If you chaps would have read Bateson, you might have accumulated the conceptual tools to think this through rather more clearly. Alas, there was not much interest in that careful thinker.

tldr: Feedback produces circular causation, like a thermostat regulates a heating system that operates the thermostat. This produces "in effect" a system with a purpose - to maintain a temperature between limits. Human bodies and living things do the same or similar things to maintain themselves in dynamic equilibrium. It would be foolish to try and understand a heating system without reference to its purpose; one could make no sense, for example, of its having "gone wrong". Understanding is another purposive relationship with feedback.

I think it would be wise to leave stupidity undefined.

It is where I always start and what I seek to leave.

Are you confusing a goal with a gateway? Goals are ends, gateways are beginnings. They can look similar.

My "have to" is innocuous. I only meant that one would have to agree to some form of the categorical imperative in order to have the kind of motive you described. — J

And I was saying with my innocuous "ought to" only that this conversation has no meaning unless we are morally committed to truth.

But what is the problem here?

If I say I have a desire to do something, no one makes a fuss, but if I say I have an obligation to do something, it is problematic and someone will demand that I get it out of my pocket and show them.

So here I am, getting the obligation out of my pocket and showing you - that talk only works if you commit to truth and refrain from crying "wolf!" when there is no wolf. The game of lying can only get off the ground in a community of truth-tellers, because only when there are truth tellers does anyone have any reason to understand what is being said.

Nobody has to tell the truth, sometimes people don't want to tell the truth, but they always ought to tell the truth. It is when someone tells me I ought to do something when I don't want to do it that I start to get all sceptical, but if I cry wolf when there is no wolf, I might find that when there is a wolf, no one heeds my cry and no one comes to my rescue. What you ought to do matters to you, and stuff that matters is real.

And this is not a matter of convention, because an opposite obligation cannot function; lies become spam and we stop listening and responding. It is a simple fact that society, and civilisation is necessarily a cooperative affair and such mutual obligations are integral to every human society without exception.

But this is the Kantian problem of universalization. I have to first accept that my actions can serve as a "maxim" for others, — J

You don't have to accept anything. But you ought to accept the truth, otherwise there is no reason or meaning to our discussion.

When we claim something like "one ought not murder" we are trying to describe an objective feature of the world. As such, if there are such features then realism is true and if there aren't such features then error theory is true. — Michael

And the true feature of the world in this case is that A society of murderers cannot exist. They die out.

Point of order.

Feedback is not a place to have the discussion of a deleted topic. The mods have deleted the topic because it was poorly set out and argued. They have answered the feedback, and should have closed the thread already. The solution is to set it out more clearly and cogently in a new thread, or else move on.

Maybe we should listen to the ghost of Nelson Goodman and argue for moral irrealism: that there are incompatible different versions of value systems, and in any given context at least one of them needs to be taken so seriously as to be called 'moral'. — mcdoodle

That would work fine for which side of the road to drive on, and result in some aphorism like "When in Rome, drive according to the rules the Romans follow."

But ... "Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes;
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases." ... is patent nonsense, and incompatible with human flourishing, which is not infinitely adaptable, but finds some social environments inimical.

There is a game babies play of throwing their toys out of the pram. This is a non-verbal behavioural negotiation. For a while, the attentive parent will play along, but eventually will get bored. Learn the limits of parental responsibility with your baby! This is morality before language – social regulation being enacted. Of course it's real; without such learning through negotiated relationship you will die.

I have no problem with this...except I don’t see how it is a moral realist position: morality can have social value (and can conflict with personal value) without there being moral facts. Are you also arguing that those social values are moral facts? — Bob Ross

Are there personal desire facts? "I like to breathe." sort of thing?
To the same extent there can be moral facts. "Societies like truthful communication."

There is a real difference between a pile of car components and an assembled car. A big difference and a vital difference, that we use words like 'structure' and 'function' and 'interaction' to get at.

At the level of living things, there is the same kind of structural interacting of parts that make a functional whole, but in addition, this functioning is reproductive; that is an organism has a functional relation to itself, and hence to the environment such that some environments are good for it and others are inimical. This is a differential self preserving relationship with the environment that is the root of what we experience as desire or need. Yeast needs sugar, and chooses to ingest it.

Humans need social nurturing as well as food and shelter. Parents need to love and nurture their children, and children need to be nurtured. Are you having any difficulty with the reality of these things I am saying?

Why did they write in the article about 'artificially' raising oil demand? — ssu

Probably because they're a bunch of conspiracy theorists a doom merchants. Unless the policy was a secret one that directly contradicted their public commitments on climate or something complicated like that.

Conspiracy theory anyone?

https://www.channel4.com/news/undercover-filming-highlights-saudi-plan-to-artificially-raise-oil-demand#

Odd mod. — BC

You think that's odd? @Hanover made me stop talking to him.

With regards to my previous positive argument for moral anti-realism, I no longer accept it (thanks to the useful critiques by fellow moral realist members). — Bob Ross

It is a rare and beautiful thing when a chap changes his mind even a little as a result of discussion. I am inclined to say it is also a good thing to be swayed by cogent argument and to seek the truth. Truth is better than falsehood. and this is necessarily the case because a community of habitual falsehood speakers would have no use for each other's speech, and meaning and language would be lost entirely.
Now life can manage perfectly well without language, but whenever the question is raised, the question itself presumes that a truthful response will be forthcoming - whether it is raised in a philosophy forum or scrawled on a toilet wall.

So in general, I would suggest that morality is social value, and the sense of unreality arises because social value and personal value can and do conflict at times. No one complains that their own desires are unreal, it's always those values that conflict with them that might not be real...

You made me stop talking to you.

I don't see the moral equivalence you're trying to draw. — Hanover

You know, I really believe you don't. That is the tragedy.

But "Hamas made me do it" is pathetic.

In the scenario posed, the question is whether we can shoot a child who is being used as a human shield in order to save our city (or, in the alternative, whether we can invade a hospital in order to remove an enemy military base underneath). — Hanover

And the answer you give is yes. The answer I give is no.

Incidentally, I understand that British policy is never to negotiated with hostage takers, on the grounds that to negotiate would be to encourage hostage taking in the future. I don't know if the policy is implemented on every occasion, but it is certainly advertised. Strange that tough minded Israel doesn't follow such a policy. All a matter, I have to suppose, of whose child it is whether it is or isn't moral to sacrifice them.

However, this ability of some individuals to have an outsized role in the course of historical events is instructive for "every day people," as well. Gavrilo Princip happened to be positioned to change history when he shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Mohamed Bouazizi's self immolation likewise set off a cascade of world shaping events in the form of the Arab Spring. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The old flap of a butterfly's wing creating a hurricane. The human world is a chaotic system of unrivalled complexity, and there are unknowable moments when one life can have a large effect, and sometimes all too knowable periods when one life is caught in an inescapable flow. Who knows, but I might meet a future Gavrilo on the street today, and just a friendly smile divert him from the path of destruction? For certain every mover and shaker needed to suckle and have their diaper changed before they rocked the world.

Damn, this so far feels like some really melancholically pessimistic stuff. — javra

Now a poem, one gives thanks for, but one does not ask for it to have a goal, not even to comfort the melancholy. But they illustrate my point. One does not denigrate the lives of others who choose a different path, not even a poet, not even a bad poet. Yet the op in sublime ignorance passes judgement over not one but two venerable traditions because they fail to satisfy his own feeble criteria of instrumentalism. It's a piece of egregious "what's-the-point-ism?" that deserves to be exposed for the depressing elitist nonsense that it is.

So I repeat, there is nothing about goals that make them worthwhile. Once get that into your head and you can begin to live a life in freedom.

There are no worthwhile goals. If life is the goal, it is already achieved; if extinction is the goal it will be achieved eventually in every case. Set up the goal posts wherever you like and kick a can between them, or just kick a a can down the road. Or ask a stupid question and get some answers. Remember to breathe, or forget.

China has the largest buddhist population in the world, but this doesn’t seem to have prevented them from also being the world’s highest emitter of carbon, surpassing the U.S. — Joshs

With only 4 times the population! Greedy beggars!

I didn't. Rape, murder, and torture isn't necessary for the protection of one's society. — Hanover

They are used as weapons of war. If you don't use them, then my original point stands, that the virtuous put themselves at a disadvantage by renouncing immorality. Once we have agreed that far, we can argue about what acts in particular we might find it seemly to renounce in all circumstances, and what killings and maimings of innocents we can tolerate while still enjoying our moral superiority in difficult situations.

As I've also noted, the morality I've described is what prevails in most every nation. — Hanover

You need to show that what prevails is moral. And you need to show how a moral individual, or a moral society behaves differently to an immoral one. If your morality is simply to sink to the level of behaviour of the worst, then whatever you call it, I will call it immorality. But if a moral society or a moral individual behaves differently on principle to an immoral person or an immoral society, then to that extent the moral are at a disadvantage . Have it which way you want, but not both ways. Don't claim the moral high ground and the right to murder, rape torture etc. Virtue has a price.

But this is what I'm challenging, which is that you can have an ethical ethics system if it gives advantage to those you consider unethical. — Hanover

Then you can't have an ethical system; you are reduced to 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' backed up with 'an eye for an eye' and 'God favours the big battalions.' And the good are no different from the bad.

This is an aspect of a very general problem for good people everywhere. Good people limit themselves to good, or at least justified actions. Bad people though will readily stoop to good actions whenever such will further their nefarious ends. This means that bad people always have the advantage of playing by the rules when it suits them, and cheating when that suits them better.

Tough shit, suckers!

. I imagine 20th century history would be quite different if Adolf Hitler had died of a stroke shortly after becoming chancellor for example. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can imagine history being very different if he had had a better primary school art teacher.

As has been pointed out by unenlightened, our basic setup for parenting is kind of bad. And that means a lot of parenting traditions will be adaptations for that situation. That means a lot of bad things might be happening as a matter of course that we don't even recognize as "bad parenting". — Echarmion

One thing we do know is that the state makes a terrible parent. So there is no reason to imagine that the state has any expertise on what even constitutes a good parent or a good upbringing.

I wonder if a fundamental cause of the controversies is that the concept of free will is poorly defined — Art48

I think the controversy arises from the fact that one is obliged to believe and not believe at the same time.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. — Robert Frost.

One has to choose whenever roads diverge. And in order to make a choice, one has to believe one can freely choose, and has to choose or else remain forever in the wood. It is always some other philosopher or poet who claims that one's choice is not free but predetermined, but for oneself, as for that other herself, one has to make the choice whatever one believes just as if one were free to choose.

And of course even the most trivial choice of action, as any time traveller will affirm, makes "all the difference", if only because the next traveller will find the paths differently worn and have a different choice to make depending which, for you was "the road not taken".


Edit: In case anyone does not intuit the argument from the poetry, the philosophical claim is that for any human choice, the decision-making process can include any philosophical claim or consideration except one that specifies that choices cannot be made, or are already determined.

You might imagine, given my handle here, that I would be familiar with this great controversy, but alas I thought I thought I was the lone wolf crying in the wilderness. It is obvious that Caesar needs a whole Empire, Napoleon needs an army, and even Newton stands on the shoulders of giants by his own admission.

One does not need to negate the significance of the individual to acknowledge these things. When one man presses the button to end the world, a cast of thousands will have toiled to prepare the connections, and hundreds will do the bidding of plans drawn up before he got his finger anywhere near the red button of doom. The fantasy of the independent sovereign individual was never more than an adolescent wet dream. Rather, the power of the community cooperating makes things happen and changes the world.

So the question for individuals is always with what they will cooperate. The leaders we currently have are inclined to cooperate with our most primitive instincts and arouse fear and greed, and the doctrine of the isolated mechanical self-interested individual is ideal ground with which to promote these sensations.

Fear that the other is about to rob, to rape you, to take your job your home, and your family makes one feel isolated, and that makes one easily manipulable, because as a social being, isolation is a terrible anxiety inducing state. So one tends to join the nearest army available.

Try not to cooperate with these kind of projects, but with projects that produce affection and welcome everyone that cares to join and work for the community.

It takes a village to raise a child. — African proverb

Anyone who thinks they are capable, or any parent or couple can be capable of raising a child without social support, should first demonstrate that they themselves can build a house and produce food to sustain themselves, alone, with only tools they have made themselves. Until then, it is safe to assume that it is society as a whole that is responsible for supporting parents to support children, and that their failure is our collective failure.

Why do these realisations lead to melancholy or escapism? Why don’t people change their expectations instead of being mad about human nature? Why isn’t there a discipline that aims to build concepts that are closer to reality? — Skalidris

We know that it is possible to live in peace, to care for one another and enjoy life. And yet we know that we do not do it. I don't see how this knowledge can not lead to melancholy or escapism. We are destroying the planet and ourselves for nothing. Hurrah???

I expect the extinction of human life, or at least 90% thereof this century. It makes me sad. do you think there is some non-escapist way I can find it not sad? I don't even want to not find it sad. surely the very least I can do is to end my life in tears.

Was he pushed, or did he change horses midstream?

https://www.ft.com/content/dd9ba2f6-f509-42f0-8e97-4271c7b84ded

Mostly, I fart around and make lots of mistakes. But sometimes I read the instructions or watch a video, when mistakes look like they might be expensive or painful.

Austin has argued that Ayer makes use of the Argument from Illusion, but that a closer reading shows Ayer does not actually believe the argument. That is, Ayer does not reach the conclusion, that what we directly perceive are sense data, as a consequence of consideration of the Argument from Illusion. Rather, Ayer has other reasons for his view, and uses the Argument for Illusion only rhetorically, as a post hoc justification. — Banno

The old "illusion" of a chequerboard with a shadow cast across it such that dark square A is 'surprisingly' shown to be "the same exact shade" as light square B ...

... seems to me to demonstrate that we precisely do not see the sense data, (patches of identical grey) but the interpretation thereof. We read the difference into the same data and see the result. One reads the flat screen as if it were representing the world. Just as one does not see the black worms all over the screen, but the meaning of the writing.

Likewise, I am told that the eye vibrates, and this produces a 'flicker' at the edges of objects that aids edge detection. One does not experience the vibration or the flicker, but the edges of objects.

Likewise a spear fisherman learns to see round the corner of the water's surface to where the fish really is so that when his spear bends as it enters the water, it will hit the fish. And the architect, the artist and the fashion designer all use 'trompe l'oeil' with equal proficiency. Only philosophers actually look for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Hume's scepticism is the scepticism of the power of pure reason. His fight is with a rationalism that tries to prove what cannot be proved but must be discovered. Reason cannot get an ought from an is, or a will-be from a has-been, or a world from experience. This is because it is limited to words and talk and can only keep language in order at best.

This is the sense in which it cannot affect the world. And the sense in which it certainly can affect the world is that when one orders coffee the waiter tends to bring one coffee. The tree is not listening, but the lumberjack is. Now if one cannot allow that both these senses are perfectly valid, then it is rationality that has a problem, because the world accommodates both with no trouble at all.

Thus Hume is rejecting rationalism in favour of empiricism, and it looks like Austin is doing the same, while Ayer and co are trying to rehabilitate a form of rationalism

This video is out of date. The climate has got worse, the political situation has also got worse. Extinction rebellion has failed. Emissions are still increasing.

And here's some mainly US history on the politicisation of the issue and the betrayal of the science.

It's what every decent human has to do, care for each other and reason our way to living together. "How" is with a deal of wisdom that is hard to find, and harder to practice. Doctors have to do it, especially surgeons. How does one kindly take a scalpel to another human? I don't know...

Here's a handy summary of roughly how very fucked we are and why we are not going to be unfucked by science magic or very stable geniuses.

https://www.okdoomer.io/10-reasons-our-civilization-will-soon-collapse/

The most common argument against the existence of objective morality and moral facts besides moral differences between societies is that they aren’t tangible objects found in the universe and can’t be measured scientifically. Are there any refutations or arguments against this?- — Captain Homicide

And if the lack of moral facts is true, and the argument is sound, does this make it a good argument? If it is a good argument it refutes itself, therefore it cannot be a good argument, therefore it is a bad argument. If there are bad arguments and good arguments, then truth preservation is good and there are moral facts.

It's hard to be specific. A history of philosophy is usually recommended, and some sort of dictionary is a great crib-sheet. Philosophers are all great name-droppers and jargon users, and something like this is really useful. http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/ Sort the Neoplatonism from the neologism fast.

Then Stanford (SEP) will give depth on anything that grabs you. Beyond that, it all depends on what has bitten you whether one might prescribe a dose of Rorty, or Nietzsche. or Ryle, or another. You're going to have to deal with Plato sooner or later, and my personal favourite starting point is The Trial and Death of Socrates -straight into the individual in relation to society and meaning worth dying for.