What benefits do individuality or mental privacy really have? And with a lost sense of individuality, would knowing what others think of you really matter? Of course people will judge your thoughts, but if we could always tell what other people were thinking, I think we would be more compassionate about what other people were thinking. More understanding of why people do what they do. If we fused our minds, wouldn't that make everyone more interested in the greater good instead of constantly worrying about trivial things?

The state governments could elect a leader and whenever there is any international threat there would be a meeting to decide what to do about it. We shouldn't have a system in place where someone like Donald Trump can come in out of nowhere and have full power of our armed forces. When the country was founded it made sense to have a president because of the slow speed of communication. There needed to be someone to make a decision and fast. We don't need that anymore. With the advancements of technology, fast communication isn't an issue.

I don't think there needs to be a single commander of the military. There should be a board in command of the military. That seems like the best way to keep our country protected from the inside to me.

:-} The military is also used for attack, conquest, or invasion, recall, which has little to do with protection. The US-led invasion of Iraq, for instance, served special interests far more than it protected citizens against alleged "weapons of mass destruction". The idea of protection was misused to mislead the citizens. — jkop

Well I believe that the use of the military for unnecessary violence or monetary gain is immoral. Obviously the act of misleading citizens to satisfy special interests is wrong. Arguably depending on the special interests, but I don't enough about the war on Iraq to make claims about it. I certainly think the main focus of our military should be protection.

A democracy without government merely amounts to "might makes right", in which case all citizens lose their freedoms because (like what Bitter Crank says about "eternal vigilance") they end up being on guard against each other all the time and everywhere. — jkop

I agree, but I also think that we should have our guards up at all times. I'm incredibly concerned about the strengths of our freedoms. I see too much possibility for our government to lose power to a hidden corrupt elitist agenda, and I think that we should divide our military so that it isn't under complete control of one person because that could lead to some very bad situations. A democratic military with the capability of separating and fighting our government if need be.

Shouldn't our healthy democracies be prepared for such situations though? Wouldn't state run militaries be a potential solution?

It might be difficult, but I don't think it would be impossible. If we were to have federally funded state governments that could prevent against a totalitarian state I think that would be the best option. I don't really see how it could take away our ability to defend against external threats either.

Why should the military focus only on external threats? If we were to ever reach a point where we had to rise up against our national government, there isn't much we could do at this point. With the advancements of weapon technology, most people couldn't really afford to pay for anything that could fight off drones, missiles, tanks or any of the technology the government uses.

I think that all those things are self serving. People do good things for others because it produces a good feeling.

I'm not sure what you mean by the concept of ought-can though. Would you care to elaborate?

http://thesolutionsproject.org/

I'm curious what everyone thinks about this

I see identity as being more fluid than anything else. I am the result of the consciousness that is produced by my brain. My identity is the result of that consciousness trying to make sense of itself in order to achieve a feeling of comfort and familiarity. But I think that attaching your sense of identity to your physical traits is problematic. I have never taken pride in being a man or being white. I take pride in my accomplishments and my ethics. My actions are the indicator of who I am and that is where we should find our identity in my opinion. I think that transgenderism is simply people who don't feel normal trying to do so. But I don't think that anyone feels normal. Just because we can do gender reassignment surgeries doesn't mean we should. However, I don't see any harm in doing them for now. And I am certainly not an expert on the subject. We should see whether or not it actually helps to have the surgery and society should be as accommodating as possible. To answer your question though, yes if I were to do all of that I would still be me because it is the same conciousness in every instance of "me"

Does it matter though? Just because men are biologically bigger does that mean they should be separated in sports? I'm sure there are some women that would want to compete on a men's level.

Do you think it is a waste of time to argue politics?

The song that got me into philosophy. I don't think there will ever come a point in my life where these lyrics specifically won't resonate with me.

"Some people think
That if they go too far
They'll never get back
To where the rest of
Them are
I might be crazy
But there's one thing
I know
You might be surprised
At what you find
When ya go!

If you been
Mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion,
An yer in between
Don't you be
Tarot-fied,
It's just a lot of nothin',
So what can it mean?"

I love the whole concept of this song. A catchy experimental beat with such mediocre cringe-worthy lyrics that perfectly convey the meaning of apathy towards the whole project. A perfect example of people making art exclusively for themselves.

I don't really understand that point of view. How could tradition be the center of a moral view?

So what lies at the center of your moral view?

How is suffering ambiguous but moral agency isn't? I haven't really seen any sort of evidence showing that humans have this mystical thing called moral agency that other animals do not.

I think we're just arguing semantics here. I'm not saying that we created English straight from scratch. A chair maker doesn't will the chair into existence. They build it piece by piece. If it weren't for our consciousness would our language exist? If it weren't for our species, would the concept of meaning exist?

If it weren't for us creating language, we wouldn't be able to conceptualize meaning. Meaning is just a word in a language that we created. Therefore we created the concept of meaning.

I disagree. We may have created the concept of meaning, and we may be able to apply that to our individual lives. That doesn't mean that life as a concept has it's own objective meaning or purpose. Life is as far as I can tell completely random. That isn't necessarily a bad or good thing, it just is. The closest thing to an objective truth about the meaning of human life is to survive and procreate, but that is just one aspect of life. Life is too vague a concept to apply meaning to.

This sounds a little sentimental, no? Attachments in themselves aren't moral or immoral, so I'm not seeing how they can be justification for a moral hierarchy. — Heister Eggcart

The attachments are there. Less attachments would mean less impact if the life were taken away. There would be less consequences to killing a grown woman than her fetus.

Society dictates the nature of a fetus's being? — Heister Eggcart

I would say that society has the power to take away the life of the fetus so yes.

I see no justifiable reason for human life to be held at a higher importance than all life.

Because the woman would have other people with emotional attachments in her life and the fetus has not developed many if any such attachments. The fetus has no current place in society. The fetus is dependant on the woman for survival. The fetus has no sense of self awareness before 18 months.

I'd be interested to see where you got these statistics

I like most of what you said, but where does quality of life come into play. Couldn't it be morally right for the mother to abort if the life of the mother and the life of the fetus were subject to more suffering as a result of the child being born?

So you think that this issue is more important to consider from an economic standpoint instead of moral?

I'm not ruling out speciesism entirely. I'm just suggesting that the notions of all human life being equal is a sentimental idea. If you are going to adopt an equality in that situation it should apply to animals as well in my opinion. A fetus shouldn't have the same value as the president of the united states. I like your idea that anything that can feel pain should have value, but in this particular instance both mother and child feel pain. Wouldn't the fully developed mother be more valuable than the fetus?

Depends on what you mean by value. In most cases I would say yes everyone has value. In terms of value towards society I think that everyone would have either a net positive or negative value. I don't think it would be possible to prove the value of a person because there are too many variables that we are not aware of when it comes to our self. It is also dependant on what a person thinks is best for society so value is completely subjective. We would all need to be identical to come up with a universal defintion of value and nothing can be measured if it cannot be defined.

How do you think Trump managed to keep the trust of american citizens after repeatedly lying to them?

Isn't everything a self serving act? can you actually do something not out of self interest?

In a previous conversation you said that emotions are differential and logic is integral. Where does intuition fit into that model?

So the neurons of a highly intuitive person would be more out of sync than a less intuitive person?

So are logic and emotion simply separate tools for the self to use?

Would you mind sharing some of that knowledge with me?

the "that's not how it works" part

That would only be an issue if one's concept of beauty was transfered to you from external sources, but that's not how it works. — Terrapin Station

What makes you say that?

If intelligence were to evolve to be more efficient than emotions, would emotions still have any evolutionary purpose?

1. a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory: a potentially serious conflict between quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity known as the information paradox. — Bitter Crank

thesis — apokrisis

It seem that most of my ideas are self contradictory in some way. I don't know if i believe that there are alternatives to those ideas that can be otherwise though. Maybe that's why I try to argue that the self is an illusion. It may be possible that I am stuck in some sort of semantic error

I can't tell you whether these preferences are innate or acquired. Do we think that a statue of Apollo from the classical era is beautiful because the ancient sculptor captured innate beauty, or have we been taught that classical sculpture is beautiful? — Bitter Crank

I'm not sure if I believe in beauty being an innate concept. From an evolutionary standpoint I don't see much value to beauty. I find it to be more logical for beauty to be an idea that was conceived as a way to swindle someone for personal gain and ended up being a very contagious idea.

I've seen things about the fractal being key to our concept of beauty, but I've always thought it was superstition. Do you have any type of source that you could include that would say the same?

That makes a lot of sense

Beauty is both demonstrable and quantifiable — wuliheron

How?

If you disagree with me, try to persuade me to your point of view. What is the point of philosophy if you don't debate people you disagree with? Does what I said make you think I'm too far gone or something? I really don't understand why you would just shut down like that

And all of that is a consequence of the development of the Christian West. I think what you would see as a consequence of putting their ideas into action, is a culture that is a lot less free, because it grants the human being no intrinsic reality. — Wayfarer

It may be a consequence of the development of the Christian West, but does Christianity contain any value to the future of society? I don't think taking away a source of "intrinsic reality" would be a bad thing. It would force people to think for themselves instead of accepting a false notion of there being a correct view of reality. It would lead to a more authentic society in my opinion.

As if minds aren't being corrupted already by the free availability of online pornography and all of the nefarious activities that people get up to on the internet. you can loose your home without leaving it, gambling on the internet. — Wayfarer

I don't see pornography and gambling as being damaging to the human intellect in the same way that religion is.

There was a powerful philosophical movement called Logical Positivism which was started by a brilliant phllosopher, A J Ayer, when he was still in his twenties. He published a book called Language Truth and Logic, which argued for 'the principle of verificationism'. Very hard to summarise it, or the arguments around it, I spent a whole semester on it. But suffice to say that in the end, it had to be admitted that Ayer's principle of verificationism couldn't be justified on it's own terms. Why not? Because the statement that 'every proposition has to be verifiable with respect to some state of affairs', could not itself be verified by those means. (I'm paraphrasing here.) — Wayfarer

This sounds a lot like Godel's incompleteness theorems which is a concept I have had trouble grasping but I blame that on a lack of a solid mathematical foundation. The way I understand it, It was all about the limits of math in the same way that I think you are using the principle of verificationism to show the limits of logic. I think there will always be circular reasoning in using a technique for understanding reality on it-self.

My opinion on Christianity is that it has outlived its purpose. Humans have evolved through it but it's time is ending the further science advances because I believe science can do a better job than any of the functions of the bible.

The "self" is not an illusion as much as the concept of an unchanging, concrete self is. There is clearly something that perceives, senses, imagines, feels, thinks, and decides. Whether this thing persists over time, or whether this thing is capable of being dissolved does not change the fact that it is still there. — darthbarracuda

That makes sense. Is that something unique in any way though or is it just programmed by events in reality? Are all of our senses of self the same thing which only differ through variation in experience?