Lisa Benson for September 30, 2012

Yep. Wait until the “customer” actually gets the bill for that “repair job”.

Yes 30 months is not enough. We should have killed that entire auto industry to save it too.

“Yes, The Japanese can supply all of the autos we need”

Yes, when it’s not enough to put a “dent” in the number of people unemployed. Nice job in telling only half the story.

I think we had too many BUSHinesses during the Bush administration. They all went to China.

Lisa Benson’s imaginary world is curiously devoid of tea party culprits.

Under Republican leadership, laws were passed which rewarded small businesses outsourcing their jobs. The tax rate went to 7% and later to 0%. Along with low labor rates (30 cents to $3/hour) It encouraged business to move offshore. Bush and Cheney said that it was good for our economy as we could “Live better for less”.

ReFlex….you’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid, I see…..

good job, Lisa. Obviously, Obama does not know what he is doing, and we know that what he has done has been a hindrance to recovery, not a help. Voters ought to employ that old saying…“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on us”…..

So keeping taxes and interest low, and bailing out big businesses that employ lots of people is bad.What, then, do you propose?Increasing taxes? Increasing the interest rate? Letting the Big Banks fail? Letting the auto industry lay off millions of workers? What?

If Barack is the repairman, then Congress and the Senate are the people keeping the parts he needs from getting to hand. The Executive and Legislature is strongest when its a team and not trying to make self look better by making others look bad. Everyone ends up looking bad.C.

Hey, Doc, you got me worried — I’ve never really tried to establish the basis of my morals much — as you know I’m not much inclined towards philosopher per se. I started to have a little chat with exoticdoc, but for one reason or another it didn’t go much of anywhere. But I started to try to put a few things in pixels, and I’m just going to throw them out here to see if anyone reacts. I’m not committed to any of it, and I’m more interested in discussion than in maintaining my position. So here’s Part I (of III):

Part I: First, I start with the assertion – somewhat hypothetical – that my morality is based on reasoning. When I say that my morality is based on reasoning, I should explain that I grant (at least) two different kinds of reasoning, one which takes its ideal form in mathematics, and one which takes its ideal form in the analysis of meaning. To begin with the mathematical kind of reasoning (the other will come in later), I used earlier in the discussion with exoticdoc the example of the proof of sum of the interior angles of a triangle in Euclidian space. I used this example deliberately, because the sum of the interior angles depends on whether or not one accepts Euclid’s fifth postulate. In non-Euclidian spaces, the sum of the interior angles will be more or less than 180 degrees. The point here is that even in the most rigorous form of reasoning, axioms or postulates are necessary, and different axioms lead to different results. One can legitimately ask how to decide which axioms to use – for example, should one include Euclid’s fifth postulate or not? The answer, I think, is practical, and a matter of judgment. (Judgment, however, does not lie outside of reason; but that’s another topic.) In most situations, Euclidian geometry gives good results, but in some situations, it’s important to use non-Euclidian geometry. This discussion, however, enters into rather controversial areas in the foundations of mathematics and the relationship of mathematics to the “world”. [More to follow]

to bruce, the Dr, and the lonecat…great writings, great thoughts./applaudsC.

Part II: Moral reasoning, therefore, presumably begins with axioms, and again the choice of axioms is both important and also a matter of judgment. One could begin, for example, with god. I choose not to begin with god, because I think there are no good reasons to believe in god and rather bad results if one does. I begin with the existence of other people. That is, I assume that these things walking around and talking to me and to each other are people more or less like me, and in particular subject to the same kinds of pain and pleasure that I have. A further axiom, perhaps, is the axiom of intersubjectivity, that is, I assume that people have the ability to imagine what these other people are experiencing. I feel that the first of these axioms, the axiom of other minds, is pretty secure; if someone were to deny that other people are pretty much people, I don’t know where the conversation could go next. The second axiom is perhaps not quite so secure, and it may be that sociopaths, for instance, have difficulty imagining the experiences of other people. [More to follow]

My attempts here to talk about the basis of morality assume not so much that this basis is universal, but perhaps that it aspires to being universalizable, as it were. Anyway, here’s the finale.

Part III: I’ve attempted to establish the moral axioms that other people are more or less like oneself, and that people generally have the ability to imagine the experiences of other people. (I might add that the imagining of other people calls for the other kind of reasoning, non-mathematical reasoning, reasoning which concerns meaning, and that’s where the traditional humanistic subjects enter.) I will go further now and say that I believe that most people under normal circumstances not only can imagine the experiences of other people, but they have some feeling that other people should not suffer pain. There are, unfortunately, quite a few non-normal circumstances. Still, even in such circumstances, it takes a fair amount of effort for the forces of evil to overcome the natural sympathy people feel for each other. One of the most potent tools of the forces of evil is objectification, a process which attempts to deprive other people of their humanity. One sees this process over and over in war and in the lead up to war. We see it right now in the objectification of Muslims which is displayed in this forum. And thus those of us who retain our intersubjective morality try to resist this kind of objectification. So, based on the moral axioms I have laid out, axioms which I think are reasonable, I can reach through a process of reasoning a moral position which judges anti-Islamic propaganda as morally wrong. That’s one example out of many.

Well, sure, talking to myself. I do it all the time. It helps to get me a seat on the subway. I guess I would say I start with empathy, but then I reason from there. I guess it partly depends on how you feel about getting from an “is” to an “ought”. Conditionals might do it (If you think X, then you ought to do Y); or perhaps it amounts to the same thing to have an “ought” in the axioms. Can you manage either without some axioms (or the equivalent)? If so, how. And if not, what are the axioms? This is not what I usually think about. I ponder moral problems all the time, but not in so foundational a way.

But I’d say more. I’m making a claim that some kind of empathy is (nearly) a human universal, and I’m giving as evidence the enormous efforts that are taken to overcome empathy through objectification created by propaganda.

Consider your tenant. Is your decision (at least partly) based on empathy? If not, what is the basis for the decision?

“(I should be asking onguard all this as it was he who questioned my morals but I doubt if he has the wherewithall to understand my points.)”Doesn’t exoticdoc2 question all of our morals because he believes without religion there’s no basis to have morals? Except he doesn’t want to understand why one can have morals without religion.

Again, let’s consider geometry. The choice of axioms and postulates comes before the rational deductions. But I wouldn’t say that the choice of axioms and postulates lies outside of reason. And I wouldn’t say that geometry is not rational, just because it’s based on axioms and postulates. As I said above, it’s a matter of judgment, but I take judgment to be part of reason. Kant’s third critique opens the door, though I don’t follow his lead in all respects.

Geometry and morals? Isn’t that obvious? Think of the moral problems raised by the romantic triangle, for example. And shouldn’t everyone act on the square? (I can do some more of these in Greek, but I’ll leave it there.)But seriously, I guess this just came from the way I reacted to the original discussion with exoticdoc — he didn’t understand when you said that you base your morals on reason, probably because he doesn’t have much concept of what reason is. So I put all this in the context of the most rigorous system of reasoning I know of, and even there you have to start with something. But the choice of where you start, though it stands outside the deductions you base on it, in my opinion (for what that’s worth) doesn’t have to stand outside of reason per se.

I’m with you on the evolutionary basis of human morality — I think that a human morality based on empathy (or what Dennett calls the intentional stance) is at least in theory universalizable, but a morality based on lying, cheating, and stealing, or in the enjoyment of the suffering of others, can’t be universalized, even in theory, in a society that would continue to exist.

Rope-a-dopamine?

You people do realise the economy was on a one way ticket to the loo, before the last election and it wouldn’t have matter who won the election, as neither party could stop the train wreck that is the US economy.