Perhaps the problem here is that the opposite for isolationism doesn't have to be interventionism. The thing is that you can participate very actively in international organizations, without intervening in the affairs of other countries. The only thing is to respect the sovereignty of other states as you want others to respect yours.
That's it.
You don't have to close your borders, retreat to North Korea -type isolationism or leave international organizations and look at them as having sinister plans against you. You just opt out from the use interventions. Especially military ones. — ssu
How so? — frank
argumentum ad populum fallacy — Terrapin Station
That's the argumentum ad populum fallacy, and it results in saying that it's true that it's morally permissible to have slaves (if you're in the US in the 1820s in the South), that it's true that it's morally permissible in certain historical tribal settings to cannibalize neighboring tribes, etc. — Terrapin Station
It's just that that stuff is irrelevant when we're talking about the ontological status of moral stances re whether they can be true or false. You're not going to say every single thing about every aspect of morality every time it comes up. You'd have to write a book over and over. — Terrapin Station
The reason I buy moral noncognitivism/subjectivism is that I want to get right what the world is like, and it's clear to me, via empirical and logical/reasoned means, that morality is simply dispostions that people have about interpersonal behavior that they consider more significant than etiquette. Moral stances aren't found in the extramental world, so there's nothing there to match or fail to match (so that utterances can be true or false). — Terrapin Station
But didn't Merkel say it was time for Europe to start findong new allies (can't remember how she put it). Was that just bluster? — frank
It's just illogical until you see who's benefiting from this arrangement. BC nailed it. Globalism means global domination and it's not really the USA that dominates. It's certain entities who've learned to use the USA as a tool. That will change as nations learn not to trust the USA, when they realize they need to look to Russia or China for their defense instead of the US. — frank
So, I'd like to use the claim that "future people have no standing at all" as a baseline for discussion and ask for your opinions and reasons as to why this statement is correct of false, given the system of moral philosophy you ascribe to.
With that said, what are your thoughts? — Echarmion
Fair enough. Since I know it's origins, I cannot really see what it would tell you if you didn't know it. I understand that viewing history as some kind of great cycle is appealing to many, though I don't think the facts actually support it. — Echarmion
Still I don't think it needs to end as badly for the US as with all other empires in history, because times are very different now. — ChatteringMonkey
Not in and of itself, but in this case it directly supports a view of history of cyclic, where "strength" and "weakness" are the governing factors, and where men need to be kept "strong" by rigid discipline and hardship. — Echarmion
You're aware that the picture you're sharing here is literally fascist propaganda? — Echarmion
Among the history buffs on the forum, is this sort of thing normal for nations to go through? Or is it something particularly American? — frank
Hume believed in the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Constantly throughout the Treatise he is inquiring after the cause of certain mental events. It's funny that he doesn't like the principle of sufficient reason regarding the external material world, but he is a true believer regarding mental events. Hume believes our thoughts are caused by impressions, ideas, contiguity, resemblance, connection, imagination. He comes up with all kinds of causes for mental events, but he want to suspend judgment on material objects. — Ron Cram
If an apple drops from a tree, it still falls to the ground. It does not go into orbit following a curved spacetime. Attraction exists. The warping of spacetime explains planetary motion precisely, but I don't see that it is explains gravitational attraction on the surface of earth. — Ron Cram
Causes and effects are necessary due to the Principle of Sufficient Reason. — Ron Cram
False. What is true on classical scales does not have to be true on quantum scales. Also, Sean Carroll didn't mention this, but Einstein was correct when he said that GR and QM will never be unified because the spacetime continuum cannot be quantized. — Ron Cram
The term "fundamentally" and "metaphysically" are not synonymous. — Ron Cram
False. Sean Carroll is a modern physicist. He knows that we live in the classical scale universe and the video admits that cause and effect play a role in our everyday lives. — Ron Cram
The use of "cause and effect" to describe the warping of the universe causing the attraction of gravity is exactly right. — Ron Cram
The math between Newton and Einstein is very, very close. Newton's equations are much easier to work with and precise enough on smaller astronomical scales, that NASA used Newton's equations to plan the manned flight to the moon instead of Einstein's. — Ron Cram
The words "fundamental level" refer to quantum scales. Hume was not aware of quantum mechanics so don't try to force him to take a position he never took. In the video you linked, Sean Carroll admits that causes and effects are known on the classical scale. — Ron Cram
Newton did not assign a cause for gravity, he simply described it as a centripetal force without being able to assign a cause for the attraction. Einstein came with a deeper and more precise theory which explained the cause of the attraction as the warping of the spacetime continuum. — Ron Cram
That's not going to happen. Given [insert local history here] it simply is the case that people of ethnicity X are liable to be in danger from people of ethnicity Y in the places where people of ethnicity Y rule the roost and there is a history of conflict. This applies to honkeys in the South African townships, and blacks almost anywhere in the US or Europe. Only if you are of ethnicity Y that rules the roost can you afford to ignore the obvious facts of life on some theoretical principle.
One comes to assume these things because they are true, not because genes or skin colour make it true, but because social forces make it true. Just as Germans tend to speak German despite there being no gene for speaking German and no distinct race of Germans. It is a wonder to me that seemingly educated folks hereabouts cannot get their heads around this. — unenlightened
That strikes me as the main reason new life doesn't come into being. If it takes 100s of millions of years for it to "evolve" from non-living matter, we would never see it "pop" into extence. Even the simplist life is incredibly complex. That leaves a very big door open for development to be disrupted by other life or changed conditions. Seems like it would take a very long period of stable conditions to life to develop abiotically. — T Clark
It's about quantum indeterminacy until the observer appears. That's literally the whole point of the example. — Artemis
Then you don't seem to understand what Shrödinger's cat was about. — Artemis
So what is required, is a deeper understanding of the nature of values and especially a solution for the problem of "evaluating values" - if that is possible at all. — Daniel C
Your last question is also very important: why I ask about the "meaning of life" and what do I care. I ask, because, after many centuries of being alive on this planet, people are still struggling with this question on a day to day basis. I believe that a philosophical analysis of the problem may, perhaps, in some way help some people to cope better with their search for finding meaning in life. You can see clearly that I am not of the opinion that philosophy has all the answers for all the people who are struggling with this problem. And this problem can become an immense one on a personal level: just take a look around you and see how many people are suffering from depression and how many suicides are committed. This is the reason why ask about the "meaning of life" and why I care - it is such a serious issue! — Daniel C
We as humans have made many technological break throughs over the past decades, but having us rely on such technology is simply dulling the human brain essentially making us idiotic people who think nothing of world issues or even issues in our own government. Is this wrong?
Personally I classify this as an epidemic of stupidity. Conscious stupidity. Many people in the past fought for rights and liberties yet nowadays adolescents only care about the world on their smart phone. We don't use the rights given to us to their full extent. We don't care of what is going on around them. The political debates, the wars, the death, things that could change our lives! Now we only care about how many followers we have on social media! Our society is becoming dead. We are becoming livestock for the rich and powerful to prey upon and we are allowing it! Aren't we awake? Aren't we alive? — Lucielle Randall
2. I only know pop science so this is that. Electrons, so I'm told, exist in some kind of weird probability space. They don't exist anywhere but are smeared proabilistically with some places more likely, others less, and are effectively nowhere til [something] collapses them. I know no science but if an electron collapses in an improbable place does that radically alter what's probable after? — csalisbury
It's not a problem. Morality is just something different than the social enforcement of morality. — Terrapin Station
But you can't make any sense out of the mores without adding in meaning, value judgments, etc. — Terrapin Station
morality being about interpersonal behaviour doesn't make the disposition itself interpersonal.
— ChatteringMonkey
I don't know if that's what you meant to type, but I couldn't agree more. — Terrapin Station
If she wants particular consequences, etc., sure. But that in itself isn't actually morality. Morality is value assessments of interpersonal behavior. — Terrapin Station
Sure, there's no law or no mores etc. backing up your personal view. That's often the case, isn't it? — Terrapin Station
Subjective shouldn't have a "merely" first off, as if it's simpler or inferior or whatever. — Terrapin Station
Whether something is a bad idea is also subjective, of course. — Terrapin Station
Morality is dispositions about interpersonal behavior. So that means that by definition, it's not just about one's own behavior. — Terrapin Station
And by definition, it's dispositions that people feel strong enough about that they'd take forcible action to prevent,and sometimes to obligate, some behavior (otherwise it would just be etiquette). So of course there's a social aspect to it, but moral stances, moral valuations themselves are individual and subjective. — Terrapin Station