So you have no interest in replying to what I said. Okay. — Thorongil

Maybe I'd be more inclined to talk about this if you brought this up elsewhere. I don't know why you continue to insist on discussing a private gripe with me in a public discussion.

You sound like you're from a top 10 worst anime villains of all time.

Forget the theism/atheism debate here. I ask everyone, theists and atheists: does the concept of a being from before time creating everything make sense? If so, why? If not, why? — Starthrower

Does the concept of an uncaused world that nevertheless seems contingent make sense?

The only perspective I have is my perspective. Don't you think you should only apologize if you recognize that what you did was wrong/inappropriate? Just because someone claims you did something wrong, doesn't mean you actually did do something wrong and thus must apologize to them.

But to talk of morality transcending that socially-constructed framework is to talk about it having some human-independent, and nature or evolution independent, basis.

I'm not sure from your words whether you have clearly disentangled the two incompatible positions and chosen a side to stand on. Either our morality is the normative product of natural circumstances or it has some super-natural basis. — apokrisis

No, this is a false dichotomy. For instance I think mathematics is transcendent to socially-accepted norms. Logic transcends society. Yet our capacity to ascertain logic and mathematics presumably comes from evolution. I think the same thing applies to morality.

There's nothing "spooky" or "queer" about objective morality under an intuitionist view. I think we come to know moral truths in a similar way we come to know mathematical truths, or understand logical reasoning. I think you're begging the question here by assuming that an evolutionary explanation of morality necessarily precludes the possibility of objective morality. Hence why you automatically assume any objective morality must be "super-natural".

Of course, since I deny values can be reduced to natural properties in the same way water can be reduced to H2O, I'm committed to there being a separate realm of things other than descriptive facts. Stabilizing society =/= good, because it's an open ended question as to what goodness is, in both the analytic and synthetic sense.

Doesn't matter, for you said that "a person should still apologize for what they have done even if they did it accidentally or did not mean to do the wrong thing." So if you refuse to apologize, then you don't actually agree with this statement and are in fact a liar and a hypocrite. — Thorongil

No, I'm not going to apologize because I don't recognize what I did to have been inappropriate. You may think it was inappropriate, but I don't agree with you on this. How is this difficult to understand?

I think people over-estimate how much they actually need.

If you don't feel guilty about being a rich white male, or his fortunate wife, how did you manage to solve your guilt problem? — Bitter Crank

By trying to help those who are less fortunate. Feeling guilty doesn't help anyone.

You forgot to add on what I said afterwards:

My view is that, no, a person should still apologize for what they have done even if they did it accidentally or did not mean to do the wrong thing, because apologizing is a way of communicating your recognition that what you did was, in fact, wrong to do. Not apologizing for doing the wrong thing in general means you either don't think it actually was the wrong thing to do, or you have a character flaw that precludes you from admitting failure and assuming responsibility. — darthbarracuda

I've already told you that I don't recognize what I did to have been inappropriate. Thus I do not feel compelled to apologize.

Yes, in the off chance that you are actually bothered by your own hypocrisy and interested in reconciling, I felt I had to respond. — Thorongil

Yet you picked a terrible place to bring this up.

I stand by my post, as it directly bore on the topic of this thread. It wasn't an attempt to derail it or troll. — Thorongil

Then what exactly was it supposed to do, then? I have no idea why you thought to bring a private conversation up in a public discussion, and re-route the philosophical discussion to your personal gripe with how I treated you however long ago that was.

Of course it is incoherent. Either the basis of morality is transcendent of society or it is simply whatever society does in terms of what works for it.

If there is some moral absolute, then there is no excuse for a moral agent to ignore that. Moral relativism becomes simply indefensible. One's duty is not to the whims of society but the absolutes we claim to have transcendent status.

And then vice versa. If morality is relative to the social good - what works for it - then that is the standard to which a moral agent ought to direct their strategic reasoning.

Things are then only gray or muddled to the degree that moral agents can't make up their minds which is the case.

But yes. Many really are muddled in just this fashion. — apokrisis

It's not incoherent. There's absolutely nothing incoherent with the notion that there is a fact of the matter as to what we ought to do that transcends society, but that our epistemic access to this is muddled, confused, or otherwise limited in some way. There's a lot of truth to the saying that doing the right thing is by accident. Or - to put an Aristotelian twist on it - doing the right thing is oftentimes (but not always) due to a prior development of habit, in which action virtuously or morally comes naturally, and the moral agent is capable of deftly maneuvering given the circumstances ... but that this does not constitute perfect moral knowledge. (I've been toying with the idea that given our nature and circumstances there cannot ever be a "right" action, but that's a different topic).

Ultimately we may divide meta-ethical theories between dualistic theories and monistic theories. In fact there is only one dualistic theory (intuitionism), and four monistic theories (naturalism, subjectivism, non-cognitivism, nihilism). I'm of course championing intuitionism - I think there is a clear difference in kind between facts and values, and that any sort of morality that can be recognized as morality must employ some form of rational intuition.

"What works for society" is ambiguous, because it hides the fact that society only works if people do actually believe in some form of transcendent value - even the social contract theory implicitly holds that life, or something similar, is good. There is a system of justice because people believe justice to be morally important. Laws are made (sometimes) with morality in mind. etc. To the degree that someone believes what is good (transcendent) = what maintains social stability, then doing what will keep society stable will be one and the same with doing the good.

It seems you have no interest in reconciling. So be it. I'm happy to ignore you once more. — Thorongil

I never said that. I said I have no interest in reconciling in this discussion, which you have masterfully managed to de-rail.

Now you're trolling...

Right, that's why it was relevant. — Thorongil

No, that's not relevant. This is a philosophical discussion, not a place for you to mention private interactions and relish in the apparent irony.

But if morality is about collective social goals, then we instead hope that mature individuals are rational game players. They don't merely just follow norms blindly, nor ignore them selfishly, but play the social games creatively and strategically. — apokrisis

I don't see how we can't have both. Morality as socially-transcendent yet moral agents maneuvering in creative and strategic ways. There's nothing incoherent from what I can tell with the notion that there is an actual transcendent morality but it's muddled and "gray" in the colloquial way of looking at it.

I'm doing so now because it seems especially relevant. — Thorongil

How is it relevant, though? You actually said you brought it up because you thought it was ironic.

I don't care if it is or isn't, I'm just pointing this out to you. — Thorongil

Either you're lying about not caring, or your intent is to create drama. Why, though?

I'm feeling for myself, after some deliberation, that apology is part of a ritual or symbolic exchange. You make an apology when you believe that by such a speech act you will place yourself, and the person you're apologising to, in a better relation than your present mutual standing. That's it! — mcdoodle

I agree that apologizing can put two people on higher mutual standing with each other. But I will say that apologizing only to get to a better standing with another person is insincere, even manipulative. You should apologize first and foremost when you have done something wrong and the other person deserves to be supplicated to. Sincere apologizing is an act of humble submission - you put yourself at the mercy of the other person, and they can either reject or accept your apology.

Shiiiit, you're still hung up on that? If I remember correctly I said I was going to be honest with you anyway. Do I need to apologize for being honest?

I'm not going to apologize for something I don't see as wrong. That would just be insincere of me, a sniffling apology to get back on someone's "good" side. I'll apologize when I think I actually did screw up and feel the other person deserves an apology.

I apologize if that was rude... /s

Edit: to an extent I come from a Levinasian stance, in which I experience a primordial demand to apologize to anyone and everyone simply for my very existence. I get in other people's way, interrupt their projects, irritate them, etc. Any sort of self-righteous indignation is a violence against the other person. So, I do feel a need to apologize to you, just as I feel the need to apologize to everyone. But from a broader, third-person perspective, as an impartial observer, I don't think someone else would agree that I should apologize for each and every thing I do.

That's what I wonder. Can people actually choose to do wrong? If they are making real world choices, they must weight the decision with many factors. And of course it is easy to rationalise and tip the balance the way that favours yourself and your interests. But that just says people construct some belief about whether they are overall in the right or in the wrong. And having done that, by definition really, they pick what is for them the "right".

Talk of intentionally picking the course you know to be wrong doesn't sound coherent. You are really talking about people picking the course they know you would likely judge wrong - but they would rather see what they want to do as right. — apokrisis

I don't agree with what I see to be your reduction of moral rightness/wrongness to subjective or inter-subjective opinions, or calling it "right" instead of right. You and I seem to be using different concepts here, as it is plain to me that choosing the course that is morally wrong is very much so possible and coherent and happens all the time, whereas you seem to be using it in the sense of prudential rationality, or weakness of will.

I'd be more interested in something like the ancient Greek notion that evil is born from ignorance. But that would lead us to the question of moral responsibility in general, and not just apologizing (but also punishment, justice, redemption, etc).

So your OP seemed to want a black and white absolute moral principle. But morality is normally pragmatic. — apokrisis

No, not at all, I explicitly reject any sort of black-and-white moral absolutism. At least, any sort of morality that can be cashed out in real life. But rejecting absolutism doesn't necessarily imply relativism or extreme particularism. We can certainly have prima facie principles and duties, which I think ultimately is what is the case. So the OP, far from asking for absolutes, is asking for general, "at first glance" moral principles. At first glance, when someone does something wrong, they ought to apologize regardless of their intentions. But this of course isn't an absolute. It's only a guideline for what tends to be the most appropriate thing to do.

Really, I'm less interested in the meta-ethics this time and more interested in actual normative ethics.

But if you intentionally do the wrong thing, surely you must believe that in some larger way it is the right thing? So it would then be unreasonable to apologise - unless you have also come to believe you were in fact wrong and so changed your mind about what is right.

Whereas if you do something wrong by accident, then apologising is no big deal. You are not to blame. An accident is. You are apologising for an accident for which you are not responsible in any intentional sense. — apokrisis

People can do the wrong thing knowing it is the wrong thing because they do not care about morality, and care more about themselves or whatever. Promising a friend to do something for them but deciding to not fulfill this promise and go have fun partying or whatever instead is an example.

If I were to crash my car into someone else's on accident, I would feel compelled to apologize even though I didn't do it on purpose.

Ethical Intuitionism by Michael Huemer. Now this is some actually-good analytic philosophy.

At most I think you could argue that being in possession of significant wealth, and the freedom that comes along with it, is a (typically) necessary but not sufficient condition for the sort of intellectual achievements that we attribute to those on Posty's list.

I agree with your other points though. — Erik

Sure, yeah, a necessary but not necessarily sufficient condition, I'll agree to that. The socio-economic situation is as much a factor in a person's development as is their particular physiology or character.

i'm hammered and dont give a damn about anything right now, ill get back to you tomorrow maybe, who knows and who cares honestly. life sucks and then you die. if god exists we won't know it cause he obviously doesnt give a damn about any one of us.

edit; dont ban me mods luv u bless u be well etc etc etc

dumb shits like the average internet atheists will say theism is a mental illness.

good thing nobody who has a single neuron gives a shit about what these fucks have to say.

i'm not wrong, and you atheist poseurs know it. read a goddamn book and come back once you realize your fucking retarded "secular humanism" is incoherent and groundless. new atheism is a mental illness you shills.

Probably this has less to do with being intelligent and more to do with being materially and socially privileged as to have the means to pursue personal interests in the depths these people did. Notice how every one of your examples was a white male, and everyone apart from Gauss I believe came from wealthy and powerful families.

Certainly there are plenty of intelligent and passionate people who are economically and socially underprivileged as to make the nurturing of these talents far more difficult. There is a lot of potential that is never realized simply because the economic and social circumstances don't favor many of those who have it. A shame, really.

I don't know the answer to this question, but I'll speculate and say that not everything evolution produces has to be functional and positive for the organism's persistence. There are some things that have evolved that are detrimental to the survival of an organism/species but not so much that it actually purges them. Or it takes many generations for the extinction to actually happen. There are also some traits that evolve that are completely accidental and neutral in functionality, that exist by chance and have no bearing on the survival of the organism.

The experience of free will may be an instance of a neutral trait. Though I'm also speculating that it may have arisen through a complex mental evolution, which might have taken many generations of fragile mental instability where many members of the species went insane, mad or otherwise "broke" mentally. I think it might be reasonable to say that the proliferation of mental illnesses today is only a fraction of what it would have been thousands of years ago, when the mind was still developing. Back then the mind may literally have been a chaotic maelstrom. Or the appearance of a "free will" experience may have come accidentally and only after the appearance of failed "free will" experiences.

It can be difficult to wrap one's head around the amount of time that took place in the evolution of biological life on Earth. It's a ton of time, with plenty of opportunities for accidental developments, most of which would have resulted in failure.

You're sure this is true? I can think of examples where you should do acts that aren't wrong if you don't. For example, you should brush your teeth twice a day, but there isn't anything wrong if you don't. Or, there's a really delicious donut at this bakery you should try it, but it's not because it's the right thing to do. — Purple Pond

I said it can mean the same thing. Asking why something is morally right or wrong can be the same as asking why we should be moral at all. Why should I respect people's autonomy? Why should I not hurt people? Why should I help those in need? etc. My point was that asking why we should be moral only makes sense if we ignore that morality has a claim upon us.

Then we don't necessarily disagree. For you the whole purpose of morality is to tell us what we ought to do. (not merely because of how society functions.) Doing what's right is acting in accordance to that purpose. — Purple Pond

Yeah basically. I'd say morality tells us what we ought to set ourselves to do with the aim of actually succeeding. Other factors may hamper our ability to perform this act that nevertheless preserve our innocence so long as we earnestly tried to accomplish an end. It's not directly our fault that it didn't happen as it should have.

But I'll note that for us personally as individuals, moral responsibility can take on more than we are actually capable of doing. We can feel guilty for not being good enough, remorse for failing to succeed even when the odds were stacked against us. We may not be able to ascribe blame to other people for failing to do the impossible, but we ourselves certainly can and do feel guilty for the same reason.

So why is stealing wrong? It depends on the point of morality. If morality serves to keep society functioning, then stealing is wrong because society can't function if everybody stole from each other.

What do you think? What's the point of morality? Do you see any problems with interpreting morality based on purpose? (Just and idea I want to test.) — Purple Pond

I think asking why something is right or wrong can be essentially the same thing as asking why you should(n't) do this act. For someone coming from an intuitionist angle, asking why we ought to be moral is an incoherent question. Morality is binding and universal; you ought to do what morality asks of you because that's what you ought to do.

Ultimately, "justifying" morality by appealing to its function in social stability only pushes the question back, since social stability must thus be seen as good, desirable, in a moral sense. Unless we deny this desire is anything more than a personal expression of our preferences, in which case this just leads us to non-cognitivism, which then results with the OP as being cognitively meaningless.

So I can "learn German", "read philosophy", "listen to music", sleep and avoid pain.

Personally I think you can't really "decide" your philosophical starting points logically. You can use logic and reason only after you assume certain beliefs to be true. Perhaps after a while of philosophizing you'll eventually vindicate these premises, but the initial jump can't be justified in a purely logical way.

But everyone can choose different starting points. Disagreement may just be traced back to differing preferences on which premises to take for granted. Hence why I think we should be tolerant to each other. Although you could also just disagree with this as well.

So I think there's two questions in your OP:

1.) whether we can freely choose what to believe in, and
2.) whether living without beliefs in relation to something else is possible.

With respect to 1.), I think you are right in that we don't (usually/ever) actually choose what to believe. I think we might even be able to get away with discarding the notion of belief entirely in many cases. In normal life, we "choose" to act based on whatever seems appropriate. It is pre-theoretical navigation, whereas beliefs are theoretical, abstract, and more importantly political.

But I think the argument that we don't choose what we believe is just another aspect of a deterministic argument. We don't choose what we believe, we don't choose what we desire, we don't choose what we ultimately do, because the deus ex machina of libertarian free will is incoherent.

With respect to 2.), this was a part of my recent discussion of agnosticism. If we're agnostics about, say, the existence of God, I think we actually end up "living" in a see-saw between atheism and theism, one moment theoretically considering theism but pragmatically navigating as an atheist, and the next moment the inverse. We have to make some commitment, even if it's temporary, or we're paralyzed by being unsure.

Dune by Frank Herbert

If you reliably demonstrate that God exists, this seems to put the whole concept of faith into jeopardy. Kant's maneuver allowed him to make room for faith by denying knowledge of God.

To the extent that someone thinks religion is about "being right", they're either a nincompoop or a fascist.

Does philosophical progress exist? — Agustino

It depends on what we see "progress" as. Is it just the "solving" of problems, in the "consumption" model of knowledge? Or can it be the appreciation of questions themselves, and the creation of new questions?

A lot of this I think has to do with whether we see philosophical issues as problems or questions. Problems implies we're anxious to figure things out and move on. Questions seems to imply a slower and more appreciative approach, where the attempt to answer a question is but an aspect of the overall "experience" or "process".

Some people may complain that this creation of questions is endless and pointless. Typically they ignore the fact that everything else is endless and pointless. The "magic" of philosophy is with the mystery, the endless folds and twists and perspectives. Once you think you've "solved" a philosophical problem it seems to end up being dull and banal, like a dead weight you drag around. You wonder what the whole fuss was about, and why it's seen as so important.

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to answer these questions, but we ought to keep in mind that finding the "Truth" might and probably will result with us being disappointed, maybe scared. To the extent that we deny this probable possibility, our dreams of escaping our illusions and attaining Truth will be founded on an illusion.

Hence why I'm finding it increasingly difficult to give a damn about any overly-theoretical or academic, "intellectual" pursuit. Enthusiastically pursuing Truth seems to me to already be distorting it. In some sense I think we're not really pursuing Truth as much as we're running away from what we already know to be True. If there's still a good reason to explore the world and discover new things it's because it's fun to hang out with friends and have a common goal. It's not very "aristocratic", but who cares.

Yes, very good. I see you've read your Heidegger.

Therefore compatibilism is impossible. — bahman

No, if we assume everything before you said is true, then libertarian free will is impossible. Libertarian free will is an incompatibilist position.

Free will in another hand is the ability to initiate or terminate a chain of causality. — bahman

This is the libertarian free will definition. Not compatibilism.

If consciousness is not the product of the brain, there seems to be two options:

Occasionalism, which holds that there is no causal relationship between the two substances, physical and mental (since they are actually different), and the appearance of there being causal relations is an illusion originating from the pre-established harmony at the beginning of the world.

Idealism, which holds there is no physical brain at all, and the only substance that exists is mental.

Both are compatible with the observation that bumping someone on the head makes them lose consciousness.

• Read more primary sources
• Self-initiate exposure therapy to anxiety triggers
• Organize my thoughts more for my book
• Regularly volunteer in the community
• Prepare for things to get worse

I'd have to try to find where he said it, but from my memory Wittgenstein wasn't necessarily saying that philosophy was "amazing" (especially since he saw it to be analogous to a sort of disease). He was rather saying that while some people may give up on philosophical questions because "they'll never be answered", he finds their continual resistance to answering to be a source of awe.

Not sure I understand what you're asking.