Is it reductionist metaphysics? — T Clark

metaphysical claims have no truth value. — T Clark

For me, metaphysics should be applied piecemeal. It's a tool to help with thinking and understanding - a tool box. When you're doing reductionist science, maybe pull out the materialism and realism. When it's math, pull out the idealism. When you're trying to see how it all fits together, you might need holism or even mysticism. — T Clark

The desire to reject metaphysics is itself what must manifest metaphysics as the “other” which has been placed at the greatest possible distance. — apokrisis

In Existential Physics, Sabine Hossenfelder was asked : "are you just a bag of atoms?". She replied : "The relevant property of humans is not our constituents. It's the way the constituents are arranged ; it's the information you need to build a human, the information that tells you what it can do." — Gnomon

Life and mind are dissipative structures organised by semiosis. We are structures of meaning or negentropy. — apokrisis

Ontology and epistemology are not like ought and is... — Banno

Our task could be understanding but not empathy. — javi2541997

absolute knowledge — TiredThinker

I do have a pet, and I would eat it to survive. I also have kids so they would get the dog burgers first, followed by dad burgers if it meant them surviving. Survival trumps morality for most people, for most things. — DingoJones

I objected to the industrial slaughterhouses and the brutal system that eating meat en masse has generated. Not as concerned about a small community that raises animals and kills them as they need them — Tom Storm

... naive realism that dissolves into naive idealism without even being aware of it is not a sorted-out epistemology. It is 1950s plain speaking bullshit. — apokrisis

Better, the mooted distinction between epistemology and ontology is here misplaced. Always, already interpreted. — Banno

Isn't the difference between objective and subjective just how well we can know anything absolutely? — TiredThinker

Can you describe how idealism leads to solipsism? — Tom Storm

I've not immersed myself in this world but would you know off hand just who are the candidates supposedly behind these notions of simulation? Is it generally some kind of organic programmer, or are we part of an endless recursion of IT simulations? — Tom Storm

I've said it before. I'll say it again. Questions about our reality are not science. — T Clark

the notion of universal mind — Tom Storm

It's not technology which sustains life in the biological sense but air, food and water. Technology may sustain our lifestyles, but that is something else. — Janus

Are there any absolute, indisputable standards of morality, or is morality relative to the place and time? — alan1000

Is it possible to be morally wrong even if one is convinced to do the right thing? — Matias

Another related question could be: is it possible to be morally wrong retroactively?

... we are doing something that we think is normal and morally acceptable, but without knowing or suspecting that it is (objectively!) morally wrong and we are in fact morally depraved beings?

However, although the misuse of technology may be one contributor to alienation within society, it is not the only cause, as alienation existed in societies pre-modern technology. — RussellA

The cost of freedom is evil. — Agent Smith

And science clearly is not unified. We have broken it down into a hierarchical list of different sciences depending on scale and principle of organization. There have been long discussions of that hierarchy here on the forum. I think the important message is that reductionism works - each higher level behaves consistently with the level below - but constructivism doesn't - you can't generally predict behavior at a higher level from principles of the lower level. Example - you can't predict the behavior of biology from chemistry. — T Clark

Here, look at me being helpful to you: — frank

There are 613 commandments in the Hebrew Bible. — Tom Storm

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The failure to recognize the difference between everyday or scientific reality and metaphysics is the biggest failure of most posters on the forum. — T Clark

↪schopenhauer1 :roll: We do not even "understand" how we move our fingers and toes let alone what our brains are doing moment to moment or even why pessimists bother whinging on and on about "pessimism" ... Big whup. — 180 Proof

Asshole and dickish comments are the norm if you disagree. Can't just argue the arguments here. Nope. — schopenhauer1

Does quantum physics say nothing is real?

Drastically different physical principles apply to sandwiches and surfboards than apply to subatomic particles. The world works differently at different scales. Why would we think that wouldn't be true. Different metaphysical regimes apply at different scales. That's the thing about metaphysics - there's not just one appropriate view of reality. The philosophical lesson of QM is that what works at human scale doesn't work at all at nano-scale. — T Clark