There are 10,386 things about love but I can't tell you what they are because I'm, at the present moment, lovesick and, for the life of me, I can't seem to remember them.

Is this just another way of inquiring into the so-called is/ought gap? The truth is, to my reckoning, if there's a god and assuming fae is all-good, it follows that the is must be the way it should be and we're all wasting our time trying to, well, make things better.

However, if there's no god, our ideas on how the world should be matter for what is defintely falls short of the mark.

Neither true that it does, nor true that it doesn't. Now, I say this because, out there somewhere, among the 7 billion humans that walk the earth, there'll be someone, man, woman, perhaps a child, even an AI for all we know, who'll say exactly what I said, word for word, and it'll make complete sense to him/her/it. The question is, does it make sense to you? For the record, nec caput nec pedes as far as I'm concerned.

There is no "consensus" — 180 Proof

Would you like me to agree with you or does it not matter?

Thanks for all the valuable comments. On reading your posts I'm led to believe that,

1. We've understood or, at the very least, we've got a basic grasp of animal languages

2. Animal languages aren't about vocabulary in the sense we understand it - distinct words which by themselves carry semantic content - but are actually about, how shall I put it, pitch modulation. So, like on many occasions humans have participated in, it's not what you say but how you say it. So, for example, one can say "go home" with two different meanings - one could be a command, request for someone to go home and the other could be simply a question, "go home?", the difference between the two being simply their acoustic qualities.

So far so good. However, we're capable of this feat, in fact I believe our ability to express multiple meanings simply by modulating the acoustic qualities of our voice has peaked in humans and that takes us back to square one - human language is more complex and yet we;'re unable to understand animals, assuming of course that animal languages are simpler.

Well, what are the differences between objectivity and intersubjectivity?
— TheMadFool
As pointed out above, the difference is that the latter is socially constructed and the former ineluctably precedes as well as exceeds (though doesn't necessarily exclude) social construction.

re: 'objective' ...
By objective I denote subjectivity [perspective, consensus (intersubjective), language, gauge]–invariance e.g. arithmetic, gravity, boiling point of water, species functional defects of humans, etc.
— 180 Proof

re: 'intersubjective' ...
Well, an objective X, as I discern it, is intersubjectivity-invariant, that is, 'group consensus' (whether aware or unaware) does not 'socially construct' (affect) X – it's there, or how it is, no matter what an individual or group 'believes' or accepts or does not (yet) know about X, like e.g. gravity or what harms all species-members, etc.
— 180 Proof — 180 Proof

I suppose you're not bothered by the fact, what seems to me to be so, that in both cases (intersubjectivity and objectivity), one of the defining features is consensus. Well, I am because, true or not, I'm of the view that consensus defines objectivity - more observers, the more objective that which is observed - and here we are defining intersubjectivity in identical fashion but, here's the catch, providing enough room for the concept to be applicable to subjectivity. What gives?

In some sense it does. In my humble opinion, a certain strain of information/knowledge, whatever you want to call it, must become important enough to our lives before a question requesting it can be meaningful.

I dabbled in erotetics a couple of years ago, primarily to discover whether or not there could be more ways of asking questions over and above the familiar 7 (what? when? where? which? how? who? why?), and I came to the conclusion, right or wrong, that a specific area of knowledge/information must acquire a certain level of significance to us before a question requesting it takes form. For instance, location and time are crucial to living an organized life which itself is indispensable to living a meaningful life and that being so, the questions where? and when? were created out of that necessity. A similar argument can be made for the other 5 questions (who? what? which? how? and why?).

I don't understand the question. — 180 Proof

Well, what are the differences between objectivity and intersubjectivity?

If I were to play the fool, perhaps temporarily don the mantle of so-called divine madmen, I would say, in accordance with @Wayfarer's philosophy and in line with the Buddhist practice of avoiding dualistic paradigms, "neither is it true that there's such a thing as nirvana, nor is it true that there's no such thing as nirvana"
:lol:

Is the sentence ambiguous or not? If there are beings who are beyond time or if they don't make the temporal distinctions we do like past, present, and future, their conditional statements would be tenseless and we, who've built our lives around such a system, would be unable to comprehend on first reading perhaps what the message is, assuming the message does contain "if...then..." statements.

I wish I had the means to do a linguistic analysis on the matter because many times, or so I heard, concepts in one culture don't have a perfect counterpart in other cultures and languages. When this happens, I believe translators pick the closest word in semantic terms for the translation. I don't know if this whole Eastern slant on compassion that you mention here is just such an instance but it could be and thereby hangs a tale.

Can I pick your brain regarding the notion of intersubjectivity?

The google definition simply says that it's just a consensus on thoughts, ideas, beliefs, whathaveyou. If that's all there is to it then the choice of words is misleading to say the least because subjectivity has nothing to do with it. Why cause confusion by choosing words that could, like inter"subjectivity"?

Compassion seems to be a much deeper moral concept than love in the Christian tradition because, to the extent that I can discern, compassion seems to be about sentience itself while Christian love is, on the whole, a very human-to-human affair. When you define morality in terms of sentience, morality expands as it were and begins to include even non-human life, animals and even plants at some point along the way. Religions that I'm somewhat familiar with that build their moral theory around sentience is Buddhism and Jainism and these faiths have something the Christianity does not viz. moral status for animals.

What's odd and equally if not more lamentable is that Christianity is a relatively newer religion than either Buddhism and Jainism but Jesus failed to recognize animals as, at the very least, deserving of some moral consideration. Nevertheless, it's possible that animals could be, as Descartes believed, simply automatons although that would be astonishing if true but then there's Solipsism to contend with.

totally irrelevant to the scientific study of psi. — Wayfarer

Why? Miracles are legit subject matter for parapschology, no?

So... we done or are we gonna go back to argue? — khaled

I'm done. Thank you for teaching me about intersubjectivity. I have nothing more to add to the discussion.

There are 4 dimensions with time being only one of them. You would need another temporal dimension for time to curve into. — noname

Thought of that but I'm no mathematician.

Something CAN be intersubjective and also objective.

Not in this case.

I did not say "whatever is intersubjective is objective". — khaled

Ok!

Gravity affects spacetime not ""space". — Metaphysician Undercover

That's like saying economic policies affect the nation but not the people.

How so? I find that unlikely since I'm the one that introduced it — khaled

You're claiming morality is only intersubjective i.e. it isn't objective. That means it has to be subjective; in other words, what you're really saying or should be saying is that morality is subjective but then you're relying on intersubjectivity to bolster this claim which is wrong because you, yourself said "...Something can be intersubjective and also objective..."

No because I think morality is ONLY intersubjective. It is only based on agreement. It is not "out in the world" like a rock is. It's not written in stone (metaphorically) somewhere. Do you also think so? — khaled

Then you're misusing the term "intersubjective".

statistical methods — Wayfarer

How on earth did people back then when Jesus, other divinely associated folks, performed "miracles" come to the conclusion that god or some other transcendental reality exists in complete ignorance of statistical tools. Should we be skeptical of the holy books now that we have a good handle on statistics?

Something can be intersubjective and also objective — khaled

Then why are we arguing. We're on the same side.

First, which definition? If everyone agrees that something is moral does that make it objective? Or is it a bit more than just agreement?

Is it possible for everyone to simultaneously think that something is wrong and it be right anyways and vice versa? If so, then what is the method you use for determining what is moral? — khaled

I'll give you an empirical example to get my point across. If 1 person sees a boat on the horizon, you would be more doubtful than if 10 people had made the same claim. In essence, the rule of thumb for objectivity seems to be more the merrier. Thus my belief that the overlap in moral codes among various culitures and religion points to some objective moral facts that people seem to have intuited.

On the matter of intersubjectivity, I suspect the first order of business is to establish that what we have on our hands is actually, unequivocally, subjective. No intercollege without college. To say moral convergence could be intersubjective would mean we already know that morality is subjective. Begging the question situation, no?

Thanks for the info but, as far as I'm concerned, that there's some kind of common ground to be found among various cultures on morality speaks for itself - differences would be more pronounced in the absence of some objective moral truths. Also, I'd like to point out the allegedly ubiquitous nature of the so-called golden rule - that all of us see eye to eye on the value of that moral principle can't be a coincidence.

By the way, those moral rules that we agree on - thou shalt not kill for example - are justifiable i.e. in your universe it counts as an objective moral truth and can't be an intersubjective phenomenon. What say you?

Just thought of something. As Eep, in the animation flick the Croods, tells her father, "there's a difference between living and not dying", it appears that there's a world of a difference betwixt "living" and "not dying" and that being the case, we should expect or it's assumed that there are different reasons for "living" and "not dying". Dying is more painful I suspect than living; hence, people "...choose to go on..."

This would only argue that we have common intuitions about morality. Is that the same thing as having an objective morality?

And what of the cases where someone has intuitions that don’t match the majority? I think all of us have a few of those. What do we do about them? — khaled

You maybe right but then how does one distinguish intuitions from knowledge? Also, no smoke without fire; that the intuitions of disparate cultures converge to a set of moral codes is a big hint that there are objective moral truths that our gut-feelings zero in on, no?

:ok: :up:

I'll give you an example of a conditional statement that's temporally ambiguous:

1. If mom is home then the food is ready

Does statement 1 imply that mom is home before the food is ready (mom cooks the food) or does it mean that mom is home after the food is ready (mom told you that she'd arrive only after the food is ready)?

What are your thoughts?

Did you read my post properly? There's nothing about memory that can give it a temporal locus.

1. We know something is in the past because we have memories of that something

2. We know something is a memory because that something is in the past

It's circular. I rest my case.

ok

I think those who argue for non-objective morality are committing the same mistake as I was when I decided to tell two identical twins apart by noticing that one wore glasses and the other didn't. My mistake was ignoring all the other similarities that spelled "I-D-E-N-T-I-C-A-L" . Presuming a non-objective stance on morality hinges on differences between moralities of different cultures, my hunch is that a lot of commonalities, commonalities that point to objective moral truths, are being overlooked, much to our loss.

I wonder what Wittgenstein would've thought of how animals behave when they encounter something new to them. I recall watching a video of a pet dog sniffing, listening and looking intently at a remote-controlled toy, circling it, approaching and then backing away, repeating these moves in, I presume, an attempt to understand what the toy was. The toy didn't make sense to the dog, at least not within the context of its experience and abilities but that didn't stop the dog from trying to understand the toy and, I'm sure, the dog didn't leave the encounter empty-handed.

Couldn't/shouldn't we too do something similar? Sure, there could be things beyond language and even the mind but we can follow the example of the dog in the video and try to grasp whatever it is that's got us tongue-tied and/or flummoxed. In short, I find it worthwhile to try and put into words that which are ineffable and think about that which are unthinkable. Something is better than nothing. Right?

The physicalist approach to parapsychology is kinda like being a blind-but-not-deaf hunter and hoping your quarry will make a sound.

Like they say, The greatest trick that the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist. — baker

I sympathize with that sentiment, another name for the devil being the deceiver, one par excellence in all probability and hence, the greatest lie being the devil's successful concealment of faer own existence.

The biggest lie would be one that we don't know is a lie. The better the deception, the less likely that it'll be discovered. Ergo, if there's a biggest lie, no one knows of it.

An idea apt for the occasion is catch-22. To discover the truth that thinking is overrated one must think. So, do you believe the conclusion that thinking is overrated and make that part of your philosophy or do you appreciate the thinking that led you to the conclusion that thinking is overrated and draw the second inference that no, thinking isn't overrated. It

Funny, I thought it said ‘scientist’. Silly me! — Wayfarer

:ok:

This may come across as black humor and even downright evil but from a Buddhist perspective with its notion of so-called Bodhisattvas (beings who opt for samsaric existence instead of nirvana) should, given the hard facts of life - there's more suffering than joy in our part of the universe - make a conscious decision to provide, through faer person, schadenfreude to as many beings as possible for it's more likely that fae will be born into suffering than happiness, right? After all, isn't the point of being good to make people happy? I'd like @Wayfarer to weigh in on this as the most knowledgeable Buddhist scholar in our forum and elsewhere too I bet.

No thanks, I had cereal! — counterpunch

:rofl: Thanks for the discussion and to be honest I didn't quite catch your drift.

Compassion, to my reckoning, is better translated as the kind of love one is asked to feel for one's fellow human beings and because that love is based entirely on the ability of humans to suffer it follows that compassion must extend to all sentient beings too.

In my humble opinion, people are in the habit of looking for reasons to be anything and that includes to be compassionate and that, again in my humble opinion, is a dead end because there are just too many differences between humans, between humans and animals for there to be a strong enough foundation for universal compassion, the compassion of the kind recommended by religious and secular institutions. Thus, I suggest, we stop the futile search and simply be compassionate for no rhyme or reason.

Right, but the configuration doesn't exist of itself; it exists as a configuration of three balls, a pen drive, a brain. What's at issue here, ultimately, is this:

"Elementary particles, time, genes and the brain are manifest to us only through our measurements, models and manipulations. Their presence is always based on scientific investigations, which occur only in the field of our experience."

If that's the case - how do we know we're not just brains in jars, being fed sensory data we mistake for reality? How do we know we're not in the Matrix? If we assume we are not in the Matrix, we have to assume the primacy of the objective, if only on the basis of the chronology of the question. Consciousness evolved from inanimate matter. If consciousness is subjective - where did it come from? The spirit realm? — counterpunch

Red herring is all I can say.