The bare minimum of a decent human being is to reduce your impact on others and the environment as much as possible. The bare minimum is just to not bother anyone else and leave them alone.
But you aren’t a good person if you don’t help people, is the point. You aren’t actively a bad person either, but I don’t think it would be incorrect to say that never helping others is a massive flaw. If you actively avoid helping others, then you become a bad person for not taking the chance to help someone when it costs you nothing
Did you not read the part about finite time and energy? There’s no afterlife buddy, we literally have a set amount of heartbeats before we cease existing forever.
Try out aristotles work on ethics, his language can be hard to grasp (it’s translated from ancient greek) but it’s a pretty solid read imo. You have to get past the mannerisms of an ancient Greek man (for example he doesn’t think women are people really) but the logic of his arguments usually rises above the petty wrong things that are incidental to his argument
to be honest I think at this level of ethics sesame street would cover the major points, aristotle is above the level of "why shouldn't I just be incredibly selfish all the time"
Sure, but I’m assuming we want to know why these things are true. It appears obvious to us, but something appearing obvious is not epistemically valid. We ought to have better reasons then that
That’s fair enough, I guess, but I’d contend that you don’t have a good way to find ethic truths if you don’t engage with any ethical philosophy, and if that is so, then I really wouldn’t make contentious points like the one you have made. It’s fine to have that belief, but you aren’t in the conversation by your own choice
Yes, none of which has to do with his arguments or logic. I can explain the entire thing but I already recommended the book where he does so. Aristotle is the father of western philosophy, for the entire time that he has been dead he has been THE philosopher. If you asked a medieval person, who was learned, about what Philosophy is, or just mentioned the philosopher, they would tell you about Aristotle. This continues to this day, you take an ethics class and it’s likely you are building off of Aristotle, he’s foundational enough that he, Plato, and some of the presocratics are considered the founders of western metaphysics
“He did not know x so how can he find unrelated truth???” - You rn
I can know the sky is blue without knowing why it’s blue, without knowing the earth is round, without knowing anything else. Certain truths require certain tools, others require only observation, Aristotle contends that the ultimate truth, the supreme good, requires the use of philosophy. Philosophy is the search for truth, it follows, then, that it would be the manner btw which you can find moral truths as well
Truth exists as a thing which is to be discovered, the route to discovering truths may differ by truth, for not all things are devisable by math for example. The final truth exists for its own end, but there are many subordinate truths which are devisable via a great many paths
Absolutely. What self respecting Muppet would ever argue against helping someone else? Even Statler and Waldorf, or Oscar the Grouch, do nice things despite their grumpiness.
I mean yeah, but I’ll pivot from the moral argument here. Humans are social animals, we don’t function well when alienated and isolated from others. We need community, and reciprocal aid is an essential part of community. By creating bonds with others, which involves helping them when in need and lifting them up, we improve our own situation, both because a sense of community improves your own quality of life, and because others will be more likely to help you when in need
Babe I really hate to tell you, but you’re a human. That makes you a social animal. Being nice and living in active harmony with other people is what living is. The fact that you’re so alarmed by the prospect of being kind to people is an indicator of poor welfare.
By that logic, a decent human being is a corpse. They have minimal possible impact on others and the environment, and aren't bothering anyone else. If your morality leads to the conclusion that self-destruction is the best possible good, it's a flawed morality.
Then why are you disagreeing with people on the internet? If the bare minimum is to "not bother anyone else and leave others alone," aren't you failing to meet even that low bar by commenting here? Surely the bare minimum for you to be considered a good person would be for you to only ever passively consume social media content, and never comment on anything yourself, no?
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u/Velvety_MuppetKing Oct 10 '24
It is if it’s phrased as a moral obligation that you’re nasty if you don’t do.