• Deleted User
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  • Terrapin Station
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    I like coffee ice cream. That over there is coffee ice cream. So far, objective factstim wood

    "I like x" isn't an objective fact. It's a subjective fact.

    "It's good" is a subjective judgment that an individual has to make, for whatever reasons they make it. "It's good" can't be the same as any objective set of facts, because no objective judgments such as that obtain.

    Reason is subjective. It's a mental activity.
  • Deleted User
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  • Terrapin Station
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    Be good enough to provide your definition of "fact." You can refer me back and I'll look for it.tim wood

    Facts are states of affairs. Ways that things are. Remember that the subjective/objective distinction refers to mental phenomena versus non-mental phenomena. So an objective fact is a state of affairs that is NOT mental phenomena. A subjective fact would be a state of affairs that is mental phenomena.

    A subjective judgment can't "become objective."

    You're asking when particular sort of mental phenomenon can become the same phenomenon, just without it being mental. That's not possible.
  • Frotunes
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    A heroine addict mother wouldn’t be good for her child hence it can be immoral?
  • Terrapin Station
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    A heroine addict mother wouldn’t be good for her childFrotunes

    That depends on who you ask. (And for many who answer, they're going to want some details, they might be careful not to conflate various things, etc.)
  • Frotunes
    113


    Who would disagree with that? That a mother addicted to heroine is worse for a child than were she sober?
  • Frotunes
    113
    You're out of your element, man. Of course drug use can sometimes be immoral. What if a pilot took cocaine and crashed a plane? What are you smoking?
  • Terrapin Station
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    Who would disagree with that? That a mother addicted to heroine is worse for a child than were she sober?Frotunes

    I don't at all categorically agree with it, for one.
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  • Terrapin Station
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    Synonyms for "phenomenon" include occurrence, event, happening, fact, situation, circumstance, experience, case, incident, episode, sight, appearance, thing. (Source--Google dictionary)

    On your definition of subjective/objective, everything is subjective - how not?tim wood

    That's not at all the case, since most of the world isn't brain phenomena.

    Why can't we have discussions around here that aren't so patronizing, by the way?
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  • jorgealarcon
    15
    It's wrong if it hurts you. If weed causes you to become less focused and less alert, working like an escape from reality, this "escape" will hurt you personally in the long run.
  • halo
    47
    First, morality is contextual. What is immoral in Yemen or in the 1700’s America is not necessarily immoral today. So who’s definition of morality do you speak?
    Second, is it not immoral to lock a person up for exercising their free will? For smoking or snorting a plant? If any immorality is done it’s by the lawmakers and the people who demonize other for what they don’t understand.
  • Terrapin Station
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    The world may not be, but everything we do with, in, or about it is brain based.tim wood

    To do something with it, there has to be an it. Most of the world is the it. The division is between our brains functioning in a mental way and the it--everything else that exists.
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  • EricH
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    @tim wood @Terrapin Station
    Somehow this discussion of illegal drugs has morphed into a discussion that maybe should go under the Philosophy of Mind category.

    But as long as we’re here, I’ll jump into the waters - hopefully I can clarify them instead of muddying them.

    The crux of the difference here (as I’m seeing it) is that Tim is asserting that mental activity is ultimately based in the physical world, whereas Terrapin is asserting that there is something fundamentally different about mental activity.

    I'm with Tim on this, and here's my reasoning:

    We already have machines that can measure mental activity - albeit at a very crude level. Will these machines advance to the point where we can measure mental activity at such a fine granular level that we can distinguish pleasurable physiological responses from un-pleasurable ones? That remains to be seen, but in my opinion this is possible.

    So while the statement “Coffee ice cream is good” is clearly a subjective opinion, the statement “Tim Wood likes coffee ice cream” is a description of a measurable/observable state of affairs - namely that when Tim consumes coffee ice cream it produces a physiological response that Tim describes as 'liking'.

    Of course I could be wrong. It could be that there is some unknown factor that will prevent us from ever measuring mental activity at that fine level of granularity. We can speculate that perhaps there is some quantum mechanical thing going on - and any attempt to measure mental activity at this level of granularity alters the very thing we’re trying to measure.

    If I have misrepresented either of you, please gently correct me. . . . :smile:
  • Deleted User
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  • Terrapin Station
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    How do you know anything about the "objective" world? Not do, but how.tim wood

    That's very simple: you observe it via your senses.
  • Terrapin Station
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    The crux of the difference here (as I’m seeing it) is that Tim is asserting that mental activity is ultimately based in the physical world, whereas Terrapin is asserting that there is something fundamentally different about mental activity.EricH

    No, I'm not saying anything at all like that.* It's simply that we can create categories like "Fender amplifiers" as opposed to "everything else," or "Trees" as opposed to "everything else," etc.

    The reason for bothering to do that with mind and everything else, whereas we don't usually do it with Fender amplifiers and everything else, is that (a) people, including frequently in a philosophical context, tend to reference mental stuff for obvious reasons, including that they want to talk about knowledge, about values, etc., and (b) people frequently say very confused things about mental phenomena versus other things, where they project mental phenomena onto other things, akin to supposing that you could use a tree as an amplifier.

    (* Well, or if I'm saying something like that, it's in the same sense that I'd say "there's something fundamentally different about bookshelves and bacteria and stars and automobiles, etc."--a la everything has unique properties, and we can't just ignore that and pretend that everything has all properties in common.)
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    My point is that Terrapin's division into mental and non-mental - which I appreciate him providing - is very problematic, and for his purposes untenable because inconsistent.tim wood

    There's nothing problematic or inconsistent about it. Among the things in the world are brains, shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, etc. It's a simple matter to locate properties/phenomena in each as opposed to the others (or as opposed to all others). That way you don't try making sauerkraut with your shoes, you don't try sealing a letter with a cabbage, and you don't look for a rock's evaluation of a musical piece.
  • Deleted User
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  • Terrapin Station
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    Just exactly what is it?tim wood

    A pronoun substitution for the objective world. The objective world is the nonmental world. You observe it via your senses. There's no problem there (aside from philosophers who haven't even managed to reach the object permanence stage of psychological development).
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    Only inconsistent if you make your division between mental and non-mental.tim wood

    Is it too much to specify an inconsistency?
  • Deleted User
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  • Terrapin Station
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    But you never, ever, saw a tree in your whole life, and never did anyone else, ever.tim wood

    lol--that's nothing that I'm claiming (and it's rather ridiculous). At any rate, it's not an inconsistency to disagree with something that someone else is claiming. In order for me to be uttering an inconsistency, I have to both be claiming P and not-P.

    But the fact is that whatever you take to be the tree, just is your mental representation.tim wood

    No. That's not at all a fact. Representationalism is wrong.

    Why do you believe that representationalism is not wrong?
  • Deleted User
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