I take your concern about the necessity for consequences to be proportionate to moral actions as valid. My personal belief is aligned with it.

However, let me draw your attention to a queer fact about morality in religion. In most religions morality isn't quantified which is a necessity for Sider's argument. I don't think any scripture has ever used comparative terminology like "best" or "worst" or "very" when they discuss morality. As far as I know morality in religion is spoken of in terms of the unqualified, plain good and bad.

Either this is an indication that good and bad are qualitative and not quantitative or heaven and hell have a graded scheme for dealing with the dead. I think the latter is more plausible and I did mention that hell is usually presented as having a hierarchy for punishment. The thief and the mass murder are treated differently. Although there is no clear indication in scripture that heaven too shares this feature I think that it does follows as of necessity.

However, this doesn't imply that there's a possibility that a good person will burn in hell or a bad person will be frolicking gaily in the garden of eden.

I don't mean to take the simulated world theory (Matrix) literally, but just as a metaphor for a designed Process instead of a designed Product. — Gnomon

I have nothing against the idea of process being the purpose rather than products. Assuming a designer for the moment it's possible that s/he wants to create a robust life principle capable of spontaneous generation and able to sustain itself against great odds.

I wonder now whether in this context intelligence is just one of the tools life evolved to perpetuate/steer/accelerate the process towards something even bigger.

Paleontological evidence doesn't confirm this hypothesis. After all the dinosaur age makes it quite clear that intelligence isn't necessary for life. That said intelligence does give us an edge in the survival business doesn't it? The USA has a program that scans the skies for large asteroids that could precipitate a global extinction event like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Of course we have to factor in the possibility that intelligence, in human form, is itself an extinction event. Looks like intelligence is like weapons of mass destruction - capable of preventing catastrophes but is itself a major threat.

Stark. I think every target of censorship feels like a victim, though. Those who wield it always feel righteous. No? — frank

Yes and I'm interested to know what follows.

Heard of him? — ovdtogt

Yes and I also know he had a taste for topless bars :grin:

I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. — ovdtogt

Firstly congratulations for the depth of your aesthetic sense. Secondly I have nothing against describing and viewing life as a chemical reaction but there is something wrong in the view that life is just a chemical reaction. As I mentioned this maybe just a symptom of a gap in our understanding but there's a chance that life is much more than just a chemical reaction. A lot would depend on which of these two possibilities is true. If we're nothing more than glorified bags of chemicals than it would be very depressing but, on the other hand, if there's more than meets the chemist's eyes then the mystery deepens and all sorts of interesting and awesome possibilities are up for grabs.

life: a replicating chemical reaction. Is this an accurate or even useful definition of life? And if so are we able to speculate how such a self replicating system could come into existence? — ovdtogt

How easy it is to reduce the wisdom of philosophy, the beauty of poetry and the joy of a painting to a chemical reaction in a chemist's lab.

I heard a TED talk where a speaker remarked of a friend who said "I love my child more than is required by evolution". Reductionism maybe the way to go in science but it fails to completely capture the full range of experiences in the phenomena it attempts to explain.

It could be that this belief that the whole is somehow greater than its parts is just an illusion, reflecting a lack of knowledge rather than anything real in such beliefs.

When someone shuffles a deck of cards and deals you the first twenty cards, the probability of getting those specific cards is extremely unlikely. Yet we have no problem accepting that you will get an extremely unlikely hand.

On the other hand, it's also extremely unlikely that your child will ever be a member of the National Basketball Association. Almost no one will accept that their son will be in the NBA. It would be considered foolish to believe.

What is the fundamental difference between these two examples? And is there a principle on deciding whether or not it is rational to accept the improbable? — Wheatley

I think human reactions are tied to expectations. When a player gets a particular hand s/he isn't surprised because s/he didn't expect that particular hand.

However, imagine the player had a particular hand in mind and was expecting that. In the event that s/he gets what was expected then a reaction of surprise naturally follows because the event is highly improbable.

Similarly the average parent knows how improbable it is for his/her child to become an NBA player and when that happens it is met with pleasant surprise.

In some sense the degree of disbelief or surprise depends on how improbable an event is and how low the expectations were.


When we buy a lottery ticket we're never surprised by the sequence of numbers the ticket you bought has because there was no expectation involved. However, when we win the lottery we're shocked because we never expected to win because of how improbable it is to get the winning combination.

A battery with a negative and positive side is very balanced in the sense that it has two different sides to it — DanielP

Well, let me join you in believing everything is about balance. Would it be fair then to say that there has to be imbalance as a counterweight to balance?

Which is prior, imbalance or balance? In my opinion imbalance precedes balance, providing the motive force that moves a system towards balance. Balance can't cause imbalance because the opposing forces are equal and no net change can occur.

You say a battery is balanced because it has a positive and negative but then what causes the electrons to flow and generate a current? It can't be balance because balance simply lacks an unopposed force to do anything. Ergo, there has to be an imbalance that results in a current.

And you get how Sider thinks that this consequence of a sharp border conflicts with most people's intuition of "proportionality" as a criterion of justice? — bongo fury

I agree that reward/punishment should be proportionate to the good/bad deeds respectively we do. However, Sider's claim isn't about this particular aspect of the issue. Sider claims that two people who are morally indistinguishable can have opposite destinations in the afterlife. This is what I was arguing against by showing that bad, no matter how small can never be good enough and vice versa.

As for proportionality I think our intuitions about hell are much clearer than that about heaven. Hell seems to offer a variety of pain depending on what your sins were but heaven is uniformly accessible whether you were just someone who never hurt anyone or someone who gave everything away to charity. This only makes sense in a qualitative perspective i.e. divine judgment is based on whether someone was good or bad and not on how good or bad s/he was.

You said it's creeds that feel vulnerable to scrutiny that resort to censorship. I agree, but censors are always sure that their fight is important. — frank

I have no doubts that censors think they're right and to be fair some things that are said or written have the real potential of flaring up simmering tensions, in a locality or even the country as a whole, with terrible consequences. This is the good side of censorship and I support such actions.

However, there's a dark side to censorship and that's when an oppressive regime uses it to block and/or neutralize opposition.

The difference between the two is that in one censors are actually doing what's right and in the other they're nothing more than duct-tape in the hands of villains, used to stop victims from calling for help.

For example, the correspondence theory of truth does not seem to be a theory of truth at all, but a theory about when a proposition is true. So it is not a rival view. It is a vacuous view about something else. — Bartricks

You say that truths are different to truth. The former I interpret as facts of the world while the latter is a property of propositions and you claim that the correspondence theory of truth fails because you think it's about propositions rather than the world.

Well, consider what we mean by truths. If there is an actual difference between truths and true propositions we should be able to get our hands on a truth that isn't a proposition. Can we do that? No. This implies that truths are nothing more than true propositions and the truth of a proposition is best evaluated by assessing how a given proposition corresponds in meaning with the real world.

The correspondence theory of truth of propositions lets us know truths

Rather I think the question postulates that there is some special consequence "happiness" to which people may have an inherent "right" of expectation. — Pantagruel

Cause and effect is the dummy. Morality is the clothes the dummy wears. Happiness is essentially cause and effect. Morality decides how this cause and effect will work in terms of deserving and not deserving.

Yes the senses are not entirely reliable for creating a picture of the world but they are way better than fiction or fantasy. — A Seagull

Agreed but we would do well to attempt what's better than what's worse. Right?

By the way I think fantasy is useful in giving us direction as it usually opens up possibilities of a better future which give us a sense of how contingent but undesirable truths may be altered to make the world better.

A good segue here into whether or not true knowledge is possible and very well put.

This is why when it comes to epistemology I always only make a claim to know what I perceive to be pragmatic knowledge based on scientific consensus in sense data where it can be found. By no means an infallible point of view and one that assumes the existence of objective morality but the entire approach is to assume the best and most rational answers to be true and act on them unless proven otherwise through the same mechanisms. However I use a very broad approach in what I term to be science and it delves into soft science in the arts and humanities also and I try to keep the science balanced with morals and personal spirituality.
It's all part of the many masks we wear; — Mark Dennis

I don't understand the concept of sense data very well. The coin example of seeing the coin as an ellipse when in fact it's a circle suggests that we need to get past sense data to get to the truth.

True. But when I'm all righteous in my anti-fascism it doesn't occur to me that I might be wrong.

All censorship is like that isnt it? — frank

:chin: Didn't get that. Sorry.

So do humans deserve to be happy even though it is happiness that causes divides in people? — Anthony Kennedy

The notion of deserving/not deserving exists in a causal framework as in what is deserved/not is an effect of one's actions which are causes. Causality can't be denied so easily and so it appears that humans do deserve and not deserve according to their actions.

Happiness and its antithesis, suffering, seem to be intimately tied to morality where good is about happiness and bad is about suffering and the rule is basically this: what goes around comes around. So, in a moral context we may see the good deserving of happiness and the bad deserving of suffering.

So, to simple cause and effect we humans have added another layer, morality, which establishes feed-back loops with the end goal of perpetuating happiness and preventing suffering. It's here I guess that deserving/not deserving comes into play.

Despite the euphoria surrounding the Paris Climate Accord the world's leaders and its people have failed to act on the promises made. Few countries have legislated to start the drastic countermeasures necessary to slow down and halt global warming.

My question is: is global warming a challenge too great for humanity to handle? Is the momentum of the growth-based capitalist system too great to slow and turn around? Is the ecocentric view of the world which could galvanise the will to make sacrifices outside our nature?

I have noticed a fatalism in many people - ie 'it's too late to stop it now' or 'I'll be long gone by then' so why bother? Is this more a view of the older generation, and are younger adults ready to rise to the challenge? But even if they are, can they convince enough of the apathetic majority to win power for radical new governments in the few years before it's too late? — Tim3003

The climate change problem hasn't been framed in the way people understand - the one and only, universally comprehensible carrot-and-stick model. If there's nothing to gain or nothing to lose people will simply refuse to spend time and energy on it.

I think scientists and some other groups are giving it their best shot at dangling the carrot and waving the stick but the carrot is too small and the stick seems so far away that most people are not in the least bit bothered by it.

Climate change, if real, will require work proportionate to its cause i.e. the response must be global in scope. We then face the uncomfortable fact that the word "global" reflects geography but not politics which is divided to such an extent that it thwarts the unified effort necessary to respond to the problem.

Censorship is like saying "I know what's good or bad for you" and no censorship is like saying "I know what's good or bad for me". Both seem wrong for who's so wise to know what's good or bad for himself or herself, let alone for anyone else.

Anti-censorship is about truth of what is being said/written and censorship is about the dangerous effects of what is being said/written.

Would you rather have censorship or an enraged mob with molotov cocktails outside your house? Perhaps it's a choice between knowing the truth and a fake peace that is liable to break down on the slightest provocation; the ensuing chaos being proportional to the length of time the truth was hidden?

An interesting "fact" of censorship is that it exists and thrives in environments where the prevalent ideology or whatever can't stand up to scrutiny, requiring an additional line of defense in the form of a censor board. That should mean something if not everything there is about muzzling peoples' voices.

The ends justify the means. — Lawrence of Arabia

is said only because, sometimes, we have to do what is clearly bad in other situations but necessary to achieve what is clearly good in another situation. I think the trolley problem gets to the heart of this issue but with no clear answer except a vague understanding on our intuitions.

Personally I endorse this view fully but reluctantly so. Fully because it isn't too hard for the trolley problem to become a reality. Reluctantly because I feel there's a fundamental problem with such scenarios which is brought into relief by the fact that situations where one says "the ends justify the means" are those where there is no alternative but to do something bad to achieve the good. What I mean is that such situations are crisis events where choices collapse to one single morally questionable and yet necessary action and that too for the good.

In "normal" conditions there are many choices and at least one among them will satisfy the condition that both the means and the ends are good.

How about blending all of these various positions and look for truths that correspond to reality, are useful and cohere with whatever that needs cohering, IF that's possible.

Personally I prefer correspondence theory of truth because it's the most basic requirement for truths - that truths be about reality. This is probably reducing the philosophy of truth to a mere game of survival played out in jungles and savannahs but the hard fact is reality can be ignored only at great risk to oneself.

What about pragmatism and truth? There's merit in valuing utility. After all one side of the entire enterprise of truth-seeking is how to use truths for our benefit. It makes sense then to say truth is about utility, especially if other theories of truth can be faulted which is probably the case. However one sticking point I see is that truths no matter how useful can't stray too far away from reality i.e. correspondence theory of truth is a limiting factor to pragmatic truths. I don't know what notion of utility is being used in pragmatism but it seems that truths, seen as corresponding to reality, are the most useful. This makes pragmatic truth superfluous.

Similarly, coherence theory of truth lacks meaning by itself. It only states that a truth must fit another truth and so on until we've built a structure of beliefs that have no inconsistencies. Ok but what about the component truths themselves - atomic truths if you will. These building block truths seem to be, again, a matter of corresponding to reality.

Ultimately, in my humble opinion, all other theories of truth are founded on the correspondence theory of truth.

:joke:

So are sin and virtue separated by clear blue water, on your view? Or do they square up either side of a sharp border? — bongo fury

Good (+), amoral (0), Bad (-)

0 is as sharp a border as it gets. One may not be that bad a guy. In fact one might be just a teensy weensy bad but that doesn't mean one is in any way good. Similarly, one might be just a tiny bit better, in a moral sense, than a rock but that earns one a place in heaven.

I would think this interpretation jars somewhat with common usage, which tends to suggest that sin and virtue do meet, and possibly overlap. — bongo fury

First you are asking me to distinguish between two people where there is a fine line between them. — Coben

Sider's claim is that hell and heaven don't make sense because morality exhibits a continuum structure that allows for two morally similar people to have different afterlives. Basically, imposing a binary model on what is, according to Sider, an analog system is the issue here.

As I explained it such a point of view is ridiculous. Why? Let me offer another analogy. The integers are divided into 3 groups - positive, negative and zero. Interestingly and conveniently, positive also means virtue and negative means sin.

If you commit sins then you get negative points and if you're virtuous then you get positive points. Your position on the moral landscape depends on the sum of your virtues and sins. If are more sinful than virtuous you have a net negative moral standing and if your virtues exceed your sins then you are in the positive zone. Which side of zero you're on will decide where you go - hell or heaven.

Given the above picture, Sider's view on the matter pops out, even if it's just an illusion. What about someone who's -0.0001 sinful and someone who's only +0.0001 virtuous? Aren't they similar enough to make heaven and hell look ridiculous. The difference between them is so imperceptible to be almost meaningless. However, the outcome of god's judgment is based not on the difference between these moral points, which can be said to be unnoticeable, but on their signs(positive/negative) which is clear and unequivocal.

I disagree that sin and virtue aren't just as continuous as any other conception of moral variation. And your rumination at the end, about redemption, is (to me) similarly off-point. — bongo fury

Why? How do you come to that conclusion?

To make it easy for you, I ask for one plausible case of the Sider variety where two people who are morally indistinguishable have different fates in re heaven and hell.

I think this is more or less what I was saying. If you lean towards the bad, even by the minutest degree over 50% bad, you will tend to create a net negative whatever. — Coben

Ok

Well I don't know about your world view, but my world view is founded upon a logical analysis of sense data — A Seagull

Let's look at what objective truth means. The way I said it and the way I think you understood it is that they are facts about the world which have certain qualities, some of which I mentioned.

However this is not the whole story. The concept objective truth includes the process of acquiring and confirming facts about the world. It isn't just about facts per se but also about knowing and using correct methods to acquire reliable knowledge of our world (rationality?).

If you believe sense data is good enough to build a worldview on, you're doing so not out of whim or fancy but because of reasons you think are adequate for such a belief. In other words if you chose sense data it's only because you think they're objective truths.

In addition the senses have been shown to be notoriously unreliable in providing us a picture of the world that's stable enough to build anything sensible on it.

My point is that pain has very little to do with suffering and science and technology have thus far mostly treated pain. There are cancer patients that are perfectly content and millionaires struggling with depression. There is surprisingly little evidence to suggest that human suffering has declined over time though pain definitely has. — khaled

This is really odd indeed. Are you saying that among the countless millions of our forefathers not one single person had the sense to say what you're saying, that suffering is more important than pain or is the more plausible alternative, that pain is the first of our problems, true?

That said I must agree that medicine has only managed to pluck the low hanging fruit, pain, but then to compare that with the failure to tackle suffering is like disgracing a runner for not winning before the race finishes.

Fascinating. I would also argue to believe you have free will in the traditional sense leads to an increase in depression. Depression is not the path of least resistence. I would argue an animals ability to understand abstract concepts like law and money will lead to that animal to have deep and serious depression. Once again not the path of least resistence.

Thanks for this post. Once again very fascinating. — christian2017

The way the world is and not what it ought to be should depress everyone. That's why life should evolve intelligence to recognize this is-oughy gap and free will to enable us to make the right choices to change the is to an ought.

You say:"to build a world view that is true, the right place to start would be objective truth"

But that is like trying to build a sturdy house by starting with the roof. — A Seagull

:chin: What then are the foundations of our worldview?

When humans create art, they create an expression of reality that is more complex than the materials that constitute the artwork. Michelangelo’s David, for example, has a complexity to it that certainly wasn’t apparent in the stone before he got his hands on it.

Plus, ‘create’ is different from ‘evolve’. I think that humans also evolve into something at least marginally more complex than themselves all the time: other humans. — Possibility

We can create art but art can't create us and I'm quite sure you're not claiming we're simpler than the art we create.

Let's start this discussion on a new page but some of what we talked about will be relevant to us.

What do you mean by:

1. Simplicity
2. Complexity

All that I offer are my own personal thoughts on the matter and they inform me that 1 and 2 have to do with the number of interactions under consideration which I vaguely remember has something to do with triangular numbers.

You probably wanted critique that by asking me if one black hole is simple or complex. The answer to this question would depend on which level of phenomena we're discussing. If it's black hole interactions then it surely can't get simpler than one black hole. However, if we're discussing black hole formation, structure, etc. - things that require information of stuff within black holes then it is, evidently, quite complex because now, loosely speaking, the juggler has more balls in the air.

How is it possible that two ethically similar people have contradictory outcomes (one going to hell and the other going to heaven)?
— TheMadFool

Similar as in approximately equal but not necessarily actually equal. E.g. not-noticeably-different. Two such people will go to different places if their separation (however small) on some (fine-grained or even continuous) moral scale coincides with the sharp border between one choice (by the judge) of appropriate destination and the other. So, in the same way that two people can be spatially close but in different countries.

Sider supposes that a sense of proportionality excludes any such sharp border. It favours vagueness, and borderline cases. (I agree.)

If people are spread like a continuum and morality is a spectrum without any discrete borders...
— TheMadFool

... Do you mean without any discrete steps or increments, i.e. continuous?

... then it is possible that two people of similar moral standing may have opposite fates
— TheMadFool

Yes although the same is equally possible if the (small) distance between them is measured in discrete steps. — bongo fury

If there's a 50% mark. If you are more than fifty percent ethical, Heaven. Less, Hell. And God can read ethical tendencies down below the ethical 'Planck length', so every falls to one side or the other. — Coben

How about 2 people that lead identical lives except: one accepts Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, the other accepts Thor as their lord and savior.

Sounds pretty darn similar to me, and yet one goes to heaven and the other to hell (if purgatory exists and the Thor guy had NEVER been exposed to Christianity, then they might be allowed to go to purgatory).

Does that work?

I think the point that Sider was making was more along the lines of the binary nature of heaven and hell. IF those are the only two options, then there must be an exact line dividing those that deserve heaven and those that deserve hell. People just barely south or north of the line would have lead very similarly moral lives.

To be fair, I would have guessed that Sider made his argument at least 100 years ago. Many modern christians seem to believe that awful people go to hell, while everyone else goes to heaven (all religions or philosophies that help people to behave "good" are part of god's plan). In that case, there is no need to worry about "the line" because it is WIDE and STARK. — ZhouBoTong

In my humble opinion I think there's a problem with this view which is not quite clear to me but I'll lead you to it as best as I can.

Hell is for evil people and heaven is for good people. This is quite obvious but, if Sider is right, then, as some of you have suggested, morality should be on some kind of continuum and there has to be a cut-off point between those destined for hell and those destined for heaven. This would be problematic just as Sider says: there will be people without noticeable differences in moral standing and yet have futures that are polar opposites.

However, look at how we view sin and virtue. Let's take murder and altruism as two of the best and clearest examples of sin and virtue respectively. It's simply impossible that these two can appear close enough in whatever scale of morality we're using to cause a situation like Sider expects. One is obviously bad and the other obviously good and there are no grey areas to confound us.

Of course we can't deny that language betrays a moral continuum: worst to very bad to bad to ok to good to very good to best and we fall to the temptation of thinking this is a problem as it doesn't fit with a binary model of hell and heaven.

What bears mentioning here is that sins and virtues, at least those said to have definite effects on your afterlife e.g. murder and altruism, are completely binary. We can't commit half a murder and torture, although scalable, isn't ever good enough to cause confusions in judgment. Similarly a good samaritan can never be confused for a murderer or torturer.

It seems that though morality is on some sort of continuous scale from the worst to the best, the sins and virtues that determine the afterlife are binary in nature which makes the hell-heaven dichotomy perfectly sensible.

The model that I think more accurately conveys the truth about morality is that of two islands, one island is that of the good and the other that of the bad, with a clear separation between the two. Morality is scalable within each island like so: worst to very bad to bad in the island of the bad and good to very good to best in the island of the good. Nowhere in this model are the two models close enough to cause a problem like Sider describes. The gap between these islands is adequate enough to make the dichotomy of heaven and hell reasonable. Also this gap between the islands can be crossed in either direction, either by making amends for sins e.g. by repenting and compensating or by committing sins that'll take you in the opposite direction.

What say you?

So, maybe the "designer" of our world was more interested in the Process than the Product. — Gnomon

Indeed we're not in a position to know the intentions of a creator if it exists. For all we know we may be just the random mold growing in its trash.

However, what is obvious from how life behaves is that life wants to continue its existence. To do this it has evolved, through mere chance, mechanisms that can either block or delay natural processes that are life-threatening. From this we can infer that the processes are tailored for the survival of the product for as long as needed to allow a chain reaction of life. Given this is so, it seems an obvious goal for intelligent life like humans is to manipulate the processes (evolution) to give the product (life) an increased chance of survival. To add, human objectives in life have gone beyond mere survival and now include the quality of life itself.

Perhaps. If the final outcome was the most important goal of the designer. But multiplayer video games are intended to provide an ongoing experience for the players, not to rig the game for a predetermined end state. So, maybe the "designer" of our world was more interested in the Process than the Product.

As you suggested, "given the means and opportunity", why should it take over 14 billion human years to create a perfect world with perfect people? In Genesis, the Creator produced a perfect paradise, complete with vegetarian lions and innocent humans, in only six days, and then took some time off. Ironically, during his vacation, a Troll hacked-in to paradise and "put up a parking lot".

However, since our turbulent Game of Thrones is still evolving in fits & starts, I must assume the Designer is either absconded, or incompetent, or is enjoying the ride, and in no hurry to see the drama end. :smile: — Gnomon

I don't intend to argue for god conceived as an intelligent designer. Our conversation is, not surprisingly, drifting in that direction because of the obvious connection - intelligence & design. Let me categorically state that I'm not arguing for the existence of a creator deity.

What I mean is that given any project - life and anything else for that matter - an intelligent person with a good plan will be produce better and faster results than a person without a plan. Analogously if life had been the work of someone with a plan it wouldn't have the imperfections, like our eyes having blind spots etc, atheists are so happy to point to creationists. This inevitably leads us to the conclusion that if an intelligent being (only humans in that category) were to now take the reins of this capricious wild horse we call evolution by understanding and controlling the forces involved we might just be able to give life a good chance of success.

What’s behind the search for objective reality? What do we expect to find there? What do we expect to gain from it? — Brett

Morality is the objective reality and it addresses all the questions about what’s real so that we can know who we are, what’s important and how we should live. — Brett

Through a belief in God people accepted an objective reality — Brett

To tell you the truth I don't quite understand the difference between objectivity and subjectivity too well.

What I know is that the subjective dimension includes, as expected, many of our proclivities to commit errors in reasoning which would obviously lead as away from the truth.

So, by being objective we remove all cognitive biases and arrive at the actual truth which people call objective truth.

There are certain characteristics that objective truths have:

1. Objective truths are necessary
2. Objective truths are eternal
3. Objective truths are incorrigible

It doesn't take much of an effort to realize that if one is to build a worldview that is true then the right place to start would be objective truths. It would be impossible to be wrong if you did this and being wrong is not only embarrassing it can also be fatal.

Thus we need objective truths as totally dependable anchor points to construct our picture of the world. It's interesting to see that what began as an exercise in survival has now become idealized to an extent that survival is no longer the motivation for the search for truth. Truth has become an end in itself.

As is obvious the preferred method of discovering objective truths is rationality which makes it mandatory that every and all beliefs be adequately justified (proof or evidene).

What is the alternative to rationality? Faith, not only in a religious sense but also in as broad a sense as possible - simply rejecting rationality (evidence-based belief system). The problem with faith is that it's intimately associated with religion, which is basically another word for the dark, unlit regions of human experience where our imagination runs wild and unchecked, creating worlds that are so attractive to our deepest hopes and so soothing to our greatest fears that we simply ignore everything the world has taught us - believing sans evidence is dangerous.

Consider for the moment that religion does lead to objective truths. If so then which religion is true? They all seem to be saying very different things which is a hallmark of subjectivity, not objectivity. It isn't hard to see why this is the case. A complete lack of rational analysis in religion has led people down multiple paths to lies and half-lies. A good method to realize that the Imam, the lama, the priest and the rabbi are all wrong is to make them sit together in the same room. There is no outside force necessary to reveal the falsehoods of religious dogma. They do it best by each rejecting the other. If this proves anything at all it's the absence rather than presence of objectivity in religion.

As for morality being an objective truth, I certainly hope it is and the fact that the moral compasses of different cultures seem to point in the same general direction is, to me, sufficient evidence for that. There are differences of course but these differences are more from ignorance than knowledge which is comforting. Religion, despite being the first commendable excursion of humans into the moral dimension, lacks a rational basis. Ergo, isn't objective. Yet, if one looks closely, we will find that morals of one religion resembles the morals of another. Not perfectly but there's enough similarity to infer that religion looks more like an afterthought to an already existing moral standard. Rather than religion being the origin of morals, religion is more of an enforcer with god as the policeman.

Yes, rationality applied to morality hasn't led us to that perfect moral theory which solves all our moral problems but this comes with the territory. A complex problem can't be solved overnight but that doesn't give us warrant to fly off into the arms of a poorer substitute, religion (not the moral content but the faith part).

:joke:

This thread is about empirical knowledge, I presumed, not axiomatic claims. Aside from which, how would "all unicorns are white" not be a true statement given the system of logic you're presented? — javra

Yes. This is about empirical claims. However, if there's an empirical claim worth the effort it has to be universal in scope i.e. should take the form "All A are B" which I believe must be logical much much before it can be empirical.

Let's take an empirical claim such as: All objects obey the laws of gravity. Notice that it is a Aristotelean categorical statement. Isn't it necessary then to consider the logical character of such statements before we talk of its empirical import? What do you think?

OK, too brief in the expression. No contradiction intended. What I was addressing is a proposition that is epistemically falsifiable but not ontically falsifiable. This presumes that our knowledge is imperfect. To better illustrate via example: I say "all swans are either black or white" while holding imperfect knowledge of the world; I could falsify this claim by observing a red swan in some remote location; so its epistemically falsifiable. However, reality has it (here assuming a perfect knowledge of the world) that only black and white swans exist. So no matter how much I - the one with fallible knowledge - look in attempts to falsify this proposition, I will never be able to. Because only black and white swans exist, the proposition is not possible to falsify ontically. — javra

I'd like some clarification on this "ontically falsifiable" and "epistemically falsifiable" categories.

All that falsifiability requires is that any given a scientific theory should have a built in mechanism that can look for evidence to falsify it.
.
If a scientific theory is categorically true then it is ontically unfalsifiable and the only way we can know that is to show that it's epistemically unfalsifiable.

In my opinion the argument is:

1. If ontically unfalsifiable then epistemically unfalsifiable
Ergo
2. If epistemically falsifiable then ontically falsifiable

That's to say all we need to work with is epistemic falsifiability to get to the truth i.e. ontic unfalsifiability.

Both of these are debatable. What's not debatable is that PAIN has decreased. IE the actualy physical sensation that comes with disease for example. However there is surprisingly little evidence to suggest that SUFFERING (the subjective experience itself, or the mental part of pain) has changed much over time and much evidence to suggest that people experience similar amounts of suffering despite the pain. Good evidence would be the fact that poorer populations are generally happier (with exceptions at the extremes of course). That's an example of people enduring more pain, yet experiencing less suffering. I think if suffering was directly proportional to pain, we would have gone extinct loooooong ago.

But ok let's say suffering decreased — khaled

Let's not just "say" things and let's not get ahead of ourselves. As a friend of mine used to say "step by step". With due respect to your concerns I'd like to say this is just a matter of priorities. Physical wellbeing takes precedence over mental wellbeing. I believe the history of medicine stands testimony to this - psychiatry is younger than surgery for example.

I appreciate that you brought up the difference between pain and suffering. It matters especially if we are to be genuine about the issue of causing harm by bringing clueless children into this imperfect world. A good portion of suffering is unseen (nonphysical) and the "evidence" I offered is a bit lopsided. These areas (medicine and technology) were chosen for their tangible, indubitable impact on our wellbeing. As for nonphysical suffering I'm sure it won't take too much of an effort to find people trying to do something about that. Psychological wellbeing is as dear as physical wellbeing to us.

There is no contradiction. The definition of cardinal equivalence is that there exists at least one bijection between the two sets. I don't know why you have a psychological block against grokking that.

Guy robs a bank, gets caught. In the interrogation room the detective says, "Fred we know you're the bank robber." Fred says, "Oh you are wrong. Here is a list of all the banks in the state that I didn't rob. I even have a notarized statement to that effect from the manager of every single bank in the country that I did not rob."

Is Fred a bank robber? Yes of course. He robbed a bank! He robbed one single solitary bank and DIDN'T rob all the others. But he's a bank robber.

It's an existential quantification, "there exists," and not a universal one, "for all." Someone is a bank robber if they ever robbed a bank, even if there are many banks they didn't rob. Two sets are cardinally equivalent if there is a bijection between them, even if -- as must ALWAYS be the case -- there are maps between them that are not bijections.

Someone murders someone, they're a murderer. No use parading before the jury the seven billion human beings they DIDN"T murder. That lady cop in Dallas a few months ago who shot a guy sitting in his living room eating ice cream. She was convicted of murder. She's in prison as we speak, ten years if I recall. No use trying to point to all of her neighbors who she didn't kill. She killed one guy. That makes her a murderer in the eyes of the law.

Why is this simple point troubling you? If you're on the jury do you say, "Well, the prosecutor showed that she murdered someone. But she didn't murder EVERYONE." You find her not guilty on that basis? Of course not! Right?

Even Hitler didn't murder EVERYONE. You think he got a bad rap? LOL. — fishfry

:rofl: :rofl:

You just keep repeating yourself. Is this North Korea? :joke:

What you leave out, and what has apparently been left out, of all of this is that the sets have to first be well-ordered. Then the bijection is a two-way Hobson's choice: next rider, next horse. And you never run out of either riders or horses. The problem with irrationals, is that they cannot be put into a well-ordering. (I.e., whenever you put two net to each other, you can then always put one in between - actually, a whole infinity of numbers in between.) — tim wood

What do you mean well ordered? Kindly explain.

This one example doesn't work. If one fails to see any swans period, then the proposition of "all swans are white" is no better than "all unicorns are white" - and there are no grounds to believe that swans are real (much less that they're only white) due to the proposition being unfalsifiable (here simplifying things by not introducing reasoned conclusions, such as could apply to the probability of alien life). However, if one does observe swans but fails to see a white swan, then the proposition is falsified.

Can't think of a different example to substantiate the claim you want to make. Maybe you can? — javra

I was worried about that and was hoping someone would come up with something better.

Let me cheat and use categorical logic to show that indeed I am, very surprisingly to me, right.

All swans are white in logic doesn't have existential import unlike its negation: Some swans are black which can only be true if and only if there is at least one black swan.

Lacking claims of existence the proposition: All swans are white, is true even if you never saw a swan let alone white swans. I think in predicate logic the statement gets translated as:

IF x is a swan then x is white. Emphasis on "if".

However, if that addressed is falsifiable and if we are unable to falsify it despite our best attempts, then it gives all indications of in fact conforming to that which is ontic (else, of accurately corresponding to that which is real), i.e. of being true. — javra

This makes sense. Ok.

To this effect, hypothesize that a falsifiable proposition or theory is impossible to falsify both in practice *and* in principle. By what reasoning could one claim that this proposition or theory holds any chance of being untrue? — javra

Aside from a contradiction in your statement which I expect to carry some deep meaning I'll focus on the words "impossible to falsify". Such statements would be metaphysical for Popper, right?

It's simple. The main premise is: It is wrong to commit any act that may harm someone else unless the benefits of it massively outweigh the losses to said someone. — khaled

Can it harm someone? Definitely. — khaled

(Sorry for the abrupt departure from the conversation. I want to get back into the ring. I hope you don't mind.)

Ok. Basically by harm you mean the suffering birth into this world will entail. I agree that harm is inevitable with the proviso that:
1. If you look at how medicine and technology has changed our lives you must agree that suffering is decreasing compared with the past where disease and the simple act of living were much more difficult
2. From the above we see a downward trend to suffering in general which bolsters our hopes that in the not so far future, suffering, harm as you put it, will become zero

A life of joy is desirable TO THOSE WHO ALREADY LIVE. There are no magical ghost babies desiring joy or avoiding pain. In other words, NOT procreating doesn't mean you're "denying" someone something desirable (an argument I see often, not that you made it) — khaled

please relate the above to what you said below:

When did I imply otherwise? I never said life is inherently problematic — khaled

You say "I never said life is inherently problematic". This is the distinction that I want antinatalists to see and you see it. Life is NOT the problem. Suffering is. Within this framework lies the refutation to antinatalism viz. if suffering could be eliminated then life would be preferable to nonexistence..

If earth was a heaven I wouldn't be an antinatalist. — khaled

The above statement encapsulates the problem with antinatalism that the "solution" to life's problems is nonexistence. Everyone wants to go to heaven because they want to live happily and not because they become nonexistent.

One thing I am really concerned about is what you said:

A life of joy is desirable TO THOSE WHO ALREADY LIVE — khaled

and

Again. Imagaine a PERSON being given these choices. There is no such person. — khaled

I agree that no one is ever given, and I don't think it's even possible, a choice between life ( existence) and nonexistence. There is an issue of consent and it is problematic. In the most ideal situation existence (life) or nonexistence should be a free choice. In this context life appears foisted upon us and it's a forced participation in whatever that makes life life. However, if one looks at what you said: "I earth was a heaven I wouldn't be an antinatalist" and you are arguing for the antinatalist philosophy, it becomes evidently clear that no one, choice/not, would object to a life/existence in heaven. It's like an offer you can't refuse. Consent inhabits the world of uncertainty of decision. Will he like this? Will she hate this? I should ask first i.e. take consent. However when we're certain of what the choice will be, life in heaven in this case. we don't have to ask for consent do we?

Granted that the facts are that life on earth isn't even a shadow of what heaven could be. The problem is taking this condition of suffering in life to be a necessary fact, unavoidable. Yes, as of the moment it is unavoidable but given how much progress we've made over the ages in the happiness department you can surely see that suffering is not a necessary but a contingent truth about the world - alterable towards a more preferable state. Heaven is possible is all that I mean.

I never said that probability wasn't real. I said it is imaginary. — Harry Hindu

There is only one outcome, but in the eyes of the ignorant there are multiple outcomes — Harry Hindu

What is your explanation for why the system (person A with the dice) is behaving probabilistically?

You mentioned an important element in the system - ignorance. Person A is ignorant of the initial state of each throw of the dice and person B is ignorant of which initial state becomes a reality even though he knows the outcome after any particular initial state is selected.

So you think probability is an illusion and is just a symptom of ignorance?

There's one issue here that bothers me. If probability is an illusion/imaginary how is it that, in a simple game of dice, the principle of indifference - a feature of true/non-imaginary probability - helps us calculate probabilities that match experimental results? This isn't about ignorance is it? A deterministic system is conforming to a principle that applies only to objective probability. That would be like, in essence, being able to predict random numbers. There's something wrong. Care to take a shot at this. Thank you.

Thanks for the effort. You've made many many interesting statements in your post. I'm grateful. Thanks.

I was using the "plucked chicken" example to only point out what I think is important in math - consistency. I'm vaguely aware that we can add/delete axioms and build entirely new worlds of numbers and geometry. As must follow inconsistencies between such worlds are expected. The only example I can think of to explain this is that in non-euclidean space the sums of a triangle need not equal 180 degrees.

However, each mathematical world however constructed must be internally consistent i.e. the axioms and definitions within a given system shouldn't lead to contradictions.

In the case of the bijection, defined as each element of one set being paired with exactly one element in another set, when applied to the sets natural numbers and even numbers we certainly do arrive at the conclusion that there's a bijection between these sets.

Yet, following the same principle - pairing one element to another of these two sets - we arrive at a situation where every even number is paired with an even number in the set of natural numbers with the odd numbers left unpaired. Here we have what I think is an inconsistency - the same rule (pairing elements of one set with elements of another) producing, depending on the way you do the pairing, different, actually contradictory, results. Math can't have contradictions can it?

:smile: :up: