Norms are intentional, for they are goals. So, they are not independent of mind in the sense of being physical states; however, they they exist in nature, as actual intentional states found in other natural persons, independently of us knowing or positing them. — Dfpolis

I wasn't saying anything about whether they exist in nature (whatever distinction you'd be using for natural/artificial or whatever term you might be making a distinction with). If normatives are only mental, then there are no facts about them aside from the fact that a particular mind is thinking about them however that mind is thinking about them.

Some philosophers such as Jeagwon Kim have mustered arguments, such as the causal exclusion argument, in order to infer determinism at the supervenient level of description (such as the description of the rabbit in functional physiological and/or behavioral terms) from the determinism of the system being supervened upon (the set of the rabbit's inanimate material parts). I think those arguments are flawed, but Kim at least acknowledges the need for such an argument whereas you seem to take its conclusion for granted or just believe the denial of this conclusion to be incoherent. — Pierre-Normand

Minus the fact that I don't actually agree that determinism is the case, yes, I think there is no need for such an argument, because there's no good reason to believe otherwise, no good argument for an alternate position.The fact that it's easier to talk about "functional" physiological and behavioral stuff from a different conceptual and linguistic perspective certainly isn't a good argument in support of their being some sort of ontological distinction. That would amount to very naively reifying language/the way we find it easiest to think about something.

I'm a physicalist/identity theorist re the mind-body issue. So yes, ideas are physical, as is everything else.

As Jamesk noted, I meant temporally, and I'm pretty sure I typed temporally, but I was posting from my kindle and it often "autocorrects" to something I don't actually want.

Does A always cause B? — Jamesk

I'm a nominalist. There's only one A and one B.

Philosophy continually makes errors by trying to avoid psychologism or subjectivity.

You can't talk about semantics--meaning, reference, etc.--without talking about how individuals think about language. Whenever you try to say that reference or meaning works in some universal, mind-independent way, you're going to f-- up and say things that are wrong, things that can be very simply falsified merely by noting an individual who thinks about it otherwise.

He just explained one above.

What's an example of them occurring mind-independently in society?

Because I'm right.

So, if Kripke was arguing contra what I just said, then Kripke is wrong.

Yeah, really. Because that's the way the world is. No matter where you look in the mind-independent world, you'll not find any normatives.

Because that's what had to obtain for the effect in question.

Say that A causes B, which causes C. Well, if A caused B but B didn't subsequently produce C, then A is irrelevant to C, even though A causing B might be identical in both cases.

Re the post you're referencing there, it just depends on how you think about the name. If you take "Nixon" to refer to "Whatever was born on January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California, to Hannah (Milhous) Nixon and Francis A. Nixon . . . and became the 37th president of the United States," then a golf ball could be Nixon (if Hannah had given birth to the golf ball, etc.) while "that guy" (previously picked out by "Nixon") would no longer be Nixon.

So ability to consent, for example, where it's clear that the person can understand what they're consenting to, understand some possible consequences of it, etc.

The immediately temporarily antecedent action(s) or event(s) that produce a particular subsequent event.

Sure, but that wasn't what I was referring to above re multiple (simultaneous) causes being the only situation where I can see an "a" versus "the" distinction amounting to anything.

In other words, two billiard balls can strike a third at the same time.

in particular,
Meaning isn't the same thing as a definition.
— Terrapin Station

Why would this be worthy of mention here? — Banno

Because people often conflate the two.

So the distinction is in what certain people think, and not a distinction between the nature of "physical" or "non-physical" things. — Harry Hindu

In my view, yes, since I don't believe there are any nonphysical things.

We can't say something about the "objective nature of nonphysical things" if there are no nonphysical things.

I read ↪Terrapin Station without much interest. — Banno

t least we have some similar sentiment about each other.

Again, I don't at all agree that a mere lack of something is sufficient to suggest that we have a moral issue at hand.

So when we don't agree on that, how do we resolve it?

One thing I definitely wouldn't do is make it a "mature enough" metric. I'd be trying to avoid making it anything about value judgments as much as possible.

We already have driving tests that you're required to pass before you can drive, by the way.

If you're not making an assumption like that, then what's the mystery you'd be trying to explain. Some solution appears in your consciousness in whatever form it appears in. It has to be something mental that you didn't know about prior to that because?

First, conventional and subjective are completely different concepts — Dfpolis

I wasn't using "or" in the sense of "here's another word for the same thing." I was using it in the sense of "cats or dogs"--two different things we could be talking about.

At any rate, conventions aren't arbitrary.

No, I see the normative implications of responsibility as quite rational — Dfpolis

The problem is that there are no objective normatives.

I mean multiple simultaneous causes, not sequential.

Good argument.

"A" versus "the" isn't at all a clear semantic distinction to me, aside from the context where we're talking about an event that may have had multiple causes rather than just one. It certainly doesn't suggest anything like "only the first event in a long chain" to me.

The second sentence doesn't really make sense to me, either. Why wouldn't the first ball be necessary?

“Greek system of planetary Gods”, — VoidDetector

I don't actually see that quote on the astrology page.

I was asking primarily to help you figure out the answer to your initial post.

If you buy subjectivity, then wouldn't the answer obviously/simply be that the person in question feels that it's moral to do something they'd otherwise say is immoral just in case the immoral thing leads to greater benefits/fewer bad or immoral events/actions?

I'm not actually a determinist--I think that some phenomena could be random, but aside from that, if we're talking about a long causal chain, only the first step would be a cause because? I have no idea what the reasoning for that is supposed to be.

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

I didn't stipulate that, so <shrug>

It could have been hitting it with a cue, or another ball hitting or, or maybe the table was tilted, or whatever.

How would you describe the distinction there, exactly?

How can it ever be moral to make an evil act for the greater good? — Jamesk

What, ontologically, do you believe makes anything moral or immoral? In other words, what do you believe that morality is, ontologically?

The author expressed something, and that something is carried in the sentence. Arbitrarily assigning meaning gets us... where? — Bitter Crank

The sentence is really just a set of marks on paper, or a computer screen, or sounds that someone is making, or hand movements, etc. We don't arbitrarily assign meaning, but the meaning isn't literally in the marks, sounds, motions, etc. The meaning is in our heads.

All of which we know consciously comes from Ideas built from impressions. — Fobidium

Why would we take a perception to be an idea? What would suggest that it's an idea rather than simply a perception?

The first ball striking it.

creating situations of lack, and more strongly, adversity for something when there was nothing there to originally experience lack or adversity is sufficient for moral concern. To make something experience a situation of lack when there need not be lack, is wrong. — schopenhauer1

Okay, but I don't at all agree with that. "Creating situations of lack" is not at all sufficient to be a moral concern, especially when it refers to things like having to do laundry or clean house.

Thanks.