Where's our President? Clearing out peaceful protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets so he can stand in front of a church to get a picture taken. — Relativist

Chester is as gone as the President is from his duty of leadership.

Why is it? In that thread StreetlightX insults several people, calling them stupid, fuck wits and such. Is that okay?

Clear case of one rule for mods and another for others — I like sushi

Low quality posts mean that you have no substance of relevance in the discussion at hand. If you call someone stupid or fuck wits while still providing a relevant argument and maybe even examples of why they are fuck wits, you have no real reason to be banned. Some people are really deserving of being called idiots and fuck wits, especially if they write propaganda and stuff that have no philosophical relevance whatsoever. Pushing ideological agendas for example, with no interest in a deep dive of those ideologies means that the only approach anyone can take against them is to call them fuck wits and idiots, since there's no room for discussion with such people.

So, there are no different rules for mods compared to others.

The solution to the problems is to create anti-segregation laws and funding to help black communities to prosper up to a level on par with the privileges of white people. While silencing white supremacy, alt-right racist propaganda and their spread online based on the Karl Popper principle of not tolerating the intolerable.

Society acts upon a level of uncertainty about how to fight fascism and the intolerable which are pushing states into racist acts against their people. This confusion among the public creates an apathy that let racist ideologies to spread and destroy society, especially when they enter the stage of state police violence.

Silence fascism, alt-right and white supremacy. Push social medias and youtube to take down popular channels who can be proven to spread that propaganda. The only problem I see is the inaction of people confused as to how to think and act while still agreeing that white supremacy propaganda is bad.

I agree with the sentiment. Though I wonder what exactly the relation between systemic injustice and individual morality is. It strikes me that while your argument sounds true, there seems to be an element of collective punishment. It doesn't matter who, specifically, the violence hits so long as they share collective guild as part of some group. Do you think that's a problem? — Echarmion

To compare, we can compare to feminist theories about the collective guilt of white males. That is a much harder collective guilt since I have not chosen to be born into the privileges that I'm in and therefore cannot really be blamed on past actions by others because of it. However, the guilt of the people in society within the context of the protests, are directly linked to the situation at hand. The inaction and indifference to the problems within their own borders of society is the exact reason to why Afro-Americans have been subjected to systemic racism by the police.

If people in this community had any interest in changing things for the better they would have elected politicians that would work for solutions to the segregation problems. They would have acted together for the inclusion and empathy towards people of color, for building bridges where bridges are needed. They would have listened to Afro-Americans instead of just ignoring them. But they didn't. Throughout the years, there have been so many invitations from Afro-American communities to act against the problems. To discuss, inform and educate people on the complexities and there have been so many peaceful protests that have just been ignored or downright mocked.

People blame the police, but the police and their level of violence is a power that is positioned there by the people. So the people outside of these communities are as much to blame for what is happening as the police conducting violence. It's not that if you give a police officer a gun he will murder someone, it's not that if you give the police an automatic rifle he will murder ten people; the level of violence in power is given to the police from the people, directly or indirectly.

If people wanted a better space for everyone, they would have acted for it, but they didn't and what is happening now isn't punishment, it's the desperation against that inaction, indifference and apathy that people shows the world. If people don't listen now, then the people are the appeasers of fascism and appeasers of fascism was the ones who paved the way for Nazi Germany. What did the world think about appeasers after the war? The apathetic narcissistic people who paves the way for fascism, deserves the fate that fascism deserves. Act and do something or consequences will unfold, not as punishment, but as a deterministic force to balance out the inbalance.

I was hoping for some kind of discussion about what is happening, how it can/could be handled, and what steps to take towards a future goal - and what such incremental steps may look like.

I think it reasonably fair to say progress has been made, albeit with backwards steps along the way. The encouraging signs are that these public protests look string enough not to dissipate - this looks like an opportunity for rational discussion and a rethink about troubled areas in US culture. — I like sushi

People have been opened to such debates for years now, especially since Trump took office. And Afro-Americans have been very forward with their observations and thoughts on police violence and segregation. The problem isn't what has happened now, because that is the result of inaction for fixing the problems. If people would actually listen to the one's discussing the issues, the socio-economics and segregation problems as well as the observations of the rise of fascism over the last couple of years, that would have been the start of the solution. But people are mentally lazy, they are surface-level thinking and media plays along. The actual problems are complex and deep and need a deep dive in order to find a solution. The biggest problem has been that the alt-right narratives of "leftist agendas" and other nonsense about "leftist propaganda" has become mainstream and people cannot discuss the actual problems without being branded Marxists in a negative fashion.

Here's the solution: silence all the alt-right propaganda, silence all the surface level anti-intellectuals and have a proper discussion about the problems in society. People need to stop pitting leftists against alt-right and think that is where the issues are. People need to stop branding any discussion about class and segregation as "leftist". I'm sick and tired of pseudo-intellectuals who does this and gets a voice in both media and social media.

The ones actually looking into the problems knows where the problems are, it's the indifference, inaction and apathy from the ones putting people in power and those in power that rolls out the carpet for fascism to have control over groups of people that now had enough.

No one who's intellectually seen behind the curtain of society is in any way surprised by the current protests.

Does this mean it's nearly the end of the war already? What is it with fascists and bunkers? — unenlightened

Fascist mancaves?

Yes, I know. It's pretty funny to me. It's like declaring the 'alt-right' a terrorist organization. It's so stupid, its funny. — StreetlightX

You are also a part of the anti-fascist movement if you do things like informing a company that they are in business with white supremacies, if you work against an alt-right politician who's close to being elected into power etc. All active forms of anti-fascism will put you into that movement.

So it's just another tool for the racist fascist fucks to control the narrative. Get regular people to think it's an act of terrorism to stand up against fascism and you've laid out the carpet for that fascism.

We need to push forth the "appeaser" phrase, make it a hashtag or whatever. An appeaser is a word for anyone who just let fascism happen, who doesn't do anything and never acts to block it's growth. Society is filled with appeasers and they are far worse than the fascists because, without them, fascism will never grow or happen.

Anti-appeaser movement = AntiApp movement unite.

Something that can be done. — unenlightened

The only thing that can be done on individual police levels is to educate them in psychology and philosophy. A police officer who understands segregation, socio-economics, class struggles and the psychology of the persons they encounter will be able to do their job in a way that respects the community they invade.

However, it's hard for them to do so if the state orderers more militant actions. You, as an officer, only have a choice of putting down your weapon or complying with the state fascism.

They can't really since it's not an organization and has no leadership. It's a movement based on action against fascism. It acts against active forms of fascist growth. Compared to fascists, they do not continue doing either violence or acts against fascism when fascism disappears. But fascists will never stop what they're doing until the groups they aim attacks at disappears completely, which is hard when those groups generally are of color. Anti-fascists disappear when the fascists disappear and fascism is a choice, compared to being of color. The blame they get is so obviously out of the interest of alt-right lobbyists and neoliberal capitalists, it's an easy way to block anti-fascist movements and stigmatize their activism against their interests.

Charlotte black clergy understand anger about George Floyd, but preach peace and solidarity: — Marchesk

The problem is still that the peaceful approach has had no significant impact on society, the fascist state machine still grows. This is why violence and destruction from protestors cannot be condemned by anyone having insight into what is actually going on. If people peacefully protest for years and still get brutally killed by police violence, then they will move on to violent and destructive ways, because the former peaceful methods don't work.

If society ignores or is indifferent to suffering and problems in a part of their community, then they have no right to condemn the violence and destruction erupting.

There is no logic to ignoring people's peaceful protests and requests for help in changing things and then condemn violence and destruction that happens because nothing changes. It's the same as asking them to just accept that they might get murdered by the police one day and there's nothing they can do or change. Nope, people will stand their ground against such indifference, ignorance and downright fascism and anyone condemning that need to examine things much closer.

What the state and police is doing is a form of long term entrapment of an entire community, they push and push and when the keg blows up it's the "thugs" of the community that are the criminals. Nope, entrapment is a crime committed by the police and murdering people in those communities and hiding behind the state violence monopoly of the police will push the entire community to commit crimes when things have gone too far. The protestors committing violent acts cannot be blamed if viewed through the idea of entrapment, which the entire society is guilty of.

The myth of “outside agitators” is being simultaneously weaponized by conservatives and liberals to demean and intimidate protesters.

It's hard for them to weaponize it if there are numerous observations of white supremacists instigating violence. It's in the best interest of fascists to instigate violence during protests.

Not even the ones trying to turn this into their own revolution? Fuck them. I hope they all get arrested. — Marchesk

The ones hijacking the protests, or the white people who use the protests as excuses to ventilate their destructive tendencies in no relation to the reasons for the protests, or the ones destroying stuff and doing violence in an attempt to further their alt-right white supremacist agenda with labeling destruction on the protests by doing it themselves, yes, fuck them. Because they are part of the problem the protests are against. The violence I don't condemn is, for example, the ones beating the guy who took out a bow and arrow to shoot people around him. That is a fascist poster boy if there ever was one and he had it coming, he had it coming for years.

The current neoliberal ideology that much of the world is governed under leads to more fascist rules of governments that push state police violence against the people. The narrative of Afro-Americans being responsible for more crime than others are based on one set of facts and one set of fascist racism pushed into the power of government. The fact refers to somewhat higher crimes in poverty areas, with a demographic higher for Afro-Americans, this then fuels prejudice from the police against them. The reasons for poverty are the socio-economic factors that echo down from earlier segregation laws and ideologies going back decades. Something like that doesn't just end when laws disappear. With those facts fueling the local and individual police prejudice/racism against Afro-Americans, the fascist factors fuel them even further by creating narratives for the general public through media and right-wing lobbyism which skew the public view of the conflict.

The current violence erupting now isn't the result of the police killing one Afro-American person, that was just the spark that blew the keg of gunpowder that has been filling up by peaceful protests over many years. We've seen all the kneeling, the hashtags, the peaceful requests to open a dialogue. We have seen all the movements trying to enlight how fascism is growing, how the alt-right and racist movements have risen. But no got damn person is actually doing any actions to battle it. Normal, regular people go back to their lives, they don't care, they don't do anything and then they are surprised when all of this blows up.

I'm not going to condemn the violence of the protestors. The apathy and indifferent attitude among the people make room for fascism to grow and the violence and destruction seen now is as much a blow towards that as towards the state violence. If years of peaceful protests and requests don't lead to anything, while fascist movements and white supremacists grow loud, then it's no damn surprise that these kinds of destruction and violent protests occur. I cannot condemn the current protests because society had it fucking coming.

And he threatens to close down social media because of it. Per definition, that is active censorship by the government. Wouldn't that be against the law in US? Or at least, wouldn't that be a very serious act against the people by an acting president? If this happens it will either be the end of Trump or Trump will enforce even more power that the people are "fine" with.

For example, a while back when I read the books “Maze Runner” and “Divergent” only to have the very same movie versions of the two come out a few months later(books came out 5 and 3 years before movie versions respectively). Other times I have heard or thought about a certain thing that no one would normally talk about, only to have that very topic pop up repeatedly. — Braindead

None of these are coincidences. Divergent and Maze Runner were popular, film studios were looking for more franchises to milk money out of after Harry Potter and took the most popular books they had in store to produce them. The reason you read them was that they were popular, you discovered them because they were popular and wide-spread and because they were popular and wide-spread they caught the studio's attention as well.

The other part is the thing that made Carl Jung think of the collective unconsciousness. But the reality is that we as a society take part in the same events and ideas until they become a feedback loop. What we perceive as coincidences are mere that we observe and take part in the same things as others, therefore, we think similar thoughts and we observe others express the same kind of ideas as us. It's the concept behind why two movies from two different studios gets made at the same time, case point, White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen.

Coincidences are how we perceive similarities around us, it's an intellectual flaw out of our biology as pattern-seeking animals, nothing more. If you want answers to your phenomena you can do further reading in psychology.

This all brings up the question of the validity of talking about the subjective in the first place. We can all agree that there are subjective experiences, but no one will ever agree to value other subjective experiences over their own since their own subjective experience is the only one they can have. We cannot as individuals, value something we can't have, can't experience, can't see etc. The closest we have is empathy, the closest we have are stories, protagonists of stories and their perspectives as fantasies. But we will never have someone else's subjective experience, which means we can only accept other's subjective perspective in concept, but never truly accept any other experience or perspective over our own, ever.

I have read some of Russell's books on morality. I have never read a reference to the "four cornerstones" of the scientific method applied to morality. — David Mo

Because that's the line of ideas I'm pursuing. If everything about philosophical discourse is about referencing other philosophers and never build upon them, then all the dialectic becomes is a quoting contest.

I draw upon their perspectives, trying to create another argument based on their ideas on epistemic responsibility and Russels Value of Free Thought. The challenge is, as mentioned by many, the definition of well-being. The phrase makes people view my argument as a duplicate of Sam Harris, but his ideas are so ill-supported in his writing and without any arguments at all, which makes my attempt a bit more leaning towards analytical philosophy. I want to make the argument solid, as solid, it can be. The problem is definitions, without them the argument fails. Sam Harris never cares for definitions, I do.

The key thing about the argument is that it denies the act and consequence to be in themselves objectively moral. The moral or immoral value of the act and consequence is impossible to predict, which is why most moral theories fail. What I'm aiming at is that while the act and consequence can't be defined, we can define the method of choosing how to act.

In essence, how do people arrive at moral choices, not which specific method leads to good acts. The method, by way of freethinkers, is about detaching yourself as much as possible from the choice you make, minimizing biases and assumptions. A scientific mind has to do with a mindset borrowing cornerstones of how scientists handle epistime. It's not about applying the scientific method of testing, gather data, statistics and so on, but applying an unbiased approach when making a choice. I could easily say unbiased rational thinking, but what does that mean?

What is the practical way of doing it? The four cornerstones that I borrow from the scientific method give hints on how to think when making a choice. Can I verify my choice by any data? Can I replicate my choice as something many could do? Can I test my choice, falsifying it so that I know there are no other possible choices? Can I predict different outcomes of my choice?
This is not the scientific method, but it's borrowing parts of how scientists handle information and data. Borrowing these things from the scientific method and applying to thought when making choices in life gives you a method of doing unbiased rational thinking.

There's no point in asking for unbiased rational thinking when people clearly approach such methods in biased ways. So a method of thinking, a mindset, a scientific mindset is my suggestion for the approach. It might sound pedantic, but I argue it needs to be clear.

I really don't see the ways of thinking unbiased rational thoughts, conducting freethinking methodology is where my theory suffers, since it's just a practical way of following Clifford and Russel's philosophies. My theory suffers in defining well-being, as mentioned, and to complete it as a moral theory, that definition needs work. Which is why I think you argue against my theory from the wrong angle. I think my idea about borrowing from the scientific method to apply practicality to freethinking based on Clifford and Russel is pretty clearly explained.

The same can generally be said for our intelligence and even health to a large extent. — Pinprick

Without genes to pass down an increase in intelligence over time due to practices that heighten intelligence, we will lose intelligence and fall back into a society where the standards of living and quality of life are less than today since no one with high intelligence is there to handle those kinds of practices.

I see a world governed by a highly intelligent super A.I, where the population of humans can't understand how it works and can only decrease intelligence as it's evolutionary irrelevant to life and existence.

The idea that countries getting together to form post-democratic empires is somehow good for the long term is farcical. The idea that the EU has saved Europe from war is farcical..NATO did that...Japan ain't in the EU ...have they been at war since WW2 ? — Chester

How do you know that the post-democratic form was an intentional form and not a symptom of bureaucracy? How do you know that only military security through Nato was the single reason and not also that national ideals of being part of a larger group formed less nationalist movements which lowered the ideologies of nationalist empires?

Aren't you assuming your premises correct before a conclusion? I see a lot of ignored possible reasons and moving parts here.

The point is that no one can forecast the future but we can decide how we get there, like choosing not to go down the post-democratic empire building route for instance. — Chester

So you are saying that no one can forecast the future, but you forecast that EU is bad? What about trying to improve the problems with bureaucracy and moving away from post-democracy within EU? You assume that EU equals post-democracy, but I see no link there other than it has the symptoms. The idea of EU is not post-democratic by definition. So why wouldn't improving the coalition that is EU be better than dismantling it or abandoning it? You must first prove that EU is undeniably unable to change to the better before knowing your decision to leave EU to be the right choice.

Otherwise, you are doing just the kind of forecasting of the future that you say is impossible. In light of other options, abandoning the EU project is so far only ideologically based, not based on reasoning and rational thought. I'm not saying leaving isn't a conclusion of rational thought, I'm saying that the induction argument for leaving is so far very ill-supported in evidence outside ideological opinion.

You only have to go back through some posts here to realise that the people who want the EU are overwhelmingly leftists...leftists love authority, big government and all the corruption that comes with it.
Here's something for leftists to consider...there's fuck all difference between big government and big business, that's why they get along so well in China. — Chester

Which you prove about your reasoning by these statements of labeling the other side of the argument.

I'm interested in hearing you put your ideas through philosophical scrutiny, not ideological opinions. We are writing on a philosophical forum after all.

FI you can work from home, theres a good chance yours is a bullshit job. — Banno

Most philosophers can work from home and teachers will later teach their ideas. So without some seemingly bullshit jobs, the non-bullshit jobs would have nothing to work with. There are many bullshit jobs that lead to great discoveries throughout history, sometimes seemingly outside their field. The one who decides which jobs are bullshit is the one to question which knowledge that definition is drawn from.

Is there a branch of knowledge that is based on these "four cornerstones" and is not science? I don't know of any. — David Mo

Contemporary Freethinkers is closest to mind. It's not science per se, but the method of thought. It's from Clifford and Russel I draw from when forming the argument. If that is the method, the problem is its foundation, as you and others mentioned. The method can't work outside clearer defined aspects of well-being and harm. If the method is close to what freethinking is, a clearly defined foundation of well-being and harm can place it into rationality-based moral theory that is solid enough within an anti-realist approach.

The gain was mentioned a while back...less over paid politicians and less unaccountable commissars getting to decide what the over paid politicians get to vote on. Leaving guarantees nothing except UK politicians get to take the blame or credit for what happens...if they fuck up it's easier to get rid of them because they are elected. — Chester

I asked for answers to the question in terms of long term, in terms of 50 to 100 years. People seems to only think a few years ahead, not civilization as a whole over longer spans. Like the span of peace from when the EU was first formed until modern times. I'm not interested in short term ideas.

Reading through a lot in this thread is quite the comedy.

I have a fairly straight forward question. What is to gain by Brexit? I understand the feeling of autonomously being free from dealing with other people. It's a feeling I have most days against the stupidity of other people. But I'm curious to what is to actually gain in the long run. Think past corporations, globalism, capitalism. There are far too many empty phrases thrown around and in most cases not very well understood in the context so the question again is, what is there to gain by cutting yourself off from a larger group? Looking forward, into the future, what is there to gain?

The world is not the same as before, so what is to gain when thinking about where we are heading?

because Chris doesn't even understand half of the criticisms being put in front of him. His responses clearly demonstrate that. — Wolfman

Does my edit of the first post not show just how well I understand the criticism? Do you think philosophy is about accepting "defeat" and that it's about who's right, wrong and that it is a contest? I can't begin to tell you how sloppy it is to write such a thing during a philosophical dialectic. Please refrain from such things. It's the equivalent of all the unknown philosophers over the course of history who's names go unnoticed because all they do is attack with closed minds.

I have never claimed to have a bulletproof argument, even stated so in my opening post. I have always said it's a work in progress that I wanted to test the merits of at the moment. I have taken all the criticism into account for the next revision of it and tried to explain the point of view I'm working from in order to get more discussion out of it, that's it.

If you want to gloat at a work in progress, you're clearly misunderstanding the basics of philosophy.

My objections, therefore, still stand. — David Mo

Of course, I need to go back to the drawing board, as I have said numerous times. I have tried to explain the foundation I'm building the argument upon. But since you pick and choose and even said to ignore other writings in this thread I don't think you want to understand my point of view here, you want to enforce your own.

For the above to make sense, you will have to specify the concept of well being, the precise set of rules that you are proposing, why the well being that you have defined is the basis of morality. You will have to explain how you evaluate different concepts of welfare that men have. Etc. — David Mo

Which I could try and do when updating the argument. It's also the core element that is the weakest in the argument and that has already been addressed by others, as said.

As long as you don't do all this, your proposal remains in the field of indefinition and doesn't seem to lead anywhere. If you try it you will find all the difficulties that it entails. You will realize that these difficulties have already been dealt with in moral philosophy many times without finding a solution that satisfies everyone. — David Mo

I know that there are plenty of sources that are like this argument and I'm drawing from many of them, trying to unify different ideas. But the problem I have with your objections is that you seem unable to view upon an unfinished set of ideas and understand the concept of it, that is what I have been trying to explain. This is why you confuse the scientific method with what I am actually saying. You cannot move past that you think my concept is about using science to determine morality, that is not what I'm saying. But you keep at it. If you can't understand the basics of the concept I have been trying to explain, then you absolutely will find things vague.

So, by me saying "borrowing the four cornerstones of falsifiability, verification, replication and predictability from the scientific method to apply to the method of thought in order to come to rational conclusions of a situation", does that sound like "using the entire scientific method to research moral choices"? Forget about the now invalid argument in the OP, read this thing again and tell me what you think I'm talking about here specifically.

Therefore, talking about things like "scientific" or "strictly" does not have much future in the field of ethics. With apologies from Sam Harris, Dawkins, de Waal and others like you who seem to be excited by this possibility. — David Mo

Sam Harris ignores previous philosophy, thinks we can define everything by (in his case) sloppy neurological research, have nothing to support claims and has segments just about blasting religion because he... dislikes it. I understand that Sam Harris and my argument seem alike, but they're not. If you misunderstand how I include "science" in my argument I can see how you draw that conclusion, but you are mistaken again.

I've been leaning towards free will NOT existing, after some deep thought on the subject. And to define 'free will' quickly, I would say it is "the ability to have acted differently". I would argue that there are 3 things that enforce your actions. Beliefs, Desires (or wants), Mood. None of which are your choice. Can you choose to believe in magical leprechauns? Can you choose to desire homosexuality over heterosexuality? Can you choose to be happy instead of sad? — chatterbears

We are formed by nature and nurture, they are two sides of the same coin. They define how we act. But free will needs to be defined first. If you are talking about free will versus determinism then no, we don't have any free will. There are those arguing for quantum randomness to be a part of the neurological activity and therefore randomness can be part of how we choose something, but outside of evidence supporting it, it won't give you free will anyway. You are a product of deterministic pathways and you can't change that.

However, in terms of practical philosophy, the nature of the universe is separated from how we define acts of freedom as human beings. Even though we live in an illusion of free will, it doesn't mean you are doomed to fate. That's a universal law that we live within, but not something we perceive. The choices you take might be determined, but you act through your experience and knowledge in a way where choices feel free.

One of the best cases to study the consequences of free will as we live by it would be to look at the justice of criminals. By the very definition of determinism, criminals are the result of deterministic paths that lead them there. If you put aside emotion when viewing justice of criminals you realize that there are no criminals at all; it is a social construct of defining the outliers who suffer consequences from society, other people or mental illness. By determinism, they haven't chosen to be criminals, no one in their right mind would, they are forced or compelled by different factors.

So through this lens, criminals should be treated as victims of determinism. And correcting those paths is the only way to get rid of criminality. Everyone who studied justice and society concludes the same thing, that harsh punishment for their actions won't change a dime in terms of fighting crime.

But we still punish them and many advocates for harsher punishments. This is the act of our emotion towards them, not our intellect. And if we do, we are really acting as if free will existed. You cannot be a determinist without accepting this fact of justice, that would be cognitive dissonance.

So how do we apply practical philosophy towards this? How do we draw the line between determinism and practical ideas about free will? Because if we all just say we are the result of determinism we could argue against any change. A criminal would just say that he's a product of determinism and he doesn't have free will. But in order for us to treat the criminal back to a place where he can function and be part of the society we first need to cut the deterministic sources for crime, but also enforce the illusion of free will onto him in order for him to choose a new path.

Therefore, we apply free will as a practical concept towards people, in order to open up change within them. It's an illusion, but it's a practical illusion for society to work. The philosophical challenge, however, is where to draw that practical line. Most people draw that line out of emotion, without any rational thought put into it, the path of harsher punishment. But the empathic, empirical path is to study the determinism of every situation and draw the line where it is rational to do so. In terms of justice, most people are unable to draw the line correctly.

You wrote this yourself in your opening remarks. It corresponds exactly to the objections I made to you. I think your attempts to avoid those objections have made your ideas more confused, rather than more precise. — David Mo

But the argument in the OP is not valid anymore, which has been stated numerous times. So I urge you to read what has been written through the thread first since you ignore that I am trying to expand on the issues to present a new version later. If you only return to the argument in the OP and ignore what I write now I understand that it becomes confusing.

-To know which acts are better than others you need to know what makes a good act and what makes a bad act. In other words, what you mean by "good" in a moral sense. — David Mo

Not if moral acts in themselves aren't good or bad. We can establish a foundation around well-being and harm that you then use when addressing all data points surrounding a certain choice. If you exhaust and maximize the data to the best of your ability and question your own biases when doing so while strictly following a ruleset of the well-being/harm foundation you are acting morally good by the process of thought itself. The act and consequence has nothing to do with this, it can be a bad consequence and it could be a bad moral act, but the argument I am describing is proposing that the morally good or bad is within the act of calculating, not the act that is calculated out of it. That the act of actively making the effort of epistemic responsibility is what is morally good, not the consequences of the calculated act or the calculated act itself.

-You have not given a single observable and measurable characteristic that allows you to decide that an act is good. — David Mo

Because you are still talking about the act. This method I talk about here has nothing to do with good or bad acts, it has to do with calculating the act. Ignore the argument in the first post, it is outdated.

-If you want to evaluate which acts are better than others in a scientific way — David Mo

Still not what this is about.

I don't look at this as a matter of trust. I do business with a lot of different people, many of whom I don't particularly trust, the question of whether I trust them or not just doesn't come up in my mind. The situation is more like one of need. I need the service they offer, so I do business with them without thinking about whether or not I ought to trust them. You, and unenlightened, might argue that the fact I do choose to do business with them implies that I trust them. I don't think that way, and I know that I do business with a few whom I particularly don't trust. I just need to be more wary of these people. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you have hit upon the stumbling block for many here. This is the naivety of trust, that it does not occur to one to do otherwise. The veteran of Afghanistan who has a panic attack whenever he see[s a curtain twitch has lost his trust in the benignity of strangers. To those of us who have not experienced the constant danger of snipers, it seems a bit mad - we call it PTSD. Why would you think a moving curtain is dangerous? — unenlightened

I think that it's a problem of interpretation of the word trust, then. We use trust when we mean need or dependence. As we look at money, which is a social construct around trust, need, necessity for the cogs of society to work etc. As we talk about trust we will bend the word and its definition into many different types of interpretations. But they are indeed different versions of the same concept and the concept is the core we need to discuss.

So I would look at the Google issue more as a question of need. If they offer a service which is needed, then we use it, whether or not we trust them. But doing business with someone whom you do not particularly trust means that you need to be wary. We could assume, that just like doing business with anyone else, the company would want to give us honest service to maintain a reputation, but such assumptions are what leave us vulnerable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly, but I think that's the thing here, trust is need, is a necessity, is a contract. It's a contract that works until society sees it not working. How many companies have died because of misconduct? It happens and the fear within companies to do things that destroy themselves is indeed a reality, just as the reality of people fearing the companies doing misconduct. This is why we have ethical boards, laws and regulations, in order to keep everyone in fear of doing things wrong.

It's also a question of morality. We have laws that force us not to kill each other, but people can also already have morals that prevent them from killing, as a basic result of empathy. As long as the company isn't corrupted by its own complexity, it will have some form of morality through the people working there. And of course, that morality fails, just as people fail and do crimes. But as a general rule, we have trust not in each other, but in the morality of others, which guides us even if we don't have laws.

So can we trust Google? I don't think so. Can we trust them to do their best to be moral against their customers? Yes. If they don't they will one day fall as a company as long as society is upheld as free and laws and morality can review them. Being morally bad in front of their customers is not good for business, so either they don't do it or they hide it. But hiding such actions is a very risky venture, possibly lethal for a company. All it takes is one person with empathy to speak out against the company and their misconduct is stamped out, or the entire company itself.

So, as you say, we can only assume them to be good, just as we can only assume others around us to be good. But outside moral theory, most people have empathy which guides many moral choices and people make up the companies we do business with. Google is a massive company, so there can be misconduct in some areas while others are perfectly fine, the key here is that we know we are vulnerable. As long as we do, we question.

To question a service we use, is a kind of agreement in the contract of trust. It's the "I can trust you with this, right?" -interchangeable with "if I can't trust you with this, I will take you down". This kind of agreement is a foundation of the trust we give and have; fear and trust is two sides of the same coin. If we are to trust someone we agree upon the fear of breaking that trust. The trust comes out of an agreement of that fear.

1. Subject of the thread you proposed: if a scientific method ("scientific mind") can objectively establish which acts are morally better ("priority"). — David Mo

You start out directly wrong in this by saying I'm looking for a scientific method to objectively establish morally better acts. I'm not, I propose borrowing four cornerstones of the scientific method into a mindset to calculate the most probable good moral act, based on a foundation of well-being and harm. Objectively and probable aren't the same things and that is an important factor for this theory and fundamental to its core.

2. To know which acts are better than others you need to know what makes a good act and what makes a bad act. — David Mo

No, not for this, because it doesn't put a value in the act, it puts a value into the method used to calculate the act. This is what I mean by taking a step back from other moral theories that try to define the acts themselves. It's a Kantian duty-type theory, where the duty is the method applied to find out a morally good act, not the act or consequence itself. This theory is a moral anti-realist theory that doesn't focus on either consequence or the act, but how to form a probability around good and bad options before an act.

3. If that method you propose is scientific and objective, it will be based on a set of observable and quantifiable "good" properties. — David Mo

The method is not, the "scientific mind" is not the scientific method, it's an idea about a mindset, a, in other's word, virtue of a person, holding not a thought or absolute idea but a method to think that is drawing on the four cornerstones of the scientific method. It's never meant as a way to calculate objective moral truths.

If I say this is theory is moral anti-realism but still incorporate scientific method as an idea into it, you must take a moment to think about how I actually use the concept within the argument. Because now you are making an assumption about what my argument is really about and then counter-argue it from that point of view, which means you have a misunderstanding of my argument before you counter it.

This can be because of many of the problems that others have pointed out and that my argument is in fact flawed in its inductive reasoning in the OP, that's why I suggest reading through them all to see the ongoing discussion around all the factors that are problematic about the original induction. Because I'm open for counter-arguments as long as they focus on the details of my argument, not a faulty interpretation of it.

A typical case in moral philosophy is the combination of the lesser good for the greater number and the greater good for the lesser number. — David Mo

That has to do with consequences, my argument is more focused on deontology. How someone calculates the probability of the act has to do with the consequences, but what I talk about is that the only moral action we can take is that calculation. What the calculation itself is based on is a set of rules/foundation that guides the calculation, just like the laws of physics guide new hypotheses about physics. I talk about the duty of epistemic responsibility in calculating an act, not the consequences or the act itself. I propose that the duty to calculate is the only moral thing we can do, consequences and acts themselves are impossible to evaluate within moral theory.

So what level of trust is enough for a functioning society? Do you trust scientists? Do you trust hospitals? Do you trust your mechanic not to tamper with the breaks? The building blocks around trust are many more than "if there's a chance of abuse, there will be abuse". That's a Murphy's law type reasoning that isn't very nuanced. It is true that abuse happens, so how do we minimize it? We can't get rid of the risk of abuse without losing freedom, so we can only minimize it. Repercussions to companies conducting such abuse, risk of closure, legal actions etc. Alongside that the risk of the business losing the trust of the customers which is a major part of having a business running. Risking that trust is not a good business strategy and doing so requires extreme measures that could be even riskier.

So what level of trust can you work with? And if you can't give trust in any direction how would you solve that?

Google is just a search engine that provides links to trustworthy, or untrustworthy information. It's not so much should you trust Google, but should you trust the sites that Google provides as a result of your search? Do you trust your own site-searching skills, and use of keywords, to find the right information you are looking for? — Harry Hindu

Exactly and it's in their interest to look trustworthy. They do not gain anything from falsely marking other websites as trustworthy or not, quite the opposite, people would want to use Google more in order to be certain in their web searches if there was a clear marking system for trustworthy sites in the searches.

Yes, just like the milk seller depends on trust. Government, business, everyone in a society depends on trust for every interaction. And if we do not trust google, do we trust the independent body supervising them?

I propose that the sickness of the age is that blows to trust have proliferated and they are indeed hard to recover from. But we cannot function without trust, and we cannot function without a search engine. I don't think there is another answer. Trust comes from honour, and so without honour we die. Thus the unreality of morality is seen to be somewhat exaggerated. — unenlightened

Yes, this is the fundamental problem of the post-truth era and it's a tricky one. I think that trust comes from repetition. Repetition of competence, repetition of providing evidence and facts.

If a political leader provides facts and evidence, act upon educated ideas etc. they will after repetition of such conduct be treated as trustworthy political leaders.

An independent body supervising this marking system will have to be founded by trustworthy people that exist within its committee. Experts in their field that has earned trust through repetition within their job. Then the independent body itself needs to repeat until being labeled trustworthy.

The marking system itself is based on repetition, repeated acts of trustworthy nature will keep the marking for their websites. Misconduct will mark them as not trustworthy. It might even need regulations and laws around it, so that Google is not handling it, but maybe demanded to have it and if they abuse it, it's considered a crime against information.

The big question is, in a time when no one can be trustworthy, can we create a system that can guide people to trustworthy sources of information? If we can have systems of review within science in order to exclude pseudoscience, why not for marking information so that people know where to find evidence and facts and where to be careful. I think it's possible and I think the alternative is worse chaos.

This is not really true. A company may work hard to gain the trust of customers, but once they receive it they have the customers by the balls. And since the company's priority is always its financial well-being there is no good reason why the company would not abuse that trust. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, agreed, that's why I said:

It's important not to become naive and comfy in their care, always question them, always question everyone. By constantly challenging them and reviewing them we challenge their handle of our trust and they will do anything to keep that trust. The risk of mishandling trust is such a bad business strategy that it gives us enough trust for the life we live. But always question them, otherwise they will find loopholes. — Christoffer

In essence, the larger the corporation, the heavier the fall. If financial well-being is their concern, a major blow to trust would be a major blow to financial well-being. The more a company relies on trust in their business, the worse the consequences of trust abuse.

That's why we always have to review these companies, that's why it's so important with things like whistleblowers, protection of them, and company practice transparency.

The thing I wrote about markings though, has to do standardized markings of websites that provide information. It would be in Google's interest to do this since people want a trustworthy search engine. There isn't much gain to abuse such a marking system for their searches and they would be praised for battling the post-truth era problems of information.

I usually present ideas of my own. — David Mo

I'll add something else about your "method" when I have time. — David Mo

Sure, but why are you using this thread for this? Why not start your own thread about morality? This discussion is about this method, so the time spent here should be about that, not different subjects.

Objection: You cannot qualify an act as moral if you do not have a concept of what is moral and what is not. You cannot put a moral act prior others (the human community over the personal interest, for example) if you do not have a criterion of priority or hierarchy of some over others in the form of a rule (Choose x before y). You cannot claim to have an objective method for deciding which act is moral and which is a priority if you have not defined the objective validity of those criteria. And this implies a universal or a priori rule, as Kant would say. — David Mo

But you object by presenting a moral absolutist concept when I reject moral absolutism entirely.
There is no morally good or bad acts that can be defined, only a method to find a probability of the best morally good choice. To have a framework for that method, you need a foundation that guides the reasoning and that foundation is well-being and harm. The reasoning built on top of that foundation will then find the parameters of well-being for any given situation based on the current knowledge zeitgeist.

This is why I urge you to read through this thread first. Because you seem to miss that I do not propose an objective way to act, but an objective way to calculate moral and propose that ethics philosophy will never find any solutions if it tries to create a framework of acts, it needs a framework of reasoning and that is the only way to come close to an objective moral way to live.

As for the marking system, the system itself should be independent as a standard. Google should implement it with search results, but the standardized system is not Google's. Review of how the system is handled by Google is therefore done by that independent committee.

I agree about the concept of trust.

But do you trust Google? — unenlightened

Not really, but I trust corporate image and Google is actually in the business of trust. Their lifeblood is that we trust the safety google provides and that the services provided are trustworthy. When reports came in about how Google handled paid search results it was a major blow to their brand. Same goes for Facebook, who need to keep the trust of their users.

As long as the business requires the trust of its users, then it's a level of trust that can be used by the users themselves. I believe that a Google-branded trust-marking system is possible, because Google wants to be the most trustworthy search engine. And if they start to mark pages as trustworthy because those pages pay Google for it, that would be a blow to their brand of trust that is hard to recover from.

We can trust the fear of losing trust. As long as there's a cold war balance in trust between consumers and producers in a capitalist society, it will regulate itself. Customers want to trust a company and the company needs the customer's trust. Failure to comply results in failure of the business.

So can we trust google? No, but we can trust that they want to keep their business. It's important not to become naive and comfy in their care, always question them, always question everyone. By constantly challenging them and reviewing them we challenge their handle of our trust and they will do anything to keep that trust. The risk of mishandling trust is such a bad business strategy that it gives us enough trust for the life we live. But always question them, otherwise they will find loopholes.

If you think so, what is then your answer? Not having a democratic elections or what? — ssu

Not sure how you conclude what I wrote into that. But in terms of elections, first, a two-party election that forces Republicans to vote for a person like Trump enforce a mentality where they need to post-justify their choice and defend someone they clearly don't want to have as a president. It creates a cognitive dissonance that further push chaos.

Then I have the idea that people can only vote if they can answer basic questions about the politicians and parties involved in an election. A form, free to be filled out with any source of information, online, in libraries etc. but need to be correct in order to vote. This way, people who doesn't really care about their vote or politics, those who just vote because of bullshit reasons would probably not feel the energy does go through that process before a vote and it would concentrate votes to those with basic understanding of the parties and people that get the votes. A basic understanding is a fundamental thing in a democracy that aims to lower the risk of demagogue politics.

We also need a standardized marking system for online information. Official, scientific, trustworthy media, trustworthy individuals and red marks for those who actively spread disinformation/misinformation. Such markings can start off as being handled by Google as Google handles most of the searches in the world.

If I'm gonna describe details about the practical implementation of the above I need to write lots of pages, but as a general point to where I stand in how to improve democracy and current information age and tackle the post-truth epidemic.

So much for the definition. In practically any culture you will be considered a good person if you behave according to these conditions. — David Mo

But we are discussing ethical philosophy. Just like scientific theory doesn't have the same definition as theory in common tongue, a moral act or defining morally good acts in ethical philosophy is not the same as how it's commonly used in language outside of the philosophical dialectic.

You're partly right. If moral rules imply two different interests, mine and others', a major problem is proportion. — David Mo

You have taken that out of context. The priority I provided had to do with which order you think about harm and well-being through the method I proposed.

I do not believe that there is a scientific yardstick for these uncertainties. Rational debate on them is advisable; scientific solutions are not possible. If you have this yardstick, I would like to know it. It would alleviate many of my daily concerns. — David Mo

Not sure that you fully understand what I argue for in this thread. I recommend that you read my posts to get more insight into the theory.

And we have not yet entered into a particularly vexing case: what do we do with the cynic who refuses to follow any moral standards? Phew. — David Mo

I haven't proposed any moral standards. I've proposed a theory for a moral method of calculating moral acts. So if someone doesn't follow moral absolutes or standards it's irrelevant to this theory since I dismiss moral standards in favor of the method. There are no standards, only ways to figure out what is good in case to case. Someone who doesn't do this is epistemically irresponsible and immoral. What we do with them depends on what they are immoral about.

I agree. There's no magic moral solution. What is moral are the conditions that make a moral choice possible. What are those conditions? — David Mo

Again, recommend you to read the comments and posts in this thread if you want to understand the theory of method i propose. If you mean that the conditions are the foundation on which the method is used, then I've listed them eariler.

Yeah, norms change which is why surveys may be repeated. Ideally maybe like once a year. Until then I'm afraid the concept of "morality" is likely to remain an intransitive, incommensurable spectre. — Zophie

I think it always will be, which is why the only thing we can decide on, in order to hack the It-Ought problem (Hume), is to find the Is in common basic good and bad things, such as well-being and harm and combine them with the Ought, in order to calculate the best possible choice or act in any given situation. Any other attempt at finding an objective morality or trying to settle on what is a moral will fail. And I don't think a survey will hold up, even if we do it every year. It could lead to a shift in morality that could really be harmful to a lot of people just because civilization had "a bad day" that year of the survey.

As far as I can tell you are just arbitrarily saying we can't hurt the minority, but this conclusion doesn't follow from any of the principles you supplied in the OP. Additionally, you sprinkle the term "well-being" into your responses in some vague fashion, as if that will solve anything. You make no mention at all of well-being in your OP, by the way, and that was supposedly where you were defining your moral terms :roll: You have a ways to go before your half-baked theory makes any sense. — Wolfman

That's because the argument is a work in progress, as I state in the last sentence of the OP. The discussion following throughout is part of the process to make the argument clearer and better. I haven't updated the OP yet. I see the discussion as the philosophical dialectic to improve the argument, to review it and I'm thankful that you and the others do this.

I have earlier made a remark that there are flaws in the argument based on how people have answered it, you included. That especially the part of value morality is not working at all etc.

So you are right that the OP is flawed, that's why the discussion is important. I'm pretty convinced that the theory will hold up, but it's very vague and needs changes that makes it crystal clear. The slavery argument didn't hold up against it, but I need to change the OP argument to show clearly why, if you get what I mean? :smile:

Of course. Science is about discovering what is the case, not what should be the case. Obviously it's not perfect. But it's at least empirical. — Zophie

Just to be clear, my idea of scientific method or mindset is about borrowing the method into a framework of though at any given moral dilemma. So my theory is not directly using scientific method, but a guidance of thought by it.

To my mind law is about as certain as ethics can get, so maybe you'll accept a legal parallel in the notion of common law, where standards are slightly more malleable and descriptive in pursuit of what I'll tentatively call "the least unusual and most popular".* — Zophie

Law can only follow moral philosophy. Law can never be ahead of philosophical definitions of morality. We base laws on the morality we have decided is correct. This is why laws are always changing, both through time and by consequences being analyzed by philosophy.

The hypothetical scientific survey I proposed, which gives everyone on the planet some input, would follow a similar intention in order to establish a normative notion of universal morality, or as I would prefer to call it, kindness. Science doesn't do prescriptive knowledge; that's chiefly the job of philosophy. — Zophie

What someone ought to do as a good moral choice based on a normative notion of universal morality, is only as good as the knowledge the people creating that statistical norm. I would argue that a democracy voting forth a president like Trump shows how badly asking the people will grant you norms that are objectively good. And what about shifting tides in world views? In 2035 it's proposed that the world consists of 50% atheists. That means that if we do a survey right now, a lot of the morality norms will come from religious scripture, but in 2035 we will have much less of it. So we can't get norms as the norms are shifting, we can only get a method based on commonalities of what is good through time.