free will is irrelevant to just⁰ification": Justification is a way of showing that an act was right or reasonable. But not only free will is relevant, it is actually a prerequisite! If someone who commits a crime is proved --by medical examination or just opinion-- not to be able to distinguish between right or wrong, he is sent to a mental hospital instead of a prison. In that case, we cannot talk about either justification or free will — Alkis Piskas

Imagine this scenario: a person unable to distinguish between right or wrong has a voice in his head that tells him to, let's say, give all of his fortune to charity. Can we evaluate his actions ? If he was a billionaire, and his money allowed to save 1 million lives from war and disease, can we say that he acted morally?

My view is that to answer the question we must first make a distinction between a good action and commendable action. I think that the former entails that the action was done with benevolent intent and was compatible with the laws of morality while the latter entails the action was merely compatible with the laws of morality regardless of intent.

My view is that in order for criminal justice to exist (as we know it) we must assume a certain level of autonomy and responsibility of individuals, called "free will" — Wheatley

I don't think that is the case because whether or not a killer has free will does not change the fact that we must do what we can to prevent him from killing again.

If someone who commits a crime is proved --by medical examination or just opinion-- not to be able to distinguish between right or wrong, he is sent to a mental hospital instead of a prison — Alkis Piskas

And when they know the difference they are judged for their responsibility.

Sorry for not answering. Thanks for pointing it out, I wouldn't have responded if you hadn't.

Now, I 'd like to point out that I don't really think my argument was convincing anymore. I!m not sure what to believe now. But still, keep objecting, it will help me see the flaws and the good in the argument.

Can you think of a specific example where this would be the case? — Average

Imagine that there's an asteroid coming towards Earth and I am sent on a mission to stop it. Now imagine that to do so, I must activate a device that can only be activated manually and destroys everything in a 50 km radius, destroying the asteroid and me.

I think that mortality is irrelevant. What I mean is that regardless of whether or not health is morally right we need to be healthy in order to do anything in the first place. Also health is only the goal in this example but if I used other examples it would become clear that my criterion is different. For example if we shifted to a military scenario it would become clear that certain tactics and strategies historically adopted were later abandoned due to new evidence demonstrating a lack of any value. The same argument would still apply. — Average

But what about when the objective can only be accomplished at the detriment of one's health ? Do you sacrifice it, or is there a point where it's better to fail ?

Please define broad — Average

What I mean is your questions can be broken down into a lot of "smaller questions". But I realize this isn't that much of a problem actually.

Idk I’d prefer to avoid assuming that happiness is the highest good
1h — Average

But we need some assumption to work with. If we don't, then we have to answer the question of what is the good, which is a monumental question by itself before trying to answer your question. So, what do you assume to be the highest good ?

I would use the criteria of medicine. What I mean is that historically some treatments that have been adopted were later abandoned due to new evidence demonstrating the lack of any value. Bleeding a patient would be an example. — Average

What you call the criteria of medicine seems to be health. Problem is, is health morally right ? If so, then are there exceptions ? If me bleeding to death saved a person from being killed, did I do the irght thing ? If yes, then it must be that there are values higher than health.

How do we determine if we are right or wrong? How can we be certain that our actions are actually beneficial and not counterproductive? — Average

As others have pointed out already, you're asking questions that are too broad to be dealt with. We cannot determine whether we are right or wrong if we do not know what is right and what is wrong. A similar problem arises with your second question too.

But still, for the sake of this discussion, let's assume that happiness is the highest Good, like most claim. The question then is how do you determine whether your actions will reduce or increase the amount of happiness in the world.

The answer is that it is extremely hard to do. Of course, if you knew all the relevant variables, like the sensibilities of those who would be impacted, their preferences, etc., then you could determine the morality of the action. But in real life, we very rarely have that information, What you can do instead is look at what you know, and try to learn as much as possible before deciding a course of action.

But what if you don't know anything about the consequences ? The answer is that if possible, do not act. But if you are forced to act, then I'd say you can do whatever you want to, because whatever what you will do, you cannot be held responsible for the consequences.

I guess simulation of touch, smell and taste is absent because it doesn't give an adaptive evolutionary advantage. Sight and hearing simulation helps a lot, which explains why it is present Though I'm not really sure about whether they truly are absent. I can for example imagine the taste of pizza, although the simulation of it feels much less intense than the simulation of the sight of it.

In the grand scheme of things, our actions are insignificant. But our actions are still significant on a smaller scale. A father reassuring his child is trruly important at the scale of the child, but will be insignificant to, let's say, a tribe in South America, or to the Sun, or to Andromeda. Events are significant on our scale because we are beings localized in a specific ( and small) time and space, which means that our subjective world is small enough to make events that are insignificant in the objective world significant.

then your (any!) argument is merely determined — 180 Proof

Could you please clarify that statement? Is it that me making that argument is determined or is it that the existence of the argument itself



Talking about normative ethics cannot be done until we have established whether it is possible or not to even do normative ethics, using normative ethics to establish whether normative ethics are possible is a fundamentally flawed way to approach the problem.

of course there is such a thing. Propaganda is the first step towards censorship, when people are apathetic or are made compliant with propaganda they will not oppose censorship

Who are you talking about when you talk about the powerful ? Do you mean governments, or institutions and individuals capable of making things go their way ?

Assuming you're using the latter definition, then is it not true that modern liberal governments have constitutions preventing censorship ? Is it not true also that private companies often say that they protect free speech ? If those two propositions are true, then it is true that censorship is either illegal, or dishonest, or perhaps both ? Is it not also true that power comes through institutions in the case of governments, and reputation in all other cases ? Then you have your answer, power is not much reliant on censorship, because power can be stripped away when the powerful use censorship, as the peope will not see them in a good light, censorship can only be performed safely by the powerful when the people already are compliant, in which case it is useless.

Yes, it doesn't clarify what is a sufficient reason. But to propose what reasons are sufficient would be doing normative ethics, a consequentialist would say that an action is justified because it causes more utility, a Kantian would something else, and all the others too. This discussion is focused on metaethics. I do not know what kind of reason is sufficient or necessary, just like all human beings. But I'd say that the justification should be logical, such that the morality of the action is required or suppported by the premises, and the premises must be true.

a lack of free will does not justify the action. If a man is forced to kill another by one of his friends, does that mean that the murder was justified ? No, but does that mean that the person who was forced was responsible? No, he was not responsible. We can determine the morality of an action regardless of the responsibility of anyone, one could for example say that the murder was wrong because of the consequences, or because it violated the integrity of a rational agent, or because it was not virtuous, but notice that in all of those previous propositions responsibility is not mentioned. What is moral or immoral is the action, not the fact that the agent was morally responsible or not.

what I mean by justified is that there are sufficient reasons to perform that action. For example, some people say that killing is wrong because you shouldn't kill other people.

Who is to blame? — Prishon

Everyone knowingly contributing to it. That means all Westerners since the introduction of the issue to the public in the 90s and most the rest of the world since the 2000s. Now I know most people would prefer to blame politicians and the elite, and indeed they are to blame, arguably more than the rest of the population, but we must remember that a lot of people in the middle-class use machines exarcebating the problem.

Is it even useful to ask if there is a blame? — Prishon

No, it isn't because it does not help us solve the issue. We can continue the blame game forever
but that won't stop the climate from changing.

is climate change that bad ? — Prishon

Yes, it causes natural disasters.

If you gonna make people stop believing in religions then WHAT could replace God? How can you convince people to be "good — dimosthenis9

Replacing something is a matter of finding something to perform the same function as the replaced object. So whether or not we can replace God depends on what we think religious belief is for.

It follows then that if what we want is motivation to be good, we must find something that makes people good. There's an issue with that though: we do not have any generally agreed upon definition of what is good, and we don't even know whether good and evil exist. But for the sake of answering your question, let's define good as what is accepted by society.

The answer is simple then: the envy to conform, empathy and emotion. When one conforms, one respects societal norms, when one feels empathy, one is not willing to hurt another with the help of emotions like guilt, pity etc. In fact, the first motivatior is the actual wa religion makes us moral, for when religion sets the norm and children are raised to respect it, the people conform to what the religion wants, one can look at Middle Ages Europe for an example.

greater degree of Consciousness — 1 Brother James

What do you mean by that ?

the faculty of "Intuition", which provides that person with bits of Knowledge unobtainable by the brain? — 1 Brother James

What do you mean by intuition ? Do you mean propositions obtained without thinking ? Because if so, then it isn't knowledge, just belief.

when I say proof I mean it in the general sense of proving something is true, whether it is through logic or observation.

Self-cultivation is about the development of your abilities. Philosophy contributes by reflection on what abilities should be developed, and how to develop them.

now that I think about it, consciousness, CSE, and brain states seem to be the same thing. We are aware only of mental images and brain states, and consciousness is the set of things one is aware of. So, I guess those terms are redundant.

Also, I have unfortunately misused the term "consciousness" which led to some mistakes. Indeed, consciousness cannot access brain states, because consciousness is composed of brain states. I think a more appropriate way of saying it is our conscious subjective experience is the result of us being aware of brain states. Or do you have any objection to this ?

I think "aware of" means "knows the existence of".

The color in our brain is an accurate representation of the of the wavelength combination being reflected — MikeF

Yes ! It's a representation of the wavelength combination, not of the object.

We are perceiving the world as it is, and at the very least, it is a gross exaggeration to say what we perceive is very different from the way the world is. — MikeF

I admit, I probably made an exaggeration when saying the world is very different from the way we perceive it. But it is still different in very important ways. We do not perceive every wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum and every sound frequency. There are very important parts of reality that we cannot perceive without the help of external tools.

color, when considered as a part of electromagnetic spectrum, is not an illusion. What I say is an illusion is the mental image of color created by your brain. You are not aware of the color of an object, but it is the wavelengths of the photons reflected by that object that you are aware of.

Air molecules moving is not an illusion too. The illusion is the sounds created by your brain. You are aware of the vibrations caused by the object behaving a certain way.

Yes indeed, our senses give us a good approximation of our environment. But it is only that, an approximation. And indeed, our new tools are very useful too and give us an even better representation of reality, for example more wavelengths and sound frequencies.

I don't really understand what you're saying. Could you clarify it for me please?

when you assign meaning, you use your mind to draw conclusions based on the mental image created by your brain. For example, when I see that a man I don't know stands in front of my home and looks inside, I use my mind to conclude he shouldn't be there.

Usually stupidity is a mob rules kind of thing — Book273

Yes. The most flagrant sign of stupidity is people silencing all those who disagree leading to echo chambers. Both can be found in COVID conspiracy theory communities.

Fear is the best tool. As fear increases, rational thought decreases, and people are more easily led — Book273

Who's more scared, someone who believes that there is a pandemic and that it can be stopped or someone who believes that there is a massive conspiracy by the elite ? Which threat is the hardest to stop ? An important component of fear is the feeling of powerlessness.

Also, emotions evolved for a reason. They often point to a problem to solve. Granted, accepting someone else's solution without thinking is bad, but pretending there's no problem at all is bad too.

what do you consider infinite good ? If there are people in Hell for an eternity wouldn’t that be infinite evil ?

what I mean is that our perception of the world is an image constructed by our brains based on signals. Those signals, like air or water moving, are not the objects in-themselves. They're influenced by the objects we perceive, but specific properties that objects seem to have because of those mediums are not real. Color, for example, is simply photons of differing wavelengths xollected by photoreceptor cells that the brain processes to create the illusion of color. Sound, is simply molecules pushing each other that makes certain parts of our ears vibrate, and it then processes by the brain. Those properties constructed by the brain are what are commonly called secondary qualities or phenomenon in philosophy.

There are however, other properties that objects have that our brain allows us to perceive. Shape, size, mass, volume are examples. Shape, for example, is perceived because the photons coming from an objects are arranged a certain way because of the actual Shape of the object. If a photon bounces off a ball, the ball will seem round because of the way the photons bounced off the ball. Think of it as this way, you have the actual like shape, like a circle, and the photons bounce at certain points within that shape, and if you placed a point on every point a photon bounced, the shape would be full, in the case of the circle, that means that all points of equal or lower distance to the circumcenter than the radius would have been touched by a photon, and the points would form a filled shape, for lack of a better word. For the other more quantitative properties, you simply use the aforementioned filled shape and measure parys of it and if needed you perform the necessary calculations. This is commonly called primary qualities or noumenon in philosophy.

Honestly I don't know whether or not all consciousness is CSE. I can't think of a mental image that is subconscious or unconscious, apart from maybe the circadian rhythm, but I don't know if it can be considered a mental image. Anyway, what do you think ?

could you please clarify your question? I don't really understand what you mean. If my understanding of your question is correct, then I'd say all CSE is intentionality towards an object, that is consciousness of something.

the hard problem is about how experience arises from non-sentient matter, not whether or not it arises from it. We know for example that certain areas of our brain are activated when doing logic, math, reasoning, and that particular types of neurotransmitters are associated with particular emotions.

And about representational drift, the subject of the article, it means simply that we don't know how thoughts arise from patterns of neuron activation. But, we do know that there are neurons that activate, though we don't know why the activated neurons change. And even then, we still do know that certain brain regions, as opposed to specific neurons are activated by a specific activity. For example, if you try to compute something, your motor regions are not going to be activated, while other regions will be. Our understanding of the brain is very incomplete, of the mind, even more so, but we already know that there is a relationship between body and mind, though we do not understand it yet.

To the second article, Bennet and Hacker are against the current remnants of Cartesianism in neuroscience and the understanding of the mind based ONLY on the brain, which means that we can understand the mind at least more completely in material terms if we studied other objects than the brain. I agree with this, you can't understand perception by ignoring the eye or the ear. This is not to say that the mind is entirely physical, it must be physical at least in part, and as I've said before, there is mounting evidence that essential parts of the mind can and are studied empirically.

But those emerging technologies work by associating brain states with certain actions, like moving up or down. I'm not saying we can understand our conscious experience by understanding the brain, this isn't possible at the moment, as we do not know exactly what is the nature of the relationship between consciousness and brain states, for example we don't know how the sensation of pain arises from C-fiber firings, but we do know that the strong correlation indicates at least some level of influence from brain states.

A brain is a thing, but is a state of a thing also a thing? — Mww

Of course, a man is a thing and so is an angry man, or an happy man. Or did you mean something else by state of a thing ?

For states to enter something is an effect on it. What is the cause? — Mww

I don't really get what you mean, could you clarify please ?

Crying isn’t a noun but can it not be considered a perceived regularity? — Mww

Yes of course. It seems that I have made a mistake by limiting perceived regularities to nouns. Apparently it also can be a verb, adjective, or an adverb.

If consciousness is the set of all things, and the set of all things changes, wouldn’t consciousness change? — Mww

.
Consciousness is the set of all things an agent is aware of. That is, intentionality is a defining feature of consciousness.

There are mind-controlled drones that work by the mere operation of thought that work by observing brain states. Or maybe am I wrong and they work in a different way ?

Living an examined life means evaluating our past or current behavior and beliefs by applying moral principles and reason. That's my take on the subject.

It seems to me that when talking about philosophy as a way of life, we have to distinguish between using philosophy as a guiding principle, and using it to express those principles. Stoicism, as a way of life, belongs to the first category. Diogenes' lifestyle belongs to both categories. Philosophy as a way of life the, is about bringing the abstract values and principles down to our lifestyle, and/or using our lifestyle as a voice when we do not want or cannot speak.

What do you mean by intelligence ?

Given what we currently know for sure about the universe, humans are quite special. We are the only known non-extinct species capable of language, we have a physiology and neurophysiology that makes us able to use and make tools, and we are capable of observing and reflecting on the world around us in a way no other known form of life can.

But of course, we are ultimately governed by the same laws than the rest of the world. We are like a aircraft carrier in a storm, better than a raft, but still vulnerable.

They will be given the opportunity to live much longer - forever, even - but at the cost of filling a slot in the system that provides this opportunity to them. — darthbarracuda

What do you mean by "filling a slot" ? And by system ?

It will make people more dependent on technology than ever before — darthbarracuda

What do you mean exactly by dependant on technology ?

They will live longer, but they will utterly helpless without the state — darthbarracuda

1. Why would they be helpless ? And why to the state ? And what do you mean exactly by helpless ?
2. If someone owns a company, never falls sick, is immortal, doesn't need government support, and in general has a comfortable life that they have made for themselves, does that make them helpless ?
3. Why does lack of aging entail helplesness ? If you never need to go to the hospital, and that you have an eternity to get a comfortable life, why would you be helpless ?

They will never learn how to face death properly, but will instead keep running away, clinging to science to save them again and again, because when the possibility of escaping death is available, it will be considered suicide to not take advantage of it — darthbarracuda

1. What do you mean exactly by facing death properly ?
2. It SHOULD be considered suicide, imagine if you are about to fall off a bridge, and that someone tells you to grab their hand, if you don't want to grab it, but that you can, isn't that suicide ?
3. Why wouldn't they face death properly ? You later say in your post that they could still die at any moment, in a traumatic way, so wouldn't they be even more ready to face death, as they would have much more time to prepare for it. And why would they need to face death ? If you are unlikely to die at all, then why would you need to prepare for it ? This is like saying a person unlikely to ever be hungry must learn to face hunger properly.

It will be pathetic, nobody will be brave, their freedom will be manufactured, and nobody will understand the respect and dignity given to those who age and die, because everyone will be more and more similar and thus evaluated only by how they perform in the workplace. — darthbarracuda

1. More and more similar in what ways ? And by their freedom will be manufactured ?
2. Why would they become more similar ?
3. If they are more similar, then why would they be evaluated ? Why evaluate people if they are all the same ?

The elderly were respected in ancient times and before then, because they had accumulated wisdom. With the printing press (a major technological innovation), their wisdom could now be mass produced in books. Old people got pushed to the side. Sinclair believes that another technological innovation could bring old people back into relevance by putting them back into the workforce - but it was technology that made them irrelevant to begin with! — darthbarracuda

Elders can today make their knowledge even more widespread throug writing. Their knowledge can transcend their lifetimes. If their lifetimes become infinitely long, they would be able to tell stories the way they used to before, and wouldn't need to have to write down everything.

What is behind the new role of history in the US? — Number2018

The need to contextualize the current situation in the US. That is, Americans need to know why the world is the way it is right now. This applies to the rest of the world too. History shouldn't just be about remembering some facts about what happened before, it should help us understand our own world too.

What is the point? — SteveMinjares

1. Knowledge, that is forming justified true beliefs on the the existence or non-existence of God in the theis sense of the word.
2. Religions give lots of rules to follow, if God doesn't exist then these rules are unjustified, so knowing whether or not God exists is important for ethics.

You shouldn’t care what others think and believe. — SteveMinjares

1. So if someone believes that we should exterminate a certain ethnic group we shouldn't care about their beliefs ?
2. Why shouldn't we care ?

To me asking why we believe is insinuating that you have doubts about your own convictions and are considering other faith or ideals — SteveMinjares

1. Assuming that this is true, then that would mean that we are open-minded, which apparently is something you value deeply.
2. Why do you think so ?

So why ask the question, if you don’t care? — SteveMinjares

If we didn't care, we wouldn't ask the question. But we do care.

I am a Christian cause it bring me joy and happiness — SteveMinjares

1. What is your definition of joy ? And happiness ?
2. Why does it bring you joy and happiness ?
3. So if someone's belief that all theists are simple-minded and dumb brings them joy and happiness, does that justify his belief ?

Happiness shouldn’t be rationalized — SteveMinjares

1. What do you mean by rationalized ?
2. So we shouldn't try to rationalize the happiness a serial killer feels when killing his victims.
3. Why shouldn't we ?

Is a belief that I follow that release me from my anxiety and depression, it brings positive thinking and optimists to my life — SteveMinjares

Yeah. So ?

What is so irrational about pursuing happiness? Why is this concept so hard to understand? — SteveMinjares

I don't know. Do you think happiness is rational ? If so, tell me why.

But don’t pass these philosophical questioning about God as intellectual reasoning you aren’t fooling any one. We all know is a desire to express stereotyping and discriminator thinking. — SteveMinjares

1. What do you mean by stereotyping ? And intellectual reasoning ? And discriminatory thinking ?
2. So if a kid questions God's existence he is discriminating and stereotyping ?
3. Why do you think that questionning entails discrimination and stereotyping ?