I would have thought it abundantly clear that the objection raised by my answer to your title question is a major objection to your hypothesis. But obviously I have failed to meet your exacting standards as to how I am expected to reply to your posts so I won't be bothering in future! Have fun hypothesising in your little echo chamber.

The visible universe is thought to contain about 10123 bits of information. A rudimentary quantum computer containing only a few hundred qubits vastly outstrips that! — tom

That's ludicrous. The information within your computer cannot not be within the Universe. If it was to make accurate predictions about the Universe such a computer would need to contain every bit of information in the Universe including the information it contains about every bit of information in the Universe including the information it contains about every bit of information in the Universe including the information it contains about ...... infinite capacity in other words. Moreover just one step in any calculation toward predicting the future of the universe would involve a change of state of part of that information requiring a refresh of all of it to make the calculation valid leading to an infinte regression. The precise future of the Universe is therefore, by definition, incalculable by any calculation device within the Universe no matter how sophisticated. Moreover, by implication, it is equally impossible to calculate the exact history of the Universe to date.

Suffering is passive. It is the world acting on you. It cannot therefore be all there is because it does not take any account of you acting on the world. It is a sign of mental illness, specifically depression, to believe there is only the world acting on you and that you acting upon the world is futile or impossible. A non-normative state cannot be all there is.

I thought this was supposed to be a philosophy forum. Philosophers have no business wishing unfulfillable dreams on anybody or believing that there is any fundamental difference between the world at 23.59 on December 31st and at 00.01 on January 1st or indeed that there is such a thing as 1st January at all! Bah, humbug!

did you know we used to have a 10 month year but August and December for DECA were added by the Caesars. — lime green zesty citrus

No. December means 10th month and was always part of the calendar. The 10 month year started with March (Martius) with the 5th to 10th months being named for their number (Quintilis to December). January and February were added to make it 12 months eventually moving all the others up by 2 so that September (7th) became the 9th month and so on. The 5th and 6th month of the 10 month calendar were renamed centuries after becoming the 7th and 8th months by this process; July from Julius Caesar, and August from Augustus.

Who says that inequity is wrong per se? There's clearly nothing morally exceptionable about the fact that Usain Bolt can run faster than me. I think you need to far more precisely define what forms of inequity you consider 'wrong'.

I believe humans, and most sentient organisms for that matter, have a deficient fear of pain. On the flip side, we have an overly aggressive fear of death. — darthbarracuda

Then you believe wrongly. It is not being dead that people fear but dying, the transition from life to death. The reason being that they expect it to be painful. This hardly suggests a deficient fear of pain. If anything we have an over-aggressive fear of pain which makes, as often as not, the anxiety about pain worse than the actual pain itself!

One that can very easily be knocked down by proof of a counterexample.

This old chestnut again? It really is very simple. There is no such thing as an inalienable right be it human or animal.

Can I find a justification for a practice that zoos themselves long ago eschewed? Unsurprisingly, no!

Death is not the outcome of either action. It is inevitable and thus entirely independent of A1, A2 or no action at all. Pascal's wager is entirely about what happens after death (another weakness being that it has no value unless it presupposes that there is an 'after', of course).

I'm not sure just how relevant the prodigal son is here. The decision to return was not one made in the expectation of reward. It is not a decision of hope but one of desperation. Indeed he was prepared to live the life of a hired servant. It is the grace of the father that is the point of the story (parables being 'tales of the unexpected'). In Pascal's Wager the son does not return humbled and contrite but confident in his reward.

What matters most is knowing what it is that you don't know. Philosophy is surely the best tool for achieving that.

If your reason for posting is to be understood then it seems to me entirely reasonable to expect that you to do everything in their power to ensure that you cannot be misunderstood. How is it my responsibility to make sense of something you wrote badly or ambiguously? All I have is the words on the page. If there is a disparity between what they say and what you thought you were saying then who should take responsibility for that if not you?

Surely the real question is not whether the logical case you present is irrational. It clearly is not. The real question is whether Pascal's Wager conforms to this pattern which, as far as I am concerned it does not. The main reason for that is that there is no way to know what the outcomes of each alternative action will be let alone whether they would be good or otherwise. Are there not clear indications in the New Testament, for example, that something more than intellectual assent is required for salvation and that many who make claim in the name of Jesus will be rejected? And wouldn't a perfectly good God be bound to reject those whose belief is based entirely on self-interest?

These concepts aren't apprehended and don't exist linearly, but are diffuse, interconnected, and apprehended purely through experience — Noble Dust

This seems a very odd thing to say about metaphysics given that its very definition is the study of that which cannot be experienced or observed.

Overall you appear to be making an appeal for flawed 'experience' to take precedence over testable 'logic' in our examination of the world. What is there to prevent that becoming a free for all for every possible belief in which credibility is judged only by the fact that someone believes it? What safeguard is there against the grossest of error?

Once again you're merely playing with the meanings of words bending them to suit your own predetermined opinion.

But the truth is intelligibility is only useful when it can predict consequences. — Agustino

Really? I can see no justification for such a conclusion whatsoever.

"how did the world/universe/life get to be the way it is?" — 0 thru 9

Once upon a time.

Most of your suggestions for areas to work on appear to have far more to do with how you appear to others rather than to yourself. Surely healthy self-esteem gives not a feather for externals such as 'appearance'.

The more I read of your own contributions the more I think it was a troll question to begin with. Clearly you have your own answer to every objection already so I can see no other motivation for this thread than to anger everybody.

What is there to have a view on? Seems like a statement of the bleedin' obvious to me.

Oh dear. Seems to? How quickly they forget!

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. - J. R. R. Tolkien

They are alive in exactly the same way as transplanted organs, masses of living cells which are not self-sustaining. If it is ethical to use one for medical purposes then it is ethical to use the other. It really is as simple as that. Thus the only ethical questions that need answering revolve around how the embryos are obtained; consent for in vitro fertilisations, time limits on stored embryos, whether aborted foetuses might be used without consent and so on.

If organ transplants are ethical then there seems to be no grounds on which to object to use of embryonic cells. The real question is surely only how embryos are obtained.

Do you trust the weatherman when he tells you it's going to rain tomorrow? — Benkei

This seems like a very odd example to choose because, well, most people simply never trust weather forecasters. In the UK there is a firm belief, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, that weather forecasts are always wrong and a very strong market in personal forecasting devices of all kinds from the ultra-scientific to the wildly esoteric.

If you really are so complacent as to teach children that it is ok to simply take someone's word for it, even though they may be qualified to the hilt to give that word, then you are doing them a huge disservice. No source should ever go unchecked, no teacher should ever appoint themselves the guardian of all knowledge. Else nobody can tell when they are, as they inevitably will be (it is estimated that 90% of all current knowledge will be shown at some point in the future to be erroneous, inaccurate, or inadequate). just plain wrong.

What does it mean to say that God is sentient? If it has any meaning at all it clearly cannot be sentience as we know it. And even if it were it seems an awfully big leap from every possible world has a sentient being involved in some kind of a relationship with it to all possible worlds have sentience and further still to all possible worlds are sentient.

Mental disorders should never be indulged. I have been clear and consistent in that regard. If you disagree, it is just because you are "confused." — Emptyheady

As your definition of 'mental disorder' is simply deviation from supposed norms, ie. behaviour that you personally find odd or repugnant, in which you support yourself by cherry picking medical diagnoses that can be twisted to that interpretation, I would suggest that you are the last person on Earth from whom anybody should be taking advice on this matter. You are, frankly, for those of us who suffer from genuine mental illnesses our worst nightmare, a dark spectre that reaches out from the horrors of Bedlam and exorcisms. How dare you pretend that this is somehow a contest of morals with you on the side of the angels, spitting out your 'shoulds' and 'should nots'? I could find a hundred references in your beloved diagnostic works declaring your behaviour and argument in this thread to be mental disorder of the worst kind if I so chose. Why, in your barbarous opinion, should we indulge your disorder?

So you're saying that people passionately argue cases which they do not themselves believe to be true because I find that very difficult to believe as a general rule. There are of course situations in which you might; when playing devil's advocate, for example, or when bating someone just for the pleasure of seeing them lose it. But I cannot accept that it is characteristic of all.

The problem with this solution is that all people generally know why they have raised their hand or generally performed any act. — Hanover

There are many, many reasons why this may not be true though. Neurological disease, automatic responses (you don't consciously control adjustments to your balance for example), external forces, drunkenness, etc. Knowledge of right and wrong is clearly not part of the consideration of the moral responsibility for involuntary actions. But presumably we would not want to rule out moral responsibility carte blanche for all involuntary actions.

By definition, a female baby is always born as a female — intrapersona

And by definition, (legal definition in Germany), a baby of indeterminate gender (1 in 1500 births, over 80,000 per year) is always born as of indeterminate gender. How does your prejudice deal with them? The grave injustice done to these people by enforced gender assignment over the years is incalculable. Why would you want to continue and extend that kind of oppression?

I agree it seems to be a first world problem. — Terrapin Station

On what evidence? Do you imagine that people in the third world are happy to be engaged in the same old scrapping for survival everyday and content with tedious repetition? And what possible explanation could there be for that. Brains don't differ in their demands for stimulation on some kind of national or tribal basis. The avoidance of boredom has been a driving force in both technological progress, particularly in labour saving devices, and in the flourishing of entertainment, games and sports, and especially gambling evident in all human societies and cultures.

It isn't necessary to got to the extreme of solipsism though if by 'there is no forest' we mean rather that something is there that only becomes a forest when observed by a forest-perceiver. This rightly puts the emphasis on the namer as the source of a thing's 'name' (by which of course I mean every aspect of identity) rather than any inherent quality of the thing itself.

If the old chestnut had been rephrased as 'if a tree falls and only a profoundly deaf person is there to hear it' then it is perhaps clearer that there is no sound though the observer experiences the event in other ways.

I'm really not sure which is worst about USA's understanding of the world, its staggering arrogance or its mind-numbing ignorance. If you seriously think that Russia can not call upon any allies then I despair. Belarus, China, and India all consider Russia a primary ally and in a fight there is no doubt that countries facing sanctions from USA at present, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and others would be more than willing to pitch in. Meanwhile where exactly on the border do you think you could amass this invasion force? Kazakhstan? China? Estonia?

There is not a single (sane) military strategist in the world that thinks an invasion of Russia is doable. The scary thing for Europeans who would undoubtedly bear the brunt of the fallout from any attempt at it is that there's now someone in the White House just barking enough to try it anyway!

Back when Europe was in its "Dark Ages", Muslim countries were more advanced in social and scientific progress. — swstephe

And would probably still be today if it hadn't been for the persistent oppression of the Moors in Western Europe and the Crusades. It is entirely the fault of Christian Europe that Islam put up its walls, withdrew into a Mediaeval image of itself, and ceased all progress. Then just as it began emerging from behind the walls, it faced another onslaught from the British occupation of Palestine, the creation of Israel, and deliberate destabilisation by oil hungry Western interests. There is little doubt that insular, fundamentalist Islam is the product of the West's determination to fulfil every prophecy about the Great Satan. We are reaping exactly what we sowed.

So I say no right wing newspapers and you come up with 3 articles from that beacon of rationality the Mail? I think we have the measure of your commitment to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In all the three cases the decisions were made on points of law. All these decisions have precedents with non-Muslim defendants and even the Mail has to admit that Islam does not licence the crimes involved. You may argue, as many feminist and victim support groups do, that the justice system in UK is too lenient on sexual crime in general but that has nothing to do with religious favouritism.

The Rotherham situation is a hugely complex one with systematic failures in social services, police, and local authorities. If you are claiming that the perpetrators were acting in accordance with Islamic tenets then you've clearly lost the plot.

we'll just invade Russia — wuliheron

Does anybody actually believe this crap? USA can't even quell a tiny enclave of religious fanatics in the Middle East. Russia occupies 1/8 of the world's total land mass!

already installed the first Star Wars defense — wuliheron

And it doesn't work!

Why must we change them at all. By what right do we presume to do so? Of the hundreds and thousands of mass shootings and bombings in the USA in this past decade less than 1% have any connection whatsoever with Muslims. If anyone has the right to be changing anyone shouldn't it be the other way round?

And there are dragons at the edge of the world and the Krampus will get you if you're alone in the woods at Christmas. Provide actual evidence for these allegations, and I mean actual court proceedings not hate filled propaganda from right wing newspapers!

If you can drink vodka then the last thing you are allergic to is alcohol! Clearly you are allergic to the flavouring elements in these drinks, not the alcohol itself. And did you really just say that you think your child is 'fortunate' to have allergies? I wonder if he/she shares your enthusiasm!

I can conceive of there being a point to this rambling diatribe. Unfortunately I see no evidence of one whatsoever!

Why does everything in life have to be built up into these great philosophical psychodramas? I like a drink now and then. I don't feel any need to justify this to myself or anyone else. It is pure speculation on your part that people drink alcohol in pursuit of euphoria primarily. One of the principal reasons in the past, for example, was that it was a darn sight safer than drinking the local water! And why do you feel that any reason is required for you're not imbibing. It looks an awful lot like virtue signalling from here!