The human value proposition comes from inside me, that’s why it’s called ‘introspective’ reasoning. You call me out in this one instance of ‘introspective’ reasoning, and not Guess_Who for doing nothing but?
I did explain: “My preference for reasoning is logical, but logical reasoning
can only approach a basis. That made me search for a foundational premise.
No foundational premise can be mathematically proven by logic alone.”
Every moral system is ultimately built upon an axiom, a foundational assumption that is accepted as true without proof. Because logic alone cannot generate human values or duties out of thin air, it requires a starting input. An axiom serves as this undeniable starting point, or the "ground floor," of a philosophical system. If you do not accept the initial axiom, the entire moral framework built on top of it loses its justification. If you strip away every single axiom, you inevitably land at Moral Nihilism; the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or wrong; functionally it means the absence of morality. People like Guess_Who say that atheists are immoral, but this is a Non Sequitur fallacy, it confuses the source of morality with the capacity for morality. You don’t have to be a nihilist, when you are an atheist, you just pick any other axiom that bases a moral system.
Here are the primary axioms that all moral systems rely upon:
CATEGORY --- FUNDAMENTAL AXIOM --- SOURCE OF MORAL DUTY
Experience --- Suffering = bad; Well-being = good --- The internal state of sentient beings.
Authority --- Higher Power = the law --- The will or structure of the transcendent.
Purpose --- Essence = destiny --- The realization of natural human excellence.
Interaction --- Society = necessity --- The logical rules of reciprocity and peace.
Intuition --- Moral facts = self-evident --- Direct intellectual insight into reality.
Guess_Who’s morality is reportedly based on the Authority category.
My morality (humanism) is based on the Experience category.
Guess_Who has the larger burden of proof, because he claims to know what rules God imposes on people.
I’m just saying that I value my life, and I am pretty sure that other people do too.
You were making the classic utilitarian and economic value argument, but you are fundamentally confusing instrumental value (usefulness) with intrinsic value (inherent worth). You claim to believe in the Purpose Axiom, when you say "Most of us are taught that life has value... a human given Life can blossom"; acknowledging that human life has a unique, built-in natural potential. But then you shift to a radical Economic/Utilitarian Axiom, which is based on the Interaction Axiom. You maybe think that this is purely logical, but it isn’t. The economy we live under and the money it uses is just an agreement to facilitate cooperation. There is a whole slew of axioms attached to that value system. A few numbers stored in a computer's memory or written on a piece of paper have no intrinsic value; they only possess the worth that our moral system attributes to them.
You are also contradicting YOURSELF, because you take a ‘pro-life’ stance against abortion. A fetus, zygote, fertilized cell has ZERO economic or transactional value, yet you claim it has ‘worth’. You place its value above the bodily autonomy of the person carrying it in the womb. You think bodily autonomy is important, because you defend the right to refuse vaccinations. You also very much support the right to defend yourself. On which categories do you base all those opinions? Let’s just focus on you claiming that a fetus, zygote, fertilized cell should not be killed:
• Are you saying “It’s a sentient being and it wants to live?” (Experience)
• Are you saying “God says so!”? (Authority)
• Are you saying “It needs to live, just because it can!”? (Purpose)
• Are you saying “A fetus has value because of a Social Contract”? (Interaction)
• Are you saying “The value of an unborn life is a Self-Evident Truth”? (Intuition)
Do you just value the life of the unborn, or can we agree that you value your life, I value my life, so we all have value? Do you have ‘transactional value’? Only recently, you spent a significant amount of money to save yours. Was your life worth more than that sum of money? I think your value is higher than what you are able to contribute, I would miss you if you were gone. The value of a piece of art is more valuable than the materials that it’s made off. That’s a supply and demand value. DEMAND is a manifestation of human desire, appreciation, emotion, and meaning, which is based in the Experience axiom, or of its usefulness, which is based on the Interaction Axiom. Everything that you consider ‘cold hard logic’ still has a basis in some form of moral system. If we lost it tomorrow, we would all just lay down and wait until we expire.
I like a challenge, so lets convince you that the ‘person that has chosen to waste that valuable life by living on the street doped up’ has value:
• Experience: A homeless addict is a conscious, sentient being who feels pain, cold, and despair. Because the capacity to suffer is the ultimate metric of moral relevance, human dignity is fixed by their sentience, not their productivity.
• Authority: If human worth is a sacred gift bestowed by a Creator, it is absolute. Declaring a person worthless based on their economic output is theological arrogance, you are overriding God’s baseline assignment of dignity with a corporate spreadsheet.
• Purpose: Human worth is anchored in our built-in trajectory toward natural human excellence. An addict retains their value because they possess the fundamental blueprint of a human life; even within their flaws or limits, their purpose is to achieve the best flourishing possible. By claiming they are a permanent loss, you deny the reality of recovery and actively steal their purpose, ignoring humanity's moral duty to help them realize that excellence.
• Interaction: The social contract is a safety net, not a corporate transaction. If a person has "negative value" simply because they consume more than they produce, then newborn babies, the elderly, and the disabled are also liabilities; a transactional view that destroys the rules of reciprocity and peace, turning society into a cattle ranch rather than a civilization.
• Intuition: You demand rigorous economic proof before granting value to a living adult on the street, yet you demand zero proof when asserting the value of an unborn fetus. Human worth is a self-evident truth; if you require people to pass an efficiency test to earn it, you are practicing accounting, not morality.
I did not pose all the arguments as my own opinions. I laid them out to show that your pro-life, pro-gun, and anti-mandate stances already prove you value things far beyond mere dollars and cents. You are actively choosing axioms like Authority, Purpose, or Intuition to defend the unborn, self-defense, and bodily autonomy. That shows that you do not support your radical Economic/Utilitarian Axiom, and even if you did, that is also a moral system based on an axiom or even several.
Even an economic system that doesn't care about human value still cares about something. It cares about efficiency, systemic survival, and aggregate optimization. It places the 'health of the market' as the highest good. That is, by definition, a moral framework. It has an ultimate value that it worships: the preservation of the machine over the parts that build it.
The problem is, your framework completely eats itself. An economic market only exists because human beings invented it to help them survive and cooperate. The market was made to serve humanity; humanity was not made to serve the market. When a system begins to demand that the humans who created it, including people who are disabled, elderly, or temporarily struggling, must sacrifice their own well-being and declare themselves 'worthless' for the sake of the system, the logic falls apart.
A tool that destroys its own creator to keep itself running is a broken tool. By agreeing that you have 'negative value' simply because you cannot produce a profit right now, you are defending a framework that has lost its mind. It is self-defeating on all fronts: it destroys the rules of reciprocity, it rejects the very human desires that drive demand, and it turns a cooperative safety net into a meat grinder. You don't have to apologize to a spreadsheet for existing; the spreadsheet is supposed to be working for you.
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