milankovitch cycle?

The point of the hard problem is to demonstrate the limits of what we can know about consciousness and sentience in others besides their behavior. — Philosophim

That's an interesting issue, but it's not the hard problem.

I don’t need to posit spirits in a thing in order to find value in it. — NOS4A2

Me neither.

You can start by valuing the things that are there instead of the things that aren't. — NOS4A2

What do you value?

Where does that lead you? — NOS4A2

To wonder how you find life worth living.

Start from what is there and see where it leads you. — NOS4A2

There is phenomenal consciousness. Where does it lead me?

But what is actually there, the physiology, cannot serve to explain it. — NOS4A2

You're welcome to explain it to us. :strong:

I've never heard anyone say that, who wasn't rather naive about what is going on in the physical sciences. See the link I posted above. It is certainly informative about ways my phenomenal consciousness differs from that of others. — wonderer1

Sure. It's called first person data. It's there in the physical sciences. What we're looking for is an explanation for it. Why does it exist?

So my question is: is the root of the hard problem self reference or is it our critical lack of knowledge in that domain? — Skalidris

Critical lack of knowledge. The easy problems of consciousness are the ones our present scientific "toolbox" are equipped to handle, such as how sight works functionally. Not that this kind of research is easy, but just that it's within the concepts we're used to. The hard problem is explaining phenomenal consciousness, so going beyond the function of sight to why there is an experience associated with it. It's supposedly "hard" because we don't yet have a place in the physical sciences for the idea of phenomenal consciousness.

You asserted that if there is God then moral truths are a posteriori necessities — Michael

I most certainly did not. You didn't read anything I wrote. You didn't read the SEP quote, much less the link. I'm out.

So what is the motivation to obey God's moral laws? — Michael

I don't believe in God. I was explaining how there can be aposteriori necessity in the moral realm. You had suggested that I should get a nobel philosophy prize for discovering it.

Everyone is going to answer questions about morality their own way. We have a variety of well worn paths that have been passed down to us because Christianity was a fusion of different cultural perspectives.

I can give you my own thinking, but I wouldn't be trying to convert you. Just explaining. You probably have your own answers as well, though sometimes old fashioned contemplation is necessary to bring it into focus.

And what if God commands that love is immoral? — Michael

You seem to be spinning off questions without having read anything I wrote. Too busy?

No, because as soon as you introduce God all bets are off. — Michael

Read the SEP link.

What's the motivation to be loving? — Michael

There is none. You either do or you don't.

So let's grant that the existence of God entails that there are necessary moral truths. — Michael

? You were asking how there could be necessarily true statements known a posteriori. Did you understand the answer?

What is the motivation to be moral? — Michael

Love.

Think for a second about what you're asking a skeptic to do. A person is a skeptic for a reason. You don't know what that reason is tied up with. It could be guilt about how they treated their parents, or gratitude to someone who helped them when they really needed it. Point is: you don't know how much you're asking. You want them to take it all and put it to the side for a second in order to listen to something new.

If you can't do that yourself, why are you asking someone else to do it?

Kripke’s examples are not the only ones that could be appealed to in order to shed doubt on the coextensiveness of necessity and a prioricity. Some other problematic cases are listed below (Chalmers 2002a; cp. Chalmers 2012, ch. 6).

Mathematical truths. It is common to hold that all mathematical truths are necessary. But on the face of it, there is no guarantee that all mathematical truths are knowable a priori (or knowable in any way at all). For example, either the continuum hypothesis or its negation is true, and whichever of these claims is true is also necessary. But for all we know, there is no way for us to know that that proposition is true.
Laws of nature. Some necessitarians about the natural laws (see section 2) believe that the laws hold in all metaphysically possible worlds. But they are not a priori truths.
Metaphysical principles. It is often believed that many metaphysical theses are necessary if true, e.g., theses about the nature of properties (e.g., about whether they are universals, sets or tropes) or ontological principles like the principle of unrestricted mereological composition (which says that for any things there is something that is their sum). But it is not obvious that all truths of this kind are a priori. (For discussion, see Chalmers 2012, §§6.4–6.5; Schaffer 2017.)
Principles linking the physical and the mental. Some philosophers hold that all truths about the mental are metaphysically necessitated by the physical truths, but deny that it is possible to derive the mental truths from the physical ones by a priori reasoning (see Hill & McLaughlin 1999; Yablo 1999; Loar 1999; and Chalmers 1999 for discussion). On that account, some of the conditionals that link physical and mental claims are metaphysically necessary but not a priori. — SEP

The formatting got screwed up there, but look at the bolded section that starts with "Laws of nature." This is the primary root of moral realism: that it comes from God. Some cultures maintained that we're born knowing the difference between good and evil (Persians), but in the Hebrew outlook, we aren't. We have to learn it by becoming acquainted with God's laws. That would be a form of a posteriori necessity.

Does necessary a posteriori truth without rigid designators make sense? If not then if ethical non-naturalism is true then "it is immoral to harm others" is not a necessary a posteriori truth. — Michael

I could work out a scenario in which someone would conclude that it is (the bolded part), but the point is that possible world semantics always starts with a set of assumptions about how the world works, and it helps us analyze the way we navigate through and assess statements that arise from those assumptions. It's no good for weighing those starting assumptions. That's done by other means.

As it "immoral". — Michael

Right. Adjectives can't be rigid designators.

Then "harmful" rather than "harm". — Michael

That's an adjective. You can use the Holocaust as a rigid designator.

If ethical non-naturalism is true then "immoral" and "harm" are not rigid designators that refer to the same thing. — Michael

Neither is the kind of thing that could be a rigid designator. Harm, in the sense you're using it, is a transient state. Immoral is an adjective. Using possible world semantics is going to cause confusion. That's because different starting assumptions will give you different possibilities (and impossibilities).

Ok, but how would you answer the question?

Is the suggestion that these two worlds might be identical? — Banno

How does the Holocaust being inherently evil show up in something I can sense? What would I see that tells me I'm in the world of inherent evil? What would I hear or taste? Smell or feel?

I'm just thinking that the Kremlin can't be that dumb. — jorndoe

If the US has left NATO it would make a little more sense. I think you missed our discussion about how the US congress has just passed a law to make it harder for a US president to exit NATO. They did that because Trump is expected to try.

Once the US has left NATO, it will make more sense to use funding from oil sales to enlarge Russia's territory. Maybe Poland first.

it seems unlikely that Russia will attack NATO countries. They're more likely to insert covert operatives/agents in such cases. — jorndoe

Why do you say that?

The difference would be exactly the truth of the obligation...

Michael seems to imply that there might be no other difference. First, the existence of the obligation is sufficient to differentiate the two words; — Banno

I think he's looking for a difference beyond those two things, though. Think of these two situations:

Situation 1: The Holocaust was inherently evil. It's evil in all possible worlds because there just can't be a Holocaust that doesn't have the property of evil.

Situation 2: The Holocaust is evil because we think of it that way, not the other way around. We could presently live in a world where the attitude behind the Holocaust (eugenics) prevailed, and everyone thinks of it as a great thing that made the world better. We just happen to live in the one where it's viewed as unbelievably horrible.

What practical difference is there between situation 1 and 2? How would your life be different? How would anybody's life be different?

There's something specious in the question Michael asks about how worlds differ given moral truths. they differ specifically in the truth of those moral statements... — Banno

I don't quite follow.

but once it is found that one ought not murder babies, the alternatives are pruned from the tree of possibilities — Banno

I think so, yes. So if you've found that murdering babies is immoral, you might read about the history of infanticide in a purely moral light.

Or is there a way to introduce the modality of "ought" into a possible world semantics, other than using accessibility? — Banno

There's this SEP article about deontic logic. There's some mention of possible worlds, but I think moral commitments come first. If P is the proposition that it's immoral to kill babies, and you believe P, then you will say P is necessarily true. You'll say that anyone who believes there's a possible world at which P is false is deluded.

Notice that toward the end of that article they allude to the fact that normativity is a pit with no bottom. If you jump into that pit, you may never be seen again.

It will all be over if Trump wins.

How do the people feel? How will they feel long term? How closely aligned are the perception and the reality? — Fooloso4

I don't know. You'd have to ask a Russian resident.

You can look it up; Biden, Nuland, Sullivan, Blinken, they all were. — Tzeentch

We've been through this already. I'm not going back through. :wink:

The entire current administration was involved in the Maidan. — Tzeentch

Probably not.

A resolution calling for a cease fire is not a cease fire. Both sides in the conflict must agree to a cease fire. It is not as if they did and the US blocked it. — Fooloso4

Apparently Putin has been fishing on back channels for a cease fire since practically the beginning of the invasion. He's still doing it, but in public he never says anything like that. US military intelligence has assessed it as part of some strategy to cause confusion on the battlefield?

Anyway, at this point the Russian economy has become dependent on the war. It grew by about 3% last year in spite of the heavy sanctions. This is partly because of oil sales to China and India, and partly because they have a booming war economy. So it wouldn't be to Putin's advantage to stop the war in Ukraine. He wants people at home to feel like everything is fine, and it's not going to be without that boost to the economy from the war.

His strategy vis-á-vis NATO was probably to pressure the Europeans to stop freeloading. I don't think he would actually leave. And honestly in terms of European freeloading behavior he has a point. — Tzeentch

He despises Europe because he sees them as weak. He likes dictators because he respects them.

The underlying reality is that the US was allied with Europe because of the cold war. That era is fully gone now and Europe is just dead weight to the US. NATO no longer makes sense. This and abiding American isolationism will probably result in the demise of NATO. The Germans understand this. I don't know if anyone else in Europe does.

That does sound a bit far-fetched. — Tzeentch

Everything about Trump is far fetched. :razz:

The US congress just passed legislation making it harder for a US president to withdraw from NATO. That kind of legislation doesn't usually work though. The SCOTUS will declare it unconstitutional.

The reason for this attempt is that everyone expects 1) Trump will be reelected, and 2) he's going to withdraw form NATO and basically join BRIC. No, it doesn't make much sense, but such is life. :grin:

The links between the Biden administration and Russia's invasion are crystal clear. — Tzeentch

The link between another Trump administration and a Russian invasion of Europe are also pretty clear. Neither Trump nor a large swath of the American population would care.

As if "physical or emotional injury" were not evil. — Banno

Most societies identify circumstances in which it's good to do physical and emotional injury. Plenty of moral codes identify actions as evil even if there's no associated harm.

This is not to say you can't decide that evil and harm are coextensive, it's just that you're not reflecting what social groups usually say. You're just pedaling your own religion.

The idea that Russia will attack Europe is extremely silly — Tzeentch

Famous last words

Germans believe Russia will attack Europe if Trump is elected.

:meh: