Are you the kind of person you'd want in your community?. — tim wood

Yes of course. I'm very pro-subversion. The kind of person I don't want is someone who'll follow a law they don't agree with simply because it's a law. I'm not saying any law is a law simply to be a law (and it's ridiculous that anyone would read anything I said that way), I'm talking about motivations for following it. I'm talking about "I don't agree with this law, I don't agree with the reasoning for it, I don't agree with the context that the reasoning and law arise in, I think it's a bad idea, I disagree with it morally, etc. , so I'm not going to follow it (unless the risks of getting caught breaking it are too great)" as opposed to someone saying any or all of that yet thinking, "But it is the law after all, so nevertheless I must follow it/I have a moral duty to follow it." The latter is what I don't want.

I can see some merit in thinking that, but among the things I have in mind here are making decisions that simply make life easier for me--keeping a job instead of burning bridges and looking for another, staying out of prison, etc.

No actual person needs adversity prior to his/her birth. — schopenhauer1

Actual people might need to create offspring, might need to create adversity, etc. It just depends on their wants.

I follow laws if: (a) I agree with the law, or (b) the risks of getting caught breaking it are too great.

Non sequitur is an argumentative fallacy. I made a comment. I didn't forward an argument.

You can't take a judgmental high ground when you didn't even understand the idiom.

Great understanding of the rhetoric of persuasion. You have it all figured out.

I like how you gamble on the idea that I've never persuaded anyone morally, as if I'm maybe a 20-year-old who is speaking purely hypothetically a la stuff I just made up now. You sure didn't stick your foot in your mouth there.

Do you know of any law that is a law just because it is a law? — tim wood

No, but what's the relevance of that (aside from not understanding a common idiom, which seems to be symptomatic around here.)

Then the entirety of your argument would be "don't murder because I prefer people not murder." — Hanover

No, it isn't. There's a whole art to persuasive rhetoric. You're going to tailor it to the person (or the people) you're trying to persuade, a la the traditional sense of ad hominem. And yeah, it's "disingenuous" on your view, but that hardly matters. The goal is to persuade others.

No way in Hell I'm going to think we should follow laws just because they're laws. That's pretty much the complete opposite of my disposition.

I'm very pro tactics like jury nullification, too.

If you really adhere to Emotivism, you'll have to explain how it is at all rational to engage in ethical debate, considering you're admitting that your arguments are only valid to you. — Hanover

I wouldn't say they're valid to me, either. Validity is about truth. Moral stances are not the sorts of things that are true or false.

"Moral debate" is purely a practical matter of trying to persuade people to not treat others (and create laws for others) in a way that you do not prefer, in a way that you disapprove of. It's akin to, say, being in a band and trying to persuade your bandmates to write or play a particular section of a song you're working on a particular way.

You are having a problem with "wasn't needed in the first place". — schopenhauer1

Let's do one thing at a time. Need always hinge on wants. X is only needed when S (some subject) desires x, or desires something else, y, that can not obtain without x.

So whether creating adversity is needed solely hinges on actual persons' wants.

It is not as simple as being an individuals decision to do as s/he pleases. — Athena

While I agree with that, I would say that it is as simple as not legally prohibiting persons' decisions. That is highly immoral.

Nope, I am not. I am just saying to prevent adversity, not that some actual person is benefiting from it. — schopenhauer1

But you're not. The whole point of the analogy is that you're comparing it to an actual person.

You don't need to keep denying that you're saying that there's a person prior to birth whom we're doing something to. I know you'll deny that you're saying that.

The problem is that you keep writing things that suggest that despite the denials,. that's really how you think about it.

Just for example:

In your view, apparently, the possibility for objective morality is predicated on the ability of both mental and non-mental machinations, such that both are embedded with a moral stance. — Mww

First, I don't know why it would appear to you that I'd be saying that objective morality would be predicated on anything about mental machinations.

Second, I'm not sure "the possibility for" adds anything to the sentence semantically.

Third, "X is predicated on the ability of y" seems to be missing a clause to the effect of "to such and such." In other words, what ability?

Fourth, "embedded with a moral stance," seems ontologically to suggest that you're thinking of moral stances as being something independent of both the mental and non-mental states in question.

Every sentence in your post has multiple issues like that.

I haven't the faintest friggin idea what you're saying in just about any sentence there. It would take some work to convince me that you have any idea what you're saying as well.

Doing heroin, meth, cocaine, and other drugs doesn't even fall in the same category as "skiing, sailing, abseiling, skydiving, rock climbing, scuba diving, racing, rugby, bowling, reading, sewing, playing video games, going to the cinema, discussing philosophy..." — Wallows

If the category is "consensual activities" it does, Alex

If you're going to say it's immoral to do drugs or immoral to illegalize drugs or assert any position on morality, you have to first assert what criteria you use to determine what is moral and then explain how those criteria are or aren't satisfied. — Hanover

Moral stances are personal dispositions/"feelings" about the acceptability of interpersonal behavior that one considers more significant than etiquette.

Only rarely will I do anything that I think is immoral. There have to be significant balancing pressures--concessions for loved ones, livelihood necessities, self-preservation--for me to do something I consider immoral.

That's not to say anything about whether other people consider the things in question moral. I have a lot of unusual moral stances.

Legality, on the other hand, for me is a consideration based on (a) whether I agree with the law, and (b) the risks of breaking it.

There has to be something more than possibility to warrant belief. That's because for any proposal like brains in a vat, both "We are brains in a vat" and "We are not brains in a vat" are possible. So if possibility is sufficient to warrant belief, you'll have contradictory beliefs about the vast majority of things. (The only exception would be something for which a claim doesn't suggest something contradictory, but its negation dos, if there are really any such claims.)

Is it immoral to do illegal drugs?

No.

Is it immoral for any drugs to be illegal?

Yes.

But you can probably tell where this is going in regards to being an analogy for antinatalism. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, it's suggesting that prior to birth, there are people in some state. Even though you keep denying that you're suggesting that.

This analogy would be nonsensical to you if you didn't think that prior to birth, there are people in some state. You rationally realize how absurd that idea is, maybe, but emotionally, you keep returning to it. Hence this analogy.

What's inconsistent there in your view?

I have all kinds of faith based reasons why I believe in God, non of which I feel a need to defend, and non of which I feel should be attacked — Rank Amateur

If you have reasons that support your beliefs, then I'd say that there's (at least putatively) a rational basis for them.

Yes, they all have the property of being brain phenomena. Brain phenomena with the property of being mental is a subset, and "brain phenomena" is a superset that includes the subset of brain phenomena that has the property of being mental.

"Objective," however, in my usage, does NOT refer to "brain phenomena." Objective refers to things that do not have the property of being mental. So subjective stuff, in my usage, isn't a subset of objective stuff. I'm stipulating this. So it's not something I can get wrong. I'm telling you something about the way I use words. You can use the words differently. It's fine if you do.

There's no way in Hell I'd ever try to discuss anything more complex with you by the way, given the absurd difficulty we're having with something so simple and stupid.

Yet I know of no rationale argument that supports we have the ability to make any such claim — Rank Amateur

Again, why would you believe any claim whatsoever about God then? Why not simply move on to something you can make a rational/supported claim about?

Not all brain phenomena have identical properties.

Some have property M. Some do not have that property.

The brain phenomena with property M are "subjective" but not "objective."

The brain phenomena without property M are "objective" but not "subjective."

The terms are simply another way of saying whether something has property M.

Here's what's required for objective morality to exist in my view: the world apart from minds has to somehow have moral stances embedded in it. They'd have to be properties of some non-mental existents, maybe some sort of field or whatever.

If there's no evidence of moral stances occurring in the extramental world, then there's no reason to assume that morality can be objective. We're left with morality being a property of the dispositions, feelings, etc. of entities with minds.

Wake me when we find the religious claim that's coherent.

Right, I'm aware of that and I'm not a fan of it, but I'm just adding/broadening it out to note that I'm not a fan of people moralizing or being negatively judgmental/self-righteous in general. What he's talking about is a problem, but it's just one subset of people moralizing and being negatively judgmental towards others.

Presumably you intend that anything one has knowledge of is “mental” and that which we do not have knowledge of (regardless of it being a brain state of a kind as well) is not “mental”. Is that right? — DingoJones

That part is definitely not right. That seems to be taking me for an idealist (at least an epistemological idealist). And I'm not at all an idealist. I'm a direct realist.

And yeah, the difference is awareness/consciousness (where I'll add that I'm not actually categorically ruling out unconscious mentality, but I don't believe there is any good support for anything amounting to phenomena that are just like mental phenomena, only we aren't (first-person) aware of the phenomena in question).

Also the word is autonomic, not automatic. Here's a definition of autonomic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomic_nervous_system

Within the brain, the autonomic nervous system is regulated by the hypothalamus. Autonomic functions include control of respiration, cardiac regulation (the cardiac control center), vasomotor activity (the vasomotor center), and certain reflex actions such as coughing, sneezing, swallowing and vomiting. Those are then subdivided into other areas and are also linked to ANS subsystems and nervous systems external to the brain. The hypothalamus, just above the brain stem, acts as an integrator for autonomic functions, receiving ANS regulatory input from the limbic system to do so.[3]

I'm not a fan of people moralizing or being negatively judgmental/self-righteous in general, whatever corner it's coming from.

So see what I said right after that above:

I use the terms so that all you have to ask is, "Is this a mental phenomenon?" If the answer is "Yes," then necessarily it's subjective and not objective. If the answer is "No," then necessarily it's objective and not subjective.

So re the brain phenomenon in question. Ask the question, "Is this a mental phenomenon?" If the answer is "yes," then the brain phenomenon in question is subjective (and necessarily not objective).

If the answer is "no," then the brain phenomenon in question is objective (and necessarily not subjective).

So let's take a couple examples.

Phenomenon a, which is the brain state (that is, particular parts of the brain being in particular states) of being an idea. Ideas are mental, thus that state is subjective (and necessarily not objective)..

Phenomenon b, which is the brain state that helps regulate our respiration. That is autonomic and not mental. Thus that state is objective (and necessarily not subjective).

I don't even understand exactly what you're referring to by an argument.

All this hemming and hawing over the word "seems." Sometimes it seems like some of the regulars here must be social misfits who have zero to no interaction with typical, everyday Joe (at least American) English speakers, because these issues are sometimes tackled as if we're extraterrestrials trying to figure out "English--how does it work?"

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/it-seems
http://www.idioms4you.com/complete-idioms/seems-to-me.html
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/seems

Brain phenomena qualifies as being part of everything that's not mental phenomena (objective). — Harry Hindu

Re the way I use the terms, the subset of brain phenomena that have the property of mentality is NOT objective. I use the terms so that they're necessarily mutually exclusive. I use the terms so that all you have to ask is, "Is this a mental phenomenon?" If the answer is "Yes," then necessarily it's subjective and not objective. If the answer is "No," then necessarily it's objective and not subjective.

The way I'm using the terms is similar to this:

"'Shmagel' refers to any loose rocks on a mountain with a summit 4,000 or more feet. 'Plagel' refers to everything else in the world, including all rocks everywhere else (including on lower mountains), and including every part of any mountain that's not a loose rock."

If you think of the terms in that vein, just two sounds to (a) pick out a particular sort of thing versus (b) everything else, then my usage should be clearer to you.

I really don't see what the big deal is. — Harry Hindu

It's not a big deal. I just became curious because you were using the terms in a way that I wouldn't use them. I'd never say that subjectivity is a subset of objectivity for example. I'm not criticizing the way you're using the terms, so you do not need to keep defending it.

I'm using "sems to be" to refer to our beliefs, what we think is the case, however we've arrived at that conclusion.

At least for now social security won't be affected:

https://www.businessinsider.com/government-shutdown-2018-social-security-checks-still-paid-2018-1

Yes, of course to the first two.

Re the last question, yes, although valuing things is subjective.