Your thoughts are just post hoc scripts that magnify and feed-back on the affects of your depression. — Nils Loc

:100:

But why should I get beyond this rut? — JacobPhilosophy

Because you want to. If you exist anyway and don’t want to die and don’t expect to live forever then may as well enjoy living while you can, and spiraling about meaninglessness isn’t helping anything, so may as well just try to stop doing that if you can.

Which is what you’re here in this thread for isn’t it?

Surely that could not be objectively true! — 3017amen

It’s objectively true that I’m conscious. I suspect like kaarl you’re conflating epistemology with ontology. Just because you don’t know for sure what’s going on in my mind doesn’t mean there’s no truth about it.

In what context are you referring? In other words, are you suggesting there is an objective standard that precludes mystery, arbitrariness, subjectivity, and/or the unknown? Examples that are too numerous to mention include but are not limited to: paradox of time and self-reference, conscious existence, cosmological existence, Love, metaphysical will, ad nauseum. — 3017amen

I don’t know what some of those are, but the ones I do understand I would say are perfectly compatible with my principles here.

But if it is subjectively true that one person does not like ice cream in general, how do you reconcile or preclude the arbitrariness behind the subjective truth with the objective truth of the statement? — 3017amen

I can’t understand this question.

And even if one did like ice cream, how could you objectively account for the feelings that person has about his love for ice cream? — 3017amen

If you mean an explanation of why they have those feelings, that would be a complex psychological question, and you’d have to ask an expert on that exactly how, but it would involve some kind of empirical observation like all scientific questions do.

demonstrating quite clearly that you still do not appreciate the difference between subjective and objective. it is literally impossible for any statement I make about my preference to be "objectively false". — Kaarlo Tuomi

It is if you’re lying. If you say your favorite flavor is strawberry but you actually have no favorite flavor, you have said something objectively false. That’s what lying is.

I suspect what you mean is that I can’t ordinarily (without some kind of mind-reading technology) check whether or not you’re lying, but that just shows that you‘re confusing epistemology with ontology again. Just because nobody knows someone doesn’t mean there is no truth about it.

I don't actually have a favourite flavour of ice cream. I don't understand what folk mean when they say, "my favourite [insert appropriate noun]." the expression is essentially gibberish to me, and when I say those words it is as though I were reading a story written in a foreign language, I suspect my audience might understand but I do not personally have a clue what it means. — Kaarlo Tuomi

In that case, every statement that something is your favorite flavor of ice cream is objectively false. Like every guess about the contents of an empty box (besides “it’s empty”) is objectively false. If I say your favorite flavor of ice cream is pistachio, and you know you have no favorite flavor of ice cream, then you know my claim is false. And the answer to the question of what is your favorite flavor of ice cream is “you have no favorite flavor of ice cream”, and if indeed you don’t, as you say, then that answer is objectively true, even if I don’t know whether it’s objectively true or not. (You might be lying to me and I can’t read your mind).

everything really is conditional on some prior assumption or other, and usually on a whole pile of them that, for the most part, folk don't even realise they are making. — Kaarlo Tuomi

This is an epistemic claim, about what is known, not an ontological claim, about what is real. It’s important to distinguish them from each other. I never claimed that anything is ever known with complete certainty—quite the opposite actually.

It doesn’t follow from “everything is uncertain” to “nothing is true”, and vice versa saying “some things are true” doesn’t mean anything is certain.

What I'm asking is why you distinguish moral rights for this treatment. It's clearly not the way you handle philosophical rights (the right answer to a philosophical question). — Isaac

It is exactly the same. I try to account for everyone’s reasons, but that doesn’t mean trying to simultaneously agree with everyone’s conclusions.

If I am unpersuaded by a philosophical argument, it’s because I think I have already accounted for all the reasons they give in support of their conclusion, and either there is just some apparent invalidity to the argument (while I account for their reasons I don’t see how those reasons entail the conclusion), or I am also taking into account other reasons that they aren’t and coming to a conclusion that accounts for all of them. I never just say “that reason doesn’t matter”; I say how I have already accounted for it, and what else I’m accounting for that they’re not.

Likewise with moral reasoning. Some selfish person may think some thing is good because it avoids pain for them or brings them pleasure, and disregard the suffering it may bring to other people. Those other people may do likewise. I try to account for all of their concerns, all of the suffering or enjoyment they’re aiming for or avoiding, but of course I can’t agree with either of their conclusions because to do so I would have to disregard the concerns of the other party like they do.

Figuring out what exactly would account for all their concerns, or all philosophical reasons, may be a hard creative task, but the solution to that challenge is the thing that I take to be objectively correct. Even if I don’t know what it is yet. Whatever it is that satisfies all those reasons, addresses all those concerns, in science whatever model accounts for all observations, that is the thing that is objectively correct, even if we don’t yet know what that is.

This differentiation between reasons and conclusions, experiences and interpretations, etc, seems to be the most important point that I’m not communicating well enough to you.

The hypothetical is a metaphor. “Drowning” is drowning in doubts and fears, figuratively. You do happen to exist, and the way to make peace with that is to stop trying to find reasons for it, just relax and float in the acceptance that you simply do, and it doesn’t have to be for any reason.

I know it’s easier said than done. I also sent you a PM yesterday with something I hope will be more helpful.

it's just a means of saying "why not" in different words — JacobPhilosophy

“Why not” is the correct answer.

This is a common pattern across philosophy. People get into a cynically over-skeptical mindset and demand a reason for everything, instead of just rejecting things when there is reason to do so and accepting whatever meanwhile. But if you do that, keep demanding reasons for everything, you fall down an infinite regress of constantly asking for reasons for those reasons ad infinitum, which leads directly into nihilism. The solution is to not do that. Accept anything by default and only reject it when there is reason too — and having no reason to accept it is not the same as having reason to rejecting it.

The metaphor I used to remind myself of this when I was suffering terrible existential angst last year was to imagine myself on the surface of an infinitely deep sea, and tell myself “don’t try to stand on the bottom”. Became there is no bottom so if you try to stand on it you’ll just drown. This doesn’t mean you stick your hands up in the air and hope that Superjesus whisks you off into the sky, either. You’ll drown if you do that too. The solution is to just float on the surface.

Thanks! I do actually associate that “no unanswerable questions” position with a certain sense of “optimism”, and the “no unquestionable answers” with a certain sense of “pessimism”. Optimism in that something or another is right and it’s possible to figure out what it is; pessimism in that something or another is wrong and we can never be sure that our opinion isn’t it. But that kind of optimism is also anti- a different kind of pessimism, the kind that would say it’s just not possible to ever be right, because nothing is. And my kind of pessimism is anti- a different kind of optimism, the kind that would say that our opinions are definitely the right ones and there’s no chance they’re wrong.

if I told you that my favourite flavour of ice cream was strawberry, would you have any means by which you could determine, independently of me, whether or not the statement is true? — Kaarlo Tuomi

No, but you do. And if I tell you otherwise, you know whether I’m wrong or not.

There being a correct answer is not the same thing as anyone knowing what it is.

You can hide an object in a closed box and ask me to guess what’s in it, and even though I have no way of knowing, my guess is either right or wrong because there’s something or another in that box (unless it’s actually empty, in which case all guesses are wrong—but still objectively wrong).

Individual observations do not speak to the efficacy of a belief in an objective reality. — Kenosha Kid

Every individual observation rules out some possibilities about what might be objectively real. An account of objective reality has to account for every single observation, otherwise it’s not actually objective.

It kind of sounds like you’re implying confirmationism here, that enough observations can prove something to be true, rather than the falsificationist view that anything might be true that has not yet been observed false. If you’re likewise thinking of objective morality that same way, thinking I’m talking about proving that certain things are always good, then maybe there’s the problem. I’m not, regarding either reality or morality.

There being an objective reality means that something can be actually false, not just disbelieved; and there being an objective morality means that something can be actually bad, not just disliked. Neither means that you can ever prove anything to be true or good in all circumstances and beyond all doubt. Just that there is some unbiased standard against which to judge and weed out things that we can tell are false, or bad.

That someone else thinks something 'ought' to be the case is, to you, a fact about the external world. — Isaac

That they think it is an “is”, but the thing they think is an “ought”. I’m talking about either replicating their own experience to get your own copy of their same “ought” if you doubt their claim, or else just accepting their “ought” claim on its face if you can’t be bothered and just want to trust them. At no point are we to take a step back and talk about the “is” fact that they hold that “ought” opinion; we stick to the “ought” opinions themselves.

Not all matters that people think ought not to be the case are related to immediate hedonic sensations, even of themselves, certainly not of others. — Isaac

And not all “is” claims about reality relate to empirical observables either. I’m saying precisely that both of those are problematic kinds of opinion, because they lead to irreconcilable differences, baseless claims that nobody can reasonably interrogate, having instead to just take someone’s word for it or not. I’m saying that regarding both “is” questions and “ought” questions, we would do best to concern ourselves only with possible answers that we can test against our experiences: empirical in the former case, hedonic in the latter.

You keep conflating the moral equivalent of perception with the moral equivalent of sensation, missing the point that I’m saying precisely to disregard the former for the latter, because the former is only a fallible, subjective interpretation of the latter. What you’re saying is like arguing that someone who looks at the order of the natural world and sees it as evidence of intelligent design has “empirically observed God”. That’s not an empirical observation, it’s an interpretation of them.

Likewise, seeing some people doing some stuff and passing moral judgement on them isn’t a direct experience of something “seeming bad” the way that pain is. That’s an interpretation, a “moral perception”. It remains an open question whether that interpretation is really an accurate model of all the “moral sensations” involved, exactly like it remains an open question whether the perception of intelligent design is an accurate interpretation of all the sensations (observations) involved.

I want to take it a step further, if it hasn't been done already, by showing that this "thinking thing" can't be a material/physical entity with the aid of the fact that everything physical/material is dubitable i.e. the physical/material could be an illusion. — TheMadFool

That has been attempted already, by Descartes himself. It’s the whole foundation of Cartesian dualism.

Given that we can cast doubt on the reality of the physical — TheMadFool

All the particulars of the physical, but not any physical whatsoever. One cannot imagine experiencing nothing at all — that is simply to not imagine — and the physical world just is the world of experience, so one cannot imagine there being no physical world at all, only that all the particulars one believes about the physical world should turn out to be different.

The stuff about the identity of the doubter is just a parallel to that. We can’t imagine being nobody to experience anything, and we can’t imagine not experiencing anything, so indubitably someone exists to experience and something exists to be experienced, even though all of the details of both of those are dubitable.

Ok, I agree, but the fact that he rejects answering unanswerable questions raises another question for me. How does he define whether a question is unanswerable? — Have some tea

It’s not that I reject answering certain kinds of questions I deem “unanswerable”, it that I reject ever deeming a question “unanswerable”. It’s a principle to never give up in principle, even though in practice you will of course sometime have to take a break. Taking a break is just saying “I don’t know yet”, but giving up is saying “it can’t be known”.

my favourite flavour of ice cream is strawberry, and that is my subjective opinion, and it can only ever be subjectively true. it is neither right nor wrong, — Kaarlo Tuomi

If I told you that your favorite flavor of ice cream was pistachio, would I not be wrong?

That Paris is the capital of France, and that chocolate is my favorite flavor of ice cream, are both states of France and of me, respectively, and are both objectively true. Paris being the capital of France isn't something that France thinks or feels though, because France isn't the kind of thing that can think or feel. Since France isn't a subject in the sense of something that has thoughts or feelings, there can't be thoughts or feelings that are subjective to it.

I suppose we could consider the social fact of capital-dom to be a state of opinion of the people of France, who we might call "France" collectively, in which case Paris being the capital of France is a subjective preference of "France" as in the French, just like chocolate being my favorite flavor of ice cream is a preference of mine. It's still objectively true that the French consider Paris their capital and that I consider chocolate my favorite flavor of ice cream, but those objective truths are about subjective states: about what the French or I, respectively, think or feel.

Someone else thinking or feeling differently doesn't contradict that, but our thoughts or feelings being different than our own thoughts and feelings does, so one or the other claim about that must be wrong. I can prefer one flavor of ice cream that's different from what another person prefers, and France can have a different capital than England, but my favorite flavor of ice cream can't simultaneously be two contradictory things, and France can't simultaneously have two contradictory capitals; at least, not unless we mean in different contexts (e.g. at different times) or in different ways (one is the religious capital, one is the military capital, etc).

Preferences are subjective inasmuch as they are states of subjects.

It is objectively true (or false) that a given subject is in a given such state.

A different subject being in a different such state doesn't contradict that. They can both be objectively true.

But the same subject being in a different state, in the same way in the same context, as themselves, is contradictory, so at least one of those claims must be wrong.

The existence of the doubter is certainly beyond doubt. — TheMadFool

Only to the same extent as the existence of some world or another the details of which are being doubted.

All the details of the doubter are equally in doubt. Who am I? I have a bunch of memories and thoughts and feelings but are they really mine, or is someone else feeding them in to me? Someone is doubting when I doubt and I identify with that doubted but who is that exactly? What are they ("I"?) like? All of that is in doubt as much as anything about the world is in doubt.

so how do you discriminate between an opinion and a preference? — Kaarlo Tuomi

A preference is a kind of opinion, which is about yourself. "I prefer chocolate" is a statement about yourself. "Bob prefers strawberry" doesn't contradict that, because it's about Bob, not me. Someone could contradict a statement of my preferences: "no, you prefer vanilla". At least one of those statements about my preferences is wrong. Since I know a lot more about what's going on in my own head than anyone else, it's probably not mine.

It's like "I hear a ringing sound". But then Alice says "I don't." Those aren't contradictory. "There is a bell ringing nearby" and "no there isn't" are contradictory, and at least one of those is wrong. But statements about our own perceptions, sensations, desires (i.e. preferences), appetites, etc, don't contradict just because one person has one and someone else has a different one.

if I understand you correctly, you are just using "preference" to mean the answer to a question that does not have an objectively true answer. — Kaarlo Tuomi

No, because it's still objectively true that I prefer this and you prefer that, but those two objective truths are not contradictory. It's only contradictory to claim both that this is better than that, and that that is better than this, in the same way, in the same contexts, etc. Because that's a claim that's not about someone, it's a claim about the world, and there's only the one world*, while there are many someones, who may differ from each other without contradiction.

(*Leaving aside modal realism, which is a big can of worms it would be counterproductive to open right now).

that would seem to require that you first consider whether or not the question has an objectively true answer. those questions that have objectively true answers go in one box where your philosophy deals with them, and answers that do not have objectively true answers go in the discard pile. correct me if I'm wrong. — Kaarlo Tuomi

My principle of objectivism is that every question has an objectively true answer. No questions ever go in the discard pile. That's the whole point of it. (Since most people easily and casually accept objectivism about reality, the main function of this in practice is to say "don't discard questions about morality").

however, what happens if I disagree with you on that single point, that the question has an objectively true answer. is my answer an opinion or a preference? — Kaarlo Tuomi

Preferences are a kind of opinion, so it's an opinion either way, but it's not just a preference, unless you're just saying "I like it when questions don't have objectively true answers", or "I wish some questions didn't have objectively true answers". That would be a preference... for something that I think can't possibly be. Me thinking that is an opinion, one about the world, not about myself. You thinking otherwise is a contrary opinion about the world, not yourself. The world has to be at most one of those ways, it can't be both, so at least one of us is wrong. Of course I think it's not me, and you think it's not you; otherwise we'd change our opinions.

suppose, for example, I do not believe there is such a thing as objective reality. in that case EVERYTHING would be conditional and subjective. in this case it would not be objectively true that Paris is the capital of France because it isn't even objectively true that France exists. — Kaarlo Tuomi

If your belief that there is no such thing as objective reality was true, then it wouldn't be objectively true that Paris is the capital of France, sure. But I think that that antecedent belief is false, and so the consequent is not entailed.

this claims that there is ALWAYS a right answer. and that cannot be true if some answers are only preferences. — Kaarlo Tuomi

See above.

But the big bang must be contingent. — EnPassant

Must it? Explain.

You have to go back further, into eternity, the get to the source. — EnPassant

So in an account where there was some eternally existing "primeval atom" that then spontaneously exploded into the whole universe as we know it, you'd be willing to call that primeval atom "God"? That's the original account of the Big Bang (no longer current in physical cosmology).

Or does the eternal thing have to be forward-eternal too? In that case, if it were proven that there was some kind of boring simple physical thing that had always existed, had done something like smash into an eternally-existing space-time to transform it into the universe as we know it, and continued to exist somewhere out there beyond our space-time now, would you call that "God"?

Or how about the most contemporary account of physical cosmology, eternal inflation, in where there is an eternal and infinite quantum field, the inflaton field, that goes on existing even now and will exist forever, that on occasion spontaneously shifts in one spot to a different phase resulting in what we perceive as a Big Bang, which is actually a much much much more slowly-expanding little bubble in the still-expanding spacetime mostly still occupied by the inflaton field. Is the inflaton field "God" on your account?

What I'm getting at here is whether you're okay with the notion of a God that is not a person, that doesn't have thoughts or feelings or wills, that can't hear prayers or issue commands, or judge souls after death, etc. It's just some thing that kicked off existence, and nothing more. Is that really enough to count as "God" to you?

Because I expect it's not to most theists, who are not theists because they were convinced by faulty metaphysical arguments that there must exist some boring piece of metaphysical machinery to enable the existence of the ordinary universe, but rather were charmed by childhood stories of a loving powerful being who's watching out for them.

To start with, the definition of God as the source of all contingent things is sufficient for 'belief in God' and sufficient for a simple definition of God. — EnPassant

What is each contingent thing has as its source some other contingent thing, such that there are no non-contingent things? What then is God?

And even if there did have to be some necessary thing that was the source of all contingent things, that could just be some event like the Big Bang. If the Big Bang turns out to be the source of all contingent things, and is not a person or in any way at all like a mythical deity, just some impersonal cosmic event, would you call that "God"? I don't think many would.

I disagree with this. why does either one of them necessarily have to be "right" ? — Kaarlo Tuomi

It's not that one of them has to be right, it's that (if they're contradictory) they can't both be right. That parenthetical part, "if they're contradictory", is very important as I'm about to say...

believe that it should be entirely possible to notice that there is a difference between two things without having to make a judgement about that difference. and I apply this in all aspects of my life, not just philosophy. there is, for example, a difference between the novels of Stephen King and Charles Dickens, but I don't feel compelled to say that one is "better" than the other, they are just different, that's all.

but you seem to think that any difference needs to be resolved in some way. which means that every single person who does not subscribe to your philosophy is wrong in your eyes, and I'm afraid I just could not go through life thinking that everybody else was wrong just because they are different from me.

is a man wrong if he has a different job from you, or drives a different car from you, or goes on holiday to France instead of Mexico? what about the people who choose to live in a house that's not yours, are they wrong because their opinion is different to yours? is a man wrong if you don't think his wife is attractive, where exactly does this all end? — Kaarlo Tuomi

Most if not all of those are examples of opinions that are not contradictory. Many of them are mere preferences, which is what I suspected you might have meant by "opinion". Preferences, being explicitly subjective, don't contradict with each other. If I like chocolate ice cream and you like strawberry, those aren't in contradiction, so it's not the case that at least one of us must be wrong. (And if was an objective claim in question, like which is the most popular ice cream flavor, we might still both be wrong; maybe it's vanilla).

But if I think the capital of France is London and you think it's Moscow, at least one of us is wrong, because it's can't possibly be both at the same time. And as it turns out, we'd both be wrong, because it's actually Paris.

If anyone thinks [insert some claim that something objectively is or ought to be some way] and someone else thinks [insert another claim that that thing objectively is or ought to be a different way], since those two things can't both be right, at least one of those opinions is wrong. Possibly both. Maybe we don't know which. But if they're contradictory, they can't both be right; that's just what contradictory means.

Back to the topic of the OP, in saying that no question is unanswerable, I just mean that there's always some possible answer that would be the right one, even if nobody yet holds it, or we can't yet figure out which one it is. Whoever disagrees with whatever that right answer is, they're wrong, but perhaps we don't know it yet.

I'd think you'd like my principle of liberalism which follows directly from the principle of objectivism that is the encapsulation of the "no unanswerable questions" principle. Liberalism (as I mean it) says to give every opinion the benefit of the doubt until it can be shown wrong. And the complementary principle of criticism says that every opinion might always be shown wrong. Together those mean that I don't (and don't advocate that others) go around thinking that everybody who doesn't think like me is definitely wrong. Of course I think I'm right, otherwise I wouldn't think what I do; if I thought I was wrong I would change my mind, so would anyone. But I'm not certain in that beyond question, and I'm explicitly against anyone (myself included) being certain beyond question about pretty much anything.

But this is describing individuals. It does not describe objective "oughts" and "ought nots" but rather those arising from the experience of each person separately/ — Kenosha Kid

It's a bunch of small pieces of the one big objective "ought", in the same way that individual observations are only small pieces of the one big objective "is". Being only part of the total truth doesn't make something untrue or only subjectively true, and likewise things being only part of the total good doesn't make something bad or only subjectively good.

Then you're making no differentiation between an empirical fact and a belief. It is an empirical fact that something is banging on the door. Objective morality is not an empirical quantity: it cannot be detected, or verified. It is only a belief, like that there is a monster at the door. — Kenosha Kid

You're still talking about "objective morality" as though it's a descriptive, existing thing out there somewhere, like a monster, that someone might believe in, with or without evidence. That just evidences the confusion I'm trying to clear up here. You seem to place "objective reality" in the same category: that objective reality isn't the unbiased total of all possible empirical experiences, but it's some thing out there somewhere that causes all those experiences. I reject that exactly as much as I reject what you mean by "objective morality", but that's not all those words can mean, and saying it is is precisely the conflation of objectivism with transcendentalism you deny. There doesn't have to be something transcending all experience for there to be possible an objective, unbiased accounting of all experiences together.

What I can measure are my moral feelings: how I feel when I see a child in distress, or a person being attacked, etc. I have no access to any objective moral truths, but I do have access to scientific evidence that those feelings are explicable in terms of physiological drives. I have a window to see what it is that is banging on the door, and whether, knowing this, the belief is justified. — Kenosha Kid

You have "no access to any objective reality" either by those standards. You only have the small pieces you can subjectively experience, and your trust in other people's reports of their experiences (that what they say is looks true, looks true). Similarly, you only have the small pieces of "objective morality" you can subjectively experience, and your trust in other people's reports of their experiences (that what they say feels good, goods good). In both cases, objectivity just means accounting for all of those experiences together without bias.

You can never finish accounting for all of them, and you can never eliminate all bias, but if there is any possible way of measuring progress in accounting for more of them and reducing bias, then that points the way toward the concept of objectivity: what lies at the end of that process, even if it's never reachable. Saying that objectivity is possible is just saying that such a process can be conducted; and saying it's not is just saying it can't be. You clearly think it can be, and that's all that's required for objectivity. There doesn't have to be some magical invisible thing in an abstract realm acausally causing things to be moral or something bizarre like that.

in which case we must ask what would be required in order to convince you that you were pissing? — Ciceronianus the White

And here is the real problem with Cartesian doubt. Sure, you always might just be dreaming that you’re pissing, but if you always assume that it’s probably just that until proven otherwise, then you will continue to assume that forever, because it could not be proven otherwise, since every proof might just be part of the dream too.

That reduces to absurdity the notion of doubting everything that can possibly be doubted just because it can be, and only believing things where doubt is impossible. In its stead, we are left with believing in whatever so long as it’s a possibility, and only doubting it when belief in it becomes untenable.

Google’s top definition of “opinion”, sourced to New Oxford American Dictionary, is “a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.” That “necessarily” part is important; it means that opinions can be based on fact or knowledge, but also might not be. Opinion is a broader category than knowledge. Two people can be of two different opinions and neither be sure which of them is right. But it nevertheless can’t be the case that they are both right, if they disagree. It could maybe be that neither is right. But even if one of them is right, that’s different from either of them knowing which of them is right. And of course each of them thinks themes right and those who disagree consequently wrong: if someone thought they themselves were wrong, then they would change their opinion to whichever they those was right. To be of some opinion just is to think that something or other is right (and the negation of it thus wrong). One can (and should) nevertheless still acknowledge the fallibility of their own opinions.

my Indian — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I assumed this was a typo or autocorrect the first time, but do you somehow own an “Indian” person or something?


Also while I’m here, fuck Mitch McTurtleFace for not allowing the senate to even consider extending further aide even now that America is the global hotbed of the pandemic.

We’re going to see some pretty insane economic collapse once the eviction moratoriums and the enhanced unemployment end in a few weeks. Remember who to blame when that happens.

but having read considerably more of Bill's philosophy than the excerpt given in this thread I think that he has probably not thought very long or hard about why anyone might disagree with him. — Kaarlo Tuomi

I am curious to know what gives you that impression, as I have been through many different philosophical views myself that I now find fault with, and so understand quite well why people would be of those opinions—I just also understand why I couldn’t remain of those opinions (which are then reasons for others not to either).

I tend to the view that we are each entitled to our own opinion but that opinions are not either right or wrong, they are just opinions — Kaarlo Tuomi

I wonder if perhaps you mean something different by “opinion” than I do. That’s the only way I can make sense of this.

so I persevere in the hope that I might learn something. — Kaarlo Tuomi

I appreciate that.

I think Bill is what is known as a skeptic, philosophically. — Have some tea

It’s the “no unquestionable answers” part that is meant to convey a kind of skepticism. The “no unanswerable questions” part is there to guard against skepticism going too far into nihilism. It’s saying to not give up just because you haven’t answered a question yet. Assume there is some answer that you just haven’t found yet. And consequently give any possible answer a chance. But then (because no unquestionable answers either) test each of those possibilities and reject the ones that fail, and consequently discard any supposed possibilities that could not in principle ever be tested as meaningless, not even saying anything.

This is essentially the conversation we're having. — Kenosha Kid

It’s really not though. There being something banging on the door is there being something that is actually (objectively) moral; in contrast to the door-banging, or morality, being merely some shared illusion. You’re giving an account of why we’d all partake in such a perception of something banging on the door, while at the same time denying that anything actually is banging on the door. I’m not saying there’s a monster — plenty of other people might — I’m just saying that the persistent shared experience of something banging on the door is all there is to there being something really banging on it. So there is something really banging on it. What that might be is up for debate. But to agreed that there is this persistent shared experience of something banging on the door, yet deny that anything is really banging at the door, because of a doubt that monsters exist, is to conflate any belief in SOMETHING banging at the door with a belief in monsters specifically doing so.

The correct answer to that question is, if you must be as conservative as possible, something but it's precisely this something that thinks we understand as mind. — TheMadFool

Sure, and the something that is the object of that thought is the world. All the details if the world are highly dubitable, but then so are all of the details if the self.

the complete elimination of all suffering is an 'is' we measure suffering - we might do so by questionnaire (taking people's word for it), we might do so by fMRI scan, empathy...whatever. These are only the means by which we do the measuring, what we end up with, after that measurement is taken, is a fact, an 'is'. — Isaac

And as I keep explaining, I’m not starting from the “is” that is the description of those people’s experiences, but from the “oughts” those experiences directly give rise to in those people. Every experience someone has that feels bad to them, i.e. that hurts them — not their emotional or cognitive judgement of the morality of something they perceive, but the immediate experience of a bad sensation, where the sensation itself conveys its own badness, i.e. pain etc — take that to be bad (an “ought not”), as it seems to be, and add that to the list of things that are bad (a bunch of “ought nots”), which then demarcates the boundaries of what still might be good (“maybe ought”).

All things moral directly involve that which counts as acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. — creativesoul

I don’t disagree with that at all, I’m just not sure where you’re going with it in relation to the OP.

The OP is an account of my journey of changing my views in response to new reasons that challenged those views. I was implicitly a divine command theorist as a kid until I encountered reasons to doubt that there was anything divine or supernatural at all. Then I was an ethical naturalist until I read Moore who convinced me otherwise. But I already had reasons against non-naturalism (the same ones that went against divine command theory), so I looked to what alternatives there were. I tried on a subjectivism (ideal observer theory) and a non-cognitivism (universal prescriptivism), so long as they maintained universalism, since universalism was the main argument I had by then read against those classes if metaethical views. And then I read more and more technical objections to those and started really trying to come up with something new that avoided all of the problems of all of the others.

This hasn’t been a process of rejecting reasons that go against what I already believe, but of adapting my beliefs to account for more and more reasons. Nowadays I don’t change my beliefs much only because it’s rare that any argument is new to me: I’ve already heard them all and the counter-arguments and followed where the sum of reasons from both sides seemed to lead.

You're not secretly testing us are you, as if we ought to know. Egocentric bias? Hypocrisy? — Nils Loc

No, I genuinely can’t remember what it’s called, and can’t google for something I don’t know the name of. I don’t think it’s either of those, but googling “egocentric bias” lead me also to “self-serving bias” and “fundamental attribution error”. I think the latter is the term I was thinking of, but the former is a better match for the idea I wanted.

But Descartes proved his own existence, and by extension, the existence of anyone else capable of making the cogito ergo sum argument. — TheMadFool

Except he didn’t; see Gassendi and Lichtenberg mentioned above.

Or else, to the same extent that he proved that some self exists, he also proved that some world exists, but he proved no particulars about either, and left no leverage for ever doing so.

Unreasonable doubt is rejecting everything until it can be proven from the ground up. This is unreasonable because nothing can be proven from the ground up, so that entails automatically rejecting everything forever.

Reasonable doubt is being willing to reject something in case reason to reject it should arise. Absent that, it's reasonable to believe whatever just seems most likely to you, even if you can't prove it from the ground up, so long as if there is reason to reject it, you will.

We can doubt every particular about the physical world, but we can't doubt that there is some physical world at all. The physical world is the stuff that's available to empirical experience. I can't imagine not having any empirical experience at all -- that would just be to not imagine anything.

I wrote in another thread recently:

Descartes famously attempted to systematically doubt everything he could, including the reliability of experiences of the world, and consequently of the existence of any physical things in particular; which he then took, I think a step too far, as doubting whether anything at all physical existed, but I will return to that in a moment. He found that the only thing he could not possibly doubt was the occurrence of his own doubting, and consequently, his own existence as some kind of thinking thing that is capable of doubting.

But other philosophers such as Pierre Gassendi and Georg Lichtenberg have in the years since argued, as I agree, that the existence of oneself is not strictly warranted by the kind of systemic doubt Descartes engaged in; instead, all that is truly indubitable is that thinking occurs, or at least, that some kind of cognitive or mental activity occurs. I prefer to use the word "thought" in a more narrow sense than merely any mental activity, so what I would say is all that survives such a Cartesian attempt at universal doubt is experience: one cannot doubt that an experience of doubt is being had, and so that some kind of experience is being had.

But I then say that the concept of an experience is inherently a relational one: someone has an experience of something. An experience being had by nobody is an experience not being had at all, and an experience being had of nothing is again an experience not being had at all.This indubitable experience thus immediately gives justification to the notion of both a self, which is whoever the someone having the experience is, and also a world, which is whatever the something being experienced is.

One may yet have no idea what the nature of oneself or the world is, in any detail at all, but one can no more doubt that oneself exists to have an experience than that experience is happening, and more still than that, one cannot doubt that something is being experienced, and whatever that something is, in its entirety, that is what one calls the world.

So from the moment we are aware of any experience at all, we can conclude that there is some world or another being experienced, and we can then attend to the particulars of those experiences to suss out the particular nature of that world. The particular occasions of experience are thus the most fundamentally concrete parts of the world, and everything else that we postulate the existence of, including things as elementary as matter, is some abstraction that's only real inasmuch as postulating its existence helps explain the particular occasions of experience that we have. — Pfhorrest

I ran a small poll in which I asked participants wether social media profiles represent fake selves, in which the overwhelming answer was yes. The following question was whether they represented their true selve on their profiles, to which many positive answers came from the same people that had previously voted that social media profiles portray fake personalities. — Alejandro

I wonder if (and suspect that) this is related to the well-known psychological phenomenon where people generally blame their own failures on their environment while blaming everyone else's failures on the people themselves. Because everyone is well-aware of all of the challenges that they themselves have faced and so have excuses to make for themselves, but they don't have that same first-person perspective on everyone else, they only see other peoples' final actions and the consequences of them.

This is some kind of named bias, but I can't remember the name of it. Anyone else?

I've never heard of a "theory of music" as in a different kind of theory besides the math or science kinds. I've heard of music theory, but that's more like the scientific theory about music, although I guess it's not quite that. Perhaps more the philosophical theory of music? (Philosophical theories are yet again different from mathematical or scientific ones).

The action of the reason is to see harm which was not previously detected; it does not redefine my notion of 'good', rather it refines the way my brain detects external harm. Does that sound similar to you? — Kenosha Kid

Roughly. But "harmful" and "bad" seem to me roughly synonyms. That is the "notion of good" that we share, and exactly why I say to appeal to hedonic experiences as the common ground for determining what in particular is good. It's those contingent particulars that we to sort out in order to make moral progress. To realize the harm that people are experiencing and the relationship of that harm to our behaviors.

Moral objectivism to my understanding is the claim that what is right or wrong doesn't depend on what people think is right or wrong. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, but that doesn't make it independent of anyone's experiences of it, just of their interpretation of those experiences, their thoughts on the matter. Just like reality isn't independent of empirical experience, but it is independent of what anyone thinks is or isn't real.

This is exactly the conflation of phenomenalism with nihilism that I think underlies half of the views I'm against, and I'm actually kind of grateful to you for showing me such a clear and self-professed example of it in the wild.

Let's consider objectivism about reality for comparison, where you inversely conflate objectivism with what I call "transcendentalism" (which conflation is exactly logically equivalent to that conflation of phenomenalism with nihilism, because transcendentalism is just anti-phenomenalism and objectivism is just anti-nihilism). When you say there is an objective reality, you (seemingly) don't just mean that there is some possible unbiased account of all of our empirical experiences taken together; you (seem to) mean there is something else besides just the persistent potential for those experiences, some transcendent thing out there behind those experiences, which makes possible the unbiased account of all of them. I on the other hand don't mean that; I distinguish the objectivity, the unbiased-ness, from the transcendentalism, the something-beyond-what-we-can-experience-ness. There is an objective reality, but there is nothing to it besides the things that we can observe about it.

Likewise, when I talk about an objective morality, I'm not saying there is some transcendent thing beyond all our experiences that makes possible some unbiased account of the total of our (hedonic in this case) experiences. I'm just saying that such a complete unbiased account is possible. Which you seem to agree with: we can in principle empathize with everyone's suffering and make progress toward eliminating it all, and that total elimination of all suffering would be the complete triumph of good, no? Our only point of disagreement really seems to be that in calling that "objectively good", I just mean that it's good without bias -- it's not only good because someone thinks so -- while you seem to think that means that there is some kind of ontological thing out there somewhere that's making that possible.

:smile: :up: