(I'm new, just looking for a place to argue. Hopefully this will be ok.)

Why is subjective morality respected?

By my ken, morality is simple. It is a collective of people mutually sacrificing their natural freedoms in order to empower the collective. They all mutually refrain from doing things that are naturally within their power, and thus the society benefits. — Marzipanmaddox

Communist-like morality.

It begins and ends at the uncharted territory of marks on paper/screen.
— creativesoul

Also, the Buddha's day, nothing was written down, so it couldn't have begun there..... — Wayfarer

I meant the depth of our agreement.

The idea conflicts with everyday events/facts/happenings/actuality. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people.
— creativesoul

things often don't turn out in ways that seem right. — Wayfarer

Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. We can watch it take place. There are innumerable historical examples thereof. So, to believe in karma in light of this...

In order to make any sense at all, we must further think/believe that things are not what they seem regarding the aforementioned unfortunate circumstances.

Your reply is a prima facie example.

Of the buddhists I've spoken with, there seems to be something peculiar - fishy - about the way they talk about causality. Karma.
— creativesoul

I agree - whenever karma is used to rationalise misfortune or blame, it's superstitious fatalism. The only beneficial aspect of believing in karma is as a positive corrective, i.e. the realisation that whatever you do will come back to you. Beyond that it easily morphs into fatalism. — Wayfarer

Sorry for the delayed reply. I'm not sure that I follow your reasoning here Jeep.

The agreement is more superficial than it may seem. It begins and ends at the uncharted territory of marks on paper/screen. The same marks are often repeated - sometimes verbatim - in statements that differ remarkably in their meaning. I think that you and I are working from different world-views.

In layman's terms...

The issue is multi-faceted. In order for any of it to make sense - there must be some supernatural moral judgment at work. I reject cosmic justice.

The idea conflicts with everyday events/facts/happenings/actuality. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people.

Of the buddhists I've spoken with, there seems to be something peculiar - fishy - about the way they talk about causality. Karma.

Are you seriously arguing in Trump's defense regarding charges of being one who demonstrates sociopathic thought, belief, and behaviour?

One problem with Trump is his elitist mentality.

When you're one of the guys, in the club, and/or part of the group... it need not be publicly pronounced. Members believe it regardless, often as a result of what's not said.

Elitism reigns supreme. Ignorant and well-educated alike. There are striking similarities in all racist thought/belief as well. One can be elitist without being racist.

Of course I hope you got the point about the claims against fundamentalism. If all certainty counts, then it is itself untenable, because by virtue of being certain that fundamentalism is the problem, well... surely you get the point.

Certainty is but one element of many that make up fundamentalism(the kind I think you're referring to). Unshakable certainty despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The glorification of continued belief despite evidence to the contrary. The notion of faith no matter what. The book by Russell I mentioned earlier spells these sorts of problems with Christianity out better than I could ever hope to.

A pivotal read.

It's not so much the certainty that is the issue so much as what one is certain of.

You make a good point. However, the OP was about atheism, no? — Noah Te Stroete

The OP is about atheism, but more specifically it is about a better 'kind' than militant and/or "new atheism". The author asked about better reasoning/reasons for being atheist. I took that to be the main thrust.

I offered a simple foundational tenet/belief regarding warrant(that which constitutes sufficient/adequate reason to believe something or other. The point was that being the result of a valid conclusion does not constitute warrant and/or sufficient/adequate ground to believe. All belief in and/or notions of God boils down to(is based upon) logical possibility alone. As best I can tell there is no distinction to be drawn between God and belief in God. New Age mysticism confirms this on a daily basis.

Then there is Epicurus accompanied by common sense(for the omni-gods out there like the God of Abraham).

Indeed. Atheism was the topic. I was setting out my own agnostic version.

You agree so much with dummies.

:zip:

The character though... mean spirited. Freedom must be moderated. It is when two people's freedom collide that encroachment becomes necessary. The real point is that talking in terms of unfettered, uninterrupted freedom is both fundamental - by the standards set heretofore - and impossible(untenable).

Some folk would like to be free enough to kill you. I say encroach...

Not all certainty is to be avoided. One is always certain about some stuff. Otherwise, they are mad.

How strongly do you believe that?

Strong conviction in anything that encroaches on the freedom of others should be avoided and is fundamentalism. — Noah Te Stroete

You sure about that?

:brow:

We determine what's good. It's not all that complicated. We determine how best to treat one another. In such conversations it(one's actual moral/ethical compass) all comes out in the wash(so to speak).
— creativesoul

The collective “we” or each individual? — Noah Te Stroete

I meant "we", as in... humans.

If you mean each individual, then I don’t see how you can separate the individual from the whole. None of us live in a vacuum. The problem isn’t atheism or theism. The problem is fundamentalism.

Not sure what counts - on your view - as being a case thereof...

Does having strong conviction in certain core tenets/beliefs qualify?

We determine what's good. It's not all that complicated. We determine how best to treat one another. In such conversations it all(one's actual moral/ethical compass) comes out in the wash(so to speak).

Spiritual depth is determined solely by and directly upon one's belief in the spiritual or that the spiritual.

Spirit, on my view, is best put in terms of personality and/or character.

I reject disembodied cognition.

Both good spirited and mean spirited people still roam the earth.

Goodwill towards all. Always be helpful.

A better atheist, on my view, has broadened the scope of their critical thinking beyond connecting good to religion. There is no need for the God of Abraham for good things to happen and/or have happened.

What is one's default setting regarding how you treat other people, specifically those who are remarkably different in appearance and/or worldview?

While there may be little solid ground upon which to base a belief in God, it does not always follow that a belief in God is not good or necessary for doing good. In some cases, with some people, it is.

Why I Am Not A Christian Bertrand Russell

Logical possibility alone does not warrant belief in and/or that 'X' exists and/or is true. Queerly enough, many folk hereabouts and elsewhere have a penchant for calling a logically possible statement a 'logical truth' as a result of also being the conclusion of a valid argument/syllogism. That is a misnomer.

Logical truth is a measure of coherence. Coherence is insufficient/inadequate for truth. A belief can be both coherent and false. Thus, it only follows that that which is often called a 'logical truth' can be false. Truth cannot be false.

God IS logical possibility alone.

There are much better stories, also logically possible but without all the other well-rehearsed cognitive issues.

Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that the human brain (the understanding) spontaneously constructed perceptual objects by applying (a) the pure “a priori” intuitions of space and time and (b) the transcendental principle of cause and effect to the body’s subjective “under the skin” sensations. — charles ferraro

Close, but no cigar.

The brain does not construct perceptual objects. The brain's all by itself inside the skull with neither tools nor materials. Sense perception is direct. The brain does not 'construct' a tree. Rather, it helps facilitate the creature's ability to see the tree. The brain is necessary but insufficient for seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, grasping, rubbing the tree, as well as thinking and/or talking about the tree.

Brains in vats are dead.

"When and while I think in the first person, present tense mode, I must necessarily exist."

Question: Can this famous Cartesian epistemological hypothesis be empirically verified?

The answer, I submit, is yes. However, with the peculiar proviso that the empirical verification (thought experiment/thought act) that occurs must always remain subjective and personal, rather than objective and public. — charles ferraro

Rubbish.

Thought experiments are not dependable methods of verification/falsification.

And...

This directly conflicts with the bit you wrote about all philosophical theories. Incoherency and/or equivocation is inevitable. Both are unacceptable, regardless of which is the case.

This is the inherent weakness that attaches to all philosophical theories, no matter how marvelously they may have been constructed. Beautiful theories all destined to go nowhere. Dead ending because the truth of their hypotheses is not subject to the possibility of any empirical verification. — charles ferraro

I would be interested in arguing in the negative; against what I take the above to mean - on it's face.

Some philosophical theories are falsifiable/verifiable, are they not? Seems to me that they most certainly can be. Most aren't, but I digress...

I mean, I argue - mostly - along the lines of Ockham's razor and methodological naturalism.

My own theory of mind is quite verifiable/falsifiable.

Science have one of those?

But it is such an important topic.

It had to be a dream, because it was not actually happening. It ought be.

Indeed. Some renditions of King are empty of all meaningful content.

Taking another at their word requires understanding what they mean. He talked about the devaluation of another based upon their race or their color of skin. We all know that that is wrong on so many levels.

If you're writing about the things I've said, I never called anyone racist. — T Clark

Indeed. I agree. You did not.

I was writing about what you said. I was not offering a report of what you said.

I don't find racism to be a useful concept. It also sets off a bunch of emotional and defensive responses that obscure the discussion. I try to accept the good will of people in these types of discussions to the extent I can. — T Clark

Sounds good as long as we talk about the devaluation of another based upon race alone.

Hard to get a good handle upon white privilege without discussing it's roots.

My fault for not offering enough context...

...ignorance of or indifference to history infuriates me. — T Clark

Willful ignorance?

Ignorance of white privilege does not make one racist.

I'm 67 years old. I have friends who had to ride in the back of a bus. I graduated from high school in a town in southern Virginia in 1969, which is the year it became legal for black and white people to marry there. — T Clark

In my own personal recent history, I've witnessed a group of co-workers stand up as a united front - arm in arm - against exactly that kind of unwarranted negative value placement upon another.

Willful ignorance.

Check out The Innocence Project...

Sigh...


'White Privilege'


I will not deny the importance of focusing upon deep seated institutional racism. There is much knowledge capable of being gleaned about the justice system of the United States from/by looking at actual numbers/cases of police shootings and more movingly... the remarkable difference(s) between criminal sentences handed down along the lines of race to perpetrators of the same crime(s). There are patterns that cannot be permitted to continue. We need productive factual practical discourse regarding race relations.

I deny that the notion of 'white privilege' is the best way to get there.

On it's face, the notion itself smacks of exactly what it's purportedly against. Racism is what happens when one judges an entire group of people - on some personal *value* level. Based upon race alone some negative worth/value is attributed. It's - at best - the fallacy of gross overgeneralization, and it is at the heart of racist thought, belief, and/or statements thereof.

The only thing that all people of the same race have in common is they're people of a certain race.

The vestiges of full-blown racism is understandable given that cultural integration/acceptance is still new to many people. The overwhelming fear of others that comes is undoubtedly grounded upon the human penchant for war. The scarcity of resources combined with wanting what others have is a thread that binds human history. Brutal killers as rulers. There is a time when it is wise to fear certain people.

When talking about how to go about change, we can start by realizing that some people you just can't reach. Be very very careful who you place in such a group and how you further describe that group. Some people have hate filled thought/belief/minds/hearts. These people are not rational. They are angry. Walking volcanoes. The mark of rationality/reasonability is the ability to consider(at least temporarily) another viewpoint.

However, there are minds to be changed and/or otherwise helped. Some reachable people are white. Some of those whites have been taken advantage of - by the system - throughout their own history. Many if not most of those people look out into the world and do not feel privileged.

Some reachable white people have not been taken advantage of. Some have experienced much privilege. All of those non racist white people - regardless of socioeconomic circumstances - capable of being awakened to the deep seated racism still pervading many communities and governments ought be reached without appealing to fallacy.

It has never been the case that all whites have equal 'white privilege'.

There are many white people who could be swayed if they themselves felt better understood. There are many commonalities between the oppressed. Race is one. Not all white people have equal privilege. That's the way it is and the way it has always been.

However, unless these less fortunate white people had legitimate well-grounded fear of being physically harmed by the police even though they have done nothing illegal/wrong, unless they've felt all alone and in immediate physical danger in a room full of strangers - from the same race, unless they have served much of a life sentence for a crime that they did not commit, unless you could feel the unwarranted unwelcomed stares and comments about your race, unless these things(and much more) were a part of your daily thought/belief and life not by choice...

...then you have had the privilege of being a white citizen in the US.

Thinking of trees includes trees. Trees are not in our heads. If part of thoughts are not in our heads, then it makes no sense whatsoever to say that thought has a spatiotemporal location(in the head/brain). Brains are necessary but insufficient for thinking about trees, as are trees.

Thought/belief is not the sort of thing that has a precise spatiotemporal location. All consciousness is thought/belief, so...

Now, I've got work to do. My life depends on it.

Put forth a creature and something for it to become conscious of. Then, figure out exactly what that takes. Re-read what I've offered here.

Toodles.

:smile:

All this talk about unconscious as compared/contrasted to conscious is very unhelpful. It adds nothing but unnecessary confusion to our understanding.

All undeniable examples of consciousness, all undeniable candidates/creatures who we say, without pause, are conscious creatures are thinking/believing creatures. They are conscious of something or other. No conscious creature is conscious of everything, including all of their own thought/belief(including the very thing that happens that makes them conscious creatures to begin with).

All thought/belief consists of mental correlations drawn between different things. All meaning involves precisely the same process(thought/belief formation).

Everything ever spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered directly involves the aforementioned mental correlations. Some thought/belief is prior to language acquisition. All thought/belief is meaningful to the thinking/believing creature. All thought/belief has efficacy regardless of the complexity thereof.

When we become - sometimes quite painfully - aware of the fact that we've been mistaken about something or other, and we have the means to account for it, we can avoid cognitive dissonance. When we cannot believe what we're experiencing, we're doubting our physiological sensory perception and/or our own thought/belief about what has just happened and/or is still happening.

It's all about thought/belief people!

When we report upon consciousness, we had better base that report upon knowledge of that which existed in it's entirety prior to our report. Thought/belief is one such thing - and must be if it has evolved over time. Consciousness is as well.

Kant's Noumena unfortunately fails us here. That is a self-inflicted wound. A limitation of sheer will fed by language use itself. Kant attempts to delimit our thought about ding an sich or things in themselves. This would include everything prior to language. Kant - for some reason unbeknownst to me - stipulates that we cannot know anything about that which existed prior to our awareness/consciousness of it. Based upon that false premiss, he continues to drive a wedge between mind and world. Noumena is a Kantian child posing as a rule of all thought regarding what and/or how we ought proceed with our metacognitive endeavors(reasoning).

I put it to everyone out there that we need not know everything about something to know some things about something. This holds good regarding that which existed prior to language itself. Creatures are very attentive, quite conscious, of certain things. These things are part of bigger events, and the totality of these events captures the creatures' entire attention. We can watch this happen over and over again. The simplest correlations we can verify involve a creature with a multifaceted biological system replete with several different kinds of physiological sensory perception(a sensory organ system).

The creature does not know that this is happening, but it most certainly is. So...

When talking about consciousness, it would behoove us all to keep in mind that we ought be focusing upon both, the candidate and what the candidate is purportedly conscious of.

Being aware, conscious, and/or otherwise attentive towards something(consciousness) has a minimalist criterion at it's heart - and it must in order to be amenable to evolution without invoking unnecessary entities. This minimalist criterion must consist of that which is necessary and sufficient for all known examples of consciousness. It must be able to somehow progress/increase in complexity over time, perhaps over lifespans, and throughout the history of that particular species' time on earth(humans in mind).

An adequate outline.

It need not fill in all the blanks so much as it need to provide the framework which is capable of being used to do so. That is explanatory power. Given my own strict adherence to certain rules and/or guiding principles along with a fondness for Ockham's Razor, that power is inherent in the notion of thought/belief that I work from because that notion is based upon the strongest possible justificatory ground(universal quantification regarding verifiable/falsifiable statements).

It's all about thought/belief. Get thought/belief wrong, and you've most certainly gotten consciousness wrong - somewhere along the line - as an inevitable logical consequence.

Mental correlations happen autonomously. We need not 'turn it on'. We cannot turn it off. All conscious creatures - and thus all consciousness - involve(s) exactly that(mental correlations). It does not involve the creature being conscious that they are conscious(that they form, have, and/or hold thought/belief). It does not involve the creature knowing that their own behaviour is informed, directly effected/affected, and/or otherwise influenced by the never-ending process of mental correlations being drawn between different things.

As best we can tell, the only conscious creatures aware of the fact that they are conscious creatures are humans. We become conscious of our own thought/belief(worldview) solely by virtue of complex common natural language replete with names for our own mental ongoings. The common sense as well as logical(on pains of coherence) point here - of course - is that prior to becoming aware that one is conscious... one is already conscious.

Becoming aware that one is conscious requires complex natural/common language. Being conscious does not.

Not all conceptions/notions/ideas/frameworks of consciousness are on equal footing. As far as I'm aware, no conventional school of thought has ever gotten it right(well-grounded and amenable to evolutionary progression without anthropomorphism, the obliteration of meaningful language, and/or the personification of animals).

To ask whether or not some thought/belief is a conscious or unconscious one is to neglect the fact that all thought/belief is formed by a creature capable of drawing mental correlations between different things, and that that is *precisely* how anything and/or anyone becomes conscious.

Not all creatures are aware of their own thought/belief. They are conscious nonetheless... of a plethora, a smorgasbord, a panopoly of other things.