Here we've taken away the ability to measure a human reaction and still made a determination. — Cheshire

The counterargument here is that values ultimately rest on the human, and (probably) animal. They do not have independent existence.

Could an object be beautiful if no one considered it so? Clearly not. So with value.

Fake acct., I was trying to post an extra story in the story contest, haha.

It's strange to me; if I was watching this event I wouldn't be thinking about the people that would never see it or the painter. I believe I would consider the act immoral based on the direct injury to the object. I think a momentary faux personhood by virtue of it's ability to possess and deliver meaning would be the subject of harm. — Cheshire

Same.

I think the axiom I proposed is too narrow. Harming reservoirs of value is bad. Not just humans are reservoirs of values. Animals are, and the environment, and paintings.

In your answer to number 2, you dropped the painter. I was wondering why. — Cheshire

I guess I felt it is effectively destroyed for him, since he will never see it.

If I can show that an immoral act can be against an object; then I've demonstrated an objective morality is more likely to exist? — Cheshire

Sounds like a different meaning of "objective".

I don't think its a matter of equivocation. The great philosopher Rumsfeld analyzed this one adequately. There are three types of questions:

1. Those we have asked and know the answer.
2. Those we have asked and do not know the answer.
3. Those we have never considered asking.

Meno considers 1 and 3, but omits 2.

What absolute is being aimed at? I deliberately phrased the question "how voluntary are emotions", not "are emotions voluntary".

Breathing is somewhat voluntary. You can exercise control, but within strict limits, and this is not the default state. By default the autonomic system is in control. The body (as distingushed from the brain), does not control breathing, it effectuates it.

Why make room for constructs which don't exist. Evil isn't "just psychology", it is a pattern which pervades the human condition. It is eternal, but only to the extent that humanity is eternal. Outside the human context it is nothing.

Evil is privileging one's own material/emotional/ideological interests to the point where doing harm to others in order to meet them is a matter of indifference. One is evil to the extent that one behaves in this way, and evil acts are evil to the degree in which they meet this template. It is malignant selfishness.

Note that sadism is just one variety of evil: the joy the sadist gets from harming is more important to him than the harm he commits. The tempermentally sadistic who refrains from doing harm is not evil.

This trait certainly exists, but there is no metaphysical dimension of evil which goes beyond it.

central committee sock/stooge — skyblack

What you lack in wit, you more than make up for in incomprehensibility.

What do you believe as the causes for emotions? — Corvus

I believe they arise from brain states. They are a perceptual dimension no different than the five senses. But what they are perceiving is internal.

If we know about the causes, nature, and more accurate definitions of emotions, perhaps, we could understand emotions better, and answers to the OP could emerge naturally? — Corvus

Or, we can examine what is phenomenologically right in front of our noses.

How could we tell — Wayfarer

It does seem strictly unknowable, like some kind of uncertainty principle of bullshit.

The last "metanarritive" to fall is the future. This knowledge is now pervasive. Is this late stage postmodernism, or are we now in some new, eschatological condition?

generates random samples of pomo pseudo-text: — Wayfarer

There MUST be published papers written with this thing.

[reply="skyblack;569147"
If only you knew what a joke you've been!

Shoo, joke.

As I see it the meta-narratives only "fell" among a select group of academics. Outside of that "circle jerk" the meta-narrative of modernism is alive and kicking hard. — Janus

But these things rot from the head down. Scientism, secularism, humanism all began with the intellectual elites. But postmodernism is way past that stage. You only have to look at the last four years in America to see the mainstreaming of postmodernism in plain sight.

Or did the postmodernists actually cause the thing they said was already happening? — Kenosha Kid

I don't think they caused it, but I think they quickly embodied to a parodical degree what they described: discourses on Truth revealing themselves to be, and devolving into, language games.

one largely untethered from its metanarrative (communism) and instead tethered to a judicious choice of allegiance — Kenosha Kid

Communism untethered to a metanarritive?

In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unliveable. People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. — William Lane Craig

Well, this one didn't age well .

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Calm down tough guy!

The parallel here with thinking is that we can try to think what we want to think, but unpleasant thoughts can intrude in spite of our efforts, as is the case with ptsd, depression and anxiety. — Joshs

This is why I wouldn't says that thinking is *perfectly* voluntary, only that we have substantial voluntary control over it, in a way we lack with our emotions.

If that makes you feel better, carry on. — skyblack

Yes DK, your arguments are just too devastating, to the point that I had to call in some favors from the moderators to edit your posts, and I can valiantly pretend you didn't crush me with your brilliance.
If this belief makes *you* feel better.. carry on!

This seems plainly untrue.

• I feel grief. I desire to be happy. If the desire *was* the feeling, this desire would fulfill itself immediately,
• I desire something, and feel pain by the absence of its fulfillment. Its fulfillment brings me pleasure. Here the desire is linked to a feeling which is the opposite of its fulfillent.
• I desire something, and anticipate happiness in its fulfillment. Its fulfilment leaves me feeling empty.

While desire is *a* feeling, and is often closely bound with the feeling of its fulfillment, in the ways you point out, it hardly seems identical with the feeling of its fulfillment.

I don't know what I'm talking about, or really much of anything. Rather than dig myself a deeper hole, I will quit while I'm behind. I apologize for my presumption and arrogance: I'm still learning. With diligence, some day I might be a better and wiser person. — skyblack

Thank you DK. Well said, and apology accepted.

But even in saying this much about the choice to think something, we are already presupposing that one is motivated to think a thought. We say that to be voluntary, a thought must come when we want it to come. — Joshs

I don't know if it is meaningful to talk about acting voluntarily without a desire or aversion of some kind. If an act fulfills neither I don't think it can be voluntary. But the desires and aversions themselves are emotional, and largely involuntary.

Lets presuppose the desire:
Given a desire to think about X, I can directly think about X.
Given a desire to feel Y, I cannot directly act to satisfy this desire. Instead I have to do things like go to therapy.

Do you acknowledge this difference? How do you account for it?

I know you are but what am I? — skyblack

Well played, sir!

Good riddance, Dunning Kruger!

But then, your post doesn't really state any reasoning or argument — skyblack

It does, if you weren't so wrapped up in your own variety of idiocy you might see it.

I'll try once more:

You claim:
"Emotions are involuntary since they are under the jurisdiction of biology."

Your argument seems to be:
If X is "under the jurisdiction of biology" (whatever this means), X is involuntary.
Emotions are "under the jurisdiction of biology"
Therefore emotions are involuntary.

I presented three bodily functions, all of which presumably fall under "the jurisdiction of biology":

Motion of the hand: High degree of volitional control.
Blood pressure, or to use a more obvious example, breathing: patrial and limited volitional control
Secretion of the spleen: no volitional control.

Demonstrating that the relationship you propose is false. There is no apparent relation at all between "the jurisdiction of biology" and degree of volition.

BTW I read the post where you

"perhaps proved" — skyblack

this claim.
:rofl:

You are confusing the issue .

Your boss barks at you, "think about tomorrows meeting!". You can obey if you choose, because you have at least has a high degree of voluntary control over your thoughts.

Your boss barks, "now be happy!". While you might be so already, you generally cannot choose to obey this command, since emotional state is generally involuntary.

My hand is under the "jurisdiction of biology" and I have control of it. So is my spleen, and I have no control. And so is my heart rate and.blood pressure, and I have a degree of control.

"Jurisdiction of biology" does not seem to be the relevant distinction here

what we call emotion. is no more or less voluntary than thinking — Joshs

This is utterly at odds with everyday experience. We can say to ourselves, "I will now think about tomorrow's meeting", and then think about tomorrow's meeting. We generally cannot say "I will now be happy" and be happy.

The walls of a hole are made of something too. A hole is a way that a surface can contour in 3d space. Nothing mysterious.

To me there is nothing puzzling about holes. Holes are a topographical feature, the opposite of hills. If there is a hole in a ground, the ground is shaped in such a way that there is an empty cavity it partially encloses. The word "hole" may refer to the topographical feature, the cavity, or both at the same time. But even if it refers to the cavity alone, there is no lack of reality in the space which the walls of the cavity enclose.

Trying to think of other things that are ontologically parasitic. — fishfry

How about shapes? Shapes can't exist in isolation. They must be molded from something.

Holes are properly thought of as shapes. Their only distinction is concavity.

Their appearance is certainly an illusion as well cannot perceive them at all without "projecting them onto an imaginary plane"

But this raises more questions, what has a "stable reality"? — Manuel

Both objects and processes exist independently of anything that may or may not perceive them, this is what I meant by "stable reality"

We'd have to say that it is a hallucination within a hallucination or something along these lines. — Manuel

I don't have a problem with this.

So at some points our mapping converges in some crucial areas. — Manuel

I'm not sure if you are understanding me here. The only requirement is that there is some stable mapping from a sensory constellation to "cliff". But the form that mapping takes is irrelevant. Trivially, my red might be your green. Or my color might be your sound, or it might be some other form you can't conceive of. As long as qualia masks reality in some stable manner, it can take any form at all and be functional.

If you are going to argue by analogy, the analogy has to at least make sense. Time seems to move from past to future. Distance having a length does not compute.

This argument presumes that time is only the instant we are currently experiencing. If this were so, I agree. The cough ofa fly 10000 years ago may have no impact on the universe: it's state would be identical to it's state has the fly not coughed. So I'm every sense the cough ceases to exist.

But our best understanding of the universe is that space and time are coequal, and the universe is a 4d hypersphere. In this case, past events have the same reality as present, as all are in a sense contemporaneous. Only memory and causality seem to separate past from present.

A simple proof I came up with a while back demonstrates this. Do you buy it?

Suppose time had a speed.
If time sped up or slowed down, the universe would speed up or slow down, everything would speed up or slow down together.
Therefore the speed of time has no observable impact on the universe.
Therefore there is no speed of time.
Therefore time is not moving.

Certainty and uncertainty are not binary choices. Nothing is truly certain. Any knowledge you gain from experience may be contradicted by new experience. Any logical, mathematical, and especially philosophical conclusions may be tainted by flaws in the argument you cannot perceive.

Nothing is absolutely certain, and most things are not absolutely uncertain. You can only do your best to accurately assign degrees of certainty to the propositions which are relevant to you.

Ok, so being isomorphic with a natural number means being in a system capable of distinguishing at least that specified whole number of different items? — bongo fury

Yes, so for instance your apple glyph can be encoded with some number [0, N) where N is the number of glyphs in the fruit language. This number would then be an encoding of an encoding. In general by information I mean: Being an encoding or being encodable in such a way that the encoding is representable as a natural number.

Perhaps there is an additional requirement that you and the rest must be symbols? — bongo fury

I don't want to include only encodings, I want to include everything encodable. So the informational content of a physical system is the minimum encoding that would permit someone with the encoding and the means to completely reproduce it. Of course you can modulate this requirement with a fidelity. Given an apple, this can range from indistinguishable reproduction, which would be an enormous amount of information, to mere membership of the right fruit class, where a glyph would suffice.

You are probably aware that digital data is stored as 1s and 0s. These are interpreted as base-2 numbers, which are just like the familiar base-10, except at every digit only 2 values are possible, instead of 10 So, every file on your computer can be interpreted as an enormous number. In the case of a movie, if it is well compressed and HD the file size might be ~4GB. This is 2^32 base-
2 digits, corresponding to a single base-10 number of around 1.2 billion digits! — hypericin

I think your premise is right, some but not all metaphysical questions are in fact simply language questions. But it is interesting that you have your examples perfectly backward.

The mind body problem is not just some people making associations with matter and "unthinking stuff". If that's all there was to it, the problem would have dissolved a long time ago. It is an inquiry into how two seemingly unrelated domains, matter and thought, are related. This is about as unlinguistic a metaphysical question as you can get.

However, questions of identity are in fact a perfect example of a linguistic question posing as metaphysical. Whether John's cremated body "is" or "isn't" the same as the once living one is entirely up to language and convention. Some languages and cultures may say yes, some no. Others may call John different after he had a stroke. There is simply no ontology which dictates the boundaries of words. These boundaries are ultimately human contrivances.

At least, the above is a plausible approach to tackling the problem, and is a good example of a metaphysical problem being attacked as merely linguistic.

So your admirable (for me) nominalism, as embraced in paragraphs one thru five (of eight), depends on grammar? — bongo fury

Of course not, grammar merely reflects it

Couldn't it easily have happened that we referred to apples as "apple" (with no article) even while only ever accepting a (any) whole one as answering to the name? — bongo fury

When referring to a single, definite apple, we say "the apple". The point is, "the apple", once established, may only refer to a singular physical object. Whereas "the book", when denoting a work of art and not a specific copy, may apply to any extant copy, as the information (or meaning), not the physical medium, is the referent.

...Treat an apple as a character in a discrete alphabet (e.g. of fruits) and the analogy is complete... — bongo fury

I don't follow this argument. A pictogram is a symbol, and so information, not an apple.

Would some version of your "informational" exception then not apply? — bongo fury

There is no "exception". Matter is one kind of thing, information another. Being different, we think about them differently.

Why on earth not? — bongo fury

Because we don't. This is just a fact.

Hypericin: I finished reading my copy of "The Eyes of the Overworld" today.
Bongo Fury: Oh, I just finished reading "The Eyes of the Overworld" on e-book today.
Hypericin: Wow. What are the chances, we finished the same book on the same day.
Bongo Fury: Same book? No we didn't. You read a paperback, I read an e-book.

An observer would conclude either this is your version of humor, or you suffer some kind of brain damage.

But what is that? — bongo fury

That which is encoded or encodable. That which is isomorphic with a natural number. That which is the same between a paperback and e-book copy of a book.

Sure. But not if you merely studied, however carefully, the digital or analog recordings themselves (literally, as opposed to the sound-and-light events produced from them). — bongo fury

But the information itself could be discovered. Context, and therefore meaning, is not deducible from information. If it was, it would be redundant.

the screenings and plays (sound-and-light events) which collectively constitute said artwork — bongo fury

Considering the screenings, they depend on and are completely reflective of the film reels.

Sorry. Seems like Platonism to me. — bongo fury

Maybe. But you aren't understanding me.

Hell of an album