1. It is morally impermissible to perform an action that is in-itself bad;
2. It is morally impermissible to directly intend something bad—even for the sake of something good;
3. Harming someone is, in-itself, bad. — Bob Ross

So we should stand by and watch someone brutally murder several innocent people because it is 'bad' to harm the murderer. :D

Any Utopian worth their salt knows that ends don't justify means; the means determine the ends. — Vera Mont

The road to hell ...

If Christians tried to behave like Jesus, they would feed one another, not execute them. — Vera Mont

My point is they would fail and know they are failing. Imagine a world of people walking around thinking they are the saviors of humanity. I do actually think they would be more likely to execute one another (albeit by the hands of others maybe) than feed to support each other.

Changing society at large ... Have you already managed to pull off one, single change to society, no matter how small? — Tarskian

I warned against anyone trying to do so and am against anyone trying to do so. I am against Hitlers and Pol Pots who put plans in action for their own personal utopian ideal.

Understand?

Why not aim for the ultimate - even though you may have to settle for whatever you can reach? — Vera Mont

You are less likely to kill people reaching for something that is impossible and less likely to justify their deaths by claiming to be holding to some utopian ideal.

By all means search for whatever inner utopian ideal you wish, but do not assume anyone else wants it nor that they would welcome it - that is the thrust of my point.

That's what you aim for, the standard against which you measure your actual accomplishment. — Vera Mont

Speak for yourself. Keep it to yourself too :) If everyone was walking around trying to be Buddha/Jesus/Mohammad/Whatever, I have strong reasons to believe the world would quickly become a dystopia.

We should realize that arrival at the perfect Utopia is not very probable, but it remains the only truly worthy goal.
— Chet Hawkins
Just so. — Vera Mont

I think it is probably better to aim for a possible optimum than assume an ideal. Once an 'optimum' is reached the situation can then be reassessed.

On the flipside I would disagree with what I said in terms of personal goals but stick firmly to it if attempting to apply to society at large.

After all, "suffering" isn't a "problem to solve" but rather an exigent signal to adapt one's (our) way of life to reality by preventing foreseeable or reducing some imminent disvalue/s. :fire: — 180 Proof

I would even go so far as to argue if one is against suffering one is against life. Suffering is not 'bad'. I imagine a great number of people here 'suffer' when reading philosophical works, or 'suffer' as they struggle to express their ideas.

A lot of people do some basic research and find out that the so-called "top notch" medical care in their own country is massively overpriced, not actually any better than some foreign alternatives or both.

One only has to look at how ridiculously overpriced basic meds and procedures in the US compared to other western or foreign equivalents.

Many people are now waking up to the realisation that they can spend $5000 at home or have a 2 week holiday and get treatment for $3000.

Of course there are some cases where the equipment is not available - but rarely the knowhow.

It is your thread so you should provide clarity of what you are asking instead of throwing out random questions and having others guess what you are talking about.

If you are just riffing, fair enough. If you have something explicit to say I have not seen it yet.

They is no direct question in the OP (very nebulous). There are fundamental flaws with how you outlined science. Even in the discussions you are having with others hear I see virtually nothing relevant to the misconceptions expressed in the OP.

Perhaps if you show me how you would answer the previous questions you asked of me it would elucidate what you are actually getting at. Failing that I will just leave you to it. If so, have fun :)

The above is my launch into the spine of my OP. — ucarr

And you start by making an obvious error. All questions are "what?" questions.

How does ice melt? = What are the processes/mechanisms that cause ice to melt?

With his paper, "The Hard Problem," David Chalmers shows in stark fashion what science, so far, cannot do: it cannot objectify the personal point of view of an enduring, individual self with personal history attached. It can technologize the self via computation, but the result isn't an authentic self. Instead, it's just a simulation of the self without an autonomous self-awareness. This technical self is just a machine awaiting additional source code from humans. — ucarr

There are many questions that science struggles to address. How consciousness works (what are the processes of consciousness) and what it is (what it does) are scientific questions.

Any question is potentially a scientific one - scientific method can be applied to SOME degree.

Expressing emotions and blind opinions are not scientific, but we can investigate the cognitive science behind why some people do this and explore how it can be useful (in a scientific manner NOT an emotional one instilled with blind opinions).

If there's a grain of truth in what I've written above, then Tarskian is correct in the characterization of the Incompleteness Theorem being the cause of a crisis in science and math. Jeffrey Kaplan compounds the reality of this crisis with his exegesis of Russell's Paradox. — ucarr

I think Husserl started to address this by pointing out that psychology does not deal with subjectivity - because it takes on a material objective measurement of non-material subjective content. The whole point of his phenomenology was to create a new 'science of consciousness' that explored primal concepts and better ground underlying principles for the physical sciences.

Science is defined by hard and fast rules/laws that are accurate enough to surpass mere blind opinion or singular subjective perspectives.

The Arts do not do this:

- History does not, whereas the science of Archeology does.
- Literature does not do this, whereas the science of Linguistics does.

I have a feeling you are confusing yourself by interchanging Why, How and What without appreciating that they are ALL What questions. This then lead to you holding to How for one line of questioning where it suits you whilst holding to Why for another (even though - to repeat - they are BOTH What questions).

Experiencing is experiencing. Consciousness is consciousness of ... not simply some floating item - Husserlian 'intentionality'.

Maybe you wish to ask 'What would we mean by saying Consciousnessing?' rather than relying on the term "thinking"?

As of yet, I am still unsure what you are saying and starting to think that you do not really have a clear idea of what you mean due to misapplication of terms and heuristic bias.

From your writing above I'm thinking you're not totally averse to my claim science and art differ mainly in terms of two different modalities of discovery: science leans towards objective discovery; art leans towards subjective discovery, and QM establishes where the twain shall meet! — ucarr

Well, that is such an obvious difference that I am baffled why you would wish to point it out? If your point is merely that Art is subjective and Science is objective (broadly speaking) ... so what?

I think I at least offered something a little more nuanced by approaching what they Value rather than how objective they are. As I mentioned, Superstring Theory is only still around because it seems to solve certain problems BUT there is no objective evidence - it is purely theoretical.

Maybe you will find this interesting; I have mentioned before some time ago ...

Art does two things (1) brings temporal experience into a singular moment (2) transforms a singular moment into a continuous temporal experience.

For example, if I listen to a piece of music or watch a movie the experience becomes one unified whole, whereas if I look at a sculpture or a painting I stretch the experience out across time and animate it. Time is the medium of art.

Science does neither. Science is singularly focused on reducing data to a universally applicable formula. Time is tool not a medium for science.

Still worshipping Algos I see :)

When you talk about the difference between the two disciplines, you talk about art being resistant to accurate measurement. So, can you spin out a narrative of difference that illuminates the meaning of science being accurate measurement and art being touchy-feely measurement? — ucarr

That is an oversimplification I feel. Science does require creativity as much as art.

There are not just TWO distinct disciplines. There is a good deal of overlap between various fields of interest within and between Science and Humanities subjects.

If you wish me to focus merely on 'accuracy of measuring' then I guess I can try, but that is not what science is. Nor would I say the humanities is just 'touchy feely' as each leaves an impression on the other (science affects humanities and humanities affects science). For this reason I would not state that the humanities 'resists' accurate measurement at all - no field of study does that. There is a history of science (humanities) as well as items like linguistics (the science of language).

'Meaning' of science in terms of accurate measurements? Mmm ... I guess the humanities is far more concerned with felt experience rather than observed experience. That would probably be the best simplistic distinction - both 'measure' in different ways. I guess it is a matter of Value; the arts are concerned with subjective value that nevertheless approaches pure abstracted ideas of beauty and such (feelings/impressions) whereas the sciences are concerned with objective value that can be formulated into an abstract 'meaning' (equation).

There is a whole sea of grey. I do not for an instance assume there is a 'black or white' to this but that such ideas of a pure black and white differentiations represent an abstraction of experience.

I have no idea what point you are trying to make here.

Obviously those two things are quite different in a number of ways. An equation is abstract, where an action is not. The former can be applied in an objective sense whereas the latter is focused more on subjectivity.

I posted because your general conception of what science is seemed misguided/inaccurate.

When talking about the humanities and sciences, they are categories of subjects in academia. If you are attempting to use these categories outside of this then you need to be more concise with what your underlying point is. For me at least! :)

It had its highlights, but I agree that overall it was nowhere near their other films.

I stated this quite clearly already, no?

Every Sperm is Sacred :grin:

The sciences are concerned with “what,” whereas the humanities are concerned with “how.” — ucarr

No. Science is concerned with science. The humanities are concerned with humans.

The give away is in the names?

The sciences are rooted in communication of existence in terms of what things are, how they’re interrelated, what they do and what functions, if any, they have. — ucarr

Huh? That sounds more like mysticism.

Science makes no assumptions. Blind speculation can happen but it is cast aside if no rational means of determining any kind of evidence can be unearthed. That said, there are some theories that fit observations so well that they live a bit longer than usual; Superstring Theory is one example.

Observation is key in all sciences (Empiricism).

The sciences are all about measurement. Through the lens of the sciences, to measure a thing is to contain it and thereby to know it. — ucarr

No. Science uses measurements based on observations. If measurements cannot be made science does not just leave it alone. We can observe changes and then speculate as to why such changes are happening. The evidence of scientific truths comes through determining a means of measuring but it is certainly not all science is.

Empiricism is fundamental to all the sciences.

The humanities are rooted in communication of voices arising from The Hard Problem: What it’s like to navigate and experience the material creation as a sentient being with an enduring individual point of view with personal history attached. — ucarr

Not really. The Hard Problem is a scientific problem.

Through the lens of the humanities, to journey from cradle to grave is to string together a personal narrative (continuity) of emblematic, pivotal, transformative and self-defining moments. — ucarr

Maybe.

In short, The Humanities are about the expression and understanding of the human condition in lived terms most often through a narrative function - although philosophy itself tends to straddle both the science and humanities through the employment of the science of logic (mathematics).

The means of accurate measuring of items like 'good' and 'bad' is obscure (and possibly a delusion?). We still measure value in human life but such measurements are so abstracted and opaque that more often than not we are misled and misguided by our sense of reasoning.

By this I simply mean that we do not possess the scope in spacial or temporal terms to pass any reasonably accurate declaration for a hard and fast 'rule' of human nature. Where we are blind the Humanities dresses us in comfort. Is there truth hidden within this comfort? I believe so.

And the threat being perceived. The protection of loved kin and territory is also a strong animal instinct. But there is a huge difference between willingness to fight for one's convictions and loyalties, and a desire for war. — Vera Mont

I know. I was the one arguing against what Tarkian said in regards to "craving war".

There is something to be said for the possibility of humanity slipping back into feudalistic tendencies with societal collapse. Maybe it will happen again. I hope not though.

But that's a digression from the question of war. If men want to go war, and men have pretty been in charge of things through history, why has there ever been conscription? I'm supposing that the men who run things and want wars are not the same ones who actually have to fight the wars. Most of the latter would prefer to be left alone to work their farms or looms or forges and play with their kids on a sunny day. — Vera Mont

I agree. Being humans though, when we see something 'evil' we want to correct it as we are visceral creatures and physical force is a habit of animal nature for obvious reasons. The willingness to fight comes through the belief in the extent of the 'evil' perceived. Being highly social creatures we are more than just mere brute force though.

I don't believe that. — Tarskian

What you believe does not change reality. I was not talking about a specific year, it was a generalisation. The scale and intensity of conflicts has changed quite dramatically.

The rest of what you said is probably just an attempt to bait an emotional reaction maybe? Either way, there is not anything substantial as an argument against the claim that the vast majority of people are not "craving war" as you put it.

I do not see people beating each other everyday let alone looking to join a war. I do strongly believe that many younger men are seeking some kind of 'evil' to fight in some way. Most are probably willing to fight for what they deem as 'good'. These items can be, and are, sometimes misdirected by nefarious characters and/or desperation which cause bogeymen to appear where there are none.

You see things a bit like people who eat enjoy eating a steak but who swear that they would never kill an animal. — Tarskian

You know this how? More blind speculation. Saying things is just saying things.

The truth is I would actually be willing to pay more to kill what I eat. My personal opinion is if you are not willing to kill an animal you should not eat meat. I have expressed this view on numerous occasions to numerous people.

As an analogy of views on war. I just do not see this at all. I have travelled the world and not seen a single war break out. You, on the other hand, speak as if people are out there making war all the time. They are not. This is visible to everyone.

We are clearly carnivore. — Tarskian

Omnivorous.

On the one side, the farmers were sick and tired of roving gangs who stole their harvests. On the other side, not everybody wanted to fight. Some farmers just wanted to farm. So, in exchange for a share in the harvest, the farmers appointed their own gangsters to take on the other gangs.

If we don't do any of the fighting by ourselves, that is because we pay other people to do it for us. Someone has to do all of the killing required to protect the harvests. Apparently, it is just not you. In that case, you instead pay for someone else to do the killing for you. — Tarskian

And this is a good point to argue against yourself in terms of currently living in a peaceful time. We have moved on from slavery and serfdom. I can already guess the response to this, so let me make clear I do not mean there is NO slavery NOR serfdom anymore, only that it is no longer the norm.

The world is continuously at war in various places. Wars don't really stop. They just shift location. There are wars going on right now. We conveniently ignore them because we can. — Tarskian

The truth is we can SEE them more now than before. There is far less war today than 100 years ago. We have been gradually becoming more stable.

The way you put your point across you made it sound like if you looked out of the average window you would see death and pillaging on at least a yearly basis. This just doesn't happen anymore in most corners of the world.

Just because we have an aggressive element to our psychological make-up it does not define who we are. War is something we do, it is not anywhere near a defining part of the vast majority of human lives today.

Civilization is just a very thin veneer on top of the brutal truth. Male animals crave war. — Tarskian

I am all for cynicism, but when it is based on faulty assumptions it can be quite dangerous.

Human males do not crave war. If this was the case there would be more war. I think it would perhaps be more fitting to suggest that humans crave conflict rather than war. If we craved war so much then we would pretty much all be dead by now via self-annihilation. As history has shown we are more prone to negotiate to prolong our survival because mutually assured destruction is just that.

I would have thought Chiang Mai would be more like $800 a month. I guess people on that site are from US and want large space to live in or something?

- Chiang Mai, Thailand, $1020/month — Tarskian

That much!?

Some people even volunteer to die in foreign lands for their ruling mafia. I cannot imagine any decision more stupid than that. The ruling mafia does not give a flying fart about you. Never have. Never will. So, why would you? — Tarskian

I agree with everything here pretty much except the view that there is a "ruling mafia". I do not believe most of what happens in the political sphere is directed by any upper echelon of society. Things just move along and some people claim ownership of the resulting milieu if it adheres to their ideology.

I have not quite processed let alone regurgitated something taken from Adam Smith. The 'Invisible-Hand' but kind of find something intriguing about how Nozick reformed the idea little.

When I look at economics in general I am more interested in the distribution and scarcity of ideas and aesthetic sensibilities than focusing so intently on commodities.

I have a very simplistic view on politics. At the top, you have the ruling mafia. At the bottom, you have the populace. I cannot imagine a society without either. I acknowledge the existence of both but I do not trust either. — Tarskian

This is precisely what Popper is looking at. He seems to view this as a remnant of Closed Society carried on in Open Society. Something akin to harking back to a "Golden Age" where some magnificent Ruler held sway over society.

Nassim Taleb. — Tarskian

Ah! Heard of the Black Swan idea before. Looks interesting.

Democracy is rule by the mob. I will never endorse it. — Tarskian

If that is how you see Democracy then who would ever disagree with that? Mob rule is not exactly an enticing idea :)

Like every single ideology it has its uses but also its limitations. Popper does not offer a solution only seems intent on pointing out the reason for the problems - that is Reason itself. The cat is out of the bag now so we just have to sit back and see how things play out.

I have had the feeling that we are living through a very significant revolution right now (on the scale of the creation of civilization) but like many a blind sage I am probably completely wrong because the more I come to learn about everything the less certain I am about anything. Undoubtedly every person in every age felt some kind of severe revolutionary movement on the immediate horizon.

You can find the full text online for free.

There are obviously more nuances than in the Wiki entry.

He offers some opposition to what you seem to be sketching out as inevitable. Reading the introduction should give you a reasonable outline of this with the distinction of an Open Society and Closed Society and how in our civilised state we are caught between harking for some form of primitive Closed Societal tribalism or transferring this paradigm into rational society by recreating a 'magical' scheme that results in tyranny (authoritarianism).

In terms of naivety I am fairly sure Popper would frame your position as naive due to a clinging to historicism.

Either way, it is an interesting read whether you agree or not. Will help you to either fortify your opinions with a more rational opposing line of argumentation, or perhaps question some assumptions you consider to be fundamental.

No reading suggestions for me?

Note:

The idea that philosophers would be effective rulers, is laughable. — Tarskian

That was over two millennia ago. Keep the context in mind.

Have you read Karl Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies"?

I am in the process of reading this currently and it may serve you well to have a browse of it.

I am currently reading several works covering the broader topic of society. If you have any suggestions for me too would be very much appreciated. I try to cover subjects from as many unique perspectives as I can.

Thanks

Temporality is 'essentially' what we are. Our memories, although altered with time, remain for the most part intact. Our brains soak up what we experience in relation to what we have experienced.

What is special about humans compared to most other living organisms is that we can extend ourselves into an abstracted past and future sense of self. This is the experience of having an individual identity and like every human experience once we question its authenticity we always find something wanting ... this is basically what conscious experience necessarily entails.

A 'pure apodictic knowing' is to experience nothing. We are aware of what can be questioned not what cannot be questioned.

In this sense when you draw yourself away from the concept of an identity, and focus your attention elsewhere, your identity takes on something resembling a 'pure apodictic knowing' because it is no longer held up to the light of scepticism and rational analysis.

Marx equated happiness with power. That was the mistake.

Just another case of bourgeoise dictating their views to the proletariat because they deem themselves wiser and more worldly.

It was from a meta-ethical standpoint I said this. That is why I reframed 'Moral' and 'Ethical'. Anyway, I think we mostly understand each other here even if we disagree about AN :)

Thank you

I think it is hard to articulate - hence the problem of vagueness. It is something some people struggle to fully grasp. Emotivism that is!

The fact that I don't think I should be forcing other people to adopt my view doesn't make it less ethically-driven. — AmadeusD

In common parse, yes. In the framing I made for 'Moral' and 'Ethical' I am satisfied with how you have responded. If you had said some other things then I would have pulled you up about them. This is because AN only makes rational sense if it is either 'Moral' OR 'Ethical' in the way I framed those terms.

Could you expand? My understanding of Moral Naturalism is that it more or less indicates that morals are evolutionarily-required aspects of human development, which I don't agree with. — AmadeusD

It just seemed that you were framing emotional dispositions as the grounding for moral choices rather than there being no moral choices. I made the leap from biological necessity to emotional dispositions. That is clearly not what you meant though.

What is Right For You (Emotivism) is not deemed Objectively Right. Ergo, your claim is Subjectively Led not Objectively Led - for emphasis this is what I meant in my distinction between Moral (Right for Your Perspective) and Ethical (The Right Objective Implementation).

Only you can shake yourself free of dogma sadly. If you cannot admit he was wrong about anything then that should tell you something at least.

GL

He was wrong about the immediate collapse of capitalism. This is not a controversial point.

He has yet to be proven right about where a communist revolution would occur too. Where they did occur did not fit into his vision at all.

It generally does happen. — Tarskian

It did not happen. If you cannot admit this simple truth then there is nothing to discuss.

To be fair to Marx he envisioned a transition from capitalism to communism through socialism NOT a jump from feudalism directly to socialism. Either way, it was all hypothetical and has yet to have come to fruition on a national scale.

That is silly. What he said would happen did not happen. Pretending he made this claim yesterday is simply ignoring that fact that capitalism did the exact opposite to what he predicted after his death.

Charles Dickens made the very same kind of predictions too. It is completely understandable given the socio-politcal climate of their times. It just didn't pan out as they expected.

And again, all that aside, Marx certainly pointed out problems with the economic system that are worthy of examination today. I am not simply dismissing every criticism he had of capitalism.

He said the middle class would get sucked down into poverty. They didn't. That fact is not up for debate.

That is not to say he pointed out valid issues with capitalism. I do not believe any one in history has ever been proven correct in every prediction that they made - and even those that were correct are seldom so for valid reasons.

If we can believe Plato's account (which I doubt we can fully) then he was threatened under the assumption he would flee Athens. Socrates called their bluff though and refused to leave on principle. If he had left he would have been shown to be a hypocrite.

In general, I believe Plato wrote what he wrote because he was against Democracy. I doubt Socrates was against Democracy (if he was the kind of person we generally think of him as) because he always questioned everything rather than reaching specific conclusions about broader political matters.