, "FreeWill is just plain silly (absolutely insane) and is not rationally/logically justifiable" would you still consider me a reasonable person?

Explain free will. What does it mean? Then demonstrate you have it. 

How do you measure the "objective truth" value of a particular statement if nobody agrees with your hypothetical?

Sometimes it is hard. 

For example, either Vishnu or Nanabozho or Pangu or YHWH is "real" to the exclusion of the other three options.  Does that logical conclusion support any one of the presented gods as "more likely" than any of the others?  I don't believe it does.

And I believe it does - YHWH. But we digress from the topic of the thread. 

This is a problem with ELO in general.

Well we can draw the conclusion that people perceive themselves as having well-being and having more or less of it. If this isn't a problem, same thing goes for love. 

Well surely you would admit that people can have more or less wellbeing?

Refreshingy honest, 3RU!  How do you feel about you stealing Fallaneze's pencil?  :)

Can you quantify how much well-being you have? That hasn't stopped moral philosophers from corralling around the idea.

If you could quantify that amount of pure love that is gained or lost, relative to our level our awareness of how our thoughts and actions affect other living things, I think this is the hidden measure for determining whether someone acted morally or immorally and to what extent.

Well we clearly recognize that some actions are more immoral than others. Raping someone is more immoral than lying about stealing a pencil. So when you consider that there are "shades" of immorality, it's just a matter of having a ranked difference versus a number difference with wavelengths of light. 

A fact is an objective truth. It can't be anything other than objective. A subjective truth is something that applies to a particular individual, but it is still true to that individual and can be nothing but true or it is not a fact. Facts do not depend on whether you believe them to be so or not. A fact is something that is true - period. 

The definitions are either factual or they are not. Just because you agree does not make something a fact. It either is or it is not. 

It depends what you mean by free will? Do you think your will is really free in the sense that what you believe is built upon by other beliefs? If your thinking about these beliefs is faulty your whole house is constructed on a shaky foundation. Sure, some of it has truth to it and in it, but overall it could lead you to false conclusions. There has to be some truth to it in order to make a smidgeon of sense. It just depends on the degree. 

Free will and self-will are two different things. We have the ability to choose. We all have a volition, a will to do what we want to do or like to do or deem best to do, but how free is that will from outside influences?

Since people are not neutral in their beliefs I question how free their wills are?

Unless there is an outside personal Being that is objective in that He knows all things and has revealed what is good and true, then we can have an objectively true belief if it conforms to the necessary Beings. So, even is I hold a bias and am not neutral towards one view, that view can be objective if it corresponds to what is true. 

That is what made DDO an irritating debate site, IMO. It was not being well maintained and things were left to atrophy. 

True, but when both sides make compelling arguments sometimes it is hard to judge one as better than another. 

True. But when you don't know the truth and both arguments are opposite, logically they are not both true. 

Are you suggesting it would be unanimous?

You don't seem to get what I'm thinking about.   I think maybe morality does not exist - there are only moral judgements.   Our brains have evolved to un/subconsciously estimate the harm/benefit of something heuristically; that estimate is then passed to consciousness where it is experienced as the morality of that something.  That is an efficient system because it avoids actual thought - we don't have to think about whether murder is good or bad; we have neural hardware to do that.   

That frees up the thinking parts of the brain for other tasks, which is good.   But it means we only estimate the objective harm/benefit of stuff via a subjective sensation (we call it morality) derived from a neural net in our heads.   

It either is a fact or it is not, but sometimes it is hard to determine since our knowledge is basic in some areas of thought.

Yeah, it is good to identify your definitions. 

True, if the facts are known. 

Some ideas are plain silly, for they are not rationally justifiable. When your opponent doesn't grasp this then showing the implications of their belief system in this area by a ridiculous example of what the opponent believes drives home the point, if not to them then at least to others. 

Sure. Respect is always nice, but that does not mean to say all ideas are equally nice. I have found that sometimes there is no consensus available when dealing with what is true because of confirmational bias. No one is neutral. We all have a bias. It is whether the bias conforms to the truth that counts. 

In DDO there were many debates that were not voted on. Thus, a tie was declared.

If you say it is different here then that is a good thing. Unless both sides have equally valid arguments a tie should not happen.

When you are debating opposites it is hard to conceive of both being true to what is. It goes against logic to believe they are.

Usually, there are some valid points and some invalid points in both arguments. It is hard to distinguish which is which in some debates because both debaters make a compelling argument, at least it is for me. That is why a checklist comes in handy. It identifies what the voter should be looking for. 

I like that idea. I'm not sure, but I thought DDO gave this option. 

...neither side seems capable of identifying the truth in some debates.

sometimes the best avenue is to show how absurd an idea actually is by ridiculing it.

it is not immediately obvious which is more harmful

I think the form is useful or an aid in developing more consistency in voting.

I'm just taking a jab at the older trend of RFDs

I think the apparent fine-tuning of the universe is fascinating,

i like what i think you're saying;  that morality (or rather immorality) of something is roughly proportional to the harm it causes.... so the morality of something is related to the good is does.  That seems like a tautology, but one can think of ways to quantify 'harm' (reduced life expectancy,  pain induced etc).  Harm and benefit are not completely arbitratry.

It does seem useful. If there was a comment box beside to cite examples it would do the trick. I think the argument itself deserves more points than the other categories. 

Can't view the entire thing without a subscription. But it only looks like 2 pages. DART votes need at least 5 pages of explanation to be valid.

...applying argument voting standards to select-winner debates, please suggest changes or alternatives to the proposals.

The universe [only apparently] changes, God does not.

The universe is not [a comprehensive measure of] God [and at the same time, the phenomenal universe itself is a 100% consequence of the nature of God].

So it's true: you lack the capacity to read and understand. If your god created a universe then he changed, it's simple enough for even you to understand.

After you have built your first coffee table you become a man who has built a coffee table, you have changed from the man who hasn't built a coffee table.

Maybe I should get my 7yr old grandson to explain it to you.

Just because someone has better sources and better spelling does not mean they should tie a debate with someone who had exceedingly better arguments.

I see no way of proving which party escalated to the use of lethal force here, so there is no way to prove that anyone is responsible for the homicide.  You shouldn't intend to kill someone in simple self defense though.

Because many debaters, myself included, feel that sources, spelling, and conduct do not deserve separate point categories. 

Well, who are the involved parties, and who is responsible?

The arguement states that there is no inherent reason to justify.  Murder is unjustifiable, and so naturally it will not be justified, but it's not contingent upon justification.