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.

We are, alas, living with the consequences of rationalism. The enlightenment and the success of science make it seem as if reason has triumphed over emotion, but this cannot be, and even the terms 'success' and 'triumph' are emotional judgements.

But to reject rationality in favour of emotion would be as impossible and dangerous as the worst excesses of rationalism. Emotion in the broadest sense is caring about something some degree. To reject emotion is to pretend not to care about anything, and that is a recipe for failure to say no to absolute horror. But to deny reason is equally to deprive oneself of any ability to act effectively on one's emotions. Reason it is that demand, when emotion says no to horror, that one acts to end horror.

Not so much a Holy Grail, more a big box of snakes, all entangled with each other, most of them poisonous and slippery. Reach in at your peril and try to pull out one snake to examine it, and be-it the snake 'ontology', or the snake 'freewill', or the snake 'ethics', or whatever, you will find it so entangled with all the other snakes that it is impossible to get a clear view of it, and difficult enough not to get bitten.

What are the philosophical consequences of science saying we are mechanistic?

Thus the title, and we have a genuine scientist saying it; but what are the consequences?

On the face of it, the consequences are that, demonstrably, machines can produce moral systems, artistic traditions, religions, science, and philosophies. Who'd of thunk it? Well we would, apparently, because we are simply machines.

What I disagree with is the notion that the coming collapse, if there is one, will mean the end of the human species. I mean, it could, but there isn't reason to believe it has to. — frank

That is about where I am. A lot depends on all those tipping points and positive and negative feedbacks as well as what humans do in the next couple of decades. A runaway hothouse scenario is possible that would eliminate almost all complex land based life. 6°C is more possible, and would be unspeakably bad. But there is no precedent, so nobody knows.

I'd put my money on insect supercolonies to evolve into a new form of life. — frank

They'll use your money for nest material.

I would put my money on bacteria. — Agree-to-Disagree

They'll eat your money.

Descartes and Hume both distinguished beliefs produced by reason from beliefs produced by the imagination (i.e. by instinct, custom and habit), an imagination which we share with the beasts. In their view, a method of belief formation presents itself as a method of reasoning only if it appears to justify certainty about its conclusions. Any method of belief formation which fails to promise certainty must first be vindicated by a proper method of reasoning before we can rely on it. And if this can’t be done, we must admit that to form beliefs by that method is to yield to the workings of our imagination. Since induction could not be so vindicated, Hume made the required admission:

"the experimental reasoning, which we posses in common with the beasts, and on which the whole conduct of life depends, is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power that acts in us unknown to ourselves (my italics) (Hume 1975: 108)

And he thought the same applied to any method of belief formation. For Hume, ‘belief produced by reason’ is an empty category; for him, our beliefs are governed by the very principles of instinct and imagination which rule the mental lives of the beats. — D. Owens.

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/1211/1/owensdj3.htm

Hume elsewhere confesses that he does indeed expect the future to be like the past, and the ground not to collapse beneath him. My understanding that he is not in fact attacking the common-sense understanding of the world at all, Rather he is attacking the over-reach of "reasoning". It is reason that is limited by not being able to get an 'ought' from an 'is' or a 'will be' from a 'has been'.

But humans are not constrained by reason, only philosophy students are, and then only in their academic productions.

The collapse you describe in the economy is not such a big threat. It will be painful and might required decades of authoritarianism and revolution. Or even a collapse in civilisation. But the threat from climate change is existential. — Punshhh

The economic collapse is part of climate change, just because the economy is predicated on the eternal expansion of fossil fuel consumption and waste dumping . When the burgers run out the white man will get angry. Angry toddler with nuclear arsenal may not wait for the seas to close over his head.

Is this headline intended to cause fear and anxiety? — Agree-to-Disagree

Of course it is. Headlines are designed to grab your attention, by evoking some emotion.

It is a tragedy that because such manipulation has been going on for a century and more, we have learned to ignore these things as the exaggeration has become wilder and wilder. The same thing happens with fire alarms. Too many false alarms result in folk ignoring them when the fire is real. Thus a whole academic discipline of climate scientists and Earth science researchers end up being treated like a hysterical headline writer.

I think the personality comparison is quite apt. Churchill was a privileged rabid factional racist obsessed with his own destiny in a declining empire of world exploitation. And Churchill was petty much a spent force, marginalised as the out-dated bigot he was until WW2 gave him an enemy to suit his rhetoric. Unlike Trump, mind, he was an actual soldier with combat experience.

The difference is that both Trump the US are fighting fantasy 'enemies within', and that is what puts them on the fascict side on this occasion. Identifying the real enemy is the crucial step that is lacking (hint: think oil).

I want to start from scratch and understand the first principles of philosophy so that I fight different theories while on solid ground. — T4YLOR

Alas, this is a recipe for disaster. Instead of starting from where you want to be, start from where you are, in the middle of a muddle. Instead of looking for solid ground, look for clear issues and questions, and and try to articulate what is personally at stake for you in answering one way or another. Read widely, and expect to change your mind a lot. Breathe...

The story of The Emperor's New Clothes comes to mind. The best protection is another viewpoint - a diverse community; the greatest danger the echo chamber of the party line. In this sense, one could say that taking stupid seriously is what keeps us somewhat honest, and to declare once and for all what is stupid it to stop listening to the dissenting voice. I keep meeting this circle in the topic ... Oh yes, poetry...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? — WB Yeats

The poem declares its title and transcends itself in its self discovery. And the blank and pitiless gaze is surely the triumph of stupidity? As if wisdom must become stupidity for lack of conviction or an excess.

Well there would have been much more wisdom in a dignified silence; when I find my own stupidity, I have already transcended it. Finding it in others is a trivial pursuit.

Stupidity: n, thinking philosophy can be found in a dictionary. :wink:

Trump has the best words.

My main question is: What if there were greater existential threats to humanity than climate change, would the apathy on those issues not be good reason to be spiteful over all the climate change hype? — Merkwurdichliebe

There is no 'if' about it. The greatest threat to humanity is the collapse of the economy. The new industrial revolution combining 3d printing and AI mean that mass production and consumption are becoming unnecessary, as a means to wealth and power. The mass of humanity entirely lacks the wisdom to control the economy, and so mass production and consumption - and hence the mass of humanity - will end. The failure to tackle climate change is just a convenient means to accelerate things a little. "Keep calm and carry on", is all we know how to do, like our cousins the lemmings.

I doubt it was meant to remember the enemy combatants, like the axis power soldiers who lost their lives in commitment to the destruction of Britain. That is, it is not just a day to lament death, regardless of who has died, but those who died in war defending Britain. — Hanover

Well My state owned radio featured a reading of "All quiet on the Western front", a German story of lament for the loss of one German youth, and another program about the dreadful failure of the armistice to bring peace in the long term to either Europe or worse to the Ottoman Empire, largely due to its inequity as between races and nations. I find the suggestion that one is or ought to be partisan about the dead a bit offensive, not personally, but to the long tradition of using the poppy as a symbol of the common colour of all our blood regardless of flag or skin. It seems that even in death we are a long way apart.

But my main point was to expose the irony of the likes of Tommy Robinson defending Israel. and the dreadful fact of the British government encouraging him.

Remembrance day is a thing in the UK, stemming from WW1 and folk like to stand still and quiet for 2 minutes, to 'remember the dead'. This year there were also scheduled marches calling for a cease fire in Gaza. The Home secretary, Suella Braverman, a non-white person, who has oversight of the police amongst other political duties, was calling these demonstrators 'hate marchers' and demanding that the police ban the march as it would conflict with the remembrance day observances. The police declined to do so, and her displeasure was publicly displayed.

So today, we have the edifying spectacle of Right-wing Nationalists on a "counter-demonstration" turning up to the remembrance cenotaphs, getting drunk, and chucking stuff at the police in supposed protection of the sacred remembers of the fallen and against the pro-Palestinian marchers, (who were elsewhere, a mile or so away), and therefore in favour of Israel, all while giving a modified (with a pointy finger) Nazi salute, because such gestures can get you arrested.

Thus is the doctrine that my enemies' enemy is my friend played out in all its manifold hypocrisy, based on the contrivance that those who mourn the dead are the enemies of those who protest the dying.

It all fits neatly together with the observation made somewhere very quietly, that Palestinians are also Semites.

Have you seen a Ukrainian Maginot Line anywhere? — Tzeentch

No, but I have seen a Russian one.

The scenario where what you describe is possible (with the forces Russia commits to Kiev) is one where Ukraine forces essentially don't put up a fight and Russian tanks can roll into Kiev uncontested. Again, that would certainly be the ideal scenario for the Russians and they certainly would have done that if there was no resistance. — boethius

That's all I'm saying, they went for a quick decapitation of the government alongside a push for a land bridge and as much coast line as they could, including Odessa which would have given them control of the 'breadbasket', a powerful lever in international relations. Without that regime change, it looks like they are now resigned to at best a frozen conflict for the indefinite future, because they still don't seem to have the numbers to occupy and subdue the whole country.

I already addressed what you said, and my complaint that you quote is that you deal in innuendo and never even have a point to make. If you actually made an argument, I would do my best to address it, but since you confine yourself to 'whataboutisms' and feeble attempts to undermine climate science from a position of sublime ignorance, there is little but your personality to go at. But I don't blame you really, you are only a pawn in their game.

No one here is arguing the Russian invasion went perfectly according to plan, we're just pointing out Russian decisions do make sense. — boethius

The idea that Russia is an irrational... — boethius

No one here is is arguing that either, at least not any more than any human group is fundamentally irrational at any time.

So, assuming you're correct and Putin views Zelensky a puppet of the US, why wouldn't said US puppet do what he's told and implement US policy of rejecting peace? — boethius

I'm not a military expert, but what happened looks to me to be modelled on the WW2 German invasion of France, a high speed blitz takeover of the Capital avoiding the main defensive forces to remove the government and replace it with a Vichy style government of the strategically unimportant regions, and annexation of, in this case, the entire south coast. Zelensky removed has no chance to dance to anyone's tune. Given an ex comedian with no political pedigree in charge, that is not an irrational plan. That obviously didn't happen, and then there was a strange pause before the withdrawal and regrouping. It looked like a winning plan until it didn't, which was when the airport couldn't be secured.
There was even a Pro-Russian faction with support from oligarchs and security services waiting to step into the breach.

What were the Russians running short of? — Tzeentch

Anecdotally, they were running short first of fuel, then of personal equipment for troops, and then of munitions and tanks and even training facilities for the reinforcements. But perhaps that is all Western propaganda.

A quick negotiated settlement was obviously the preferred outcome, but I think it's pretty much unthinkable that the Russians did not plan for a situation in which negotiations failed. — Tzeentch

Then why did they have those long lines of stalled transport for a week or two, and why did they run short of so many things so quickly? Can they not count?

We used to have standards -- specifically to filter out the bogus stuff. — GRWelsh

Yes indeed; standards. It goes for anything. We have food standards, hygiene standards, safety standards, building standards, that we rely on; and, here on this informal site we still have standards of behaviour. Fake money is not tolerable why would we tolerate fake talk? Money is nothing but a promise that we trust. Counterfeit money destroys trust in the currency and inflation is the measure of the loss of trust. Civil unrest is the measure of the loss of trust in government.

And wacko conspiracy theories are the measure of the loss of trust in those institutions that have taken over from religion – Science and the Media.

Without trust there is no society, no government, no police, no army, "...and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

T I think such a puppet regime would last a few days at most. — Tzeentch

I think Putin thought the same about Zelensky. A puppet he could knock over in a few days.Do you think Russia began this prepared for a long war of attrition?

I think it is a reasonable supposition that Putin thought he was attacking a comedian of a leader, and could do what he liked in Ukraine at little cost, and I think it is also reasonable to suppose he wanted Odessa, and a puppet government in Kiev. I think he planned to be sucking the profits from the grain harvest by now.

We have been lied to and manipulated so much that trust has been lost in politicians, scientists, and the media. It is impossible now to trust authority, and so people are left rudderless, and prey to any fantastic conspiracy theory. To be contrarian is just another masquerade of sceptical rigour - the less one knows about something the more fair-mind one must be in opposing whatever is the consensus. Perhaps we never should have trusted them, perhaps we never did. I blame psychology as the science of lies; it has driven us all insane.

Apparently, you want to go further. You want government to sanction and discourage politicians from lying? I see enormous problems with that. — RogueAI

Of course there are problems with that. We are used to politicians lying and when caught in a lie, shrugging it off or doubling down (to hell?). Yes I want politicians to value truth and reject lies and demand some honour of each other. We are in the situation where that seems an impossible ask; we expect to be lied to all the time, and that is why many people fasten onto whatever conspiracy theory is current. Perhaps it will take another world war or an environmental catastrophe before folk will learn their mistake.

Yes, vote for the party that sanctions its own members occasionally for the most egregious bullshit. Support the Science foundations that expel the fakers of results. Frequent the philosophy forums that remove the proselytisers and crackpots. Do your own best to make the distinction and support others to make the same distinction. Do not vote for liars and charlatans. If you do not make the distinction and hold fast to the truth as best you can, then you cannot in good conscience complain when your democracy is subverted by liars and fascists.

There is no freedom in not being able to believe what anyone says; it is the end of the life of the mind, and the end of civilisation. I see that as an enormous problem.

Lovers of wisdom need to banish bullshitters from their midst. This is a moral imperative.

You. I answered the question first, and then criticised it. Do you think that repeating it makes it more cogent?

Who's going to be the arbiter of truth? Government? — RogueAI

If you maintain that it is never possible to distinguish truth from lie, you have already given up on communication, and there is no answer for you. You and I and others need to to do our best, and the law needs to do its best and professional bodies need to do their best, and it will never be perfect. But this is not some radical reform I am proposing; there have been prohibitions on fraud, libel, etc since a long while in many communities, because communication is founded on truth and trust.

Of course there is no one arbiter of truth - stop asking misleading questions and putting yourself on the side of the lie.

What we're experiencing with Trump, Fox News, Newsmax, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, this whole phenomenon of alt-right, alt-facts, conspiracy theorists, demagogues, etc. is all what I would call the necessary evil of living in an open, democratic society with free speech. — GRWelsh

The US democracy needs a cleanup — Christoffer

The lesson of the fascist movement that led to WW2 is a moral lesson, which has been forgotten.

We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem... We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we. — Goebbels

"Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it," — Jonathan Swift wrote in The Examiner in 1710.

With this in mind, it is certainly naive and imprudent to protect the right to lie. On the contrary, media that lie, advertisers that lie, estate agents, politicians, scientists, doctors, that knowingly lie and deceive, need to be sanctioned and firmly discouraged from doing so. Ordinary people can be easily deceived and persuaded by ranting demagogues when trust in the general honesty of leaders and professionals is lost. To mistake freedom of speech with licence to lie is to promote a destructive anti-social ideal, and welcome tyranny into the heart of the nation.

God knows it is easy enough to be mistaken, to misunderstand, to be wrong in what one believes and says unintentionally already, we need no help from purveyors of snake oil.

They are. But it seems to me you're not interested in what everyone else has to say, and rather in having a soap box to display your "scepticism". Which I'm putting in quotes because unlike actual scepticism, it mostly looks like motivated reasoning adopting the aesthetics of scepticism.

Case in point being that you only reply to the bits of posts that you feel comfortable with, ignoring the rest. — Echarmion

A bad faith poster, basically, cherrypicking evidence to support a position they never explicitly declare, and so never have to defend or concede. A time-waster, who will never give up because time wasting is the whole project, and communication is not on the agenda.

I think he's just here to poke unenlightened in the butt. — frank

Always happy to be someone's significant other. :joke:

2023 'virtually certain' to be warmest in 125,000 years - EU scientists
— Kate Abnett and Gloria Dickie, Reuters

Think carefully about the implications of this statement. — Agree-to-Disagree

Look carefully at the graph you posted, and you will see that the previous peak temperature was about 125,000 years ago and was just a tad higher than now. So the quote is an accurate description of what is in the graph.

But what you leave out that is highlighted on the graph with a nice red highlighter, is how very out of the 400,000 year cycle the Co2 level is at the moment. We have thrown a C02 quilt on the planet that will warm it to a level unprecedented in at least the 400,000 years of that graph, it being obvious that the actual temperature lags behind the measure of the insulation. The CO2 level is literally off the scale, and in 50 to 100 years, the temperature will be too.

Not only that, but the steepness of the rise is also unprecedented, meaning that the change in climate will be unprecedentedly fast, making the adaptation of the biological environment more difficult. Forests, for example can only move very slowly, by the reach of their seeds per year.

But kudos for almost finding a mistake in a news item. :roll:

Does religion perpetuate and promote a regressive worldview? — Art48

Yes. And since humanity is making speedy progress towards environmental catastrophe and self-destruction, a bit of regression might be prudent.

How do we learn those learnings or wisdoms (or follies) by which "we ourselves"-our ideas about self-seem to be changed?
I began to think about such matters a long time ago, and here are two notions that I developed before World War II, when I was working out what I called the "dynamics" or "mechanics" of Iatmul cul­ ture on the Sepik River in New Guinea.
One notion was that the unit of interaction and the unit of charac­terological learning (not just acquiring the so-called "response" when the buzzer sounds, but the becoming ready for such automatisms) are the same. Learning the contexts of life is a matter that has to be discussed, not internally, but as a matter of the external relationship between two crea­tures. And relationship is always a product of double description .
It is correct (and a great improvement) to begin to think of the two parties to the interaction as two eyes, each giving a monocular view of what goes on and, together, giving a binocular view in depth. This double view is the relationship.
Relationship is not internal to the single person. It is nonsense to talk about "dependency" or "aggressiveness" or "pride," and so on. All such words have their roots in what happens between persons, not in some something-or-other inside a person.
No doubt there is a learning in the more particular sense. There are changes in A and changes in B which correspond to the dependency­ succorance of the relationship. But the relationship comes first; it pre­ cedes .
Only if you hold on tight to the primacy and priority of rela­tionship can you avoid dormitive explanations. The opium does not con­tain a dormitive principle, and the man does not contain an aggressive instinct.
The New Guinea material and much that has come later, taught me that I will get nowhere by explaining prideful behavior, for example, by referring to an individual's "pride." Nor can you explain aggression by referring to instinctive (or even learned) "aggressiveness."* Such an explanation, which shifts attention from the interpersonal field to a facti­ tious inner tendency, principle, instinct, or whatnot, is, I suggest, very great nonsense which only hides the real questions.
If you want to talk about, say, "pride," you must talk about two persons or two groups and what happens between them. A is admired by B; B's admiration is conditional and may turn to contempt. And so on. You can then define a particular species of pride by reference to a partic­ular pattern of interaction. — P.133

You only exist in relationship. — J. Krishnamurti

Is this a learning by which you might be changed? Are the relationships you have on this site ever such as your ideas about yourself are changed? I affirm from my own experience that it happens – not every day, one is not a gadfly – but now and then, And I know others here that have affirmed a change of mind.

The book has always been preparing for, and from the very beginning engaging in, a transformative relationship intended to be liberating. We already knew, mind, that teaching is a matter of inspiration, and a mutual affair, but here it is laid out how exactly we are responsible for each other and for the world. One becomes respectable by being respected, just as one becomes violent by being violated. we make or break each other by our identifications. In calling you a terrorist I'm claiming to be terrorised on my own behalf or on behalf of another.

that there is a learning of context, a learning that is different from what the experimenters see. And that this l earning of con­text springs out of a species of double description which goes with rela­ tionship and interaction. Moreover, like all themes of contextual learn­ing , these themes of relationship are self-validating . Pride feeds on admiration. But because the admiration is conditional-and the proud man fears the contempt of the other-it follows that there is nothing which the other can do to diminish the pride. If he shows contempt, he equally reinforces the pride.

Alice Miller's The Drama of the gifted child in a single paragraph, and a simple model of the making of antisocial behaviour. The important learning is the contextual learning, which is learning how to be and who one is socially. If one learns early on that others are the enemy, one will be alone forever. And if such a one has children, they will be toys, trophies and eventually rivals. Hell is the inability to change.

One sees more and more in the media persons who ignore interrupt and override the interviewer, in order to recite their own version of reality. There is no dialogue, but a monologue, and therefore there can be no contextual learning, and the speaker makes themself into a non-person, a mere mechanical recording that fails to communicate at all. Such is teaching without learning; sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Are you aware of the politics surrounding this? Asking genuinely. Is it lack of wanting to move or lack of wanting the immigrants or both? — schopenhauer1

No one wants to give up their home, and especially not under coercion and with no compensation. But in the situation that prevails, it would not be expensive to make a realistic promise of a better life to people living in awful conditions for years and years. Fuck the politics, I would be wanting my children safe from being buried alive or blown to pieces.

Israel needs some land, and Palestinians need some land. — schopenhauer1

It's so difficult to be even handed. The fact is that Israel has some land, and Palestine has none.

Palestinians need some Palestine. One has to start where one is, and where one is is that there is Israel and there is not Palestine; instead there are enclaves and territories, autonomous regions and refugee camps. So one is on one side condemning a government and on the other side condemning a resistance movement / terrorist organisation/ bunch of landless refugees.

There are something like 13.5 million Palestinians, and there is no Palestine, and no other country in the world is prepared to absorb them. If there was somewhere they could go to, Gaza would be almost empty years ago. The one thing we can all agree on here is we don't want them in our back yard. We're happy enough to tell Israel what they ought to do and not do, while shutting down immigration as fast as we can.

And the one state solution is fine as long as you don't have to live there. Some 7 million Jews do not want any more to be always in the minority, but they are outnumbered nearly 2 to 1 by Palestinians.

So the first step towards a solution as I see it is to deal with the refugees that have been stuck in camps their whole lives, by welcoming them into Europe and The US and Canada, and anywhere else with decent civilised peace loving and wealthy populations. That would ease the pressure all round and show a tad of commitment to a peaceful solution. I'm all for finger wagging as a rule, but it just doesn't seem to be working in this case.