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@khaled has said that he is interested in arguments, from the negative utilitarian position, that would counter the AN argument, and that he personally does not subscribe to this view. — Moliere

Right. I was curious what his view actually is, though.

Mentality is physiological in the sense that it is normally supported by the neurophysiological processing — Dfpolis

It's physiological in the sense that it's identical to physiology.

Neurophysiological data processing cannot be the explanatory invariant — Dfpolis

"Explanatory invariant"? What's that?

I haven't read every post in the thread. Did you ever say what your personal view is about all of this stuff?

That's a good point in that "preventing suffering" is incoherent if no one exists. People need to exist for preventing suffering to amount to anything at all.

I purposely said that this is an imperfect argument for the reasons you brought up. Since this is about the state of the world in the sense of stochastic harms and goods that can befall someone in greater or lesser variance it makes the argument hinge on statistics rather than axiological principles of harm. Hence, the more absolute and stronger argument is preventing suffering, period. — schopenhauer1

What? I need to go back and read whatever post this is supposed to be referring to, but "the more 'absolute' and stronger moral argument" isn't going to follow from anything.

but it is hard to justify anything other than preventing harm — schopenhauer1

The only way any moral stances are "justified" period is by someone feeling however they do.

So time (in the v term) determines mass. So something in the universe must be aware of time else it could not assign a mass. That suggests time is real? — Devans99

My view of time isn't the standard physics view of time . . . well, and that's especially the case since physics still leaves time unanalyzed ontologically and just treats it as an instrumental quantity that doesn't need to be pegged otherwise.

Time is definitely real on my view. Only creatures with minds are aware of anything, though, and that's a very small subset of what we find in the universe.

I wish you would say more. I think privacy is very important. Do you disagree with that? I think feeling safe is important. Do you disagree with that? I think our relationships are much better when we share social agreements and feel like we can trust each other. Do you disagree with that? What would follow is discretion is important. Discretion, good manners, and respect. Not shoving a difference in someone's face is being respectful and that is conducive to feeling safe and having good relationships. Now who the other person is, doesn't matter because we show all people the same courtesy and respect. It doesn't matter who they are, because it is our behavior that matters. Doesn't that solve a lot of social problems? — Athena

I think that people tend to be irrational about privacy issues. Part of that is the degree to which people estimate that anyone is going to really be interested in their private lives.

Feeling safe is fine, but if that involves an aversion to difference, or if it involves people being hypersensitive and rather neurotic, then we have serious problems.

Re trusting each other, that's important in close relationships, of course, but I think it's just as important that we don't automatically trust others, especially not what they say. We put far too much weight on utterances/speech acts in general in my opinion.

I'm not at all a fan of etiquette or "good manners" for their own sake. I want people to be existentially authentic and to be able to accept difference.

I'm very pro-difference, pro everyone letting their freak flag fly, and pro being cool with others letting their freak flags fly, no matter how different they may be from your own, no matter how much you wouldn't choose the same things for yourself.

And respect needs to be earned.

What solves social problems is being cool with difference. Being laissez-faire. Not wanting to control others. I'm extremely against all types of social pressure in the direction of conformity.

If everyone around you thinks religion is just too silly to bother with, then that becomes a kind of automatic truth not worth questioning. — sign

I'd love to be able to empirically test this. :wink:

I think in general, by the way, that you grossly underestimate stupidity. You often seem to think that just because someone is intelligent in some regard, they can't be quite stupid in other regards, even closely-related areas to the area in which their intelligence occurs.

https://www.ynharari.com/we-should-never-underestimate-human-stupidity-historian/

What increases is the inertial mass, or in other words, the amount of resistance it has to any change in its motion.

It's just a fact about how relative motion works.

That the essence of the real can be grasped in concepts. — sign

What if you're not an essentialist? (I'm not.)

Or rather, in my view, concepts are something that individuals perform--they're abstractions that individuals create, abstractions that range over a number of particulars, because it's easier to deal with the world via these sorts of abstractions.

And then "essential" properties are simply the properties that an individual considers necessary for the concept they've formulated. In a nutshell, they're properties that an individual requires to call some x (some arbitrary particular) an F (some concept term, per that individual's concepts).

So while there are essentials in that sense, it's simply something that individuals make up, a way that individuals think about the world (as are concepts in general).

Where does the idealism come in? It does not come in as the 'mental' of some isolated subject. It comes in as language, which is essentially objective. I don't choose what the signs mean, and as a philosopher my goal is to have my signs recognized by others as being objective, as revealing the world-in-common. — sign

Obviously I don't agree with any of that, either.

One of the core tenets of the sciences is that empirical claims are not provable, they are only provisionally verifiable in lieu of falsification. All scientific claims must be revisable, otherwise they're not scientific claims.

So no one really versed in science was claiming proof or certainty from within its framework in the first place.

Certainty is not worth worrying about.

Pulling is attractive, right? Pulling is towards something. Imagine you have a simple electron orbiting a proton. If the electron is being pulled on gravitationally, it's more difficult to keep moving in the orbiting motion. Hence a relative slow-down of motion.

Speed increases mass. That's the reason that exceeding light speed isn't possible.

If time is just change/motion, why does it run slower when an object travels near the speed of light or is near an intense gravity field? — Devans99

The effects on mass (basically a kind of "pulling" on the mass in both cases) is a counteracting force that make changes/motions relatively slower.

Think if you were moving a bunch of helium-filled balloons around. If something were pulling on the balloons, it would be harder to move them around. Near light-speed and intense gravitational fields are how much of a "pulling" difference we need to notice a significant difference in how things are relatively moving/changing.

I have a couple of arguments for time being discrete rather than continuous (actually similar arguments can be used for discrete space too). Thanks in advance for any feedback.

1. A point in space cannot have size=0 because it would only exist in our minds and not reality (no width; insubstantial)
2. Similarly, the point in time ’now’ cannot have length=0 (if it exists for 0 seconds, it does not exist)
3. Or if a ‘now’ had length=0, then a second would contain 1/0=UNDEFINED ‘nows’
4. So ‘now’ has length >0
5. Can’t be length = 1/∞ because ∞ does not exist (∞ + 1 > ∞ making a nonsense of ∞. Or if you define ∞ + 1 = ∞, implies 1 = 0)
6. So a ‘now’ has a finite, non-zero length. Time is composed of a chain of ’nows’ so time must be discrete

Or

a) Imagine a second and a year
b) By the definition of continuous, both time period are graduated identically (to infinite precision).
c) So there must be the same information content in both (same number of time frames: ∞)
d) But a year should contain more information than a second
e) Reductio ad absurdum, time must be discrete — Devans99

Alternatively, one can realize that mathematics doesn't actually occur per se in the external world, that time is just change/motion, and that change/motion only makes sense relatively (to something changing at a different relative rate/in a different way), so the question of whether it's discrete or continuous is kind of a category error.

"Sound" refers to a sensation. How could a sensation be external to a sensing body? — Metaphysician Undercover

How ignorant would you have to be to not be familiar with definitions of "sound" not as a sensation?

"Sound is defined as "(a) Oscillation in pressure, stress, particle displacement, particle velocity, etc., propagated in a medium with internal forces (e.g., elastic or viscous), or the superposition of such propagated oscillation" for example

I don't recall any such explanation, only a confused bit of nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your evaluation of it is independent of the fact that I explained it.

The problem with this perspective is that the religious traditions give us a much more comprehensive and realistic understanding of the nature of time, and the relationship between time and space, than the assumptions employed in modern science do. All of the unanswerable problems of modern physics, and cosmology, mentioned by wayfarer above, along with the issues of spatial expansion, dark matter, dark energy etc., are all incomprehensible aspects of reality under the paradigm of the scientific representation of time. It is my opinion that the problems in understanding these aspects of reality, will never be resolved until we release the scientific representation of time, and return to the religious ideology for guidance. — Metaphysician Undercover

And what is the religious theory of time?

Same as when asked "what do you believe", the answer "not this god and not that god either" isn't an answer to the question either. — Tomseltje

Unless the context is clearly religious, who would respond to "what do you believe" with a comment about gods?

If the context is clearly religion, then "I don't have any religious beliefs" would answer the question just fine, just like if someone were to say, "I don't play any sports."

Otherwise I'd expect someone to respond to "what do you believe" with a question of their own--"what do I believe about what?"

This is rhetorical blather. — schopenhauer1

He said that you're forcing something upon someone by procreating. You're not. "You're forcing something on someone by procreating" is ontological blather.

"Procreation is the direct causes of someone" is fine. Maybe he should have said that instead.

I'm not denying anything about what causes someone to exist. I made that clear by saying "It's an act of force in the way that opening a beer bottle is an act of force. In other words, it takes an application of physical forces to produce a particular effect."

I'm objecting to this language: "You're forcing something on someone by procreating."

If we can use feelings as explanations for peoples' behaviors, then aren't feelings objective? Anytime that you talk about the way things are, which includes peoples' emotional state, you are speaking objectively. — Harry Hindu

How would it make any sense to say that subjective/subjectivity refers to or necessarily implies "not the way things are"?

I've said this a ton of times, but when I use the terms subjectve/objective, I'm using them as simple synonyms for "mental" versus "extramental," and ultimately, I'm using those as terms for two different sorts of locations (brains versus everything else). Applying one term versus another to various things is like asking whether something goes in a cabinet or not. "Peanut butter?" "Yeah in the cabinet." "The couch?" "No, not in the cabinet." Etc.

Why does the location matter? Simply because if something is only a mental phenomenon, then it's not something that one can get right or wrong in the sense that one can get right or wrong what the chemical composition of, say, a volume of seawater is, It's simply a fact that people have the mental content that they do.

And doesn't that make the claim that it is possible, in principle, to arrive at an objective understanding of the absolute? — Wayfarer

I'd phrase that as "an understanding of the objective absolute," not as "an objective understanding," since understanding itself doesn't have the property of being objective. Understanding is a mental phenomenon, not an extramental phenomenon.

Anyway, so you're basically using "absolute" to refer to "what's behind it all." I wouldn't say that an understanding of that is necessarily achievable only by science, at least not with the assumptions that are currently made by the sciences, and scientists are just as prone to endorsing nonsense as anyone else, but the answer to "what's behind it all" is certainly not going to be religious, and is certainly not going to be arrived at by anything like religious "inquiry."

Mentality is physiological, by the way. But I wouldn't say that there's any reason to believe that a desire, per se, can be nonmental. I don't buy the notion of unconscious mental content in general.

Also, needs always hinge on wants.

How else do you propose someone do ethics then? Your own ethical rules result in a clear absurdity for me and that is "hiring a hitman is not wrong". I truly don't understand how you can hold this view. What about putting someone in a cage with a starving lion and no defenses? After all, it's the lion that is doing all the work not the person. — khaled

I'm not sure what you're responding to. How else than what do I propose "someone do ethics"?

Again, the way that everyone really does ethics, whether they believe/realize this or not, is by intuiting how they feel about interpersonal behavior.

And yeah, different people feel different ways about the same things.

Re the lion thing, lions aren't making choices that make them culpable for attacking someone, and I wouldn't think it's cool to lock someone in a cage nonconsensually, lion or not. Not because of some overarching principle, though.

Is metaethics the only thing you understand about ethics? — chatterbears

No. But the metaethical facts I've been mentioning can't be just ignored when we're talking about ethics from any other angle.

I am have been trying to talk to you for many posts now, about your normative ethics. — chatterbears

I explained earlier that I don't do ethics by any sort of overarching principle, because I think that's a bad idea that always leads to ridiculous stances (like antinatalism, for example).

how would you teach your kids right from wrong? — chatterbears

I didn't see you ask that. I don't believe that one can teach someone right and wrong. Right and wrong have to be a way that someone feels about behavior, and you can't teach someone (how) to feel. That doesn't mean that people aren't influenced, but just how they'll be influenced is unpredictable.

What I do is stress deliberative introspection, and stress that of course one's moral authenticity has to be balanced against the risks of bucking various societal norms. (For example, if one feels that it's morally permissible to commit murder, then one would need to balance acting in accord with that with the possible/probably social repercussions.)

It is an act of force that directly impacts the child — Andrew4Handel

It doesn't directly impact the child prior to or even at the moment of conception.

it is an act of force to begin somethings existence without its consent. — Andrew4Handel

Consent is a category error because there's nothing to grant or withhold consent.

I don't see how you can describe the creation of a child as not an act of force. — Andrew4Handel

It's not an act of force against someone a la it being a consent issue, which is the emotional conflation you're shooting for by using that language.

It's an act of force in the way that opening a beer bottle is an act of force. In other words, it takes an application of physical forces to produce a particular effect.

Aren't natural languages invented too? — ssu

Yes, of course. I'm just stressing the fact that it's invented, partially because you never know what someone is going to assume if you just say that it's a language.

Making the child exist is an act of force and then its experiences are forced on it (by its nervous system etc). — Andrew4Handel

It's not an act of force on the child. You can't do anything to the child until it exists. It seems like that's going in one ear and out the other.

Mathematics is an invented language, initially based on how we think about relations, and then the bulk of it is akin to extrapolating how we think about relations into abstract "game" of sorts.

That's not to say that it's not useful, but so is natural language. It's just with natural language, not many people are under the illusion that it exists independent of us.

No, I'm not a platonist. I'm somewhere between a subjectivist and social constructivist on ontology of mathematics.

And more generally I'm a nominalist in the sense where I deny that there are any real (that is, extramental) abstracts period.

Huh?

What do you mean? Trying to figure out what... — Wallows

Dimensionality other than three dimensions (plus time if you want to consider that a dimension) isn't real. It's just a mathematical game that we can play.

Since this would only be a mathematical game, the only answer that would make sense would be based on how we're setting up the rules of the mathematical game we're playing.

Was her desire for water not an objective fact? — Dfpolis

Of course not. Desires are mental phenomena.

If you need a desire for that then there's nothing objective about it.

There is no sense in which the child is choosing or that nature is forcing the parent automatically or that the child has expressed a preference and made a contract. — Andrew4Handel

Right, but there's no sense in which the child is being forced, either. It can't do anything, and we can't do anything to it, until it exists.

Combining your DNA and you partners is using physical forces to make someone exist. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, but that's not using force on someone.

Which is dominant? It probably depends on the exact scenario at hand, just what variables we're talking about.

to force him or her into existence — Andrew4Handel

You're not doing anything to anyone prior to them existing, hence you can't "force someone into existence."

Well then I have no idea of what you're talking about because I have no idea of what you mean by "objective sounds". — Metaphysician Undercover

Weird. That's such a basic thing to know. Objective sounds are sounds occurring external to your body.

What we've been talking about since we first engaged in this thread is how people use the word "matter", what "matter" commonly refers to. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's not at all what I'm talking about. My topic wasn't language.

because you seem to have no idea what people refer to with "matter", — Metaphysician Undercover

I explained a number of times what I'm referring to with "matter." For the common definition, we can simply look in dictionaries.

For you, laziness is a good basis for moral decisions — chatterbears

I actually didn't say anything about that. In the post about laziness, in fact, I explicitly said, "Not for any ethical reasons."

For me, re metaethics, the only basis there is for morality, at least foundationally, is how someone feels about interpersonal behavior. It's not a good or bad basis. It's just factually the basis.

As I've said again and again, no non-moral stance, fact, etc. can imply any moral stance.

"Laziness" isn't a moral stance. Hence "laziness" can imply no moral stance.

The point is whether you can do something like perfectly cut the sign's meaning from its material 'body.' — sign

Well, the meaning is the act of association we perform, while the sign simply isn't capable of performing such an act. That act is necessarily a way that we think about the sign. It's not an issue of literally thinking "I am performing this act of association," it's simply that it's not possible for a sign, or some sounds that others make, etc. to perform it for us.

It's just like it's not possible for others to perform the act of "translating" sheet music, say, into an instrumental performance for you. That's something you have to do. But when you're doing it, it's also not that you're constantly thinking, "I'm translating these marks into a musical performance on this instrument." Nevertheless , it doesn't make sense to talk about that process as if the translation could be public somehow rather than something you're doing--performing, as an individual.