Hehe, now we are getting somewhere:
cw: Let's make a few things clear. As an admitted subjectivist, you do not share my morality that I stated above.
M: One of the things that has amused me about your diatribe is that it mostly doesn't really apply to me. I am not a 'subjectivist' as you call it and have nowhere admitted to such. I believe that truth is absolute, but perhaps in a different way then you.
cw: You may think you do, but that's only because you don't understand the consequences and meaning behind your ideas.
M: As a non-'subjectivist' the lack of understanding you posit does not apply.
cw: When we break down the essence of morality, there's 3 (maybe 4) major schools on the nature of "good": Intrinsic, Subjective, and Objective. I believe there are across the board truths and universals that apply to all people, since I believe reality is external of our consciousness. So when I say the "The "Good" is that which sustains and promotes Man's Life" that means this good is objective and applies to everyone.
M: Yeah, me too
cw: Your theory, Subjectivism, says that the "good" has no relation to the facts of this external reality. Since truth and reality are individual contructs to the Subjectivist's mind, the "good" is the product of a person's consciousness... created by feelings, desires, intuitions, whims, and whatever else is going on inside that person's mind.
M: Except I am not a subjectivist.
cw: So you cannot believe the Good is "the ideas, principles, concepts, and activities that sustain and promote human life." For you, Good is a blank check to be written by whoever is taking that psychotherapeutic trip through their own mind. What if their truths are different from yours? What if they discover things inside themselves that don't jive with your discoveries?
M: No, the good is the same for all because we are all the same. And he who knows himself knows everybody. If, as you are soon to say, the search for understanding, and here let me substitute self understanding, proceeds with honesty and integrity what will be discovered is universal.
M: Far more dangerous that a true subjectivist who modestly admits to opinion is the subjectivist who masquerades his subjectivity as behind the veneer of absolute truth. You see the danger, but not whom it applies to.
cw: So you are a "modest" subjectivist. Fine.
M: No, a modest absolutist, but just coming to the subjectivist's defense with regard to relative dangers.
cw: But I do not claim to know absolute truth... only that it exists.
M: Oh man this is wonderful and what I've been trying to tell you.
cw: And it's our job to induce and deduce our best, most reasonable, and most honest observations and analysis of this external, objective reality that we live within, and not evade this reality and invent our own contrived mental wonderland through bio-feedback, counseling, or any other psychological technique.
M: Exactly what I've been telling you. I am simply claiming that I know some things via observation and analysis, owing to my merciless self questioning and scrupulous self honesty, that you seem to have missed.
cw: Whatever tricks and explorations we play on our minds will affect perspective, but it won't alter or create reality.
M: It sure won't as I well know. Your constant refusal to appreciate psychological data won't change the truth about yourself.
cw: If sustaining and promoting human life is our goal, then we ought to try and learn about this reality, since the closer we live in accordance to reality the better off we'll be.
M: Couldn't agree more. One of the big reasons why I prefer the art-science of psychotherapy over faith based religion. Seems that the deep psychological insights hidden in religion are, for the modern western mind, too occluded by stuff a rational modern educated mind can't swallow.
cw: The doctors who perform laser surgery are dealing with reality much more so than a shaman casting his "medical" spells on a patient through chants and trinkets.
M: Well here you are completely wrong in essence. Naturally laser surgery is better at curing some forms of blindness, but the shaman may be much better at curing blindness of the soul. The shaman is working from a deep experience you fail to appreciate, I think. He is using his wisdom and life experience to heal. A shaman can perform miracles you can't imagine. And his medicines are a source of constant medical examination and study.
cw: The society that accepts the universals of Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness is living closer to reality than the society living in tyranny and slavery.
M; Yes, because these things are innate to the nature of man as you will find when you dump all your cabbage and phony baloney baggage.
cw: This is the true meaning of the Age of Reason. This is the idea that fueled the Enlightenment. I can do without the mental witch doctors trying to reverse this progress by coaxing us to forget the real world and enter some sort of mystical, unreal realm. Moonbeam, you cannot fake reality. We can evade it, but we do so at our own peril.
M: But you are simply being dogmatic where you should be reasonable. We are all well aware of the dangers of dogmatic religion and authoritarianism. What you fail to note is that primitive people had sophisticated and highly developed realizations about human life mixed in with their superstition. What modern man, in particular has lost, is the capacity to feel. And what primitive people have which you don't, is being. They are far more here in the now and therefore far more happy. What an intellectual does is live in abstractions and not the reality of which you speak so highly. You are up in your head and they have their feet on the ground.
As I have tried to tell you, knowledge comes through human experience, the actualization of human potential. You can't see the end of the road from the beginning.