The New Ten Commandments

Pro began the debate with the correct definition of "commandments." He said "... my list of moral edicts ..." That's right. Commandments are not interesting thoughts, points to ponder, considerations, guides to practical living, or anything other than moral edicts. After getting the definition right, he backtracks at every step, arguing that edicts are no good because they don't allow enough flexibility, that they do not have to be guides to moral behavior, and that, since he is making his list, they don't have to be on the subject of morality at all. I think the semantics are important, because when a debate challenge is posed it's reasonable to suppose that "list of moral edicts" means a list of moral edicts, and that will be the subject of the debate. However, I also think it is a worthwhile exercise to ponder a list of moral edicts. Is it possible to write a list of succinct moral directives that if pursued would make the world a better place? I think simple rules are useful, but getting ten of them is not so easy. The point of commandments is to provide useful moral rules for living. If the objective were to prescribe outcomes, then "be happy" would guarantee that everyone would be happy. The reason that "be happy" is not a good commandment, besides it not being a moral edit, is that it does not provide an understandable rule that tells a person how to be happy, or leads even leads in that direction. What I mean by Pro's various commandments being "vacuous" is that they are not rules that a person can usefully apply. Consider the following commandments: "Never do anything wrong," "Always make the correct moral decisions," "Achieve the right balance between self, family, and society," "Use violence only when justified," and "Live a good life." These are not good commandments because they are goals, not rules for achieving goals. Thus, a jihadist can say, "I only use violence when justified." The commandment does not tell what is justified and what is not justified; it begs the important question. They may be points to ponder, along the lines of "Ask yourself, is this really just?" But that is far away from a moral edict. Using Pro's constructs, if you want people to be "safer, more compassionate, and generally happier" then issuing the commandment "be safer, more compassionate, and happier" is all that is needed to do the job. People just need to obey and the task is accomplished. Any clues as to how to achieve that would be redundant in Pro's method. Pro only edges back a little from commanding the outcome. Commandments to "be reasonable" and "don't claim to know more than you know" seem to be adding something substantial, but they really add almost nothing. Imagine how a jihadist would respond to those commandments: "I know the will of God without doubt. It is reasonable to obey the will of God, and that is what I do. I am always open to new evidence. Everything I see confirms my beliefs." The jihadist is wrong and is in fact unreasonable, but Pro's commandment to "be reasonable" will do nothing to dissuade him from doing evil. A commandment, "Don't kill infidels" would cut to the chase. That rule says, "If you think you are being reasonable and it leads to the conclusion that you ought to kill infidels, then you are wrong. It is not allowed." Thus "be reasonable" is vacuous as a commandment because it doesn't prevent anyone from doing whatever they want to do. It provides no guidance as to what is really reasonable and what is not really reasonable. Short of the extreme of jihadism, consider Al Gore's book "The Assault on Reason" http://www.amazon.com... I have no doubt that Mr. Gore is sincere in his advocacy of reason. However, he is woefully incapable of reasoning. he rationalizes his ideological beliefs and proclaims the result a victory for reasoning. A non-vacuous rule is something like, "Never take drastic action without pondering it for three days." The quality of a decision will probably be improved if it is pondered for a while, so there is reason to suppose outcomes will be improved. The rule is an easy-to-understand guideline, not a dictate of outcome. Pro leaves it to me to rephrase what he is trying to say in (5). I think he wants it rendered as "Do not deprive others of life, liberty, or property or their pursuit of happiness unless by doing so it would reduce suffering overall." That reduces to the vacuous, "Act justly." It provides no guidance as to what is just and what is not just. Compare the non-guidance of that to, for example, "Willful violation of a patent deserves treble damages." or the Biblical "An eye for an eye." The idea is that good commandments guide action rather than begging the question of how to act. In (3) Pro, said explicitly that charity should always be in the forefront. Forefront means "The position of most importance, prominence, or responsibility" http://www.answers.com... But when I challenged making charity the highest priority, Pro retreated to a meaning along the lines "People should be reasonably charitable relative to other demands of society." This goes back to begging the question of what a reasonable amount of charity is. It's not a guideline for living. Pro never explains what he meant by "increasing the overall levels of happiness among living creatures." (7) or "do not discriminate on the basis of ... species" (8) I asked how we are even to know if a squid is happy. Are otters supposed to get the right to vote? Pro says he didn't mention humans at all. If that is true then humans are not "living creatures" nor are they a "species." That is nonsense. So what meaning is there to the commandments to make "living creatures" happy if it does not include making squid happy? My point is that we certain ought to discriminate on grounds of species, so his rule not to discriminate is wrong. Pro, I gather, says that he wanted to recite the highly-Biblical Golden Rule in (6) but screwed up the wording so it it wrong as written. He says that some reprehensible things ought to be forbidden. True, but the error is that some subjectively reprehensible things ought not be forbidden. Pro makes a list of things that ought to be proscribed and then claims that his commandments prohibit them while the original Ten Commandments do not. The problem is that his rules prohibit virtually nothing without interpretation in the way he interprets them. The rules do not say, for example, that jihadism is prohibited. It's only prohibited if the jihadist believes it to be unreasonable. Similarly, only unjust gender discrimination is prohibited by Pro's rules, and all manner of abuse is thought just by the people who practice it, and by many of the women who are subjected to it. so Pro's real rule is, "Ask Pro what is reasonable and do what he says." That's not useful. Pro omits from his list the specific prohibitions of the original ten commandments: theft, murder, adultery, covetousness, perjury. Unlike Pro's commandments, they are not buried in murky "don't steal unless you think it's reasonable" ambiguity. Commandments can come in conflict, but that does not imply they are not useful. If commandments are in conflict, then one is back to figuring out what to do to resolve the conflict. But most of the time, a person does not have to steal to save his mother, so the rule is applicable. The Bill of rights is the same way. They are stated with unwavering affirmation, but sometime the Supreme Court has to resolve conflicts. Pro's list of commandments is inferior to the traditional list because people can use moral edicts, and he provides none. His list merely basically advises that everything your think is reasonable is okay, or maybe one should go consult Pro and find out what is "really" reasonable. This doesn't work.