Yeah, your argument is slipping. If history is the battleground of human ideas playing out, it's got a lot of horrible examples of what humans do. Thus this argument that some particular set of morality is "the" true or essential human biological behavior just seems cherry-picking. — schopenhauer1

If my argument was simply that the nice ones in history are true and the nasty ones false, it would be, yes. But that's not my argument, which is grounded on scientific evidence.

I think you're conflating "morality" in general and the specific morality we have going on at the moment in particular. — khaled

No, it was rather more than that. The bases by which a moral proposition can be well- or ill-grounded are not just those "we have going on at the moment". What I was getting at was the distinction between the word "morality" as an umbrella term for theoretical concepts and its more fundamental, pre-theoretical, natural meaning.

So I'm attempting to clear up an existing conflation, not add a new one. Failed by the looks of it. :D

Moral claims that don't match the majority do not lose their status as moral claims. — khaled

And that's my point: a moral claim is a claim about what a person should do, either generally or in specific circumstances. It may be true or false. So antinatalism is a perfectly coherent false moral claim. But it is not a claim about what morality is.

The society and biology determine which moral positions become most prevalent. — khaled

Well no, they don't, that's the shame of it. I would say they seem to be largely sculpting the trend of morality in some places to some extent at the moment. We are tending toward egalitarianism in most countries (not the middle east which has largely moved away from it) and I think people are encouraged to be more empathetic. We are increasingly progressing toward responsible social behaviour in many quarters.

But that's in the background of history of slavery, military expansionism, genocide, and other injustices, and it's not difficult to see how antisocial behaviours are again becoming not just normalised but lionised, i.e. ethics are made out of them. Likewise any arguments for such are not well-grounded, not because they fail to meet the theoretical criteria for a moral theory, but because they are contrary to what morality really is in its pre-theoretical sense.

So, unenlightened hasn't shown us any meaningful distinction when talking about what symbols and rules can be used to refer to, or express beliefs. — Harry Hindu

Which is why I suggested to him:

Perhaps you can muster a better one? — Kenosha Kid

You got there in the end, well done!

I just dont see whats so difficult in explaining your use of terms . Random is a term that assumes that your choices are probable, so you didnt really do much thinking in your thought experiment. Just saying. — Harry Hindu

I've just learned from experience how to spot a patented HH derailment and don't think this thread is an appropriate place to explain why thought experiments don't need exhaustive blueprints. If you're interested in learning about probability theory, go and do so.

Because they commit violence on college campuses and disrupt college speakers such as Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson. Those aren't fascists. — BitconnectCarlos

Wait, now you're back to saying that you have a right to be heard. I thought we'd dispensed with that. You're essentially arguing against the right for people to protest, as long as they're the wrong people.

And these protests are hardly an Antifa issue. No doubt many self-identifying members would protest Jordan Peterson, but the Venn diagram of Antifa and non-Antifa JP-haters has a huge overlap.

As for violence on college campuses, I presume you mean the Berkley protests in which Trump supporters and and anti-Trump protestors, which naturally included Antifa members among their numbers, clashed. That was unambiguously wrong. Few would pause to condemn them.

Is it your view then that the anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-white-supremacist movement as a whole must be considered as such? I ask because you don't seem to have such concerns about far-right groups such as neo-Nazis and the KKK who have a more consistent history of violence (consider Charlottesville, for instance).

Antifa is using violence and intimidation to shut down the rights guaranteed to us. — BitconnectCarlos

Your right is that the government will not pass laws that allow you to express your persona beliefs. Antifa is not a reformist group. How have they then breached your first amendment rights? Explain it, rather than just repeatedly claiming it, because as far as I can see Antifa has resulted in precisely zero government legislation against your freedom of expression.

Neither. An amendment can be added and it's not an attack on the founding principles. Obviously something being passed in the 1970s wouldn't be a founding principle.... — BitconnectCarlos

Okay, so you agree then that an amendment is a change to the founding principles your country was based on. You also seem fine with the founding principles your country was based on changing. It seems now quite a hollow complaint.

What constitutes fascism" is an extremely relevant question. If you believe it's good to punch a Nazi or a racist and violent suppress that type of speech, what about Zionism or capitalism? Can we punch capitalists if capitalism is essentially white supremacy? This is a really important question. — BitconnectCarlos

So you DO think I'm obliged to treat all your points but you are free to shrug off the ones you "didn't feel like" responding to? Do you see how dual standards is endemic throughout your thought?

I don't think so. He clearly and unambiguously said that the antinatalist claim is not a moral claim as far as I understand. — khaled

I'll try not to speak for Isaac but we are quite simpatico on this.

Let us take the question: Ought I to wear black shoelaces or brown shoelaces to the market? I would say this is 100% not a moral consideration. However an elder of the Latter Day Church of Black Shoelaces might strongly differ with me on this.

On the other hand, if you put forward a moral theory in support of the position of the Latter Day Church of Black Shoelaces, I can't rightly argue that it is not a moral theory: you are making a claim that it is moral to do a particular thing. It's just that your theory is daft.

Morality is really an intellectual endeavour. Fundamentally, and naturalistically, what we're talking about is biology, specifically the biological traits our ancestors evolved in order to better survive in groups: empathy, altruism, egalitarianism, and some means of overriding these in certain circumstances (called counter-empathetic responses). Naturalistically speaking, this biology underpins but does not fully account for what is real that we refer to when we speak of morality.

In this sense, the shoelace question is not a moral consideration: it has nothing to do with our social biology. However, "One ought to wear black shoelaces to the market", as espoused by the elder, is a moral claim in the sense that it is a claim about what our morality should be, even if it has nothing to do with what our morality is.

(Obviously your average religious person will completely disagree with me about what morality actually is, since they have a different and more rigorous and imaginary moral authority than the social biology you and I have inherited from our ancestors. But they are, of course, mistaken. :) )

There a whole bunch of scientists who have a dim view of philosophy which I suppose they regard as nothing more than wool-gathering. I can't name them but if you survey the scientific landscape as it were you will come across a few science bigwigs who don' take too kindly to philosophers. That's not to say they're right of course. — TheMadFool

After almost ten years in a physics department, I haven't come across it. The nearest I can muster are: 1) the phrase "it's just philosophy, not science" which I don't think is meant to belittle philosophy so much as reflect the fact that some things do not meet the criteria of scientific theory (which doesn't stop scientists thinking about them ALL THE TIME (viz: the long-running discussion on the interpretation of QM); 2) if you do philosophy, you're not kidding yourself that it's a great career move, whereas if you're doing physics you probably either want to be an experimental physicist, a theorist, an astronomer or work in industry in some physics-related way, so those are the usual routes taken. I guess to that extent, studying philosophy is seen as more luxurious, more hobbyist, and less vocational, so there might be some resentment at feeling obliged to do something more vocational. I imagine that's even worse in the UK now after the tuition fee hike. But it's not a judgment on the philosophy itself.

I'm probably talking out of my hat when I say this but it's probable that some, not all, scientists aren't aware that science is just one branch of philosophy - empiricism - taken to its natural conclusion and even if they are in the know about it, their grasp is likely to be superficial and unlikely to include the intricacies and subtleties that lie at the heart of objections to empiricism. Thanks — TheMadFool

That's true. I was originally answering the point that science itself is deaf to philosophy, but science can absorb philosophy and pass it on as methodology, without science students necessarily being taught the reasons behind it. You do learn all this stuff if you do Physics with Philosophy for sure. And I guess that's the problem. I won't speak about chemistry and biology, but physics students have to specialise. You can do experimental physics (what I did, to my regret), computational or theoretical physics, physics with mathematics which does the equivalent of what you suggest for the mathematics underlying physics, physics with astronomy, physics with industry, or physics with philosophy. It would be nice to do more, and one can elect to do so depending on how structured your course is, but you can't do everything and, because as I said above, science timetables are very full, there's not much room for extra-curricular reading except for the least social of us. :)

Agreed. Isaac so it's literally just you trying to say that antinatalism is not a moral theory. — khaled

I think Isaac's view was similar to mine.

No, there are clearly natural reasons to accept them. — khaled

Fine. Give me the natural reason to adopt the ethic:

It is wrong to eat sherbet on a Wednesday — Kenosha Kid

I know that freedom of speech doesn't give the right to whatever platform you want, but you're still allowed to express your ideas verbally and in writing. — BitconnectCarlos

Good, so you understand that you are not protected in defacing property you don't own, or to assemble free from counter-protestors. And presumably you're not going to suggest that fascists should be free to engage in violent acts but Antifa not free to defend themselves. What threat do you actually perceive from Antifa then? It can't be their anti-fascist position which, by your own argument, must be as protected as anti-black sentiment.

Anyway, it's a non-starter to use the first amendment as an argument against Antifa since they're a direct action group, not a reformist group. The first amendment protects citizens from laws made by the government, and Antifa do not seek to reform those laws.

I avoided your first point because it was wrong — BitconnectCarlos

Really? Let's take your right as an 18+ year old American to vote. Your argument is that this amendment, passed in the early 1970s, was one of the founding principles of your country? Or that every amendment since the Bill or Rights is an attack on the founding principles of your country?

I didn't feel like getting into it — BitconnectCarlos

And, believe it or not, I didn't feel like getting into a point that wasn't relevant to my argument. It's rather hypocritical to think I was obliged to respond to everything you have to say, yet you are not.

The first amendment guarantees freedom of speech. Take your undemocratic trash elsewhere. Very convenient of you to avoid my second point, as well. — BitconnectCarlos

Very convenient of you to avoid my first.

Freedom of speech does not mean a freedom to occupy whatever platform you choose. You do not have the freedom to take over university spaces, take over media platforms, or put up pro-Nazi posters on other people's or public property. Nor does it mean that others must be silent so that your speech must be heard: you do not have a right to be heard in a vacuum!

Your freedom to put up a poster that says "Kill the Jews" on, say, the window of the house you own (not renting or mortgaged) has been impinged on, but not by Antifa, rather by hate speech legislation. This speaks to my third point:

it certainly does not protect your perceived right to act to make a world that is violently hostile to others. — Kenosha Kid

Its your thought experiment with words that already assume what your thought experiment is trying to prove. — Harry Hindu

The thought experiment sought to prove nothing. It was meant as an illustration. Ill-advisedly, perhaps, given that it is generally impossible to determine from your responses whether you've understood anything or not. Alternatively, I could just response: go and read some basic probability theory, but you'd probably question your text book's existence :D

I was saying that what antifa is doing is contrary to our first amendment. — BitconnectCarlos

An amendment, by definition, is an alteration of the principles your country was founded upon. I do agree that religions and ideologies can be put under a single umbrella, but the first amendment protects your right to personal belief: it does not protect your perceived right to make the world a platform for those beliefs, and it certainly does not protect your perceived right to act to make a world that is violently hostile to others.

Science can, if all goes well, find a good foundation to build its theoretical/experimental structures on — TheMadFool

Philosophy has always provided this benefit to science: natural philosophy, empiricism, Popper, Latour, ontology, phenomenology, ethics, and countless more. And the entirety of mathematics. It always puzzles me that some philosophers and philosophy students think that science closes it's ears to philosophy; I suspect this is because philosophy is more forgiving of whack ideas and those accusing science of antipathy toward philosophy hold some of those whack ideas :D

Antifa fundamentally seeks to stifle certain views, and I get it - in Europe they do this but in America it's against the principles our country was founded on and moreover it sets a dangerous precedent. — BitconnectCarlos

Antifa seek to stifle neo-Nazi and white supremacist views. I suppose to an extent the US is founded on the latter, but that's not something to be proud of.

And I'm telling you that you are wrong. — Harry Hindu

Uh huh. Well if you want to demonstrate rather than insist on it, be my guest. But since it's not relevant, don't expect a rapt audience.

So what? Different languages have different rules for the same symbols. We can still translate the meaning and end up saying the same thing in different ways. — Harry Hindu

That was my counterargument, yes.

I'm asking, how is something randomly chosen? — Harry Hindu

And I'm telling you: the mechanics of a thought experiment are irrelevant to the thought experiment. That's what makes it a thought experiment.

Heck, I would say most people think so. You and KenoshaKid (I think) are the only two trying to say that antinatalism isn't a moral theory. — khaled

I said it has no basis in a naturalistic moral framework. You can make an ethic of what you like: It is wrong to eat sherbet on a Wednesday; Three-legged people must not own budgies; It is wrong to act in a way that would allow for the possibility of someone being harmed whether to a great or small extent. These have in common the fact that there's no natural reason to accept them.

How does one select one at random? — Harry Hindu

That is irrelevant to analogy.

Even without error, it equates to true in computational logic and to false in propositional logic. That was his point. A being null or undefined or non-numerical is not relevant.

the Italian Fascism never knew any kind of racialist thought — Bertoldo

Italy didn't have the kind of internal racial tension that Germany had, but it does not follow that Italian fascism was not racist. They had extremely racist views about their neighbours.

I don't see how this follows. How does the number of configurations of things make something more likely than nothing? — Harry Hindu

It's basic probability theory. Imagine 10 differently coloured balls in a bag, You select one at random. What is the probability it is the blue ball? 0.1. What is the probability it is a not-blue ball? 0.9. There is only one configuration of blue, but nine configurations of not-blue. Replace the concept of blue with the concept of nothing and the other nine colours with nine different somethings and repeat.

Exactly. What came before determines what comes after. How does nothing begat something? — Harry Hindu

Read on and find out.

but then it wouldn't be a contradiction, like they claimed. — Harry Hindu

I think you misunderstand what unenlightened was saying. In propositional logic, A = A + 1 is always equal to false, '=' being the equality operator. In Java or Python or such, A = A + 1 is true (if A is defined). But this is just because '=' is not the equality operator but the assignment operator, and assignments always either error or yield true: you cannot have false. Same symbol, different meaning.

I think it is quite controversial to place science within empiricism. — Garth

It's either controversial or it's not. You can't have an opinion about what consensus is. Anyway, science is empirical, whether you think so or not.

The question is why is there something rather than nothing, not why is the something apparently quantum mechanical and not otherwise. But I do take your point. It at first suggests some law in there that allows quantum mechanical things to happen such that such a multiverse could begin.

Firstly, most of QM is irrelevant. We're not really talking QM, but rather chiefly one of its postulates: the superposition principle. To us, the superposition principle seems like an exotic thing because we're used to having things seem single-valued: the cup is on the desk, and therefore not on the window sill. Is the superposition principle a law that the universe must observe in order to exist? I'd say not: having a single value is a special case of having multiple values. So I think it's the other way around: a reality without a superposition principle is the one that needs explaining.

The rest of QM, including the Born rule which I implicitly referred to when stating that the probability of finding the 0-dimensional state space would be zero (which after I posted I realised was wrong), is not required. In fact, without observers, half of QM is pretty meaningless. If it is possible to have a universe that does not obey a wave equation (and I can't see why not), wang that into the mixing bowl as well. As for the Born rule itself or something similar, this is only meaningful if there's an observer outside of the multiverse. It doesn't really matter what the probability of a given universe is since they do not interact. (This might be different if our multiverse chanced upon another and we needed to explain why that multiverse appeared to have only one universe in it... the equivalent of always measuring live cat or dead cat.)

This is the exact verbal violence, meant to silence me, that I am pointing out is symptomatic of emerging fascism. — Garth

A group of people, unafraid to fight back if attacked, go about trying to remove the violence of fascists and you're happy to misrepresent them. I validly criticise your logic and I'm "attempting to silence" you. When did fascists become so whiny? Your post on Antifa was nothing more than intolerant propaganda (which btw is not the purpose of this site). It was not a serious criticism of the group or its aims or means. If you want better than "verbal violence", do better. But in my experience there are no sane, well-adjusted fascists. They at best sound like you.

Insofar as someone is just doing nonviolent, legal acts like this, meant to clean up the community, he is not an Antifa-scist, but an Antifascist. The distinction is important for my argument. — Garth

Then your argument is bunkum, since those guys scrubbing Swastikas off walls..? They're called Antifa. Or sometimes community service workers.

Good thing I'm not using right wing logic. — Garth

Your logic is that of right-wing nutjob shock jocks.

Science is a particular methodology of empiricist natural philosophy.

The Antifa-scist sets aside his conventional morality to fight against this enemy -- he verbally and physically attacks the enemy, he destroys the enemy's property and interferes with the enemy's business. He would not normally do these things, but he justifies his actions because of the danger he perceives. — Garth

Who knew that scrubbing Swastikas off walls was the same as scrawling Swastikas on walls?

Right-wing logic is demented.

Yes, I scratched my head at the seeming contradiction between the uncountability of the irrationals and the definition of the Dedekin cut, but of course by definition each cut either has a lower set with no upper bound or a greater set with no lower, et voila: uncountability. I guess I'd never really thought about it, thanks.

The probability that you randomly select a real number from the unit interval and it turns out to be rational, is zero. — fishfry

50%, surely? Otherwise you couldn't have a unique Dedekind cut for each real.

Either way, arguing about the trivial illustrative example I offered is irrelevant. — unenlightened

Begs the question why you offered it. Perhaps you can muster a better one?

I think both your and 's points have value so maybe there's a synthesis available. You are right that there are far more configurations of things than of nothing, making something more likely over time. But time began, as far as we can tell, with things.

In usual quantum cosmologies, there exists at least a field (the inflaton field) which decayed from a higher energy state to a lower one probabilistically. This decay could effectively mark the start of the clock. (There are alternatives.) But that doesn't answer the question: why is there something to decay from rather than nothing? What would 'nothing' mean here? It could mean the ground state of the inflaton field: had the universe always been in this ground state, there would be no other state it could explore. No particles could be created, and no symmetry breaking into the fields we know about. It would be static and therefore timeless.

But even that ground state exists in an N-dimensional state space called Hilbert space. Even in the static ground state of the inflaton field, why does Hilbert space have N dimensions and not 0?

I think the soundest concept of 'nothing' we can have is precisely this 0-dimensional Hilbert space of the inflaton field: this is not a nothing in which 'no thing' happens to exist, but the nothing in which the very possibility of a thing cannot exist, since there are precisely zero allowed states, not even static, empty ground states.

Your answer seems the correct one in this case, but we have to treat probability in a quantum way, i.e. as superpositions of ANDs rather than as ORs. The multiverse might be a superposition of every possible state space, including the 0-dimensional one. We inevitably find ourselves in a not-nothing universe because we can't find ourselves in the nothing one (the anthropic principle) and because the hypervolume of the not existing universe must be zero (a 0-dimensional universe has a 0 volume, so no matter how high it's amplitude, its actual probability is zero). This makes a something rather than nothing inevitable, and without metaphysics (other than the trivial one, plus some interpretation of QM).

The assumption that he meant A to have some numerical value appears reasonable. Null pointer errors aren't very relevant to the discussion.

Do be careful with computational logic. It doesn't work the same as propositional logic, because instructions are not statements. "A= A+1" Contradiction as statement, simple commonplace instruction. — unenlightened

Just in case this wasn't picked up, this is not right. If the programming language is such that = is the assignment operator, which I think is what you had in mind, then the above simply means that different languages might use the same symbol for different things. In languages in which = is the equality operator, A = A + 1 equates to false. In languages in which it is the assignment operator, such as Java and Python, there exists another equality operator such as == such that A == A + 1 equates to false and means exactly the same as A = A + 1 in propositional logic.

If you are just a collection of mental states, I'm not sure, but in this case, there is not only one version of "you", a guy that was exactly like you until 10 years ago and now is doing different things is "you" too... And if you expand this vision, you will probably reach something like "open individualism", where you are everybody. Even more, since this don't require physical continuity a guy like you appearing now is your past "you" too... And, then, a guy remembering being a famous singer is him, even if these singer have never existed... Since this is based on memories, I guess that you could reach bizarre conclusions, like if your neighbor develop false memories of being you and you got amnesic, he is more you than yourself. — Philosophuser

Right, none of which has anything to do with quantum mechanics. One can ponder exotic edge cases of unrelated identical twins, but these are questions about probability and language, not quantum mechanics.

Whoops! Misread this as "Quantum Immorality". Now there's a metaphysical topic worth pursuing! :nerd: — jgill

Sure, like the theory that Bose-Einstein condensation allows for multiple universes to emerge together as highly correlated multi-excitations of the inflaton field, allowing for big bangs to occur simultaneously and evolve in perfect unison such that we are not inhabitants not of one universe but of many.

I call it the gang bang theory.

Taking MWI seriously, branching occurs upon measurement of a quantum system in a superposition of states corresponding to discrete measurement outcomes. Is dying a superposition of being alive and dead? Even in the Schrödinger's cat experiment, the only version of the cat that experiences dying is the dead cat. The live cat was always fine. If you start out dying, the only version of you that won't die is a cured version, and that is medicine, not quantum immortality.

On the broader multiverse or infinite-monkeyverse, we have the ship Theseus issue: is an identical copy of you identically *you*?

Okay then, can you give an example? Text books are subject to the same rigour as papers. Popular science articles such as in New Scientist or Scientific American are typically based on specific papers with dumb questions like 'Was Einstein wrong?' or 'Does God eat peas?' bolted on for sex appeal. What texts do you have in mind that discuss time dilation, that are written by scientists, and yet are lacking the sort of rigour you demand? And do you generally find that philosophical discussion of e.g. time dilation is more rigorous (examples would be useful)?

Nice OP, Garth. I largely agree, at least up until the application to philosophy. I started a thread on 'natural morality' many months ago which touched on how hunter-gatherer groups worked. One of the interesting things that came up (I think in discussion with Isaac) was the idea of group dominance in which, for instance, a particularly good hunter attempting to leverage his accidental superiority to wield power would be shut down by the group as a whole. Being the best is fine; expecting special treatment because of it will bite you on the ass.

We don't live in hunter-gatherer groups so I'm not sure how well we can argue for such egalitarianism now, other than to say that, whatever kind of social group we find ourselves in, that characteristic is still part of us, specifically it's part of our moral biology, manifest in disgust toward the boastful and a sense of injustice at preferential treatment. That is, elitism is bad because morality is biology and our biology says it's bad.

Another argument for egalitarianism is the illusion of expertise as described by Daniel Kahneman during his study of iirc stock brokers. The prevailing culture is that one stock broker can be said to be better than another based on a good win. In his study, Kahneman found that none of the so-called experts demonstrated above-average performance outside of that one big win. It was just luck, nothing more. In addition, none of the brokers were any better than a rational amateur: the entire industry persists simply because most people are irrational and make systematic errors. I mention it because it seems like a prime example of where 'excellence' is so unjustly rewarded.

Naturally some people are talented and many endeavours have little to do with increasing one's (or one's group's) standard of living. Not everyone can be a neurosurgeon and I would like very much, should I ever need a neurosurgeon, to have the best. I would hate to find out that mine was a hobbyist who, despite no particular talent, thought he would just 'have a go'. Likewise my field, physics, is not for amateurs: the field progresses through excellence (or niche, well-trained mediocrity) outdoing excellence. Not being more wrong than one's predecessors is an existential matter.

Physics is a branch of philosophy -- empiricism -- that adheres to a specific methodology. But while the means differ, the aim is much the same: discover truth by finding fault in the existing theories and addressing and improving on them in your own. This cannot be a democratic or egalitarian process. Illogical theories should not be seen as the equal of logical ones nor ill-grounded propositions the equal of well-grounded ones. If they were, you'd just end up with an infinite number of monkeys crapping on an infinite number of typewriters, which is far from profound.

On which, a sound argument can be extremely profound. Natural selection was a sound argument and people haven't stopped talking about it yet. Then again, unsound arguments, such as creationism, have generated even more discussion. I'm not sure the soundness of an argument is particularly correlated to its public interest.

Right, I guess I shoud have been more specific : what in the quote is the opposite of consensus ?

Do you think what I said is wrong, like scientists don't say things like "we can measure welfare" ?

Or do you think that defining such concepts in a scientific way wouldn't lead to consensus ? — Avema

Your post suggests that science is rather loosey-goosey in its use of language and its concepts, that it doesn't really know what it's talking about compared with philosophy. The truth is precisely the reverse. There is no room for ambiguity or misunderstanding in scientific publications because you have to place your work in an extremely large and rigid context. You cannot, for the sake of argument, define time dilation as something subtly different to how the community understand it (unless an existing shortcoming in that definition is the point of the paper): you manuscript would never get published if you tried.

Ultimately any scientific paper has to be written in such a way that someone else in your field can go away and reproduce your results. This places extremely tight limits on the language and concepts you employ. So when a scientific paper discusses time dilation, this is understood exactly by people who understand the language of science. That language -- mathematics -- is itself extremely concise, which is one of the barriers to understanding that lay people complain about: to understand the exact meaning of a paper's point on, say, time dilation, you need to understand e.g. tensor calculus.