Well, are our current theories wrong now, and just not understood as such? Or are they "true" now and will become false at some point in the future? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Was the Earth truly flat when dominant practices and beliefs affirmed it as such? If not, the truth of the Earth's roundness cannot have been dependent upon those practices. Indeed, if the reality (truth) of things just is whatever the dominant practice/culture says they are, how could beliefs ever fail to be "pragmatic" and why would they ever change? We are always omniscient in that case, just so long as we don't disagree. — Count Timothy von Icarus
if the reality (truth) of things just is whatever the dominant practice/culture says they are — Count Timothy von Icarus
Since there are no facts outside of practice and language, it follows that there can be no prior facts that determine practice and language themselves. And, since there are no facts outside of current belief and practice, no facts can explain how or why beliefs and practices change and evolve. — Count Timothy von Icarus
the solution of making truth dependent on man leads to some bizarre conclusions, especially if man is considered to be contingent. — Count Timothy von Icarus
if they were to perform bad in any of those endeavours, they would have produced nothing or the opposite. — Barkon
You won't sell a product if it's created bad. You won't survive if you do bad to your health. You won't create paradise that lasts if you're not good by nature. — Barkon
If other people were aware of him they would probably revolt — Barkon
We’re never omniscient; we just get better at describing the world in ways that work for us. — Tom Storm
Truth, in that sense, isn’t about matching reality, it’s about what proves useful in our ongoing conversations. — Tom Storm
but if the Earth were to die of heat death, that fact would become irrelevant and effectively vanish — Tom Storm
f truth only exists inside the context of human practices—is indeed dependent on them—what truths could we possibly be missing such that we are not omniscient? Wouldn't our (collective) lack of possession of all truths itself show that all truths aren't actually dependent on us and our practices, for how could they exist without our knowing of them if our practices make them true? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Did the Earth lack a shape prior to man and his practices? Or did it have a shape but it wasn't true that it had that shape? If man once again began to believe the Earth is flat would it "become flat again?" And if it wasn't round before man decided it was round, in virtue of what did evidence suggesting the Earth was round exist? — Count Timothy von Icarus
If all men died out it would cease to be true that man ever existed? So likewise, if we carry out a successful genocide and people come to forget about it or don't find it "useful" to bring up, it ceases to have ever occured? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Why would people find it "useful" to formulate such truths if they weren't already the case, and why does it seem prima facie ludicrous that it "would be true that sheeps and pigs could produce offspring just in case everyone found it 'useful' to affirm this?" This is the problem with the dependence claim. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I will take the claim to be:
X is right = I have a positive attitude towards X.
I think this view of 'right' is incorrect (and the same for 'wrong'). When discussing ethics, that simply does not seem to be what is meant by the terms.
For instance, it makes sense to hold the thought "I think death penalty is right, but is it right?" Under the view above, this would translate to: "I think I have a positive attitude towards the death penalty, but do I have a positive attitude towards it?" This makes ethical reflection seem trivial, when it does not seem to be trivial. So that is a problem for the theory. — GazingGecko
It also fails to handle disagreement. If I disagreed with the previous speaker, and said: "No, the death penalty is definitely wrong", it seems like I tried to contradict them. However, this would not be the case if I'm just reporting my own attitude. To illustrate:
A:"I have a positive attitude towards the death penalty!"
B:"No, I have a negative attitude towards the death penalty!"
A and B are not making contradictory propositions. Both can be true simultaneously. But in these exchanges, we are often trying to contradict the other person. So there is something problematic with the subjectivist theory. — GazingGecko
If other people were aware of him they would probably revolt. Which is where a moral power play ensues. — Barkon
Someone can knowingly sell cigarettes or cancer causing products and be very successful and live a very happy life. Period. — Tom Storm
That’s a beautifully put reflection. I think you’ve touched the heart of the matter: suffering is not merely a social construct or a linguistic convention, but a fundamental experience that resists reduction. When we ask, “What is bad about suffering?” the most honest answer might be that it needs no further justification - it reveals its badness in the very act of being endured.
Language and culture may frame or contextualize suffering, but the raw experience of agony, despair, or anguish is prior to those frames. That’s why so many ethical systems, despite their diversity, converge on minimizing suffering and promoting well-being. They are built on the foundation that suffering is not an arbitrary preference but an undeniable reality, and well-being is its natural counterweight.
In that sense, good and evil are not metaphysical mysteries but responses to the lived fact of suffering and flourishing.
— Truth Seeker
Yes, prior, logically prior, meaning if this dimension of our existence were to be removed, then the very concept of ethics becomes meaningless. So here, one has to step out of language andlogic entirely for the logical ground to be what it is. Now, the same canbe said for science, I mean, remove, well, the world, and science vanishes, but science only cares about quantifications and causal connections and works entirely within the structure of thought of its paradigms. It doesn't ask about the nature of scientific observation, say, because it doesn't care since this kindopf thing; it doesn't have to. After all, the color red, say, just sits there. It is nothing without the language that discusses it analytically. The phenomenon itself has no qualities that are not reducible to the categories of language contexts.
But that sprained ankle, not like a color (as such) at all. The very salient feature of its pain is the very essence of the category! This empirical science cannot deal with this, and analytic philosophy simply runs away, because to admit this is ,like admitting an actual absolute. Like admitting divine existence in their eyes.
But are they wrong? After all, this IS the essence of religion: an absolute in the metaethical analysis. — Constance
But that sprained ankle, not like a color (as such) at all. The very salient feature of its pain is the very essence of the category! This empirical science cannot deal with this, and analytic philosophy simply runs away, because to admit this is ,like admitting an actual absolute. Like admitting divine existence in their eyes.
But are they wrong? After all, this IS the essence of religion: an absolute in the metaethical analysis.
— Constance
That’s very well put. I think you’re right that suffering is not like the color red, which only becomes “red” in relation to our perceptual and linguistic frameworks. The sting of pain is not dependent on cultural categories - it is what it is in a way that forces itself upon us prior to analysis. — Truth Seeker
https://nursesgroup.co.uk/pain-management-in-nursing3) Talk therapy for managing pain.
Psychotherapy includes different methods to help you understand and change unhealthy feelings. It also helps you to understand unhealthy thoughts and actions. It can help you manage or change how you feel the pain.
Are you saying that if truth only depends on us, then we should already know all truths, but since we don’t, truth must exist independently of human practices? — Tom Storm
All I’m suggesting is that we interact with our environment and build stories, models and conversations to explain things. What we call truth emerges for a process. This is in constant flux and never reaches capital-T Truth. But many different models will be useful for certain purposes. — Tom Storm
Saying the world was flat made sense in the context of what we knew at the time. Now it makes sense to say it is a sphere. Today most of us obviously prefer the latter, and it's more justifiable. But where will we be in 1000 years? Will we still think of the world as a material entity, or might we come to see it as a product of consciousness, rather than a physical object? I note also that there is an emerging community of flat earthers and globe deniers. Is Trump one of these? :wink: — Tom Storm
It’s not that anything could be true just because we say it is. Things in the world still constrain what we can do. Our conversations and practices are built around those constraints. We find some statements “useful” precisely because they help us navigate reality as it seems to behave. — Tom Storm
Pain is not the same as suffering. One might say that pain is the alarm system of the body's damage control function. Sometimes the alarm can go off because there is a fault in the system.
Suffering is a response; an attitude one takes to pain or to other experience; a judgement. One can suffer from guilt, from ennui, from despair, as well as from pain.
So the essence of suffering is the negative judgement of the sufferer. Thus the endurance athlete has to learn to withhold that negative judgement and thus overcome the 'pain barrier' that would otherwise limit their performance.
But this means that suffering is totally in the experience of the sufferer, and it makes no sense to say, therefore, that suffering is good, because suffering is constituted by the judgement that it is bad.
I can still say, though, that your suffering is good for me, if I find it amusing or consoling, or gratifying in some way, but it is not the suffering that you feel, but the idea thatI have (of you suffering) that I am gratified by.
3) Talk therapy for managing pain.
Psychotherapy includes different methods to help you understand and change unhealthy feelings. It also helps you to understand unhealthy thoughts and actions. It can help you manage or change how you feel the pain.
https://nursesgroup.co.uk/pain-management-in-nursing — unenlightened
I think there are advantages to occasionally looking at the world through an amoral lens. Judgment and understanding stand in opposition. The more you judge something or someone, the less you understand, because once the judgement is made (that was evil!), there's no reason to look further. Understanding requires putting judgment on the shelf. For instance, if you think about the most aggressive, toxic person in your life, consider that angry, aggressive people usually feel weak and afraid. People who try to manipulate others feel like they have no control. People are contradictory. People who are in pain sometimes lash out to cause others pain. Plus causing pain can be a form of self medication because it feels good to stomp downward. It makes you feel powerful, and a dopamine burst is apt to accompany it, producing a feeling of accomplishment. In other words, the question ethics doesn't spend much time on is: why does the abuse exist? Step away from ethics into nihilism, and you can see how so many people are trapped in a web of grief and rage, most born into that web. Instead of lamenting it, see the way this web shapes identities and grand dramas that play out over generations. — frank
But that doesn’t make suffering reducible to “just a judgment.” — Truth Seeker
Consider the proposition, "Falsehood is better than truth."
If it were true, then it would be better to believe that truth is better than falsehood.
If it were false, then it would be better to believe that truth is better than falsehood.
'Therefore, 'truth is better than falsehood' is the only tenable moral position on truth. — unenlightened
For instance, if you think about the most aggressive, toxic person in your life, consider that angry, aggressive people usually feel weak and afraid. People who try to manipulate others feel like they have no control. People are contradictory. People who are in pain sometimes lash out to cause others pain. Plus causing pain can be a form of self medication because it feels good to stomp downward. It makes you feel powerful, and a dopamine burst is apt to accompany it, producing a feeling of accomplishment. In other words, the question ethics doesn't spend much time on is: why does the abuse exist? Step away from ethics into nihilism, and you can see how so many people are trapped in a web of grief and rage, most born into that web. Instead of lamenting it, see the way this web shapes identities and grand dramas that play out over generations.
Wouldn't the very idea that the one can understand best when suspending all evaluative judgements itself presuppose that the truth of human activity and happiness doesn't need to be understood in terms of values and ends? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Jesus was a moral nihilist. — frank
Compassion comes from suspending judgment — frank
The people who can't see that are the ones who need to throw the stone. They lust to see the sinner in pain. — frank
These people are locked in a cycle that Jesus encouraged people to find their way out of. The way out is through forgiveness — frank
In fact, forgiveness presupposes judgement — Count Timothy von Icarus
Sorry, I'm not going to read all of that. I read through some, and it occurred to me that it was excessive. — Constance
But existence qua existence syas nothing about this. OTOH, there IS no existence qua existence; this is just an abstraction from what there, in the givenness of the world. — Constance
one has to move toward inclusiveness, that is, including everything that IS, and this means all of what is usually excluded, human subjectivity. — Constance
constitutes a view of existence which has no place for your thesis. — Constance
You thesis amounts to a world where divinity subsumes existence. — Constance
I'm a little unclear what it would mean for something like Germany to not be objective. Does this mean it is not an objective fact that German surrendered in WWII? Is it not an objective fact that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July, 4th, 1776? Are there objective rules to chess? What about objective truths of arithmetic (which is often considered a "game" like chess)?
But that doesn’t make suffering reducible to “just a judgment.”
— Truth Seeker
No, I certainly didn't intend that reduction, especially the 'just'. Pain is real, and judgements are real, and suffering is real. The point I want to emphasise though is that the idea that suffering is not bad is contradictory, and thus that the reduction of suffering gives a necessary and real foundation of morality.
And compare this to my earlier suggestion, in relation to communication:
Consider the proposition, "Falsehood is better than truth."
If it were true, then it would be better to believe that truth is better than falsehood.
If it were false, then it would be better to believe that truth is better than falsehood.
'Therefore, 'truth is better than falsehood' is the only tenable moral position on truth.
— unenlightened
To be alive as a human, is to make judgements of oneself and of the world, between edible and poisonous, true and false, friend and foe, and so on. And though one can be mistaken, one cannot actually prefer foes to friends, falsehood to truth, poison to food, or suffering to comfort. — unenlightened
Well, my confusion is that "makes sense in the context of," is not normally taken to be a synonym for "is true." Is the idea that these are the same thing? Perhaps it "made sense" to sacrifice people to make sure the sun didn't disappear in the context of Aztec civilization, but surely it wasn't true that the continued shining of the sun was dependent on cutting victims' hearts out on an alter.
Yet the idea that our conversations and practices and generative of all truths would suggest just this. That "makes sense to" is synonymous with "is true." — Count Timothy von Icarus
Ok, did reality truly behave this way before we found it useful to say it is so? Either it did, and there was a truth about these "constraints" that lies prior to, and is, in fact, the true cause of, human practices (i.e., these constraints were actually, really the case, that is, truly the case) or else it was our own sense of "usefulness" that made the constraints truly exist in the first place. Or, did these constraints which shape practice and conversations actually exist, but it wasn't true that they existed (which is an odd thing to say)?
If practices are necessary for truth you cannot posit constraints that lie prior to practices as the cause of those practices without denying the truth of those constraints it would seem. For they only become truly existent when declared so in practice. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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