So first, there's commitment. If you want to be a Superpower, then you have to be one. If you don't want to be a Superpower, well, the US president will be listened to as much as the comments of the Canadian Prime Minister is. — ssu

I think we have directly opposing viewpoints on what's best for the world. You think it's best for the US to be a global leader. I think it's best for the world to recognize the US as a heavily armed psychopath. In short, the difference between us is that you think the US is the good guys. I'm pretty sure they aren't.

You've got me wondering how many other non-Americans see things the way you do. Is it common?

I don't look at 'internal discourse' as an excess of an activity. — Paine

I don't either. I just don't have it all the time. It's not a judgement, it's just the way my consciousness is. I wasn't aware of it until I met someone who had an internal voice all the time. It's through contrast that things come into awareness.

You think having troops in a country that has it's Parliament asking you to leave shows great diplomacy, fine foreign policy? — ssu

I was looking for a more objective analysis. What American foreign policy would not have resulted in a trainwreck? But to answer your question, I think the fact that there is an Iraqi parliament that is able to ask US forces to evacuate is fucking brilliant. That's the optimum outcome to an invasion: the existence of a body that represents the people. I have no idea what you were looking for.

Foreign policy decisions matter — ssu

American foreign policy decisions do, yes. The primary aim of those decisions is to serve the interests of the American people. Does the US government always get that right? No, they really don't.

Not having peace and not having cordial if not friendly relations isn't a show of success — ssu

I think it mainly indicates that the US government doesn't have a magic wand.

think they are either confused by the unwarranted emphasis on sub-monologue to the exclusion of sub-dialogue (far more typical in my own case at least) or they are reacting consciously or otherwise to the unwarranted inference of actual internal speech. — bongo fury

Everybody seems to think we're all the same. It's really hard to grasp that we aren't.

There are people who don't use language to think by themselves? — Paine

I think there's a spectrum. NOS seems to be so far on the side of not thinking in words that he doesn't quite understand what's going on with people who have it. He's mystified.

I'm more in the middle of the spectrum because I can do it at will, but at baseline, there's no internal voice. I experience things, but those experiences can't be fully captured by words. It's like words are a net and some of my experience falls through the holes. My memory of it is in feelings. A metaphor I use is the feelings are like music. There are base notes, treble, harmonies, and recurring themes. But it's not music. It's emotional tones.

I've known people who have an internal voice constantly, from the time they wake up till they go to sleep. I couldn't grasp that when I first discovered some people like that. I thought I would shoot myself if I had an internal voice all the time.

I agree.

As the Iraqi Parliament asked the US and other foreign forces to leave three years ago, this is a train wreck, no matter how you want to make it US policy in the Middle East something successful and meaningful. — ssu

The US never intended to occupy Iraq long term. Why does Iraq asking the US to leave make the situation a train wreck? By the way, in healthcare, a "train wreck" is a person who isn't going to survive the assault they've experienced, whether it was a physical assault or an assault by a disease. It might be that I don't know how you're using the term. If you're saying Iraq can't survive what it's been through, I'd say you're clearly wrong.

Do you mean there are people who don't? — Wayfarer

We talked about this on a different thread. Only some people have it.

The basic question is this: are words more than their word-form? — NOS4A2

"Word" can have a couple of meanings. It can be actual sounds or marks, or it can be an abstract object expressed by these physical events.

We know the two are logically distinct because a variety of utterances (the sounds or marks) can all express the same word.

My perspective is that the concept of a word is part of an analysis of communication. We dismantle it and put the pieces out on a table. Don't worry over abstractness. It's a result of this analysis.

A cool fact about words: in Vietnamese, the word expressed by a sequence of sounds is selected by the melody of the utterance. So you can say "mah" one way and it means ghost. Say it another way and it means iron. Or something like that.

How about not invading Iraq for weapons and a weapons program that didn't exist anymore in the first place? — ssu

You're judging the justification for getting rid of Saddam, not the benefits of getting rid of a torturing tyrant on health of middle-eastern culture.

And how about not invading Afghanistan and fighting your longest war lived there because a financier of a tiny terrorist group that was successful in one strike? He btw. escaped to the sanctuary of Pakistan, but you didn't invade Pakistan. — ssu

Again, you're taking cheap, meaningless pot-shots instead of undertaking a serious assessment.

Americans craved for revenge and blood after 9/11 and they had this wonderful hammer of the armed forces of a Superpower, — ssu

More superficial sound bites. The point of the Iraqi invasion was to democratize the Middle East. It was bold gesture. Unfortunately, the population of the middle east didn't welcome the intervention.

Eh. It used to be worthwhile to discuss world events with you. Not so much anymore.

Everybody inhales microplastics. We need to do some research on the effects of that.

Besides, US Middle East policy is and has been since the Gulf War a slow train wreck. — ssu

Really? What sort of policy changes would have made things better?

but is refused on the smaller scale and with real, living, flesh-and-blood human beings? — NOS4A2

That's mainly because letting them "eat cake" led to revolutions. It's necessary to throw them a bone.

In this case, the basis itself might change; if cultural evolution was the basis for most of history, there comes a modern time when it is no longer wise to ignore the environmental consequences of 'cultural evolution'. Again, it is a practical matter, and something that has only recently become a dominant moral issue. Anyway, the correct morals are the ones that lead to flourishing, aka 'the good'. — unenlightened

There are two competing outlooks in our world: (1) is that nature is always smarter than we are. By this perspective it's a mistake for us to try to re-engineer our own culture to meet an environmental crisis. Nature will handle it more efficiently that we ever could. Nature is brutal, but it doesn't waste time on misconceived solutions. It goes straight to what will work in the long run.

The alternative (2) is that we do have the ability to change who and what we are, and we may face conditions in which this is the only road to survival. A case of this was when western nations became multi-racial in the wake of the end of slavery. The only way forward was to force change. This can be extremely stressful, but it does work.

I think the coming years will be a test of these two approaches. I won't live to see who won. :groan:

"Unlike other kinds of beliefs, our moral beliefs being right or wrong has no practical consequences." — Michael

You could have it that rule-based morality represents wisdom about what worked best for our forebears. Since cultures evolve, what works changes over time. In one era, greed is destructive, in another, it's constructive. In this way, you could have a kind of moral realism, it's just that the rules are in flux. The basis for the rules is always the same, though: cultural evolution.

Nietzsche could be seen as complaining about moral rules that have become destructive, so what was good has become bad. He saw the practical consequences of this as a dulling of the spirit and a failure to make the most of life.

:lol:

The nonconcientious objector would deeply oppose the fact that they were untied, but refuse to do anything to rectify it. I would trip — Merkwurdichliebe

Don't do that. Leave your hair uncoiffed.

I admire the objector, but I loath the conscientious — Merkwurdichliebe

Just leave your shoes untied.

I think everyone who didn't want to get vaccinated just got a religious exemption. Of course there were those who just decided to let their children starve. So sad.

The 8 years is not the median duration for the full approval process, but only for phase I of the clinical development. — Merkwurdichliebe

Phase 1 takes a few months.

You know, you have a right to refuse any kind of medical intervention. It's a federal law. :cool:

But im sure it went through all the rigor of normal testing to ensure its safety for public use. — Merkwurdichliebe

:up:

The quote from Yalemedicine is not in disagreement with what I said.

Have what? — Michael

A lack of persuasive arguments.

I don't know of any persuasive argument for any metaethics. — Michael

Well, there you have it.

Well yes, any persuasive argument for some metaethics (whether realism, error theory, or subjectivism) is going to have to account for why morality works the way they say it does. — Michael

Would you agree that you don't know of any persuasive argument for moral realism?

I'm not saying that my assessment is superior to the Bible's. I'm simply providing you with a coherent account of moral realism that can explain for why morality applies to humans but not cockroaches. — Michael

Ok. You have coherence, I'll grant that. Would you agree that a persuasive argument for moral realism is going to have to account for why morality attaches only to certain kinds of intelligence?

Others differ. — Banno

You differ, yes. I don't think anybody else does.

Okay? — Michael

So why is your assessment superior to the Bible's? Why do objective moral rules only apply to persons who understand them?

I mentioned an example. Morality applies to any species (or rather, person) with the intelligence to understand morality. — Michael

Not according to the Bible. Adam and Eve didn't have the knowledge of Good and Evil before they sinned.

You are asking for a friend? — Banno

My neighbor has really prominent brow ridges, so maybe.

Because moral realism is the contention that there are true moral statements. — Banno

I don't think so.

Humans are biologically distinct from non-humans yet human biology isn't artificial; — Michael

Yes, my argument hinges on that. Scientists of human origins don't agree with that, but that would take my argument into the weeds.

I can still argue this: there's an ancestral continuum from Homo Sapiens backward. Even if you want to pick a certain point where there was a mutation, this choice for where we draw the moral line is going to be arbitrary. For instance, we know that Homo Sapiens and all our close relatives have a mutation that makes our jaw muscles weak. That would be an objective separating line between us and the other animals. But why would having a weak jaw make us subject to moral rules?

Plus that demarcation will have us holding member of Homo Erectus accountable for all their bullshit.

An EUA is most definitely not the same as the the normal full approval process. — Merkwurdichliebe

The FDA's approval process is mostly paperwork. All the vaccines went through the standard 3 phase clinical trials. These phases check for safety and efficacy. The clinical trials were the reason it took so long to get the vaccine to the population. The actual vaccine was produced in a couple of weeks. That's one of the advantages of the new technology.

That's a challenge for some theory on normative ethics (e.g. utilitarianism, hedonism, etc.). Moral realism is a theory on meta-ethics and so it doesn't need to answer this question. — Michael

Cannibalism was just an example. The question is: is morality only for humans? The idea is that if morality is only for homo sapiens, then morality is artificial because there's an ancestral continuum between humans and their forebears.

If morality is artificial, then moral realism fails.

Most moral realists throughout history didn't have to consider morality for animals because they didn't realize that we emerged from an evolutionary chain. We evolved from an animal that looked like a squirrel, and it evolved ultimately from archaic cells that developed a relationship with mitochondria.

So if it's a continuum, and the archeological record shows that it is, how does moral realism work? Is it immoral for black widow spiders to eat their mates? I think the obvious answer is: no. It's not.

That means we're stuck with this: X is immoral for us. The challenge to moral realism is in asking about what's moral for homo habilis, or homo erectus. They're human. Are they us? Or not? The answer is going to be somewhat artificial, which means morality is artificial.

That one ought not eat babies takes precedence over the argument. — Banno

So if Neanderthals engaged in cannibalism, you would say that was immoral? I'm just asking for the sake of understanding your position.

Civil society is a rigged game, as far as "winners" are concerned. — BC

Do you think it was rigged for Jeff Bezos?

Which paints a different impression of the thread's theme — javra

Thanks for the thought provoking reply. The thread is about the requirements of life, and how those requirements may differ from what we expect or want.

Rhetorical question :wink: Probably. Even to this day. However, they have have certains ways of doing things that seem trustworthy, and those that are suspect...for example, the full approval process versus emergency use authorization for vaccines. — Merkwurdichliebe

They actually did go through the whole standard testing procedure. What was sped up was the paperwork part, which sometimes takes years. Still, this was a radically new technology. It goes in and makes your own cells create features of a lethal virus. I joked to myself when I took it that this is how zombie apocalypses start. I was a little nervous, but I took it because I had spent the previous year planning how I would spend my last functional days if I got covid. I was making little videos of family and friends doing normal things, planning to watch it at the end.

Rules without a rule-giver does seem spurious. — Michael

Plus there's no fact about which rules you've been following all this time. Augustine's solution: Love and do what you will.. No need for a rule-giver. No need for rules at all.