I’m kind of with you, but I’m also very reluctant to endorse anything associated with intelligent design. — Wayfarer

I'm not suggesting intelligent design is the only other choice for us.

All I'm saying is that chance offered as an alternative to a creator-god doesn't pass muster. Why? Well, chance in the context of creation simply means that there was X% probability for the universe to come into existence.

Firstly, chance is an aspect of a god-created universe too. There were many possible universes god could've created and also god could've decided not to create anything at all. Lump all these possibilities together with the fact that god allegedly created this universe and we have the right ingredients for chance - there was X% probability that god created the universe.

Secondly, god is an explanation for how the possibility of this universe as expressed in the X% probability became a reality. In other words, the actualization of a possible universe is what a creator-deity is supposed to have effected.

To claim that the universe was created by chance is nonsense because, as I mentioned earlier, all that's possible, probabilistically, is to say that there was an X% chance for the universe to have come into existence. Nowhere in this is the information that such and such caused the possibility of a universe to become a reality.

lol. No biggie. Mind you, it is such a subjective phenomena, I don't know if you can ever provide a sufficient objective description, IMO. We know that there IS a line where we exercise our willpower, but between unanticipated situations where our responses are totally spontaneous and rote situations where perhaps we labour under a delusive self-perception, describing the exact placement of that line isn't straightforward. I do think we each have an intuitive awareness of it though.... — Pantagruel

My worry is that determinism could be masquerading as will-power. The top result when you do a google search for "will-power" says that it's strong determination that allows one to do something difficult like quit smoking. Baked into this definition is the idea of will-power as something that enables us to resist or go against our natural proclivities.whatever they may be and that becomes a somewhat adequate foundation to make a case for free will.

The problem is that every case of will-power in action can be reformulated as one in which one desire overrides another. In the nicotine example, the desire to stop the habit overcomes the desire to continue it. It's not a case of resisting an urge, an impulse, a desire but a case of one urge, impulse or desire being stronger than another. Where desire is involved, determinism is naturally present for as Schopenhauer said, "a man can surely do what he wills to do but he can't determine what he wills".

Your distinction between freedom and the freedom we possess is interesting, but when I open the present of your thought, the box is empty. It is a word game without substance because if we do not understand cause and effect and "the limits of our freedom[/u], things can go very wrong, so I don't think separating cause and effect thinking from our understanding of freedom is a good idea. Yes, I do say "the facts as they stand matter". :kiss: — Athena

But you don't get it. The fact that you consider our existing condition as just one in which we have to deal with, as you said, "the limits of our freedom" indicates that you subscribe to the definition of freedom I provided, freedom as "the power to act, speak, and think as one wants". Then you go on to criticize the very definition that you believe is true - nothing wrong in that if you're suicidal of course. The present of my thought may have been empty but yours is incoherent. I guess something's better than nothing :smile:

Only one task left: how is wanting being free? — tim wood

To do as we want is freedom.

I think the reigning consensus has been that life is the outcome of chance as distinct from providential design or divine creation during the last century. That is one of the major grounds of the so-called 'culture wars'. — Wayfarer

My hunch, for what it's worth, is that all this talk of "life [the universe included] is an outcome of chance" by scientists and their ilk is, far from being even half an explanation, a smokescreen that conceals the truth, the truth that we have no clue as to how the universe, life, came to be.

To say that something, say x, occured by pure chance is simply to assert that many possibilities existed and that one of them actualized. That's all that the notion of chance/probability achieves - it doesn't, in any way, inform us why one possibility and not the others actualized and that's precisely the question that should've been answered if chance were a good alternative to a creator-god explanation for the existence of the universe.

Give it a moment's thought. Firstly possibilities are true for a creator-god too: there were many options available and a creator-god chose one of them and here we are. This feature of probability - possibilities - inheres in all creation including divine creation. Secondly, why one of the possibilities (in our case this universe the one in which we exist) became a reality isn't explained by chance for the simple reason that to do so would require those who claim it does to demonstrate how this universe is more likely to exist than not but that's a piece of information which, to my knowledge, we don't have. Were it that we possessed this knowledge, the matter would've been settled a long, long time ago.

A cursory read of the Wikipedia entry on Wittgenstein's private language informs me that Wittgenstein or his band of followers, as the case may be, is/are under the impression that private languages would be/should be incoherent. I suppose "incoherent" here is more about comprehension of messages in a private language than about inconsistency in the logical sense although it maybe a bit of both in varying proportions.

What is the most private, most personal experience that we have? I'm referring to an experience that's impossible to point to and say, "Here, this is it. This is what I'm talking about." The first thing that crosses my mind is consciousness. It's not something that we can point to directly and all that we know of consciousness is gleaned from indirect evidence. I suppose what I want to say is that when it comes to consciousness all that's linguistically possible, demanding the utmost rigor, is a private language. Consciousness fits the bill of an object that can't be, let's just say, put in the public domain a necessary step in the creation of languages according to Wittgenstein.

Is the difficulty we face in defining consciousness in a way that's precise and universally acceptable evidence that Wittgenstein's correct on that score? Consciousness and us have an uncanny resemblance to Wittgenstein's beetle-in-the-box analogy.

Next we enter the domain of emotions. Granted there are words for the emotions we experience but, at the same time, they possess an ineffable quality. The subjective nature of emotions, just like the subjective nature of consciousness, belies the existence of words to refer to them. How on earth did something so private find itself into a community of language users? The easiest answer is behavior - there are certain plainly visible physical manifestations of emotion and also consciousness and they're, for the most part, consistent enough to enable drawing the appropriate conditions that prevail inside our very private minds which, I suppose, permits the coining of the appropriate words and phrases for them.

In line with Wittgenstein's intuitions, emotions and consciousness still are linguistically troublesome - it's hard to put them in words. :chin:

Oh! Sorry. Didn't see it. Damn! My humble apologies.

I see. I provided you with an inside view - the internal workings of X's and Y' minds - and so, the answer would've been as plain as the nose on your face.

But now imagine you're the store clerk and you hear X, exercising his will-power, and muttering "no" and then you hear Y, after making his utilitarian calculation, saying, in a hushed tone, "no!". Would you be able to, from just the "no!" both X and Y utter, which one has will-power? :chin:

Deeply sorry about making you repeat yourself. I zoned out back there.

These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence. — Wayfarer

This is exactly what I've been grappling with for quite some time. We say that cars and elephants exist but that unicorns and god do not. Isn't that what you would say if the mental world were treated as if not part of this universe? But, the catch is, the mental world, even if only, on occasion, dealing with objects that aren't physically instantiated, is a subset of the universe. What I'm driving at is that just as a car or an elephant is said to exist in the universe, a unicorn or god too exists in the universe. True that one exists in the physical and the other in the mental but both worlds are, at the end of the day, part of the universe.

:ok: :up:

You didn't answer the questions

I think in the trivially evident sense that some people appear to possess greater will-power or self-control than others — Pantagruel

:ok: Will-power. I'm having trouble understanding will-power. What is it exactly? There are two ways of looking at will-power:

1. It's an ability, a "power", that enables us to control ourselves better - check our impulses and do things we normally wouldn't want to do. There's, in the exercise of will power, a push and pull between the various internal forces that determine which course of action we'll opt for. Under this interpretation, will-power is just and nothing more than forcing ourselves to do/not do certain things. This doesn't involve our higher faculty of rationality.

2. It's, again, an ability, a "power", to carefully study the pros and cons of an act, a thought, a speech, and making a decision thereafter. Here to there's an internal conflict but it takes place at the level of rationality. We either choose a path we don't like or refuse to choose one that we really like. Quite similar to 1 above you might say. However, there's a crucial difference. Since we've weighed the positives and negatives of our action, this generally means that we've made a choice that has more upsides than downsides. In other words, there's something in it for us in this case - we've thought things through.

The difference between 1 and 2 can be illustrated with an example. Imagine two men X and Y and both of them are in the same jewellery shop having a look around. Both notice an unattended expensive diamond ring on a table and both realize that if they quietly palm it no one will notice and they could have a diamond ring for absolutely nothing. X's initial thoughts are that he should steal the ring but he tells himself "No! I don't want to steal" and that's about all the thinking that goes on in X's mind. Y, on the other hand, reasons "If I take it, at some point they'll figure out the diamond ring is missing and then they'll inform the police. since I was I here I'll be a suspect. They'll search my house and they'll find the ring. I'll go to jail. I don't want to go to jail. No! I don't want to steal!"

As must be obvious to you, X isn't constrained by the consequences of his action. He simply says "no!" to stealing. Y, on the other hand, is constrained by the effects of his action. He reasons and concludes "no!" to stealing. Who, X or Y or both, possess will power or has self-control? Why?

life is a fluke — Wayfarer

Is life a fluke? I remember an a senior in college once telling me that the evidence for god is the order that's apparent in the universe. I was young then and I was impressed with what he said about how all the planets revolve around the sun in an orderly, mathematically precise, manner. I'm sure he mentioned our beloved solar system only as a stepping stone to, in effect, cover the entire cosmos itself, displaying a regularity which, to him, was impossible without the participation of an intelligent being, God.

I hadn't read logic back then but I recall being troubled by a particular aspect of his claim. Is it that,

1. order implies god

or

2. god implies order

???

If it's 1 then sure his argument is as good as any but what if it's 2?

If I had to prove 1 then I'd have to prove that all cases where there's order, there's always intelligence involved (god). That, prima facie, seems acceptable until we come to the realization that to hold this to be true is a petitio principii - you're presupposing god's causal association with order.

If it's 2 then we can't conclude that god exists from order.

A penny for your thoughts.

A fresh perspective to an old issue. If it were up to me i.e. if I were the coder I would want the simulated people to possess real, objective liberties - free will?? I'm averse to the idea of giving people meaning they didn't choose for themselves. That said, I would like to ensure an overall structure to the simulation, not necessarily a specific, clear-cut purpose but with a just a hint of form that would, quite naturally, give the simulation a nebulous meaningfulness and just a hair's breadth away from meaningless randomness.

As is obvious, I'm trying to balance freedom with meaning as the too seem at odds with each other. If I give meaning then I take away freedom. If I give freedom I take away meaning.

Also, I would make it a point to give simulated people freedom, as much as is possible given the limits of the computing power, and what if even when this has been achieved people still look for meaning at a level that would require my (the programmer's) intervention at a much larger scale than the simulated people themselves. Does all life consciousness seek meaning? Is the thirst for meaning an inevitable consequence of consciousness, the kind we're familiar with? An open question.

I think that depends on the degree of "will". It does appear that we are not all "equally constrained" though. Or "equally free" I guess — Pantagruel

In what sense aren't we "equally constrained" or "equally free"?

You're trying to reconcile the intentions behind actions and the consequences of actions because they happen to be in opposing camps in the scenario you described. The problem arises because you want to put a label on people in a consistent manner i.e. you want a person to be good or bad and it's impossible to do so when intentions and consequences point in different directions on that question. The simple solution in my humble opinion is to not try to do that - labeling a person as good or bad - but treat intentions and actions as different as they actually are. Instead of trying to zero in on a man's moral status, treat his intentions for an action and the consequences of that action separately. We could say, for example, that Mr. X's intentions were good but what followed from his actions were bad or that Mrs. Y's intentions were bad but what her actions led to bad things. This in favor of trying to say something like Mr. X is bad or Mr. X is good or that Mrs. Y is good or Mrs. Y is bad.

One critique of private language, perhaps its a variation of Wittgenstein's own original, is that there's no possible means to ensure consistency, an essential for a language I presume, in a private language as there's no way to confirm consistency. If, for example, I, in a burst of inspiration, decide to develop my own private language and I assign the word "xat" to water what would happen if I forgot what word water was supposed to be referred with? I would have to depend on my memory, I would have to remember the word "xat" but memory, as we all know, is imperfect, we'd basically be relying on something we know, has been proven, to be unreliable. For each word invented, the same problem will rear its ugly head and we'd probably never understand ourselves forget about others understanding us.

Am I right?

You're talking of knowledge in a narrow sense - a particular speciality like nuclear physics is knowledge alright but it isn't the kind of knowledge wisdom is associated with. A wise person isn't confined to specific disciplines but has a fair if not complete grasp of all that can be known and the hope is that with such a broad understanding of the world, fae will provide the best possible answer/solution to the questions/problems that the world has to deal with.

:up: :ok: Thanks for the video link. Will watch it later

Interesting! How much "insulation" does the brain have I wonder.

Laugh, believing we are free to do anything we want seems to lack awareness of consequences. Because there are consequences resulting from what we do, we are not exactly free. Sooner or later the wrongs will come back to bite us — Athena

Google definition of "freedom": the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants. Freedom is precisely how it's been defined but the actual situation on the ground may vary. Read the fine print :joke:

On a more serious note, one has to draw a distinction between what we mean by freedom and to what degree we possess it. These two are entirely different things. One - the meaning of freedom - represents our conception, expectation, and perhaps even our hope and the other - the freedom we possess - is reality's constraining, modifying, limiting effect on us.

Of course you might say that the facts as they stand matter - we have to mind the consequences of how we act, speak, and think - and that tells an entirely different story of human "freedom" than that supposed in the definition of freedom. True but notice a simple fact. Would you call this situation, having to walk on eggshells as it were, always mindful of the consequences of our acts, speech, and thoughts, freedom? No, right? I rest my case.

Between my arms, silent legs.

What does this have to do with chess? — god must be atheist

:rofl: Good one!

What would a mind male + body female individual be appealing to in thinking that they are male? This would clearly not be on a biological basis unless you would say that they are simply factually mistaken. My understanding is that this would need to appeal to some kind of social construct about the typical qualities associated with sex i.e. a mind male individual does not relate themselves to the qualities typically associated with a body female. Admittedly I am finding it hard to distinguish between the social and psychological senses mentioned earlier. — Tom1352

Well, what I've noticed is gender-identity assumes a definite form - I'm male/female as the case may be - at a very young age, much too young for social factors to be relevant I'm afraid. Take this with a pinch of salt though as it's based on anecdotal "evidence".

As for the question that I ended my second to last post with, "does mind have a gender?" I recall writing about it on another thread. Women are, barring a few outliers, generally weaker than men and so that imposes restrictions on the options available to them in any given situation. It, in a sense, forces women or should force women, to, well, think outside the box. Over many generations, if genetic inheritance is true, the divergence between male and female brains should become sharp enough to be noticeable. These physical and mental differences will naturally become part of the social landscape - manifesting as distinct and, some might say, non-overlapping, gender roles that then take on a life of their own in the social sphere. Whether, after gender roles have been firmly established in a social context, they become a mold we impose on the young and whether this produces desired or intended results is, to me, an open question.

What do you mean by mind male/female/ambiguous? Is this referring to the psychological sense as discussed as in what an individual feels about themselves or socially as in whether they have typically masculine or female qualities or a combination of both? — Tom1352

Mind male = someone who thinks "I'm a male".

Mind female = someone who thinks "I'm a female".

Mind ambiguous = someone who thinks "I'm male AND female"

Body male = someone who has male genitalia

Body female = someone who has female genitalia

Body ambiguous = someone who has both male AND female genitalia

What puzzles me is this. If gender-identity issues, with ambiguous genders, and this seems more plausible than not, in the population existed throughout human history why on earth haven't we gotten used to it? I mean if gender-ambiguous individuals were prevalent all this while, we should've been desensitized to them by now. 2 million years of evolution the human race has gone through is a lot of years by any standard to get used to something, right? Yet, there seems to be virulent form of animosity the traditional genders (male/female) harbor towards the gender-ambiguous community. It's as if they're new kids on the block and the neighborhood won't have anything to do with them

Anyway...

Gender comes in the following varieties:

1. Mind Male + Body Male [the traditional male]
2. Mind Male + Body Female
3. Mind Male + Body Ambiguous

4. Mind Female + Body Male
5. Mind Female + Body Female [the traditional female]
6. Mind Female + Body Ambiguous

7. Mind Ambiguous + Body Male
8. Mind Ambiguous + Body Female
9. Mind Ambiguous + Body Ambiguous

There are 9 possible mind-body gender states.

But then I remember reading a philosophy book that asks the question, "does the mind have gender?"

"Modal logic" isn't just alethic modal logic, the logic of necessity and possibility. Alethic modalities are just one kind of modality. There are different kinds of modalities, and they don't necessarily have to have any relationship to each other; as in, it's not baked into the logic itself — Pfhorrest

I don't get it at all but that probably says more about my ignorance anything else. My reasoning is simple:

1. Before we can consider whether a person is permitted to buy a drink at a bar, we must consider whether that's even possible, right? It doesn't make sense to discuss whether your pet dog, assuming it's not an undercover MIB agent, is permitted to buy a drink at the local bar for the simple reason that it's impossible for it to do so.

2. Before we consider moral possibility (permissibility), we must first deal with possibility itself

Permissibility supervenes on possibility, Without the latter, the former just doesn't make sense.

Yes, and that's the perplexing thing about Kant on lying, because his system generally seems to permit maxims that take context into account, and in other opinions (such as about capital punishment) he seems to take context into account, so why not on lying? — Pfhorrest

My hunch is Kant's opinion on capital punishment - his pro-death stance - is totally unrelated to his ethical theory. Kant was merely expressing an opinion that had nothing to do with his deontological ethics. If you think otherwise, kindly show me which specific proposition(s) in his moral theory lead to the conclusion that the death penalty is necessarily just.

Well, I'm sorry we didn't find an agreement. I hope the other readers will find out who is playing with words and who is not. : ) — L'Unico

:up: :ok: Just so you know, I gained some valuable insights from our discussion. :up:

There's nothing weird about the diamond operator meaning possibility, in an alethic modal logical, wherein box means necessity. What's weird is if you mix alethic and deontic modes like you suggest. — Pfhorrest

Oh. I get what you mean. However, deontic logic supervenes, if not in entirety at least in the part that's got to do with relationship between possibility and permissibility, over modal logic, right? Modal logic is about raw possibility and necessity, deontic logic is about moral possibility and necessity. If something is impossible in modal logic, there's no point in discussing it's permissibility in deontic logic. Deontic claims must first run the gauntlet of modal logic before deontic logic can even get its hands on them. All I'm saying is we must first deal with possibility before we start to work on moral possibility. Reasonable?

Universalizability means that it applies for all similarly-situated moral agents.

Or to quote Wikipedia, "the most common interpretation is that the categorical imperative asks whether the maxim of your action could become one that everyone could act upon in similar circumstances".

The circumstances can be accounted for without compromising the universalizability. — Pfhorrest

Kant used the example of lying as an application of his ethics: because there is a perfect duty to tell the truth, we must never lie, even if it seems that lying would bring about better consequences than telling the truth — Wikipedia

I don't see and context-sensitive assertions being made. :chin:

But if you take the first literally than it's not equivalent to the second. — L'Unico

And you say I'm playing word games. :smile: Have a good day.

"Is Nothing that which can be conceived by the mind?"

This proposition is equivalent to:

"Do we have a concept of Nothing?" — L'Unico

These are not propositions. Anyway, if the two questions are equivalent, the answer to the first should satisfy the answer to the second. Does it?

I have, many times. Do you have a particular part in mind? — Pfhorrest

Well, look up modal logic in SEP and read the section explaining the diamond and box operators. Box = Necessary and Diamond = Possible

On a broad level, it mixes "is" with "ought" in a way that doesn't normally fly. For a narrower example, it would imply that nothing that can (possibly) happen is wrong (forbidden), since "P is forbidden" = "[]~P" (if [] is deontic) and "P is possible" = "<>P" (if <> is alethic), and <>P iff ~[]~P (in all forms of modal logic), which would read as "it is possible that P if and only if it is not forbidden that P", if <> were alethic and [] were deontic. — Pfhorrest

You're all over the place at least that's how it seems to me. Can you break up what you said into two sections 1) Modal logic and 2) Deontic logic and then explain how it's weird that diamond operator should refer to possibility? Please read the modal logic page in Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy and clear your doubt - there's nothing weird about the diamond operator signifying possibility, in fact it's meant to do so.

Deontic logic is a sub-field of modal logic and may have its own peculiar interpretations of what the operators mean but that's beside the point. Read belowl

Taking a different approach, it must be that x is permissible only if x is possible, right? If something is impossible then there's no point in talking about permissibility. If something is impossible then surely the question of whether it's permissible doesn't arise. It's a mistake to think of permissibility in the impossible for the simple reason that the former offers no options and the latter depends on options, a contradiction: no option (impossible) & option (permissible).

Coming to what I said: []P -> <>P, it's listed as an axiom in the Wikipedia modal logic entry. See here

If necessary that P then possible that P. In the context of the lying to a murderer thought experiment in Kant's ethics

1. If it's necessary that (you shouldn't lie AND you should save your friend) then possible that (you shouldn't lie AND you should save your friend)

2. It's not possible that (you shouldn't lie AND you should save your friend)

Ergo,

3. It's not necessary that (you should lie and you should save your friend)

And 3 is where Kantian ethics ends - there are no duties to fulfill for the reason that it's not possible to fulfill them.

context-sensitive duty — Pfhorrest

One hint, One word, universalizability.

Yes, because we can imagine consequences, something happening in the future. — Brett

:up: Remember about how I said Kant views immorality as irrationality. There's another side to the story though. For certain you must've heard someone saying, "he's so naive" words with which they refer to someone innocent and by logical extension someone incapable of, or unlikely to, resort to immorality. This pronouncement that people who are good are naive i.e. foolish or oblivious to the ways of the world suggests that all is not well with our planet but, most importantly, this opinion is at odds with Kant's view that to be immoral is irrational. If people who pass such comments are to be believed, it's irrational to be moral.

However, this particular brand of criticism leveled against goodness can be interpreted as an attempt to err on the side of caution rather than fall for every trick in the book of morally-bankrupt folks and put oneself in danger.

Too, treating goodness as a trait only a village idiot would possess (goodness is irrational) overlooks the fact that the very existence of people who think and talk this way wholly depends on the goodness they have a dim view of. Just saying.

Is good the result of morality, or is morality the result of goodness? — Brett

Morality is our understanding of good and bad. Goodness is just one side of this coin (of morality).

Understanding morality, in our case, doesn't always lead to goodness but this may reflect misunderstanding rather than true understanding. If Kant is right, if one really grasps what morality means in terms of what our values are, immorality (bad) is, at its core, irrationality. That's to say, goodness is a mark of a rational mind and badness is, simply put, illogical.

This is because the wisest choice is to say goodness exists and must be added to God’s omniscience, because what other than goodness would benefit us? So we must chose goodness. — Brett

Given that morality has been key to the apparently fragile peace among people, tribes, cultures, nations and other social entities, it's the low-hanging fruit and thus the obvious choice when it comes to finding a interim measure to forge and sustain peaceful coexistence and peaceful coexistence is what we all have in mind when we say "better future", right? It's quite evident when you approach it from that angle why we've chosen goodness for a "better future" as it were.

freedom is confined to just raw capacity — tim wood

What do you mean by "raw capacity". You speak as if freedom has a meaning other than being able to do whatever we want. Pray tell, what is this other meaning?

There's no modal logic I'm aware of that has [] as obligation and <> as possibility, and it would be really weird if there were — Pfhorrest

IPlease visit Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy. Also why would it be "weird"? Really why? What makes it weird?

I get that the diamond operator is read as permissible in deontic logic but my point is what would be really weird in the truest sense of that word is if someone told me that something impossible is permissible. Take a moment to consider the situation if someone did tell you that a certain action x is impossible but that x permissible. Impossible means you can't do it and permissible is you may do it. That you may or may not do something makes sense only if it's possible to do that thing, right? In the simplest sense, permissible implies that you have an option but impossible implies that you have none!

I don't know off the top of my head of Kant's own justification for his pro-capital-punishment position in light of his broader ethics, but I would expect it would be something along the lines of the full context of an act mattering for the general duty you're following. Instead of "never do X", a duty could be "never do X when Y unless Z". So he might have thought the general rule was "never kill someone who's not actively trying to kill someone else unless as punishment for attempted murder" or something like that. If so, he could just as readily have endorsed a more sophisticated duty regarding lying, and it seems irrational of him to have instead bit the bullet and just insisted that all lying is always wrong all the time no matter what. — Pfhorrest

So, you're of the opinion that Kant's notion of moral duties came with caveats, conditions that made room for his pro-death stance? The only way Kant's pro-death views make sense is if it's a moral duty to execute murderers. Any ideas how we may arrive at that conclusion within the framework of Kant's ethics? Can we reason backwards from the position that the death penalty is justified to a foundational premise in Kant's moral theory? :chin: You may ignore this part of my post as I think it's only incidental unless of course you had a good reason to bring it up in which case I'd like you to give me more to go on. Thanks.

In deontic logic the diamond operator means “permissible”, not “possible”, just like the box operator means “obligatory” rather than “necessary”. So it follows that if something is obligatory it is permissible, and if it’s not permissible it’s not obligatory, but that doesn’t say anything at all about alethic possibility: it might be that morally obligatory things are impossible so we’re just fucked — Pfhorrest

□p (necessarily p) is equivalent to ¬◇¬p ("not possible that not-p")
◇p (possibly p) is equivalent to ¬□¬p ("not necessarily not-p") — Wikipedia

??? :chin:

You're talking about deontic logic but it's an offshoot of modal logic, the latter subsuming the former as it were. Ergo, if something goes wrong at the level of modal logic, it wouldn't work in deontic logic too.

Think of it.

Modal Logic: If necessary P then possible P

Deontic Logic: If necessary P then permissible P

If deontic logic were independent of modal logic then it should be possible for a proposition P to be impossible and yet permissible. That doesn't make sense, right? The permissible supervenes on the possible.

But I don’t think any of this is really necessary to make sense of Kant. He was just being inconsistent. Surely his categorical imperative would generally prohibit killing, but Kant was fine with capital punishment, so sometimes killing must be okay, by his reasoning. If killing can sometimes be excused even though it’s generally wrong, surely the same must apply to lying. — Pfhorrest

I didn't know Kant supported the death penalty and Wikipedia describes it as an "extreme position". Noted! However, does it follow from his ethics? I'd like to see how it does if it does? Any ideas?

The point I'm making though is that there's a contradiction that follows from Kant's ethics in the lying to a murderer thought experiment and I'm sure this is just one case of many conflicts of duty scenarios that are possible and also actual but the contradiction can be denied by positing a third option - amorality - and one does that, we're not in the moral sphere anymore - good/bad no longer apply to a person who can't, in Kantian terms, perform faer duty. That it's necessary implies that it's possible. This is where @tim wood comes in - we have to have freedom to perform our duties, Kantian or otherwise.

:rofl:

:up:

Finally, you say: if Nothing can be conceived by the mind, than it's something (something conceived by your mind), which is paradoxal. But to me to say that something can be conceived by the mind is to say that we have a concept of that thing. So we you ask me if nothing is conceivable, it's like if you are asking "Can we form a concept of Nothing?". The answer is yes. Does it mean that Nothing is Something? No. The concept of Nothing is something. Nothing is just nothing, as the concept say. — L'Unico

You seem to have missed my point. Nothing is not anything. If so, any question I pose of the form below:

1. Is nothing x?

must be answered with "not" or the grammatically correct "no" for nothing is not anything.

My question then is,

2. Is nothing that which can be conceived by the mind?

Yes/No?

If you say "yes" that means nothing is something, something the mind can conceive of but that's a contradiction.

Ergo, the correct answer is "no". Nothing can't be conceived of by the mind but there's a definition of nothing which, if anything, implies that we have conceived of nothing. Paradox!

Does knowledge necessarily conduce to what is good (and I admit I have paraphrased what you actually said)?

And the obvious answer is no, it doesn’t, and a multitude of examples appear before my mind... — Todd Martin

Two words, one person, "Immanuel Kant". I was on another thread titled 'Freedom And Duty" started by @tim wood on Kantian ethics. What a lucky coincidence!

Kant, to the extent that I'm aware, set out to put ethics on a solid rational foundation that prescribes duties, the failure to fulfill them entailing a logical contradiction based on our values, the things we hold dear like life, truth, personal property, dignity, and whathaveyou.

It appears that there is a profound relationship between omniscience and omnibenevolence. The former, recognizing what humans value and also being perfectly rational, inexorably progresses to the latter, Kantian in character, a moral system in which immoral = irrational. Is it just another coincidence that the decalog is deontic in spirit and in letter? :chin:

Depends on "want." I want my coffee in the morning. I am "at liberty" to get it, and "free" to choose my means. But am I free wrt to the having of it? Not really. Fortunately for me no question of duty that I know of arises directly out of my having my coffee. But if I move 3,000 lbs. of steel, burning non-renewable fossil fuels, taking the time for a 12 miles round-trip, contributing my increment to the dangers of the road, which in the presence of snow and ice are not trivial, for cup of expensive bitter-flavored hot water, am I being a reasonable man? What say you? — tim wood

Why can't you just say that freedom - being able to do whatever we want - is either an impediment or an obstruction for the good, that duty - being unable to do whatever we want - is what defines the good?

In a Kantian universe good means certain morally meaningful duties, obligations to either perform or not perform certain actions but we're completely free with respect to whether we accept to live by this Kantian moral code or not.

Thus, to append to what you said, and I quote, "freedom is exactly freedom to do one's duty (OR NOT)".

It's kinda like having the freedom to either become a member or not become a member of a club (the Kantian club) but once you're a member you have to follow the rules (Kantian duties). :chin: