aside from the context where we're talking about an event that may have had multiple causes rather than just one. — Terrapin Station

Exactly the point, multiple causes. Where is 'the cause'?

I think that when we talk about causation we are talking about some force existing in objects not just 'a cause' but 'the cause'. The one and only thing that makes it so that the second ball 'must' move, the first ball hitting it is only sufficient but not necessary.

Ideas are mental states caused by something outside of us. That something must have causal power which material objects do not have. What ever it is outside of us we can only know through the impression made on our minds through our senses. We only ever have an idea of objects.
You cannot really deny that ideas exist, in fact the existence of ideas is the only thing you can know without doubt. Matter on the other hand is something that you can only have an idea of.

Okay, but what is it (ontologically) that you'd say makes anything moral or immoral? — Terrapin Station

In my opinion morals are relative and subjective although seeking the greater good does appear to be altruistic and altruism does happen in nature.

I think Socrates is right saying that it is better to suffer bad acts than to commit them. I also think that Kant is right that there are some things categorically wrong and that we have duties. I also agree with Hume that a lot of morality is sentimental.

Utilitarianism seems more like the rules of survival rather than morality, however morality is a product of survival. So in short I don't have a simple answer for your question.

So the first ball hitting it is only a part of a chain of causation that ultimately traces back to the big bang. In which case the first ball hitting it is not the cause but the explanation of why the second ball moved.

There is no Reason without emotion. That is Hume's fatal flaw. He is not alone. — creativesoul

Hume doesn't deny the existence of reason only that it plays a back seat role in our moral decisions. Emotion is not reason.

The first ball striking it. — Terrapin Station

And what caused the first ball to strike it?

Committing an evil act cannot be moral in my ontology.

Morality is the rules of acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. Morality is a human condition. We are interdependent social creatures by our very nature. Rules for behaviour are inevitable. — creativesoul

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But is morality a product of reason or emotion?

Something being evil doen't make it wrong, and something being good (or "holy", if you prefer) doesn't make it right. — RosettaStoned

How would you then define good and evil? Surely Good is right and evil is wrong by definition?

An evil act would be good if it helped more than it harmed — RosettaStoned

You do realize the contradiction in that statement don't you?
Evil is evil, if being evil can lead to a good result then morality is not about good.

I disagree. The court was right in it's decision. The men should have waited for Parker to die if they were so sure he would.
This does not, however, apply to your case as you judge yourself more valuable than the other and hence it is not you who should die. — Heiko

I believe that the deciding factor that swayed the court was the defendants lack of remorse over the act.

The case of Richard Parker is one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens

There are many dilemmas in the real world faced by many professions that involve distributing goods and services in order to save or benefit the majority. Emergency services is one example, the military another...

What would you say is the cause of the second billiard ball moving?

So killing one innocent person in order to save one hundred can never be moral in your opinion?

University of London

It shows :)

You are analytic I presume?

Just arguing with you from Berkeley's position has been a great help.One needs to talk philosophy in order to really get it. I am 50 and retired, I left school in 1983 and went straight to work so the last time I studied anything was like you some 30 years ago!

Your instinctive objections were all anticipated by Berkeley and he also anticipated Hume on causation which is what makes him so fascinating to me. If you can accept his Christianity then his arguments are really very solid. The same objection he has of Locke basing theories on incomplete knowledge is still highly relevant today.

I need to write an essay on the subject for university and will have to face a question in the exams on it for my degree. That is why it interests me, I want to get a good grade.

Yes until we can rid ourselves of 'cave mentality' the artists only help reinforce the allure of the cave.

That is fine and I respect that but the point of this thread was to discuss the arguments presented by Locke and Berkeley both for and against matter and compare them.
I am very interested in your opinion of that, less as to your opinion about the subject in general.

I am trying to examine both arguments from a neutral position which is not easy as I am just as much a product of Locke-Mills-Ramsey scientific view of the world as you are. I assure you that immaterialism seems as dumb to me as it does to you however I have a strong desire to understand the theory fully before writing off as incoherent as you have.

Exactly. What is "matter"? What are "ideas"? How do they differ if not just by location (Ideas are in a mind. Matter is everywhere else)? — Harry Hindu

According to Berkeley matter is an incoherent idea that we arrive at by an abuse of language. Ideas are by definition non material unless you follow Descartes dualist approach that there are two types of substance. Locke denies Descartes spiritual substance and Berkeley denies Descartes material substance.

Idealism states that there is no matter at all, only ideas and minds. Descartes employs a two prong retreat (mind and matter) from solipsism but is left with the mind-body problem as well as a few others. Berkeley makes an even stronger commitment to God and uses him solely in his retreat from solipsism but is left with the problem of seeming ridiculous..

I'm a direct realist. — Terrapin Station

That's great but can we leave your personal position aside and focus on the argument between Berkeley and Locke?

How is it any less coherent than the idea of matter? What is matter? Atoms? Quarks? Higgs-Bosun's? Dark matter? Is light a particle or a wave? What the hell is Quantum theory all about? Hawkins last theory points to a multiverse, is any of that any more coherent than God?

I stopped reading at 'If Christianity is true'. Can religions have truth values? Not all Christian belief is about transgender issues, Christianity could be wrong about that and right about other things.

My two cents worth, homosexuality and gender vagueness have been with us for thousands of years. Christian culture is one of the most sexually repressive religions around. The only major moral issue here is one of medical morals. Before gender reassignment was around and wide-spread we didn't have a transgender issue.

God doesn't need to predict, he already knows what will happen but knowing and causing are different things.

I didn’t pay back my student loans, but that “choice” was fully determined by circumstances beyond my control. The stress of living in the ghetto where gunshots rang outside, drug deals in the parking lot outside my window, the paper-thin walls that made it impossible to differentiate outside voices from the voices inside my head; all contributed to my already fragile mind (I have schizoaffective disorder), fully determining my need to be proclaimed disabled and unable to work. In no possible universe given all of these factors as still holding true would I be able to work. So, I reject your view that “intelligible” actions are not fully determined. — Noah Te Stroete

The problem is that mental disorders tend to be underlying just waiting to get out. It is very possible that even if you had a perfect time as a student, good neighborhood, enough money to study without going into debt etc you still could have ended up in the same condition.

There is a special relationship between man and God in regards to freewill. The story of Genesis shows it perfectly. God gives Adam freewill and tells him not to do X. It is obviously a set up, God knows that either Adam or Eve or both will give in to their curiosity.

Eating the apple was not the test, it was a given, the test was what would happen afterwards. Adam as we already know first lies and denies the whole thing and when cornered blames it on Eve. This is the first case of moral responsibility in the face of determinism and Adam screwed it up.

http://woozapooza.tumblr.com/post/65858615349/betterbooktitles-immanuel-kant-critique-of

This was the original title.

Apparently it is just as hard in German. He sent the manuscript to his best friend who begged him to be allowed to stop reading it. By the first half the poor fellow was quite sure he was going mad.

John Searle has some great lectures on Kant as does Dan Brown, but I won't be attempting the book any time soon.

I don't understand why you can't understand that ideas and external-to-me physical stuff are not identical. — Terrapin Station

Our ideas are impressions of external-to-me physical stuff. Forget about identical, ideas cannot even be similar that stuff, ideas can only be similar to other ideas, that is one of Berkeley's points.

Yes! Philosophy is a science. — Harry Hindu

Physics is the only science.

Which would just be another assumption made by someone (Berkeley's word is not the final word) who is being skeptical of others' assumptions. What's new? One unfalsifiable claim is just as good as any other. Where's the evidence, not just of other minds, but of spiritual stuff vs. physical stuff, God, etc.? — Harry Hindu

No evidence really just inference from induction which is the same with science. Starting from the first person inquiry can only be justified by saying there really is no better place to start. If there is one thing we can know it is our own minds and thoughts. Not infallible knowledge of of how they work but at least of their existence.

I am no scientist but I am aware of the fact that several scientific paradoxes exist. Science has no actual equation for gravity, not what it does but how it works in itself. The whole concept of mass seems at least a little shady to me.

I am suspicious of any form of knowledge that can only be understood by a select few and science is one of those. The more we discover the fewer can actually fully understand it, we are then left with new high priests to translate, interpret, simplify and feed to us of lower than very high I.Q's.

That fact is that it's obviously incoherent and wrong to try to separate matter from form and properties. — Terrapin Station

That is what Locke proposed, the separation of matter from substratum, primary qualities from secondary and that is what Berkeley objected to.

Science still lacks perfect explanations for form and properties, science itself holds the ridiculous notion that matter is supported by a substratum even today. So your complaint is justified but not only against philosophy.

The whole problem there is the ridiculousness of for some reason taking matter (or substance) to somehow "underlie" things like roof tiles and trees, but to not itself be properties, forms (not in the platonic sense--in the sense of things like shape/extension), etc — Terrapin Station

In philosophy we need to be amazed by all of our ideas. The vulgar take matter to be properties in its self, as philosophers we want to know why this is the case.

Solipsism is the risk that Descartes also ran, but Berkeley is firm on their being other minds.

wonderful post. I wasn't asking whether immaerialism succeeds in undermining materialism though. You say that Berkeley provides an instrumentally better theory but we need to support this statement. The major weakness in Locke is his statement about matter that 'it is something I know not what'.Berkeley is accusing Locke of not being sufficiently empirical in building a theory on something not understood such as matter.

Locke as you rightly point out is afflicted by worries over this problem, Berkeley uses it to trip him up and yet Berkeley has no worries about the metaphysics of spiritual substance and minds. He apparently doesn't need the explain what they are and how they exist, merely what they do.

He argues that our relation to minds and God is more intimate and accessible that it is with matter. We can have notions of these things without ideas of them, but come on George, you do not justify this.

Instrumentalism makes a heavy claim on Okham's razor and for sure to a strong believer God is a simpler theory than materialism, but only if you leave out any metaphysics of God.
Another problem is his reverting back to the Cartesian methods which caused the impasse that Locke was trying to overcome.