Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

The problem is that you seem to assume that in my system, all this being responsible for things must result in horrible self-loathing and guilt.

There is -plenty- of room in this system for just not giving a **** about the fact that you bear some responsibility for things. Sometimes people take -credit- for the contributions they make via "Not interfering" just as much as they try to say that because they didn't interfere they deserve no credit at all.

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

I don't care one way or another whether responsibility entails moral responsibility, although given that this was the assumption I had of what the discussion was about I'm sort of thrown off. I also don't care whether people think themselves responsible or not responsible, only whether they are. I don't think there is a connection between perceived and actual responsibility, causality is the only link in responsibility, perception and emotion play no role.

At this point though I wonder if there's even a point to arguing, because you're saying "There is some, necessarily undefined level of responsibility applicable to all existing entities for all existing situations, which may or may not have a link to some, necessarily undefined level of moral responsibility, which may or may not allow for moral evaluation based on personal values, in a way that remains open-ended and undefined".

How could such a statement even pretend to have substance to refute?

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

If you grant, for a moment, that inaction as I defined it -does- count as an action, which allows for your particular kind of feeling of responsibility; can you at least see how in such an instance, the degree to which you then are responsible is irellevant, and the degree to which you may or may not feel morally good or bad about it becomes irellevant in the statement "I am responsible"?

If you can see how given that circumstance (even though I know you disagree with that circumstance) your summation of as actually boils down to "There is some level of responsibility applicable to people who are aware of a situation, have the power to effect it, and are aware of the consequences of doing so" then perhaps I have some miniscule hope of explaining my position in a way that you will at least understand, even if you continue to vehemantly disagree.

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Intuition is a type of "understanding" I would prefer to rid myself of.

It's not a feeling of responsibility. How many times do I have to say human emotions have nothing to do with responsibility, only a direct cause/effect relationship is behind responsibility.

No; What?

Look, I understand what you're trying to say, it just isn't something which can be substantiated. the notion itself isn't particularly offensive to me, although what the notion is used for seems problematic, but my main concern is that there is no way to give your position any foundation outside of language, and while part of the problem may simply be that we're using different language, my language at least pretends a distinction between the real and the ideal and some applicability of its descriptive function to the state of affairs of reality. A reality. A real one.

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Well, I mean it comes down to the fact that I consider knowing you can act, and choosing not to, to be a deliberate -action- and like all actions, has consequences.

To me, you're putting the cart before the horse and saying "Unless there are -outside consequences- you haven't acted" Where to me, the actions you -enabled- by -choosing- to not act -are- the consequences of that action.

Basically, I consider "refraining from disabling" and "enabling" to be functionally the same thing, and you do not.

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

So, you are agreeing with me that consciously inaction (thinking and deciding not to act) is in fact and action.

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

and to me, the word "enabled" implies causation, making your entire position a huge ****ing equivocation. Oh, but no, you look at causation backwards, observing first the effects and then deducing causality where it isn't. And why do you do this? Naturally because when you see effects you don't like, you have to search for causes which also offend your majesties royal, divinely substantiated sensibilities.

I'm not the one putting things in the wrong order.

All actions have consequences, but not all, no, not any actions have consequences which extend to infinity. Some actions carry far, others carry very short. Thoughts and internal decisions don't contain an element of external causality. If you flinch at your inability to find a convergence between emotion and reality, get the fuck over yourself.

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Sure, just not an action of any stripe which would allow you to hold someone responsible for something that occurred externally to them.

I see what you did there.

Just as I was talking to a friend of mine about how much I was enjoying the discussion, and how even if I disagreed with your position, I could understand how and why you might think that way, you had to go and do the whole "10 year old, only with a better vocabulary" thing you get criticized for so often in here.

Look, this is the situation: Call it what you will (and you will) but I simply cannot see how you can be in a situation, and have the ability to simply -make- the situation happen or not happen, and sit there and tell yourself "I didn't let it happen, it would have happened anyway, in absolutely no way is this something that has to do with me" To me -that- is an equivocation to make people who are too afraid to actually intervene in a situation feel better about themselves.

"I -could- have stopped it, but I decided not to" I really can't see how you could possibly argue that someone in such a situation has -absolutely no- responsibility for the consequences of their electing not to intervene. It's a coward's way to justify apathy and non-involvement. As soon as you can effect a situation you are -in- the situation, how you elect to -act- within that situation is up to you, but if your chosen action -in- the situation is to do nothing to stop it, you have acted and are responsible for the consequences of that action.

You are standing on the sidewalk, a child is standing on the curb, and from up the nearby hill, you can see a car rolling down the hill directly towards the child. The child is in arms reach, it is a trivial action to grab his arm and pull him to safety. You can see that he doesn't notice the car, and that if you do nothing, the car will hit and crush the child. You decide "I'm going to let nature take its course" and the car hits the child and crushes him to death.

I simply am incapable of understanding an outlook that would make you then say "Well, I didn't change anything, -none- of that is the -slightest- bit of my fault"

Re: I see what you did there.

How could I afford not to be arrogant, out of 6 billion people I'm the closest one to actually seeing the world.


You dislike rhetoric. OK. I dislike deeply ingrained cognitive biases which lead to fallacious modes of thought. It doesn't mean I dislike you, just what seems to be a substantial portion of you. If it makes any difference you're one of the most likable people I've conversed with in this respect, in terms of lack of relative foolishness.

Would you blame the forest which surrounded a tree struck by lightning for not attracting the lighting themselves? Of course not, a tree has no animus. But what is animus except the utilized ability to act, to effect causal change? You're a superstitious fool, plain and simple.

Let's look at the role emotional language plays in your formulation. It looks to me like it's.... total. A total role. "Afraid" "coward" "apathy". You're using observed bad character synonymously with responsibility, in this case, pejoratively, "guilt". Again, a little too convenient for me to take your language as a serious measurement of reality.

Yeah, and? Think up all the examples you want, it won't change reality. Of course you don't have the strength to abandon the role of emotion in formulating your world view, so correspondingly of course you are incapable of seeing the truth of my position.

I know. I forgive you.

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

What isn't causal?

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Thoughts. Or rather, whatever element of causality is contained in thoughts doesn't extend into the realm of interpersonal relationships or effective physical actions, including simple vocalization of thoughts, without additional action or otherwise expenditure of energy.

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

You're reaching way too hard here.

Re: Conscious inaction; an action in itself?

Do you have an actual criticism, or do you just find something repulsive about the amount of effort you believe I put into the last response?

Well, either way I'm going to bed. I'll either hear more argument/whining tommorow, V~

Backhanded!

Does "Damning with faint praise" count as a logical fallacy?

I agree with the first portion of your definition, and disagree with the second. Deciding to not directly effect the situation is utilizing your ability to act. You appeal to the lack of causal effect by saying "If I wasn't there, things would be the same" except that you -are- there, and making the animated choice to maintain the situation as it is.

If, for example, a government decides to maintain a standing law, they are viewed as having made an -active- -responsible- decision...that has no direct causal effect on the way things had been previously. The law existed, they elected to not remove it, but they are held responsible for the consequences of the upholding of that law.

Being the 1 in 6 billion unique person that you are, you'll no doubt point out that there are all kinds of trivial laws on the books since days of yore which have never been removed, but which people simply acknowledge as being non-entities as far as considering them or paying them heed is concerned, but since your stance is one that says there is -never- a case as described in which your belief fails to apply, even if you appeal to millions of cases where you are correct, I need have only one where I am.

This leads back to where you openly criticized me for having vague and ambiguous terms. Well, your stance is one of 'zero' and my stance is one of 'non-zero' as any mathematician will tell you, the actual size of the non-zero is completely irellevant when just comparing 0 and !0.

So...because your belief says "Emotional language is invalid" my use of emotional language causes you to dismiss my point...okay, please provide varifiable, objective universal proof that emotional language is -always- invalid in this case ie. other than "Because I believe it isn't"

Ought we to call you Friedrich from here on out? I can practically hear your will powering. As soon as you can provide proof for your negative (Since disproving one is inherently impossible, and thus the burden of proof is yours) namely, that you have the aforementioned provable, universal truth that in absolutely no case, ever, does emotion have a necessary function in ones worldview, I guess we can continue.

Well, isn't that consoling.