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[INFP] INFP's - Help me clarify something?

Elfa

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Again, I wonder.... what purpose does moral nihilism serve? How does this benefit those living in the material world?

Maybe for the same reasons we learn about gravity, or chemestry, or biology? Just to know about what surrounds us? (but this is a possible nihilist speaking)
 

tkae.

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So it is often said that INFP's are guided by moral code. And I know that alot of threads have popped up regarding what that moral code looks like (and ofcourse its unique to each individual INFP, though there seems to be some universal constants, like not harming people, being a good person, being humble, etc.) And I was just wondering...

What thoughts do INFP's have on moral nihilism? Do INFP's reject the notion? If you think that moral nihilism might be true, then how do you go about framing your morals in life?

It's a hard one, I know. So any info you relay at all will be quite appreciated.

Oh, and here is the definition of moral nihilism I'm going by:

Moral nihilism (also known as ethical nihilism or amoralism) is the meta-ethical view that nothing is moral or immoral. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is neither inherently right nor inherently wrong. Morality may simply be a kind of make-believe, a complex set of rules and recommendations that represents nothing real and is seen as a human creation.[1]

I equate moral nihilism with a dangerous logical worldview at best and true evil at worst.

Unless you mean nihilism towards morals, i.e. a kind of agnosticism towards morals where you know they probably exist but don't really seek to define them any further, which is perfectly fine, moral nihilism as a true dismissal of morals and personal ethics essentially lowers you to backstabbing cutthroat who subscribes to a Nietzschean or Machiavellian philosophy of power and wealth through domination and manipulation of others, which is in essence the worst possible value you could possibly have as a human being.

In my opinion, you can be a completely moral person and have nothing else going for you in your life and still be superior to even the most powerful CEO or politician. It's in this way that Ghandi and MLK were superior to the people they were up against, disproving the validity of such things as Nietzsche's philosophies or moral nihilism.

So for me it's really not hard at all. I may not respect you if you're moral but have other things that undermine your morality, but if you're immoral of morally nihilist then I'll vehemently despise you as a traitor of humanity as a whole.

:bye:
 

OrangeAppled

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Your say that his argument is poor and has no reasonable foundation to back it up, but I'm not hearing anything solid in your argument. If you have a reasonable foundation to back up your argument, please explain, because I would like to hear the logical reasoning behind both perspectives rather than just hear people saying the other person is wrong.

I have not made an argument in response to his post because I have not stated a belief that I am seeking to prove, nor am I trying to disprove his belief. I answered the OP many posts ago separately from this conversation, & I was & am not interested in a debate. The minute this thread turned into "I'm right, you're wrong", then I lost interest.

I'm not the one defending that a stance is correct or claiming another is incorrect. That's the difference.

Anytime you want to address the arguments I presented, just go right ahead... I'll be here waiting. I'm trying to be patient with you, but you're determined to make that difficult.

I did address them, and I was patient with you despite attempts to devalue my opinion because I'm an INFP. I told you what your arguments amounted to and why that disproves & proves nothing. I'm not going to pick them apart line by line when I can address them briefly & move onto more interesting threads.

I'm not interested in conversing at length with a person when they insist that their opinion is somehow objective & more true than others, but then they approach the topic with such bias its impossible for them to see anything else; that's why I said "that's how you feel". It's your personal conclusion & has little to do with reality. I'm not interested in changing your view; at most, I was only pointing out that there are opposing views that are just as valid.

I'm familiar with the different kinds of moral systems, and all are presented as valid ideas to consider in any class or book which covers the matter thoroughly. I certainly found some more valid than others though. A few posts on a messageboard are not going to prove "enlightening" to me when I've already considered this in the past in greater detail, I can tell you that.
 

Thalassa

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Maybe for the same reasons we learn about gravity, or chemestry, or biology? Just to know about what surrounds us? (but this is a possible nihilist speaking)

Um, gravity, biology, and chemistry serve very practical purposes.
 

Silveresque

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I have not made an argument in response to his post because I have not stated a belief that I am seeking to prove, nor am I trying to disprove his belief. I answered the OP many posts ago separately from this conversation, & I was & am not interested in a debate. The minute this thread turned into "I'm right, you're wrong", then I lost interest.

I'm not the one defending that a stance is correct or claiming another is incorrect. That's the difference.

I'm really sorry if I've upset you in any way. I think I may have sounded much harsher than I intended. :(

I wasn't saying your viewpoint was wrong, I only wanted to hear the reasoning behind your viewpoint so I could understand it better. I also don't wish to prove or disprove either side, I just like intellectual debate because I can learn from it.
 

PeaceBaby

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Morality is a "problem" that solves beautifully into a complex, yet elegant mathematical proof.

It would be interesting to discuss in that format, no? If it could be written as such? ;)

[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7b0cLn-wHU&feature=related"]Come Forward, Silent Rogue ...[/YOUTUBE]
 

NegativeZero

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I'm not interested in conversing at length with a person when they insist that their opinion is somehow objective & more true than others, but then they approach the topic with such bias its impossible for them to see anything else; that's why I said "that's how you feel". It's your personal conclusion & has little to do with reality. I'm not interested in changing your view; at most, I was only pointing out that there are opposing views that are just as valid.

Translation: I don't care for a fruitful discourse on this topic with a meaningful exchange of opinions and viewpoints. Oh, at least not with people that disagree with me. These are my beliefs and they get a pass because it's just my belief.

I don't really know what "more true" means or could mean. Truth isn't really so much a quantity as it is a quality and in this case, you're either right or wrong. Now, in many philosophical dilemmas, we may never know. This is where concepts like epistemic warrant and probability come into play.

You are right about me being subjective about this — I do think my view about ethics is more consistent with the ontology we find ourselves in, and I think yours is less consistent; so in a sense, I guess I do think my view is "more true."

However, I'm not saying you're totally wrong for believing it. I have to assume that people actually base their beliefs from their experiences, and even if they find strong evidence and reasoning contrary to it, they cling to what corresponds with their reality as a means to explain what they've seen, experienced, felt, etc. Even if this is what you're doing, I'm doing the same thing.

So whatever. To each their own, I guess. I would probably agree with most of the ethical stances you advocate with few exceptions.
 

erm

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Moral Nihilism, as defined in the OP, subscribes to no moral system. It provides no more reason to be selfish than it does selfless, cruel than it does nice, it offers no more reason to want truth than to reject it etc.

As for practicality, well if true it has about as much practicality as larger truths that don't impact daily life much (that the stars are x distance away etc.). It will impact behaviour, if true or believed in, like anything will to some degree, but I've seen no evidence to suggest that belief in Moral Nihilism makes people become more psychopathic, violent, self-centred, cruel and such. I think the most likely correlation is the other way round, that those who fit that list of adjectives try and use Moral Nihilism to justify their actions. It would be interesting to see how represented Moral Nihilists are amongst criminals.

if we say that no moral objective truth can ever be known.. is not the existance of this concept attempting to be a moral objective truth in and of itself? *brain hurts* I don't understand how it can proven, how can it be fact?

The first problem there is a semantic misunderstanding.

Morality is a vague (unclear definitions) and ambiguous (multiple definitions) term. Under the semantics of that question, Moral Nihilism is "there are no objective moral truths, except for this one", simply because an objective moral truth is redefined to include the lack of objective moral truths (lack of objective moral truths under different semantics, that is, hence no contradiction). Under the semantics of that question, it is not possible to lack morality.

As for the second question, it can't be proven fully, at least at the moment, but evidence for or against it can be gathered rather easily.
 

Southern Kross

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When you talk about what society has agreed upon as being acceptable and moral, you're talking about ethics, which is different from morality. Morality is for the individual, ethics is for society. This is not in conflict with moral nihilism. Moral nihilism can be applied to this if one decides that these ethics are simply an agreed-upon set of values rather than an absolute moral truth.

This is exactly what ethics are for. Ethics form the guidelines for what values are socially acceptable. If one chooses to follow values that are in direct conflict with ethics, one runs the risk of upsetting the harmony. It is always a choice of the individual whether to accept society's ethics or to oppose them, following instead their own moral beliefs.
When I say moral norms that are agreed upon, I do not mean it so much in literal terms. I meant that societies for the most part have fundamentally the same moral views. Of course, cultures interpret these views slightly differently, and some societies are corrupted by personal interest (rather than what is good and just for all) and may fail to adhere to these norms. I see the way humanity moves toward creating ethical systems, not as coming together to manufacture social guidelines, but as indicative of the enduring, underlying, congruence in moral views that always existed.

Also, I'm pretty sure that consciousness does not exist independently of our thoughts and desires... after all, isn't consciousness RESPONSIBLE for thoughts and desires, or at least responsible for processing them/interpreting them to ourselves?
Perhaps I didn't word it well. I meant that consciousness exists regardless of thoughts and desires that result from it; they seem at first glance to be intertwined, but thought/desire alone cannot change consciousness and their existence is wholly dependent on its.

I was attempting to draw a comparison between consciousness and universal morals, as well as between thoughts/desires (ie. the variety of applications that consciousness can take) and the diversity of moral interpretations (ie. cultural/subjective values) that can result from the same essential origin.

At this point, why not just bypass the analogy and say morality is a byproduct of consciousness, i.e., it is a human construct? You don't seem to have any sort of evidence or reasoning that morality really "exists" outside of its status as an idea.

What you're doing is making a lot of mysterious, spiritual assertions that are really epistemically unfounded.
No indeed. There was no spirituality intended. I only wished to demonstrate that morality is complex and enigmatic as consciousness is, but that it doesn't follow that we cannot outline it with some objectivity. You argument appears to be that morality doesn't resemble mathematics: constant, quantifiable, impersonal; and for this reason it must be arbitrary. Would you have everything that doesn't fit this mold be thrown into the box labelled, "subjective human construct"?

You accuse us of not understanding philosophy, but yet you do not wish to engage debate in the accepted manner of philosophical discussion. Appealing to hypothetical concepts and intuitive perception are commonplace approaches; claiming there is no concrete proof for an argument is absurd. It is philosophy after all.

I'm not interested in conversing at length with a person when they insist that their opinion is somehow objective & more true than others, but then they approach the topic with such bias its impossible for them to see anything else; that's why I said "that's how you feel". It's your personal conclusion & has little to do with reality. I'm not interested in changing your view; at most, I was only pointing out that there are opposing views that are just as valid.

I'm familiar with the different kinds of moral systems, and all are presented as valid ideas to consider in any class or book which covers the matter thoroughly. I certainly found some more valid than others though. A few posts on a messageboard are not going to prove "enlightening" to me when I've already considered this in the past in greater detail, I can tell you that.
+1
 

NegativeZero

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Metaphysically describe what you think morality is.

Do you think consciousness can occur without a brain? If not, what do you mean by calling it transcendent then?

How would we go about "universally employing" consciousness?

Are the codes of morality immutable?

... that can exist from the same essential origin.

What would this origin be then, exactly, if it a) wasn't an intrinsic property of the universe and b) wasn't man-made?

I mean, if morality isn't an intrinsic quality of the universe, and it isn't a human construct... what the fuck is it?
 

Santosha

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I don't believe there is any objective moral truth. Infact, I struggle with the concept of objective knoweldge entirely. The problem that science faces when it attempts to explore the true nature of the universe, or to know anything for that matter, is that it is only using physical manifestations and observation. Subject-object divide.

"It's like trying to look at your own head with your eyes. The best you can do is to observe the reflection in a mirror, and draw conclusions from a two dimensional representation of your three dimensional head. You will never be able to see your own head with your own eyes."

The one thing that seems to really resonate within me is the zero-point field, a theory in quantum physics that attempts to prove that there exists an energy field that shows all things are connected.

So If I subscribe to the idea that everything is connected (and I do) then when I really look at the bigger-big picture, everything is one. And if everything is one.. then any attempt to distinguish this from that is an illusion. An illusion I believe is created by the human brain processor, in an attempt to understand self, when self is actually a consciousness not created by the brain. And there is quite a bit of evidence to support this- when you start looking at mind over matter, brain activity in placebo affects and hypnosis, and even people that are flatlining in highly monitored states, only to go on and recall experiences outside the body that do not align with DMT release and firing neurons.

"To set up what you like against what you dislike - this is the disease of the mind"
Dam skippy. It's an illusion, too.

So what your doing when ever you create a preference for basically anything.. (be that good/bad, sweet/sour, individualism, id-ego-egosim constructs) is attempting to disconnect from all-connected. And I just don't buy it. I can't proove it, obviously.. but clearly I am skeptical of ALL proofs.

Yet I am still forced to experience with my mind, in a body, on a material plane. If we are all connected, the collective unconscious, then what is the point? What purpose could this serve? Many modern spiritualists will say, we are here to experience what we are NOT, to understand what we are. And that doesn't really make sense if we are everything.

Meh. I'm not sure if I conveyed this as well as I could *shrugs* but sticking to the original points... I believe I do fall under the oh-so-limiting vocab of "moral nihilism." And I just want to add, that I do NOT believe moral nihilism is simply a copout to justify crude or apathetic behaviors. I think there is a much bigger picture being over-looked by a few here. I am very interested in thoughts that others might have in HOW you can morally align yourself if you believe in a collective unconscious.

Edit: Is morality not really just a complex code that aids in survival?
 

Santosha

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[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3R4zkblHZk"].[/YOUTUBE]
 

nolla

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I don't believe there is any objective moral truth.

In practice, anything people call objective is just a vote among top scientists. Usually not even that.

I am very interested in thoughts that others might have in HOW you can morally align yourself if you believe in a collective unconscious.

What do you mean? I believe in collective unconsciousness, and collective consciousness. I see most people living in a state of immorality that has been patched up by society's moral code. They are unconscious. Some become more conscious and they start to have morals of their own. But there is no reason to blame the ones who don't become more conscious because it is like blaming a seed for failing to grow.

Edit: Is morality not really just a complex code that aids in survival?

Yes. But that is no reason to disrespect the code. People always say 'It is just a part of our nature', or 'Love is just chemicals', and it is weird. It's like, if you can explain something by something, it's somehow losing value (or dropping to the level of valuation of the object that explains it). Even if it is just an aid in survival, so what? Life is just a flash between two eternal darknesses, and that's marvelous!
 

sqnh

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What thoughts do INFP's have on moral nihilism? Do INFP's reject the notion?

I'm an INFP, a seminary student, and I might very well be a moral nihilist!

I absolutely believe that morality is subjective, it changes - it's dynamic. I think it's possible for humans to convince themselves (and others) constructs are moral and immoral. Scientifically speaking, I think most life-forms instinctually strive to survive, and perhaps the adaptation of moral behavior has evolved to support survival. I don't think that there's anything inherently right or wrong woven into any given phenomenon, however. I have my own ideals that I won't violate, but I'm cognizant that I'm always a stroke a way from being even the slightest aware of morals, you know?

So, I'd say - yeah - definitely possible to be a moral nihilist. As far as how that would look, for example, the INFP nihilist could say that they don't kill people because they believe it to be bad, though killing itself does not have any inherent value. The nihilist admits that they are placing a value on the object. Does that sound right?
 

BAJ

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I'm not sure if my first post was relevant. I was explaining how my sensitivity to fish death changed over time. First morality: the fish is in pain, this is bad.

Current morality: 1.) sometimes fish pain is bad 2.) fish taste good 3.) sometimes you must kill one fish for the benefit of many 4.) if there is no market for the fish, then it must die. Who will buy the fish and why? Etc.

I agree with morality being somewhat arbitrary or relative to culture. If you were born into a different culture, with a different upbringing, then eating puppies would be yummy. Inside me, I see the seeds for almost every kind of evil, but some are sat upon stones and get no rain.

But I have a problem with the concept of nihilism. Why would a nihilist care? Why would they even get out of bed?

How is being a true nihilist different from being a complete sociopath in a moral sense?
 
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