Not structuralism. — Constance

Why not structuralism? It's a candidate for answering what ethics is.

his is a hard question. To say what happiness is IN a context of relations, uses and purposes is one things, but then, what about "out" of these contextual indices? — Constance

The ancient Persian answer is that goodness is the direction we're reaching out toward. Evil is what we're pushing away from, so a good person is in motion, or progressing. In this view, it doesn't matter what your present condition is, if you're progressing, you're good. If you're stationary, you're evil.

The ancient Jewish answer is that goodness is clear for all to see in your health and well-being because obviously God is blessing you. A similar outlook is Roman stoicism, which aligns goodness with Nature. It's in a tree's nature to grow toward the light, if it fails to do this, it becomes sick. Sickness and evil are basically the same thing: a failure to abide by your nature. I like the the Roman view because it's efficient.

If you notice, both these views allow flexibility in what actually counts as good. We may discover through experience what really constitutes progress or health. On the other hand, they conflict in whether goodness shows up on the surface, or if it can be hidden. Our present worldview is a fusion of ancient views.

And he keeps trying to use the military for domestic crime issues. I wonder if that will feel normal in 2028.

We basically won't have a CDC in 2028. Aaaaaaaah!

I agree, excluding the occasional nuclear war. — MoK

People absolutely have to provoke one another to see if nuclear warheads will show up. They can't just sit there and act like they have some sense.

I'm not confident that I will be dead before things spiral out of control, and I'm an old man. — BC

Have you ever known a time when things weren't on the verge of spiralling out of control?

I think the US will contract into a Western Hemisphere alliance (including Greenland) and leave the rest of the world to themselves except for the occasional nuclear war.

We are in dire need of good leaders in this "West". I see danger all over and escalating. Let's hope it doesn't spiral out of control. — Manuel

It will eventually, but probably not in our lifetime.

I don't see why we should believe that discourse of the "West" (whatever that means) can no longer be given. — Manuel

I think the conventional wisdom among political scientists is that the US is in decline, so therefore China will continue to grow out of regional power status into super power status.

As for liberalism, everybody is capitalist. Everybody has fairly centralized authority. So the scene will be primitive social dominance, gorillas in the jungle.

Reactive fury is a counterfeit of power: it shouts, it strikes, and all the while it gnaws its own heart — praxis

yep.

How would you have heard of the ones that withered life? The morality that endures is life-giving. Lashing out is lashing in.

, I can say for myself with a high degree of confidence that the former USSR and the USA were not so different states in the mentality of their citizens (which may sound like wildness now), — Astorre

They're similar in that they're both given to apocalypticism. They're both looking for signs of the end of the world. Over-simplified, the Cold War was two cultures seeing each other as the anti-Christ. Is that what you mean?

It sounds like you're asking what normativity most fundamentally is? And you sound like a structuralist. You're looking for a answer that explains all the disparate pieces, like the two-dimensional people building a theory from watching a spoon pass through their plane. All they see is a dot that turns into a line, and back to a dot. What is it?

I read a book by a structuralist who focused on gnostic myths. The typical myth goes like this:

In heaven, all was silent because nothing is undone in heaven. Then, out of the silence came the first question: what is this?. God turned to the questioner and said: "Silence yourself. There are no unanswered questions in heaven." The questioner understood and complied, but something about this event caused a part of the questioner to fall out of heaven, and this part is known as Sophia. In time, Sophia gave birth to a blind god named Samael. Samael's body is our universe, but everything that happened in Samael took place in blindness. There was murder and violence, but it didn't mean anything. It was like a play with no audience.

Sophia felt sad when she looked at her son, who couldn't see her. So she whispered into his ear and what she said pervaded his body and coalesced in humans. Humans awoke and began to see their world for the first time. They felt guilt and shame. They had become their own audience. And they turned to see beyond their world, to heaven, where all questions are answered.

For a structuralist, a story like this could be about something that is always happening in the present, maybe below the surface.

I think this thread is finally coming to a close. — Sam26

I think you should have considered the possibility that NDE is a result of hypoxia. The brain goes without O2 and a weird memory is created.

What are the chances that near-death experiences are the result of hypoxia?

If the probability is, say, 50/50, I would agree, but the probability is high based on the evidence. Most of our knowledge is probabilistic, but we don't say "It may or may not be true." Moreover, we don't claim "to know" if the probability is relatively low. I'm claiming to know that the conclusion follows, not, obviously, with absolute certainty. — Sam26

What exactly is the probability of life after death? Ball park?

Are we truly entering an era of multipolarity? If so, what are the philosophical consequences of a world without a dominant cultural “center”? — Astorre

The US is declining, China is rising. It would be fair to say we're headed toward multipolarity. On the one hand, two superpowers make the world safer than one. On the other, it's unfortunate that that safety comes at the price of wasted energy (undermining one another) when the species now has an opportunity to take control of its energy needs to avoid climate change.

On the other hand, war, even cold war, has a tendency to drive innovation. I believe there were Romans who claimed it was a mistake to destroy Carthage because without an enemy, Rome would become weak. I think this is true. Existence becomes pointless for a superpower.

I guess the philosophical issues I see are:

1. That conflict makes us more innovative.
2. Conflict creates meaning and identity.

Could this shift lead to a new "Iron Curtain"—a bifurcation of global norms, technologies, and values? — Astorre

I don't see a big rift in terms of values. It will be more a competition for influence. Is there really a big difference in the values of the US and China? I mean fundamentally? Russia is a different animal. It's kind of inexplicable, but hasn't it always been?

The ethical question I have is THE ethical question: What is the ground of ethics? — Constance

What difference does it make?

Therefore, it is probable that consciousness survives bodily death in some form, preserving enough continuity for veridical representation. — Sam26

I think this is the same as saying it may or may not be true.

You could say Augustine was a naturalist because he warned not to go around explaining everything with miracles, but to look for natural causes. If he understood what natural causes are, I don't know why it would be strange to you?

Naturalism is about causation. It posits that we should proceed with the assumption that natural causes are there to be found.

And British empiricism died a long time ago

All these objects emit different wavelengths.

How do we learn that object X has the same redness as a postbox, Northern Cardinal and sunset when it will be emitting a different wavelength. — RussellA

Because we don't learn to associate the word with one wavelength. We associate it with experiences, but those experiences reflect both physiological predisposition and cultural conditioning. Right?

Nelson Goodman proposed that "red" doesn't name a universal redness, but just applies to an object:
Red = {postbox, Northern Cardinal, sunset} — RussellA

I guess he isn't familiar with discussions about color itself, but they're pretty common. I think we just learn to associate a certain word with a certain range of visual experiences?

Yea, but the OP wasn't saying that the set of red things is a definition of red. It was saying the set is redness because it has all the instantiations if it.

but we can talk as if there were an abstract thing {a,b}. — Banno

The hallmark of rationality: speech.

If anybody has any ethical questions, they can just ask me.

And I hope has the sense not to ditch it yet? — Banno

Why do you say that?

That's why nominalists (e.g. Quine) didn't like taking it for granted in logic. — bongo fury

Mary Tiles (a philosopher of math) says she can imagine mathematicians ditching set theory someday.

The set of all of our theories of set theory is public, but here we are attempting to figure out what the members of that set are. — Moliere

:up:

Everybody in this thread has their own private set theory. :lol:

Except me.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. The mainstream view among mathematicians is that sets are abstract objects. You can see them with the mind's eye, but not physical eyes.

@litewave seemed to be suggesting that people know firsthand about sets because they can see them. That is incorrect. You can't see a set.

I don't think that's at odds, per se, with defining a set as a collection of objects, or individuals. — Moliere

The point is a set isn't something you can see, anymore than you can see infinity.

Nationalize everything!

A set is an abstract object.

A set is a collection of objects — litewave

Not in set theory. A set is criteria. It's an abstract object.

She has never seen a universal though. But she has seen collections (sets), so she may know more about collections than about universals. — litewave

You think knowledge is limited to what you can see? If so, she's never seen a set. A set is an abstract object.

She also doesn't know about the general property of redness, which probably cannot even be visualized. She only knows particular instances of redness. — litewave

She probably knows about redness as a universal.

set S = set of all elements that have property P

This is an intensional definition of a set, a definition by specifying a common property of the set's elements. — litewave

A set won't give an adequate intensional definition of a property, though.

1. Redness = the set of all red things
2. Karen believes the rose has the property of redness
3. Therefore, Karen believes the rose has the property of the set of all red things.

If Karen doesn't know anything about sets, the substitution fails.

I get it, I'm just saying that elements of a thing's structure and potential can also be counted as properties.

I think the idea of properties is pretty flexible. It's like thinking of an object as a solar system with a core of identity, and transient orbiting properties.

Hume pointed out that an object with no properties is inconceivable, so we might think of properties as a product of analysis. We divide up the inherently united thing into parts: identity and properties. As you say, some properties cash out as events of interaction.

Mode (internal disposition): This is the objectively existing structure of the apple’s embodied being—its surface texture and chemical composition—that predisposes it to reflect light of a certain wavelength. This mode exists independently of both light and observer. It remains even in complete darkness. This aligns fully with realism. — Astorre

Wouldn't surface texture also count as a property? Can we think of surface texture as a realized event?