Apologies for the offense, but luckily, (perhaps reciprocally to an error I made first) the sentence I set out to write differs greatly from the sentence you read. Perhaps a reword will help:
One is not required by facts to change one’s (terminal-ish) values.
It would be absurd to have meant “you (AngryTroll)”, but the grammatical feature of English where “you” refers to a general person makes good sense
The word “compel” was important there, not flourish. Even you (AngryTroll) are not required to change your moral accounting of other people by your beliefs about their intelligence. A different way this could go would be to go thr “It All Adds Up To Normality” route and realize that your accounting of other people is not necessarily dependant on their intelligence.
Sorry, I know that’s messy in that there’s a grammatical correction and a philosophical objection, but I think it would muddy the waters to leave either out of my reply.
I was using my pronoun “I” in the same way you used “you”—“I” was the general person being preached to. You don’t get to dictate the system of evaluating humans for any evaluator (but yourself).
If one chooses to define his valuation of an individual human as being based on facts about her, then, yes he is compelled to change his estimation of her value based on facts about her (or change the system to no longer be based on facts).
For example, if I choose a system of evaluating humans based on how much I estimate a person and her offspring are expected to contribute to self-reported intellectual flourishing in the long term of mankind, then, learning that she and everyone genetically similar to her are violent morons implies an update on her value (compellingly; the logical implication doesn’t ask me permission to exist).
Determining her value as 1 or 0 based on whether your (Alex’s) sperm could turn her eggs into a baby or not (with some other weird grandfathering-in going on for genetic defects) may be your (Alex’s) method of determining her value. Her genetic predisposition to being a violent moron may not compel you (Alex) to change your (Alex’s) sperm-based valuation of her. But your personal system of human valuation, and everyone else’s, can be different things. You can’t stop them from being so; you’re not God.
Thanks for the reply. I’m going to dip out (after reading your reply, if you choose to leave one), but I will in my last reply suggest you revisit my initial and revised wording, which said that nothing “compels” or “requires” you to change in this manner, not that you are forbidden from doing so.
You are fighting against a position I do not hold, and so cannot offer you the satisfaction of convincing me to abandon it. You made a claim which I interpreted as “You MUST follow this procedure”. I replied that nothing “MUST” be done, and now you are, if I’m reading you correctly, explaining that you MAY. I agree! You MAY! You also MAY NOT, so I think MUST is overblown.
Apologies for the offense, but luckily, (perhaps reciprocally to an error I made first) the sentence I set out to write differs greatly from the sentence you read. Perhaps a reword will help:
It would be absurd to have meant “you (AngryTroll)”, but the grammatical feature of English where “you” refers to a general person makes good sense
The word “compel” was important there, not flourish. Even you (AngryTroll) are not required to change your moral accounting of other people by your beliefs about their intelligence. A different way this could go would be to go thr “It All Adds Up To Normality” route and realize that your accounting of other people is not necessarily dependant on their intelligence.
Sorry, I know that’s messy in that there’s a grammatical correction and a philosophical objection, but I think it would muddy the waters to leave either out of my reply.
I was using my pronoun “I” in the same way you used “you”—“I” was the general person being preached to. You don’t get to dictate the system of evaluating humans for any evaluator (but yourself).
If one chooses to define his valuation of an individual human as being based on facts about her, then, yes he is compelled to change his estimation of her value based on facts about her (or change the system to no longer be based on facts).
For example, if I choose a system of evaluating humans based on how much I estimate a person and her offspring are expected to contribute to self-reported intellectual flourishing in the long term of mankind, then, learning that she and everyone genetically similar to her are violent morons implies an update on her value (compellingly; the logical implication doesn’t ask me permission to exist).
Determining her value as 1 or 0 based on whether your (Alex’s) sperm could turn her eggs into a baby or not (with some other weird grandfathering-in going on for genetic defects) may be your (Alex’s) method of determining her value. Her genetic predisposition to being a violent moron may not compel you (Alex) to change your (Alex’s) sperm-based valuation of her. But your personal system of human valuation, and everyone else’s, can be different things. You can’t stop them from being so; you’re not God.
Thanks for the reply. I’m going to dip out (after reading your reply, if you choose to leave one), but I will in my last reply suggest you revisit my initial and revised wording, which said that nothing “compels” or “requires” you to change in this manner, not that you are forbidden from doing so.
You are fighting against a position I do not hold, and so cannot offer you the satisfaction of convincing me to abandon it. You made a claim which I interpreted as “You MUST follow this procedure”. I replied that nothing “MUST” be done, and now you are, if I’m reading you correctly, explaining that you MAY. I agree! You MAY! You also MAY NOT, so I think MUST is overblown.