Because while you busy yourself with procedural details of how to reduce morality to a utilitarian optimization, you don't ask what any of that has to do with being moral. — SophistiCat

What do you even mean by "being moral"? That is the first metaethical question to ask, what claims that something is or isn't moral even mean, and that's one that I do answer, before I even begin approaching the other questions.

What are the criteria of success (other than aping the superficial trappings of science)? — SophistiCat

The criteria for the success of what? A moral science, or generally any system of morality? The criteria for success of those things is to provide a means of answering questions about morality. When someone wonders what is moral, how do they figure it out? When two people disagree about what is moral, how do they resolve those difference? Answering how to do that, how to figure out those answers to questions about morality, is the criteria for the success of a system of morality.

"You can't do that, so don't try" is one proposed "solution".

"Just do whatever [God/the State/etc] says" is another.

I think it's easy to show that neither of those proposals actually works, and rejecting them both and working with whatever's left is where I begin my project.

How do you jump the is-ought gap? — SophistiCat

That you think I'm even trying to do that shows you haven't understood a word that I've said so far. I'm staying entirely within "ought", starting from "ought" and following to "ought", just proceeding in a way analogous to the ways we've been successful at starting with "is" and following to "is".

(I predict you'd respond here "aha! So you're starting with a system of morality already, your 'ought' premises, just like I said!" But no, no more than the physical sciences start with some set of unquestionable "is" premises. The physical sciences start with uncertain "is" hypotheses and try to rule them out to get an ever-narrower range of remaining possibilities, they don't start with some presumed facts and derive others from those. I propose doing the same thing with ethics: we don't start with anything as certain, we start out with a bunch of possibilities, and then narrow them down. The point above is that all those possibilities are "ought" to begin with, and narrowing them down doesn't appeal to any "is" either).

I was agreeing with you. That :100: emoji means “full marks” or “entirely correct”.

Ascetic? — 180 Proof

That is another good suggestion, along the lines of ”abnegative”. I had in earlier drafts also used “austere”. All three have the same problem but I’m wondering if that’s really such a problem after all. What do you and @Wayfarer think between those three? (“Apophatic” doesn’t seem appropriate as that’s more about how you get to that conclusion than what the conclusion is).

I realize that these claims will sound utterly outlandish to most people. But the reason I believe them is that I find this to be the simplest explanation for what we know and observe. — Daz

:100:

It is far simpler and less absurd to assume that just having a first-person experience at all is not a special unusual thing but a perfectly ordinary facet of everything, and that the nature of that first-person experience varies with the functionality and behavior of things, than to suppose that some magical wholly new metaphysical thing starts happening when otherwise inert matter gets arranged in just the right way (or else than even we humans somehow don’t even have the first person experience we think we do).

Or meontic ("beyond being")? : — 180 Proof

On second thought I'm not so sure that really gets at the thrust of what I'm aiming for.

Something relating to "abnegation" seems like a possibility, like "abnegative", but I'm not certain that everything that falls into this category is necessarily about denial of pleasures, so much as they are about the morality of things not necessarily tracking the pleasure or pain involved with them.

If I could solve this analogy for "xxxx", I could just term it super-xxxx-ism:

real : physical : natural
::
moral : ethical : xxxx.

But I can't think of what could stand for "xxxx" there.

Maybe someone like @Wayfarer who actually (I think) adheres to the position I'm against and trying to name could suggest a good name for it.

As supernatural reality transcends the empirical, ___what?___ morality transcends the hedonic?

If you don't understand why you do what you do — SophistiCat

What suggests that I don't?

Disagreement fuels the fire of discussion, no? I guess the ideal is situations where there's "shades" of disagreement, but within the shades there's a sort of "general color" of alignment of ideas. — Noble Dust

Yeah, that's the thing. I perceive the spectrum of philosophical opinions in two main camps, that I actually visualize as literally black and white: religious, statist, capitalist, generally authoritarian and hierarchical opinions in the "white" camp; and nihilist, relativist, subjectivist, egotist, solipsist, etc, opinions in the "black" camp. — Pfhorrest

I thought I would share, in elaboration, that I also see 2 or 4 other broad camps of philosophies, mixing and matching and tempering these black-and-white poles in different ways. In an old version of my Codex, that was going to be a dialogue, I planned to have four (or possibly six) characters representing those broad perspectives as my interlocutors, so maybe I'll just dig out some old descriptions of them:

Tina was what you might call a "preppy": an upstanding all-American citizen with excellent grades from a private college-preparatory school, and even better grades here at the university. She was by far the cleanest, most well-mannered, organized, and best prepared of all my friends. As a business-law major with eventual political aspirations, she knew where she was going in life and had mapped out how to get there, and she wasn't going to let "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" get in her way. This disciplined and dedicated attitude was in fact the only thing which really held our friendship together, as I shared a similarly clean lifestyle (unlike most of my other friends), but beyond that our differences of opinion were vast. Had it not been for our adjacent seating in a class on Philosophy of Law, I doubt we would ever have met.

You see, quite unlike myself, Tina was an avowed theist and statist who happily supported the mixing of church and state; though she did so with the best of intentions, of course. While I could mostly agree with her on what she would consider "moral" issues of lifestyle choice, our thoughts quickly diverged on the question of why those choices were superior; and especially on whether they should be choices at all, or rather mandatory as she would prefer.

For Tina, faith in her religion was the core of her entire outlook on life. She believed the Christian Bible was the absolute, literal truth, handed down from God himself; that it contained all the answers to life's most important questions; and that a morally legitimate state ought to enforce its law here on Earth. To deny the legitimacy of the Bible was to attack the foundation of her entire philosophy; to her, it was tantamount to declaring the world a meaningless, amoral chaos. In Tina's worldview, faith in her sacred text was the only hope of escaping such nihilistic despair, and the only hope of finding truth and goodness in the world.

[...]

Frank was about as different from Tina as you could possibly imagine. He was a "punk" with a mohawk and piercings, who smoked like a chimney and drank like a sailor. He had never declared a major when his parents sent him here to school, and he had finally dropped out last fall after three grueling years of barely slacking his way through classes. He had stayed in town rather than return home to face Mom and Dad's wrath, and had been couch surfing in the local punk community ever since they had cut off his rent.

But for all his academic failings, Frank was far from stupid. In fact he was quite bright, and read plenty of philosophical literature in his own free time; his favorite place to sleep was at the local anarchist book store. He only faltered in school for lack of effort, not for lack of talent. He didn't care where he was going in life and saw no point in jumping through so many hoops to reach a destination that was ultimately meaningless. You see, Frank was not only a self-professed atheist and anarchist, but a complete nihilist, a solipsist, and an egoist, who thought everything was exactly as Tina faithfully held it wasn't — meaningless and amoral — and he thought her a deluded fool for believing otherwise.

[...]

This line of argument was common for John, who as something of an overachiever had always looked down on average folk as ignorant and backward, especially after his mistreatment as an unpopular "geek" in his youth. Driven to prove himself, anything less than perfect scores on any test he took were simply unacceptable to him, and so he pushed himself forward even harder than Tina did. He was a skilled computer programmer and something of a mathematical genius by now, but he applied his efforts here at the university to the more practical major of aerospace engineering with the ultimate goal of helping pioneer mankind's expansion to other worlds beyond the Earth.

[...]

Quite the contrary, Jackie was an easy-going social butterfly in most respects, who somehow was friends with just about everyone, no matter how different they might be from her or each other. Though no slouch at other subjects, she preferred to dedicate her life to art, music, and generally making beauty wherever she could. Here at the university primarily for self-enrichment, she was majoring in art history, about which she was quite passionate. Her passion for beauty was exceeded only by her passion for social justice; like Frank, she was very anti-establishment, but whereas his expression thereof was to ignore the law or break it out of spite, she was a revolutionary socialist who sought to inspire a democratic uprising and drastically reform society for the better. Being the archetypal "hippy", her ultimate goal in life was to help return everyone to a quiet rural life style, where they could live in touch with the land and with their families and each other. She thus disagreed with John quite vehemently on many issues, though she was tactful enough that it did not compromise their friendship.

[...the rest are unfinished notes to myself never worked into proper narrative or dialogue...]

Jackie point out that Tina is a transcendental realist and an austere moralist - objective but not phenomenal in both factual and normative matters - and thus she is a fideist. Because she is internally liberal but not critical, she is externally critical but not liberal: "We don't have to answer to you, we're right, so do/think as we say".

John point out that Frank is a solipsist (thus implicitly an empiricist) and an egoist (thus implicitly a hedonist) - phenomenal but not objective in both factual and normative matters - because he is a skeptic. Because he is internally critical but not liberal, he is externally liberal but not critical: "Think and do whatever you want, but we're all equally wrong".

John considers himself to be rejecting fideism without buying into nihilism. On factual matters he leans more toward Tina's side of things, affirming the existence of a mind-independent reality, but rather than Tina's transcendental realism, John's factual position is partly phenomenalized — (factual) materialism, the position that only things which have some empirical impact are real, though they have an existence beyond that appearance as well. Because he fails to distinguish between facts and norms, and because norms per se have little or no empirical presence, on normative matters he leans more toward Frank's side of things, skeptical of all normative claims, but rather than Frank's egoism, a concern about populism leads John's normative position to be partly objectivized — a meritocratic individualist, he views morality as a personal matter for each individual to pursue on his own, with no obligation on anyone else except as they be persuaded to accept by contract.

But Jackie contests that John goes too non-objective in his rejection of morality, and he doesn't go phenomenal enough in his rejection of transdendence, seeming to equate pure empiricism with solipsism; the latter of which, combined with a sense of elitism in reaction to his concerns about populism, leads him dangerously close to fideism about factual matters, in the form of scientism, or at least so Jackie claims.

But John flatly denies his adherence to scientism, though he still shows inklings of it in his distrust of popular opinion; and when pushed by me, he concedes there are undue traces of transcendence implied in his (factual) materialism as stated.

Jackie too considers herself to be rejecting fideism without buying into nihilism. On normative matters, she leans more toward Tina's side of things, affirming the existence of a morality beyond personal desires, but rather than Tina's austere moralism, Jackie's normative position is partly phenomenalized — (normative) materialism, the position that only things with some impact our quality of life are morally relevant, though they have moral relevance beyond just the pleasures and pains they induce. Because she too fails to distinguish between facts and norms, and because facts per se have little or no normative import, on factual matters she leans more toward Frank's side of things, skeptical of all factual claims, but rather than Frank's solipsism, a concern about elitism leads Jackie's factual position to be partly objectivized — a social constructivist, she views reality as something of a "collective dream", a social fiction existing only as a power relation between groups, most properly defined by majority consensus.

To this, John retorts that Jackie goes too non-objective in her rejection of reality, and she doesn't go phenomenal enough in her rejection of austerity, seeming to equate pure hedonism with egoism; the latter of which, combined with a sense of populism in reaction to her concerns about elitism, leads her dangerously close to fideism about normative matters, in the form of communism, or at least so John claims.

But Jackie flatly denies her adherence to communism, though she still shows inklings of it in her distrust of private enterprise; and when pushed, she concedes there are undue traces of austerity implied in her (normative) materialism as stated.

[...and these notes might have been turned into two other characters instead of pinned on me...]

Somewhere in here, Frank tries to pin down my position, and paints me as a "scientistic-communist": a materialist in both the factual and normative senses, supporting a form of earthly authority in the form of panels of experts checked only by each other and dictating what is right to the masses. I set him straight, by disclaiming the transcendent aspects of both senses of materialism, and the authority of experts to dictate what is right.

In response Tina tries to pin me down instead, and paints me as an "individualist idealist", supporting a society of independent people each pursuing their own ideals of truth and goodness unhindered by the nay-saying of anyone who might want to call them wrong. I set her straight too, by affirming the need for some kind of mutual criticism grounded in common experience. — an old, incomplete version of the Codex circa 2008-2018

So basically you've got:

- 1. The fideistic archetype

- 2. The nihilistic archetype

- 3. The scientistic/libertarian "silicon valley brogrammer" archetype, who is like a tempered version of 1 about descriptive matters and like a tempered version of 2 about prescriptive matters

- 4. The constructivist/Marxist "social justice warrior" archetype, who is like a tempered version of 2 about descriptive matters and like a tempered version of 1 about prescriptive matters

- Someone like 3 about descriptive matters and like 4 about prescriptive matters

- Someone like 4 about descriptive matters and like 3 about prescriptive matters

Platonic (re: Form of the Good)? Or meontic ("beyond being")? — 180 Proof

"Platonic" seems too broad again, but "meontic" seems a plausible option. I'll mull that over. Thanks again!

The China Nation Argument : — StarsFromMemory

I figured your homonculi scenario was a refinement of this same argument, so, same answer.

The inverted qualia argument — StarsFromMemory

Supposing that inverted qualia are possible is just supposing that functionalism is false. Not only do we not have any reason to assume that inverted qualia are possible, but we cannot ever possibly know that they are, because we cannot ever share someone else's first-person experience, only our own.

I would recommend reading the pdf if you are not already familiar with Nida-Rümelin argument that I have highlighted in bold above. — StarsFromMemory

I was not aware of those scientific findings, but as I started reading that PDF's description of them my immediate reaction was the same one that that author came to by the end: the conclusion that inverted qualia have been shown possible by those results hinges on a bunch of philosophical presuppositions.

The only slight differences in my take are that the stuff that goes on in the middle of a function can make a difference in the total phenomenal experience that happens on account of it. Just like, in the Chinese Nation or the homonculi scenarios, I concede that there is some different experiencing going on on account of how the "neurons" in the simulated "brain" each have their own full brains and lives and do things other than just execute the neuronal functions in the simulated brain, so too on my account there would be slightly different phenomenal experience going on within the functionally different sub-components of the person with inverted color cone pigments, but the phenomenal experience of the whole person, who remains functionally the same on that whole-person level, would remain the same.

The function of any kind of science is to reliably and methodically find answers to some kind of question. If you cannot see the utility of having some way of reliably and methodically finding answers to questions about morality, then you've apparently just given up hope.

Moral non-naturalism is neither naturalistic nor descriptivist — 180 Proof

Right, but I'm trying to name a specific kind of moral view that I am opposed to, so I don't want to use a name that covers something so broad that it also includes what I'm in favor of. My view is non-descriptivist, and therefore not naturalist. This view I'm opposed to may or may not be descriptivist but is definitely not naturalist. So "non-naturalism" does encompass this view I'm opposed to, but also technically encompasses my own. I'm looking for a name for something narrower than non-naturalism.

... "deontic". — 180 Proof

That could be a good suggestion, except that it's again too broad, if "deontic" is just taken to be opposed to "consequentialist". Because my own view is also anti-consequentialist, and so deontic. The view I'm trying to name is, too, but again I'm looking for something narrower.

I worry I may have to just make up a term of my own for this, though even then I'm not sure what a good term would be.

If the homonculi truly perform no other function, then they are just synthetic neurons, and I find nothing strange that a synthetic perfect copy of a brain should have the exact same subjective experience of a real brain.

Nor for that matter, that a perfect copy of the functionality of a human brain (such that that brain-program they execute reports that it has feelings and memories and things just like a real human brain would), executed by a bunch of tiny thinking feeling beings (who each have their own independent functionality but, as a small part of that other independent being, also execute that brain-simulation function), would actually have the feelings and memories and other experiences that it reports having.

The tiny people who are part of making it happen would also all have their own experiences that (we're stipulating) don't factor into their execution of that brain-simulation, and so the simulated human has no awareness of them. And the whole larger brain-simulation function doesn't factor into the independent thought and feeling functions of the homonculi, so it's not like they each feel a little bit of the pain of the whole brain-simulation.

The whole setup is weird, of course, but the conclusion about what would happen if it were instantiated doesn't seem strange at all to me.

Thanks, but that's not quite what I'm going for, because the view that I support is not a moral naturalist point of view, inasmuch as it's a non-descriptivist point of view, and naturalism is descriptivist. That's why I'm putting "supernatural" in scare quotes, because it's not actually supernatural what I'm trying to name, but more the moral analogue of supernatural: "empirical" is to "supernatural" as "hedonic" is to "________".

One thing I could particularly use some feedback on is suggestions for a name for the unnamed moral analogue of supernaturalism discussed in this essay. For the whole moral side of transcendentalism-as-I-mean-it, I say

what we might call "transcendental moralism", in contrast to what I would call "hedonic moralism"

and for the aspect of that that's

about considering things like wealth, survival, and reproduction as the things of ultimate value, the highest of goods, irrespective of the pleasure or pain brought about in the pursuit of them

I can easily just say "materialism" in a moral or prescriptive sense, but for the things that are more "spiritual", like to do with ritual purity and such, all I have to say on naming it is

The moral equivalent of supernaturalism, for which I lack a clear name, is to claim that something is good or bad regardless of how it makes anybody feel, hedonistically; regardless of the pleasure or pain that it causes. It is, loosely speaking, the supposition that there is such a thing as a victimless moral crime: something that hurts nobody, but is nevertheless morally wrong

Can anyone thing of a good, especially an already-common, name for this kind of "supernatural"/anti-hedonic kind of moral viewpoint?

That system is not completely functionally identical because its components have additional functions that the components of a real brain would not. Those differences in behavior (the things the homonculi do besides just emulating neurons) correlate with the differences in experiences that the system as a whole undergoes. The similar behaviors (of the system as a whole) would still bring with them correlatively similar experiences too.

I said all of those things count as phenomenally conscious. None of them count as access conscious.

The fact that is not impossible that a P-Zombie can exist — StarsFromMemory

Is that a fact? Show me something that is definitely a p-zombie.

In any case, if you read my essay as you said then you already know my reasoning. There are three mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive possibilities: nothing has phenomenal consciousness, only some but not all things have it, or everything has it. I know first hand that I have it, so the first one of those is out. A physicalist ontology leaves only emergentism as a possibility for the second, so arguments against emergentism leave only the third as a possibility, and that is what panpsychism is. If panpsychism then no p-zombies, therefore if at least I am phenomenally conscious and physicalism is true and emergentism is false then no p-zombies.

Sure, anything that can reasonably be considered an object can also be considered a subject of experience.

What can or cannot reasonably be considered an object is in general the open question that mereology studies, but that has nothing to do with questions of consciousness specifically.

Science is done the way it is done not because scientists have come to an agreement about its philosophical foundations (even the philosophical community is far from such an agreement) — SophistiCat

The scientists don't have to explicitly elucidate the principles for it to be evident that they have agreed upon them; and the philosophical community don't have to agree on everything that they explicitly elucidate about those principles for there to be agreement on a common core of them. Try appealing to authority in a scientific paper, like "the Bible says...". Try appealing to some completely unobservable-in-principle phenomenon as evidence (not an as-yet-observed phenomenon as explanation for an observed one). Try suggesting that maybe there isn't actually any objective truth about reality, and local opinion is all that constitutes truth, so inside the headquarters of the Flat Earth Society the world (all of it) actually is flat, even though as soon as you step outside it goes back to being round (everywhere, even inside there) again. There are broad philosophical assumptions that all scientists make, like (as I said) realism, empiricism, and some kind of rationalism, and if you try to forward an argument that doesn't take those for granted, scientists will reject it because of that.

All we need for an "ethical science" is that kind of broad agreement. Rational appeals to evidence only, no authority, no popularity, no intuition. Evidence based on experience, i.e. hedonism. Objectivism in the sense of universalism, contra relativism, to quote Chomsky:

if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others—more stringent ones, in fact—plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil. — Chomsky

Panpsychism fails to make any empirically useful statement — Zelebg

As I said before, it's precisely as useful a statement as naturalism is. To a necessitarian naturalist (of which I am also one), any object cannot help but be natural; it doesn't make any sense at all to talk of supernatural things. Everything is natural. So "natural" is not a distinguishing feature between any two things, and it really means nothing, in that sense. But it clarifies what otherwise might be a point of philosophical confusion: to be an object at all is to be an object of experience, something connected to the network of phenomenal interactions that is the universe, and a supernatural object, an object that has no observable properties at all (that outputs no behavior that feeds into the input of anything else in that network of interactions) is no object at all; it doesn't exist.

Similarly, panpsychism like mine (I obviously can't speak for everyone) just says that the point of philosophical confusion that might give rise to notions like philosophical zombies is as nonsense as supernaturalism. All there is to account for besides the third-person observable behavior that is output by the function of a thing is a first-person account of exactly that same function -- that's all that phenomenal consciousness consists of, the having of a first-person experience -- so it would make no sense to talk about something that is functionally identical to a human except it has no phenomenal consciousness, a philosophical zombie, because everything has phenomenal consciousness (a first-person perspective) that depends on its function, so something functionally identical to a human has the first-person experience of a human.

The thing that makes useful distinctions between objects is not whether they are natural or not, but what they do, the specifics of the output of their functions, their behavior. And the thing that makes useful distinctions between subjects is not whether or not they have a first-person experience at all (their phenomenal consciousness), but what it's like to be them, the specifics of the input to their functions, their experience.

Oh right, that problem. I didn't recognize it by name before; I think the capitalization threw me off, maybe. Anyway, I gave my answer to that above:

The functionality of things is what groups them. The way information flows through systems, the causal connectedness or isolation of them. — Pfhorrest

It's precisely analogous to how the behavior of things groups together, because they are two sides of the same coin, that coin being function. Phenomenal experience is the input to the function of any thing, physical behavior is the output of it, and the specifics of the thing's experience and behavior are both determined by that function. All of the properties of the thing, of which the thing is merely a bundle, are behaviors, or functional dispositions to behave in a certain way; whatever cluster of functions makes those behaviors appear bundled into a single object, from the third person, also make the experiences seem bundled into a single subject, from the first person.

That's an odd wish, from my point of view, to have a camp of people that agree with you on everything. But you strike me as an opinionated fellow, with a definite position on everything, so I can kind of see how you would expect all water to flow to the same level. I like to think of myself as too much of a chameleon to be the same color with anyone (though I am probably deluding myself). — SophistiCat

It's not so much of a wish, as a wonder.

But yeah, sometimes it is a wish too. I have very well-defined positions now, but I have moved through many different positions over the course of my life and education, and it wasn't until I got out here in the metaphorical wilderness of seemingly-uncharted or at least little-traveled territory that I found myself no longer having fellow-travelers going down the same path as me.

It seems like off on other paths I used to be on, or those I intentionally avoided, there are still big happy groups, who may be shouting across the divides at each other, but all have each others' backs to assure each other they're on the right path too.

While being out here by myself, when everyone in every direction is shouting "wrong way!", even though it looks clearly to my mind that their ways are wrong, it still makes me heart ask "is this the wrong way?" And it's comforting when someone else thinks so too.

Okay, I did read your essay (nice read) — StarsFromMemory

Thanks!

What about properties like fluidity or rigidity that don't exist on the small scale but exist when the individual particles combine in a fixed way?

I understand that emergentism has major flaws and is not widely accepted, however, I don't think your objection is justified. What is objectionable is that emergentism claims irreducibility of those properties. That is simply unjustifiable to believe in. — StarsFromMemory

Fluidity and rigidity are those kinds of abstractions I have no problem with. If you just model the mechanical interactions of molecules, you end up modeling a system that exhibits rigidity or fluidity etc automatically; you don’t have to have your model add something new to certain arrangements of molecules.

Also, why don't you consider the possibilty that phenomenal experience arise from the processing of sensory input by the brain as detailed by 'The Integrated Information theory' and Global Workspace theory? — StarsFromMemory

When factoring in functionalism about access consciousness I basically do. Phenomenal consciousness generally is the processing of information (that every physical thing does in at least a rudimentary degree). The kind of complex phenomenal consciousness that we have arises from the complex information processing functionality that we (our brains) do.

Also, what do you make of the Combination Problem that threatens the idea of panpychism and the conceivability of a P-Zombie that experiences the same physical states without any mental states. You do state that you think they are not possible, any concrete reasons for that belief? — StarsFromMemory

I’m not familiar with that problem by name. My reason for rejecting the possibility of philosophical zombies is my direct awareness of my own phenomenal consciousness plus anti-emergentism leading to my functionalist panpsychist conclusion whereby everything has some experience, and things with the same function have the same experience, so something functionally equivalent to a human would have the experience of a human.

Functionalism about access consciousness, panpsychism about phenomenal consciousness.

Hahah, thanks :)

He implied that the US is letting potential tyrants run for president. I’m wondering which person(s) he thinks are potential tyrants running for president: someone(s) from one party this year, everyone from every party for generations, somewhere in between...?

The functionality of things is what groups them. The way information flows through systems, the causal connectedness or isolation of them.

And phenomenalist panpsychism had the same usefulness as naturalism: it ends up purporting that a completely trivial property belongs to everything (naturalness/first-person experience) sure, but in the process of denying that a property that would be absurd if substantiative applies to anything.

“Free will” in an incompatibilist sense is a bad thing anyway. You want compatibilist free will, which would not be lost in heaven.

That’s all about access consciousness. Functionality. Phenomenal consciousness is something much less interesting.

So the big question, how can our government allow potential tyrants to run for president?! — DeepThinker

Who exactly do you have in mind?

Admitting uncertainty even in the face of what looks like an obvious answer and then investigating it anyway is what makes scientists “smart”.

Science didn't wait around for its foundational questions to be solved before it could get off the ground - if it did, it would have been waiting to this day. Historical nomenclature aside, what we today recognize as science came together haphazardly as a living practice, rather than as a systematic application of a fully developed philosophical program. If anything, metaphysics and epistemology have for the most part been playing catch-up to science, taking its practice and its findings as a subject of study. — SophistiCat

It is impossible to do science without agreement on foundational things like empiricism and realism and some form of rationalism (as in rejecting appeals to intuition, authority, etc). Those practicing scientists may not have all made explicit their philosophical assumptions, but the work they did as a community had to take them for granted; those who continued to dispute those principles did not become part of the scientific community, but instead became its opponents, disputing its results on what scientists consider fallacious philosophical grounds. Because those scientists had at least an implicit philosophical framework in common.

Moral philosophy has slowly been making organic progress in a similar direction. Utilitarianism’s emphasis on hedonic flourishing mirrors the emphasis on empiricism. Deontological and rights-based models mirror the emphasis on rationalism. All of them generally reject appeals to authority and such. Liberty and equality are more valued now than historically. There is a clear trend of moral thinking moving toward a more “scientific” methodology based on common experience and critical reasoning, we just haven’t fully developed a consensus on how exactly those principles all fit together yet.

Everything that exists.

Access consciousness is a functional property that only applies to things with the requisite functionality.

Phenomenal consciousness is nothing more than the having of a first-person perspective, and applies to everything.

The phenomenal consciousness of something that is not access consciousness is as unremarkable as the behavior of that object, though, since both phenomenal consciousness and behavior are products of the object's function.

Access consciousness is the difference in function, the important thing that matters, that distinguishes humans from rocks.

But that function is built up from simpler functions that are built up from simpler functions so there's never a hard line where something suddenly becomes / ceases to be "consciousness" in either sense.

My complete thoughts on the topic.

I just realized that I forgot to ask for one rather important piece of feedback, which thankfully has not applied to the five essay thus far, but will be important to ask about on the other seventeen still to come:

- Are there any subtopics I have neglected to cover?

I've added that to the OP of this thread now, and will include it in the OP of future threads as well.

Better buy more toilet paper... — Banno

If I'm desperate I can use pages of bad philosophy — Metaphysician Undercover

(as toilet paper, implying printing onto paper)

you print bad posts to this web site? — Banno

(you print something, that something being bad posts, that have been posted to this web site; not that you print something to this website, that something being bad posts)

I print nothing to or from this site. — Metaphysician Undercover

(but if you’re desperate for toilet paper, you can)

It's the people who nearly agree with us we can't stand :wink: — bongo fury

I have noticed that, especially in politics, where right-wing people disagreeing with me feels trivial, because of course they do, while other left-wing people disagreeing with me actually hurts. I think it may be related to the Uncanny Valley effect: someone sufficiently different is just an Other, but someone who's a lot like us but slightly off is just... sick somehow, disgusting.

I haven't debated anything with you, but we could try picking one of your favorites and you change your side to your opponent's. Or not. You can do it on your own too. — frank

On most topics I'm not even sure which position would be "the opposite", since I can usually identify two positions that differ from me on a given topic in different equally dramatic ways. I usually wound up at my stance on a given topic after trying out a bunch of different opposing views and not finding any of them a comfortable fit.

I can only think of one person here who I feel is generally in the same philosophical camp as me overall, 180 Proof, with whom I can only recall one disagreement on one topic — Pfhorrest

I don't recall any disagreement with 180, but that doesn't mean my little pup tent is in the same campground. — praxis

That's why I mentioned that second part about him laying out his whole philosophy in my other thread. There are lots of people who I can't recall much disagreement with, but don't really know what else the rest of their philosophy is about.

to think that science is principally guided by philosophical doctrines, other than the ones that emerged organically in the course of its own development. — SophistiCat

Why do those ones deserve an exception?

The physical sciences we have today began as a branch of philosophy, "natural philosophy", that pretty much solved its foundational questions and then went on to do the business of applying them.

There is no reason to think that moral philosophy cannot do the same thing, solve those foundational questions, and go on to start doing ethical sciences by applying those.

FiveThirtyEight has finally updated their election odds predictor with Super Tuesday results, and it's showing Biden with close to 90% odds of having a majority of delegates, "no one" somewhere pretty far behind, and Bernie now just the front-running among everyone else who has almost no chance.

I was already sad today, and now I am more sad. Another four years of Trump are probably ahead, and even if not, it's not likely that anything is likely to actually improve under Biden, at best they'll just stop getting continuously worse.

There are certainly cases where neither of some alternatives are morally obligatory, but agreement on them is still valuable; the road-side case is one of them. But in those cases, there is still a prior agreement that agreement is good, which requires some agreement on "good" in the first place. We need to agree on what side of the road to drive on because if we don't then there will be car accidents and people will die (etc). Someone who drives on the wrong side of the road isn't doing something wrong because of the side of the road they drove on, but because they caused a wreck and got someone killed (etc). Similarly, with valuing people living together in a more or less harmonious way: that presumes that we all agree that whatever kind of disharmony we're aiming to avoid is bad. There are lots of things where there are multiple equally acceptable ways to realize a goal, but the end goals are still held in common.

It is an improvement. I admire your willingness to seek out and adapt to counter-factual views. It's commendable. — Wayfarer

Thanks!

So, given that rather verbose caveat - I agree with you. — Wayfarer

:)

(No time to reply in more detail now, off to bed time).