I said what I said because he said this:

everything is countable — Marzipanmaddox

Quite why he said that, I don't know. :chin:

Quite why he said that, I don't know. — Pattern-chaser

Yeah, I don't know why he used "theoretically" either.

I think that he is one of those people who uses technical-sounding terms in a jumbled and sporadic manner in the hope of sounding like more of an intellectual.

I've seen much worse.

Why would you say that morality is based on flourishing when all you really mean is that you think that it would be useful to think about morality in terms of flourishing? — S

Because I think that the idea of good and bad moral action, the inherent logic of it, if you like, is based on the idea of benefit vs harm, i.e. flourishing vs languishing. I shouldn't have to keep repeating this.

Morality is a set of codified rules of behaviour. All such rules are subject to the individual(cultural, societal, social, familial, and/or historical) particulars. — creativesoul

Ok. This is an incredibly loose standard of morality. While you can argue that everything that falls under this category is morality, I would disagree.

Look at the Canaanites. These people, as a culture, would sacrifice their children to Moloch. They, as a community, believe that child sacrifice was a good thing, so they did it. By the standard you describe, child sacrifice is moral, so long as the community agrees to this and enforces this law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch

I argue that there is a difference between law/standard/culture based behavior and morality. Morality, the way would define it, is something that is always beneficial to the society. The society will always benefit from a moral action, but just because something is agreed upon by a culture, society, or family doesn't mean that this action is in any way a moral action.

By the standard you describe, child sacrifice is moral, so long as the community agrees to this and enforces this law. — Marzipanmaddox

Not at all, because CS is in this culture, not the Moloch. So by the standard he describes child sacrifice is immoral because we think that it is immoral.

If you define morality as "maximising personal pleasure at the expense of others" that makes clear what is moral and what is not too. It just means that several community benefit actions I take are now defined as immoral. So what? — Isaac

The "so what?" is exactly what I am trying to get at here.

If we have this system, quantified and calculable, the same "so what?" that would be created by this system can already be seen in science.

Though, yes, everyone can agree that a rock thrown into the air will fall down to earth, so why would we need to define this, empirically, with calculable equaitons, when we can already agree that the rock will fall down, when we don't need equations to come to this conclusion?

The thing is that calculable equations provide extreme degrees of clarity, and beyond that they can be utilized in a manner that provides a great degree of value.

With physics, say, the Chinese knew for thousands of years that you could make fireworks. You could use gunpowder to propel explosives into the air, at which point they explode. The advantage of physics allowed people to turn this general understanding of the world into very explicit and useful knowledge. We can now create missiles that fly into the air and land at the exact location you want them to.

It is this complete mastery and understanding of a topic, to the point where we can calculate and know exactly how things are going to work, this allows us to make much more precise and accurate decisions.

It's the difference between old-fashioned fireworks/rocket launchers, which were used as a weapon, such as the Hwacha, and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwacha

There is a clear ability to gain incredible degrees of success which were previously unimaginable by applying the scientific method to things.

This is the difference we would experience in society. No longer using the equivalent of the Hwatcha as the epitome of morality, but using instead the intercontinental ballistic missiles of morality. Think of the value that morality has brought to society, this is the Hwatcha. Think of the difference between an ICBM and a Hwatcha, this is the difference between traditional non-quantified morality and quantified/objecitve morality.

Logically? Look, words have definitions, and the word, "life", has a definition, and an acceptable definition can be found in the dictionary. — S

Ok. My definition is in explicit accordance with the definition in the dictionary. Beyond that, when you logically produce a definition of something, when you do this accurately, then said definition is an accurate and legitimate definition of that word.

Why would the definition of something be anything other than the logical definition of that something? Why would something be defined in a manner that cannot be explicitly reproduced using logic?

"

You're delusional. You're also trying to reinvent the wheel, which is a foolish endeavour. — S

I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel at all. I'm trying to argue that the scientific method should be applied to process of making wheels. I'm trying to improve upon the process from which wheels are made, using a systematic approach that has been explicitly proven to function.

The wheel has been improved greatly by the scientific method. There is no reason that morality should not be subjected to the same system of improvement.

To say that this is reinventing the wheel is to say "All wheels must be made of wood or stone, this is how wheels have always been made, if a wheel is not made of wood or stone it is not a wheel at all."

If this were the case, then all wheels would still be made of wood and stone, when in reality very few wheels are made of wood or stone today. Philosophy here is this wood/stone wheel. I am arguing that the utilizing the scientific method to define, refine, and improve morality would produce a much higher quality product, a better and far more functional form of morality. It's hard to have a car with wooden wheels, and the same can be said about using traditional/non-scientific morality to govern our society.

My argument is that simple. "Apply the scientific method to morality in order to study, formalize, refine, and improve our understanding and ability to utilize morality."

I'm not arguing in favor of altruism. I'm not arguing in favor of anyone doing anything to hurt themselves for the sake of others. I'm arguing in favor of morality.

Here is my reasoning. Originally, there were only individuals. Then people formed groups. The groups are always more powerful than the individual, this is why the groups came to dominate.

My definition of morality is "That which holds the groups together, thus enabling them to dominate the individual."

Once an individual is part of a collective, they are no longer an individual, they are a part of that collective, and they cannot exist without the collective so they are not an individual. The collective is the individual, as you cannot divide off the people without destroying the collective.

I am just arguing in favor of success, regardless of what you want to call it. The power of the collective has proven to dominate the world, and this is why i defend it. Unless every society in the history of the world is a "collectivist altruistic society", then this is not altruistic collectivism. Sure, they may be similar, but they are not the same.

By being a part of society, you sacrifice your individuality, you are no longer a person, the only "person" here is society, you cannot exist without society and thus you are not an individual, you cannot be divided from society and retain any legitimacy of your own existence. That is why your own desires are disregarded if they conflict with the well-being of your collective.

As for "words have meanings", look at it like this.

The "meanings" of words are agreed upon, but that does not mean they are accurate. If somebody tells you the definition of a rock is "A hard immobile object created when God created the world 6000 years ago", this is a functional definition of the word, and many people agreed to it over the course of the history of the West, but just because people can agree upon a definition does not make it accurate.

I use logic to produce the definitions of the words I produce. Logically, if my definitions are different than the agreed upon definitions, I would argue that the logically correct definitions are more so valid than ones that are simply agreed upon. People can agree upon false definitions, and logic would argue that these definitions are false.

Your argument that "words already have meanings, you can't make them up", is essentially "The Bible says this is true. If you disagree with the Bible you are wrong."

I try to produce accurate definitions, and I would argue that my own are more so valid and justified by the world at large, simply due to providing actual quantifiable and objective evidence to support my definitions, than any sort of semantic argument based upon popular accord or otherwise subjective and baseless metrics.

Basically, once you start to count things, you can tell that everything is countable. — Marzipanmaddox


Consider the difference between "less" and "fewer": There are fewer cows in the field, so there is less milk. The concept of countability is this basic. Cows are countable; milk is not. — Pattern-chaser

You can count volume of milk with liters? You can even count/approximate the individual number of atoms in that liter of milk if you really wanted to.

Think of a rock falling from a person's hand towards the ground. This may not seem numerical, but even if it does not naturally appear this way, we can still represent and describe it numerically. — Marzipanmaddox


No we can't. We can develop and assign numbers to something like a falling rock. These numbers might predict the rate at which the rock falls, but that's as far as it goes. There is much more to be included before we can say that our words "represent and describe" it. — Pattern-chaser

The numbers do represent and describe the falling of the rock, you can use numbers to represent any aspect of that situaiton you want, the location, the time, the space, the density. The point is not that I have fully described the falling of that rock, it is that numbers can explictly be used to desrcibe every facet of that rock falling to the ground. These things can all be quantified, that's all that I'm saying. What part of a rock falling can't be quantified?

If it was not selected for or against, then it would not be so prevalent — Marzipanmaddox


That's an assumption, not the conclusion of a logical thought process, or at least not one that you've offered in this discussion. — Pattern-chaser

That's just how evolution works. If you put pressure against a trait, that trait becomes less prevalent. If you put pressure in favor of a trait, that trait becomes more common. This is why all Europeans had light skin, to increase the amount of vitamin D they received from the sun. This is why black people have dark skin, to protect them from being burned by the sun.

If there was no selective pressure here, then those traits would not be as prevalent. Meaning black skin would be just as prevalent in Europe as white skin, meaning white skin would be just as prevalent in Africa. The reason that things become uniform across a population is because selective pressure has pressured any sort of alternatives out, alternatives cannot compete with the most competitive form, and thus the most competitive form of the trait becomes universal within that population.

Empathy/sympathy here was selected in favor of, in many forms of complex life, just like how white skin was selected in favor of in Europe. It was selected in favor of because it increased the liklihood of survival when compared to its absence, just like how dark skin increased the rate of survival in Africa when compared to the absence of dark skin.

I'm saying philosophy is not reliable method of deriving truth because it deviates from the scientific method. — Marzipanmaddox


Ah, so the only reliable method that exists for "deriving truth" is the scientific method? — Pattern-chaser

Yes. Truth here meaning the subject is no longer subject to debate, that the accepted truth is proven to be universal and effectively unquestionable. Think of the difference between the unquestionable validity of physics when compared to philosophy.

It is much, much harder, and easily impossible in many cases, to question and argue against commonly accepted and thoroughly proven arguments made with physics, whereas with philosophy it is incredibly to do this, because there is no need to produce any sort of reproducible empirical result that can be objectively validated by anyone.

It's the difference between "This experiment proves that my argument is correct, with objective, impartial data that justifies my argument." and effectively "I say I am right. I am right because I say I'm right."

Not that I agree with the math fetishism he's espousing, — Terrapin Station

What I am arguing is no more "math fetishism" than any other science. Do you describe physics and chemistry as "math fetishism"?

People don't use math to explain these sciences because of some perverse sexual arousal that comes from math. They use math to explain these things because math has consistently proven to be a far more applicable method of explaining and legitimizing an argument than a non-mathematical argument.

everything is countable — Marzipanmaddox

Quite why he said that, I don't know. — Pattern-chaser

It's because this is a fact. This is why I say these things. You live in an explicitly finite world, there is nothing that exists within it that is not finite. All finite things can be counted. It's simple logic.

I use this term because subjecting every other facet of this explicitly finite world to scrutinous scientific formalization has provided incredible benefit to society. I'm basically just saying "Science has proven itself to be valuable, philosophy should not turn their nose up at the scientific method considering the benefit it has produced in countless other fields."

As for using "theoretically" I use words like this in order to explain that I am not some infallible source of correctness. This is called creating a hypothesis, and then the next step is to actually perform experiments, collect data, and formulate an argument based upon the data that is derived.

By the standard you describe, child sacrifice is moral, so long as the community agrees to this and enforces this law. — Marzipanmaddox


Not at all, because CS is in this culture, not the Moloch. So by the standard he describes child sacrifice is immoral because we think that it is immoral. — Isaac

But in their society, in the Canaanite society, Child Sacrifice was a moral action? That's what I'm trying to get at. Regardless of our own society, within the Canaanite society alone, it would be considered a moral action?

I don't think anyone has considered the basis of morality, which I argue is empathy. If we lacked empathy, there would be no morality. Morality is the intellectualization of empathy, turning it into a calculus.

It is no coincidence that a variety of cultures independently developed the "golden rule".

By the standard you describe, child sacrifice is moral, so long as the community agrees to this and enforces this law — Marzipanmaddox

That doesn't follow from what I wrote. That is morality. That follows. You're conflating moral judgment that is based upon one's morality with morality.

But in their society, in the Canaanite society, Child Sacrifice was a moral action? That's what I'm trying to get at. Regardless of our own society, within the Canaanite society alone, it would be considered a moral action? — Marzipanmaddox

Yes, presumably.

The difference between being 'X' and being called 'X' is determined by whether or not we are the deciding factor in what counts as 'X'. Elemental constituency.

Some things exist in their entirety prior to the very first report/account of them.

Morality is one of these things.

You live in an explicitly finite world, there is nothing that exists within it that is not finite — Marzipanmaddox

Infinity is an idea, not a physical thing. Just like seven is an idea, not a physical thing. Neither infinity nor seven exist, unless we count ideas as existing, as you do not. :chin:

Infinity is an idea, not a physical thing. Just like seven is an idea, not a physical thing — Pattern-chaser

Of course I'd counter that ideas are physical things.

What are their physical attributes?

based on the idea of benefit vs harm, i.e. flourishing vs languishing. — Janus

I wouldn't say that "benefit" is the same thing as "flourishing."

A benefit of x is anything that S (some subject) desires that's provided by or that's an upshot of x.

Flourishing has a connotation of a sustained desired state.

Things that S considers a benefit might not actually be things that would lead to a sustained desired stste for S. S might even desire things that would be harmful in S's view if sustained.

They're subsets of brain states.

I did not ask what ideas are, but what their physical attributes are.
Pay attention, please.

So the same as attributes of brain states. They're organic, they have electrochemical properties, etc. Which should have been obvious by noting that they're subsets of brain states.

Are you ever going to answer what I was asking you in the hate speech thread, by the way?

What about ideas that do not possess electrochemical properties?
What about ideas: not felt, not imagined, not pondered, not spoken, not heard; lone, floating somewhere, somehow?

What about ideas that do not possess electrochemical properties?
What about ideas: not felt, not imagined, not pondered, not spoken, not heard; lone, floating somewhere, somehow? — Shamshir

Huh? There are no such things. Brain states have electrochemical properties. Ideas are something people are aware of insofar as they occur. They're not "floating alone somewhere."

Marzipanmaddox,

What a great question (s) and debate! I hate to ask this somewhat rhetorical question but after reading some of your analysis; what is the human phenomena called Love? Is it subjective, objective, or a little of both (?). And if you believe it's both, in the spirit of ethics and/or morality, how should we exclusively parse that in your mind?

I apologize again in advance for that question however I'm just trying to understand your argument in favor of objective exclusivity... .

Your awareness of an idea is as irrelevant to its life, as it is to my own.
Probably.