Inmendham’s Alphabet Of Evaluational Transgressions

[Update 2017-04-30: There are a few things in this post I no longer endorse. Some of the issues I'm spotting on this latest reread are stylistic. Others are plainly substantive, like my treatment of emotional suffering as categorically distinct from physical suffering, such that physical suffering always wins first rank in the moral prioritization realm. In 2013 and early 2014, I really did mean always whenever I wrote "always". This is subject to numerous reductio ad absurdum based counters, which are so obvious one shouldn't feel the need to single one out. Oddly enough, my attempts to free welfarist theories from all such reductios were precisely what motivated the emotional/physical categorization in the first place. I now accept that there is no avoiding of reductios, at least not in moral philosophy. I might be nitpicking, but that's just how it rolls with me. For updated criticisms of all things Inmendham, see this blog's post-2013 posts. I'm only keeping this post up because I (largely) share Inmendham's belief that wiping out content that was once available for public consumption is intellectually uncouth. As such, let the record stand.]

This will be an overdue continuation of the squabble from earlier this year between the discrete value economics promoted by Inmendham et al versus what I'll coin here as 'Freelance Ethics'. The last time I made an effort to cover some of this, I received a juicy dead-end for my troubles. Hopefully the itemized structure of this post will assist me in communicating rebuttals in a more lucid manner compared to the bloated posts from seven months ago.

Additionally, let this serve as a manifesto highlighting other areas where seeing eye to eye with Inmendham is managed only by paying no mind to internal consistency, while offering my own heterodox theories on a shiny platter for readers to adopt and/or scrutinize. One thing motivating me here is Inmendham’s ongoing challenge to have someone (anyone) present a cogent counterargument to any of his stated beliefs. He’s been griping about his inability to get a properly structured, well-organized debate format off the ground due to a lack of interest. This is true. No critic is ardent enough to put in the necessary time/effort to undermine Inmendham’s formulation of Intrinsic Value in a way that might resonate with him, so I’ll jump in and be an accommodating host by alphabetizing the entire ordeal. Each contentious issue gets its own letter. By assigning letters to individual points which are bound to continue causing friction, no item of contention will be swept under the rug. Inmendham can easily reference each section of our now abecedarian dispute outlined below (assuming he wishes to argue further, which I’m sure he will). Oh the excitement.

Note: Jump-links for the below are pending due to ongoing formatting issues

 

The Contents:

Inmendham Glossary (beginners only)

Preamble 

A. Establishing Premises

B. Central tensions between 'Justice Maximization' and 'Harm Minimization' 

C. "Sentience creates value" 

D. "That’s just your psychology"  

E. The Orphanage Proposal 

F. Extinction: The Pseudo-Goal 

G. Assisted Suicide vs. Unsolicited Mercy Killings

H. 'The Golden Rule' Is Awfully Rusty

I. "They can’t handle the truth”

J. "Why don't people lament the absence of life on other planets?"

K. “Zero-Sum Game” as a Post-Natal Proposition

L. “You can’t win” vs. Crude Literalism

M. 'Moral Nihilism' and 'Defeatism' are disjointed 

N. Non-Rational =/= Irrational

O. Non-impositions?  

P. Approved Impositions

Q. AntiNatalism and Atheism are not ideological cousins

R. Hedonism

S. Tactical Insults vs. Knee-Jerk Insults

T. Open Hostility Towards Doubt

U. Unquenchable Reinforcement Of Belief (including $1000 challenge) 

V. Style, Substance, and VloggerDome 

Summation

Inmendham Buries Himself On Ethics. Again.

Inmendham responded to my latest video. I urge everyone to watch his response here. I will no longer be leaving comments on Inmendham's videos (as some of my comments will continue getting spam-marked) which means I'll be refuting his molesting of context and timelines here. This will be a time-stamped, point-by-point contextualization of the arguments and replies. My initial hope was to simply post this as an "update" on the underbar of my last video, but YT won't accept it. I'm guessing it's too long for an underbar.

Before I proceed with the time-stamps, I'll address a reoccurring complaint from Inmendham. He kept pointing out that my thought experiments weren't at all relevant because I initiated every bit of this by showing up on a video of his where he had set the tone. He accused me of defiling this tone and asserted that he doesn't give a shit about any hypothetical scenario in my blog. He repeatedly stated that he wouldn't have bothered with anything on my blog had I not commented on his video. How then, are we to explain this video he made months ago? This is a response to a blog I wrote, riddled with those very conjectural events which he's now purportedly disinterested in. This response I received from him was entirely unsolicited, so he is actually the one who started this by replying to my "AntiNatalism And Dissection" blog back in December. I commented on that video response and told him that I would be following up with him "hopefully soon". Well, that "soon" turned out to be months as I had a hectic schedule up until mid March (and still do in some respects). Rather than following up on a three month old video of his, I left two comments on his brand new Objective Morality video (where he specifically argued for the very net-equation I argued against in the blog he replied to). I didn't think that me commenting there would matter to him at all, because we have evidence of him having displayed interest in my previous offerings, just a couple of months prior. I wouldn't even be mentioning any of this now if it hadn't been for him making a colossal fuss over my commenting on his video out of nowhere. I don't do YouTube consistently, so of course I comment "out of nowhere". Was I supposed to send a week-long notice ahead of time?

Inmendham's Axiological Projectivism

[Update 2015-05-20: Many of the criticisms here are outdated. See recent posts (2014, 2015) for a more polished set of them.]

This will be a response to Inmendham’s read-and-respond videos targeting some comments I left in his neck of the woods. My commenting in Inmendham's house warrants justification, apparently. It's an attempt to sway his regular viewers, with little-to-no hope of making a dent in Inmendham's own thought patterns. He should find this most complimentary; by sidestepping him and focusing on the potentially convincible, I give him the benefit of someone who isn't a wishy-washy, new-position-every-six-months-having prick. You know, the type who opens his mouth without sufficient certitude of his incontrovertible correctness. Beyond my comprehension is how someone of Inmendham's mindset continually manages to expect that anyone would engage him in VloggerDome style video exchanges “to the death” without seeing the non-starter that he himself imposes on any epistemic motive among potential opponents. Especially when he complains how, for some strange reason, no one is taking him up on the video challenges in the wake of his oft-admitted insusceptibility to persuasion.

Anyway, if the comments I posted amount to a trespass in Inmendham’s eyes, I’ll relocate them elsewhere from now on (like here).

For the record, I haven't seen anything Inmendham posted after "more BullshitMan part 1". That video, along with the "EatYourOwnBullshitMan" one already overloaded me with objections and I'd like to keep this shorter than my previous post. If Inmendham went on to make additional arguments after "BullshitMan Part 1", I'm yet to see them, but be assured that I'll cover them after I'm done with this entry.