The attack was pathetic. Israel killed two Iranian generals, a score of their diplomats, and Iran threw crap weaponry at them that got blown out of the sky.

These hypotheticals are Hollywood. Real conflict is not scripted. — Vera Mont

I agree with that.

But all of that aside, meaning, all of US aside and our morality, before we judge the morality, we can simply see that animals kill and eat other animals.

That simply is, the very subject that already exists for our moral question. We spawn in the same pond of animals as all of our ancestors spawned to be food for the next… — Fire Ologist

We are moral agents. Animals are not. We make laws regulating our behaviors on the assumption we can rise above our primal instincts. Eating meat is probably immoral and I shouldn't do it, but I just don't get that upset about it, and I don't want to give it up. I think future generations are going to judge us harshly for how we've treated animals over the years, and if aliens came down and started eating us, we could hardly complain.

As I said, we need general rules, but those rules cannot adequately deal with all cases. — Janus

I agree it should be a general rule to avoid torture, but there are hypothetical cases where it would seem to be the moral thing to do. Shouldn't the government carve out exceptions for those cases? Or are those exceptions already "built in"? Consider the following:

Suppose government agents catch a terrorist with a nuke in the heart of NY and there's one of those Hollywood digital readouts counting down 30 minutes. Further suppose those agents start breaking the guy's fingers and he spills his guts about how to disarm the bomb and they disarm it. Would you support prosecuting those agents? No jury in the world would convict them and rightly so.

Civilians should be limited to revolvers, shotguns or bolt-action rifles, with lengthy prison time for any violators. That is definitely not an NRA position.

Of course, torture must be condemned tout court, If I torture the perpetrator to save my family, I will never claim that act is morally justified, because the standard for society has to be "no torture under any circumstances" and I support that. — Janus

Why should that be the standard? Do you torture the terrorist to get the code to disarm the nuke that's about to go off and kill a million people? I think you have a moral obligation to start pulling some fingernails.

Iran attacked with the ferocity of a cornered rabbit. Looks like the status quo is still in place. The rial is trading at 600,000 to the dollar. The last thing Iran wants is a war with U.S./Israel

Of course, if Iran does manage to kill some Israelis it's obviously genocide, and that changes the situation.

Israel is a nuclear power. They're not going to be at the mercy of anyone in the region.

The 2A refers to "the people." You refer to "people." what do you mean? What do you imagine the founders meant? — tim wood

American citizens.

In a Massachusetts' court - or in any other court I know of - your opinion wouldn't matter. And, that is exactly the circumstance in which you're obliged to retreat if you can. — tim wood

If someone is breaking into your home at night, where are you supposed to retreat to? The back yard? Under the bed? Regardless, I live in California.

"Good heavens! Read your own citation! I quote from it:
"The latest data show that people use guns for self-defense only rarely. According to a Harvard University analysis of figures from the National Crime Victimization Survey, people defended themselves with a gun in nearly 0.9 percent of crimes from 2007 to 2011."

My citation showed there are 100,000 cases of defensive gun use every year. Do you dispute that? Not every case of defensive gun use is going to be reported as a crime.

"David Hemenway, who led the Harvard research, argues that the risks of owning a gun outweigh the benefits of having one in the rare case where you might need to defend yourself.
"The average person ... has basically no chance in their lifetime ever to use a gun in self-defense," he tells Here & Now's Robin Young. "But ... every day, they have a chance to use the gun inappropriately. They have a chance, they get angry. They get scared.""

If there are 100,000 cases of defensive gun use a year then the claim "has basically no chance in their lifetime ever to use a gun in self-defense" is false or pretty misleading.

"So apparently you assess yourself personally as not so much at risk; yours is a drawer gun. Do you ever practice with it? How do you assess your chances of successfully confronting a house breaker with your gun? That is, your gun by itself could get you or someone else killed who should not be killed if you're not proficient, trained, knowledgeable, and practiced in its use - and never mind what your bullet hits if it misses your target."

I've practiced and am proficient with it. I no longer target shoot. My nearest neighbor's house is hundreds of feet away. The danger to them of a .38 round going through two (or more) walls and hitting them is nil.

He's law-abiding right up to the exact moment he is no longer law-abiding. The point being that "law-abiding" seems not a very good indicator of who should/should not have a gun. — tim wood

People without a criminal record should be able to buy a gun. I'm on the fence about mental health issues.

"As I suppose you know very well, state laws differ greatly on whom you can shoot and why, and in many cases are contradictory. E.g., in Maine you can shoot a woman hanging laundry in her own backyard. In Louisiana a boy coming up on your porch - if memory serves he rang the doorbell. In Florida, I gather, anyone who comes towards you whose looks you don't like. In Massachusetts your first duty is to retreat if you can."

I agree that you should retreat if you can, unless someone is breaking into your house.

So if you want to shoot an intruder, you shall have to consider what state to live in. — tim wood

I live in California. It's legal to shoot home invaders. I would only shoot someone if I thought they might kill me. Even then, I would fire a warning shot and tell them to get out. If they're running out the door with my TV, I would let them go.

And I'm sure too that you know perfectly well that by far the greater danger to the inhabitants of a house is the gun that is already in the house. So it would appear that justifications are more based in fantasy and wishful thinking than reality, and these fantasies get too many people killed that should not have been killed.

My kid is grown and moved out, no kids ever visit, and I wouldn't use it for suicide. I don't play with my gun or target shoot. It sits in a drawer. It's not a danger to anyone except someone trying to break in.

Washington Post says 100,000 cases of gun self-defense happen every year. That's a lot. How many of those would have been killed had they not had a gun? Even if it's only 10%, that's 10,000 people a year who were saved because they had a gun.
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/13/602143823/how-often-do-people-use-guns-in-self-defense

ETA: If/when I have grandkids, I'm not keeping a gun in the house. You're right there that the danger is just too great.

Palestinians are not the enemy, but I do see them as an enemy population in the same way that a highly pro-nazi town in 1945 would have been. The citizens themselves aren't inherently evil and deserving of death, but I would be very cautious of them. — BitconnectCarlos

:100:

Turns out that "law-abiding" citizens do most of the killing. — tim wood

Unpack this, please. If it's unjustified killing (murder/manslaughter), than the person is not "law-abiding". If it's a justified killing, then it's self-defense.

— tim wood

Btw, you want to "counter the threat." What threat is that, exactly, and how, exactly, do you plan to "counter" it?

The threat is someone breaking into my house. The counter is shooting them with my gun.

There are 400 million+ guns in America. It's easy for criminals to get their hands on one. Law-abiding citizens should have access to guns to counter the threat and that requires gun manufacturers.

For me the enemy is always the enemy combatants, fighters or servicemen. Legal or illegal. Not the civilians. — ssu

Suppose the Nordon Bombsight actually worked with 90% accuracy and that 90% of bombs dropped on German munitions plants, aircraft factories, oil/ballbearing production, etc. actually hit their targets.

Under those conditions, would you have opposed strategic bombing of German war industries?

Besides, I don't know if idealism 'solves' the question of re-incarnation. — Wayfarer

No, not that. The problem of personal identity across time.

Do you think idealism solves it? Did you see the conversation with Kastrup and Koch yet?

Me (now) is not identical to the me of yesteday, much less to the infant me of 70 years ago.

I take the identity of indiscernibles seriously: entities x and y are identical if every predicate possessed by x is also possessed by y and vice versa — Relativist

But you can never be identical to yourself in even the shortest amounts of time. At any point in time, atoms are moving in and out of your body, changing your physical makeup. But breathing doesn't make you a different person. Why should memory loss? Are you claiming the loss of one completely trivial memory in the next five seconds make you not you? That it turns you into a completely different person?

The main difference between Trump and Biden is that Biden and the Democrats would not try a Reichstag Fire to stay in power, even if they thought it would work. That's just not in the DNA of the party. Trump, and the GOP, would.

“That’s not an argument”
Am I the only who was reminded of Crocodile Dundee?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vW54lAtldI&ab_channel=Movieclips

If memories aren't preserved in my after-life consciousness, in what sense is that still me? It hardly seems like something to look forward to. — Relativist

If half your memories suddenly disappeared, would you be half you? Wouldn't you still be you even if you lost 90% of your memories? If I had a conversation with my 20 year old self, I could tell my 20 year old self: "95% of what you do this year will be forgotten by the time you're 50." What should the reaction of my 20 year old self be upon hearing that? Fear that so much will be forgotten? Also, if my 80 year old self tells me that I won't have dementia, but through natural forgetting, 95% of this year I'm living right now will be forgotten, how should I feel about that right now?

No thanks. If you feel nothing can be done, then go on doing nothing. — Mikie

As opposed to being a massive dick to people on some obscure philosophy forum? If you're so upset about climate change, why are you wasting your time here? Do you think your ramblings here are helping the planet in any way? There must be some painting somewhere you could be scheming to throw some soup at.

*3. "In attempting to answer these questions, we’re up against the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’: how a physical brain could underwrite the extra-physical properties of phenomenal experience."
Note --- What he calls "extra physical" I'm calling Meta-physical, in the sense that Ideas are not Real. — Gnomon

And yet ideas obviously exist. If they're not physical, what are they? Are you a substance dualist?

Not comparable. China isn’t murdering thousands with US support /weapons. — Mikie

Ah, I see. So U.S. consumers aren't supporting China when they buy hundreds of billions of cheap Chinese crap every year? You get so worked up about genocide, I would have figured you'd be in favor of a boycott of a country actively engaged in it.

Right, so it’s hopeless. Cool analysis. Bye. — Mikie

Not hopeless, but what we're currently doing is obviously not working. People are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to transition away from fossil fuels. Poor and developing countries are also going to keep using fossil fuels. We're going to have to either hope for some tech miracle, hope the Earth is self-regulating in some way as to prevent warming from getting too bad, or geo-engineering our way out of it.

Cheer up, though. Embrace idealism. This is all just a dream. It's meaningless. Work on adjusting your attitude so you attract a better reality for yourself.

And yet,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/03/12/eia-confirms-historic-us-oil-production-record/?sh=6fcd85824048

No matter who we have as president, if it's valuable, it's going to be dug up and sold or used. Biden can chip away at the problem at the margins and push for more EV's and fewer gas stoves, but that is just putting a finger in the climate dike. Gas went up a buck a gallon in the last four years, and there will howls of protest as if the world was coming to an end. People aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary for real solutions.

https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/chinese-genocide-of-uyghurs-in-xinjiang-continues

If someone believes a simulation of a working brain is conscious, would this be a fairly accurate description of what the person believes: "to say that a simulation of a working brain is conscious is to say a collection of electronic switches is conscious. That if you take enough switches, run an electric current through them, and turn them on and off in a certain way, the pain of stubbing a toe will emerge."

ChatGPT
Yes, that description captures the essence of the belief that a simulation of a working brain could be conscious. It implies that consciousness arises from the complex interactions of physical components, such as electronic switches in the case of a simulation, rather than from some non-physical or supernatural source. This perspective aligns with the idea that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the arrangement and activity of the underlying components, similar to how the experience of pain emerges from the activity of neurons in a biological brain.

So a biological brain, a silicon brain, or a computer simulation of a biological or silicon brain, would all experience consciousness. — Malcolm Lett

This thread doesn't seem to be going anywhere, so I'll post the usual stuff I post when someone claims this.

If a simulation is conscious, then that means a collection of electronic switches is conscious. That is to say that if you take enough switches, run an electric current through them, and turn them on and off in a certain way, the pain of stubbing a toe will emerge.

Isn't this already, prima facie, absurd?

Is naturalism really more parsimonious than, say, idealism? Take the Many World Interpretation of QM. Kastrup arguers that countless universes popping into existence all the time can hardly be called "parsimonious". Do you think he has a point?

Does philosophy hold aloof from science within an academic fortress of abstract math and logic? — ucarr

And common sense. After all, it was a philosopher who recently won a famous bet against a scientist, not the other way around.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-25-year-old-bet-about-consciousness-has-finally-been-settled/

Panpsychism is on the rise, people are taking plant consciousness seriously, scientists are being called out by their colleagues for pushing integrated information pseudoscience...Philosophy has the upper hand these days when it comes to consciousness.

Then you’re simply not paying attention. Take one example:

Biden: “Climate change is a problem we have to address.” Passes biggest climate bill in history — the IRA.

Trump: “Climate change is a Chinese hoax.”

You: “I see no difference.”

Sorry, but it’s sheer idiocy. You may not like either choice— neither do I — but let’s try to face reality. The whole “no difference between parties, they’re all corrupt” line is about 20 years out of date. Now it’s primarily used by those who know exactly nothing about either party, or their policies.

The differences are, in fact, stark. It takes effort not to notice. — Mikie

The push from the Biden Admin for EV's and emission standards is also night and day compared to what a GOP administration would be doing/will do.

What does your theory have to say about computer consciousness? Are conscious computers possible? Are there any conscious computers right now? How would you test for computer consciousness?

Science can't do ethics.

I don't know. Maybe a more knowledgeable person could chime in.

yes, but a series of dominos don't implement a process, like the process that can determine if a number is prime, unless they're set up in a specific way. So the question is, what way of setting up sand implements that process? — flannel jesus

Well, if there are a lot of processes that result in consciousness, and a lot of sand dunes being blown around by the wind, then occasionally, through random shifting of sand particles, some process that results in consciousness should occur through random chance.

what process do you think shifting sand is implementing that's conscious? — flannel jesus

There doesn't seem to me to be much difference between dominos falling over and sand grains moving around.

oh well then, in principle... MAYBE

Though I'm partial to the idea that, rather than dominos being conscious, or a computer being conscious, or a brain made of neurons being conscious, what if it's the *process* that's conscious? The process is substrate independent, maybe THAT'S the thing that's conscious, and not the thing the process is implemented on. — flannel jesus

If it's substrate independent, there could be "flashes" of consciousness happening all around us as processes occur in various things: meteor swarms, shifting sand dunes, clouds, etc.

I think if it can't, it's because what other people have mentioned - the dominos fall and don't pick themselves back up. Consciousness might require a certain level of recursion, and Dominos, becaus they fall and stay down, are kinda hampered in their ability to implement recursive algorithms.

I think computers - or even neurons - are basically fancy dominos without that limitation. — flannel jesus

What I meant by a system of dominoes includes a machine that continually sets them up after they fall according to some program.

Does anyone think a system of dominoes could be conscious?