[ExI] Tolerance

[JOSHUA JOB]

> You said that you more enamored of universal principles of action.  
> Yet, you reject the concept of maximizing utility. This doesn't make  
> sense to me in some way, since it seems obvious that personal  
> preference and individual agency are not subject to falsification.  
> Given that, you shouldn't expect there to be "universal" truth, but  
> rather some metric of goodness that is dependent on individual  
> experience and preference. The concept of utility, I grant you,  
> isn't perfect, but meets those criteria for a metric on something  
> that cannot be objectively measured as well as anything else.
> Brent Neal, Ph.D.
You can develop universal tenets for human behavior from the fact  
humans are animals who survive solely based on their rational  
capacity, and the fact that the source of all value for an organism is  
that organisms life (it can't have values of any sort without that).  
As such, any action by anyone which interferes with the ability of a  
person to behave in the way which they decide is immoral, it is  
attacking the basic principle and root cause of all possible values.  
As a result, you have no right to initiate force against any other  
human being.

I'm glossing over of course, but that gives a very basic outline of  
how you can arrive at certain universal principles of action based on  
principles and reason alone. As for what an individual should do  
outside not initiate force, well that is a more complex subject. But  
overall it is simply to serve his own individual life and pursue his  
own individual values which it has determined based on reason. That is  
a universal principle which can apply to every single person on the  
face of the Earth (or anywhere else humans happen to be) without  
contradiction.

Utility cannot be judged accurately at all. I know what is best for me  
most likely better than anyone, I cannot know what is best for you or  
society as a whole. That is totally personal and individual in nature.  
It seems odd to say that one should universalize a purely personal  
view of what are values, etc. and the apply them to everyone in order  
to determine what course of action to take. Why not just have them  
apply to yourself? That makes it much less prone to error.

I am intrigued by your repeated stress on falsification. You cannot  
live your entire life based on falsification alone without any  
principles created inductively from experience and reason. So why  
place such stress on falsification, especially in a moral system,  
which is expressly about how to live your life?


Joshua Job
nanite1018 at gmail.com