the claim that one has experienced the presence of God in their life is analogous in ways to the claim that one has experienced the presence of extraterrestrials or ghosts in their life.

Too vague. Different interpretations of the 'in ways' can lead to it meaning anything from simply that the claimant can speak a human language (claims are made in human language) at one extreme to that the claimant is an untrustworthy loon at the other.

Analogies are a marvellous tool to help somebody understand a difficult, non-controversial concept - like the balloon analogy in cosmology. They are hardly ever of use in debate - at least, not in rational debate (which, admittedly is a tiny proportion of the debate that goes on out there in the world).

You mention evidence. Whether evidence is appropriate depends on the context of the claim. If somebody knocks on my door and tells me I should believe them about their experience of God, and join their religion, then a demand for evidence is appropriate.

On the other hand, if I am conducting a survey, and approach someone to ask them whether they have experienced communication with God and they reply 'Yes', a demand for evidence is inappropriate.

Happy to engage. What is your claim and its supporting argument?

Are you going to tell me that you don't think there's a point there, behind what I said? — Sapientia

Yes.

And that was a serious point. — Sapientia

Come off it!

It was a sneer.

We all make mis-steps like this from time to time, when we get riled by what others say. I know I do.

Just withdraw it and return to making logical arguments, as you generally do, and which are generally excellent.

my point is that many Christians who believe they have some direct access to 'God' are about as crazy as C.S Lewis said about someone who tried to claimed they where a fried egg — dclements

Why do you think that? I am not a Christian now, but I was one a long time ago and thought then that God listened to my prayers and communicated back in some vague way. I don't think I am any more or less rational now than I was then. It's just my life experiences that have changed.

I don't think any of us are in any position to judge other people's rationality, because we cannot know what experiences they have had and IMHO, in the end, all judgements are based on experience.

Also, Lewis's so-called trilemma ('Lord, Liar or Lunatic') is not a trilemma because there are at least two other options:

1. The claims that Jesus claimed to be God are false. The historical Jesus never made such a claim ('Libelled'); or
2. There was no historical Jesus ('Lack').

More about that here.

Can you tell me where exactly non-existence and PSR connect? — TheMadFool

It's easy to work out. Just write out your favourite version of the PSR and look for where the word 'exists' or 'there is' occurs. Sometimes it's disguised as a 'has', but I'm confident you can see through that.

When the search is negative we may conclude nonexistence. — TheMadFool

No we may not.

There have been many intense searches that failed to find the sought object, only for somebody to find it in another search years later.

Liquid methane is nonexistent on the surface of the Earth because the temperature, pressure conditions are not right. — TheMadFool

I very much doubt this. I am pretty confident there will be laboratories in which liquid methane is produced or stored for some experimental purpose or other. In any case, I said it is rarely possible, not that it is never possible. A handful of counterexamples (of which the liquid methane case is not one) does not contradict that.

Like it or not, even if you want to just deny PSR, you'll have to assume it's true. — TheMadFool

What makes you think that?

A counter-example to the PSR would be a proof of non-existence. Proving the non-existence of something is rarely possible, except in maths.

For any phenomenon, however bizarre and seemingly inexplicable, how could one ever prove that there is not some reason for it that is hidden from our view?

There are plenty of things for which we have no explanations. Dark Matter is one that springs to mind. It is entirely possible that there is no explanation. But how could we ever know for sure that there isn't one?

I think you did. — theMadFool

I can't see the PSR, in variant 3 or any other variant, being invoked in Willow's post, implicitly or explicitly. In which part of the post do you believe it was invoked, and what makes you believe it was invoked there?

My guess, based on your upper texting of 'because' in your post, is that you are thinking that providing a reason for something is using the PSR.

That is not correct.

Providing a reason is saying 'look, here is a reason', whereas invoking the PSR is assuming there must be a reason even if we can't see one. It's the difference between the proposition (which almost everybody believes):

1. Some things have explanations

and the proposition (which is the PSR, which is not widely believed outside the Rationalist camp)

2. All things have explanations.

I think it depends on whether you interpret a list of rights as Contractual - something that all the signatories agree to try to provide to their citizens, or Metaphysical - having some fundamental existence irrespective of whether anybody agrees to the list.

If you want to interpret it as Metaphysical then I can see there is an irresolvable dilemma. If we assume that there does exist some mind-independent list of rights, it is impossible to know what rights are in it. There will be great disagreement as to what goes in it, and no way to resolve the disagreement. It may be possible to obtain 95% plus agreement on somewhat over half of the UN's list of 30, but that's all.

If one interprets it as Contractual, the difficulty falls away. The composition of the list is determined in the negotiations leading up to the signing of the declaration. There is no Metaphysical standard against which the agreed list can be tested. The situation is concrete: all countries that have signed the declaration are obliged to uphold the rights it contains.

There can still be arguments over interpretation though. Take 15: 'Men and women have the right to marry and to found a family.' Does the use of 'Men and Women', as distinct from the 'Everyone' that opens most other clauses, imply that the right only exists for a pair consisting of a man and a woman? Does it exclude same-sex couples, or was the 'Men and Women' chosen in order to exclude children? But if so, why not just say 'adults'? Does it generate a right of polygamy and polyandry since it uses the plural? And what about an inter-sex adult that is neither a man nor a woman? If it had said 'Everyone' it would automatically include them, but 'Men and Women' does not. Is that deliberate? Who knows (not me)?

Further, is the right to marry satisfied by common-law-marriage - ie long-term co-habitation? I expect a major motivation of number 15 was to rule out miscegenation laws (prohibition of 'inter-race' sexual relations), which I think applied to common-law arrangements as much as legal marriage contracts, and perhaps also to rule out familial vetoes on marriage a la Montagu and Capulet. Such an interpretation of the right is as a negative right: nobody may prevent you from forming a common-law marriage. It needs a stronger interpretation - as a positive right like number 26 (Education) - to say that it is a right for any two consenting adults to receive a formal, legal ceremony, called 'marriage' in law.

My understanding is that nobody knows right now whether blockchain will be a genuine disruptor that mostly replaces existing payment systems, or a fad that withers away. But for as long as there is potential for the former - and currently most believe there is - financial institutions, software companies and financial regulators are all investing in understanding and experimenting with it so that they don't get left flat-footed if it takes off. So far it hasn't, but that doesn't mean it won't.

Most physicists, for example, believe in God — tim wood

I have vague memories of seeing a survey that reported exactly the opposite. Scientists reported significantly lower levels of belief in God than the general population and physicists reported significantly lower levels of belief in God than other scientists. The figure of about 20% is floating around there in my pseudo-memory.

Of course, really I'm just hoping somebody will Google up the survey and tell me whether my memory is accurate.

I don't want to derail. So I'll add a vote that I think Kant's ideas are still very useful to study. I find myself constantly coming back to his Transcendental Aesthetic, Transcendental Deduction of the Categories and Synthetic Unity of Apperception in my musing about Life, The Universe and Everything.

Rather he thinks randomness arises from unknown order. — TheMadFool

Not quite, but not too far off.

Each acquires a meaning relative to our scientific theories.

A phenomenon is chaotic under theory T if we could predict the phenomenon using T if we had enough precise information, but information at that level of precision is not available in practice and there is enormous sensitivity to the initial conditions, so any predictions we make are likely to be wildly inaccurate.

A phenomenon is random under theory T if there is no imaginable set of information, excluding information about future events, that would enable us to use theory T to predict the phenomenon.

Chaos is about a practical limit on prediction and randomness is about a theoretical limit, but both are relative to the theory T. A phenomenon that is random under theory T may be non-random under more sophisticated theory T2.

Interesting.

To justify that 'because', it appears that one of your fundamental axioms is:

for all X and all Y, if X talks about Y a lot then Y is the boss of X

It would appear then, that Satan is the boss of many Evangelical preachers - a great opportunity for me to plug my latest essay.

about his boss Trump — Agustino

Not Wayfarer's boss. As a non-citizen and non-resident of the greatest country on Earth, he is not subject to the rule of the Orange One. I imagine his posts on the subject are pure Christian sympathy for those that, through no fault of their own, are.

Here basically 1 equals 2 and 3 which is false. — Pippen

One needs to maintain the distinction between terms, which represent objects in the domain of discourse, and formulas, which (speaking roughly) have truth values.

In your OP, the implication is that A, B and C are formulas, in which case the OP can make sense.

In your second post, you appear to want '1', '2' and '3' to represent numbers. If so then they are terms, not formulas, hence statements like

Premise: 1

or

1<--> 1

are meaningless because '1' is not a proposition, and hence cannot be a premise.

If you are not familiar with the notions of 'terms' and 'formulas' just think of them as 'nouns' and 'sentences'. A term is like a noun, and means nothing unless uttered in a sentence.

OK, but can you tell us what it is that you were trying to say?

For instance, are you saying that there should be more formally recognised human rights? If so which ones would you like to add?

Or are you saying that there are too many, and that some of the rights in the UN list should not be there? If so, which ones?

I do have some level of skepticism as to where one should draw the limits on this ever expanding list — rickyk95

What does that mean?

One is skeptical about a proposition. For instance, some people are skeptical about the proposition 'Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969'.

But you say you are skeptical about 'where one should draw the limits on this ever expanding list'. That quoted phrase is a question, not a proposition. One cannot be skeptical of a question.

It's like saying 'I'm skeptical about what the name of next week's lottery winner will be'.

Yes. That's why we are best of discarding notions of 'causality' in history and instead looking for enabling conditions - of which there will be many.

Yes, because it is possible that on the way to accomplish your goal you will be confronted by somebody that refuses to allow you to pass unless you can tell them your name, your goal and the air-speed velocity of a fully-laden swallow.

Is there any reason why actual leftists and liberals can't be as comfortable loving and serving their personal nation-state as the typical conservative? — Bitter Crank

While, as usual, I think your idea for a thread is great and your thoughts on the topic deserving of attention, I can't help but take issue with this question.

My observation is that the group of people who serve the state in the sense of being employed by it seems to have a higher proportion of people that one might loosely describe as 'left' than the general population. At least that seems to be the case where I live (not in the US). The exception is the military services, for which the leaning tends to go the other way. But the military services are only a small part of public employment, and the overall 'left' lean of public servants seems distinct.

So the empirical evidence seems to suggest that 'left'-inclined people are more comfortable serving their personal nation-state than the non-'left'-inclined.

I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing.

It's just a thing.

So, are you saying there no universal morals — TimeLine

Yes. I have already said so in this thread several times.

and that thou shalt not kill is equally baseless — TimeLine

I've already answered that too. See first sentence of my previous reply.

I can't help but observe that it looks like almost nobody - except maybe a few Jains - believes that rule, based on their actions and the actions of the governments and parliaments they elect.

What about linguistics and moral predicates? — TimeLine

The question mark at the end of this suggests it's a question, but I don't know what you're trying to ask.

Values need to be measured in some way as ethics is not about 'me' but about 'us' and it is not good enough that you are convinced in non-objectivism only because you are ok with that. There is observable moral intuitions that people combined hold and it is common sense that one should dispute the reliability of their values since the acquisition of moral beliefs and the motivation to act involves a range of factors that challenge the quality of the agent' cognition. — TimeLine

If there's a disagreement on this point, I suspect it's one of expression rather than of substance. I too believe it is important to challenge the moral beliefs and the recommendations of others when I judge that they cause harm. But I do not think of that as questioning the reliability of their values.

In some cases two disputants will share the same values but have reached different conclusions as to how to maximise satisfaction of those values. An example is two politicians arguing about immigration. They may both wish to maximise the benefit to society, but one may believe that immigration will ultimately help that while the other thinks it will hinder it. The dispute is over implementation, not over values, and hence it is possible for one to be right and the other wrong. But often only time will be able to tell us which one it is, and by then it will be too late.

Other disputes may come down to core values - for instance the value of freedom vs that of equality. A socialist will argue for higher wealth redistribution while a libertarian will argue for less. The difference is one of values, not implementation. Neither value is wrong. Neither is valid nor invalid. They are just different. I'm on the socialist side and argue for that, but I don't think that makes me correct and the libertarians incorrect.

I am merely trying to point out that your position is baseless. — TimeLine

It is based in my values. If you regard that as baseless then I am not disposed to argue. I would simply observe that, as far as I can tell, every position I have ever seen espoused by anybody else is equally baseless.

Not good enough. — TimeLine

Not good enough for what? To convince you? So I see.

A belief is measured by something, something that enables you to believe that the action is 'correct' in order to act thus. What is it? — TimeLine

Certainly. The measurement is the assessment of plausibility, to which I alluded. That will generally be a process of assessing whether the proposition that is a candidate for the honoured position of 'belief' can be deduced with high confidence from the axioms that I accept instinctively - axioms such as the Principle of Induction, that there are other Consciousnesses, and that Suffering should be minimised.

How do you believe your conception of beauty is formed? — TimeLine

I don't know how it is formed. It is just there, and that is enough for me.

Explain how you form this 'ethical framework' and why you believe it is correct? Since you think that 'wrong' is what would violate this framework, in order to ascertain what you mean by 'wrong' I would need to understand the validity of your ethical framework. — TimeLine

Haven't we been here before? I have explained that I don't think the word 'correct' applies to ethical frameworks. It's a category error, like trying to measure the length of an idea. The same goes for 'validity'.

With all these questions, you seem to be searching for something, but I honestly cannot tell what it is. If you could tell me what you are searching for, perhaps I could help. But then it is often the case in philosophy that one feels one is searching for something, but one does not know what it is.

How do you measure this 'ethical framework' with your beliefs and whether your values that enable you to act against what you consider 'wrong' as being aligned 'correctly'? — TimeLine

I'm afraid I don't understand that question.

Are you saying that you have direct access to your judgements and experiences — TimeLine

I wasn't saying that. But I do have that direct access.

that there is no sociological or epistemological basis to this ethical framework in which you have formed? — TimeLine

No I am not saying that.

Since you muse quite regularly on the concept of Beauty, how does this conceptualisation form? — TimeLine

I'm afraid I don't understand that question.

I don't have a position on Khashoggi. I know almost nothing about him, so I'm afraid I can't help with your inquiries about him.

I can answer some of your other questions though.

what is 'wrong', — TimeLine

I call that potential action 'wrong' which would violate my ethical framework if I were to do it. I try to use the term publicly only in relation to my own actions, not those of others, as I see moral judgements of others as usually unhelpful.

what is 'belief' — TimeLine

I call 'belief' any proposition that is sufficiently plausible to me that I am prepared to act in accordance with it.

how 'prevention' is related to the subject of your moral position? — TimeLine

My moral framework will lead me to decide to take certain actions. Some of those actions may involve imposing my will on others, including preventing them from doing things - eg preventing the mugger from completing their mugging. Such interventions will be prompted by the perception that I am in a position to be able to prevent harm from occurring.

your values — TimeLine

My primary value is compassion. Beauty is another. I sometimes muse over the extent to which they overlap.

Does that clear up the confusion?

That's a constructive direction to take it, because it leads to an important distinction, which is between damages lawsuits and injunctions. I see the latter as frequently useful, but the former as only rarely so.

Injunctions can be useful because they request that the court make an order for somebody to perform or not perform a non-financial action - for instance to not publish something. The purpose of the injunction is to prevent a harm, so there is no need for assignation of guilt, merely for a court order requiring or forbidding the action.

Damages suits, on the other hand, usually involve the assignation of blame. I am very anti-blame, and do not like damages actions. I find it hard to imagine myself ever taking out a damages action against somebody. Bad things happen all the time, and the search for somebody to blame rarely helps us cope with them. If I lost my wealth and livelihood and a successful damages action was the only way I could provide for my family, I might do so. But that would purely be a mercenary tactic, not a moral judgement on the party I was suing (regardless of how much my barrister, as hired sophist, would present it as such).

I am not saying that damages suits never have any benefit, but I feel that the vast majority of them cause social harm. Defensive medicine is the classic example of the harm done by such actions - where the doctor makes decisions that minimise the risk of being sued, rather than what is best for the patient. Children's playgrounds with all the fun toys removed is another example.

What exactly do you mean by prevention? — TimeLine

Saying to the would-be mugger: 'Hey you, stop that', and then (courage permitting) physically restraining them while asking bystanders to call the police if they don't stop.

As for arms dealers: you tell me what power I have over them and I'll tell you in what circumstances I'd use it.

The rest of your post appears to be about judgements under the law. This discussion is about moral, not legal judgements.

Yes. I see punishment of law-breakers as the job of the state, not of individuals, else we descend into Philippines-style vigilantism.

That statement you quote is about making a judgement of somebody after the actions have occurred. If the actions have already occurred, I cannot prevent them. You seem to be inferring from that that I would not seek to prevent further such actions, if I deemed them to be harmful.

That inference is incorrect.

It's the difference between
(a) stopping somebody from mugging an old person, and
(b) condemning the mugger.

I would do (a) (if I had the courage) but usually not (b).

The reason for your confusing the two might be that in both cases a judgement is made. But they are different judgements. The judgement in (a) is about harm. The judgement in (b) is about guilt.

In my moral framework it is essential to make judgements about harm, but not about guilt.

We do however make judgments of others in formulating policies, for instance. An industry should not imply child labour except under certain stringent conditions, say. In such cases we seek common ground with others about what we think would be wrong, surely? — mcdoodle

I agree. If we have a difference, perhaps it is one of emphasis.

I think of it as seeking common ground with others as to what constitutes a harm. That takes the form of a judgement about an act rather than a judgement of a person or their intent. If I can find enough others that agree with me that child labour is a harm, we can form an effective movement to agitate for change.

The lobbying may take the form of making loud, emotive verbal judgements of the employers of child labour, if the advice from the best spin doctors we can afford is that that tactic is what is most likely to succeed. But that would be purely pragmatic - and also unfortunate in my view (a 'necessary evil'), as I would prefer to lobby without having to say that certain people are bad. I would not believe the employers are bad. I would just wish that they ceased employing children, and do what I can to make that come about.

This contradicts your basis of striving to act according to your personal morality whereby you believe that Khashoggi is the only one who can assess whether his actions are deemed immoral, which is thus an objective, mind-independent decision and your 'very strong personal sense of right and wrong' leads to counter-intuitive implications. You are denying your personal morality and so your 'very strong personal sense of right and wrong' on the basis of which you strive to act is false, as you are acting with inaction. — TimeLine

Contradicts how?
Denying how?
False why?
What inaction?

Nothing I have said implies that I would not take action to prevent harms committed by someone else. In fact I have said quite the opposite.

As is so often the case with moral absolutists, you are arguing against what you think moral relativists believe, rather than putting the effort in to carefully read what I've said and trying to understand what I actually believe.

But you do. You said it yourself, that 'believing one's values are subjective renders one powerless, or disinclined, to act on them.' — TimeLine

Umm.

Here is the passage from which you took those words

The mistake that some (not all) moral absolutists make is to hold on to the unexamined presupposition that believing one's values are subjective renders one powerless, or disinclined, to act on them. The presupposition is wrong, but it is very widely believed. — andrewk

Can you spot the difference?

Clearly s/he is NOT rational because if rationality could assist s/he wouldn't resort to random choices. — TheMadFool

That doesn't follow.

You seem to be under the impression that those quotes contradict each other. Yet if you follow each one back and look at the statement to which it was responding, you will see that they are in complete agreement. [Hint, you'll find the first one is referring to a decision, not a toss]

Would you use a woolly hat to hammer in a nail?

If tossing a coin is rational then why not use it for ALL situations

Tossing a coin is neither rational nor irrational - it's just an action.

The decision to toss a coin is rational in some situations, of which we've had three examples.

It is not rational in all situations.

Would you use a woolly hat to hammer in a nail?

My question: Can I deduce 5. - 7. from the premis — Pippen

Yes.

I thought both men came out of the exchange with dignity and credibility. None of that dignity or credibility finds its way to Trump though.

We've already covered this - maybe more than once! The ass did make a rational choice, and that choice was to go in the direction indicated by the coin.

Do you think it irrational that, at the beginning of a football or cricket match, the two captains agree to toss a coin to decide which one gets to choose which direction to run (football) or whether to bat (cricket)?

Do you think it irrational that rugby is played with a non-spherical ball, thereby introducing an element of randomness into the game through the unpredictably of how the ball will bounce? [Tais toi, all you soccer devotees that are screaming Yes, Yes, Yes!!!

You are saying that there is no such thing as 'wrong' — TimeLine

No, I am not. That is the classic moral absolutist mis-step, to conflate denial of absolute right and wrong with denial of personal morality. I believe there is no such thing as absolute, mind-independent, objective wrong. But I have a very strong personal sense of right and wrong, on the basis of which I strive to act.

Hence, in my analysis, whether Khashoggi acted wrongly is a matter that in the end only he can assess. The only way in which a judgement on my part of his actions makes sense is:

(1) if I am on a jury and am called upon to judge whether he has committed a crime. In this case all that matters is what the law says; and
(2) if I want to use his case as an example to encourage or discourage certain types of behaviour to others. In this case all that matters is my assessment of his behaviour according to my values, not those of anybody else.

how can you trust in these values when making an ethical decision, a decision likely to impact others — TimeLine

I do not understand the question, as 'trusting in my values' is a concept that does not mean anything to me.

For values to be trustworthy or non-trustworthy would require that there be a 'correct' set of values against which mine can be measured, and I do not believe there is such a thing.

I understand, of course, that many people believe there is such a thing, and I do not say they are wrong, just as they are in position to say with any justification that I am wrong.

It is just too subjective — TimeLine

It is subjective. I am not a moral absolutist. I see morality as personal - and hence subjective. In the eyes of a moral absolutist, that may seem too subjective. To me it does not.

As I now see Terrapin Station has just observed.

The mistake that some (not all) moral absolutists make is to hold on to the unexamined presupposition that believing one's values are subjective renders one powerless, or disinclined, to act on them. The presupposition is wrong, but it is very widely believed.