The New Ten Commandments

Pro announced his intent in his opening argument. He said "my list of moral edicts ..." will lead to "... a generally happier world." Our debate progressed to a conclusion in which he asserted, "I don't proscribe specific methods for achieving happiness because frankly I'm ignorant about what the underpinnings of human well-being actually are." And what happened to the concept of "moral edicts"? He says, "I could have redefined my commandments as "Handy dandy fun rules for living a good life" and the resolution would have been equally as true." I think this admits that Pro failed to make a list of moral edicts that would make the world a happier place. Moral edicts are rules meant to govern human behavior. They are inherently tied to human nature. If one honors his parents and does not lie, steal, commit adultery, or murder, than one will be happier and the world will be a happier place. Consequently, as soon as Pro admits that he is not up to understanding human nature, he out of the Ten Commandments business. While it's true that we do not have a perfect understanding of human nature, we are far from total ignorance. The cited old commandments are good ones relative to our understanding. I suggested ways that new commandments might be written that reflected a more current understanding, for example, "Ponder important decisions for three days." would be a good one. This reflects the understanding is that a common human frailty is to make a quick decision then rationalize it. Another one along those lines is "Don't make any decision until you have to." That promotes keeping an open mind, a step towards rational behavior. Pro didn't take that tack of crafting edicts that are both specific and promote rational behavior, even though I have demonstrated it is possible. He settled for distant truisms, like "don't believe anything without good reason" and "be kind to animals." Even most of his truisms need analysis to discover the intended truism. If the goal is to one-up God (or at least tradition) in the Commandment department then crafting simple language is important. If one means "be kind to animals" then "don't discriminate on grounds of species" is a wild miss. The original Ten Commandments did not have a post scripted "or whatever, you know what I mean" and that is a virtue of their formulation. I showed in the debate that Pro's (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), and (8) all require a "well, you know what I mean clause" at the very least. I think they are too poorly worded to be valid. I think I made it clear what I meant by certain of his commandments being "vacuous." He used the word "truism" and I think that's pretty close. It's something along the line of "be good." It promotes a general goal while giving inadequate instruction as to how to achieve it. "Be good" or Pro's similar amorphous general goals allows the jihadist to rationalize his behavior as just and rational, whereas a commandment of "Do not kill infidels" would settle the issue. Pro asserts that "What constitutes 'evidence' 'reason' and the 'scientific method' are not open for interpretation." That is probably true in the abstract, where reason is perfectly applied, but Pro allows each person following his commandments to judge for themselves subjectively what is reasonable and what is not. I gave the example of Al Gore, an intelligent and well educated man, writing a whole book on reason without ever getting beyond a rationalization of his particular beliefs, ignoring contrary evidence and generally running the list of logical fallacies. An intelligent and well-intentioned man fails in the attempt. There is therefore no chance that people with ordinary prejudices will succeed from such general direction. Pro defends his concept of promoting truisms by analogy, "Lets say that I tell you to travel to San Diego California and I don't give you instructions on how to get there. Is this a vacuous statement on my behalf? Not really. ... you could do a little bit of research and find this out in a few minutes or hours at most. Such is the case with human flourishing." The analogy fails because few would guess that San Diego is an important goal, but one identified the steps to get their are easily discovered. By contrast, "happiness" is obvious, but the steps to get their are not obvious. Similarly, Pro's goals of reason, justice, and so forth are obvious, but the steps are not. That understanding is reflected in the concrete nature of the original Ten Commandments, and lost in Pro's amorphous truisms. Pro argues, "Reason is not subjective despite what my opponent may believe." I did not argue that reason itself was subjective. I argued that an individual's assessment of what is reasonable is subjective, and that makes a generic "be reasonable" a useless commandment. The human power to rationalize grows with intelligence, so as a general directive it doesn't work. Specific steps ("at least read the Wikipedia entry first') could help, but Pro gives none of those. In every case he relies on useless self-assessment. "You are to imagine that the year is 1840 and that you are a black lesbian living in the United States. Would you prefer that the original Ten Commandments were ascendant or would you prefer that my commandments were ascendant?" If ascendant means "guaranteed by a supervising deity" then I'd go with Pro's list. But if "ascendant" has the practical operative meaning of "obeyed by self-assessment" then I'd go with the old list. The old list has the definitive "thou shalt not kill," whereas Pro's list allows anything to be rationalized as "reasonable" and that includes all of the common prejudices of the times, believed as well-found and reasonable by the locals. I'll grant that the seemingly definitive "thou shall nots" are often rationalized with amazing ease. That's a tribute to human powers of rationalization. However, that supports my position. Commandments have to be very specific to even have a chance, and even even then they can be evaded. Truism-type goals don't have a chance of succeeding. Pro concludes with, "Just imagine what our world would look like if everyone represented a model of Socratic rationality." Sure, that's nice, but the way to progress in that direction is not to just proclaim, "Okay, everyone, listen up. Everyone should be rational from now on. Thank you" I think we can make progress, and the exercise of writing commandments could be useful by affirming rules that might head us in the right direction. Pro missed the opportunity by opting for vacuous truisms; poorly worded ones at that. The resolution is negated.