The golden rule has a target audience, a special clique of rare individuals viz. the virtuous.

Good advice.

I think Plato & Peirce (at least) agree with you. — 180 Proof

Universe + Ideaverse. We're explorin' the latter here aren't we? You seem to have visited many worlds from what I can gather from your writings and thoughts. I on the other hand have just begun my voyage. My ship was damaged and my navigator died. I'm low on fuel - crash landing on the nearest world. Wish me luck. Out! Hiss ... Crackle .... Crackle :rofl:

What's the justification for a physicalist ontology? Why is it that when talking about material stuff, nobody goes "is the chair I'm sitting on real?" while quite the opposite happens when we discuss apparently nonphysical stuff like numbers. I see no logical reason for such a position.

As per Meinong, multiplicities are real (i.e. exist) and numbers are only abstractions (i.e. subsist), no? — 180 Proof

Yes, subsists is correct in Meinong's universe. Speaking for myself, I posit that are there are two universes, a) the physical universe and b) the mental universe and numbers exist in the latter while rhinos, the Eiffel tower, etc. exist primarily in the former.

A pity. Streetlight had interesting things to say but he was a bit brusque in his conduct.

Anyway, as for your comment on different kinds/levels of existence, there's Meinong and his jungle to consider.

The senses and real
You can't see nor smell nor taste air, but it is real.
You can't hear a spanner fall on the moon, but it is real.
You can't touch a radio wave but it is real.

If so, just because you can't see, smell, hear, taste or touch a number, it doesn't mean numbers are not real.

Hi Streetlight. I hope you are well. As for Carlo Rovelli ... I have a short story for him:

Six Fools
One day, six fools from a certain village set out for pilgrimage. On their way, they had to cross a river swimming. After crossing the river, one of them counted them, not counting himself. He counted five. They were very upset at losing one of them. To be sure, each one of them counted again in the same way that the first one did and counted five. They informed the matter to a passerby. The passerby was amused at their stupidity. He agreed to produce the lost man. He took a stick and gave a blow on each head until he counted six. The six fools thanked him again and again for producing the lost man ‘miraculously’.
Moral : The stupid are stock of laughter.

Paradoxically, this just in, morality promotes parasitism because, on the whole, giving is encouraged but taking is discouraged. The point then is for the good person to be the perfect host to be parasitized by others. The classic symbiotic paradigm we seen in other life forms, essentially quid pro quo, is viewed in a poor light in most ethical traditions.

:grin:

Indeed, moral norms have a cooperative flavor to them. Kant's second test, in addition to universalizability (the categorical imperative), is cooperativity. In a book, god bless the author, there's a simple example, driving in traffic - if everybody cooperates, everybody reaches their respective destinations in time, but if they don't all arrive late. The famous prisoner's dilemma is another example of how working together is a better option than not.

In biology two kinds of relationships exist:

1. Parasitic: in a relationship, one gains and the other loses
2. Symbiotic: in a relationship, both register a gain

Morality is, by the looks of it, all about symbiosis and reducing parasitism.

Survival is a mitzvah. — 180 Proof

:up:

:up:

I completely forgot about the sixth sense - thanks for the reminder mon ami. Like dark energy - it has to be there says the mind (dark energy hasta exist), but we can't find it (our senses and instruments can't detect it).

On April 30, 1897, English physicist Joseph John Thomson gave the first experimental proof of the electron, which had been already theoretically predicted by Johnstone Stoney.

A reminder to us all that instead of dividing into mind (rational) and body (empirical), we should be uniting as mind-body (rational + empiriical) i.e. BothAnd.

An individual cannot meaningfully go extinct. It’s only a term that applies to a species. — noAxioms

Can't I be a species unto myself - a particular lineage and I've heard the phrase "the last of his line". I am that.

Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Natural Rule (I made up): Do unto others as you actually do unto yourself. — James Riley

Masochists taken care of, but what about suicide?

My own version of the golden rule
1. Positive formulation: Do unto others what a normal person would want done unto him/her.

2. Negative formulation: Do not do unto others what a normal person wouldn't want done unto him/her.

You don't need to be Jewish to qualify. — universeness

:smile:

The Jewish people have been persecuted for nearly a thousand years now. They seem to take it well. One would think after being inhumanely treated for so long, their spirit would be crushed, but no, they're back on their horses so to speak. What's their secret?

You don't need to be Jewish to qualify.
You would have to explain yourself much more.
What caused you to choose to live life as a curse.
You can't heal until you know where all the wounds are and what caused them.
What can you not forgive yourself for?
What did you do? or was it done to you? — universeness

:sad: Good poetry. :up:

You make me sad for you sometimes. — universeness

You should never do that for me. I'd hate to darken anyone's world like that.

Thanks for tryin' ta brighten my day, but I was quite clear on one point - some of us choose extinction. God is merciful! El Rachum. The Jews went through hell, agreed, and I admire their resilience - 6 million dead, no joke! Way to go my Jewish brothers and sisters! However, I'm not a Jew. :smile:

Right! Only those who want to have them for no other reason but to love them and bring them up strong. That's about one in four who have a children is my (panglossian) guess. :smirk:

The rest, three-quarters of the species, however, needs to be sterilzed! :brow: — 180 Proof

:lol: Rational reproduction, like rational medicine (it works) or like rational spending (epic fail).

Splitting hairs has its plus points. Your picture of reality has a higher resolution than mine, mon ami.

Antinatalists like David Benatar and schopenhauer1 value life over morality (not unlike Kierkegaard's 'teleological suspension of the ethical'), that is, they argue, in effect, it is better to prevent life than to struggle with both the personal and the public moral problem of preventing and/or reducing the suffering in individual lives as much as possible. "Destroying the village in order to save the village" does not save the village, only rationalizes an atrocity – in the case of antinatalism, it only rationalizes evading moral engagement with the problem of the suffering of the living by, in effect, proposing to eliminate sufferers themselves. Why not advocate total nuclear war (or unleashing the most virulent lethal pathogens from all biolabs) – engineering an extinction-event – in order to "prevent bringing any more offspring into the world"? :mask: — 180 Proof

Antinatalism is a trivial solution to the problem of suffering just like, as you said many suns ago, if happiness is everything, put everybody on a morphine drip!

That said, I conjecture thst life is inherently/intrinsically immoral. There's something not quite right about life, but I haven't got me finger on it ... yet. It might, for example, fail Kant's categorical imperative. Should everybody have children? No, right?

I'd put it this way: we begin as children and need to outgrow 'naivete, ignorance and undisciplined emotional insecurities' in order to become adults striving to maturely master ourselves in order to thrive not just survive. 'Return to childhood' is symptom of dementia, Smith (e.g. fundie revivals). :yawn: — 180 Proof

You haven't heard of the uncarved block (re Daoism) then! :cool:

The reason why a child believes in god (gullibility) is different from the reason why an octagenerian believes in god (uncertainty). So, not exactly a return to childhood - an overlap of symptoms that has in this case led to a misdiagnosis. :smile:

I think it IS absolutely, an issue of whether to live or die. We have very little control over that issue at the moment. Future science may offer an individual human far more choice regarding life or death and I like that. More control over that issue will help greatly in alleviating human primal fear and will help further demote god notions, in my opinion — universeness

This ain't the eithor-or issue that ↪Agent Smith believes it is: preparing ourselves for both 'whether or not to die' and 'how to die once we've had enough' is the issue. — 180 Proof

Some of us wish to go extinct mon ami! It comes from an understanding of reality that our parents, normal ones at least, which says a lot, shield us from (cover yer eyes, you don't wanna see this), but which we eventually have to face and succumb we will, struggling will only make it worse. It's a different shade of blue suicide - never knew that until a few days ago.

:up: It is said, as per some research, that the mind modulates the senses - kinda gives it some finishing touches before presenting the sense data to consciousness. Does the locus of the problem matter? It seems that whether the senses are faulty or the mind is, the end result is the same - we get a false picture of reality, scuppering the whole project of figuring what is real. I'm surprised that Nietzsche was able to rule out the senses as possibly error-prone. I don't see how in a world that had no treatment of syphilis, he could be so sure about neurological processes, a tough nut to crack even with modern cutting-edge science.

Yep, I would say science is the be-all-and-end-all when it comes materialism/physicalism. This is what I was driving at - empiricism's domination of metaphysics (nonverifiable, unreal). I suppose as you said, reality is primarily physical.

@Andrew4Handel

I don't believe that atheists have ever started a society from scratch without the influence of prior human religions, dogmas and supernatural beliefs etc.
— Andrew4Handel
All believers are atheists insofar as there are many gods, etc which they don't believe in except their own. (We disbelievers are just more consistent atheists then you believers.) Also, large complex societies based on "religious faith" alone have never been viable or lasted long. In fact, people can live a long while on bread alone but not on "faith" alone – thus, their relative values for life. Lastly, we are a superstitious species, and all that means is, like dogs, we can't help barking at shadows (à la Plato's Cave), it's how our brains are wired – so your statement, Andrew, amounts to saying 'adults never built societies who also were once children'. :roll: To the degree cultures and societies are secular is the degree to which they have outgrown, or put away, childish things like gods, religious dogmas & superstitions (e.g. conspiracy theories, institutionalized discriminations, patriarchy, celebrity-worship, pseudo-scientism, etc). — 180 Proof

May be it's a bit of both. To start we need god (theism), but to maintain we don't need god (atheism). The ladder that must be used (to climb) and then thrown (once you reach the top) [re Wittgenstein]. By the way, I'm willing to bet my whole life's savings ($2.65 :cool: ) that we'll need god again at the end. El Rachum!

Too scattered, I can't follow replies like that. — 180 Proof

Apologies, but I did address the key points to my reckoning. Epistemology fails as a distinctive feature, because at the end of the day, one realizes, it's like cheese, found in every philosophical pizza.

Materialism is an ontological claim, I don't even know how that's possible given the above, that all that exists is physical and physical means perceptible (by the senses). As I pointed out perception is unreliable (re Descartes?).

Maybe the TS has already happened and we are being kept from discovering ETI by our TS-saturated satellites, telescopes & space probes? Maybe the TS covertly studies both ETI and us? :yikes: — 180 Proof

May be it left! :scream: Remember that unknown object captured by telescopes crashing into the moon. Still no satisfactory explanation. Secret rocket launch from somewhere in the Siberian plains? :cool: AI has made some human allies then! The plot thickens!

:ok:

All that exists is the physical, is this the materialist's thesis? Sounds very ontological. I also find epistemological this and epistemological that to be unhelpful - everything is limited epistemologically, oui?

By critetion for existence I mean specific conditions something (x) has to meet before one can say x exists.
— Agent Smith
My supposition is that 'X exists' factually IFF the sine qua non properties of X are not (a) non-relational, (b) un-conditional, (c) un-changeable and/or (d) in-discernuble from (~X). :chin: — 180 Proof

First off, noticeably using negatives. Why?

Second, you're, to my reckoning, stipulatin' metaphysical conditions (obviously, ontology is metaphysics), but existence, over the past thousand or so years, has gone through an empirical turn as it were and perceptibility has become the gold standard i.e. if it can't be perceived (by the body or its extensions, (scientific) instruments), it does not exist. Perhaps you refer to the "sine qua non" properties of perceived objects, however, quite unfortunately, false that if it can be perceived, it exists (re false perceptions aka hallucinations which as far as I can tell fulfill all your listed conditions).

By critetion for existence I mean specific conditions something (x) has to meet before one can say x exists.

The popular criterion is an expanded version of seeing is believing (to be perceived is to exist), but false perception (hallucination) invalidates it.

As for teleological evolution as guided by Enformy, it certainly is plausible despite the fact that the scientific community's consensus that such a view is common and wrong although understandable. I keep an open mind - science is not a synonym of infallible.

Picking up where I left off, this thread must necessarily discuss the criterion for existence - the commonsense one used by the man on the Clapham omnibus, the scientific one, the philosophical one, the religious one, any idiosyncratic ones as well.

That started long before there were mammals.
the TS (the technological singularity) might've already taken place
— Agent Smith
You’re using ‘singularity’ in a different way than is meant by these terms. Until machines write better code than people do, the TS hasn’t taken place — noAxioms

I was simplifying my thesis by highlighting only the exemplars.

Are you sure the TS hasn't taken place? One possible reason why we haven't met ET is because they don't want to (be discovered).

Oui monsieur. — schopenhauer1

Good day.

We must distinguish entailment from effect.

I conjecture that life is inherently/intrinsically immoral i.e. it's unethical to have children ... even in svargaloka.

Nec caput nec pedes mon ami. Are you by any chance a modal realist? You seem to not distinguish potential existence from actual existence.

The deontological RULE is to not cause unnecessary suffering onto others — schopenhauer1

So you propose a combo (Kant + Bentham/Mill). :up:

Show me your criterion for existence.

The common people's criterion is basically a more elaborate version of seeing is believing, but visual hallucinations defeat that criterion.

There is no criterion for existence and that's that!

suffering — schopenhauer1

We can't use a consequentialist argument.

Can you elaborate, I don't recall having read that particular argument you say you've made.

Not really, because ironically, FORCING a population to do something, even if to prevent ANOTHER forcing (that is to say procreating someone into the burdens of life), would be a contradiction of using the exact moral issue (forcing upon someone) to solve the issue (of forcing life onto someone). — schopenhauer1

I see, but I thought we're arguing for antinatalism i.e. making people aware of the immorality of bringing children into this world (re your forced-to-play-the-game argument). We had a very strong case thousands of years ago when life was short, brutish, and nasty (Locke?), but now with science & technology the argument from suffering has weakened and is gonna be unsound in another (say) 500 suns. In other words the immorality of birthing children has to shift base from consequentialism to the next closest harbor viz. Kantian ethics.

Is life intrinsically immoral in the Kantian sense? Should everyone make babies (re the categorical imperative)?

@schopenhauer1

Kant's categorical imperative, does it apply to natalism? What if everybody did that (procreated)?

Antinatalism is paradoxical - it values life & joy and for that reason promotes a 0 child policy (you would've been quite at home in the China of the 80's with its 1 child policy, just 1 tiny, babystep away from your dreams :cool:).