No it doesn't, but you're welcome to make that argument. — S

OK, I'll produce the argument. In order that "there is a rock" is true, it is required that a place in space and time be designated, where the rock is located. And that's what you say in the op, in your opening line "there is a rock".

So, then you remove that human capacity to designate a particular place in space and time, by saying all humans are gone. And so "an hour" is meaningless because there is no one to interpret "an hour", or to measure that hour. So your scenario is a meaningless impossibility, due to contradiction. You posit the capacity to determine an hour later, when there are no humans and "an hour" is meaningless.

Then we all die.

Then I draw logical consequences from reasonable premises and definitions, and you...?

Nothing "happens next". There are still rocks, and words still mean what they do. — S

No, your premise #1 assumes already, that "there is a rock", after the humans are gone, then proceeds to ask if there is a rock, so it's just begging the question. Of course there is a rock, the premise dictates it. But what I am trying to show you is that your premise is contradictory, so it's nonsense.

Your definition of 'carrying capacity' is according to 'species'. Are you saying that the hunter-gather is a different species than the agrian? Otherwise, as the same species the carrying capacity is the same.

The produce is grown. But how does that take us outside the solar budget?

It's relevant because your hypothetical scenario assumes the capacity to designate a particular time and a particular place when there are no human beings.

So, let's start from the beginning. All human beings die. What next?

Are you certain of that? What is a more efficient solar energy converter... a plowed field of a forest? — Bloginton Blakley

A more efficient use of solar energy does not imply going beyond the solar budget, it just implies a more efficient use of the solar budget.

The false surplus come from the fact that it requires huge amounts of energy to create and defend a field. The total amount of energy spent requires additional energy inputs beyond sunlight... like human labor... which is also ultimately fed by solar energy. Whether stored in the form of fossil fuels or created from field of hay for draft animals. So when people start planting fields there is a local surplus for a small community at the cost of eco-diversity. That same ground could only support a very few wanderers. This allows a society to gain more territory... and create more fields. At the cost of increased labor requirements to develop and sustain the fields. Increase population and the cycle continues... — Bloginton Blakley

Your arguments are nonsense. Human energy comes from consumed agricultural produce. Fossil fuels come from solar energy. These are not instances of going beyond the solar budget. That the energy is collected at one time, and used at another, does not mean that the budget is broken.

And this is important for you to note... at every step in this process the land occupied by civilization is supporting far larger populations than that same land could support in it's natural state. — Bloginton Blakley

What is your proposed "natural state" of the land, barren rock, prior to all life forms?

Which of course means that agriculture is overdrawing the solar energy budget of that land. — Bloginton Blakley

No, all it means is that human beings are better at providing for other human beings (more efficient), with what the sun gives us, as farmers, in comparison to as hunter-gatherers..

There is a rock, but no one is there to perceive it, because we all died an hour previously. Is there a rock? Yes or no? — S

This is an impossible scenario. Who determines the point in time of an hour past when we all died, if we all died? That's the problem with scenarios like this. You want to remove all human presence, yet still presupposed the means for designating a particular place at a particular time, and ask "what's there?". But who would do that designating?

The vast human population we have is because of agriculture. Before agriculture human populations were much, much smaller. And the entire ecosystem existed within the energy budget provided by the sun.

So, we adopted agriculture not to support huge populations but because of the false surplus that agriculture produce, seemed a good way to increase our chance of survival. In pursuing that false surplus huge amounts of human labor is required, and society becomes reliant on the false surplus. — Bloginton Blakley

Agriculture does not go beyond the energy budget of the sun, so the "false surplus" you refer to is completely fictitious. Sure we have artificially lighted greenhouses, but this is such a minuscule amount of overall agricultural practises, which in themselves fall far short of maximizing the energy budget of the sun, that the energy used in these greenhouses is insignificant.

The demands of agriculture created the large populations. — Bloginton Blakley

This is where you have things backward. It is not the demands of agriculture which created large populations, it is the supply of agriculture which created the large population. The human demands of agriculture are actually very small in the modern mechanized farms such as in North America. A farmer can crop thousands of acres, or herd thousands of livestock, with very few employees. Agriculture makes no demand on the population, it simply supplies for the needs of the population. If the supply is higher than the need there would be a surplus, but the modern trend is to convert crops to fuel, so if anything, there is a shortage not a surplus.

We you add to that the other demands that the agrarian lifestyle puts on the human character, you end up with things like greed... property... authority... wars... markets... climate change... — Bloginton Blakley

I don't know how you are using "agrarian" here, but the lifestyle of the farmer is one of hard work, to provide for others. It is not properly characterized by "greed" and such terms. You have created a completely fictitious scenario, which casts the members of the agricultural society as evil villains, and that's just wrong.

A bit off from the subject, but for an atheist it's quite easy. And in the process of "natural selection" you really don't need God, when you have a random process how species get their genes and then the process of those most adapted to the environment making more offspring. — ssu

But a random process is not a selection. When you toss a coin do you think that something selects whether heads or tails will appear?

First and foremost, Darwinism is part of science, not an ideology, and hence it's based on objective study. More of a need for God would be to answer moral questions, what is wrong or right, but atheists typically just refer to humanism in this case. — ssu

Science is an ideology, a methodological ideology, but that's irrelevant. Darwin had to select the words used in description of his theory, and the fact is that he used "selection". If you explain what Darwin called a "selection", as a random process, then clearly you are misinterpreting what Darwin intended. He meant, that nature selects from processes which would, without such selection, produce random results. So you cannot dismiss as non-essential to his theory, that act of selection, leaving the whole thing as random processes. "Selection" does not mean random.

As I said, it really depends on your definition where to put the line between natural and artificial and that is arbitrary. Artificial is meant as "man made rather than occuring naturally". My issue with that, is that anything man made is natural in my view. Perhaps it's easier to just do away with "artificial" and simply say man-made as something understood as a more specific process found in nature. — Benkei

But Darwinian evolutionary theory breaks down the division between human beings and other animals. So to divide between artificial and natural, along the lines of human vs. all else, is not justified or supported by any real principles. This means we need to either extend the class of "artificial" to include the activities of other living beings, or else dismiss it altogether leaving everything as "natural".

Isn't agriculture necessary to feed the seven billion people on earth? How do you propose a society not based on agriculture, when eating is one of the few essential activities?

As it turns out basing the vast majority of human life on the demands of agriculture has run into a rather dramatic dead end. — Bloginton Blakley

Do you see how this is backward? We make demands on agriculture, because it is necessary to support the vast numbers of human lives, not vise versa.

Rejecting God or any diety is easy. — ssu

Is it really so easy? The word "selection" implies choice, and choice requires an agent who is doing the choosing. In the case of "natural selection", if the agent who is doing the choosing is not God, then who is it, Mother Nature? It appears to me that as long as we maintain the concept of "natural selection", some sort of God or deity is implied as that which is doing the selecting.

Wouldn't it better serve the purpose of evolutionary theorists, to remove the word "selection" from the description of the natural processes which are related to death? We all die and there is no selection (by the grim reaper) involved. Then "selection" is left to describe the reproductive processes, like those described by StreetlightX, which are responsible for the continuity of existence. There really is no need for a concept of "natural selection".

I guess I’m trying to focus on two things:

a: that morality exists as an objective set of guides on our behaviour (I await the howls).

b: that art, primarily writing, explains it: Homer, Shakespeare, Doestoevsky. — Brett

I do not think it is correct to say that art explains morality. That's why Plato worked to build a separation between philosophy and art. Art may express different forms of morality, but philosophy explains morality. There is a metaphysical distinction between "beauty" and "good", although these two get tied up with each other as the inspiration for philosophy. If we seek what Is "good", we find that each particular good, is only objectified in relation to a further end. What makes it "good", is that it is useful for some further purpose. On the other hand, "beauty" (and this is what art gives us), is sought simply for the sake of itself. This places "beauty" as the thing with highest value (sought for the sake of itself), necessarily higher than ethical goods (which are sought for the sake of something else). Plato seems to have been perplexed by this, especially since pleasure gets placed in the category of "beauty", as sought for the sake of itself. Thinking that "good" ought to be higher than "beauty" he sought the philosophical principles to reverse that hierarchy.

What Plato didn't quite grasp, and what Aristotle brought out later in his Nichomachean Ethics, is the importance of "activity", in defining human nature. So when Aristotle looks for the highest good, what puts an end to the chain of "some further purpose", he posits "happiness", and happiness takes the place of "beauty". But happiness still seems to be missing something in relation to human existence because it is natural for human beings to be active. So he proceeds to look for a highest activity. And this is how "good" may supersedes "beauty" as the pinnacle in the hierarchy. By designating human activity as higher than passivity, "good" is now of a higher importance than "beauty" as the inspiration for activity. No longer is activity apprehended as necessarily the means to an end, but the activity, as good, becomes the end in itself.

So back to your quote above, what morality gives us is the inspiration to act well. Therefore a) is a misrepresentation of morality, as it describes more of a statement of ethics (rules for behaviour), whereas morality involves the inspiration to act properly. And your question seems to be whether or not art can give us that inspiration to act. Referring back to the distinction between "beauty" and "good", art seems to give us beauty, but it may not give us the inspiration to act, which is the good.

OK, so by your definition, natural is something that is performed by non reasonable agents, like non-living things, and we still have to decide what living things qualify as reasonable? — Hrvoje

No that's not the case at all, because non-reasoning creatures make selections as do reasoning beings. The non-reasoning ones just don't make rational choices. But non-living things don't make choices at all. So where I see the problem is in classing the living together with the non-living as "natural".

I think that in the case of "natural selection", "selection" is not a good choice of words. That is because there is nothing which makes a choice, nothing which decides the creatures "selected", and this is what is required for "selection", a choice. For example, when you flip a coin there is nothing which chooses the outcome, so whether it lands heads or tails it is not an act of selection. To say that something "selects" whether the coin ends up heads or tails would be a misuse of the word.

I'm not debating myself, and I'm not debating Darwin. — karl stone

Only a master debater could debate oneself.

In her book “Wickedness” Mary Midgley wrote that ‘It is one main function of cultures to accumulate insights on this matter (morality; our motivation, ambivalence, wasted efforts, damage) , to express them in clear ways as far as possible, and so to maintain a rich treasury of past thought and experience which will save us the trouble of continually starting again from scratch. — Brett

I think, that in morality the need to start again from scratch cannot be dismissed. This is because morality starts from the top, the ideal, and all the moral principles follow from the ideal. So as time passes, the knowledge which human beings have come to possess changes radically, so that the ideal must be approached all over again, and redefined in light of the new knowledge. This is a starting again from scratch, and I think it is also why Plato was so hard on the artists. The artists are prone to repeating over and over the old principles, from the past, which must be erased in order to put forward new ones.

In The Republic there is a double layer of representation. At the top there is the Divine Idea, the Ideal, of "righteous person", and you might call this God's idea. An individual human being may attempt to replicate this Ideal of "righteous person" with one's own idea of "righteous person". This is the first layer of representation. Then the individual will act according to one's own idea, in an attempt to bring about the reality of actually being a righteous person. That is the second layer of representation.

If we are as natural as the rest of nature, how come the selection that we do is not natural, so that it deserves special attribute, ie "artificial"? Maybe that is the only thing here that is artificial, our notion of artificiality? — Hrvoje

I think there is a division to be made between living things and non-living things. And I don't
see how a non-living thing could make a choice or a selection. Yet we refer to non-living things as being natural. So "natural selection" doesn't appear to refer to anything reasonable to me because it still requires a division between living natural things, and non-living natural things, the former being capable of selecting.

I can give you one example (that I think it's an example, you may not agree with me), for which I think it is just a bad style. The syntagm "Natural Selection" in Darwin's theory is redundant in a sense that the word "Natural" could/should be omitted, as there is no alternative to nature when we talk about reality, ie not imaginary processes but real processes. — Hrvoje

The problem here, is that nature really does not "select". Selection is a matter of choice, and some sort of will is required to choose. So the phrase "natural selection" creates the illusion that nature has the capacity to choose. This breaks down the classical division between natural and artificial.

So "Natural Selection" is not redundant at all. It's a phrase purposely chosen to break down that division between natural and artificial, thereby bringing human beings, along with all of the "artificial" things which they create, into the realm of "nature". Whether or not this is a good, and true, representation is a matter of opinion. I think it's false, as represented in my first sentence, nature really does not select, individual living beings make choices, not nature.

Oh I agree with this completely. The business of life is to build freedom. Gravity says stay down, but life refuses. And I think all along in the thread I have emphasised identification as an activity more than something static. - Or perhaps I took it for granted? — unenlightened

We seem to actually agree on a lot, we just each have a different way of expressing what we believe. But you look at activity as the identifying feature, I look to the reason for the activity (intent) as the identifying feature. That's why when you asked me about John Chau I had to try to learn what motivated him, to properly answer the question. I didn't think I'd be capable of properly judging him simply on the basis of the action reported. But this piqued my interest to do a little more research into the history of the area. The internet is so good for that, no need to go to the library anymore (that's freedom). But I worry it might only be temporary, getting overrun by special interests, so that whatever information you can get for free, will become unreliable.

It isn't really off topic, because the nature of freedom, and how it is that some form of freedom can get some sort of status as a fundamental right is important both to the creation and maintenance of diversity, and to the concept of oppression.

So I look at "freedom" as a fundamental element in living organisms, which is responsible for the existence of diversity within these living creatures, not as something which the organism has to strive to obtain, as if freedom can only arise from those efforts. And from my perspective freedom is closely tied to the concept of life itself. In Aristotle's principal biological work, called "On the Soul", he describes the various potencies of living beings. Each capacity that a living being has, from the most basic, self-subsistence, through self-movement, sensation, and intellection, is itself the potential for action. Every such capacity, or potential for action, is a contingency, and according to the nature of possibility, it need not be actualized in any particular way. Therefore I find the freedom to choose (and this is not a rational choice, but closer to a random choice as we'd find with trial and error) to be a basic principle of life itself. And the fundamental freedom to choose is the cause of diversity in life forms.

This is why identity, when it is a living being which is being identified, is so difficult. The power of choice gives that being the capacity to change its identity. That is assuming that we base "identity" in some sort continuity of existence. Aspects of a thing which do not change for a period of time provide us with the identity of that thing. In the case of living beings, what we find is that what does not change, is the capacity for change (choice), and this confuses the hell out of us. So the living being is a true chameleon, always showing you a different identity, and to determine its true identity requires exposing the capacity to change its identity.

The history of the Andaman islands is sordid. The evil here is the evil of the authorities. The British established a penal colony, mainly for those Indians opposed to British colonization. The convicicts were enslaved to provide for the opulence of the authorities. The natives were treated worse. It's no wonder that the natives hate foreigners. The convicts were known to escape, and would therefore associate with the natives, whether the natives killed them or not would depend on the particularities of the situation. What do you think the ancestry of a modern day Sentinelese really is?

I don't think so, you can add more money if needed.

The game of monopoly has a fixed amount of potential wealth and victory can only be achieved by the acquisition of more wealth than everyone else. — Judaka

The amount of wealth is not fixed, because you can keep collecting money by passing Go indefinitely. If the bank runs out of money, make some more. The problem is that the players can construct ways of extracting higher and higher rents, while the fixed rate of income (passing Go) remains the same. If you don't manage to get into the capitalist scheme you'll be sucked under, and the first to loose. But then the capitalists, having annihilated the poor loosers, along with that source of revenue, must try to extract rents from each other, winner takes all. At this point the object of the game is not to have enough money to pay all your rents, but to have all the money, and then there is no one left who might be able to charge you rent.

When I imagine zeno's paradox, I tend to imagine an arrow travelling for a bit and then I stop it momentarily in my imagination and say to myself "This is now the arrow's position. Now how did it get here?". But of course I am not allowed to mentally stop the arrow from moving, for I would no longer thinking of a moving arrow.

Is it even possible to imagine a moving object that has a precise velocity and/or position? Personally I don't think so. I always find myself either fantasising that I have mentally stopped the arrow in order to measure it's position, or that I am entirely ignoring it's position when thinking about it's motion. — sime

Yes, I agree this is where the problem is right here. If the arrow is moving, there is no such thing as its position. That's why Aristotle sought to create a separation between these two, "becoming" and "being". The arrow paradox is clearly based in this problem. "Moving" implies that time is passing, "having a position", if we're not referring to something motionless, requires a moment at which time is not passing. So the arrow cannot be moving if it has a position. Simply put, there is an incompatibility between "having a position", and "moving", these two would be contradictory. So we cannot describe the same situation in these two contradictory ways.

But there is a first position to pass through, regardless of whether you can calculate it. — Luke

The problem is that there is an incompatibility between moving, and having a position. The two are contradictory. So it doesn't make sense to describe the movement of a thing in terms of position. And if, or when we do, such as to say that a thing moves from position A to position B, then we are not saying anything about the movement itself, only that it was at position A and is now at position B. To describe the movement is to describe how it got from A to B. But to say it moved from A to B is not to describe the movement, which is how it got from A to B.

Imagine if we had taken a video-recording of the object's motion in order to establish a per-frame analysis of the object's positions over time. No per-frame analysis will tell us about the object's motion, since for that we need to look at inter-frame differences which is a feature not present in individual frames. This is again, analagous to the uncertainty principle in that motion and position are estimated, or rather constructed, with respect to incompatible features. — sime

The uncertainty principle is derived from the Fourier transform which involves the problem of "the start" (or however you want to call it), in the sense of a time period, which is similar to what Michael is arguing. A time period is defined by frequency, but the shorter the time period, the less accurate is the determination of frequency. The problem is reciprocal, if the time period is too short we can't determine the frequency, if we can't determine the frequency the time period is indefinite. "The start" is the first time period, and the shorter that time period is, the more indefinite any determination made from it is. This is very similar to the problem of acceleration. If a thing is at rest at one moment, then accelerating at the next moment, there must be a time of infinite acceleration.

Well we all have our differences of opinion, and to me, that's what makes each of us different, forming our different personalities and consequently our identities as persons. That's why I refer to Plato's cave analogy, the "real me" is to be found in my ideas and opinions, whereas my activities and cultural relations are a reflection of the real me. To reverse this, making my ideas and opinions a reflection of my cultural relations, is to deny the importance of free will in choosing what to believe. And determinist ontology leads to all sorts of problems with respect to cultural relations.

That question can only be fairly answered by an Aristotelean. I am not one, but I think there are plenty on this board. IIRC Metaphysician Undercover is one (apologies in advance if I have misread your position MU). — andrewk

I believe I've read Aristotle's work quite well, and thanks for the reference.

Does anyone philosopher still think that they prove that change is impossible? — Walter Pound

Aristotle demonstrates that change (becoming) is fundamentally incompatible with being (represented as a describable state. If change is described in states of being, there would be one state followed by a different state. To account for the change between them we'd have to posit another state as intermediary. But this would just introduce another different state, so we'd need to posit more states to account for the change, resulting in an infinite regress of described states, without any real change. So he concludes that a state of being is fundamentally distinct from becoming, change.

Accordingly he divides reality into two distinct aspects, form and matter. Form is described as actual, active, while matter is described as potency, or potential. All reality is composed of these two aspects, and the separation is theoretical only. The difficult part to understand is the distinction between "forms" in the physical world, and "forms" in the human mind. In the physical world, forms are what have actual existence, and are actively changing. In the human mind forms have actual existence, as what is real to the mind, but they exist as formulae which are described, or defined. states of being. So there is an incompatibility between what is "actual" within the human mind, and what is "actual" in the physical world. This is what creates paradoxes like Zeno's. In the physical world, the forms of existence are actively changing and this is fundamentally incompatible with the forms by which the human mind describes physical existence, as states of being.

I'm claiming that it's impossible to count in order the rational numbers between 0 and 1 and that for the exact same reason it's impossible to pass through in order the rational-numbered distances between 0m and 1m. — Michael

That's right, there can be no definite order to the rational numbers, because any "first" number is arbitrary and randomly chosen. The better question is whether the principles which assert zero as a rational number are truly consistent, and this questions the validity of negative integers. But that's off topic of the thread.

And what does infinitely small mean? — albie

It's a principle. It says that no matter how small of a thing you get, you can always get something smaller. Whether or not it's true is debatable, but I think it would be difficult to prove it, one way or the other.

We might say that "identity" in the pure, absolute sense (if there is such a thing) says nothing about the thing; "I yam what I yam", says nothing about Popeye. However, since it identifies Popeye as something distinct and separate from his environment, it still says something about something. It establishes a distinct entity, Popeye, separate from his environment. You might understand this as the difference between saying "that" something is, and "what" something is So prior to saying anything about Popeye, or Popeye's relationship to the bigger entity, his environment, it is necessary to establish that there are boundaries of separation between Popeye and this bigger entity, his environment. To say that there is such a thing as Popeye is to make this separation.

That is what I believe is the necessity of identity. It is not to say anything about the thing, except that it is a thing, and this is to individuate, separate it from everything else. If this process of identification is not done first, prior to any type of saying something about the thing, there will be ambiguity as to the identity of the individual thing which we are talking about when we start to say things about the thing.

This is the necessity, that knowing anything about me means knowing how I relate to the world; it is a linguistic, and epistemological necessity. If I am unique, I am unique regardless of what is said or known, but to know that I am unique is to know something about the world, that it only has the one unenlightened in it. — unenlightened

So from my perspective, this is a vague and partial truth. It is true that "knowing anything about me means knowing how I relate to the world", but only in the most fundamental sense of "how I relate to the world", meaning knowing that I am an individual, distinct, separate from the world. Knowing "that" I am an individual is knowing something about me, which is not the same as knowing "what" I am. But it is necessarily prior to knowing what I am as an individual, in order to avoid the ambiguity involved with distinguishing whether I am talking about me, or I am talking about the world. So it is not necessary in an absolute sense, but necessary for an accurate understanding. This is the basic necessity, "I am that I am", and any statements about what I am can only follow from this basic assumption. Moving beyond this basic assumption, how I define or describe myself is a matter of choice, and this is where I find contingency.

All you are talking about is the political ideology of traditionalism or conservatism being imposed on a culture from outside of the culture. How is this any different from a culture defining itself as being traditionalist and imposing that on it's own people (kind of like how the Republicans are in the U.S.)? A political ideology isn't right or wrong. It is just a method of living. Other cultures have imposed themselves on others for all of history. It the natural way of things. — Harry Hindu

I wouldn't say that there is a big difference between these two. And to the extent that members of the culture are oppressed (because we identify "oppression" as bad), this is not good. When certain members of a culture oppress other members it effectively divides the culture in two, so that you are left with one culture oppressing the other. And when Americans brought slaves from Africa, you may think of this as one culture oppressing another from outside it, but the two cultures integrate, living together in that one act of slavery, creating the situation where one culture suppresses its own members. So the two are essentially the same thing, the two cultures are divided, or united into one, depending on your perspective, by that act of oppression.

I believe there is such a thing as right and wrong ideology. And just because you describe something as "the natural way", this does not make it right. Morality is often involved with curtailing what comes natural to us, as is the case with breaking bad habits.

How does one discover a unique aspect without relating it to the group? Even with DNA the uniqueness of the individual consists of usually a unique combination of traits that are shared in a population, or rarely a unique mutation, which is only found to be so by comparison with the group. That is to say, uniqueness is necessarily a position in a group, like a king in a country, or a runt in a litter. To say that I am unique is to say that I have X, and no one else has X, and it is only through the relation to everyone else that uniqueness can be seen. — unenlightened

Yes, that's what makes an individual, it's a "unique combination of traits". I would say it's a unique set of characteristics. When we describe something, we cannot describe it by referring to this or that attribute, we must create a set of attributes which is unique to that individual thing. That's a matter of placing the thing into numerous different groups. So if "culture" is the principle of identity for a person, we couldn't describe a person by referring to this or that culture, we'd have to find numerous different cultures which that person is a member of, and create a uniqueness for that person through reference to the numerous different cultures ... is a member of this one, is not a member of that one, etc. But "culture" by itself doesn't serve this purpose because there aren't enough of them distinguished, and the boundaries are not well defined. But it could be used as one of the identifying features.

The notion that I particularly oppose though is the thought that "uniqueness is necessarily a position in a group". I believe that this is off track in two ways. First, as per above, uniqueness is a function of a person's position in numerous groups. The second problem is the idea of necessity. This issue is a bit more complicated because we tend to think that an object has an "objective" identity, an identity independent of any "subjective" identity assigned to it by a human being. (What Harry calls "there is simply a way things are"). This creates the idea of necessity, the identity is necessarily such and such according to the objective position of the thing.

But in general, we talk about "the identity" of a thing as something handed to the thing through human discretion, and that's a matter of judgement, choice. So this identity is inherently subjective. When we are creating an identity for a person, we create groups for classification, and choose the groups where we want to place the person, in order to create a unique identity for the person. The serious problem is that unless it is assumed that there is some objective reality to the groups (and this is a real issue as your example of "human being" in the last post demonstrated) and also that people are inclined to adhere to what is apprehended as "objectively real" when making such judgements, then they are free to create all sorts of different groups as they please, giving different persons all sorts of strange identities. Furthermore, even when the creation of groups follows principles of objectivity, there is a seemingly endless number of different groups which may be created. Therefore there may be numerous possibilities for a person's "unique identity" depending on how one creates the groups of classification, even when the groups of classification follow objective principles. And identity is a matter of choice.

I'm afraid this is not the settled unquestionable reality you think it is. On the contrary you have merely hidden the circularity from yourself. We decide who is human, and whoever we have decided is not human does not get to make the decision. And that used to include peasants, slaves, blacks, children, homosexuals, the disabled, and disfigured, and women, at various times and various places. there is still controversy on this board about when a clump of cells becomes a human. — unenlightened

Yes, I realize this, and I was wondering if this point might come forward. But what this indicates is that all forms of identifying by group are somewhat arbitrary, and unreliable judgements. This leaves us with the other option, which is to identify by the individual. And this I insist, is the only true form of identity. A thing's identity is found by determining aspects which are unique and particular to that thing itself, not by examining that thing's position within an arbitrary group. That is why law enforcement agencies depend on things like fingerprints and DNA, while profiling is less reliable and in some cases controversial.

How do you know what it is you're preserving without first observing the culture in its primitive state PRIOR to any interference of another culture? — Harry Hindu

The reason I did not answer this question is because it is not relevant to the point I was making. The point I was making is that such cases of preserving are fundamentally wrong. So from my perspective there is no instance of preserving something and you do not know what it is that you are preserving, because "preserving" has already been determined as the wrong procedure.

Remember, I was arguing that preserving a culture is fundamentally wrong, because it can only be successful through oppression of its individual members. If you consider what unenlightened and I have discussed, you'll see that I've been arguing that the group (or culture), is a category of classification created for some purpose. The effort to preserve the correctness of the categorization (preserve the culture) can only be successful through suppression of the individual members' will to diversify. You seemed to think that preserving the categorization for the purpose of scientific observation was somehow acceptable, and fundamentally different from preserving the categorization for the purpose of slavery.

I'm trying to come up with an example of where an increase in knowledge causes harm, or more harm than good. Can you help? — Evola

It's not the knowledge itself which causes benefit or harm, it is the way that the knowledge is used which is beneficial or harmful. So knowledge falls into the category of a potency, or power, which may be used for bad or good.

I don't see what you're arguing, if you are arguing anything. How would you expect to observe a culture without interacting? By spying through telescopes? How could that be respectful of the people's privacy?

I'd kind of like you to apply this to the case of John Chau. John judges himself according to an evangelical culture that he follows/accepts/believes/identifies with. The Sentinelese culture seems to identify him as a white devil invader. The Indian government identifies him as a criminal interfering white idiot. How do you see this individual? I've said I see him as a good man by his own lights. — unenlightened

You ask a difficult question, and the easy answer is to say that I don't really have the information required to make that judgement. I don't really understand his ambition, and that is what drove him to his death. And, you can be sure that he knew death was a real possibility. He was not explicitly asking for death, but he was putting his life into the hands God, where he probably saw two possible outcomes, either he'd have some success with the Sentinelese, or he'd be killed and God would make him into a martyr. Either way, he fulfills his commitment to God.

The bigger question I think though, is his perception of evil. He seems to have proceeded in his actions as an effort to fight evil, and this implies an enemy. Do you apprehend a difference between going forward with the intent of bringing good, and going forward with the intent of fighting evil? The former implies the existence of friends, while the latter implies the existence of enemies. So I think that poor John Chau's approach may have been all wrong. He most likely had good intentions, because fighting evil is of course a good intention, but he didn't properly identify and understand the evil involved, so his approach was all wrong. It is one thing to go out into the world alone, with the intent of doing good, and a completely different thing to go out alone, with the intent of fighting evil.

You want to claim that every one of these cultures is a cave, and you and Plato are outside? Even the way you put it makes no sense to me. "... how we define "person", must be derived from outside of the culture, or else we'd just have a circle." We???? We define things in a shared language and these definitions are thereby cultural. But you want to start with a 'we' that is not a culture! — unenlightened

That we define things with a shared language, and the definitions are cultural, is irrelevant to whether or not the thing being identified, the person, which we are defining, or describing, can be properly defined through reference to one's culture. We use shared language to describe things like the earth and the moon, but this does not mean that these things being defined are being defined by referring to their cultures.

Let me try a different approach for explanation. Do you agree that there are things common to human beings which are not culture specific? When we define what it means to be a human being we refer to these aspects which are common to all of us. and not specific to any particular culture, or group of cultures. We are all in the group "human being" regardless of culture. On the other hand, there are particular human beings, which we call individual persons. So when we go to identify an individual human being, as this particular human being, we must refer to things particular to that person, and this is not the person's culture, because that signifies a group of similar people. That would not identify a particular human being, it would only identify a group, giving us no means to identify the particular individual.

Now we have two extremes. All human beings are the same in one sense, and this validates "we". In another sense each is individual, particular, and this validates "me". We could move further and identify a particular variety of human beings having some similar properties, or habits, as "a culture", but in relation to moral purposes what would be the point of such a determination? "Culture" does not serve to identify the individual, nor does it serve to tell us what's common to all human beings, so what purpose is there to identifying distinct cultures?

I don't know what you're saying. It appears nonsensical according to conventional language use, and the philosophy I've studied. Yet you keep asserting it over and over again as if it's meaningful, without backing up this claim with any sort of argument od explanation.

Time is not change, it's a parameter of measurement of change. So your claim that time is change is just like your nonsensical claim that size is an object. I really cannot see how it makes sense to you.

You saw what NoAxioms wrote, we don't use "time" and "change" in similar ways. you're assertions are completely wrong.

I know that's how you feel, you've already made that quite clear. However, with no intent to hurt your feelings, I must tell you that your feelings are quite irrelevant in this matter. So you might just pull your heart off your sleeve and discuss the issue rationally. This is not the place for special pleading, you've produced no argument for your assertion. I produced an argument to back up my claim and you rejected it on the basis that you feel it is false.

Denying members of that culture the right to leave isn't just observation as I have been stating — Harry Hindu

But the subject we're discussing is not simple "observation". What we're discussing is "preserving the more primitive culture for the purpose of...". The subject is preserving the culture, not observing the culture.

Think about it this way. When a biologist wants to observe another animal, they hide so that they don't disturb the animal and its natural behavior. They don't want to influence the behavior by making themselves known the other animal. This is what I'm talking about. Scientists would observe from a distance so that their presence isn't noticed so that they can observe their behavior independent of any interaction with them because once you interact you forever change that culture. So cultures change as a result of interacting with other cultures. — Harry Hindu

All you've done now is changed the subject. You're not talking about preserving a culture any more. So what's the point in proceeding on this path?

But the Sentinelese cannot campaign to have a Starbucks, or against it, individually or all together, until the have the benefit of an education (cultural indoctrination) to tell them about Starbucks. And once they have the education and can form the view, they are no longer Sentielese in anything but name. — unenlightened

I think education is a key point here. And this is why Plato's cave allegory is relevant. The philosopher goes out of the cave and sees (learns) what the others don't see. What the philosopher sees is true and right, being something apprehended and firmly grasped by the mind, but the others cannot apprehend it because they have not been exposed to it. So the task of the philosopher is to educate the others, and it's no simple task because the others have made a comfortable namby-pamby life, living in their own little cave. So the analogy is that of forcing the people to look directly at the light source. It's painful, but the cultural habits, or even the culture itself, must be broken for the good of the people.

Perhaps it's worth considering the reflexivity of morality. Jesus did not have a view on Global warming, and thus did not consider a commandment forbidding the extraction of fossil fuels. But we are not more moral because we do. A good person is one who does good deeds according to a moral code. But it is the reflexivity of what makes a good moral code that is in question in this thread, and that requires a ground. — unenlightened

I'm having difficulty with your use of "reflexivity", particularly "the reflexivity of what makes a good moral code". It appears that we need to distinguish two different senses of "good". There is "good" in the sense of "according to a moral code", but there is also 'good" in the sense of what justifies the moral code. There's another thread now on the Euthryphro problem, which looks at this same issue from a religious perspective, but I think it's more easily understood in the way that it's presented here.

If I understand you correctly, the reflexivity you refer to is that the moral code must reflect back upon the good of the individual people within the society. So we have "good" #1, which is the people behaving according to the code, and we have "good" #2 which is what the code is doing for the people. The issue is the grounding of good #2. This is why I insist that the identity of the individual, how we define "person", must be derived from outside of the culture, or else we'd just have a circle. The circle is that the good moral code is the one best capable of inspiring the people to follow it. And there is some truth to that, but it just begs for the question of what inspires people to follow the code, and then we must turn to the nature of the individual anyway. If you've read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, you'll know that he posits "happiness", as grounding for the ethical "good" of the people.

John Chau gave his life to his moral duty; he was a good Christian man according to his own lights, and that is, in the Christian traditional least, the measure of individual virtue, what one will sacrifice for the good. "Greater love hath no man..." Not a Namby-Pamby by any means. So by what moral code does the Indian government, or the liberal elite, or anyone else, judge him to be an evil fanatic, an idiot, a madman, or whatever level of condemnation is attached to him? It seems to me that consistency requires that we treat him as generouslyl as we treat the Sentinelese - he is as innocent as they.

And if we have the right of it, if we are the guardians of morality and civilisation, is it not likewise our duty to gather these miserable sufferers under the yoke of religious indoctrination, and attempt to deprogram them, as the Chinese are doing? — unenlightened

These are issues of the relationship between good #1 and good #2. You ought to see that good #2 must take priority over good #1. Acting according to the code is only good in so far as the code is good. So how is the code judged? And this is where we turn to education. However, the issue is very complex, and it is not simply a matter of education here. Plato uncovered a very difficult problem in his analysis of sophism. The premise was that virtue could be produced by education. Teaching individuals how to recognize and understand "good" ought to inspire them to act well. But this is not necessarily the case, as people choose to do what they know is not good, and choose not to do what they know ought to be done, as good. And this problem was taken up directly, and to a greater extent by Augustine. Virtue is not simply a matter of education, as the sophists claimed "virtue is knowledge", which could be taught. There is a matter of creating the inspiration required to do what one knows is good. (Namby-pambyism doesn't cut it). This is why it is essential to understand the nature of an individual, as an individual, in order to judge a good code from a not so good code. Not only must the code outline what is "good" as a direction for education, but it also must provide the means for inspiration.

Yes, that's what I was arguing. It seems quite clear that it is a possibility. All you have to do is assume that there is a limit to the shortest time period required for change to occur, then conceive of an even shorter time period. In other words, even the smallest possible change requires a quantity of time, and we can always conceive of a shorter period of time. For example, if change requires a Planck length of time, we can still conceive of a time period of less than a Planck length. In that shorter time period no change would occur.

Looks like you have to pay to read that article.

So, have you read the article?

Your premise is clearly unsound so you have no argument. Sorry, form without content is not an argument.

You have no argument, only a feeling. That's why what you say is irrelevant to logic.