non-physical causation(?)..... Name a non-physical, or merely abstract, Y which causes such changes. — 180 Proof

1+1 is 2. This causes 2-1 is 1. However, 1+1+1 is 1 has caused a great amount of bloodshed in history against and by those who thought otherwise: the Ottoman Turks, the Arabian invasion forces, the armies of Genghis Khan; as well as against Barbarian tribes in the northern parts of the entirety of Europe, and in all the parts of the remaining world outside of Europe.

In Goethe's "The Hardships of the Young Werther" Werther loses his love. Werther then commits suicide. At the time period of a year or two after publication, twenty-five thousand young people committed suicide right after reading this fictional novel.

Sinful lives will earn you eternal suffering. Virtuous life and accepting the Holy Spirit in your heart will lead to eternal life in bliss. This causes people to swallow a piece of carbohydrate and drink some red wine in a cold building built by the community for the main and exclusive purpose to eat a piece of bread and drink a mouthful of wine.

The Quantum Theory created by pure reason, advanced math and highly intelligent atheists, and with absolute lack of evoking supernatural forces in its creation, is the most potent force for theism ever conceived.

I agree. Further to your thoughts, I would like to offer this: In the entire history of mankind (social, societal history) all good ideas eventually turned into bad ideas. Like you said communism is a failed idea; but at one point it was a very good idea.

Some examples:

The ransacking of gold of the Mezoamerican cultures was looked at as a good idea by the Spainish and Portuguesh cultures. "We are rich!" Who does not want to be rich? Because they were rich, they failed keeping in pace with the industrial forging ahead of the rest of Europe, and eventually both countries sank into relative poverty.

The importing of hard working, free labour from Africa into the British colonies. Free labour!! A capitalist's dream. The problems ensuing from it precipitated a bloody war and a lifetime of suffering for many people.

The potatoes to to feed the Irish! Hey, here's a good idea. Until the potato famine.

Let's create religion that helps the poor! the poor have stayed, the religion was changed very quickly to expoit the poor, and get everyone to shit on them.

Let's split up a religion to get rid of some of elements that are false beliefs!! Enabling ideologies to wage wars.

Let's create a vehicle of value exchange that will make trade easier. It has become the root of all evil.

Let's plant grains and eat the harvest and feed livestock with it, instead of scouring the land randomly for food and occasionally finding success by finding a fresh carcass or killing a herbivore. Much food for everyone! Result: overpopulation crisis, water shortage, food shortage, wars.

ETC.

It is hard to be consistently happy about any instance of human progress as a good thing in and by itself.

Pessimism is just the naturally logical extrapolation of expecting bad things to come from good things.

Inflation is the key element here. Not just of the doll.

One woman I dated used to plant cucumbers in her garden. She had an English garden, with all kinds of plants, including the aforementioned cucumbers, which were English cucumbers, because the lady was also English.

She told me she never harvested the cucumbers. I asked her why she then grew them. She said she liked to see them grow.

In one sense the inflation or rigid largeness IS a simplified android, which satisfies women's physical needs, and thereby emotional needs too, in the sense that women would go bonkers without them.

Watch the appropriate episode from Seinfeld. Nobody is free from desire... nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

"EI" is also a way of misspelling the name of the AI god, found in many computer science cultures.

I'm going to say something that is obvious, but everyone likes to ignore it, because it renders their pontifications null and void. In other words, I'm going to point you at the futility of your arguments, which is probably going to be a very unpopular thought for you all:

When talking about probability of life, design, god, etc., most people (except I) think of probability as a measure of reality.

But probability is not a measure of reality. In reality there are no probabilities. Probabilities are born in man's mind, to approximate the unknown when certainty in knowledge is missing.

Either everyone else (other than I) conveniently forgets about this, or else some of everyone else is too limited to see this.

For x to create y, x must precede y in existence.
If x creates x, x must exist before x exists. :chin: — Agent Smith

I hear ya, I hear ya. Butt!! In Hindi, the Hindu religion, the main gud inspired his parents to move to some city or area where they should give birth to him.

This Hindi Gud certainly existed before he himself existed.

If he can do it, any other Gud can do it.

I don't have much to say about the subject, except that what caught my eye was the fact that the term "Jesus Freaks" can be interpreted two ways: freaks who are Jesus Freaks, or as a verb, like "Jesus freaks (out) on the sight of Jesus Freaks."

Unless God created himself, God can't be in the universe. — Agent Smith

It's possible for him to have created Himself. He be omnipotent, ain't He?

Unless God created himself, God can't be in the universe. — Agent Smith

Suppose god did not create this word, but another god did?


https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7848/about-this-word-agnosticism-and-its-derivatives-agnostic-agnost-agnosta-etc-

I so totally agree with you, Zebeden.

My take on it is that god is a psychological archetype, present in all humans. Atheists, too. You never have to explain to a human what a god thing is. But when it comes to detailing it.... that's a different cat of worms.

It's just that God isn't a part of the known universe; neither is God something concrete in our cosmos, and nor do any abstractions thereof apply to him. Put simply, there's nothing in our universe, physical/mental, that we can use as a starting point in grasping what God is. — Agent Smith

you seem to be pretty sure about this. What's your source?

If the android has free will, like it is said in the opening paragraph, then its will still can be subjected by subordination to its creator's will. In our own example God does it with horrible threats, sweet promises. In your friend's example, the creator can program the free will of the android.

In either case, "freedom of will" is an illusion. Even if you believe that will is free, free to disobey the creator's commands. NOBODY DISOBEYS THE CREATOR'S COMMANDS. What people disobey are the commands allegedly said by alleged creators as stated by still others.

My god... I mean, my creator is a one-billion year long evolutionary process. I never cross the natural laws that my creator has set for me: I laugh when I find something funny, I cry when I am hurt or moved by sentimental emotions; I eat when I am hungry, I drink when I am thirsty, I have a natural curiosity, I think and figure things out, I meet my challenges, I love my wife and children, I obey those rules of society which I deem worthy of obeying, I work, I pay my taxes, I eliminate processed post-metabolic excesses, and I get turned on by watching Japanese porn in which girls vomit into each other's mouths.

The android wife can satisfy her husbands needs -- and an android husband his wife's needs -- without all the trimmings that makes the android conscious.

It takes amazingly little of human-like behaviour to fake consciousness.

Several people I have come in contact with in my life have clearly demonstrated that beyond any doubt.

No. I meant the article I linked to in the sentence in which I mentioned it. — Banno

I got you already. Cheers.

god must be atheist's article might give one pause when considering — Banno

I had published one article in two versions here as a thread. Since you referred to the article as mine, I thought you meant the one I had created. There was no reason for me to check my own article.

This was precise, at the same time as ambiguous. Okay, I admit you referenced it, but your wording was so worded that I rightfully assumed that you referenced my article, not an article I quoted.

To be honest, I glided over your referencing, since I assumed you talked about my article... how on earth would someone read "god must atheist's article" as an article which is not god must be atheist's article?

Banno, there was no way for me to quess the reference to the article you cited came from, since you claim now that the article you referenced was mentioned by me, but in another thread. This is clearly not acceptable... of course it's acceptable to quote a reference from a wholly different topic, but it's unacceptable to expect me to know when you don't at all point its origin out precisely for me, only three debate-exchanges later.

Then you ask me, "What article?"

You need a good night's sleep, like I said earlier.

If you were making this mistake in a formal academic setting, I believe you would be penalized for that.

I was referring to the article you cited for Tobias, here; ↪god must be atheist — Banno

you referenced something without telling me what you were talking about; a little while later you gave an ambiguous answer what you were talking about; and the third time you blurted out what you were talking about.

It's a little bit like playing the game "Mastermind" and using the wrong pegs three times and still expecting the other bloke to guess the solution correctly.

Please don't do this. This is impolite and unnecessarily confusing your debating partner.

DO you need an explanation of the difference between an algorithm and an heuristic? Or of virtue ethics? — Banno

No thank you. Instead, it would be helpful if you could explain in simple, street-level terms what you mean. But I won't hold you to it, you do it if you feel like it.

So... we agree that moral issues are to be solved heuristically, not algorithmically?

Then I stand by the thrust of the post, that virtue ethics better suits ethical problem solving. — Banno

I apologize, but I can't agree to something I don't understand.

I have no formal training in philosophy, and you seem to have.

You have to come down to my level on this if you wish to elicit an agreement. Otherwise just let it go.

What article? — Banno

I suggest this article.

I was responding to the article you posted elsewhere rather than your comments here. — Banno

You need a good night's sleep, Banno.

Here's the other article you suggested supports your claim:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2011.0099 — L'éléphant

You ... ... . This has nothing to do with the comparison of human's intelligence today and in history. It has to to do with the parallel development of humanoid toolmaking and humanoid language.

Why do you think you can get away with this? With quoting completely irrelevant articles? Because it is a long and technical one, nobody else bothered to read it, you were in the position of proudly referring to it as a "study that shows human intelligence is declining". Well, it does not.

Your credibility is shot, my friend. First you name a fact that never happened; and then you are uncovered for either misunderstanding a complicated study, or else malevolently using it to create a wool over the eye of your debating opponents.

For the record, I provided some passages of the articles about the studies conducted by the researchers whose names I also provided. So stop being dramatic. If you have a habit of skipping pages of threads so that you only get the middle or end or incoherent posts , it's not my problem. — L'éléphant

I learned my lesson well. I think this is what you are referring to:

Crabtree based this assertion on genetics. About 2,000 to 5,000 genes control human intelligence, he estimated. At the rate at which genetic mutations accumulate, Crabtree calculated that within the last 3,000 years, all of humanity has sustained at least two mutations harmful to these intellect-determining genes (and will sustain a couple more in another 3,000 years).

Studies suggest that we are gradually becoming less intelligent. — L'éléphant

This is a flawed article. Mutations do not occur to all members of a species all at once. A mutation may create a trend that makes an entire subset of a species die out due to inability to survive due to the mutation's effect. But the mutation does not happen in all members of the group all at once. It happens to one member, who propagates it, and eventually a popluation will come to existence with that mutation.

The article you quoted is flying directly against the practical reality of the evolutionary aspect.

And that is such a seriously grave error that one can reject the point of the article altogether.

The basic reason for rejecting a place for sociobiology in ethics remains: even if our genes demand that we act in a certain way, it remains open for us to do otherwise. — Banno

The evolutionary change I suggested is nowhere near what you suggest here I suggested. I merely suggested in the article that there was a mechanism in place originally; that was fast and hard-wired; and its mechanism was transported from one application in behavour to a different application of behaviour. The second application (to which it was transported) is not hard-and-fast in behaviour; it is rather that that the reward and punishment system after any moral behaviour is the mehcanism that was inherited from the hard-wired system.

It is all there, and because it's a brand new concept, it requires (I am sorry to say) very careful reading. New concepts are normally resisted in acceptance, but before that phase, they are often misunderstood entirely.

You say moral acts are algorithmic at the start of your post only to say at the end that there is no such algorithm. — Banno

I believe you refer to these two instances in my post:

I don't think I ever said that moral acts are algorithmic processes, but now that you say that, I believe they are. — god must be atheist

Thus, it is not some sort of moral ethical decision tree or moral ethical algorithm that I invoked that would be developed to guide man in every different ethical dilemma or challenge — god must be atheist

I left out a major part in my first quoted text. The processes are algorithmic in the sense that the decision is based on the circumstances as well; in a way that the decision can be traced back (by a very smart "mind") from the actual act backwards in time to the constituent causing parts, and then one can see how those causing parts fit together to produce the act. Conversely, if the "smart mind" was aware of the causing parts, it could correctly predict the ensuing act. Without a decision tree or algorithm this task would be impossible.

In the second part I attempted to explain that the mutation that guides ethical behaviour is not a hard-and-fast command to how to behave; therefore I denied that it is some moral ethical decision tree that's at play.

In summary, the decision tree that I don't deny is there is processing of all causational components; and the denial of the decision tree is that it is SOLELY based on a pre-existing command by ethical mutation.

These are subtle differences, and one can argue that in the original text, from which i quoted, I ought to have been more careful in the wording.

They do. They measure the number of right answers on abstract questions. It's therefore an abstract measure of intelligence, as intelligence can't be quantified. Already the IQ itself is part of the strange kind of intelligence it's supposed to be a measure of. — Schootz1

All questions are abstract, since language is an abstraction.

You spelled out that IQ is a "strange" kind of intelligence. What do you mean by that? I think what you mean is that we don't know what kind of intelligence it is.

Which means that we don't know what we measure with IQ tests.

And you agree with that.

So why did you disagree with my line, "scientists don't know what they measure with IQ tests?"

Why is everyone a naysayer and yet winding up in self-contradictions on this site who oppose my opinions?

Why??????

Studies suggest that we are gradually becoming less intelligent. — L'éléphant

I haven't seen such a study, and Elephant could not point at one such study either.

But responses to my posts on this site certainly suggest that.

Hi, Garret, just to let you know: I have stopped reading your posts some time ago. I think (without proof) that you are a simple naysayer, without enough depth or insight, and you engage people relentlessly. I don't want to be part of that.

This is a friendly and polite notification that if you reply to my posts, others may pick up on it, but I won't.

I simply don't read your posts. That's about the size of it.

Apathy is the product of alienation rather than the product of financial security. — sime

In existentialist literature, yes. But in the real world it's giving up trying.

The racket seems to be that each worker responsible for their clients makes in salary many multiples of what the clients get. Each social worker is responsible for 40 clients (give or take).

Then again, the same type of government employee is responsible for the delivery of teacher's wages (who each make about the same as the employee) and the same type of empoyee again is responsible for the delivery of medical wages (mostly several times more than the workers' wages).

By "Same type of employee" I meant that they make about the same amount of money per period, no matter what level of government.

I was just wondering about the same thing earlier today. How much does welfare cost to Canadians? What is the portion of the GNP that goes on welfare, (not healthcare) and how much of the tax revenue for the same purpose. Tax revenue is a bit tougher to calculate: employment insurance and workmen's compensation (people who get injured on the job) is federal, disability is provincial, and welfare is municipal responsibility. They pay the bills. Feds and the provinces collect income tax, provinces, sales tax, and the municipalities, property tax, mainly. There are other revenues, such as licenses, penalties, gifts, inheritance taxes, etc.

Oh, my virtual balls! — baker

Virtuoso balls! (Snicker...)

So, choosing to follow the rules of deontology or consequentialism does not tell us what to do in a particular case; we must also interpret the circumstances of that case and choose how to implement the rule.

All this to say that acting morally is not an algorithmic process, it is not just doing what the rule says. — Banno

Thanks for finally replying to me.

I don't think I ever said that moral acts are algorithmic processes, but now that you say that, I believe they are. It's just that the algorithms are complex, and our cognitive examinations can't fathom them.

Maybe you are referring to the argument in which I said moral acts are evolution-based? I think you may still be hung up on those.

Yes, I maintain the same stance as before, but I think I miscommunicated my meaning. Moral acts indeed are manifold, and no rule can be found that applies to the details of every particular case. Long words like deontology and consequentialism aside, that is true. However, the mechanics of moral judgment are so, that a basic biologically ingrained set of rules (basically to preserve the safety and surety one's DNA's future derivatives) that are present in mammals and birds as well, has been developed in humans to other areas of life, such as to accept socially ingrained morality.

This is new, and I appreciate that you may have a natural aversion to this idea, because this has not been in your readings, particularly because it is (or may be) my own original idea.

In my opinion moral behaviour that society imposes on us would not have any effect on anyone, should a mutation to alter our functioning not have happened. We do internalize some social ethics, and reject some others. In every culture, if I may assert. And every culture may have different moral codes. But the basic evolutionary step was to make individuals accept that they have to conform to some ethical behaviour that society attempts to make them to accept.

Thus, it is not some sort of moral ethical decision tree or moral ethical algorithm that I invoked that would be developed to guide man in every different ethical dilemma or challenge; I invoked this pivotal mutation that had made humans ethical beings that respond to internalizing social ethics.

Pox on your first born, and a the scream of a thousand angry dead souls to constantly ring in your ears. Those are... sort of idioms, not quite, but it pleases me to tell you this, so don't go take it personally and ignore the arguments presented to you.

there are libraries full of books on reincarnation, Buddhism, Judaism, Sadism, Christianity, Voodoo, The Illiterati, Hubbardism, Scientology, MORALS AND ETHICS!!!!, What Pleases God, How you must worship god, etc. etc.

I don't know what you are griping about.

Oh, yes. There are entire libraries filled with books on the philosophy of the unknown. We just haven't located those libraries yet.

Unfortunately the welfare state is failing too. In my town people live in doorways and tents on the street. They beg politely. Crime is still not up horribly.

The problem with the welfare state is that the money doled out is clearly not enough to pay for food and rent, and absolutely not for clothing and entertainment. If they raised the welfare amounts to livable levels, there would be a revolt, because minimum wage jobs full time (40 hours a week) still don't pay for food, rent and clothing for an individual.

So if we want to bring aboard everyone, there would be needed a massive pay raise for 20% of the population. That would not go down well politically, either.

And even if it did, there is the druggie problem. People on welfare who use every penny they get to feed their addiction.

What's it going to be, to build utopia? Establish outposts on Mars?? Get hearing aids for everyone? use Pledge to polish furniture?

Reason-driven reasonable reasoning. Correct conclusions.

Yes and that you are forced to draw that conclusion shows how implausible your definition of freedom is. — Tobias

I actually did not define freedom.

Every political and social philosopher I have read on the subject considers freedom as freedom from something, but also as freedom to reach the goals you have set for yourself. The traffic light example by the way is Charles Taylor's. Those goals are much easier to reach in a society with well planned roads than in societies one just has to fin out everything by oneself. — Tobias

I think the issue is more subtle. Not everything that allows or helps you achieve your goals in a society is freedom. In fact, society imposes non-freedoms on you.

The basic problem is that it is not freedom in every action in a society that you gets you to achieve your goals. You are HELPED to achieve your goals, which involves the curtailing of some of your freedoms. To call everything that helps you along -- such as law, order, morals and peer pressure -- while curtailing your freedom -- from going through red lights, from beating up others, from taking things away from them -- freedom, is a gross misuse of the word.

Hoo, boy. That's a massive article. I managed to read the first two paragraphs, and they were riveting. (No joke.) Unfortunately I can't read longer texts, but I might come back to this one to resume where I had left off.

The cold war was not fraught with nuclear arsenals, iron curtains and space exploration alone, they were also waged using the arts, a very potent weapon for propaganda. Lenin said, while he was still alive, "To us, the most important form of art is film." Moving pictures. Yet they used music more for their indoctrination.

In the west, the most innocent-appearing but deadly propaganda tool was tv and radio advertisements. They did not aim to undermine the communists; they aimed to sell products, and thus incite the workers to work hard, and investors to take risks, and the economy grow in unprecedented proportions, to quickly become a consumer society.

That is what is dying out now... consumer society, because mostly everyone has everything they want, and there is no need to buy stoff... there is no need to make stoff... there is no need for workers... there is no need to worry about wealth, because the stiffs like you and me will never see any, so why worry about it. Karl Marx is giggling uncontrollably in his otherwise grave grave.

Baker, thanks for putting in the Brahms piece. I feel 5% more Hungarian now than before I listened to it.

This is a very good rendition of it. Hungarians gerne play classical music, but they are schrecklich at it. The only thing they do schlechter als that in music is rock. The entire Hungarian post-Beatles music industry only managed to produce zwei Lieder that get to you in melody: "Gyöngyhajú lány" und "Emlék", both by Omega.