• Is our dominion over animals unethical?
    1. You said axioms are a given. Does this mean metaethical moral axioms can also be a given?
    2. You said someone who finds something self-evidently true (an axiom) isn't about their preferences. Could you not say the same thing about metaethics?

    You seem to be contradicting yourself. Before this, you said that all ethical views/stances, are based on preference. But then you said that accepting an axiom is not a preference. Well, there are axioms within metaethics, so you need to explain why some axioms are not based on preference, while others are based on preference.
    chatterbears

    Okay, so one baby-step at a time:

    First, ethical utterances are NOT true or false.

    Do we both understand that? If so, then we can move on from there, and I'll just remind you if I need to that ethical utterances are not true or false if that comes up again.
  • Is God a Subject?
    As I mentioned in the other thread we can dispense with these terms, "subject" and "subjective" and get by just fine. It seems to me that it is the use of those terms that causes the confusion.Harry Hindu

    I think it's a handy term for referring to mind-dependent or mind-oriented rather than mind-independent or extramental etc.
  • Is it immoral to do illegal drugs?


    Excellent post . . . we need a "thumbs up" button for posts like that.
  • Mutual relationship between Idealism and Materialism.
    Odd, though, that both of these guys acknowledged his respective philosophy was most likely beyond the general understanding of the crowd to which was explicitly directed, yet decried the method for teaching it to them.Mww

    Doing their part to cement the self-important asshole template. :wink:
  • Are there philosopher kings?


    I'm referring just as much to the idea of Plato saying "The far greater number of people only know . . . shadows in a cave, over which they bicker as to their shape," (not a literal quote from Plato obviously) whereas Plato is able to "transcend" that and has some insight into "what's really going on."
  • How does Berkeley's immaterial world actually work?
    I'll be interested to see the answers here . . . charitably assuming there will be some.
  • Thought experiments and empiricism
    It was never clear to me just what the claim was supposed to be here anyway re "transcending empiricism." Did Brown ever precisely define just what "transcending empiricism" was supposed to amount to?
  • Is it immoral to do illegal drugs?
    it also opens the door to bias and emotion based judgementsDingoJones

    I don't believe that it's really possible to avoid that, though.
  • Are there philosopher kings?


    As it should be.



    Especially given your insight.

    :wink:
  • Are there philosopher kings?
    Plato held that only a few wise philosophers could infer concepts like 'justice' intuitively. The far greater number of people (including lawyers) only know them as tenuous shadows in a cave, over which they bicker as to their shape.ernestm

    And lucky us that it just so happened that he was one of the few (or the only one?) who had "special insight" about this. :roll:

    Sounds like the typical Internet message board poster personality to me.

    And it reminds me of those folks who argue that not only is there objective aesthetic value, but lo and behold, they just so happen to be one of the people (or the only person) with complete access to it, so that all of the films/music/etc. they like best happens to also be the best stuff objectively. :lol:

    And if you act now, they also have a great bridge to sell you.
  • Giving someone a burden they didn't need to experience is wrong
    It's just an indirect way of complaining about how hard life is and its difficult sometimes to raise any more nuanced an argument than, "get over it!".Isaac

    Well and/or a philosopher's way to get relatives and friends to stop moaning about them not having kids.
  • Is it immoral to do illegal drugs?
    For sure we live in a society obsessed by being technically correct and I believe this is a serious threat to our liberty. In the past, we cared more about the spirit of the law, and said tyranny is going by the letter of the law. I won't argue that we are not highly concerned about technical correctness today. However, in the past there was room for a judge to say, we will overlook your violation this time, but if it happens again, you will be punished for the infraction and this one too. We relied on the wisdom of judges and didn't make the state the authority over punishments. A wise person isn't wise if s/he does not take ignorance of law into consideration.

    This is not the only time in history that a society became overly concerned with technological correctness. I question if this concern for technological is a good thing?
    Athena

    This is definitely something I agree with you on. There should be far more common sense in the criminal justice system. The objective should be to make everyone's lives better, and that's not done by taking a draconian, "technically correct" approach to criminal justice.
  • Is objective morality imaginary?
    I don't think so. Many people, myself included, regard morality as being essentially about the way we behave towards beings with a mental life (which probably means humans and other animals); it would follow from this that objective morality only appears in the universe once beings with a mental life evolve. Thus objective morality, if it exists, is not a feature of the extra-mental, but is a by-product of the evolution of mind.Herg

    Okay, but I'm telling you something about the way I use the terms.

    You'd have to explain to me better how you're using the terms for your distinction to make sense to me.
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?


    I asked you a yes or no question. You don't need to respond with more than three letters.
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?


    So at time T10 S is identical to S's parents' DNA?
  • Argument for an Eternal First Cause
    Not that I'm agreeing with the rest, but "Exists forever outside of time" should seem obviously incoherent.
  • Mutual relationship between Idealism and Materialism.
    although my mind is in my head, my head is in my mind, — Robert L. Wicks

    Oops! No, his head isn't in his mind.
  • Have I experienced ego-death?
    I experienced this unique feeling for 3 days if I remember correctly. On the fourth day, I bought a bag of bite-sized Snickers and ate it all myself, until I felt sick.Regi
  • Is God a Subject?


    Humor--How does it work?
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?
    The DNA is not identical to S but it will become an essential part of S.Andrew4Handel

    But then you didn't answer what I asked you. I asked what S's status at time T10 was.
  • Is God a Subject?
    "I want everyone to believe in god, so . . . it's anything at all that you can say about the world."
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?


    DNA in the mother and father is identical to S at T10? Is food that the mother and father eat identical to S?
  • Is it immoral to do illegal drugs?
    That's not even an argument, is it? Sure, I can hold the belief that Earth is flat; but, that just doesn't make it so.Wallows

    No, and it's not meant to be an argument. It's just a comment about what it conventionally refers to for something to be universally held or not.
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?
    I think creating someone is clearly an act of force on them because you are in control of the outcome which profoundly effects them.Andrew4Handel

    Okay, so at time T100, let's say, conception occurs--S is conceived via intercourse.

    At time T200, birth occurs--S is born.

    At time T10, what is S's status?
  • Is Determinism self-refuting?
    Right, that would be the identity thesis:SophistiCat

    Well, the identity thesis for someone who accepts determinism, yes. ;-)
  • Is Determinism self-refuting?
    If the physical world is causally closed, then truth, logic, reason, and other abstract things cannot have an effect on it.SophistiCat

    Because . . . of an assmption that those things are not part of the physical world? Otherwise, the connection there would need to be explained better.

    If logic, reason, etc. are physical things, then they're part of the causal closure in that case, and could indeed have an effect.
  • Giving someone a burden they didn't need to experience is wrong


    I participated in that thread, and I'll give a second, closer look at posts there, but I'm not sure what to look for. Many posts contain comments like this of yours:

    No one needs to go though adversities and life experiences of overcoming-to-get-stronger, if they don't exist in the first place to need it. Why create this need for need? Why create a situation that exposes new people to lacking something that they need to fulfill? Why create a situation that exposes new people to adversity that needs to be overcome? This impulse to create these situations on behalf of someone else is more an indication of the already-living person's inability to cope with the idea of nothingness. Our restless, willful natures prevents creates the notion that a non-existent person is a sad future.. That nothingness is sad. Nothingness is nothing. A philosopher once said, the nothing "noths". Whats wrong with noth-ing? Let non-existent people stay non-existent. Why do people feel we are bearers of some Promethean fire of being that needs to be carried forth and spread? Why use future people as "bearers of knowledge" or "bearers of experience" in such a matter? Is non-existence this scary to people? Is the blessed calm of nothingness seen as a blithe that must be eradicated with the strum und drang of life? What about survival-comfort-relief-boredom-relief needs to be lived out by a future person? What pleasures need to be had, if there was no person there in the first place to care? Certainly we can see the logic that preventing harm is a good thing, and no one loses out who doesn't exist in the first place.

    Nothing there argues for how it can make sense to say that something can be a good thing regardless of the good not being enjoyed by anyone. An argument for that is going to explain just what we're referring to by "good"--it's going to have some meta-analysis of what good even is, and then provide some some sort of support for how it's possible to have a "good" that's independent of what anyone thinks about it.

    In other words, it's not going to be an argument for a specific thing being a good that no one enjoys. It's going to be an argument for how it is coherent to suggest that anything could be a good that no one enjoys.

    So what should I look for in the thread re where to find the relevant post(s) arguing that?
  • Giving someone a burden they didn't need to experience is wrong


    I don't know if I've ever seen you paste something that I'd consider part of an argument for how it's possible for something to be good despite not being good to anyone though.

    I'd only consider something that directly addresses that idea to be an argument for that.
  • Is it immoral to do illegal drugs?
    Forgive me, but you sound like one of those flat-earthers that insist that their opinion is valid even if science proves them wrong countless times.Wallows

    Given that there are flat-Earthers, saying that "The Earth is universally considered to be spheroid" is wrong, isn't it? It doesn't matter how invalid or "proven wrong scientifically" they are. It would still be false to say that "The Earth is universally considered to be spheroid."
  • Giving someone a burden they didn't need to experience is wrong


    It must be possible to say how something can be good even if it's not good to anyone in a length shorter than a couple hundred pages.

    Heck the vast majority of arguments in philosophy are just a few lines, really.

    A few lines of stupid, normally (I'm not picking on antinatalism there--most arguments in philosophy wind up seeming pretty stupid--for example, Anselm's ontological argument, the p-zombie argument, etc.), but still usually just a few lines.
  • Is Determinism self-refuting?
    You keep using this term, "matter". I don't know what that is.Harry Hindu

    "Matter" = "chunks of stuff" basically. Like a piece of wood, leather, a pebble, etc.
  • '50% of my decisions are wrong' says...
    What makes a decision "wrong"?Harry Hindu

    You don't like the outcome.
  • '50% of my decisions are wrong' says...
    As long as you can frame them as binary choices, it would be difficult for more than 50% of your decisions to be wrong, unless you can't learn. If more than 50% of your decisions consistently trended wrong for a bit, you'd simply start making decisions and then do the opposite Then more than half would be right..
  • Is Determinism self-refuting?
    By his very belief in universal determinism, the determinist, if he is consistent, cannot interpret his opponent's sentence " I possess free will" to be an actual claim to possess an objective property. This is because if universal determinism is true then the only objective meaning the determinist can ascribe in his opponent's sentences are the physical causes that precipitated them.sime

    This makes no sense to me (and by the way I'm ignoring issues with "claims possessing objective properties" and the idea of objective meaning).

    Two immediate problems with your comment spring to mind.

    One, determinism doesn't necessarily imply physicalism (and neither does physicalism imply determinism for that matter).

    Two, why couldn't the person believe that meaning is physical?
  • '50% of my decisions are wrong' says...
    That one isn't ringing any bells, unfortunately, and a quick search doesnt suggest that it's a well-known saying.
  • Is it immoral to do illegal drugs?


    Yeah, I don't think that they're "bad stuff" just because someone has a habit with it. Much more is necessary for me to think that a situation is bad for someone other than the person having whatever drug habit. (And I have tons of prolonged experiences with people with drug habits --I've been a professional musician my whole life.)
  • Theories without evidence. How do we deal with them?


    I pretty much agree with everything in your above post except that I see anything other than being an atheist as being way too generous to ridiculous, incoherent nonsense that people have made up.
  • Is objective morality imaginary?
    That’s not how it appeared to me, that you said objective morality would be predicated on anything about mental machinations. It appeared to me you said objective morality must be predicated on both mental and non-mental machinations,Mww

    What in the world?

    If it appears to you that I said that O is predicated on m and n, then it appears to you that I'm saying that O is predicated on something about m.

    Fill in those variables for a couple other examples:

    If it appears to you that I said that working automobiles are predicated on carburetors and pistons, then it appears to you that I'm saying that working automobiles are predicated on something about carburetors.

    If it appears to you that I said that toast is predicated on bread and toasters, then it appears to you that I'm saying that toast is predicated on something about bread.

    At any rate, I am not saying that objective morality has anything whatsoever to do with mind/mental machinations.

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