Bill,
Hell, we can keep repeating if you don’t like progress and merely prefer to repeat.
You make comments like the following, repeating yourself as if I claimed the contrary (which, of course, I didn’t):
No, but people's philosophical values motivate their choices. (I would say philosophical values impact their choices, because I believe in free will and believe people can choose not to act, but maybe you actually think ideas control people like zombis and that's why you repeat it, who knows?). I have no idea why you make statements like that within the context of a discussion on the level we were having. But even worse, for example, you (in Post 176): I can know that an idea like "kill the infidels" is evil, even if no one has ever acted on it. I can know it is evil, because it is anti-life. We covered this already, but apparently you forgot. Me (way back in Post 145):
"Kill the infidels" as pure idea.
Not evil in a comedy.
Not evil in the mind of a historian or student in a historical examination of Islamic culture or Hollywood films.
Not evil as an example of grammar.
Not evil written by William Dywer in a question about meaning.
Not evil... (I could go on.)
Evil in the mind of an Islamic fanatic with dirty rotten intent.
Notice in this last that the idea is only one component of the evil. By itself, without the intent to act, it is too incomplete to be evil.
So you claim that no action by anybody is needed to judge an idea. I state that an idea needs action (past, present or future) to be evil and you make a statement like the following – as if you are disagreeing with me:
If it really is his creed, and not just something that he pays lip service to, then he will put it into action.
Well, what is it? Is an idea evil without action (past, present or future) or is it a part of an evil result only with action, meaning that the idea by itself cannot be evil? Didn’t we start to cover this with belief back in Post 145 and following? And if so, why the candystriping as if we didn’t even start? I could go on, but I want intelligent discussion, not repeating stuff as if we didn’t even start to cover it, much less get to definitions (or at least essential descriptions) as we have already done.
As regards an idea being a causal agent, you apparently disagree with Kelley. You state:
I disagree. It is indeed a causal agent… Kelley, in The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, p. 50:
I discussed this issue [evaluation and moral judgment] at some length because I believe Objectivists tend to reify ideas as causal agents, and thus oversimplify their actual causal roles. I agree with Kelley and this is why I think we are at an impasse. You package cognition and evaluation into one thing turning it into a metaphysical switch that can control folks like robots. I don’t. I think two people holding the same idea will act differently depending on the amount of rationality they choose to apply.
You morally judge the person by the idea. I morally judge the person by the idea and his rationality and a host of other information.
You want to eliminate the need to use induction to arrive at a moral judgment of a concrete. I want to examine all the evidence available. For you, moral condemnation is easy. For me it is hard work. We're stuck. You also might look into Kelley’s analysis of how an idea spreads in a culture – even Kant’s ideas. Culture is not a “collective” entity that you inject controlling ideas into and wait for the reaction. It is a bunch – millions – of people, individuals, all who make choices and all who input other information along with the idea. Your “one drop of intellectual poison” stuff does not bear up under scrutiny in actual history. Acting on bad ideas will have bad results, this is true, but “one drop” or even “one ocean” of a bad idea will not do anything at all if people do not choose to act on it.
Like I said, let’s just disagree at this point.
Michael
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