Even if they're not exactly the same, I'd say they're quite close. — Tzeentch

Jesus. Did you measure the distance in kilometers or feet?

I say, this is one of those cases where any difference seals it, and no amount of negotiation as to how far or close the definition is should change the nature of each.

Is the idea of 'philosophical counselling', a
wasteful project or something that acts
as a basis of potential?

Would you be content to rent an office and
get a signwriter to place your name next to
the title, 'philosophical counsellor'? — Alexander Hine

The ancients did have this. They were called sophós. Other names for other culture existed too.
So, in modern times, the nameplate on the door of your office should simply be "Sage".
If you were a sage, you had reached the pinnacle of virtue and wisdom and other thinkers or philosophers would pay you a visit to hear you speak.
I think you should try it. Good idea.

A friend once said, "Men are dumb and women are selfish".

That's a view the sums up her opinion of people. It's a very one-dimensional thought.
So, I responded: What are things that think with their dick? She said, "Yes."

In the news, a mother that lived with her children in squalor had one child born with a deadly SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency), though perhaps a milder form. So imagine the irony of the situation.

Without a proper facility in which to place the child, the mother decided to create the child's own bubble free of infection. All white, sanitized, bleached, dust free blankets within their tiny home -- all the rest of home could go dirty, but this child's space was kept immaculate twenty four hours a day seven days a week. The child at the time had reached the 5th birthday, and counting.

Any insights you can shed on this subject is valued. — Bret Bernhoft

I answered no. They are not the same thing. With prayers, we take our chances, with humility, to be heard. We acknowledge the power and graciousness of the God. So, whatever we pray for, asking for help or giving thanks, we are exposing our vulnerability and fears while being aware that we might not be heard after all because God has other plans for us.

I have made no secret here that I hate capitalism and think it is the cause of most of societies ills. — unimportant

Your OP reads as if we are experiencing absolute capitalism. Far from it.

There are many aspects of our society, hence aspects of our lives, that are not dictated by profit and high-risk high-reward principles. One of the greatest tragedies of the growth of capitalism is that we learned to hate governance and the leaders of our countries. Nothing the government does can be trusted. And so, we destroy ourselves because, apparently, not even medicine and science can cure idiocy.

If our society truly behaves like it's one big planet-size stock market, nothing, and I mean nothing that a fail-safe back-up plan can save us. Life would be one generation removed from extinction.

It's less 'have given up' and much more "they've been defeated'. It is extremely difficult to overcome the legal barriers erected against unionization; equally difficult is attempting to organize a company when the workers are deluged by anti-union messaging and threats. Fewer and fewer workers have experienced work in an effectively unionized company. — BC

Yes, union membership is now at its lowest. I think the inflexibility of a union is one of the reasons also. Speaking of which, look what is happening now with UPS and Amazon. UPS has laid off thousands, and will continue this year about 30k more due to the nonprofitability suffered by UPS under contract with Amazon.

The issue isn't racketeering, but a lack of motivation for proactive action. — Astorre

Yes, that is the risk. In fact, I mentioned before in another thread that there had been two experiments done on UBI in which selected individuals were provided supplemental income unconditionally to help with expenses and/or to get training for a better job/higher income. The results in both were the same, the participants did not get motivated to earn more or get a job.

First, pensions were a fine concept but those huge reserves made companies targets of corporate raiders who would buy the companies, transfer the pension money away, then send (their own company) into bankruptcy. Better to have an IRA and 401K with your name on it. — LuckyR

Good point, but I don't know how prevalent this phenomenon is.

All the rest of your comments, :up:

:lol: Perfect description!

To be more specific, the notion that democracy ignores the external influence of power, is an illusion. But did anyone actually believe this naive concept? — LuckyR

The public, consisting of the average people, is people's worst enemy.
One, the workforce (labor) seems to have given up on fighting for stronger economic condition. The pension plan had been eliminated by most corporations. What we're left with is compensation deferrals -- which is not a pension, but workers' own fruit of labor being set aside for their own subsidy in old age. Not everyone can afford to contribute to their own retirement accounts, at least meaningfully. And no one protested on the street when pension disappeared.

Two, we do not try to understand how our money held in banks and retirement accounts are being invested. The big money is beyond our comprehension -- we are passively providing the investment for corporations that, with their oligarchic behavior influencing government policies that benefit their wealth, uses money that eventually destroys us.

Three -- there is something to understand about living wages. The minimum wage is not a living wage. But increasing the minimum wage affects most small businesses and all other benefits that can be provided to the workers.

Four -- health insurance and affordable housing. I live in HCOL area, I just cannot understand how local governments can allow housing costs to go out of control without corresponding wages going out of control to match the housing costs.
And why is the social security administration still stuck in the old policy of not taxing all wages? Instead, the higher wages are not taxed after a certain amount.

Five -- taxation of the wealthy the size of the galaxy.

Just a reminder to everyone to wear a quality headphones when listening to music.
You get high fidelity sound and the sound details you wouldn't otherwise catch without one.

This isn't pure inflation due to shortages, but rather a market distortion due to a lack of incentives for production and competition. — Astorre

You missed the part of my post where I said with a combination of government services and universal basic income.
There is a way to do it without the world becoming a racketeering ghetto.

1. Humans remain needed as consumers, but not as producers. Given that the population of our planet is much higher today than in previous times, the problem is intensifying. So, how should people earn their living? Perhaps they can fill a niche in services? But even this is not infinite and will eventually be automated over time. — Astorre

It's been suggested that one solution is to provide a combination of government services and universal basic income for those that have been displaced by AI. Many workers just cannot retrain or transition fast enough to other field of work either due to age or abilities or economic reasons.
In the past displacement wasn't because there's a faster machine/AI that can do the jobs, it's because supply and demand drove the changes.
Retraining was also offered for free as a parallel transition to other jobs.
Today, it's a different fight.

3. How will a market economy cope with this challenge? After all, if we simply start handing out money to people simply for living, inflation will instantly reduce this money to nothing. Prices will simply rise. For example, if tomorrow everyone had one million dollars, then a loaf of bread would cost a million dollars. — Astorre

Would it?
Are you saying that competition for business would also disappear?
You just don't hand out money -- like during Covid. Yes, that's a good example of just handing out money. Let's use that as a lesson.

What depth of rumination can we transfer to the floor of conscious deliberation here at the Philosophy Forum? — Alexander Hine

That ethics is in the heart of governance.

I and, I'm sure, some of the members here would like see some arguments about the national security as it relates to personal data gathering and tracking of individual movements across borders and across cyber domains.

Local compute is being phased out! That's my point, not which country is making them! — BenMcLean

Fine.

True, there is a 'pressure' put on businesses to go cloud storage rather than giving businesses scale options. Most businesses are small enough to not depend on cloud for day to day operations.

This wouldn't be such a huge concern in itself if we saw a market correction to deal with it by increasing supply coming soon but instead, Micron / Crucial decided they're leaving the consumer computer hardware market altogether to focus exclusively on cloud and the clear indication across the whole industry is that they are going to intentionally reduce consumer computer hardware supply across the board, specifically to force everybody onto cloud subscriptions for everything. It seems to be happening. — BenMcLean

You got the right trajectory of events, but incorrect insight. Semiconductors have increased in production -- but maybe not in the US. Do you know whose the biggest supplier of Nvidia? Taiwan Semiconductor. Their chips production is being subsidized, not just financially, but also politically, by none other than the big C.
It got too costly to produce in the US.

Maybe you think I'm being paranoid, — BenMcLean

Well no. Just try to see where the funds come and go.

Maybe you haven't been following recent news in the computer hardware market? — BenMcLean

Do tell.

Consciousness seems like a flashlight in a dark room. We move the flashlight around and come to know what was already there. — frank

So, you are a realist!
Good analogy.

Good analysis.

What scares me is that "AI" being based on a subscription model accelerates a trend which was happening long before it -- cloud computing not just supplementing but totally replacing local compute. — BenMcLean

So servers will become obsolete?
Big companies use a hybrid of their own servers and public cloud.

What we've seen happen recently isn't just the death of Moore's Law but a clear technological regression -- the baseline requirement for the computer gaming market has actually reduced its specification for the first time in history, from 16 GB RAM back down to 8 GB RAM. This is totally unprecedented and the implication is really disturbing. — BenMcLean

I truly don't understand the sentiment here because upgrades are available.

That’s a good point. The here and now of conscious awareness is the absolute starting point for Husserlian phenomenology. Heidegger and Derrida as well accept the absolute primacy of the experienced now. Their deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence aims to show that within the now itself there is a bifurcation or hinge even more intimate than pure presence. So they dont look outside of the now to what is beyond our immediate awareness, but within this assumed immediacy. — Joshs

Good!

I think of the things outside of our immediate awareness as scaffolding necessary to hold our attention to what's within our means to perceive the world.

I would hope actually that there would be a philosophical debate about war in this forum. Too easily it becomes related to current events and ongoing wars. And this is already this OP is found the lounge, not in "ethics" or in "political philosophy". — ssu

Good point!
I'm glad you're pointing this out.

I've stayed away from -- not even reading-- threads about war because the topic becomes a series of postings about current events.

There is the political philosophy proper to discuss this:
The just war theory and ethics in the battlegrounds.
The ethics of diplomacy and negotiations should also be included here.

Largely, yes. But not because the theory is necessarily “wrong.”

You’re right to push back on such a big claim. But try to think of it less as reinventing the wheel and more of talking about the chariot. Doing so doesn’t negate the wheel’s invention, it’s simply talking about something else, albeit adjacent. — Mikie

You're supposed to dig deeper into the philosophers' work you cited in your OP. Then you can make an argument for or against it. This is what I wanted to say. But if you're not at all threading into their waters, but just want to name the subject, I don't think it's fair to name drop either.

I see that there's still confusion happening on this thread, at two pages of it.

Now you can make an argument that everything from gravity to behavior that’s “second nature” all happen in the present, but that’s begging the question. It’s essentially saying “x is present because it happens in the present.” From one perspective, this makes perfect sense: everything happens in the present, then becomes past in memory while pushing into the unknown future. Like a moving point on a number line. But this perspective is exactly what’s being questioned. — Mikie

That's the thing -- we can't even make a memory out of something that's outside of our consciousness. And no, the argument in quotes "x is present because it happens in the present" is not even a proper argument. I'm just pointing out to you when I used the ANS that what's hidden from consciousness may not necessarily be at a disadvantaged given that humans have a propensity to favor the clear and present perception.

According to my daimon Marcus Tullius Cicero "[t]here's nothing so absurd but some philosopher has already said it." And that was in 44 BCE!

I would amend that statement, or perhaps it would be more correct to say expand on in light of the subject matter: There's nothing more otiose but some philosopher has already proclaimed it.

And now some words from John Dewey: "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device
for dealing with the problems of philosophers
and beomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men." — Ciceronianus

Oh the irony! :lol:

Or hypocrisy?

Philosophers do not re-invent the wheel, but rather try to build on what's already been presented by past thinkers. — L'éléphant
Like Aristotle and Plato, yes. But if that presentation obscures something, we should think about it anew. — Mikie

Not the way the hermeneuts would do it. As I said, philosophers try to avoid reinventing the wheel. If you believe we should think anew, you are essentially saying we should discard what's already been annotated, reviewed, argued, critiqued, and defended. In other words, we should discard what's already been theorized.

Should we come up with our own view from scratch? What do you think theories are? Made from scratch? No! There are axioms, ideas, and truths collected from past works that make up a theory.

I like to think of it as studying unconscious (absence) behavior as opposed to conscious behavior. — Mikie

So, you don't think the autonomic nervous system doesn't happen in the present? It's a system that works without us being conscious of it. Please try to give a better example.
Gravity is something we're not conscious of. We were told about it. But it's happening now.

When I saw the thread title, my first thought was as in communion in Christianity. The presence of spirit. — Punshhh

Yes, good catch.

They’re arguing about the tendency to treat presence as self-affecting presence to self, A=A. What is colloquially called ‘real time’ is treated as a metric placed over events. — Joshs

Please expand on this as I'm no clear on its meaning.

One way to open a thread on this topic is to define "presence" the way it is defined within the confines of philosophy. Philosophers do not re-invent the wheel, but rather try to build on what's already been presented by past thinkers.

So, metaphysics of presence as opposed to what? By providing this piece of information, it would be clearer to understand. And just to add to this understanding, the metaphysics of presence is a critique against the privilege that we put on the 'now'-- the world as we experience it in real time.

So what are they arguing about?

As trial and error, the probability of mistakes and bad outcomes is many degrees higher than the likelihood of good outcomes, so the thing must be closely monitored, caged to avoid letting loose the monster. However, since it is possible to make many many trials, the probability of discovering something good, eventually, is also quite high. The issue would be to define what "good" is in this context. Some would say, probably many would say, "we ought not interfere with God, therefore there is no possibility of good here", but that's an absolutist, exclusionary, and probably unrealistic approach. We already have GMOs. — Metaphysician Undercover

The experimental stage should be as important as the application itself when considering ethics here. Yes, many many trials are possible, but at whose expense? What happens to the subjects when there's an error? So, the ethical inquiry must be a continuous examination all throughout the stages of the project.

I do sympathize with the notion of "we ought not to interfere with God" because the underlying sentiment in this is the naturally given attributes or properties of things in the world before man-made things become normal. There are actually efforts throughout the world to preserve the unmodified flora and fauna for the next generations who would otherwise not experience the wild origins of things.

In other words, it is a kind of philosophy that destroys humanity. When you try to understand anything, you are turning not only that thing into an object, but yourself as well into an object. — Angelo Cannata

In a manner of speaking.

We ourselves are an object of inquiry. But it doesn't mean we are mere objects like rocks and chairs. I think there is a difference between referential -- we are the object of inquiry; and the practical objects we see.

I realize that rocks and things may not be what you have in mind. Objectification is. But if that is so, then objectification is more a political rather than a philosophical notion.

Okay, then we disagree.

Not sure why we’re talking about relativism or what it can or cannot say. We’ve already discussed the well-established relativist fallacy in this thread and dealt with it, I do not disagree with it.

I’ve been trying to explore anti-foundationalism. — Tom Storm

Understood.

How could there be any such thing in a temporal world — Janus

Which has been used as a counter argument many times before.
This is like saying, how could there be consciousness when we live in a temporal world?
Are you saying that the existence of consciousness is just a matter of people's cultures or an agreement among people? What about the existence of gravity? Did we just agree among ourselves that gravity is real, or does it exist independent of what we feel? (Here, I am making a parallel argument, given that consciousness or gravity is a topic of a different nature)

And I'm not saying there is no universal moral truth, I am deflating the notion of universal moral truth to a more human and less rigid scale. I am making an empirical claim for more or less universal facts concerning what humans everywhere value and dis-value. — Janus

Again, a repeat of the quote I made above. The universal moral truth, if you agree that there is such a thing, is independent of what we value or do not value. That the moral truth coincides or addresses the things we value is of a different discussion. Our upbringing and customs and traditions are matters of moral relativism, not objective morality.

When paired with AI-driven gene expression models, the possibility arises of dynamically editable DNA a codebase not just inherited, but upgradable. Researchers such as Venter (2023) have proposed synthetic “xenogenomes” for future human-machine interfaces, where artificial nucleotides interact with embedded processors to form hybridized bio-digital systems. This raises the possibility of DNA encoding both biological traits and computational logic. — Post-Human Biotechnologies: Toward Recursive Intelligence and Bio-Digital Identity

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the ethical implications of this new form of technology called biodigital convergence. — Metaphysician Undercover

For ethical considerations - whether the editing is done on somatic or germ cells, the first thing we would want to see is regulation of research and the eventual applications of those findings. The risk associated with errors. And it is even riskier with the inherited genes.
We have been repeating the mantra the 'end justifies the means' -- we may be hoping for the betterment of humanity, but the process leading to it should be scrutinized carefully due to the possible "catastrophic" results.

Of course, we would like to see gene editing to address the disorders passed down from parents to child. This should be one of the primary reasons why we should support this kind of research. But what happens if errors were made?

And upgradable? Are we now headed to creating a new population of athletes that are semi-bionic? (Just an example)

Examples of biodigital convergence should be provided.

1. pace makers
2. genetic manipulation to produce desired behavior or charateristics
3. wearable device such as timed insulin delivery
4. I would say targeted treatment for certain diseases

Are these good examples?

Anti-foundationalism isn’t the same as moral relativism. Relativism says what’s right or wrong depends entirely on culture or individual preference. Anti-foundationalism doesn’t make any claim about what is right or wrong; it only questions whether there are absolute, universal moral truths. It’s about how we justify moral claims, not about the content of those claims, so you can be anti-foundationalist without saying “anything goes.” — Tom Storm

Please see my post above in response to Janus as to why I disagree with your post.

In philosophy, the justification for any belief-- moral, scientific, or metaphysical-- is a warranted reason (not emotions or feelings) given in a claim or assertion. It is objective.

You said: Relativism says what’s right or wrong depends entirely on culture or individual preference..
This is a claim (see the epistemic meaning of a claim or assertion), which the relativist cannot make because it is self-contradictory.

@AmadeusD please see below for my response to Janus:

It doesn't have to be a universal claim, but merely an observation that no one has been able to present a universal truth, such that the unbiased would be rationally compelled to accept it. The closest we can get, in my view is the empirical observation that things like murder, rape, theft, devious deception and exploitation are despised by most people across cultures. The only caveat being that those things may be not universally disapproved of if they are done to the "enemy" or even anyone who is seen as "other". — Janus

I'm not sure we are on the same page as far as the meaning of universal moral truths. The working definition of 'universal', as I am using it, is that it is objective and timeless and its weight is measured as true or false. They're moral principles that are not restricted by culture, period, or societal values.

That said, I have explained that moral relativists -- which is what you're describing -- cannot then make a claim (someone else mentioned this @Esse Quam Videri) or a judgment (which, in philosophy is actually a proposition or assertion) that "there is no universal moral truth, only disapproval of despicable acts by most people across cultures" because this claim is an assertion, thereby contradicting their own principle.

Essentially you are making an assertion, the value of which is measured by the truth or falsity of your belief. That is why it is self-contradictory.

So, I think that any foundation which is not simply based on the idea that to harm others is bad and to help others is good, per se, is doomed to relativism, since those dispositions are in rational pragmatic alignment with social needs and they also align with common feeling, and also simply because people don't universally, or even generally, accept any other foundation such as God as lawgiver, or Karmic penalties for moral transgressions or whatever else you can think of. — Janus

We can't combine 'foundation' with relativism by virtue of relativism's subjective stance on harm, for example. Relativism denies the objective moral truth.

Foundationalism, on the other hand, is, at its core, an epistemic principle whose theory is based on axioms and justification. (I've already given the philosophical definition of 'universal' above -- not to be confused with 'the general or majority of the population).

What I am interested in here is whether it is possible to make moral claims from either position. I can certainly see how simple relativism makes it a performative contradiction. Hence the relativist fallacy.

Anti-foundationalists, by contrast, hold that we can still justify our views through shared practices, shared goals and reasoning, even if there’s no single universal truth to ground them.

For instance, morality could be seen as something that grows out of human agreements, pragmatic necessities and dialogue rather than absolute rules — Tom Storm

First of all, Tom, your OP makes a very good point.

But to @Janus -- you touched on the heart of the argument between foundationalism and other forms of moral arguments such as relativism.

The one thing that is always missed in discussions like this is that while the foundationalist view claims that there are universal moral truth, anyone who argued against foundationalism is also making -- though maybe not intentionally and without awareness -- a 'universal' claim, mainly that there is no universal truth and morality is based on cultural differences..

So a relativist has a conundrum -- how to make an argument against foundationalism without making a universal or truth-based claim?

Here is an example, as described by Leontiskos:

Then you're committed to the value of human flourishing and you think everyone should recognize your value whether or not they do. In that case you would seem to be a moral realist, someone who sees human flourishing as an intrinsic telos of human beings. — Leontiskos

Moral realism, just like foundationalism, claims that there are moral truths that are not constrained by one's culture, customs, or society.

Relativism is a peculiar position because it is a view one cannot hold without also claiming moral truth which is the very thing it purports to deny.

To juxtapose another moral claim -- moral intuitionists can actually make an argument against moral realism because the former is not denying that there is no objective morality, only that the discovery of moral truths is self-evident.

if you're in communication with people trying to burn down a hotel, and you're saying burn down the hotel, I'm not so sure this would be protected speech there either. — Mijin

You could get arrested or investigated. It's in the context of that moment.

Good luck!

Though it is for Christmas, here's the lunar new year good luck:

Did the OP abandon this thread?

I'm confused. Do we both agree that natural and normal are two different things?

how do you define it? — Copernicus

Natural in the sense that something is natural in a subject due to the subject's existing conditions -- negative or positive environmental factors. That's why it is trendy because its environmental factors could change after a period of time. A good example of this is the human life expectancy over 100 years ago compared to now.

Normal in the sense that it is undoubtedly in the scientific sense that homo sapiens is different from homo neanderthalensis. They cannot interchange each other as differences in cranial and brow bones are significantly different.

[Edit]
So to me, the definition of normal is one of a hard-and-fast condition in which the features or properties of a subject are the benchmark for measurement.

I just find that Hume's sceptical account of everyday causality, very true in itself, doesn't really take into account the advances of modern science, say like theoretical physics. — hwyl

You just pinpointed what is Hume's empirical observation -- it's not about theory or logical deduction. It's about an ordinary person's direct experience or observation at the moment.

So if that's your criticism on Hume's skeptical account of causality, then you're not disagreeing with him.

No one is ever average... — Banno

There is a pattern here in this thread. Rules are made up as we go.