laudablepuss wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

Coming from a purely rational perspective the only thing one can be 100% certain of is that one possess one's own conscious mind, the self. All our sensory input may be deception.

How is this a useful part of your reasoning? Is this an escape clause for you?
...
How very charitable of you! You have a "strong belief" in reality. That's reassuring.

laudablepuss wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

Secondly, all of these conscious minds, including self, are - apparently - due for complete and utter annihilation in a relatively short period of time. Since self possesses nothing else other than sentience, and none of these other conscious minds truly possess anything else, than we have nothing to lose other than our selves and nothing to gain save perhaps the possibility of perpetual preservation.

This would be true if these conscious minds you strongly believe in lived in a vacuum or were incapable of changing and manipulating their surroundings. So when you lose a person (dunno why you insist on your clumsy jargon here), you're losing the potential future actions of that person and you're denying that person the potential to continue to learn and grow and get something from their lives that's worthwhile. These things are not quantifiable in the slightest, but they aren't completely mysterious either.

laudablepuss wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

Thus, from a purely rational perspective, there is nothing more precious than a conscious mind.

This does not follow from your previous statements. At all. This is a sudden value judgement you're trying to pass off as a fact. NOTHING is more valuable than A SINGLE conscious mind? Bullshit.

laudablepuss wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

Were we all rational, a universal pact of non-aggression would be agreed upon in which each participant agreed to preserve the existences of the others to whatever extent possible, except under the threat of self-termination (as nobody can be 100% certain other sentient minds exist, but such certainty does exist for the existence of one's self).

Is this how the non-aggression pact would read? If possible, try not to kill other people that you might not even acknowlege exist under penalty of potentially unreal people comming for your head?

laudablepuss wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

]Furthermore, the sensory input known as 'pain' or 'suffering' would not be inflicted upon another when it could reasonably be avoided - some leeway is appropriate and necessary here. Finally, all of us existing as we apparently are under the universal sentence of natural expiration, would all agree to put forth maximal effort to subvert and defeat the phenomenon of natural expiration. This is the ideal.

I'm going to ignore your obsession with immortality except to ask this question: suppose that we all became (what you suppose to be) perfectly rational humans, but it happened 2000 years ago? Would it still be the highest priority to drop everything and work on the immortality project?

laudablepuss wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

Working from there, all minds are equally valuable

HAR!

Senor Barborito wrote:

- lay aside your emotions for a moment and think rationally. Assuming rehabilitation to rationality were possible

WHOA THERE, TEX! Why do we need to rehabilitate a person if they are all equally "valuable"? Are we not talking about their minds now? Does their value lie elsewhere? Wouldn't a rational mind be more valuable than a non-rational one, just because of the effort involved in rehabillitation?

laudablepuss wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

would it be better to have two minds or one? The answer, of course, is two, regardless of personality they are both conscious minds and therefore - assuming chemical imbalances in their brains are corrected - capable of rational thinking. You might as well ask a good capitalist whether he wants one dollar or two.

What if one dollar wanted to kill the other dollar? And what if the other dollar was you? Would you still be so sure that two is better than one?

laudablepuss wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

But let's say we can only pick Uday Hussein or Mother Theresa to save in some life-or-death situation. Who then do we pick to go on existing? Since we're going to lose a mind in either case, it would seem rational to pick a still-living Mother Theresa over Uday for two reasons:

a) she is far more likely to be successfully rehabilitated to rational thought than Uday.

You lose. Thanks for playing. One of your statements has to go: all minds are equally valuable, or the above.

laudablepuss wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

b) secondly her actions have served the cause of rational thought by furthering its ends, even if her means are not at all rational - rewarding her would, in a societal sense, provide incentive to others to at the very least pursue the ends of rationalism.

Her past actions give an indication of what her future ones might be? Interesting. And so, for living a good life, she gets rewarded with rationality heaven. That's a relief. And does Uday get punished at all for HIS past actions? Other than hypothetically being less valuable than Mother Theresa? You know what those are, right?

laudablepuss wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

If you want it as a priority list, here goes:
Priority 1) Preserve self (one is certain one exists)
Priority 2) Preserve the highest number of minds possible (it is highly probable, based on current sensory input, that other minds exist)
Priority 3) When faced with certain death to equal numbers of minds, choose the ones most likely to be successfully rehabilitated to rational thinking
Priority 4) As a natural consequence of priorities 1) and 2) develop a means of perpetual self-preservation and make it openly available to each and every suspected sentient being without exception.

Addendum 1) When making judgements regarding priority 3, consider who will be most helpful for priority 4
Addendum 2) While pursuing goals 1-5, minimize painful input for others where possible within reason.
Addendum 3) Addendum 2 does not equate to letting hedonism of any kind interrupt your pursuit of the above priorities, especially four.
Addendum 4) Do not let anything but pure reason guide your actions - when confused, start with with the above base and reason forward from there.
Addendum 5) Should an argument that unravels part of this ethical system later be found, start from the beginning, work forward until the portion the argument proves wrong - then embrace the truth of the argument and reason forward from there.

1) Special pleading
2) An unfounded belief that the majority is always worth more than the individual.
3) A trite simplification of a true dilema.
4) A nice thought.

laudablepuss wrote:

I notice that nothing about justice even enters into the picture there. Except for the non-aggression treaty, where the only crime is murder and the only punishment is death. But even with that stunted philosophy, Uday and Qusay got what they deserved, and the dilema of Mother Theresa or Uday is resolved.

laudablepuss wrote:

Why don't you ommit the utterly impractical parts (like how you can't prove the existence of reality) and drop the pretense of perfect rationality altogether? Why don't you just admit that these are things you value: the brainbox, V., the Swiss way, whatever. Your effort to make these values into laws of nature is absurd. I can understand your need to make these things seem more permanent and primary than they really are, but I think you're overcompensating for the chaotic aspects of your personality. Just some kneejerk psychology for you there.