For example, I have seen disabled people objecting to so called able-bodied people using disabled toilets and they are making the assumption that disabilities are visible. So, it is extremely complicated. — Jack Cummins

This is a good point, and is a common prejudice: the refusal to give the benefit of the doubt. I saw a man in the grocer's recently who wasn't wearing a face mask. I immediately felt myself getting angry and had to tell myself off. Sure, he was probably just a git, but he might well have had a very reasonable exemption. You have to give people the benefit of the doubt: to not do so is to pre-judge.

Then the guy came and stood right next to me so I got to yell at him after all. All's well that ends well. (I get away with a lot having a posh voice in Manchester. People who'd otherwise pull a knife on me become catatonically confused. :rofl: )

This automatic reaction to think the worst of people when there are perfectly good explanations possible seems like a symptom to me. I think that has a lot to do with how we live and how much of our autonomy we have to surrender to live that way. We live in a world of strangers and that is not what we're built for. We feel helpless to make things right and that's not what we're built for either. There's a lot small print in our social contract that even the authors didn't notice.

I don't think that's true — Wayfarer

Don't make me explain the joke, dude.

I have moments when I am too great — Jack Cummins

Me too. Well, we are British. ;)

Anyway, in answer to the OP, I think defending your position within reason is productive, so long as you move on from that position when it is untenable, and I will stand by that no matter what.

Being wrong should be embarrassing only when we ought to have known better. "Fact-checking" is an overly common word now because, for some reason, facts are trading low. When it is sufficient for a man you don't know on the internet to say that Hilary Clinton traffics children for sex and drinks the blood of babies for you to not only build a position around that but to become elected to high office, something has gone horribly wrong.

There seems to be a strange attitude now in which the position is completely arbitrary and yet somehow the only thing that matters. There's another, older trend in which, if the facts are counter to your interests, they are illegitimate (a la climate change denial, or holocaust denial, or election result denial). I think this makes productive conversation impossible. There is no synthesis with extremist positions. One side or the other will just get mad (depending on what the extreme position is).

I think having an emotional connection to your beliefs is usually fine, but when that emotional connection is the only reason for defending them, you've glitched.

I was thinking about the history of philosophy and how in all it's history philosophers haven't really solved a single important question — Thinking

Coincidentally, my favourite philosophical question is: Has philosophy answered any important questions? It's a relief to discover on a philosophy forum that it has not. Also coincidentally, that is a paradox.

Yes, but if life carried on as it is now I would question whether there would be any quality of life at all, because just about every outlet available is closed down. — Jack Cummins

Oh sure, I'm not hoping to keep every element of lockdown for posterity. That said, a happy medium between the minimalist drudgery of the now and the extravagant gratification of the last few decades would also be beneficial. I think we're going to have to get used to a more restricted way of life anyway, may as well make a start while we're in the habit.

My issue is with those in Western cultures telling Muslim women that they shouldn’t wear the chador, or who claim to be offended by women wearing it in a supposedly free, Western culture - this is what the discussion is about, is it not? — Possibility

The former is wrong, for sure. Best case scenario, it's victim-blaming. The latter is because, at least in part, of genuine concern. Offense is an inappropriate response perhaps, but concern is not.

I am not sure that the majority of people are going to be able to work from home. — Jack Cummins

True, but I think it's a big enough minority to make a big difference. Around 50% of workers right now are working from home who weren't doing so before. Obviously there's a lot if people unemployed who will go back to jobs they can't do from home, but even so: big improvement.

I wear a mask, of course, but I have knocked items over and tripped over a step because I can't see properly as my glasses steam up so much. — Jack Cummins

Me too. Shopping blind is mad skillz!

I sometimes think that life in Britain will never go back to the way it was, and I really hope that I am wrong. — Jack Cummins

I actually hope there are some permanent changes. Remote working for those who can do it is a fantastic opportunity to help tackle climate change, for instance.

The repercussions that someone in the West will face for not living up to dress standards are, of course, far milder than elsewhere in the world. — baker

They're not just milder, they're qualitatively different. If you accept a position at a firm with a dress code then, like a nun, you have weighed up whether conformity is something you're willing to adhere to get something you want.

However when weighing up whether or not to wear a headdress in public, you are weighing up whether or not the risk of insane and hateful punishment is worth taking.

Wanting a particular job is not on the same spectrum as not wanting acid in your face. That's the troubling aspect about this.

My point is that we in the West are not free either, and we make many choices out of fear of repercussions. — baker

There are milder, broader issues around things like dress and oppression. Transvestites are often attacked by homophobes. However a) it's comparatively rare, not systematic, and b) the victim has recourse to the law. The same coersion that forces women to wear particular clothing in public (which is far more totalitarian than just in the workplace) will typically either place them outside of the protection of the law, or else under a law that supports that mode of oppression. We're talking the kinds of countries that stone women to death for being raped. Even in the most comparable cases, it's qualitatively different.

In our Philosophy of Science class, we have seen that Science focuses on the object, while the totality of reality is an interaction between subject and object. — alphahimself

If you take a look at e.g. the phenomenology of quantum mechanics, you'll see that science is already invested in this arena.

Does it mean that science is not useful in some cases? — alphahimself

To say that science is not useful, e.g. in describing consciousness, is to posit the existence of a thing that leaves no discernible mark on the universe around it. But since such a thing could never make its existence known, it as, at best, a negligible thing. If consciousness does effect its environment, then it is amenable to scientific study.

Don't you think that we underestimate the challenge of understanding the nature of consciousness by being convinced that we simply need to continue to examine the physical structures of the brain to determine how they produce consciousness? — alphahimself

Ah, well the technological viability of an experiment is a separate thing. It is perfectly possible that a scientific theory is only testable in principle, and that the technological requirements to perform the test will always be beyond us.

A more likely challenge for consciousness is probably ethics. Corpses don't have it, and we can't eliminate the possibility that only humans have a vital component of it. There might be experiments within our capability that we ought not to perform for ethical reasons.

If you want to apportion blame (and emphasize personal responsibility), then the blame lies with the employees who chose to go to work instead of losing their jobs. In the beginning of the pandemic, this is what was happening: if people chose to respect the quarantene, not just a few employers would count that as their vacation time or sick leave, and when those ran out, it was "Go to work or lose your job." — baker

Not using policy to condemn the many to die for the sake of the few us not emphasising "personal responsibility": quite the opposite! It is the responsibility of the state to minimise death, suffering and collateral damage. Individual responsibility is much more context-dependent.

For instance, we do not want doctors, nurses, grocers, police officers, government officials and other key workers quitting their jobs to self-isolate full stop, let alone at the risk of their own starvation. Instead, we need to ensure that a) they are trained and aided to work as safely as possible, and b) the duration of the pandemic is as short as possible, since they are risking their lives for our benefit.

Beyond key workers, forcing people to choose between Covid and destitution is cruel and backward imho. That does not mean that everyone should move freely around, killing more people, but that the state should ensure that everyone who can work from home does so (by legislating against unsafe employers and investing in remote learning capabilities), ensure that travel is restricted (esp. international), ensure that vital services in normal times are protected, including their employees (e.g. furlough schemes), and that everyone else can safely isolate (which involves all sorts of things, from benefit payouts where necessary to provision of shelters for domestic abuse survivors).

Then and only then you appeal to personal responsibility. There are certainly the blameworthy. I live in Greater Manchester which is the scumbag capital of the UK. We've been in pretty much permanent lockdown since it started because scumbags won't wear masks, socially distance, or limit travel. It's kind of the UK equivalent of the American Midwest, I guess. Yes, those people bear responsibility for the deaths of others because they were given an effective choice.

While true, not related to what we were discussing — Benkei

To be clear, I was responding to the point that overshorting is not a problem since it is equivalent to the same stocks being bought and sold in succession (volume-based). But if it were just that, there would be no situation in which someone pays for 1.4 stocks and ends up with 1 stock.

If someone bought a share at $10 dollars, sold it for $5 dollars, then bought another at $10, we'd say that person was a bit dim for paying $15 dollars for a share worth $5. The problem that person would be creating for themselves is the problem inherent in shorting that the trader risks meeting.

He probably wouldn't be stoned for it... — baker

A key distinction.

it would certainly not be good for his reputation and his CV — baker

But we're not talking about whether it's good for a woman's CV: we're talking about whether it would result in her having acid thrown in her face, or restrictions of freedoms, or domestic abuse, or loss of life. The man in a bikini example is directly comparable to a nun choosing not to wear her habit, not to a Muslim wearing a chador for fear of death or disfigurement. I find the false equivalence of these quite alarming.

Oppressive social forces — baker

I didn't have social forces in mind. I was referring to the oppression of an individual by another, e.g. her husband.

The occasional angst I get is: Why am I the person who is physically at the center looking out? — Scott South

Everything is at the origin of its own reference frame. The Sun is at the centre of it's, the Earth of it's, the Moon of it's. And how things are in the world is unique to each reference frame. From the point of view of a current-carrying wire, the force on a moving charge outside it is magnetic. But from the point of view of the charge, it's electrostatic. Very different stories. The distance from the Earth to the Moon depends on your reference frame. The time it takes for a ball to hit the floor likewise. Every frame is special, therefore no frame is.

The problem is that those who condemn Muslim headdress as misogynistic are ASSUMING they are forced to do so. — Possibility

When those that choose not to are free from coersion and violent consequences, then coersion and violent consequences will cease to be factors in their decision about what to wear. There is a natural priority here. No one is saying that no woman would choose to wear chador. It's just that currently that decision exists within a culture where oppressive and violent misogyny is alarmingly prominent.

It seems like men are not welcome anymore in educational institutions such as universities and so on. — User34x

Do you care to check the proportion of undergraduates, postgraduates and university staff who are male?

This is especially true if you are a fit, healthy male, whereas men who can demonstrate some kind of disability are welcome to some degree — User34x

And the proportion of those males who are able-bodied?

Elsewise, looks a bit like folk noticing their previous privilege and not liking a bit of equity. — Banno

Sounds about right. Par for the course atm.

That the borrower is doing the selling really doesn't change anything. — Benkei

Well, it does when they find themselves paying for inflated stock they don't want not just once but 1.4 times, and find they can only sell it again once. Shorting is a risk, and therefore a potential problem, sometimes a real one.

Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen but can be inferred. In the unique case of consciousness, the thing to be explained cannot be observed. — alphahimself

Do you see the muddle? The standard for electrons is inference but your standard for consciousness is observation.

A scientific approach to consciousness is exactly analogous to any other subject of scientific study: you model the thing as best you can based on observations (not necessarily observations of the thing itself), you draw hypotheses from your model about future observations (prediction), then you make those observations (test), then go back and refine the model. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Models_of_consciousness?wprov=sfla1

To observe consciousness, directly or indirectly, you have to first robustly define what it is, and then determine differences in behaviour between something that has it and something that doesn't. This is difficult because people struggle to agree on what the thing is. It's even more difficult because people tend to insist that, whatever the scientific model of consciousness arrived at, there must be, as a matter of taste, a bit left over that is the bit we actually mean, whatever it might be (a la the hard problem of consciousness), and this bit can't be defined robustly in scientific terms (and therefore probably isn't real).

Isaac is probably best placed to answer this. He knows a lot about how the brain processes sensory data, and how awareness of that processed data, such that it might be employed in reason, comes into it.

I suspect though that your question is rather loaded. I don't see what any knowledgeable person would have to say about

Reality is perception-altered — synthesis

or

our intellect transforms it into some convoluted dystopia — synthesis

or

a portal to another place altogether — synthesis

The subject of the OP doesn't seem to have anything to do with any of that.

Ask those who are looking at losing their homes, their businesses, or who have lost a loved one to suicide from the lockdown if it has been worth the cost. Methinks the answer will be very different. — Book273

This sort of thinking is precisely how the pandemic has become so protracted. A refusal to do it once and do it right because business comes first has killed off many more businesses and people than just accepting the necessary measures to handle the pandemic properly.

Also, asking whether those worst affected by measures of they are in favour of them is rather dishonest. Such measures are statistical, taken for the sake of the whole population in order to minimise, not simply eradicate, harm. Those unfortunate enough to be the worst affected have no right to insist that every person saved by those measures should instead be dead for their sake.

:clap: :clap: :clap:

You just seem to think that emotions factor into what logically one should do. — Darkneos

Of course they factor in. That doesn't make the decision "emotional".

If I wish to put a nail in the wall, it is perfectly logical to use a hammer.

Enjoying something is the state of wishing to be doing it. It is illogical to simultaneously enjoy something and not wish to do it. Conversely it is perfectly logical to wish for something and to act to realise that thing. Competing desires weigh in on whether the ultimate decision taken is logical -- eating ice cream when you are obese is illogical if you wish to lose weight -- but those aside, logic dictates that that which you will to be done is that which you act to realise.

I think the answer is the Schrödinger-Newton-Equation. — SolarWind

Yeah, something like it perhaps. I do lean more towards a general relativistic quantum theory than a quantum theory of gravity. The S-N equation itself has two approximations: it is non-relativistic (a la the Schrödinger equation), and it is essentially a mean-field theory. But it does encode potentially many-body effects.

Environmental decoherence is another factor, but tbh it's not like anyone can simulate measurement using the many-body Dirac equation anyway. We presume it behaves like the many-body Schrödinger equation (which is basically an oscillation between different possible measurement outcomes), but it's not something we can check. There are huge differences between the way solutions to the Schrödinger equation and solutions to the Dirac equation behave (e.g. the phase velocity of Dirac equation solutions is tachyonic, which impacts interference effects).

I don't know about that, but last time I checked, Stephen Hawking was certainly dead. — Olivier5

Philosophy 1 -- Hawking 0

My next lecture will explicate quantum mechanics as the golden path to fourth dimensional world peace! Its the advanced wave of the future man! lol — Enrique

:rofl:

The erroneously-regarded "interference" pattern on the detector screen will then vary symmetrically in proportion to emitter position, also slit quantity, width and placement, predictable according to some kind of mathematical formula. Is this accurate? — Enrique

It will vary depending on the distance from the cathode to the slits, the slits to the screen, the distance between the slits, the widths of the slits and the voltage of the cathode.

And do you insist QM is not probabilistic? — Raul

There are probabilistic (Copenhagen-like) interpretations of QM and deterministic (MWI-like) interpretations of QM so, no, it's not fundamentally probabilistic. The Born rule applies either way, but in MWI is a classical probability, like the probability of pulling a blue marble out of a bag. Further, there is no probabilistic mechanism even in Copenhagen-like interpretations. The Born rule is epistemological.

Right, so when you say QM is phenomenological you refer to phenomenology as understood in physics, not the philosophical one. — Raul

It's the same phenomenology, it's just specific to physical experiment.

Anyway, I think we're losing the point of the question, these theories do not explain everthing but are the closest ones to give an kind of ontological explanations of the real. Would you have other to propose? — Raul

QM is the best theory we have in terms of its predictive power. How ontological it is... *shrugs* I like pondering it, but in a working capacity I'm a shut up and calculate guy. I suspend judgement largely because we're not technologically advanced enough to jump that phenomenological barrier. It might well be that QM is complete and deterministic, we just can't simulate large enough systems to observe how macroscopic superposition is avoided. Or maybe it's complete and probabilistic. Or maybe it's incomplete, or an approximation to a better theory. No one knows.

This mistake makes clear you haven't studied QM or don't understand it. — Raul

I did my PhD in quantum transport theory.

You're mixing up Schrodinger equations and wave equations. — Raul

The Schrödinger equation is a wave equation.

A photon is not a click, but if you go to the laboratories like in the CRN you will see that particles are not clicks but probabilities everywhere — Raul

Do you mean CERN? In quantum mechanics, predictions concern experimental outcomes. If your experiment concerns certain photon emissions with certain probabilities, then this equates to the number of "clicks" you'll read at a certain angle of a certain energy across a large number of experiments. Unlike, say, the trajectory of Mercury around the Sun, we can't "see" photons without destroying them. One can model the photon using the wavefunction but cannot conflate the two: the latter is a mathematical encoding of all the information we have, which might be more than that needed. One cannot even speak of the photon existing in space and time between the emission and absorption events: even that is an interpretation. All one can say with surety is that we expect N number of clicks in a photon detector at a certain angle and energy.

Yes, there is, formulas in QM are probabilistic in the base but can become deterministic depending on the value of the factors. — Raul

No, that's not correct. The wave equations are completely deterministic. Probabilism enters via the Born rule. The collapse mechanism is unknown, presumed discontinuous.

I think QM is phenomenal :grin: ... but phenomenological :roll: ... does it even matter? It is maybe phenomenological for you, so what? — Raul

What I mean is that a robust answer to a question like "What is a photon?" is "A click in a photon detector." QM doesn't justify a firmer position than this.

A free society, where free speech is plentiful, will see political skirmishes in the streets because speech has consequences. Plentiful free speech doesn't mean that all consequences have to be tolerated. — Bitter Crank

Precisely why we should prosecute on the basis of intent. I personally don't believe Trump incited an insurrection, but that's what he's charged with: not giving unwanted opinion but manufacturing violence. In the UK we have laws about specifically inciting violence. The intelligence community will intervene if you're planning a terrorist attack, even though planning is technically just speech.

Laws against inciting violence are useful, and the censorship aspect irrelevant. In principle, one could imagine instances where it is right to plan violence, such as in the French resistance, but then the law itself is irrelevant.

People only cast it as a free speech issue when it affects their side of some conflict. They are unlikely to champion the rights of Islamic terrorists discussing an imminent attack on US soil on free speech grounds, but will champion the rights of MAGA-hatted domestic terrorists doing exactly the same. It's not a position that needs to be taken seriously.

You do not conceive reality as being probabilistic? It could be a scientific certification that ontologically reality is undetermined. Science saying reality is not deterministic! ... isn't this breaking stereotypes of the "materialist reductive" science many think...
Naturalism is the way! — Raul

My opinion is that it's probably not, but I'm open-minded. However my point above was that QM is phenomenological rather than just probabilistic. There is no theory underlying probabilistic mechanisms: one moves discontinuously from a deterministic description to a statistical, phenomenological one.

Are we doomed—in some perilous loop—to be confined to some perverse version of Kant's hypothetical imperative? Can we not overcome Hume's is/ought divide? I will undoubtedly make another post concerning the is/ought divide some other time, as it aggregates me to no end. I have my doubts about it. — Philguy

The fault lies solely on the ought side in my view. 'Ought's with 'in order to's are much easier to map to 'is's. If one's aim is to stir tea effectively, it is logical to use a tool designed for stirring tea effectively: a teaspoon, not a sponge.

I believe that the abstract quality of moral claims derives from the fact that each of us has moral machinery that operates outside of our consciousness but that spits outputs into that consciousness. We are driven to, for instance, pull a child out of the river, but that drive is in a vacuum: we are not likewise provided with the reasons for doing so, the 'in order to' that would make the action amenable to logic. The reasons we have those drives is down to our evolutionary history: the implicit 'in order to' is that it maximises likelihood of survival, but that's a statistical reason across evolutionary timescales, not a justification of individual actions.

Ethics in this context is an attempt to rationalise and formalise these (sometimes competing) drives (inner oughts iyl) in the absence of apparent justifications. The tautological and ambiguous justification for all moral actions is to be moral: to be a good human being.

A good human being to us is one that does good things, but to, say, the ancient Greeks would be one who is good at being a human, in the same way that a good hammer is one that is good at being a hammer, a good teaspoon is one that is good at being a teaspoon, etc. Goodness in this meaning is a measure of how well the object fulfills its function. Humans don't have an overall function like a hammer, but they do have design, not a teleological design, but an optimisation of biological function to maximise the likelihood of our species persisting.

An antisocial human being is a malfunctioning human being. They are designed to be social, to help others, to be considerate, to cooperate, and to oppose antisocial behaviour such as domination. Someone who is inconsiderate, would whip out their phone if they saw a drowning child to film it, who takes more than they give, who tolerates or champions antisocial behaviour in others, is not a good human being: that is, they do not meet the criteria (quality control iyl) of a well-functioning human.

If you see a child drowning in the river, you ought to try and save them... in order to be a good person.

There is, of course, no 'ought' for being a good person. For most of our history, that ought would have been survivalistic: I ought to share my food, otherwise I will be chased from the group and will likely perish in solitude. That's extremely contingent. Now one is more or less free to be as antisocial as the law permits, so long as one does not care about being judged a bad person: bad at being a human, in the way that a wobbly hammer is judged a bad hammer.

Relativity, certainly imo. It's up there with natural selection and thermodynamics.

Quantum mechanics... It's the best ever at predicting experimental outcomes, but it's a statistical theory about measurement outcomes, so there's a built-in phenomenological limit.

Exactly there is no logical reason to and yet I do failing to be able to off myself. — Darkneos

The same necessarily follows for every non-urgent thing you do. The logical conclusion is that you're a deeply illogical person living a deeply illogical life, which goes some way to explain your deeply illogical comments about what is and isn't logical.

Generally that's not a good idea. For instance, if I edited out everything I said that was embarrassing to me, there really wouldn't be much left. — Metaphysician Undercover

In that case, I <REDACTED>

So it’s possible that your friend was instinctively offended by male to male anal intercourse and relationship for this reason. — Joshs

Oh, it's absolutely certain that's a factor, as was the homophobic culture he was raised in.

This conversation has featured anal sex much more than anyone was expecting.

I know that but as I said, survival instincts are hard to overcome. So, unable to do it I do this. — Darkneos

That's not what I'm asking. Logically you cannot have reason to do anything that depends on living and have no reason for living. You cannot have reason to buy a pumpkin from the grocer and yet have no reason to go grocery shopping.

Give me an example of a homophobe who is acting hypocritically with regard to rules and I’ll try and suggest what I think you may be missing about how they are interpreting their rules — Joshs

I think I've already told this anecdote, but I'm old now so I take great pleasure in repeating the same stories and nauseum.

One of my best friends was once homophobic and I actually convinced him to about face on it precisely because it was hypocritical (he agreed). His first objection regarded anal sex, but I asked him what he thought about himself having anal sex with a woman or enjoying a pornographic film of a man having anal sex with a woman and he conceded that he was down with that. His second objection regarded same-sex relationships, so I asked him how he'd feel about watching two women having sex and he was, again, down for it. (If anyone ever tells you porn isn't good for anything, remember this! :rofl: )

This was a very liberal guy when it came to *his* sexual activity: promiscuity, infidelity, picking drunk women off nightclub floors, anal, threesomes, some pretty exploitative behaviour... He held himself to absolutely no external standard whatsoever. And yet he held gay men to severe and arbitrary standards with values that only applied to them, no one else. That is hypocrisy. Not: this is an outrage!!!! hypocrisy. Just, dispassionately, it is inconsistent and biased toward himself and away from others.

Generally I think a good measure of hypocrisy is the veil of ignorance. If it seems unlikely that someone would espouse a value if their place was switched with who that value harms, it's probably held hypocritically.

But logic is meaningless apart from the opinion( axiom) that it applies to. — Joshs

But that axiom is not a personal opinion.

But I suggest you may be led to this hypothesis by your exasperation over not being able to fathom how they could justify to themselves in good faith certain behaviors towards others. — Joshs

That's merely a claim that the reasons I give are not my true reasons and what you think my reasons are are the true ones. There's nowhere for that conversation to go. You can either trust me to represent myself as accurately as I can and, assuming I reciprocate, we can have a meaningful dialogue, or else you can assume anything I say is suspect and this amounts to nothing. Your call.

I'm not questioning the positive impacts of Christianity on the course of morality; I'm well in agreement. The point was about the origins of those oughts: someone who believes in a more literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance, will likely disagree that our moral *knowledge* is acquired socially, on the grounds that, at root, it came from divine revelation (even if that revelation was later shared socially, e.g. by preaching, teaching or printing and reading Bibles). An atheist like my hellbound self would more likely say that the Bible encoded existing human ethics arrived at through social interaction, even if those ethics weren't universal, were waning even.

I'm actually somewhere in between, insofar as I believe that those social interactions were heavily biased by biology in a direction quite parallel to what was later encoded in Jewish and more so Christian values. I don't argue this is a priori knowledge, it's not knowledge at all, but it's not purely emergent from social interaction either.

My point was just that an individual's moral knowledge being arrived at through social interaction -- even if not a universal belief -- is not as controversial a belief as those who are quickly critical of social constructionism would make out.

I’ve heard tell that logic is grounded in intersubjectivity. — Joshs

Even as a construct, it's the same construct everywhere. The laws of logic are independent of opinion, even if they're arrived at by consensus.