Or the birds. We don't mind eating chicken and turkey, but god forbid that we condone cats eating them wild birds.

In fact, people wanted to do something about birds flying into tall skyscaper windows, and thus committing inadvertent suicide. They estimate a that in North America one to seven million migrating bird individuals die this death each year.

While my complete sympathy for the birds, the bird-huggers forget that nature is more than capable and is doing the job of replacing the birds going missing in flight tours. Nature abhors a vacuum (so to speak). Each species is producing much more offspring then their or the entire environment can support. Most of the new hatchlings, and litters and newborns, etc. don't survive to age of maturity. In nature.

Humans are the sole exception. If flies, pigeons, rabbits, rats, or cats had the survival rate of humans from birth, then the earth woudl be covered with a layer of seven miles thick flies, or cats, or what have you. It is a miracle and a blessing that it's humans with our sense of sexual taboos that we got to the top of the food chain. We are destroying the planet, too, no question about it, by overpopulating it, but much slower than cats or owls or mosquitoes would do if they had our birth-to-adult survival rate.

I think they were being overly optimistic that consciousness would likely occur simply by stimulating some neurons in a very different environment. — Terrapin Station

As scientists, yes. As an individual, to whom this may happen, I think I am being overly pessimistic, and full of fear, that consciousness would occur simply by stimulating some neurons in a very different environment

I don't recall ever being afraid of boredom. I just dislike the tendency to reduce complex human behavior and emotions to a couple basic ones. — Marchesk

I'm afraid that I have to eat my hat and agree with you.

Mind you, there is a little truth in my fear of boredom. I am retired, with not much to do. There are days when a good chunk of the day I know ahead of time I have to spent bored.The boredom is not borne out of laziness, but out of not having anything to do. (But I am also lazy at times, make no mistake.)

This is exacerbated with more fear of potentially becoming a stroke victim or getting otherwise debilitated, and having an agile mind, I'll be forced by circumstance to lie in a bed on my back, day in and day out, in some reconvalescent home, staring at the white ceiling right above me and not having an outlet or inlet to stimulate my mind, to entertain me.

Now, that is a real fear of boredom. But you're right, it is not connected to laziness.

I think sushi is right about the fear part, but not on the part of what we fear. In my opinion it's not failure we fear, but more, horrendously extensive, all-stupefying boredom. We are lazy because the things we don't do bore us... it's just a tiny bit hateful, or not even that, the things we lazily avoid doing. They are mild, benign activities, which are not exciting, and therefore we fear that such overpowering boredom will reign over us, that it will make us into quagglepratts.

There's a way pigs wish to be slaughtered? — Marchesk

Think of involuntary euthanasia. Much like in humans: not being aware, or not precognizing, that you are about to be killed; and you are killed in a way that you don't notice. For instance, in deep sleep, or in a state of rapturous joy. Not any different from humans.

I'm all for happy pigs. Not sure what it is with horses and dogs getting the gold treatment, and pigs are cattle at best. — Marchesk

Pigs are the most misunderstood ones of the domesticated animals. They are better guard animals than dogs (and so are geese, by the way), and they have better olfactory senses. They are smarter than dogs, and they are not cute. That's the source of their detriment. Human beings are hopelessly shallow. Humans adore the cats, despite their TOTALLY unethical behaviour patterns (torture and rape smaller animals, and suck up to bigger, stronger animals). Hardly a cat saved a human being from a burning house, hardly a cat delivered evidence as witness of the court to save a man from the gallows pole. (Dogs have. At least in movies.)

Not to misconstrue that I don't like cats. I love cats. I am a human, after all. I am as shallow as the next person on the street.

Right. I have no arguments against that.

Is it a general rule that the higher the entropy of a system the more difficult it is to describe it? — Jacob-B

In general, the physics qualities of randomized orderliness is harder to describe.

If you take a cube or a round ball, you can describe the physics of air flow around it if there is an air flow around it easier than if you shatter the ball or cube into smithereens and try to describe the air flow around the cube or ball in this broken-up stage.

In fact, organization does cost money (in terms of entropy) because it costs money to eliminate randomness. The money you spent on eliminating randomness you get back on the reduction of costs of handling the simplicity of the ordered object. So to speak.

Then surely ethics is not a tool, but a collection of tools? My sentiment still applies, I think. — Pattern-chaser

Yes, it does. I agree. The metaphor still applies.

So I guess it's okay to raise pigs in horribly crowded environments and eat them, but not bring them back to a disembodied existence. Still, it's a step closer to envattment. If you're a pig, how do you know the farmer didn't sneak into your stall last night to hand you over to some mad scientists who removed your brain and hooked it up to some machine? — Marchesk

You are saying that we ought to stay consistent, and keep the disembodied existences of pigs also horribly crowded?

Maybe the vats should be placed very close to each other.

(BTW, I am not supporting the practice of keeping pigs in horribly crowded, unpig conditions, but I do support eating happy pigs that have been raised happy and were slaughtered in ways compatible with how a pig wants to exit.)

I think ethics could be manipulated with one tool (if you only subscribe to one school's teachings) and with the same one tool you'd manipulate, say, aesthetics; or there could be many tools (if you accept more than one school's teachings and apply them as needed.)

You're neglecting context, I think. If X is good for me, but NOT(good) for you, there is no contradiction. — Pattern-chaser

There is contradiction when you consider relevance. If you discount relevance, there is no contradiction.

The relevance exists because the two countries (as depicted in the example) do want the one and same resource, which both need but can't both have.

If Ethics isn't your thing, I can see how you wouldn't include it in your toolbox — Pattern-chaser

Ethics is not a tool. It is a branch of philosophy, and many different schools of ethics may exist. Much like aesthetics may have different schools, and one ethic may be the part of the same school as one aesthetic.

Sorry to be splitting hairs.

In my tool box there are only four tools: reason, logic, intuition, and common sense.

I don't know who has other tools in their tool boxes. Some have dogma; some have an affinity to some school of philosophy (such as to solipsism, or to realism, or to Platonism). I reject all that break my tools of reason, logic, intuition and common sense and accept those that can be worked with my tools.

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Ask me what tools I never use. I never use fallacies. Fallacies are tools of deception. They seem to appeal to logic, but they are in fact counter-logical.

No, there is no contradiction. Any apparent problems are resolved when we explicitly acknowledge that "good" is a relative term. So the situation you describe is good for you, but NOT(good) for your neighbour. — Pattern-chaser

There is one situation. It is both good and not good at the same time, but not at the same respect.

Does this constitute a contradiction? I am now not sure. The situation does not establish impossibility by the law of excluded middle, but it is a contradiction, because good cannot be not good. Good is relative, but not to the detriment of its own quality.

I maintain there is a contradiction, at the same time that I agree with you that "good" is a relative term. I say this because "good" even as a relative term can't be taken as "not good". Something that is itself and not itself at the same time IS a contradiction.

How would you define contradiction, Pattern-chaser? "Paul is tall. Paul is not tall." Wouldn't you say that's a contradiction? If something is and is not, albeit from different perspectives, would you not say the that the perspectives render that something relatively contradictory? I would.

The bias is still prevalent so no, not "ancient" but very much alive and kicking two-thirds of the world still hates lefties dated 2013 — TheMadFool

I did not know this. Honestly. Sorry. I live in a world where left-handedness is a matter of fact, like red-headedness or having buck teeth or a lisp. Nobody discriminates negatively in the circles I move in against lefties.

With regard to intolerance: there are convictions that one is not going to give up on. This is called "spine" by the stubborn, and "intolerant" by the environment of the stubborn. More examples of the noble ethics turning topsy-turvy.

In fact, in "Yes, Mr. Minister" or "Yes, Mir. Prime Minister", a character described the power of point of view in this sense:

"Ah! it's an irregular adjective. "HE is strange, YOU are idiosyncratic, and I AM an individual."

In my first language there is a proverb: "The hand of every saint points at himself." Go to a Catholic church, look at the statues of saints.

And a saying taken from the three volume set, "Murphy's Law": "Where you stand depends on where you sit."

I am not an exception to this. In fact, I'm guilty of this more than most contributors on these boards. What I try to achieve, however, is that people realize they are like this, too, like the saints, like the tribal members: the most important agent in shaping one's opinion is one's own interest.

And by interest I don't mean only tangible gains, such as money, or possessions. One of the biggest interest to philosophers is to be right and to have their opinion prevail. This is not new; not unique to philosophers; but this is all that is at stake for philosophers. A mana ger in a company, or a sports team's owner, or an army general, may have other factors to consider; the environment that influences their success. But here on the philosophy forums the only measure of success is winning arguments.

So being right gains many times the importance to us on this forum, than being right in our everyday lives. Here, being right is to be being right. So to speak. (Please figure it out.)

Little wonder people act intolerant. Finding disagreement eggs one on to push his point harder. But we don't ever convince anyone else of anything. We may influence the undecided, but those who had committed to a philosophy will never waver even in the face of extreme criticism.

This is what gives the effect of intolerance. One will feel unjustly rejected, because he can't see that his theory is a threat to the theory of others; and other's wont try to shut down his theory just because they don't like his, (frankly, most of the time they are don't care about what others say, because each individual is only only in love with his own postings and opinion), but they will try to shoot him down, because they feel it would exert a threat to their own philosophy.

The wheel was invented by someone too lazy to carry stuff, the cooking-fire by someone too idle to chew, and every labour-saving device by someone who had a strong aversion to labouring. — unenlightened

True about the labour-saving stuff, except of course in the Capitalist production systems where efficiency of production meant better profits. In this view, most ad-hoc inventions and mcguivering solutions used in industry were created by engineers who were whipped by management to make production more profitable.

But cooking was most likely not invented by someone who got tired of chewing. He or she WOULD HAVE HAD TO KNOW THE OUTCOME BEFORE TRYING if the case were a goal to chew less. Instead, in my fantasy (I can't show a proof) or in my imagination, cooking was invented by accident.

So was the wheel. There is a process described in books on history of engineering how that happened.

All major breakthroughs, or at least an overwhelming majority of them, were not thought up, but were discovered via experimental error, via accidental solutions. The micro-wave oven, the transistor, the penicillin pill; the stick, the slingshot, the gunpowder; the sail, the boat; the knife,the reading glasses, the telescope; the tanning process, the agricultural cultivation; the sundial; etc. etc. etc.

So what is laziness? A lack of motivation. (I learned this from my psychiatrists in my twenties when I was suffering from a debilitating mental disease, part of which manifestations was a deep depression.) According to my aunt at that time laziness was one of the myriads of my character faults.

Just like Baden said in the previous post.

This seems like a ridiculous argument. A lack of uniformity doesn’t render either useless - anymore than the fact that there is no uniform time rendering time useless. — Possibility

I indeed said "no uniform treatment" because they told me sometime in school that one has to make the reader work-- one has to make the reader also think of what one wrote, and not spoon-feed every notion of an idea to him or to her.

But obviously my educators were wrong. They hadn't thought that fifty years after their efforts people will not think but quibble about little details precisely because they don't think.

A lack of uniformity INDEED LIKE YOU SAID does not render either somethings useless. But there was more than what I said, and what I had hoped would be worked out easily by my readers. There was an apparent and undeniable CONTRADICTION between the two somethings.

"Love of your country is good." So far so good.

But what if your country is different from my country, and both countries need the same resource for survival?

The getting that something for MY country is good for ME, but it's devastatingly BAD for YOU and YOUR country. This is a contradiction, not just a lack of uniformity.

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It is about the third of fourth such argument I have made on this forum that people challenged me on; and they only challenge me because they can't see farther than their noses.

I hate this. I thought that on a philosophy forum people would be thinkers, who carry on the thought, and not sheepishly look at the normative meaning of every word, and draw childish conclusions on how I am wrong, but would THINK and carry on what was missing or apparently misleading in my writings.

I draw the consequence: I MUST CHANGE MY STYLE AND CONTENT, HONE IT TO EXTREME PRECISION, AND NOT ALLOW ANY LOOSE ENDS TO BE WRITTEN.

It will be more tedious for me, and it will be less enjoyable, but the community here obviously demands that. I must therefore comply, no question. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

The joke was not stemmed for me from a disbelief that in Latin "sinister" means left-handed. The joke to me was stemmed in the connection of an ancient word in an ancient and defunct language, with its ancient-time meaning (left-handed) and juxtaposing that meaning with the same string of phonemes and letters and equating therefore the old meaning of sinister to the new meaning of sinister.

This is what I though you had in mind as a joke.

That sinister meant left-handed has been known to me for over 35 years. I had a friend who was a proponent of left-handedness, and he opened a shop selling stuff made for left-handed people, and he called his shop "The Sinister Shoppe". It's defunct now.

So please don't misunderstand me, but try to understand me. Today no learned and cultured person will look at left-handed people as sinister. We allow left-handed young students to write and type with their left hands, or wipe their asses, or handle the knife, scissors, needles, or guns, or masturbate, etc. which was historically frowned upon and beaten out of children.

The joke is the seriousness of handling the word "sinister" as if it meant both left-handedness and sly evil. No, in today's vernacular sinister means never "left-handed" to the average person. Hence I found no humour in your joke.

Pantagruel, I read your last post here, where you try to separate ethics as a non-self-serving good thing. OVERTLY not self-serving. But there are at least two proofs that show that all non-self-serving behaviour is desperately and viciously self-serving. One such proof is the fact that everyone does what they will; there is no action agains the will, so to obey one's own will is ab ovo self-serving, no matter what that will will dictate for the individual to do.

The other proof applies to selfless acts of the religious.

To religious thinkers, particularly to those whose behaviour is a ticket to heaven, the non-self-serving behaviour is part of the ticket to ride, so obviously there is no selfless act rising out of religious good-doing.

that's part of the problem, Pattern-Chaser, and a big problem: good as a qualifier is hopelessly relative. Even among humans.

The other part of it is that many ethicists, as I have seen it in my readings, don't bother with separating ethical deeds from good deeds. What I mean is this: say, something has been established as good. For the time being, and relatively so, but there is a consensus that something is good. Ethicists will jump on this, and declare that doing that good thing is ehtical. The only reason they state it's ethical is because it's good. They don't separate the good in general from the good in ethical. It washes down the already weakly established concept of ethics, and it becomes nothing more than good.

Why ethics then? Just do good. But that's not ethics. At least not in my definition. My definition is unique, and obviously not accepted (yet?) into the consensus.

Pntagruel, I wish you to consider this point in my thiniking, which I hadn't mentioned until now.

People do unselfish, so-called good things for others. I do too, make no mistake. You, I and most of humanity put the needs of others ahead of our and their own, in many-many expressions and acts in their lives.

These acts are still self-referential. I can't say any more than that NOW, because I worked it out in a paper which no sensible academic publisher wants to publish. That's so, I beleive, because 1. I don't have qualifications, which ab ovo stops them form publishing my writing, and 2. my idea is an original, creative idea, not based on the classics (modern or ancient) and therefore they get panacy, like every time they don't want to see and understand that it's a brand new idea.

How can a layman have a workable original idea? They ask themselves, incredulously of my theory.

But I will keep on trying to pubish the paper somewhere. Until then I'd rather keep my ideas to myself. Thanks.

You're right. I had said free will was a Christian invention.

Later, and please note my correcting myself, I said I did not know who invented free will, but Christians use it extensively.

Please note these corrections and please disregard my before-correction stance.

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Re: The jail bit. You asserted without free will there is no responsibility. I responded that there is no free will, no responsibility, but people punish each other if they do no-no or boo-boo.

Then I offered an opinion that it's not god who punishes evil-acting people, (addiitonal explanation why I said that: as there is no responsibility due to free will, and god, if s/he existed, would only punish those who are responsible, if s/he were a fair and equitable and just god) but people punish evil-acting people.

The corollary being from the above, that Christians use free will as a vehicle to place responsibility on people, but yet it is not their god that acts to punish those who are responsible, but people punish those who are responsible. Therefore the evil-act and punishment cycle is not a god-directed thing, as god himself or herself does not hold the evil-acting people responisble, as they have no free will, according to god too, since s/he would punish evil-acting people if responsibility for their evil act was vested within them.

You agreed then later, that people put evil-acting people in jail.

Maybe I left too large, gaping holes in the flow of logic in this explanation. I apologize for making the logical jumps too wide and large.

Thanks for the answer, Pantagruel.

Your answer hinges, it seems to me, what's "good" or "right" and what's "wrong".

What's good in and by itself? Love of your country? Love of your mother? Love of your spouse? Then you get into immediate contention of what's good if someone has a different coutry of his or her own, or differnt mother, or different spouse, and you at the same time have to share resources that are not enough in quantity for all involved.

I contest therefore, based on the above, that there can be a uniform deontological agreement, This renders deontology useless.

Outcomes? I save my country, my mother, my spouse. Even at the detriment of your country, your mother, your spouse.

Again, teleology can't have a uniform agreement. This renders teleology useless.

I deny the valildy therefore, on philosophical grounds, of any ethical finding, as they are all useless..

I therefore have the ideological right to deny any value in the work of people who work in ethics because their findings can't be anything but useless.

I especially detest those who boast of their ethical know-how gained through education or practice.

Ethics is nothing but a highfolutin ideology for hiding the self behind a complex set of ideas for the sole purpose of being completely selfish.

If you are surprised at my tone then I suggest you not use pejorative terms in relation to philosophy — Mark Dennis

What? You are telling me what to say and what not to say? Aren't we (meaning you) a bit presumptious in believing you can be calling the shots?

This is the ultimante insult, Mark. To tell someone what they are allowed to say and what they are not.

This is a website where I hadn't figured out yet how to put people on iggie. But you are sure one contributor who has lost total respect by me. I shan't be reading any more posts by you, as you 1. act as if you believed you are superior 2. which you are not 3. and due to (1.) you insulted me several times, several ways.

It’s not a joke it’s just lying — Mark Dennis

You called me a liar. Remark noted and will never be forgotten.

You shouldn’t take my criticisms personally — Mark Dennis

This is a ridiculous demand.

Coitea isn’t a word in Greek. Are you thinking of the Latin Coitus? Pornea literally means to fornicate. — Mark Dennis

Koitei means "Fuckers". In Greek. I derived "coitea" from it. So i burn in hell? Or maybe your Greek-English dictionary does not contain all the Greek words that there are or used to be in use. I don't see why you ought to break stick over me due to the lacking in your dictionary.

Your thesis was that all humans lacked responsibility. You now restate it in the hypothetical. Why? — Hanover

... because theoretical trumps evidential, unless evidential contradicts theoretical.
"My thesis" had already been theoretical... i only reiterated it as theoretical, not restated it. In the first instance that you refer to, I did not state it was theoretical. So I burn in hell because I did not spell that out to you?

Was there some dispute about who ran the jails that you thought you needed to clarify it was the warden and not God? — Hanover

Yes. There was "responsibility" thrown in due to free will that god allegedly gave to people.

Why am I asked to explain the simplest things to you? I don't mind complying with demands for explanations for a while, but I get tired of doing this after a while.

1. "These men are called "Arsenokoitei" (I. Cor. 6:9) Generation after generation of translators tried to paraphrase this term for it is one of extreme derogation. It means butt-fuckers..." Page 13, "St. Saul" by Donald Harman Akenson, McGuill Queen's Universtity Press 2000

(god must be atheist said:) “My bet is that Heidegsteinbergerbaumfeld would say, if he were alive today that "philo sophia" ultimately and most profoundly meant, to the ancient Greeks in today's English vernacular, "whatever."” — Mark Dennis

This I based on other contributor's posts such as of Ocean777 who claims to have seen god, and of Devans99, who denies the fact of infinity, has a "proof" of existence of god, and has a "proof" (a priori,logical proofs both) that the universe began to exist at one point, before which point it did not exist. I based my "whatever" on contributions that insist that the BB was an unnatural phenomenon. Ocean777, Devans99 and others call themselves philosophers, and they take themselves seriously, and some others take them seriously enough to start to argue against their points. So this is what I meant, via quoting H., who is obviously a make-belief figure with a make-belief name, suggesting it's a joke what followed, but a joke with a serious and thought-out content, that philosophia means "whatever'.

At this point I don't care if you don't care. I did my background research, and I did some creative analytical thinking. Taking my words for garbage by my readers, over which words no care ought to be extended is not something I have control of. It is my readers that ought to decide that, and you, Mark, apparently decided that. So be it. I wash my hands.

if you are in the gang then it is the last place any civilised person would want to be. Thank you for the offer though........* backs slowly away without making eye contact — Ocean777

Well, if you think I am the devil, then FEAR ME, o god-worshipping cretin! I'm going to come and eat you alive, hamm-hamm.

Das schmeckt! (burp)

Philos means love, Eros would be love of the sexual connotation. Source of the ero in erotic. Fuck would be Pornea (guess which modern word that is linked to!) for Fornicate. Pornea Sophia would be fuck knowledge. — Mark Dennis

Thanks, Mark! I think fuck would be coitea, not Pornea, but that's good too in my books. Paul in the Greek version of the New Testament condemns the Arsenocoitei, which he calls by that name, and it's been a headache for Bible translators worldwide and timewide to come to terms with.

Your note was refreshing. In school teachers talked about the love for the country in Greek, the love for the home, the love for mother, etc., but the Real Deal was somehow always amiss.

... and the provincial superior court judge from the snow grooming machine at a ski slope.

This is not a joke. A friend of mine was handed down a guilty verdict, and was going to be sentenced by who had been reputedly a tough judge, when she (the judge) was eaten by the icegrooming machine at Blue Mountain resort near Collingwood. He was assigned to a different judge who ruined my friend financially, but he was spared incarceration.

Well, there you go. (Hehe.) So... how is your species working out?

I was asked in several occasions in the past by very serious people which planet I had come from.

all langauge is symbolic, and all symbols have secondary, tertiary, etc. symbolism.

If a language translator translates perfectly, then it just was successful at hitting the common language symbolism tracks (primary, secondary, terciary, etc.) in the same sequence as the original text was meant to communicate.

We can only know about God from the words of our fellow man & if we refuse to believe them then that is the end of the proof we have been given. — Ocean777

I think you need to hone your own personal definition of what comprises a proof, and get it more in line with the way the rest of the gang here uses that word.

well personally God has Always proved His Existence to me — Ocean777

YOU have always existed? I did suspect you are a relation to Jesus the Christ.

A machine translator was given the task to turn the following sentence to Russian, then back to English. The original English sentence read, "The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak." Came back as "The vodka was okay, but the meat was rotten."

Wittgesteintfeldrosenbaumblattblumberger was not always right.

I'm not a hero type person, — Ocean777

Obviously you are some relation to Jesus the Christ.

I could go on & on with many instances where I have rescued people or saved their lives when no one else would — Ocean777

It is statistically highly unlikely that you'd find yourself in a position where you could save lives from random accidental deaths. I was saved twice, from absent-mindedly walking under speeding cars, and I saved one bicyclist who wanted to start to cross the road right when the light turned to green, but I held him back, he looked at me quizzically, and then he saw a red sports car zoom past us, running the red. The cyclist watched the light, only, to calculate when it'd turn green, while was watching the crossing traffic, and saw that the red thing would not stop. The bicyclist gave me a quick nod and sped across the street.

That's all. To save a drowning man, a blind man, an electrocuted child, a raped woman, a beat-up hippy from the cops, a man from the combine harvester, a girl from the calculus exam, a woman from the Four Riders of the Apocalypso dance group, etc, strikes me as highly unlikely.

I am not saying you are a liar, Ocean777, not at all. I am just amazed how god put you into those millions -- okay, not millions, but a large number -- of situations where you had to rescue people while thousands, literally thousands, of other onlookers would not.

I wasn't really quibbling with your thought experiment. It's just that, when I read it, it struck me that the whole anti-natalist argument is a product of our modern technological world. — T Clark

Please see my previous post of geese and sheep.