I consider myself "on the left", and I don't want authoritarian eco-communism. So I wonder why you'd think all people on the left are the same, or why you think that they are somehow not rational. — Echarmion

Yes. This guy has an irrational fear of the commies. Or is raising a straw man.

It's true, they lied. But ultimately, capitalism is necessary to a sustainable future - and the left wing, anti capitalist, carbon tax this, stop that, eat grass and cycle approach won't work. — counterpunch

The climate catastrophe is now inevitable. It's gonna start hitting badly by the end of this century only, if we're lucky. What form of 'civilisation' will sustain and survive for centuries ahead in spite of climate change, I don't know. I guess we'll all take a hit, some bigger hit here, some smaller there. But I would hope that societies built on common search for truth and respect for truth stand a better chance of surviving the incoming crises than societies built upon lies.

Recently, I showed that the subjectivist, post modernist, anti-truth position of the left is false, with numerous examples, in an argument peppered with literary and philosophical references, and ran into an ideologically indoctrinated brick wall of direct contradiction. This inability and/or unwillingness to learn plunged me into a sudden and deep depression, for - if humankind cannot learn, cannot correct this mistake, we are doomed. — counterpunch

I agree that post-modernism opened a can of worms, which I suppose is fine but since the box hasn't been closed, the worms of post-truthism are now all over the place. Which leads me to my question: why do you lampoon only the left? Hasn't Trump been the king of anti-truthism lately? Or are you amongst the ones who happen to believe him?

Try again, that wasn’t interesting at all.

That lady was not a « Biden election official », and you are a liar.

We agree if this is changed to “and one cannot be certain of it”. — khaled

I propose instead: "and sometimes one cannot be certain of it”. For I can say for certain that the earth is not a flat rectangle, for instance, or that the heart is a muscle that pumps blood.

No, I only require the assumption that one can possibly say something true, even without being certain of it. The possibility of truth has to be assumed, that's all.

In the second, you still believe something is true. So you believe you can possibly say something true.

How about “None of what I can say is true except this”? Paradox resolved.

Or something like “I cannot know that what I say is true but I don’t see how this can be false so I’ll believe it”. Paradox resolved. — khaled

Yes but note that in both cases you have to assume that you can say something true about the world.

You're seriously telling me you can't think of a single other explanation? I'm not sure how to interpret that. — Isaac

Can you think of a single other explanation yourself?

Take for example the incest taboo. Why would you think it is there, almost universally?

Huhun... While in science you can approximate truth asymptotically, there are still lies and statements that are demonstrably not true in science. So the concept of truth is necessary for science, if only to rule out what is certainly not true.

In philosophy you need the axiom of truth to say anything. Because the subject matter in philosophy is not quantitative but conceptual, logical (or not), i.e. qualitative; it's about the conceptual framework that is a prerequisite for any measurement. In conceptual terrain, you get lost in logical contradictions if you assume that none of what you can say can be true (the liar's paradox).

If truth is impossible, why even bother thinking about it all? Just gobble up whatever Trump says.

The evidence is in the presence of punishments and rewards in all societies. Why do you think they exist and are so universal?

In my view, there is an objective reality, but one that is inaccessible, and is just there out of logical necessity (because perceptions need to be of things). — khaled

I agree. But it's useful to postulate the existence of an objective reality, and also to assume that we can say something true about it. These are just axioms: points of departure which themselves are not proven. But without them one lands logically into very weird territory.

The purpose of a citation is so that we can see where the opinion derives from and follow the line of argument. Without it, there's nothing to argue. We might as well just write "yes it is", "no it isn't" all day - pointless." — Isaac

Right from the start, my argument was that if what feels good hedonistically was always equal to what is a moral course of action, then there would be no need for punishments and rewards. This is pretty clear, and dare I say obvious. You could have addressed the point a long time ago if you wanted to.

the same perceptions/views? — khaled

Of what?

Last I checked idealists did not spontaneously lose their ability to collaborate with others. — khaled

These idealists must have assumed they lived in the same world as other people, then.

Those aren't the only two alternatives. How about: No world, only perceptions? Like the idealists like it. — khaled

Well then, once again there would be nothing to agree or disagree about, and no collaboration would seem possible.

Here you are proposing the existence of multiple, objective, and independent worlds. Idk why you are still doing that. — khaled

Oh, so you agree we all live in the same world? That's all I want to point out.

If it's the same then the same things happen or are the case in your world and mine. And our different views of it may be related to our viewpoint, our angle, our perspective, which are indeed different by definition. IOW, our biases are often best explained by our respective positions in this common world of ours. Rich and poor people often don't share the same views of the world, to take an obvious example, because they view it from different social positions.

Having people who agree with you is great. You can cooperate, agree on certain things, r — khaled

Once again, if your world is different from mine, there's nothing to agree about. Like if you were watching some crappy TV show on channel 1 and I was watching some crappy western movie on channel 2 and then we can agree that what we both watched was crap?... I don't see the point. It was two different sorts of crap. Likewise if we all live in different worlds then any cooperation is logically an illusion.

Why should we want everybody to live in the same world if they don't actually live in the same world?

We can still agree and disagree about our perceptions of it. — khaled

Of it? What does 'it' stand for in your sentence?

What does "flat earthers' world" even mean? — khaled

The world in which those people who believe the earth is flat are living.

Wanting agreement is not dependent on whether or not a correct version exists. I would say wanting agreement precedes the meta consideration of whether or not a correct version exists. — khaled

Nope. Without the idea that we all live in the same world, perceived by each of us differently, without this axiom, there is nothing to try and agree about.

All you can do is reach an agreement. Which you don’t need that postulate for. — khaled

You do need to agree that the world is one in spite of our different views of it, in order to WANT to resolve differences of opinion. Otherwise e.g. the flat-earthers' world would be actually flat and there would be no need for them to discuss this with non-flat-earthers, who literally would live on another planet.

What advantage does that give you that a lack of an objective reality lacks? What does it allow you to say that the no objective reality model doesn't? — khaled

You can analyse people's biases, it makes sense to do so. And hence you can start to resolve differences of perception. In today's post-truth wako world, it's important to postulate that we all live in the same world, in spite of our differences of opinion about it.

Of course it's a trivial matter.
— Olivier5

Then why not just include it in the first place. — Isaac

Precisely because it's trivial. You could find some literature supporting pretty much any common sense position. In fact even the most non-sensical positions would have some literature backing them up.

Secondly, why are you citing a work from nearly a hundred years ago to support a modern argument. Are you suggesting that no progress at all has been made in the neuroscience of morality since then? — Isaac

It's still fresher than Buridan, who dates back to the middle ages and is what you seem to go by. You are just another behaviorist if you ignore the multilayered complexity of our cognition, and the role of language in it, and behaviorists are basically treating people as beasts, like Buridan was doing. That's bad middle age thinking...

If you are that well-schooled it should be a trivial matter to put your hands on the actual research backing up your claim. This is a public forum, not a private blog. — Isaac

Of course it's a trivial matter. It all starts (?) with Le développement du jugement moral chez l’enfant, by Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, 1932, which describes how hedonic incentives are altered in the family cell by punishments and rewards so that young children would see an advantage in 'behaving'. So the first stage of moral development would be in effect hedonistic: the parents try to align the incentive structure in which their kids operate with their moral requirements through a carrot and stick approach. This is the level where your Buridan-inspired conceptual framework is valid: young children tend to chose what feels good for them. But as the child grows up (still according to Piaget and Kohlberg), she starts to realize higher levels of moral judgment: a sense of social justice and fairness through rules, then a sense of pragmatism in applying those rules and also a sense of self-worth, that allow her to outgrow selfish hedonism and the fear of punishment and develop her own realistic, workable life ethic. This is where your own conceptual framework becomes inadequate.

But if you were that well schooled yourself, you wouldn't need me to point you to Piaget.

I sense a great deal of denial in you, Brett. This movement is dangerous, violent, and explicitly so. Ignore them at your own peril.

From protestors to terrorists to mass murderers. — Brett

That's what they themselves say. It's their culture, it's their alleged goal. I'm not living in the US, so I don't personally care, but the United States have raised a Cain.

I would think this is obvious too. — khaled

Too obvious for Isaac, apparently.

a grounding in social or psychological sciences — Isaac

What makes you think I need that anymore than you do?

what is wrong is entirely divorced from what feels good in a hedonic sense — khaled

If what is wrong morally felt bad on a purely sensual level, there would be no need for morality. People would naturally do the right thing because it would be their pleasure. But it ain't like that, as you say. I suspect it is precisely because short term gratification can be pleasurable but anti-social that human societies have a need for a moral code.

The tone of Trump and crowd have an undercurrent of certain sub-cultures, where loyalty trumps truth (pun intended), where alignment outweighs doing the right thing - a divisive or alienating Us-versus-Them sentiment. — jorndoe

Quite an understatement... In that culture, there is this concept of 'the day of the rope'. That is to say, the day of the white supremacists revolution, when they will hang all blacks, gays, lesbians, Jews, scientists and fancy-pant politicians. These guys are wannabe mass murderers, well armed too...

Because I can’t imagine myself going into a room full of executives and thinking “Hmmm I might need to use some of that Nietzschen will to power in this room.” and then meeting a girl and applying the same thing. — Brett

And what do you go by in those situations, if not some 'philosophy'? (explicit or implicit)

how do you apply them throughout the day with issues bugging you at the time? — Brett

Personally? This stuff helps me deal with all sorts of issues: professional, emotional, sexual, social... Professionally it helps me keep calm and understand my capacity of action, ie where I can more usefully contribute to stuff I care about. Emotionally, I am a bit autistic and deficient, raised by rationalists who did not display their emotions, so thinking about the limits of rationality and the usefulness of emotions has helped ground me a little more. Let's not get into sex... Socially, navigating widely different social and ethnic groups is part of my job and life, so I need to know who I am socially, where I come from and how people may perceive me because of that, but I also need to know how to bracket my culture for a period, to 'chamaleon' into another self so to speak. Thinking about the universality of man (we're all the same, deep down in spite of skin color and cultural differences) helps me tread that line. Eg I can interview a Trumpian madman intent on civil war, and understand him, in spite of being at core his opponent. Philosophy helps there.

can you give me an example of philosophy in action — Brett

I can give you a few.

1. You can't deny that Marxism had an effect on the world, good or bad.

2. Whitehead and Russel founding modern math and the computer revolution in Principia Mathematica.

3. More generally, the scientific method was developed by philosophers, historically. Science is an off-shot of philosophy.

4. Popper's political philosophy (and many others' eg Raymond Aron) is at the root of modern social democracy. George Soros' Open Society Institute openly refers to Popper.

5. Freud's hypothesis of the existence of unconscious thoughts and desires has generated a whole industry of shrinks of all kinds (some good some bad).

It kind of depends on what issue is bugging you at a certain point in time. Spinoza, Voltaire, Marx, Popper, Freud, Merleau-Ponty and Bateson are some of my favorite.

Philosophies are like everything else: there are good ones and bad ones. The good ones help you go through the day. The bad ones make life more miserable than it is already.

If Congress are going to pass any kind of sinister bill, not much anyone can do about it. — Kenosha Kid

They have those laws in the book already.

In other words, state-enforced truth — NOS4A2

You have a problem with truth, with states, or with both?