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.

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.