Oh, my...you know exactly how I'd respond...and you did not want that response. — Frank Apisa

Is there a parrot nearby?

Grow some balls. — Frank Apisa

You've already said that. Like I said: predictable.

I didn't have something to say to you, I had something to say about you. You're so predictable that I already know to a degree of exactitude how you'll respond, so it seemed kind of pointless directing it to you. You could probably be replaced by a bot and it wouldn't make much of a noticeable difference.

Praise be to Murphy for that small blessing. :pray: — Sir2u

But you come very close. Very, very, very, very, very, very close.

How long do you reckon it will be before that blessing happens? :cool: — Sir2u

A long time. A long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time.

tl;dr

That is not correct.

We do not define god the same way.

Stevan Davies. The savior is not a celestial being brought to earth; the savior is a capacity of the mind, and the savior’s journey from above is actually one’s own journey from within.

John Lennon. It seems to me that the only true Christians were the Gnostics, who believed in self-knowledge, I.E. becoming Gods themselves, reaching the Christ within, the light is the truth. Turn on the light. All the better to see you my dear.

Regards
DL — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Where did my "toaster" comment go? There was nothing wrong with it.

The point was that my only objection to that would be that it misses the point. The point is what people argue over, and they don't argue over the capacity of the mind, they argue over the celestial being. You're just redefining religious terms from the way that they're more commonly understood to a way that's agreeable to an atheist, so as to cling on to them, whereas I reject that.

The toaster comment was just a way of making that clear. It's not good to declare that you've discovered God, and then have small print saying that, "Oh, by the way, by 'God', I don't mean what you think I mean, but rather something uncontroversial you'll readily accept, in spite of your atheism".

If you're not talking about anything named God then what the hell are we even talking about?

"Let's start a thread using this word, but then say that we're not talking about anything using this word." How stupid is that? — Terrapin Station

On the ball, as ever. Makes you wonder whether he actually read the opening post properly. Seems a tad inconsiderate to turn up to a discussion, disregard the wording of the opening post, then just try to push your own single-minded agenda, as you do repeatedly in multiple other discussions on the topic.

Also, he seems like another one of those single-issue philosophy types. I find them weird. Broaden out. There's way more to philosophy than this one single issue.

That's the way it is. — creativesoul

That sums up your "argument", I think. You could have saved yourself a lot of time and effort if you had simply said that from the beginning and left it at that.

It is rather insurmountable to act in accordance with a universal law, when there’s no such thing.
— Mww

About this no argument from me! — Janus

Me neither. But further to that point, the imperative to act as though such-and-such is a universal law can be ineffectual and redundant. I go direct to my conscience, so for me, Kant's categorical imperative is a useless waste of space.

And I think you've got me crossed-up with terrapin and S. They believe, and have made plain in this thread, that all moral judgments are strictly, merely, relative, matters of personal preference. — tim wood

Can you pay closer attention, please? That's not asking for much, and it is a fair request. It is tiring correcting you all the time repeatedly. Try harder.

This has probably already been said, but you neglect to consider the vital first step before reaching any conclusion on this matter, namely what exactly we're even talking about. I can reasonably conclude that under some descriptions, I know that God doesn't exist, and under other descriptions, I don't know that God doesn't exist. If your description of God leads to contradiction, then I do know that this God doesn't exist.

It's a rookie mistake.

<sigh> as we laboriously lay down some kindergarten-level material: There are different senses of the term opinion. — Terrapin Station

Indeed. This goes back to my earlier remarks that this is not by any means a discussion of equals. I know that that might sound arrogant, but it's true.

Is moral judgement founded in those 'moral emotions' or are those emotions occasioned by moral judgements? — Janus

Why the scare quotes? Those emotions clearly fit the moral category, unlike others. Each has an explanation relating to moral judgement, such as that you feel guilty when you judge you've done something wrong, and that you have feelings of disapproval when you judge someone else has done something wrong. You don't get that with shyness or embarrassment, for example.

And moral judgement is founded in moral emotions because they are essential and they make moral judgement what it is. Under current technology, a robot couldn't make moral judgements, because we don't have technology advanced enough to replicate emotions. If we built it such that it would respond in a certain way, such as to say, "No, murder is wrong", when asked to murder someone, then the robot wouldn't be making any moral judgements, in spite of appearances.

You haven't said yet what "more" than personal preference moral judgements are according to your understanding. I could also ask what more than personal preference, according to you, are the 'moral emotions" you cited here. — Janus

Are you deliberately not taking into account my response, or are you making this error accidentally? I'm not going to answer your loaded question in the way that you want me to. They're not "more than" personal preference because it's inappropriate to call them that to begin with.

The personal part is inappropriate, because one definition of that is, "belonging to or affecting a particular person rather than anyone else", and the preference part is inappropriate because one definition of that is, "a greater liking for one alternative over another or others",
("her preference for white wine"). Those are the first definitions that came up on a Google search. We don't tend to say, "My personal preference is not to murder children, because I like children when they're going about their lives, not petrified that I'm attempting to murder them or lying on the ground in a lifeless bloody heap". That's not the best way to word it, as "personal preference" and "like" don't quite do it justice. It sounds like an understatement, too trivial and inappropriate.

Terrapin uses the term "personal preference". Are you prepared to say that 'individual moral judgement' is anything more than personal preference? Terrapin apparently doesn't believe it is anything more. If you think it is more, then what does that "more" consist in? — Janus

I don't use that term at all because it isn't as accurate as the terms I use, and it adds fuel to the fire of misunderstanding. It has connotations of triviality and arbitrariness, and this is exploited. It plays into the hands of some of those against it. It is not a simple matter of liking or preferring. It is ultimately a matter of individual moral judgement. That we can speak of groups of individuals, instead of any individual in that group directly, doesn't change that. And moral judgement itself is founded in the moral emotions, like sympathy, guilt, approval, disapproval, outrage, righteousness, and so on.

So, it would follow that all opinions about the relative permissibility or recommendability or obligatoriness of interpersonal behavior that the person in question feels is more significant than etiquette are moral [RELATIVE TO THEM] — creativesoul

Yes, given the implicit bracketed part you choose to deliberately ignore.

:brow: — creativesoul

Don't raise your eyebrow when you're the one begging the question by deliberately leaving out the essential bracketed part and assuming your own interpretation which the moral relativist doesn't accept.

So, if person A has an opinion that they must act in whatever way it takes to acquire tremendous wealth and they feel that this is more significant than table manners, whatever they do is moral? — creativesoul

Moral relative to who's judgement? If you had any real understanding of moral relativism, then one would expect that to be reflected in the wording of your question. Yet it isn't.

And what's the point in begging the question?

So-called relativists... — tim wood

Moral relativists. And why "so-called"? There's nothing inappropriate about that name.

(Why or how they severally arrive at that is an interesting question, but I am not here asking that question.) — tim wood

It's not interesting and has already been answered.

So the question: is this a fair summary of the relativists' view on this thread? — tim wood

That's the gist of it, although if you read and take in what I say in discussions like this, you should know that I don't even use terms like "personal preference". I would say "individual moral judgement".

I was thinking more along the lines of existential dependency.
— creativesoul

Ok. Promise has it, sure. Promise is existentially dependent on some a priori abstract concepts the understanding thinks as belonging to it necessarily, re: in descending order of power, obligation, duty, respect. No promise as the meaningful subject of a synthetic proposition is possible without these a priori conditions.

We don’t think a promise to ourselves alone. Knowledge of those necessary fundamentals is given a priori in a subject, therefore he has no need to represent them to himself in the form of a promise. Thus, promise has the existential dependency of being represented in the world by the subject who understands the a priori conditions for it.

What does existential dependency mean to you?
— Mww

Existential dependency is a relationship between different things. When something is existentially dependent upon something else it cannot exist prior to that something else. When something exists in it's entirety prior to something else, it cannot be existentially dependent upon that something else. That's a rough basis/outline of the paradigm. The simplicity is remarkable. The scope of rightful application... quite broad.

In the context of this conversation...

There is an actual distinction between making a promise and making a statement about that promise. A difference that can only be discovered by understanding existential dependency. The latter is existentially dependent upon the former. The former existed in it's entirety prior to the latter.

Voluntarily entering into an obligation to make the world match one's words is what one does when making a promise. That is determined wholly by a community of language speakers who understand the crucial importance of the role that trust and truth play in interdependence. The preceding two statements report upon and/or take account of that which existed in it's entirety prior to my account of it. It is about promise making. It is a report about what has happened, what is happening, and barring an extinction event of humankind, will continue happening.

Saying that one ought keep their promise is about what has not happened.

It's not about approval/disapproval of how the world was promised to be changed, or what was promised to be done. Rather, saying that one ought keep their promise is about the reliability, dependability, and/or trustworthiness of the speaker. Such character traits are crucial for the survival and over-all well-being of interdependent groups.

A complete lack of trust is unsustainable. — creativesoul

That has got to be one of the worst conversations I have ever read in my life. Two people going on an irrelevant and badly written tangent.

If you could kindly point out where these have been shown to be faulty? — Devans99

In your previous discussions. You're welcome to review your own past discussions and locate my criticism, but I'm not willing to do that for you, nor am I willing to start over from scratch with you. Why should I? It's your responsibility to develop and address criticisms, and not to merely repeat old criticised arguments as though they're fresh and untouched.

I agree with Devin99 on this. — christian2017

Then you're wrong as well.

Some things no matter how seemingly illogical will always exist. As long as matter exists there will be measurement (assuming there is a being that can make measurements such as a bacterial organism or a human). Bacteria have sensors and thus make judgements and pseudo measurements on their surroundings. — christian2017

That has nothing to do with my criticism of what he has said.

They are merely repetitions of earlier arguments of yours likewise shown to be faulty elsewhere. If you have nothing new to add, then be quiet.

Well the 'something' must logically contain the first cause. The first cause is the explanation for everything else so my substitution is valid. — Devans99

No, you haven't reasonably justified the entirely assumed necessity of a first cause. Even if you show that something always existed, that doesn't show that there's a first cause.

I know precisely what that means.

An uncaused, timeless, first cause.

I have given 3 valid arguments for this position. — Devans99

I've shown your argument presented here to be faulty and you haven't resolved the fault.

And it doesn't mean the timeless part. That's just a conclusion reached about a first cause. That it is timeless.

And if you know what it means, then why are you conflating it? It's not logical to say that saying that an animal exists is, in other words, saying that a fluffy cat exists. You're just being illogical.

If the 'something' in 'why is there something rather than nothing?' is the first cause... — Devans99

Don't assume that it is.

And stop repeating yourself.

IE A first cause. — Devans99

You must not know what that means, or you're being illogical by saying something akin to that a dog is a cat, up is down, yes is no...

Please say why are they not equivalent. — Devans99

Because they mean different things. If I were to say that, "I'm going home", and, "I'm going fishing", are equivalent, then I'd be talking rubbish.

1. The argument in the op: can't get something from nothing so something (IE the first cause) must have existed always. — Devans99

No, that's not "i.e. the first cause". That's completely unreasonable.

The questions "why is there something rather than nothing" and "why is this something the way it is" both are equivalent to asking "What is the explanation for the First Cause?". — Devans99

No they're not.

But the First Cause can have no explanation; there is no cause of the first cause; no reason for it. The first cause has to be timeless and thus beyond causation (else we end up in an infinite regress). — Devans99

You aren't justified in suggesting that there's a first cause. That's an act of faith.

I think you have no idea what you're talking about.

When a sincere speaker says "I promise to plant a rose garden on Sunday", then it follows that there ought be a rose garden planted on Sunday. — creativesoul

No it doesn't. You're wrong. Accept it and move on.

Hume has been refuted. — creativesoul

Even if he has, he hasn't been refuted by you. That would be a delusion.

You also conflate belief and truth, but I do not expect you to see it. Keep on riding shotgun with one who does not care about truth. Confirmation bias feels good. — creativesoul

I know you would rather attack a straw man. That is perfectly clear.

My understanding of Hume was that he was talking about reason in a strict sense, not just what seems to make sense on the surface. If we go by the latter, then it doesn't seem to be a problem to say something like, "If you promised to do it, then you ought to do so". But anyone who knows anything about logic knows that it doesn't work quite like that. What can seem reasonable to a layperson can be otherwise in logic. And this is just one example of that. When he brought up this point a couple of months ago, I told him that he would need an additional premise, but has he adapted his argument? No. He rarely if ever adapts, he merely repeats. It would become a valid argument if we included the premise that you should always keep your promises, but I don't think that that's true without exception, and if there's a single exception, then the premise is false, which would make the argument unsound.

Hating with passion.... :fire:
S, have I told you lately what a beautiful person you are? :flower: — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Ah! Trying to kill me with kindness! :scream:

Awesome! Do you think it helps you a lot in philosophy and philosophical discussions, like you've gained an insight which others without your qualifications lack? I'm the very opposite of having a gripe, so I realise that I'm not your intended audience. But I'm interested and curious.

I very much wanted to go to college to study psychology, but I was eventually dissuaded from doing so.

I see a different problem there. It's not so much that he hasn't provided support, although you're right about that. There's very clearly a pattern with him in that regard. That's why we call him the Oracle.

The problem I see is one of logical irrelevance. He wants to refute Hume, but he is missing the target. Even if we were to grant his point, it misses Hume's point. It actually just tries to unphilosophically reinforce the pre-Hume sort of thinking.

For me, in the ethical context, to be right simply means being effective in promoting what nearly all of us want; to live in harmony, and being wrong simply means being defective in promoting it. — Janus

So this, for example, is a semantic disagreement between us which I don't think you've properly dealt with. You're not interested in any problems I see with it, just because you can maintain internal consistency, which almost anyone can do without great difficulty? How hard can it be not to contradict yourself? Internal consistency ain't the be-all and end-all.

My objection wouldn't merely be that I go by a different semantics. It would be criticism along the lines that mine makes more sense or is less problematic. If yours cannot account for a number of situations about what is right or wrong supported by strong intuitive appeal or experience or common usage of moral language, then that is evidence against your semantics. Are you not interested in that?

I suspect that you're defining these terms how you want them to be defined, so that they fit your preexisting moral principles. I am not doing that. I am thinking about how it is used, how people reach moral judgements, what they mean. Mine is more of a disinterested approach to ascertain the truth, not to make the truth fit my agenda like you seem to be doing.

I'm not arguing that a promise means that what it says ought to be done. — creativesoul

I can't quite work out whether you're massively backtracking or you're just being extremely unclear.

I'm always baffled by what could possibly motivate someone to argue against these... some of the simplest utterances to understand. Very young children know exactly what making a promise means. It's a convention, no doubt. — creativesoul

Your bafflement must be because you misunderstand Hume's point. He wasn't an idiot, and nor is anyone arguing his point here. Of course he knew what a promise meant, as does everyone here. That doesn't even begin to address the problem. You insult his intelligence, and that of others. You act as though you're a genius. That illusion still needs to be shattered, but your psychological defences are strong.

As I see it I have already elaborated ad nauseum. What could be gained by further elaborations? It would just be more repetition of the same. I don't need to justify my viewpoint to you unless you can show that it could be thought to be inconsistent with its own presuppositions in some way.

I haven't claimed your viewpoint is internally inconsistent; but I have claimed that it is, along with Terrapin's, inconsistent with a general phenomenological account of human life and hence inadequate and I have given my reasons for that contention. You don't have to agree, in fact I doubt you will ever agree, so I have little motivation, beyond a general respect for you, to respond at all, since there is no way to prove which of us is right given that we will interpret the evidence differently.

As I said if you want to focus on some specific points I have made that you disagree with and you lay our your reasons for disagreeing then I will respond, provided I judge that you haven't distorted the point in order to disagree with it. — Janus

Sigh. More work. Great.

I don't want you to repeat yourself. It is the parts which we've already explored up until I think you've encountered an obstacle which is still causing a problem which I want to deal with. But since you shut things down at the time, it would now require me to go to the efforts of going back through the discussion to find what exactly the problems were, and present them to you again, and I don't know if I want to go through that, especially since you haven't reassured me of your cooperation. You expect me to go through all of that, only for you to potentially dismiss it or ignore it altogether like you've done before? Again, it would have to be quid pro quo. That's essential. I would need your assurance that it would be worth my time and effort.

I admit that the use of "follows" is off-putting, particularly given the brevity. — creativesoul

Off putting? A very poor choice of words, more like, if you didn't mean it in the logical sense. You're on a philosophy forum. Think before you speak. How could you not have foreseen the problem of a misunderstanding arising as a result of this?

And besides, if you weren't talking about logic, then you've missed Hume's point, as he was. He was saying you can't logically get from an "is" to an "ought". He wasn't merely rejecting common sense assumptions about promises being kept, or common sense assumptions about an "ought" from an "is". His point was about logic, about the limits of reason.

Why are you judging that it would be fruitless? If it is not akin to religious faith, then why won't you elaborate where appropriate and attempt to meet your burden of justification or concede? Don't make this a circumstantial ad hominem about me, effectively suggesting that I'm closed-minded and predisposed to reject whatever you come up with, so it would be pointless.

I don't see that as reflective of a productive, cooperative, philosophical attitude. I see that as shutting down philosophical discussion and demonstrating an unjustified unwillingness to engage.

I don't believe we've reached a stage where there's nothing left but to simply agree to disagree. There are unresolved and unaddressed problems, and the ball is in your court.

I've tried multiple times now to kick-start a discussion with you over these issues.

Don't we all "talk about what we want to talk about"? Whether something is or is not relevant to a whole field such as meta-ethics is largely a matter of interpretation; it will depend on your founding assumptions and problematics. If we both want to talk about the same kinds of things then there is a chance that we could have a fruitful discussion. I don't think I have done you any more injustice to you than you have done to me; the way I see it is that perhaps we have done each other the injustice of talking past one another.

But that would only be an injustice (i.e. morally wrong) if both our aims are to have a free discussion with full acknowledgement of, although not necessarily agreement to, each other's founding assumptions and problematics. That said, if you want to enumerate some definitive points I will attempt to address them. — Janus

I don't recall deliberately ignoring several of your replies, as you have done to me, which is, in my judgement, a greater injustice than name-calling, ad hominems, and whatnot. And it is a bit of affront to expect me to do more work than I've already put in by putting together an enumerated list for you. Remember quid pro quo.

I don't understand why you single this out. If exploiting others equals exploiting ourselves that will be so on the basis of some facts about human nature. I could say the same about murder, rape, torture and so on, too. — Janus

Exactly: the specifics don't matter. It doesn't matter whether it is murder, rape, torture, and so on. I only singled that out because you explicitly spoke of it as a moral truth, which, as I said, is heading in the right direction in my assessment. I am interested in talking in general about the questions I raised there, or by doing so in relation to any example of your choosing. That is, talking about whether there are any moral truths, and if so, in what sense they are moral truths, and how they are known to be so, and that sort of thing. This is meta-ethics. It is like the metaphysics, epistemology and semantics of ethics itself, not how we should live and whatnot, which is just to do ethics.

Be truthful, because it is only you that does that sort of thing.

The rest of us have mirrors for that. :smirk: — Sir2u

The rest of you aren't Narcissus. I'm stuck here until I turn into a flower.

Also I think it is an ethical truth that if you exploit others you also exploit yourself.
— Janus

That is moving more in the right direction. Talking about whether there are any moral truths, and if so, in what sense they are moral truths, and how they are known to be so, is meta-ethics. So these are the kind of follow-up questions which you should be addressing. — S

And if you're interested in furthering this meta-ethical discussion at some point, then let me know.

Judging from your last reply you continue to totally misunderstand what I have been saying, and it seems that our interpretations of what ethics consists in are too divergent to allow for any productive discussion; so I think I will leave it there. — Janus

Yes, fine. But it's very annoying that you refuse to cooperate and are adamant about talking about what you want to talk about, in spite of my objections.

But I hope you still get around to addressing my lengthy post from earlier. I put quite a bit of effort into that, and you've already done me an injustice by ignoring or being very short and dismissive of a number of my earlier comments, although I have set that aside and moved on.