There's a nice addendum to that: since God is the one granting prayers under this account, then anyone who acts to give me what I pray for will be God. That's a lot of Gods.

My answer was directed directly at the question.

The most prominent accusation of "authoritarianism" ("You are not letting people think what they want" ) is the exact point of "SJW" argument regarding discrimination against various groups.

Since our thoughts about people, our understanding and expectations of them, define what actions are appropriate towards them, there are in fact many thoughts we ought not have about people. We have ethical reason to think certain things about people and speak about them in certain ways.

There was no strawman."SJW"s pull up non-extremists because they ignore this ethical responsibility for how we think about others. The non-extremists refuse to acknowledge there are thoughts about other we ought not have.

In terms of the people of the centre making the same criticism, they are banding together with the hard right to avoid criticism and rejection of hard right beliefs.

The "SJWs" are calling people to have specific respect and value for various minority groups, such that we recognise their mistreatment doesn't just invove thinking they should be subject to genocide. Any belief that the minority is somehow lesser or doesn't belong is a problem. These positions are found not just in the extreme genocidal wings of politcal movements, but in the mainstream right, center right, centre and even certain left politcs.

Worse these sentiments (e.g. "immigrants don't belong" ) are a festering ground for the genocidal extremes. (e.g. why must group die? "Well, they don't belong here. This is our country.)"

"SJWs" criticise the "non-extremist" parties because mistreatment extends beyond just wanting a group to be slaughtered. And the veiwpoint these other mistreatments are okay, that it is fine to devalue those groups, are bricks which build a bridge to genocide.

GR is not really a plot book. The overall plot is only slowly revealed through the stories of many different characters, which link up to get a full picture of what's happening and the connections between them. The best method is to stop worrying about where anything might be going and just follow what presents.

That doesn't help them because the contradiction is in their own "axiom"-- they claim an existing being while also saying that being is nothing at all.

Scientific inquiry isn't relevant at this point because this a problem with logic of posing an existing being that is nothing in existence.

We should disabuse them, if we are going to, for the same reason we do it to theists (plenty of them do not interfere with other either). It's important for speaking truths and reasoning. In terms of reasoning about deities, it's quite important because people will use deistic arguments to support theistic one (i.e. "god is unfalsifiable" ).

You turn it back on them, what exactly would such a deistic god even be? How can one clam there is an existing being, yet ascribe no sort of existence to it?

It's like saying: "Well, there on my shelf, there is is existing thing, but its not actually anything for sure, it could tae up the whole shelf or it might not present anything on the half at all." This is not a coherent claim about an existing being. Said being could actually be anything or even nothing, the exact opposite of an existing entity (which is itself precisely in that it is actually nothing else and never will be).

If the being does not intervene in the physical world, that is, does not form some kind of reaction of one material being to another (mere existence is an intervention because it means a relation in space-time), how can it be said to exist at all?

In the case of such a deistic God, we actually have a stronger falsification than the empirical one: we know it is a logical contradiction for it to be an existing being. Unlike the empirical one, there is not even a possibility we might be mistaken.

What are you trying to get at? That the assertion "god exists" is just as scientific as the assertion "force is equivalent to mass times acceleration"? — VagabondSpectre

Properly stated, yes.

Claims about a theistic god existing involve an empirical claim, they suppose the presence of a existing existing entity with empirical manifestations in its presence and actions. That's why we can falsify such theistic claims. When we look out in the world and find the claim events of this god did not occur, we can conclude said god doesn't exist. Why? This god is an empirical entity subject to scientific investigation.

He was suggesting the complaint was improper because the "PC" in the case, health and safety laws, are justified. In other words, his Nan should only have cold tea (and maybe not even that, given spilled liquids can be dangerous) at the workstation because the safety concern is legitimate.

Any improper usage is just referring to the mismatch between the example (cold tea/health and safety laws) and what people are often railing against when complaining about "PC" (having to respect minorities in thoughts, speech and other action).

Lee was not suggesting "PC" concerns were somehow empty or mistaken. In every case he talked about, he was suggesting "PC concerns" were genuine and so the complaint "political correctness gone mad" is illegitimate-- i.e. he's at least on Fooloso4's side, if not more.

So yes, I definitely disagree: you are basically trying to suggest Lee was saying the exact opposite of what he was regarding "PC" concerns.

Yes, since he's referring to the instance of someone referring to health and safety laws, rather than "PC" as the various expectations on speech and thought towards valuing of people of minority groups (which is "PC" for the rest of his set).

The joke being, again, the absurdity of "political correctness gone made," since it doesn't have any solid ground-- that people just throw it out the phrase whenever others/society pull them up on having to act responsibly towards others-- rather than it being a legitimate criticism of our society.

No, I'm saying you've misread the meaning of the entire set.

He's not attacking the use social responses (which Fooloso4 is talking about) termed "political correctness ," but rather suggesting that the complaint "political correctness has gone mad" is absurd because the social responses cited as "PC" aren't unethical or madness at all.

Lee's not talking about proper and improper uses of "political correctness". He's saying the complaint "political correctness gone made" is an absurd and unethical action, given what the "political correctness" entails.

If it's from the set I know, Lee was making fun of people who complain "political correctness has gone mad." The joke was about the absurdity of complaining "political correctness has gone made" about health & safety laws.

(some NSFW language).

You mean the whole debate is so irrelevant, not much to even discuss it or what?] — ssu

Does one debate whether murder, torture, lying or stealing are wrong? Insofar as the major conflict is occurring between politically aligned groups, those concerned with minority rights and conservative/centrists, there is nothing to debate about.

We are talking about a critical moral issue of prejudice and discrimination against minorities. If “both sides” were to be right, we would be justifying that some level of prejudice against minorities. We would be signalling to society, on some level, it was great to consider minorities lesser, unnatural or people who didn’t belong in our society.

A classical liberal approach of talk about and “rationally” debate to find the positives of either side doesn’t work in this case. It has no comprehension of an individual in the social context of other. When we get to questions of responsibility of an individual’s actions in society, it baulks. It imagines what we do and say has no consequence for others, just so long as we don’t hit them or really suggest they ought to have a different point of view.

We might say, it is the entirely capitalist account of freedom and society, in which their are only self-made individuals free to act and do businesses with other self-made individuals, in whatever deal the can arrange for themselves (i.e. “debate the ideas until both sides get a piece they are content with”).The very idea an individual action or viewpoint being morally unacceptable is taken to be impossible. It’s all understood to be just a game of opinions.

Ethics of society has much more at stake. There are objective feature of people and their actions towards others. Individuals have a moral responsibility toward to behave in ways which form ethical social situations. A key part of that is avoiding ideas and ideologies which form an unethical society, responsibility which neither set by an individuals wants or collage of parts of opposed viewpoints stitched together.

But has 'the Left' really embraced political correctness? If you go past the stereotypical portrayal of cultural marxists against the alt-right, does this really fall into the left/right divide? — ssh

Sure, I was talking about the minority concerned Left against the alt-right and centrists.

If we move outside that, many of The Left are opposed to "PC" as much as the alt right or and centrist. I've criticised a lot of them over the years.

Truly a red herring as those being critical of PC usually don't have any ideas like that in mind. It is truly a tiny cabal that march with tiki-torches and yell "Jews will not replace us". — ssu

They don’t need to be. A major point in all of this is discrimination and devaluing or minorities is not limited to genocidal nazis. Indeed, most of it is not. In everyday life, someone is far more likely to be affected be discrimination from someone with no designs on genocide, in many cases the sort of person who thinks they aren’t prejudiced because “they aren’t nazis who want genocide.” The immorality here is not just nazi’ who want a minorities out now, it’s anyone who devalues or consider them to not properly belong to our society.

The ethical society is not just one that doesn’t genocide minorities, it’s one which holds them belong. One that refuses to consider them “unnatural,” suppose they are interlopers for having different colour skin or coming from a different culture, degrade them for being different or think of the majority as the primary owner of the society. Many critics of “PC” have precisely theses ideas in mind. They want their derogatory jokes about minorities, their assumed ownership of society over others and their casual superiority of those who are different.

It's exactly observation, in the human sense, which is removed in that picture. The sodium and chlorine atoms aren't having human experience of observation when the interact with each other.

Subjectivity, in other worlds, is understood as more than just being our ideas or the presence of experience. To be an observer, one does not need our ideas, our experiences, to even be consciousness at all. They just have to be a distinct point of reference compared to others.

The realisation here is not "humans experiences creates things", but rather that any interaction is a result of the particular entities involved. In other words, its always an interaction in which the participants have an effect (thus, there can be no experiment performed without our measuring equipment having an impact). We cannot set up a system of "objective rules" which push around and constrain inert objects. Those involved, whether they be our experiences, tree, equipment or atoms, always constitute the conditions of the given interaction itself.

Kant makes almost exactly this argument, but goes even further. (You can tell them whatever you want, outright lie, since they are only interested in hearing what they want).

Alas, I cannot remember where it is, but I recall him suggesting in situations of such coercion, the person demanding the answer is only concerned with what they want to hear, rather than gathering truth. Thus, it's not really a lying to the coercier because they were never asking for turth in the first place.

The moral significance is a proposition or a status claimed in a truth context. A world where an action is moral is different to one in which it is not. Which is in turn different from a world without normative significance. In posing these concepts, we are trying to get something right.

These are concepts about the relations of normative meanings. They aren't "just what someone likes" any more than our sun is "just something we think is there."

At any rate, we can just ignore that and pretend they're the same sense of the term. So what's any evidence of something extramental matching a moral judgment? — Terrapin Station

We can further show the issue by examining this question. Anything I encounter in my experience, by virtue of being my mental state, is mental insofar as it is my judgment.

We can ask exactly the same question of our empirical accounts: where is the external evidence that there is anything extramental matching my judgement of the treeing my backyard? All I have is my experience, my mental judgement, a tree is present. Are we to take this as a reason to conclude there is nothing extramental?

You've misread Kant here.

He's giving an empirically realist account in this context, in which phenomena are as they appear (or would appear if we were present), rather than being something which can be detached from how they would appear in our experiences. He's not trying to suggest things don't exist without us or are beyond our explanation-- indeed, his point is the exact opposite.

Kant doesn't fit the scientism bill, but this point is compatible with accounts scientism, which reduces the world to a set of things known to us. After all, that's what scientism thinks: that the while world is constituted by things which appear in our experience (as se out in our given theory).

But they aren't different.

When we make an empirical observation, all the external evidence is only given if our judgements are correct. If the phenomena I point at isn't actually a tree, then it doesn't matter how much a scream about the presence of a tree in my experience, I will be mistaken. We make judgments to form our accounts of external evidence.

I am not deriving these judgements from an external thing or evidence.

I cannot use the appearance of an empirical object in my experience to ground this judgements about what it is and how it relates to other things. I only have "external evidence" for it if these judgements are correct.

External evidence allows me to show the presence of something only if I understand it, only if my initial judgements about it and its relations are correct. Without those, I don't have any account of what something is or what I would encounter if it were present.

The point is the moral significance is distinct from our act of judgement.

It works much the same way as our accounts of empirical objects. Every time we observe a state of the world, we are making a judgement. We judge what we are looking at, how it relates to other things, etc. to from our description or theory of what's occurring.

Yet, our judgment is not the things we are talking about. The tree isn't in my backyard because I make the judgment its present. My judgments about it are just reporting something else (i.e. not my judgement) present in itself (the object of tree).

Morality is posited in the same way. When we encounter it, we are always engaged in a judgment (our experience of what is valuable, moral,. etc.), but that judgment is not how the morality true. Like the tree in my backyard, the moral significance is an independent thing my judgement is reporting.

Well, I'm saying they are more than just connotations about things people care about.

The harms in question are facts of that subject, whether the subject cares or not. A cancer patient is harmed by using just orange juice as a treatment option, whether they care about it or not. Impact on the subject is not determined by what they want , wish, believe or care about, but how they actually exist and are affected.

That's because the subjective impact has a logical independent from the desire or wishes of a subject.

I can desire or wish to smoke, but that doesn't mean it lacks harmful effects. I can desire or wish to take heroin all day, it's doesn't take away the harmful effects of heroin on my body or wider harm on people who interact or dependent.

The subjective harm may will be according to no-one at a given time. Everyone might think smoking is harmless. Everyone might think taking heroin all day is great and harmless.

But this doesn't mean the harm isn't there. Much like our beliefs about how the world came to be, our beliefs about what is harmful to ourselves and others can be terribly flawed. People do the equivalent of thinking orange juice will cure their cancer all the time.

The point of morality is the presence of a normative judgement. When we engage in morality, we are identifying a normative meaning to ourselves which is whether or not an action is worthwhile.

In the case of this pyschopath, for example, their lack of care (or at least the actions and motivations which have gone with it in this case) are harmful to both the population at large and the pyschopath themselves. They are the difference between the people in question living in a world of this pain, conflict and strife or not. With any question of morality, it is these "subjective" (i.e. impact on a subject) which are at stake. It's never been about an "objective" command or rule.

Morality is about awareness of the impact of actions and things upon people. And the differences between when one is present or not.

Janus hasn't said anything about being statistically common being a reason for something valuable. In the posts I've read, they talked in terms of harm or well-being, which is defined on an individual's relation to everyone else.

The problem is the arguments are so weak, there is nothing worthwhile to them at all. This is what is obnoxious about both sidesism.

When the Left get-up to make a point about the moral seriousness of a cultural practice, the both sidesism paints like they are nazis to dare hold society responsible for these practices.

In this context, "compromise" is largely red-herring because the issues at stake or moral. There is no way to negotiate, for example, over whether whether white people are better than everyone else and we take any one else not to properly belong. The issues of divsion are so devisive because they ones involving a critical moral responsibility.

Facts are consituted in meaning. Any given fact has a meaning, some sort of relation to other facts.

When we talk about a fact, our words refer to it because they capture meaning of the thing we are talking about. It's how, for example, "the tree in my backyard" picks out one specific thing amongst the many in the world.

Our ideas show us the world. Every single time we understand a fact, we do so by our idea which is an awareness of the fact we are talking about.

Meaning is one fact distinguished from another, one properly present compares to another, one thing (e.g. "this tree) rather than another (e.g. "that other tree" ).

Without meaning, there are no facts/relations present, no world we might understand or investigate.

I wasn't ignoring it. My point was it didn't apply: I wasn't trying to describe stepping from one idea to other.

I was talking about is what having an idea constitutes itself, and how this relates to meaning of our ideas and the outside world.

Meaning is not independent of its idea. When I have an idea about something, be it a state, a mathematical relationship or an ethical significance, it constitutes the meaning in question. I'm not talking about an idea leading to an idea. There is no step of deriving my idea and its meaning from something else.

I'm talking about the presence of a describing idea itself.

Whatever idea/meaning I'm using to describe is reporting something independent me me or has some genuine relationship to doing so (in the case of false claims, the idea/meaning I have does not reflect what is independent of me).

Because it the same argument...

You understand the meaning of our descriptions to be nothing more than our fictions which have nothing to do with describing independently existing things-- i.e. a reification which only serves our one idea, rather than talking about a fact or feature of the independent world,

You do it all the time when people describe certain things or features of things (ethics, mathematical relationships, meaning of idea/concept/language, etc.).

The notion meaning is "just a story"in our heads is something you have repeated in many arguments.

Description can never be just a story. When we describe or aim to describe something, whether it be what's in my fridge, the number of atoms in an object, a mathematical relationship or an ethical significance, our attention is directed towards something other than ourselves.
A question of na independent truth which is not just our story or made true by us thinking it.

Even in the case where a proposed description is wrong, let's say we attempt to describe God is the underlying cause of everything or engage in evo psych reifications about how people behave, meaning is still independent because the world has a meaning: the proposed description is mistaken.

When you take a position that abstraction to an idea (i.e. you have an idea about something) amounts to reification. So when we talk about, for example, the radioactivity C-14 carbon atom, the potential for it to decay, them meaning we speak and involve isn't limited to our ideas. The C-14 carbon atom actually has that feature/meaning we are describing.

It is why we ought be aware of C-14 possibly decaying if we have encounter one, as opposed to working under the impression that atom will not decay.

So when you take a position that meaning is only in our heads, you place the things and functions you are describing there too. Decaying just becomes our fictional abstraction, rather than a feature of the object, which might happen whet we are there or not.

This issue is true of all description of the world we might give, since our descriptions use meanings to report what we are talking about. Descriptions of the world require meaning to not just be in our heads, but in the world too.

That's implied by your position. If my ideas and concepts have nothing to do with any thing in the external world, how can any of the states of the world be reflected in my ideas?

Take radioactivity. How can my idea of radioactivity be identifying an external state with impacts upon the human body? If we take a position that our ideas and concepts are just out ideas, this would be impossible. I could only ever think about my ideas. Describing external things, including my own body, could not occur. I would be unable to think about things which weren't my thoughts.

If we take ideas and concepts as reification, we are committed to a position in which radioactivity (one of our theories, our ideas, our concepts) is just an idea.

Agreed.

I was saying the amount of fallacies present in the text don't affect the truth claims. One just reads it and focuses in on the truth claims, ignoring the fallacious moves to get at what at stake for the claim. It's not hard to isolate them, assuming someone has made the truth they are interested clear.

(obviously, in some cases, a person might be committing fallacies in a way that makes the truth claim opaque, but that's just issue of communication. As with any text which didn't commit fallacies but was similarly opaque, you would have to wait to find a way in or just leave it alone because you didn't want to waste time trying to understand it and failing).

I wasn't saying you committed a "red herring" fallacy.

My point was the idea that lots of fallacies make it hard to discern a truth claim was mistaken. "Red-herring" was referring to how your truth claim was wrong, that you are supposing a problem in identifying truth claims which isn't there.

This is a red-herring because the garbage of it being fallacious is unrelated to its truth claim. In this respect, it's no more difficult to sort through whether to read it than anything else.

Now, if it's garbage in terms of its truth claim, that's a different story. Few want to waste their time reading pages of falsehoods, which is totally understandable.

That's not really doubt.

"Reasonable doubt" is actually an evidence/knowledge based claim. If we take the concept of "reasonable doubt" in law, for example, it is actually based on the expectation that if someone performed a crime, it amounts to empirical states which we can observe and investigate. It actually rejects someone committed a crime on the basis we know empirical states we would expect from the crime haven't occurred.

Doubt is the problem, it's no reason for taking any position.

If I say: "But how to I know this is true? Give a reason to think it's true" I haven't given myself no reason to reject the given claim. The idea it is false isn't justified be the act of doubting. If I am only doubting, I have no justification in rejecting a claim. I need to know how it is false to justify rejecting its true.

Anyone does! For the presence of fallacies is no measure of the truth claim or insight in question. One just ignores it and jumps straight to what is being claimed (like whether there is a fruit shop in my street, in my example) or what might be insightful (say a funny combination of things we never thought might occur together).

Yes (unless your topic was the fallacies in the argument, rather than a truth claim). You should just cut the bullshit and address the claim. Put aside the fallacies and consider whether you have a reason to deny the truth claim they are making.

The point at stake isn't whether they've reasoned perfectly, it's whether they understand what is true. You have a responsibility to care what is true, to reject their truth claim for good reason, rather than just because their argument had some fallacies. You can't just be lazy and reject their claim is true because they haven't followed a particular rule of logical inference.

(this also means Burden Of Proof is out as an objection, as someone failing to present evidence or show a truth in their argument doesn't actually give us a reason to think their claim is false).

You're not really to blame for this either. The sex/gender binary more or less considers taking a gender neutral position amounts to changing the sex of the person involved.

Our gender/sex roles are formed with sorting people of particular bodies in specific positions through the concept of sex. The moment we conceive of gender neutrality, that someone of any body (and sex) maybe of a given social role, we destroy this sorting of bodies.

In terms of the gender/sex roles, gender neutrality destroys both men and women, turns women into men and men into women. It puts "male" bodies into roles that are supposedly only "female". It puts "female" bodies into roles which are only "male." The restriction of these sex/gender roles only needs a body to defy one of stipulations for it to be provocative.

Anyone interested in the insight?

Those who want to discover what is interesting and true in the statement, as opposed to the fallacy obsessed, who are only interested in ignoring or rejecting any such insight to win contest of logical structure.

Do you not see the irresponsibility of suggesting we not be bothered with insight just because someone built a nest of fallacies? Is insight or truth not a good enough reason for bother? How could rejecting this interest in truth or insight ever square with genuine philosophical interest?

It's a terrible prejudice, build from motivation of trying to tear down an argument, rather than understand what is true.