• Best Arguments for Physicalism
    All the advances in science are consistent with idealism. — RogueAI
    What do you mean by "idealism – which flavor of it?" Why does this "consistency" with "advances in science" matter?

    Science doesn't do metaphysics.
    "Science doesn't do" poetry or sports either, so what's your point, Rogue? And how are "all the advances in science", as you say, "consistent" with a metaphysics like "idealism" if "science doesn't do metaphysics"?

    If you are a physicalist, what convinced you? — frank
    To paraphrase W. Churchill:

    IME I've found that physicalism is the worst methological paradigm for explaining – modeling – aspects of the natural world except for all those other non-physical or anti-physical paradigms tried from time to time.
  • Bannings
    Certainly, in the Platonic-Aristotlean tradition, politics & ethics are complementary faces of the philosophical coin. Not all participants in political discussions are 'dispassionate' (or thoughtful) enough to forgo their unwarranted/uninformed opinions for the sake of dialectic or argument. Political controversies attract trolls like flies to turds so Mods have to weed-out the incorrigible ones from time to time. Same as any other topics.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Great legal (& political) minds think alike! Truth hurts MAGAts, doesn't it? :victory: :mask:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    re: Criminal Defendent/Fraudster/Loser-1:

    2023 was the Year of Felony Indictments. :cool:

    2024 is the Year of Convictions (& Bankruptcy).     :fire:

    *Happy New Fear, MAGAts!*

    (Don't drop dead, Donnie, before 20Jan2025.) :sweat:
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice. — T.S. Elliot


    01.01.24
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I never called it [Gaza] a concentration camp but nice to know you [@schopenhauer1] feel obligated to defend that crime by pointing out it isn't as bad as an actual one. — Benkei
    :up:
  • Bob's Normative Ethical Theory
    Apologies for this delayed response.

    If something is solely a means to an end, then it can’t be an end itself because it is just a means towards some other end. If it is also an end then it is not just a means towards an end. — Bob Ross
    Repeating your definition doesn't make it more substantive than just a definition.

    .The argument for FET is as follows:

    P1: If something is solely a means towards an end, then it is not an end in itself.

    P2: Minds are ends in themselves.

    [ ... ]     — Bob Ross
    Again, an arbitrary posit.

    P2 notes that minds are ends in themselves, and this is because minds are the only beings with the nature such that they are their own end—i.e., they are an absolute end
    Circular to the point of being tautological.

    Minds are the only beings capable of setting out contextual ends for the sake of themselves (as the final, absolute end) and are thusly ends in themselves.
    :roll:

    C: One should not treat a mind as solely a means towards an end, but always as (at least) simultaneously an end in themselves.
    Again, this conclusion does not follow validly from your mere 'definitions' (& otherwise 'hidden premises' e.g. what is conceptually meant by "minds").

    Reason's Greetings & Happy New Year, Bob! :sparkle:
  • African Americans still wearing Covid-19 masks.
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up: :up:
  • New Year's Eve celebrations
    Just under six hours to go to 2024 on the US Pacific coast and we're about to sit down to dinner. Later I will watch 2001: A Space Odyssey again as I've done ritually almost every New Year's Eve since the early 1970s. :nerd:
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I'm a methological physicalist – I exclude 'non-physical' (i.e. stop-gap / fudge factor) concepts and entities from models, or explanations, of aspects of nature – who thinks 'metaphysical physicalism ' (re: SEP article) is superfluously reductive.
  • Bannings
    ↪hypericin
    :up:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    you Hamas symps
    — Merkwurdichliebe
    Cite where I "sympathize with Hamas" or retract your slander.     — 180 Proof
    Banned ... another "Israeli war crimes" apologist.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    you Hamas symps — Merkwurdichliebe
    Cite where I "sympathize with Hamas" or retract your slander.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪Merkwurdichliebe
    Apparently, you've not been paying attention ...
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up: :up: :up:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪tim wood
    Please, sir, STFU. Much appreciated.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    [H]amas played their hand, fuck 'em — Merkwurdichliebe
    And Bibi's regime took the bait, so fuck 'em too.

    But their choice is commitment to murder - not what I think but what they in every way make explicitly clear year after year after year after year.
    — tim wood

    Israel or Hamas? Since the IDF are far more effective terrorists, I’ll assume you mean them.     — Mikie
    :mask: :up:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪tim wood
    "The question itself is" simple minded (e.g. ahistorical). :brow:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪tim wood
    :roll: :shade: For decades Bibi has supplied matches & gasoline to Hamas and now firebombs Gaza in retaliation for Hamas setting one of Bibi's houses ablaze. You're an effin' war crimes apologist, tim wood.

    ↪Mikie
    :up:
  • James Webb Telescope
    White hole (instead of "Big Bang"):
  • What if the big bang singularity is not the "beginning" of existence?
    White hole (instead of "Big Bang"):
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    Stop accepting new input from the universe in favour of my own fantasies? That's a pretty unimaginative and unchallenging way to spend the rest of my life. — Pantagruel
    :up:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪tim wood
    I guess you don't like my answer so you deny I've given it a few times already. How about this, tim: I would not have supported the jihadist Hamas party over PA-affiliated, secular parties in Gaza and not have promoted the violent settler land-grabs in the West Bank, etc in order for both policies to sabotage all prospects of a "Two-State Solution" as Bibi's governments have done since 2004; thus, no October 7th atrocities and retaliatory mass murdering by the IDF today. Asking me what I would do in Netanyahu's current, self-inflicted catastrophe is disingenous on your part, tim, because my anti-zionist/anti-Bibi position has been stated repeatedly on this and other threads for about four years (since I became active again on TPF). Anyway, asked and answered. You've got no response but apologetic zionist "talking points" now like you've always had, which are vapidly ahistorical and morally shameful. :shade:
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    ↪hypericin
    Habituation to stimuli (e.g. dopamine-on-demand) sets in and eventually it's all "dull, undifferentiated pleasure" (just ask any (rich) junkie ... they never complain about that).

    ... knowing that your existence was a lie?
    The truth is I exist both before and after I stick my head into a permanent brain prosthetic. The only "lie" would be not to remember, or deny, that I'm now "living for the rest of my non-simulated life in a simulation".

    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    ↪hypericin
    No. No.

    A "fully-immersive simulation" prosthesis (with no off-switch / exit) = a lobotomy plus continuous 24/7 morphine drip.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    It's all on you, 180: what do you do? — tim wood
    Asked and answered over two years ago ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/650650
  • What are you listening to right now?
    Reason's Greetings (bye-bye 2023!)

    Hear me ringin'
    big bell tolls
    Hear me singin'
    soft and low
    I've been beggin'
    on my knees
    I've been kickin',
    help me, please

    "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" (7:15)
    Sticky Fingers, 1971
    writers Jagger-Richards
    performers The Rolling Stones

    :yum:

    "Y'all got – cocaine eyes!
    (ah, the good ol' days :party: )
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    What we do know is that there is no evidence of consciousness existing anywhere apart from biological organisms, so we really have zero reason to think that consciousness can exist apart from biological organisms, and every reason to think it cannot. — Janus
    :100:

    If by "we don't know" you mean that it hasn't been proven, then I agree; nothing in science has been proven. — Janus
    :up: :up:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    And to be sure, as I react to your post, it - you -would seem to say that maybe better if the Arabs had won in '67 or '48. Is that antisemitism that's showing? — tim wood
    Not at all; just my anti-settler-colonizer/anti-zionism that I share with
    (e.g.) R. Luxemburg, S. Freud, A. Einstein, E. Fromm, P. Levi, Marek Edelman, I. Asimov, H. Arendt, I.F. Stone, N. Chomsky, H. Siegman, M. Lerner, R. Falk, T. Judt ... — 180 Proof
    and Israeli conscientious objectors like Tal Mitnick. Clearly, it's apologists for zionist mass murder like you, tim wood, who are among the actual antisemites (contra Israeli and Palestinian children) in this historical context. :shade:
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    I think [Gnomon's] fundamentally wrong because he has m = matter instead of m = mass, the correct equivalence. — ucarr
    Obviously you are correct.

    I've been criticizing him from the standpoint of execution of his argumentation. I've characterized it as being slapdash and error-laden.
    You're being generous, ucarr. @Gnomon spouts his own warlock's brew of woo-woo nonsense which he rationalizes with pseudo-scientific sophistry. Have you read any of his personal blog on "EnFormationism"? A good laugh that quickly becomes a tedious slog ... yet insightful as to what he's really up to: substituting a deistic prime mover (i.e. universal programmer aka "The EnFormer") for "the creator god of Abraham". If you search my posts using "Gnomon" as a keyword you'll find that since 2020 I've challenged him hundreds of times to be more rigorously clear and accurate with the science and the philosophy he espouses, but to no avail. Maybe you will have better luck than I've had, ucarr ...

    If firstly we picture Einstein sitting at his desk writing out the equations for special relativity, and then secondly we read his paper published in 1905, can we next conjoin these two events via memory to the effect that we can claim them public and therefore physical?
    If I understand you correctly, "memory" in the brain is physical but without corroborating evidence its content is not public.

    You're saying physicalism is rooted in the scientific method's demand that scientifically measurable things be public?
    No. I'm saying that, IMO, physicalism excludes non-physical concepts (e.g. X-of-the-gaps supernaturalia) from explanations of aspects of (i.e. transformations in) the physical world ... such that, reversing your terms, "the scientific method is rooted in" (a) physicalist paradigm.

    Is metacognitive, within your context, higher-order cognition, i.e., cognition of cognition?
    More or less. Read the article I linked in the post you're referring to for an elaboration on the context within which I use the adjective "metacognitive".
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪ucarr
    Why include me in your reply to Gnomon?
  • Divine simplicity and modal collapse
    Can nothingness have a property? — wonderer1
    Maybe: propertylessness.
  • Divine simplicity and modal collapse
    A point in space? — Manuel
    Not even "a point" – nothingness.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪Benkei
    :up:
  • Why be moral?
    Maybe I've taken your point further than you intend, Banno
    — 180 Proof

    Not too far, perhaps. Talk of virtues and vices, dealing with here and now, ad hoc rather than programatic decision making, allowing for review of the outcomes, heuristics over algorithms; sounds about right.     — Banno
    :cool:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪boagie
    :100: :up:

    "The criminal attack on Gaza won’t solve the atrocious slaughter that Hamas executed." What do you think will? — tim wood
    Maybe a time machine that leads back to 1967 ... or 1948. :mask:
  • Why be moral?
    And yet we each must act, and hence each must choose what to do. — Banno
    Yes, and the (foreseeable) consequence of every action (or inaction) either

    • helps more than harns,
    • harms more than helps,
    • harms and helps more or less equally
    or
    • (mostly it seems) neither harms nor helps

    by which habits of judgment (i.e. virtues, vices) are reflectively cultivated. Maybe I've taken your point further than you intend, Banno, but I think my point is consistent with the ethical truth you've raised: "What ought I/we to do now?"

    Being moral for the sake of being moral seems pointless. — Michael
    Okay then don't "be moral for the sake of being moral" – be moral because it's usually far less maladaptive than being immoral.

    Yes, so as the OP asks, why consider morality when choosing what to do? — Michael
    I don't know what it means to "consider morality when choosing what to do" any more than what it means to "consider" seeing "when choosing" to look or "consider" empathy "when choosing" to feel. In situ we do, look or feel and then reflect on how we can improve on doing, looking or feeling; thus, we can gradually cultivate habits of judgments (for "choosing") which are either (A) more adaptive than maladaptive (i.e. virtuous) or (B) more maladaptive than adaptive (i.e. vicious). Ethics is not calculus but concerns seeking optimal ways of living with others.

    Why not just consider our desires and pragmatism?
    Who says these do not also factor into moral conduct? However, they are not the only considerations. Read moral psychology and some of Confucius, Epicurus, Epictetus, Aristotle ... Spinoza, Nietzsche, Peirce, Dewey ... Parfit, Foot, Nussbaum et al).
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    This 18 year old man, Tal Mitnick, has more courage and moral decency than any of you armchair, pro-zionist Einsatzgruppen who have been rationalizing Bibi's latest, on-going campaign of military-industrial mass murder of Palestinian children, women & elderly. Mazol tov, my young brother & comrade, Tal. :fire: :mask:

    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/27/headlines/israeli_conscientious_objector_sentenced_to_30_days_in_prison
  • Commandment of the Agnostic
    ↪baker
    Go troll yourself.
  • Nietzsche: How can the weak constrain the strong?
    Germs. Gravity. Children. Promises. Memory ... wtf, think! :sweat:
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