Therefore, if we cannot produce correct axioms, then we must have no objectively correct moral claims.

However, there is something implicit in this assertion; there could be multiple reasons we cannot produce correct moral axioms: — ToothyMaw

You are conflating specific moral beliefs with logical truth of a claim. Take for example Mill's explanation of offense-- freedom from assault, the right to ban intoxication in public, the right to ban smoking inside buildings, etc. -- the Harm Principle.

When philosophers say that animal abuse is unethical, they are not necessarily invoking some axioms that have already been proven to be logically true. But they make sense in saying, and rightly so, that animals feel pain, loneliness, hunger, and fear and animals desire social interaction and protection by using various evidence from science, the anatomy, and the relationship they observe between animals and between people and animals. The distress felt by people when witnessing the abuse is real, and pain is real, and so are hunger, loneliness, fear. The philosophers, and their adherents, are using reasoning or a reasonable explanation of why something is harmful or offensive.

Now of course, the philosophers are also aware of the universal implication of individual experiences -- so they come up with universal claims such as the golden rule, veil of ignorance, the harm principle, categorical imperative, etc.

If you take that all together, a moral axiom can be formulated, and they have already been formulated, so that we couldn't deny its truth without also imploding internally due to the difficulty of reconciling what our mind tells us and what we write for the sake of discussion, like this.

When everyday people were surveyed - and I believe these results have been replicated - people who are given the ‘Harm’ scenario say the CEO were, and by a large majority, more likely to think to bring about the side effect intentionally. On the flip side, people given the ‘Help’ scenario were very likely to think the CEO brought about that scenario unintentionally.

There is currently no general consensus as for why this is, but the tendency is to frame it as a difference between morality of the two scenarios. What do you think? — invizzy

I couldn't think of any other reason for this syndrome than the idea that those surveyed, or I guess those that represent us all, thought that "making profit" just don't mesh with the environment -- the default thinking is that people are immoral.

If people's self-interest harms the environment, it's because people are by default immoral. If people's self-interest helps the environment, it's only by accident that the environment benefits, because people are by default immoral.

Is there any justification for censorship of any kind? — Vera Mont

Yes, the family unit has the right to ban some reading materials from their household. If you or an organization starts censoring the family unit of that banning, then where does that leave all of us?

What has philosophy answered for use [sic] in the previous 100 years? — TiredThinker

For the last 100 years, it's the role of the individual in society.

All the important metaphysical questions have already been written and defended vigorously prior to this period. Most especially the ultimate reality and the self.

However, it's possible to have rapid outbreaks of false information on this network that can't self correct in real time. For a person experiencing this rapid onset, there would be a sense that his biology is acting normally but at extreme activity levels (in an attempt to self correct) but information seems to be scrambled and erratic, unpredictable compared to normal. And when he arrives for professional psychiatric treatment he will be told his biology is failing and requires medication. — Mark Nyquist

While I appreciate this very noble theorizing or speculating, this is highly intractable to even be called a theory. Do we know how information get scrambled in one's mind? I mean, we have distortion of information based on the five senses -- senses are fallible. We can be deceived. At the same time, we sometimes think erroneously because we tend to jump to conclusions with not enough information. But all these have external causes.

To get a mental image of this, imagine a virus on a computer network. Agent Based Models are a way to computer model this and simple models can show progression of a virus moving from node to node on networks with some nodes affected and other nodes unaffected. In biological brains the biology can be functioning normally but the corrupted networks of mental content are the cause of the abnormal condition. — Mark Nyquist

No, I disagree with this analogy. Virus are tractable, they are predictable, otherwise we stand no chance in stopping them. I don't care if this is an organism or a computer virus.

This is pretty much where I was heading. Do you think that is just a congenital or organic deficiency? Or did they lose or renounce the ability to be rational? — Pantagruel

On the question of whether sociopaths are born, not made, I believe if we looked at the historical evidence, most, if not all, of them showed signs that it's always been in them, which means they were born with that trait. Ted Bundy, as an example, at one point tried to convince the public that he wasn't, that he got to be that way because of his own doing -- obsession with sexual violence on film. He claimed he grew up in a normal family environment. etc. This is all bullshit. (though it was true that he didn't suffer from abuse, or that he grew up in a normal family) If you looked at the footages of his capture, when he was being moved from one location to another, or just walking to the courtroom escorted by the police, you'd see how he didn't have command of his mind. Somehow, this man, during his interview, wanted so much to show a side of him that's sophisticated and educated. A far cry from the irrationality of how he victimized those women.

If B could only occur after A's occurrence, yes. Otherwise, A and B could be concurrent.

If thinking is strategic, is it therefore also rational? Is it possible to be a criminal, and also rational, in the strictest sense of the word? What about reasonable? — Pantagruel

I was thinking of a criminal. Who can have high situational-awareness and make complex plans. But is that sufficient to rationality? — Pantagruel

I'm late in the game, and lots of rational thinking on this thread.

But my response to the above is:
Yes, one can be strategic (based on how you define it) but not rational. Sociopaths can be highly strategic and able to make complex plans, but they are not rational. Their thinking patterns are done in a vacuum, without regard to the people around them, their own situation or location, or their environment. Not sure if you've heard or read about a brief comic illustration of the mind of a sociopath. Here's a version of that example:

A man attended his uncle's funeral and saw a beautiful woman among the mourners. Knowing nothing else of the woman, but wanting to see her again, he killed his aunt.

With the ease at how we can now buy goods online, there's exponential increase in packaging (layers of materials and big boxes disproportionate in size to the goods we buy), production of goods (mostly non-essentials), trucks delivery (fuel, exhaust, traffic, and of course vehicle maintenance), warehouses to house these good, and of course, landfill wastes.

This is a scary thread. :shade:

Oil painting — praxis

I admired your paintings. Also the kale.

*not sure why I missed this thread?*

In my circles, RPG is rocket propelled grenade. — James Riley

:grin:

First, what's a job marketplace but people selling their time and strength and skill to other people? How does one assess its state of health?

And then: What else happens when automation eliminates jobs? More goods are produced, faster. More resources are used up faster. more waste is produced and released into the air, water and land faster. It literally eats the planet. Meanwhile, the people who have no jobs have no income. So who's buying all that product? Does it go straight from the factory into the landfill, like the packaging it comes in? People have to clean up the waste. — Vera Mont

A while back, if someone asked me the same question in the OP, I would have said that automation will carry us all to the sunrise and a happy ending.

Man was I wrong in that thought!

You nailed it when you said that a marketplace is full of people selling their skills and strength. The Earth should be taken care of by people who see a future and hope in their own abilities to affect their surrounding. You take those out of people and you get instead a shell of cogs walking around and thinking nothing but paycheck or the next gig or the next short term assignments. We would be full of people who now must constantly metamorphose according to the latest technology, no matter how useless this new technology is, how cost-prohibitive, and how short-lived its appearance into the limelight because there's always the next best thing to come out of the showroom.

We would be a bunch of followers of the "cool", with the name of the billionaire attached to its logo, and no longer able to understand what it means to be connected to the earth.

Man, as a person just getting into philosophy, this worries me. If I do my best in constructing an argument that happens to be sorta shitty due to my lack of experience, should I expect to be reamed like this? Is this kind of conduct expected around here? — Matt E

:sweat:

Welcome to the forum, Matt.

What then are we to make of eating meat? How could we compromise and settle everyone's concerns surrounding the ethics of meat? — Benj96

The way to settle it is to farm people for food also. Then let's talk ethics. People complain about overpopulation, then why not gather a group of people and hunt them for sports? Yes, this sounds crazy -- but is it really?
Early humans didn't eat meat. They were insectivores, or practiced entomophagy, besides being herbivores.

Why is it hard for humans to reconcile ethics and eating meat? Because we have the capacity to know the ethics behind it. Our desire for taste of meat overwhelms our desire to recognize the life you snuff out of that living being. Hunting animals stirs excitement in people. This could be an outlet for serial killing, but not using people. The adrenaline is the same. The highs are the same. Now of course, the added advantage is that hunters can pose with the carcass and post the picture in social media for others to admire. They get a lot of views. Short penises get a boost by the number of clicks.

Let's cut the bullshit and call it for what it is.

Is this irrational of me? Or is this a rational confrontation of what is? Is the collective turning our heads away the true irrationality, the enabler of this crisis? — hypericin

I would say abnormal. You're not supposed to feel that way when it comes to thinking about what lies ahead, even though you could be pretty much correct. The reason is because we have an internal mechanism -- stages, if you will -- which protects us from existential anxiety. Apparently, it's in the brain, this protector.

Thomas Mann tried to explain that the main difference between humans and other species is realization of change due to the pass of time. — javi2541997

At the risk of eschewing other things involved in this consideration, I'd say that in some ways, animals do have a sense of time passage. Just observe the animals in the wild. The pups would wait for the mother to come back, but once it's taken too long and no mom in sight, they would wander off, against the instruction. Same with the mother -- looking for a lost pup and when to give up relies on time. It isn't that the mother didn't find the pup, it is that time tells the mother to give up.

But yes, I see his point. Animals do not think of aging and when end is near. Or do they? There was a video of a mother cat who was seriously bitten by a dog. Sensing the end is near, the cat prepared the hiding spot for the kittens, and collected them in that hiding spot. Then she waited nearby to die.

Without transitoriness, without beginning or end, birth or death, there is no time, either. Timelessness — in the sense of time never ending, never beginning — is a stagnant nothing. It is absolutely uninteresting. — javi2541997

So says the man who came from being born into this world and has only limited time. If humans are immortal, which is what it's about, we wouldn't know what "beginning" is. We're just are here. Thoughts of such nature wouldn't register in our immortal minds. He can speak of "transitoriness" because that is his nature, our nature. But that's all he can speak of.

Why? Larry seems like a good one to pick, no? Assholes that make great X output still make great X output.. Isn't X output that is useful to society important? — schopenhauer1

lol.

That's really simplistic, and I'm not asking you to bring in those theories, but that's just an example of how to build an argument around one or the other. — schopenhauer1

I will not pick any of them.

That's because you think you can control Larry or expect anything he can throw at you. I'm sure Larry would choose you too. — Outlander

What's your point?

I think the question should be rephrased:

If we're in apocalypse, which would you choose to be with -- Larry or Bob? I think the answer is obvious.

Satisfaction can only truly happen by transcending one's nature of willing. According to him [Schopenhauer], this requires denying the Will and becoming an ascetic along the lines of a Jainist or something of that nature. The ultimate fate would be to starve oneself to death peacefully. — schopenhauer1

At the behest of the likes of Nagel and Rawls, I'll mention here the Archimedian point which argues that there is indeed a rational observer whose standpoint can provide an objective account of what's happening in the world.

Example? Schopenhauer himself. He was making an observation as a rational individual, using the archimedian point, while denying the will. Is this an oversight on his part?

That he was able to make a declaration, such as the reality of suffering, is a testament to his own will.

Perhaps they don't want you to wake them up to this fact. Perhaps they liked their ignorance. — schopenhauer1

Here in lies the contention. You're calling it a fact. But for others, it's a point of view.

Double post.

However, it isn't a particular war that a pessimist would care about but the seemingly pervasive aspect of conflict and war in human society, governments, and history. It seems like a feature or an irradicable bug. — schopenhauer1

I wrote a previous thread about technology, for example. In that one, I described the pervasive and inescapable nature of the fact that not all humans can truly participate in creating the technology that sustains them. — schopenhauer1

I wrote in another thread about the inability to move to another form of living. This is a pervasive and inescapable feature of being born. We cannot really change the set of choices and harms presented to us. — schopenhauer1

I now know what you really are. You're not a pessimist. You are a cynic. Know the difference. I think you have disdain, not despair, of things humans. Which give me hope -- pessimists annoy me. But cynics bring to life a different flavor of humanity. They're a funny lot, but truthful. Which is what's important. They tell it like it is.

How so? What's an example? — Noble Dust

The harpsichord.

First of all, I think @Dawnstorm has articulated it very well. I couldn't add to what he posted -- well written.

Function is key signatures, time signatures, transpositions, modes, composition forms, approaches to improvisation, proper physical technique (ways to play the piano, hold drum sticks, strum a guitar, etc). Form is more the sound of it; do you like a silky blues guitar tone or a jarring metal tone? Do you prefer Baroque music or Romantic era? Do you like the chill vibe of rock steady or the paranoia of industrial metal? — Noble Dust

They come together -- function and form. But function is felt, not heard. This is how I listen to music. Of course, when all you could hear is the shredding of the guitar, drowning out all the other sounds onstage, that distorts the harmonic quality of the whole act and then you start thinking art has deteriorated. Well yes, in that regard and at that moment.

Ouais.

How come there are no documented cases of insanity in wild animals? Also, there are no animal philosophers. — Agent Smith

And there are no animal psychiatrists. Diagnosing a mental illness in humans requires the human mind of a trained individual.

Remember that when a trained animal in a circus all of sudden becomes a killer, no one says it's gone insane. What do we always say? It's unpredictable. Animals are unpredictable and become aggressive from time to time.

Greed is a mile wide and an inch deep. It's really not that hard.

By confusing ‘immoral’ intent with a different interpretive understanding of the world, we justify our condemnation , punishment and even violence against them, but we never succeed in understanding how differently their world looked to them than to us. — Joshs

Mon dieu!
We are not confused here. The attribute of greed can be very much understood by the smallest to the biggest individual. I'm leaving out the small-time greedy -- unfair cutting of cake so that one gets a bigger piece than the other. That's boring. I'm talking about those in power, whether in an organization or the whole country.

The fact that someone gets rich does not inhibit the poor guy from getting rich. Where it often can go wrong is that the rich guy makes the poor guy depend on him for certain goods, services or needs. — Deus

An example of that is monopoly, which is still very much alive today but hidden behind, for example, exclusive contracts and technological "obsolescence".

Some have extolled the message that greed is good. — Joshs

You're watching too much movies.

You have to understand that greedy individuals do not try to hide the fact. Arrogance comes with greed. Love of power and wealth with no cap is displayed amongst them. It is understood. But for good PR, of course, they're going to say they're building communities and wealth for everybody.

Unless of course labels like ‘greed’ are our attempts to blame others for our failure to understand situations that seem justified from the ‘greedy’ one’s vantage. — Joshs

And an example of this is...what?

Is this unequivocal balance of good and bad an inherent human trait or is something that can be tackled towards higher human ideals? — Deus

If we could neutralize greed, then we can start looking towards higher human ideals. Until then, it's a fight to the bitter end.

Yes, I agree. The mistake is to assume the universe was created to raise human emotions. — jgill

lol. Where did this come from? Are you just thinking out loud to yourself? Who in this thread is talking about human emotions?

Thank you for mentioning the economic cost of all these hours spent on cell phones and social media. I guess small employers and gov jobs are the most affected.

It would be interesting to see any studies which give a picture of the economic cost & economic gains of the social media. We hear mostly about the jobs & opportunities created by the social media and Silicon Valley companies. But I think you are right to emphasize the cost of these activities. — Eros1982

Yes, the most affected are small employers and government employers. I've worked in different firms and I've seen how productivity had gone down, but somehow, more employees are needed to work on scaled down quantity of work. I've seen a workplace where flexibility is allowed, but often this flexibility is abused and doesn't help the employees fall in love with their jobs.

*sigh* I give up on this thread. It seems that the misunderstanding is rampant here. :roll:

@noAxioms, when you say this.....

But I’m not talking about a model, which is an epistemological tool. I’m talking about mathematics itself, that our universe (and others) is, at the most fundamental level, a mathematical structure. — noAxioms

you are, in fact, exhibiting Hawking's MDR. That's what it means by model-dependent: you have in mind a universe that has a mathematical structure. And the question you should be asking yourself is -- how do I know this? How did I come to think this way? MDR posits that it is inescapable. We, by default, think in terms of a model.

But what else is meant by the "breathes fire", "makes a universe", "should be a universe", and "bother of existing"?
If my interpretation of those words is a bit overzealous, then what did Hawking actually mean by them?What for instance, other than the ontological property itself, would distinguish two sets of rules and equations, one which exists, has fire breathed into it, and the other doesn't exist, no fire, etc. Suppose they're even the same empirical thing. — noAxioms

That mathematical models of the universe is just that -- no actual "reality" was harmed in the making of a model. No fire of life can be felt within a mathematical model. We cannot answer the normative questions such as "why is there a universe?"

MDR (model-dependent realism) is what Hawking is known for. Which makes him a hypocrite by saying philosophy is dead. (This is actually annoying to hear from a well-respected physicist). It tells me he did not understand Philosophy -- it becomes cumbersome to read through passages of philosophical concepts when you have a photographic memory of mathematical equations).

You can test this yourself by just using algebra or calculus, for example. The brain would have a hard time switching with ease between mathematical equation and an exposition of philosophical theory. The brain becomes impatient. You start to doubt whether philosophy is keeping pace with the developments happening in the "universe" -- developments which could be written in a neat bundle of axioms and theorems. ("mechanical" should be the monster we're after here). The slow, meticulous philosophical inquiry and scrutiny of concepts about our claims regarding reality doesn't look like a knight in shining armour. It is the sage, whose secrets are given to those who wait -- and if the wait is forever, so be it.

Little wonder that some of the best writers of philosophy are mathematicians who turned against the mechanical mind of a math purist. They wrote of the power of the lowly, much maligned empirical observations. They went to see the sage. Of course, they're heroes to me because admitting this would be tantamount to a child yelling "the emperor has no clothes!"

So, back to the basics -- because this is as close as we could get to the claim that we've touched "reality" out there.