• Bannings
    Fish in the sea, you know how I feel
    River running free, you know how I feel
    Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel
    It's a new dawn
    It's a new day
    It's a new life for me
    And I'm feeling good.
    — Nina Simone     — unenlightened
    :death: :flower:
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    Are you committed to the notion that all harm is bad? ...  We should prevent all harm? — Andrew4Handel
    I've referred many times to 'preventing / reducing NET harm' in my formulations of an ethics. Your strawmanning only leads to non sequiturs, thus your confusions persist.
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ↪EricH

    I am saying atheism seems to lead to moral nihilism and other forms of nihilism. — Andrew4Handel
    Well, one of us is playing with the wrong of the mule:
    Nihilism is conventional, or common sense, 'god-of-the-gaps theism' and, therefore, a significant reason why (philosophical) atheists reject theism. — 180 Proof
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    I don't see how you get from an assessment of harm to a morality. — Andrew4Handel
    Uh huh. :roll:

    For what it's worth ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/554048
  • Chess…and Philosophers
    ↪Mikie
    Can you name a philosopher who was an avid chess player or who recommended chess as prerequisite to doing philosophy?
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    I have become agnostic based on my evaluations of theory, evidence, probability, limitations of knowledge etc.
    — Andrew4Handel     — EricH
    Not knowing whether or not there is a g/G does not entail believing in g/G or disbelieving in g/G. Being agnostic is irrelevant.

    I want to know that my actions are good or bad objectively and not speculatively, subjectively or arbitrarily.
    — Andrew4Handel
    Observing the foreseeable (e.g. net harmful / unjust) consequences of actions is effectively pragmatic and replicatable aka "objective". I've no idea what @Andrew is talking about either.

    No one has discovered a truth value to moral claims or moral instructions.
    — Andrew4Handel
    Just like no one has discovered a truth value to medical diagnostics or treatments. :roll: What is harmful to our species is knowable and therefore preventable and reducible (i.e. in medical terms, 'therapeutically treatable'). Ergo, no "supernatural value systems" are needed (or are objective in any practical sense). Andrew seems incorrigibly confused.
  • Bannings
    ↪Baden
    :lol: :up:
  • How can metaphysics be considered philosophy?
    ↪RogueAI
    Bartricks was, in practice, a 'solipsist' and I'm getting 'solipsist' vibes from Zettel.
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    [F]or me nothing can ever exist or make sense without time. Do you have a way of explaining or describing how from a timeless state something can happen? — punos
    I agree, punos, except I subsritute change for "time". And my answer is consistent, I think, with the Nobel physicist Frank Wilczek's quip
    Nothing is unstable
    e.g. Noether's theorem, spontaneous symmetry-breaking, etc
    ↪180 Proof
    .
  • How can metaphysics be considered philosophy?
    ↪Zettel
    :rofl:
  • How can metaphysics be considered philosophy?
    [M]etaphysical questions have no truth value. They are not true or false, they are useful or not useful. Metaphysics sets out the rules, what Collingwood calls "absolute presuppositions," of human understanding. — T Clark
    It's clear from this thread that @Zettel disagrees with this because s/he's incorrigibly dogmatic. Another Dunning-Kruger troll; thus, s/he cannot respond to you or anyone here without fatuous trivialities and snark.

    If s/he walks like Bartricks, talks like Bartricks, then s/he'll be banned (again) like ...

    Do you or anyone else here ever post anything other than unsupported sentiment?  — Zettel (Bartricks)
    Pathetic projection – no post on this thread yet has been gassing "unsupported sentiments" more than the OP.
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    What response? Clarify ...
  • How can metaphysics be considered philosophy?
    Metaphysics is to philosophy what mathematics is to theoretical physics. — Agent Smith
    I don't think the analogy works, Smith.
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ↪Tom Storm
    :cool: Thanks.
  • How can metaphysics be considered philosophy?
    The propositions issuing from metaphysics and philosophy seem logically and epistemologically distinct. — Zettel
    Due to their intrinsically meta-discursive uses, philosophical (i.e. reflective) statements are suppositional, not propositional (i.e. truth-apt). If there are 'philosophical propositions', however, then I've missed – misrecognized – them. Examples please.
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    ↪Agent Smith
    A crutch that only cripples you. :pray: After all, philosophical suicide is painless, no?
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    ↪Agent Smith
    Ah yes. 'Placebo-fetish' (i.e. bullet to the brain!) is my preferred term of art.
  • Chess…and Philosophers
    So do you think either of the AlphaZero or Stockfish programs might become "the next Aristotle"? :smirk:
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    ↪Agent Smith
    I ask you. :chin:
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    Why don't you need your statements to have truth value? — Andrew4Handel
    Why do you assume that? I've claimed the opposite with respect to morality more than once (links below) which you have either ignored or given vague meandering responses.

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/773861
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/774287
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/774318

    ↪Andrew4Handel So [you assert] nature itself isn't grounds enough for natural beings to conceive of and practice morality (i.e. eusocial cooperation strategies). Why? — 180 Proof
    :chin:
  • Deep Songs
    There must be some kind of way outta here
    Said the joker to the thief
    There's too much confusion
    I can't get no relief ...


    "All Along the Watchtower" (4:01)
    Electric Ladyland, 1968
    writer R. Zimmerman, 1967
    The Jimi Hendrix Experience :fire:
  • Emergence
    ↪punos
    I posted a link to a wiki article that summarizes the relevant physics. There's "the reason" – our current best theoretical explanation – for vacuum fluctuations. The current state of fundamenral physics suffices for me as a layman (with university-level physics education and graduate degree in cognitive science). Otherwise, 'not knowng the physics' does not mean there is no explanation for some physical phenomenon.
  • Emergence
    Why "vacuum fluctuations" and not "God", that is if an answer with no explanation is sufficient? — punos
    There is not any experimental corroboration or theoretical function in fundamental physics for "God" but there are both for vacuum fluctuations.
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    ↪Agent Smith
    Well, in that case, let's hope it's a sex goddess with a bawdy sense of humor that will forgive us fools for not believing (i.e. thinking).

    :death: :flower:
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    Did you know, heard it from an Iranian, that the Ayatollah of Iran gave each Iranian soldier an actual key, a key to heaven according to him, before they marched to their deaths during the Iran-Iraq war (1980s)? — Agent Smith
    No surprise there – I've never heard that one. :lol:

    There's no lock for that key ...
    ... because "that key" is only a symbolic artifact of one or more of our cognitive biases and thus, there's no "lock", never was, or ever will be. Just 'fact-free stories' we tell ourselves in order to manage our terror and sedate our anxieties. I forget who said: the main function of civilization (or culture) is just to distract us from the abyss which our large forebrains can't help gazing into. :eyes: :pray:
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
    ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca

    So my charge is that non religious people are acting indistinguishably from religious people in a lot of their beliefs ... — Andrew4Handel
    This fact demonstrates that to do good or bad and learn or not from the consequences most people do not need "divine permission" in order to survive and to thrive. So what are peculiarly "religious values" good for? :chin:

    Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. — H.L. Mencken, journalist & critic
    With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion. — Steven Weinberg, Nobel physicist
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    Why would nature provide us with a key if there's no lock? That's wasteful, not to mention dangerous - — Agent Smith
    Mama Nature is an extravangtly wasteful (re: evolution e.g. supernovae, mass extinctions) and dangerous (re: absurdity e.g. "Medea") bitch, Smith, that blindly and insatiably devours all of her children eventually. Didn't you read the memo nailed to that old tree under the sign "Don't feed the fucking Grizzlies!" :sweat:

    Could it be a(n) spandrel / exaptation?
    I prefer to think of "spirituality" as caused by psychological defects which for many folks pop-up out of the magic bag of our hardwired cognitive biases. :pray:
  • Would true AI owe us anything?
    ↪Bylaw
    :up:
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    If we have a spiritual side (the key), there hasta be a spiritual dimension (the lock). — Agent Smith
    It doesn't follow from feeling haunted by ghosts that, in fact, "ghosts are real", does it? :meh:

    Hint: At least at the classical scale of everyday experience, the map (ideality) cannot determine the territory (reality) – e.g. a "Map of Middle Earth" does not entail that, in fact, "Middle Earth" exists.
  • What is the root of all philosophy?
    Along those lines, I wonder, is there a common root for all such endeavors? — Bret Bernhoft
    No doubt, if there is such a thing, "a common root" of thinking is Change. :fire:

    Did philosophy begin somewhere?
    Philosophy, IMO, begins (again and again) wherever the question "How do we know our assumptions are true or our givens are real?" predominates like an itch that grows as we scratch it.
  • How to Solve it?
    Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. — Winston Churchill
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    ↪Agent Smith
    ???
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    Let's see if @Gnomon
    responds... :zip:
  • Emergence
    So why or how is there something? — punos
    There is no Why (which does not beg this Why question further); and as for the How, theoretical symmetry-breaking (i.e. vacuum fluctuations, etc) suffices. Also, insofar as 'there is nothing' to stop not-nothing – "something" – from coming-to-be, continuing-to-be or ceasing-to-be, necessarily non-necessary not-nothing happens eventually. And since there is only one state of nothing-ness relative to the infinitely many states of not-nothing-ness, the probability of the former relative to the latter is vanishing close to zero (which, IMO, is the only state-of-affairs so infinitely improbable that it paradoxically necessitates an "Absolute Being" to sustain "Absolute Nonbeing" :scream:).
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    ↪Agent Smith
    "Spiritual" means to me haunted by ghosts (and "religious" belonging to a spiritual community). This may be proof of feeling haunted, not "proof of ghosts" (i.e. disembodied entities) :eyes:
  • Emergence
    Maybe there is something about nothing. — punos
    :smirk: Maybe not ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/349320
  • How to Solve it?
    ↪punos
    Sure; but only the "naturally evolved" universe is fundamental, or real. The "simulations" are merely virtual.
  • How to Solve it?
    ↪punos
    Well my barber's name is Occam... A Matryoshka doll universe-simulation seems to me as silly as "geocentric epicycles" and "turtles all the way down". I've no problem with the universe conceived of as a simulation, just the universal "simulator" / "programmer" add-on.
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    ↪Wayfarer
    Like "Coke or Pepsi" ...
  • How to Solve it?
    I hesitate to call it a computer since i don't want to give the impression of an ultimate programmer with complex intentions. — punos
    :up: Yeah, the universe-as-"computer" notion is like interpreting evolution as caused or directed by an "Evolver". Re: vestigial anthropomorphic bias (à la animism).
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