?

So, being ethical is hard? — Shawn

Unless one is an anti-social sociopath, thereby lacks (common) empathy, I don't think "being ethical", as you put it, is difficult. Practice, however, makes "being ethical" easier (habitual).

What's hard about accepting oneself as she or he is?

That's a psychological, not ethical, question. Socialization, I guess, or poor self-esteem.

I don't know of any concept or principle that "exists in a vacuum."

I don't think integrity requires commitment to "the platonic good".

Why lie about who we are? — Shawn

Well ...

Truth is ugly. We possess lies lest we perish of the truth. — Freddy Zarathustra

... the placebo effect works.

Why become something we are not?

I don't see how we cannot. Should we h. sapiens give up our civilized facades, or pretenses?

Yes. 'Volitions' (i.e. more veto than volo) are only infrequent interruptions in involuntary systems, reflexes & habits (i.e. embodiment). I suspect, however, the libertarian (i.e. decisionist) OP is less counter-intuitive for most than a compatibilist conception of "willing".

No doubt.

Thanks. My memory is pretty good but often I confiirm quotes, etc with Google rather than pulling books or whatever from my stacks. A lifetime of study and immersing myself in the arts have lacerated me deeply with interesting trivia and topical quotations. It's been decades, for instance, since I'd read Emma Goldman's Living My Life or studied Nietzsche works and yet the right context inspires their voices to return to me and meet the moment (e.g. your thoughtful OP). Anyway, glad you appreciate the references.

This post is nonsense. C'mon, try harder to address what your interlocators are actually saying. Don't waste anybody's time. Read my objections to your OP (and that of others) then try again.

On film?

However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. — Stanley Kubrick

:fire: :eyes:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/756269

Do you understand Gödel's argument? — Agent Smith

I "understand" his Incompleteness theorems only while I'm reading them or a learned synopsis of them.

If you do, kindly sum it for me. If you don't where do you get stuck so to speak?

I guess I'm "stuck" at not being an adequate enough logician or metamathematician.

In essence, what sort of god would you define yourself as? — Benj96

If not an epicurean god, then I would be a god that uses 'my godly power' to do only one thing: by fiat I'd remove every anti-social pathology / aptitude from every sentient being, simultaneously, everywhere in the universe, and until 'the end of days' ... in order to make living a mortal life again significantly less of a letdown after such a brief apotheosis. :smirk:

Hey, 180 Proof, what's that word for defining something by talking about what it's not? — T Clark

Apophasis (e.g. apophatic theology).

Would you like to address the points I am making? — ToothyMaw

I have. Derived from incoherent assumptions, your "points" lack merit. Now deal with my counterpoints if you can.

:eyes: More empty rhetoric.

For me, she's the epitome of courage. :fire:

We have two essential aspects: praxis and metaphysics. — javi2541997

How we live. How we think.

How do you know that you "really know" this?

Probably German philosophy is not practical enough but we cannot get rid of it. I mean it is one of the pillars of Western thought or philosophy. — javi2541997

I suppose, defeasible reasoning and modern sciences notwithstanding, just as we cannot get rid of 'magical thinking' either. :sparkle:

"moral realism" is incoherent (re: assumption that moral statements are empirical propositions)
— 180 Proof

That assumption does not lead to incoherence. — ToothyMaw

:roll: :shade: :point:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/759498

:smirk:

Thanks. And in the spirit of @Amity's OP, a George Harrison 'song of hope' (or joy in a minor key) as interpreted by Nina Simone

and this shorter mash-up remix of the same song:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7gYn8-ziaFI

Another time, mi amigo, it's 5am here ... :yawn: Besides, I suspect @jgill or @Banno can help you out with old Gödel.

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." ~Emma Goldman

What is your experience of hope as a feeling, action or philosophical concept? — Amity

"Hope as a feeling?" Pacifer, or placebo, for fear

"Hope as an action?" Denying risk or improbability.

"Hope as a philosophical concept?" The essential 'triumph of imagination over intelligence'.

Where have you expressed or found it?

In a foxhole there is no "hope" – there's only courage or tears (or both).

Did you find it 'hollow as fear'?

More like, as futile as regret.

:death:

"We invented the blues; Europeans invented psychoanalysis. You invent what you need."
~Albert Murray

"Without music, life would be a mistake... I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance." ~Freddy Zarathustra

:flower:

As someone who lost religious faith some time ago, I wondered about any secular songs about 'hope' and if they could be seen as a kind of 'prayer'. How spiritual is the secular?

From Latin for "song" – cantus, cantare, canto – comes, in English, chant, enchant and incantation which connotes, for me, to celebrate or express joy, whether in a major or minor key. So to the degree "the secular" is open to different, even incommensurate, expressions of joy, "the secular is spiritual" as far as I'm concerned (though in practice, far more sectarian or commercial than "spiritual").

George Harrison's 'incantations' were/are exceptions and exceptional moments in the maelstrom of sing-a-long profanities which have always been the bread and butter of tin-pan alley. For decades I've tried to curate my own library of musical joys which, unlike "hope", I find that joy motivates courage.

One must learn to love.— This is what happens to us in music: first one has to learn to hear a figure and melody at all, to detect and distinguish it, to isolate it and delimit it as a separate life; then it requires some exertion and good will to tolerate it in spite of its strangeness, to be patient with its appearance and expression, and kindhearted about its oddity:—finally there comes a moment when we are used to it, when we wait for it, when we sense that we should miss it if it were missing: and now it continues to compel and enchant us relentlessly until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers who desire nothing better from the world than it and only it.— But that is what happens to us not only in music: that is how we have learned to love all things that we now love. In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fairmindedness, and gentleness with what is strange; gradually, it sheds its veil and turns out to be a new and indescribable beauty:—that is its thanks for our hospitality. Even those who love themselves will have learned it in this way: for there is no other way. Love, too, has to be learned. — Freddy Zarathustra

Amor fati :hearts:

Hope destroys fear.
— universeness

No hope and fear always arise together; one hopes to win and fears to lose. What you claim here is the gambler's fallacy, that leads to addiction. — unenlightened

Or fundamentalism.

I prefer the original meaning of spirit as Carl Sagan described it, 'animated'. — universeness

:up:

Well Gödel shook Hilbert from that fever-dream. :smirk:

Understanding, what is it? — Agent Smith

My shorthand: to understand is to, explicitly or implicitly, contextualize discourses (i.e. narratives, maps, models), actions or events in order to orient oneself and thereby constrain uncertainty. No doubt, understanding is an infinite task because metacognition is as finite as it is perspectival.

Norms are useful or not useful for some purpose ... — 180 Proof

Commands are not true or false, they are obeyed or disobeyed. Morality is not made of claims of fact but commands, demands, exhortations, pleas, advice to act thus and not so. It is not 'truth apt'. — unenlightened

:100:

:smirk:

I think you're way off. Schrödinger's cat thought-experiment was proposed in order to show that quantum theory (re: superposition, measurement problem) is inconsistent, or incomplete, and not as a claim of "a true contradiction". Certainly, Everett's MWI was not proposed to account for "simultaneous X & not-X", Smith, and the "multiverse" add-on unparsimonously occludes the problems raised by Schrödinger and others.

Norms are useful or not useful for some purpose; they are not truth-claims in any sense. A moral statement like "torture is wrong" is, to my way of thinking, only a shorthand for some custom or norm (i.e. mores).

I've always thought that "multiverse" is a wildly extrapolated misunderstanding of Hugh Everett's many worlds interpretation of the interference pattern from the double-slit experiment. It just doesn't seem to follow that 'classical n-counterpart (parallel) universes' from 'planck superposition (n-worldlines) of a photon', does it? Physicists like David Deutsch seem to suggest this ... but like you say, Smith, what do I know ... :nerd:

Apparently, it hasn't occurred to you, Toothless, that "moral realism" is incoherent (re: assumption that moral statements are empirical propositions) and that, therefore, "error theory" is redundant.

Verificationism (i.e. Logical Positivism) doesn't make such distinctions and designates as "cognitively meaningless" all statements – utterances – which cannot be verified empirically (e.g. philosophical statements) such as ... "verificationisn". :eyes:

... as usual, @Gnomon is just making shit up or limited by poor reasoning. — 180 Proof

What "argument"?

IIRC, logical positivism's 'verificationist criterion of meaning' is itself unverifiable and therefore is, in its own terms, meaningless (i.e. self-refuting).

25 february 1943 - 29 november 2001 :flower:

We wouldn't need to say anytging more but maybe "thank you" to you if and when you deign to cite some scientific experiments which corrobrate your assertion that in modern physics "conservation laws are false".

My response would be ... Back in the 17th Century CE, Malebranche et al tried that with occasionalism and Occam's Razor made quick work of that bit of question-begging ad hockery (pace Berkeley & Leibniz redux); also, Spinoza showed that 'substance dualism', the basis of Descartes' MBP, is logically and conceptually incoherent (re: Ethics, section I "Of God") thereby dissolving the 'interaction problem' (i.e. property dualism ... neutral / anomalous monism ... etc). No need to even bother with a scientific objection to 'immaterial-material interactivity' which, as I discern the issue, is a conceptual non-starter.

I never said anything about occult energy loss and I haven't the fainted idea what you are talking about — Metaphysician Undercover

I never said you said that (note where I put the quotation marks) and, of course, you "haven't the fainted idea what" I'm (or e.g. @universeness, @Banno, et al are) "talking about".

"Murder is wrong" would be an example of a moral claim that could be objectively true (a proposition). — ToothyMaw

And what's the truth-maker? It's a statement like 'I'm sexy' that has a sense (in some contexts and not in some others) but does not convey either a formal or factual truth-value.

Do you know what meta-ethics is? — ToothyMaw

I know enough now to know that you don't.

true moral claims. — ToothyMaw

They are norms or rules not propositions, so what do you propose any such "true moral claims" would even be like? :chin: