another attempt to explain that there is no god

last SG · 2007-07-12T06:17:32+00:00

Hehe... But I've a feeling that's what they want Christians to say.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

"Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut.

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all."

AndrewPKYap SG

There is an alternative view and that is, "It is possible to understand and explain why one's thoughts, other people, life, eternity and the universe are utterly unreal. There is no need to "assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all". Therefore it is wrong to say that "Reason is itself a matter of faith."

The trick is know how to find meaning in life in the face of utter reality and not cling on to "beliefs". That is manifestly a very difficult thing to do for most people and so I do not begrudge people having a religion but I urge people to live in reality.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

That's an interesting notion, and in fact if I was a party in power would love to think that way... but there is just a catch.

If indeed there is no need to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all, then there is indeed no need or reason to believe that any one way of thinking ought to be more reasonable or "living in reality" then the next.

Hence Atheism or Theism are both equally absurd, and neither can be trusted to give any picture of things at all. Everything is truly an utterly unreal.

In such a world or its just a matter of how you relate to reality , it would indeed be a world of see-as-you-want to those who have mastered the trick of accepting the absurdism of reality.

Through of course, in order to make such a claim that our reason be relevant to reality at all, we are indeed making an absolute observation on reality, as well as reason itself, and from where we derive such a principle does not seem to be birthed of any logic but simply a presupposition accepted without question- for indeed it is unquestionable- yet again on faith.

But supposing we are all truly deluded and stumble around reality with no way to relate to it. Then it would seem that we have abandoned all hope of assuming any moral stance over any oppressive or despotic powers that lay claim to our rights- for indeed, our rights are simply constructs with no relation to reality beyond what we wished for- and by what law shall what we wish for should not be taken away from us if we accept such a universe?

For such a universe only accepts the law of power, the ability to play out by delusion over yours.

Hence, oppressing somebody for my own (in my opinion) benefit is palatable as long as I convince myself that all these appeals to freedom, justice and virtue are simply human constructs with no relation to reality- and indeed, my own thoughts. If I have the power to override or suppress them then there is really no wrong in doing so.

As long as I convince myself of the unreality of others, and find my own meaning at any cost (even at that of others), and have the power to do so... then all is well.

I find it hard to eloquently argue against any despotic powers in Speakers Corner unless I have indeed, rejected such a worldview. In fact this would pretty much mean that whatever point of view we take on politics are actually all equal, and just a result of our upbringing or digestion to come to whichever faction we have chosen... but neither really justifies itself more then the other.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

It is upon the Trunk that a gentleman works.

Analects of Confucius, I.2

The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it. But this is not necessarily a refutation of subjectivism about values as a theory. The true doctrine might be a doctrine which if we accept we die. No one who speaks from within the Tao could reject it on that account: 'åí äå öáåé êáé 'äëåóóïõ. But it has not yet come to that. There are theoretical difficulties in the philosophy of Gaius and Titius.

However subjective they may be about some traditional values, Gaius and Titius have shown by the very act of writing The Green Book that there must be some other values about which they are not subjective at all. They write in order to produce certain states of mind in the rising generation, if not because they think those states of mind intrinsically just or good, yet certainly because they think them to be the means to some state of society which they regard as desirable. It would not be difficult to collect from various passages in The Green Book what their ideal is. But we need not. The important point is not the precise nature of their end, but the fact that they have an end at all. They must have, or their book (being purely practical in intention) is written to no purpose. And this end must have real value in their eyes. To abstain from calling it good and to use, instead, such predicates as 'necessary' or 'progressive' or 'efficient' would be a subterfuge. They could be forced by argument to answer the questions 'necessary for what?', 'progressing towards what?', 'effecting what?'; in the last resort they would have to admit that some state of affairs was in their opinion good for its own sake. And this time they could not maintain that 'good' simply described their own emotion about it. For the whole purpose of their book is so to condition theyoung reader that he will share their approval, and this would be either a fool's or a villain's undertaking unless they held that their approval was in some way valid or correct.

In actual fact Gaius and Titius will be found to hold, with complete uncritical dogmatism, the whole system of values which happened to be in vogue among moderately educated young men of the professional classes during the period between the two wars.1 Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values; about the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough. And this phenomenon is very usual. A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional or (as they would say) 'sentimental' values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process. They claim to be cutting away the parasitic growth of emotion, religious sanction, and inherited taboos, in order that 'real' or 'basic' values may emerge. I will now try to find out what happens if this is seriously attempted.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

Let us continue to use the previous examplethat of death for a good causenot, of course, because virtue is the only value or martyrdom the only virtue, but because this is the experimentum crucis which shows different systems of thought in the clearest light. Let us suppose that an Innovator in values regards dulce et decorum and greater love hath no man as mere irrational sentiments which are to be stripped off in order that we may get down to the 'realistic' or 'basic' ground of this value. Where will he find such a ground?

First of all, he might say that the real value lay in the utility of such sacrifice to the community. 'Good', he might say, 'means what is useful to the community.' But of course the death of the community is not useful to the communityonly the death of some of its members. What is really meant is that the death of some men is useful to other men. That is very true. But on what ground are some men being asked to die for the benefit of others? Every appeal to pride, honour, shame, or love is excluded by hypothesis. To use these would be to return to sentiment and the Innovator's task is, having cut all that away, to explain to men, in terms of pure reasoning, why they will be well advised to die that others may live. He may say 'Unless some of us risk death all of us are certain to die.' But that will be true only in a limited number of cases; and even when it is true it provokes the very reasonable counter question 'Why should I be one of those who take the risk?'

At this point the Innovator may ask why, after all, selfishness should be more 'rational' or 'intelligent' than altruism. The question is welcome. If by Reason we mean the process actually employed by Gaius and Titius when engaged in debunking (that is, the connecting by inference of propositions, ultimately derived from sense data, with further propositions), then the answer must be that a refusal to sacrifice oneself is no more rational than a consent to do so. And no less rational. Neither choice is rationalor irrationalat all. From propositions about fact alone no practical conclusion can ever be drawn. This will preserve society cannot lead to do this except by the mediation of society ought to be preserved. This will cost you your life cannot lead directly to do not do this: it can lead to it only through a felt desire or an acknowledged duty of self-preservation. The Innovator is trying to get a conclusion in the imperative mood out of premisses in the indicative mood: and though he continues trying to all eternity he cannot succeed, for the thing is impossible. We must therefore either extend the word Reason to include what our ancestors called Practical Reason and confess that judgements such as society ought to be preserved (though they can support themselves by no reason of the sort that Gaius and Titius demand) are not mere sentiments but are rationality itself; or else we must give up at once, and for ever, the attempt to find a core of 'rational' value behind all the sentiments we have debunked. The Innovator will not take the first alternative, for practical principles known to all men by Reason are simply the Tao which he has set out to supersede. He is more likely to give up the quest for a 'rational' core and to hunt for some other ground even more 'basic' and 'realistic'.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

This he will probably feel that he has found in Instinct. The preservation of society, and of the species itself, are ends that do not hang on the precarious thread of Reason: they are given by Instinct. That is why there is no need to argue against the man who does not acknowledge them. We have an instinctive urge to preserve our own species. That is why men ought to work for posterity. We have no instinctive urge to keep promises or to respect individual life: that is why scruples of justice and humanityin fact the Taocan be properly swept away when they conflict with our real end, the preservation of the species. That, again, is why the modern situation permits and demands a new sexual morality: the old taboos served some real purpose in helping to preserve the species, but contraceptives have modified this and we can now abandon many of the taboos. For of course sexual desire, being instinctive, is to be gratified whenever it does not conflict with the preservation of the species. It looks, in fact, as if an ethics based on instinct will give the Innovator all he wants and nothing that he does not want.

In reality we have not advanced one step. I will not insist on the point that Instinct is a name for we know not what (to say that migratory birds find their way by instinct is only to say that we do not know how migratory birds find their way), for I think it is here being used in a fairly definite sense, to mean an unreflective or spontaneous impulse widely felt by the members of a given species. In what way does Instinct, thus conceived, help us to find 'real' values? Is it maintained that we must obey Instinct, that we cannot do otherwise? But if so, why are Green Books and the like written? Why this stream of exhortation to drive us where we cannot help going? Why such praise for those who have submitted to the inevitable? Or is it maintained that if we do obey Instinct we shall be happy and satisfied? But the very question we are considering was that of facing death which (so far as the Innovator knows) cuts off every possible satisfaction: and if we have an instinctive desire for the good of posterity then this desire, by the very nature of the case, can never be satisfied, since its aim is achieved, if at all, when we are dead. It looks very much as if the Innovator would have to say not that we must obey Instinct, nor that it will satisfy us to do so, but that we ought to obey it.2

But why ought we to obey Instinct? Is there another instinct of a higher order directing us to do so, and a third of a still higher order directing us to obey it?an infinite regress of instincts? This is presumably impossible, but nothing else will serve. From the statement about psychological fact 'I have an impulse to do so and so' we cannot by any ingenuity derive the practical principle 'I ought to obey this impulse'. Even if it were true that men had a spontaneous, unreflective impulse to sacrifice their own lives for the preservation of their fellows, it remains a quite separate question whether this is an impulse they should control or one they should indulge. For even the Innovator admits that many impulses (those which conflict with the preservation of the species) have to be controlled. And this admission surely introduces us to a yet more fundamental difficulty.

Telling us to obey Instinct is like telling us to obey 'people'. People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence? To listen to that instinct speaking in its own cause and deciding it in its own favour would be rather simple-minded. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. By the very act of listening to one rather than to others we have already prejudged the case. If we did not bring to the examination of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them. And that knowledge cannot itself be instinctive: the judge cannot be one of the parties judged; or, if he is, the decision is worthless and there is no ground for placing the preservation of the species above self-preservation or sexual appetite.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

The idea that, without appealing to any court higher than the instincts themselves, we can yet find grounds for preferring one instinct above its fellows dies very hard. We grasp at useless words: we call it the 'basic', or 'fundamental', or 'primal', or 'deepest' instinct. It is of no avail. Either these words conceal a value judgement passed upon the instinct and therefore not derivable from it, or else they merely record its felt intensity, the frequency of its operation and its wide distribution. If the former, the whole attempt to base value upon instinct has been abandoned: if the latter, these observations about the quantitative aspects of a psychological event lead to no practical conclusion. It is the old dilemma. Either the premisses already concealed an imperative or the conclusion remains merely in the indicative.3

Finally, it is worth inquiry whether there is any instinct to care for posterity or preserve the species. I do not discover it in myself: and yet I am a man rather prone to think of remote futuritya man who can read Mr Olaf Stapledon with delight. Much less do I find it easy to believe that the majority of people who have sat opposite me in buses or stood with me in queues feel an unreflective impulse to do anything at all about the species, or posterity. Only people educated in a particular way have ever had the idea 'posterity' before their minds at all. It is difficult to assign to instinct our attitude towards an object which exists only for reflective men. What we have by nature is an impulse to preserve our own children and grandchildren; an impulse which grows progressively feebler as the imagination looks forward and finally dies out in the 'deserts of vast futurity'. No parents who were guided by this instinct would dream for a moment of setting up the claims of their hypothetical descendants against those of the baby actually crowing and kicking in the room. Those of us who accept the Tao may, perhaps, say that they ought to do so: but that is not open to those who treat instinct as the source of value. As we pass from mother love to rational planning for the future we are passing away from the realm of instinct into that of choice and reflection: and if instinct is the source of value, planning for the future ought to be less respectable and less obligatory than the baby language and cuddling of the fondest mother or the most fatuous nursery anecdotes of a doting father. If we are to base ourselves upon instinct, these things are the substance, and care for posterity the shadowthe huge, flickering shadow of the nursery happiness cast upon the screen of the unknown future. I do not say this projection is a bad thing: but then I do not believe that instinct is the ground of value judgements. What is absurd is to claim that your care for posterity finds its justification in instinct and then flout at every turn the only instinct on which it could be supposed to rest, tearing the child almost from the breast to creche and kindergarten in the interests of progress and the coming race.

The truth finally becomes apparent that neither in any operation with factual propositions nor in any appeal to instinct can the Innovator find the basis for a system of values. None of the principles he requires are to be found there: but they are all to be found somewhere else. 'All within the four seas are his brothers' (xii. 5) says Confucius of the Chün-tzu, the cuor gentil or gentleman. Humani nihil a me alienum puto says the Stoic. 'Do as you would be done by,' says Jesus. 'Humanity is to be preserved,' says Locke.4 All the practical principles behind the Innovator's case for posterity, or society, or the species, are there from time immemorial in the Tao. But they are nowhere else. Unless you accept these without question as being to the world of action what axioms are to the world of theory, you can have no practical principles whatever. You cannot reach them as conclusions: they are premisses. You may, since they can give no 'reason' for themselves of a kind to silence Gaius and Titius, regard them as sentiments: but then you must give up contrasting 'real' or 'rational' value with sentimental value. All value will be sentimental; and you must confess (on pain of abandoning every value) that all sentiment is not 'merely' subjective. You may, on the other hand, regard them as rationalnay as rationality itselfas things so obviously reasonable that they neither demand nor admit proof. But then you must allow that Reason can be practical, that an ought must not be dismissed because it cannot produce some is as its credential. If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.

AndrewPKYap SG

You can say that if you have not "thought through" the whole "reality is unreal bit". Let me ask you a question. How can you find meaning in life and living when you have reasoned that "Everything is truly an utterly unreal"?

While you have eloquently reasoned that it "must" lead to a decline in morality or despair and "supremacy of the powerful", I submit that it does not. You inability to see any alternatives does not make your notion true.

Let me repeat my earlier statement:

and maybe I should add: "as far as possible" because I understand that many people need crutches in their lives, for one reason or another and for example, when they cannot see any alternative to what you have asserted in your post that I have quoted.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

Meaning does not matter. It is only in a state of confusion in a meaningless universe that we think that we need to find meaning in anything. It is an illusion, subject to the movements of electrons and atoms in our brain then it is anything else.

It does not matter if there are any alternatives or not, what I am pointing out is that one way or another is not higher or lower. Being oppressed is not any worse or unjust then being free because these are simply unreal concepts with no value beyond what our digestion compels us to assign to them.

Hence on what grounds to do you submit that it does not become true, or will become true because there no alternatives?

What I am pointing out is that such a worldview fully justifies whatever tyrants and despots want to do, provided the have the power to do it. "Rights and freedom" are arbitary notions raised up by the oppressed to give personal meaning to their lives, but it is no more justified then wanting to oppress.

One does not need to find meaning in life and living, as Friedrich Nietzsche and Freud pointed out these are simply the results of slave complexes and neurosis. It is the superman, the elite, the one and alone that has the power and will to create his own meaning and reason and implement it in the universe, whatever that may be good or bad (indeed good or bad does not exist) for others.

Exactly, this desire to believe in "rights", "choices", "justice" and "freedom" are arbitary crutches for the directionless man to give direction to his action. But this direction is not higher or any better then a man commited to their opposites.

Indeed, we have sawed off the branch we were sitting on and now have no right to say anything about anything at all. The man who questions the system from the outside can be hostile, but he cannot criticize.

As the Merovingian said, choice is an illusion, created between those who have power and those who have not. The only true law is action and reaction, cause and effect.

AndrewPKYap SG

I just posted something totally unrelated to this in another site but the relevance is uncanny (regarding cause and effect):

"I am always amused when people are so sure that something or other will happen as they predicted.

Think about it. Do you even know the cause of something that has already happened?

The reason you are reading this; was it because you switch on the computer? Was it because you switched on the computer and somebody discovered electricity? Was it because somebody invented the computer and somebody discovered electricity and you switched on the computer?

Was it because it was all of the above and your parents sent you to an English language school?

If you cannot know the real cause of something that is happening now and something that has happened; what makes you think that you can predict the future?

This is so out of topic, I will probably delete it away sooner...
Posted on 07/12/07 at 08:11:59 "

Even in a universe of utterly doubtful reality there are LAWS. If you let go of an apple, it will fall to the ground.

"Why did the apple fall to the ground? "Was it because (the cause) you let go of it?" "Was it because you let go of it and also somebody planted the apple tree?" "Was it because somebody planted the tree and somebody imported it and you bought it and then you let go of it?"

While we cannot know the real cause, we know that if you let go of the apple, it drops to the ground".

If you can realize the utter unreality of the universe, you can also realize the LAWS governing this existence.

Sure, the LAWS are ultimately "unreal" as well. Sure my existence is unreal but "Cogito ergo sum" nevertheless.

There is a "sort of" reality within the unreality. It is this "weird reality" that we operate in and this "weird reality" is what stops man from being totally nihilistic.

To ignore the utter unreality of the universe is delusion but to ignore this "weird reality" is equally delusional.

The key is how one should live life in a non dualistic existence where one balances the ultimate unreality with the weird reality.

This is where true happiness resides.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

Erm, you still haven't really answered my question.

What laws then, should the despot and tyrant answer to? As far as nature is concerned, the strongest survive and the winners win. Freedom and democracy are just but players in this very game and not inalienable rights to any sentient being.

If indeed a system wins over freedom and justice, then what assumption can be made against it?

To ignore the utter unreality of the universe is delusion but to ignore this "weird reality" is equally delusional.

The question then is, what's so bad about delusion is delusion and badness themselves are delusions?

The key is how one should live life in a non dualistic existence where one balances the ultimate unreality with the weird reality.

This is where true happiness resides.

What exactly is "true happiness" and how exactly is is measured anyway?

If it is but a movement of atoms in a brain that can be replicated in any other way, why indeed do we have to go through the trouble of reconizing illusion, and then accepting in at all?

Indeed, is not ignorance bliss.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

Indeed, if what I do observe from natural laws (apple falling to the ground) allows me to do something that I want to do, shall I do it?

Supposing I was a psycopath who derives pleasure enjoys robbing, torturing and then killing people, and my next target is you and your family. And supposing doing so will cause me great gain.

What's more, I have found a way to do such a thing without getting caught or you and your family being able to stop me.

From all this, natural laws have derived that just as there is now nothing to stop the apple from reaching the ground, there is nothing stopping me from carrying out my goal of robbing, torturing and then killing you and your family.

There would be no appeals to law because I have found a way to avoid them, nor any appeal to morality because they are by our worldview, illusionary. The only reality that is after all this illusion is that I can, and will kill you and there is nothing wrong with it, no matter how much you will protest.

Indeed, the most natural law is that of power, of planets being forced to orbit suns and suns in a galaxy and galaxies in a universe.

Kuali Baba SG

January, I will tell you why your attempt is flawed. It’s based on the premise that if God exists, the world would be a perfect place. However, none of the religions preach that.

AndrewPKYap SG

I answered your question when I pointed out to you that there is an Ultimate Reality and a "Temporary Reality"

You can for example say, ultimately we all die. In the mean time we live.

To live as if we live forever is to live in delusion. To ignore the fact that we are alive at the moment is equally an illusion.

I can say that ultimately, your existence is unreal and that you do not even exists. That you are a figment of my imagination or you are an illusion in my mind.

Ultimately.

Ultimately is not all there is to it, is it? There is as I mentioned in my last post, a weird reality but a reality nevertheless.

To ignore Ultimate Reality is delusional but to ignore weird reality is equally delusional.

It is also not true that in nature the strongest survive. There is strength in numbers as well. A group of united weaklings can overcome a big bully.

Happiness is subjective. If you are not happy, what are you going to do about it? If you want to be happier, what are you going to do about it?

To answer your question about despots and tyrants directly, they cannot do as they please or others will not let them do as they please simply because there is a "weird reality" in addition to the ultimate reality.

You assumptions are that, since everything is ultimately unreal, then despots can justifiable do as they please. You ignore "weird" reality.

Let me repeat, to ignore ultimate reality is to live in delusion and to ignore "weird" reality (you drop the apple it falls to the ground) is also a delusion.

If you want to live life in a state of delusion, nobody is stopping you.

AndrewPKYap SG

Maybe it is better to say: “If people want to live life in a state of delusion, nobody is stopping them”. Just in case you take things very personally.

Phaze SG

I don't think anyone claims that the world would be a perfect place even if the supernatural existed. After all, even if there were a supernatural creator, there is no reason to think that creator is perfect. In fact, in my opinion, no perfect being can be a creator. A perfect being would be perfect in itself and have no need to create.

However, I think we can all agree that if the supernatural did exist, the world that we live in would be a much different place as compared to a natural world.

For the sake of argument, let's say that God answered Christian prayers, or to be more specific, Catholic prayers and not the wishes or prayers of other religions. Answering prayers is a violation of natural law and would give catholics a clear advantage over other religions and the non-religious.

Kuali Baba SG

And conversely, if the supernatural truly exists, then a world without it would be very different from what we know too.

Phaze SG

That is true. But if you use that argument, you are using a very different definition of the word 'supernatural'.

If indeed the supernatural truly exists, it expresses itself in this universe in completely natural ways. If you take that position, then there is no meaning to the word 'supernatural'.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

So are still not making much sense, prehaps you could explain your point clearer:

What is this "or others will not let them do as they please simply because there is a "weird reality" in addition to the ultimate reality?

If indeed a tyrant has found a way to override the objections of others through some method, has not his will become to ultimate reality that others have to be subject to?

I mean, could not one also say:

To answer your question about democracy and free men directly, they cannot do as they please or tyrants and despots will not let them do as they please simply because there is a "weird reality" in addition to the ultimate reality.

In fact I don't think you have advanced one step, all it seems to be is that whatever we consider to be a no-no aka. "despotism for the freedom lover", and "freedom for the tyrant" are but dislikes that men, according to their digestion and upbringing, have taken sides on.

All you've done is stated a conflict, but not said anything about which cause is more correct- all you've said is that there will be conflict.

Which still begs the point, if there's a conflict and no laws in it (as defined by your weird reality and ultimate reality), then the only law is the power of either side.

The ultimate reality is that one side must win, it just depends on which "weird" reality of either side is stronger... which brings me back to my point, power rules at the end of the day...

And while this is an assumption on my part, I do not think that human nature lends itself much to the cause of democracy in the long run.

As C.S. Lewis puts it:

This he will probably feel that he has found in Instinct. The preservation of society, and of the species itself, are ends that do not hang on the precarious thread of Reason: they are given by Instinct. That is why there is no need to argue against the man who does not acknowledge them. We have an instinctive urge to preserve our own species. That is why men ought to work for posterity. We have no instinctive urge to keep promises or to respect individual life: that is why scruples of justice and humanityin fact the Taocan be properly swept away when they conflict with our real end, the preservation of the species. That, again, is why the modern situation permits and demands a new sexual morality: the old taboos served some real purpose in helping to preserve the species, but contraceptives have modified this and we can now abandon many of the taboos. For of course sexual desire, being instinctive, is to be gratified whenever it does not conflict with the preservation of the species. It looks, in fact, as if an ethics based on instinct will give the Innovator all he wants and nothing that he does not want.

In reality we have not advanced one step. I will not insist on the point that Instinct is a name for we know not what (to say that migratory birds find their way by instinct is only to say that we do not know how migratory birds find their way), for I think it is here being used in a fairly definite sense, to mean an unreflective or spontaneous impulse widely felt by the members of a given species. In what way does Instinct, thus conceived, help us to find 'real' values? Is it maintained that we must obey Instinct, that we cannot do otherwise? But if so, why are Green Books and the like written? Why this stream of exhortation to drive us where we cannot help going? Why such praise for those who have submitted to the inevitable? Or is it maintained that if we do obey Instinct we shall be happy and satisfied? But the very question we are considering was that of facing death which (so far as the Innovator knows) cuts off every possible satisfaction: and if we have an instinctive desire for the good of posterity then this desire, by the very nature of the case, can never be satisfied, since its aim is achieved, if at all, when we are dead. It looks very much as if the Innovator would have to say not that we must obey Instinct, nor that it will satisfy us to do so, but that we ought to obey it.2

But why ought we to obey Instinct? Is there another instinct of a higher order directing us to do so, and a third of a still higher order directing us to obey it?an infinite regress of instincts? This is presumably impossible, but nothing else will serve. From the statement about psychological fact 'I have an impulse to do so and so' we cannot by any ingenuity derive the practical principle 'I ought to obey this impulse'. Even if it were true that men had a spontaneous, unreflective impulse to sacrifice their own lives for the preservation of their fellows, it remains a quite separate question whether this is an impulse they should control or one they should indulge. For even the Innovator admits that many impulses (those which conflict with the preservation of the species) have to be controlled. And this admission surely introduces us to a yet more fundamental difficulty.

Telling us to obey Instinct is like telling us to obey 'people'. People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence? To listen to that instinct speaking in its own cause and deciding it in its own favour would be rather simple-minded. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. By the very act of listening to one rather than to others we have already prejudged the case. If we did not bring to the examination of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them. And that knowledge cannot itself be instinctive: the judge cannot be one of the parties judged; or, if he is, the decision is worthless and there is no ground for placing the preservation of the species above self-preservation or sexual appetite.

SingaporeTyrannosaur SG

Or as Agent Smith says, what compels us to fight on against tyranny and depotism?

Unless we have admitted in some way that our own weird perception/reality of the concepts of freedom and justice are somehow more important and right then the concepts of tyranny and depostism.

But unless we justify them by some yardstick that is in the basis of your so-called Ultimate Reality, there is really no reason to fight for these things except that we just happened, to have no other justification except by instinct, to end up on the bandwagon.

The thing is, I have yet to hear anything from you about what exists in Ultimate Reality that says that freedom and justice are more worthy causes then tyranny and depotism? Or is it just entirely a "weird" reality thing created from the digestion and perception of people really no different from where the ideas of tyranny and depotism were born?

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