The British think they're so great with their candidates who can speak in complete sentences.

Modern society is decaying — Bob Ross

How so? What makes you think this?

I don't think slave holders in the 1700s or even Nazis had no love for themselves. I just think they had no empathy, which was rooted in their belief that their victims were not fully human. I don't know they could have been convinced otherwise, and I'm not convinced something was broken within them. They were persuaded by the societies that created them. — Hanover

The Portuguese started the Atlantic slave trade. Before they set the plan in motion, they put the question of its morality to the Pope. He said, "Sure, go ahead." True story.

See, this is why you make the big bucks, because you can express a shrug in two paragraphs.

The problem is that "heart" is not really defined by you. It sounds like just gut instinct. I would think my moral decisions are based upon instinct, reason, experience, bias and probably some other things. But we've all faced moral quandaries in our lives and we've had to sort through them, asking ourselves (and maybe others) what the best course is. Telling someone to just listen to their heart isn't enough. Sometimes you have an inkling your heart is telling you you're going the wrong direction and you want to be sure. — Hanover

It's a lucky person who has friends who will grab them back and talk sense into them when they're headed toward a bad place. But when you're helping your friend, you aren't telling them to deny what they already know. You're telling them to face it.

You're right, it's not just a matter of feelings. Still, when the potential rapist comes to you asking for advice, tell him that a man who commits rape has no love for himself. Tell him he already knows the answer. If it turns out you're wrong, and he really has no sense of right and wrong, it doesn't matter what you tell him. He's just going to have to end up in jail. By the way, a psychology professor who worked with child molesters in the prison system told his students that people like that almost never rehabilitate. There's just something wrong with them. God almighty could come down and zap it into stone, and they still wouldn't get it. Using them as examples for understanding morality in general is probably not the best plan.

Is there some principle you follow even though it's contrary to what you feel in your heart? I certainly hope not. That's how gang members are made. They do what everyone else says is right as opposed to what they feel, and eventually they don't feel anything anymore. They're just numb to their own consciences.

In other words: telling people not to listen to their own hearts, but instead follow the crowd is beyond stupid. It's a recipe for social disaster.

Note that the quote at the beginning of your post is not supposed to be expressing the view of a CEO. Gordon Gekko was Wall Street. This is a totally different kind of profit-making. The financial sector essentially skims money off the top of transactions associated with human needs, like crops, oil, meat, etc. They don't involve themselves in any of that other than to finance buy-outs. Corporations aren't central to the American economy. Wall St. is. GM will be allowed to fail. JPMorgan Chase won't.

This means that if you're a CEO, you've been charged with keeping a business afloat in an environment where the US government is not your ally. You have to compete with foreign businesses who are supported by their governments and have better labor markets. You probably inherited a model where most of the business is off-shore. You're not really an American business. You're global.

Healthcare is very different story. We can't exactly replace American workers with Indonesians there. In the US, the trend is toward fusion. We're headed toward a time when there are no independent local hospitals. They're all owned by entities who operate across large regions. This allows them to take control of the cost of medications. I actually like the way it's working.

So help me out here. Bob wants to rape and feels it very much a part of his intrinsic nature and he doesn't want to be judged for it. He asks me why it is immoral to rape. What do I tell him?

Am I immoral when I condemn him? Why? — Hanover

I don't think you can do much until he actually rapes somebody. Then you have to call the cops.

Well, no. It's pieces from p.207 and §258 of Philosophical Investigations. It's not Kripke. It's pretty much straight Wittgenstein. All I did was change "sensation" to "intrinsic nature". — Banno

All Kripke did was change it from sensation to historic rule following. He didn't do any violence to Wittgenstein. He just pointed out the consequences.. the dastardly consequences.

Notice the difference between "Think for yourself" and "Follow your intrinsic nature". "Thinking for yourself" allows for consideration of others. "Follow your intrinsic nature" drops consideration from the agenda. — Banno

This indicates that you have little faith in humans. You believe they're basically bad and need to be threatened with fire and brimstone in order to be good. But you realize that brimstone is mythical, so you just hate your on kind and leave it at that.

I've long believed that it's better to be the fool that you are rather than pretend to be wise. Being the real fool will lead you into lessons from which you can learn real wisdom. Pretending to be wise will only shield you from those lessons and leave you foolish in the end. My perspective is sort of optimistic. It allows the human spirit to soar, even though I know that in the end, it's all for nothing.

The notion that we have a "deepest essence" is deeply problematic, especially after "existence precedes essence". — Banno

Following your heart is the best way to discover the freedom to reinvent the world. I think you're getting tangled up in word games and missing that. I think you'd probably agree with TClark if you understood what he's saying.

This is the crux of St. Augustine's famous saying: Ama, et fac quod vis (Love, and do what you will). — Joshs

It was his answer to the old problem of evil, right?

This makes sense to me, with this addition - considerations of good and evil may be post hoc, but they are likely to effect my judgment when another situation comes up in the future. — T Clark

Right. That's what I said.

It's not that judgment has to prove itself somehow in terms of value. Sometimes it's just there.
— frank

In order to effectively stop the hit man, I have to judge the situation and decide how to act. I don't have to judge whether or not what he is doing is evil. It's not relevant. — T Clark

One would expect that before you kill someone, you would think about whether it's the right thing to do. In my dream, I didn't hesitate.

This is my theory: considerations of good and evil are mostly post hoc assessments of spontaneous action. In other words, everybody is like you. We all just act without a huge amount of thought and then guilt invades later when we realize that we didn't channel our angst in the best way, or maybe things went awesomely and we take credit for an outcome that was 99% accidental. Through experiences like that, action remains mostly spontaneous, but that lingering guilt or pride makes us pause and assess the options.

As for judgment, if I call my enemy "evil," "monster," "inhuman," what value does that provide? As far as I can see, and I see it everywhere in the world, all it does is distract from the most effective response. — T Clark

I once had a dream where a mafia hitman followed me to North Dakota to kill me. There was a moment in the dream where I knew someone was going to die, either him or me, and I knew beyond any doubt: it's was going to be him. It's not that judgment has to prove itself somehow in terms of value. Sometimes it's just there.

And you're right, it was cannibalism :grimace:

But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. — Banno

This is pretty much Kripkenstein. You just need to apply the principle to historic rule following.

For Emerson, it wasn't a wishy washy situation. Around 3-5% of America's white population were abolitionists, and Emerson was in that tiny minority. He was surrounded by people who were afraid that a racially diverse society would crumble. His advice, which has been passed down for generations was; think for yourself.

Good points, I agree.

I'm not even sure that behaving in accordance with the golden rule will arise automatically when I live in accordance with my inner nature. — T Clark

That's ok. :smile:

But I somehow want to prioritize "listening" as an action. Or togetherness. I'd say that our being-with is prior to our Dasein, tho Dasein is more accessible -- tho terribly close and thereby needing exposition -- something something Levinas lol. (or Sartre) — Moliere

The pendulum swings between two poles: understanding and judgment (I got this from cabbalism, ha!) If I fall deeply toward understanding, then I eventually lose the ability to judge. I see it all. I understand why the Nazis did that, and how Stalin never meant to become what he was, and so on. I see all the biology and culture and twists of fate that produce the villain. I can't punish, because the only difference between him and me is that fate was kinder in my case.

On the deep end of judgement, I've closed the door to any further understanding. I know all I need to know to condemn. And I'm righteous. I stood up for the cause. And I have no mercy.

We partake of both sides. Understanding tempers judgment. There are those who have hearts of stone. For whatever reason, all they can do is condemn everyone and everything. Then there are those who can only welcome understanding and they become bumps on logs. I think maybe that these two kinds of characters balance one another. If you're all judgment, that's what you bring to society: the will to act. If you're all understanding, that's what you bring to your world: mercy.

This image came to me one time, it was a dragon that flies blindly, destroying. Mercy is a dove that has the power to put a mirror in front of the dragon so it can see itself. The two are eternally bound.

After 1177 BC: The Survival of Civilizations, Cline

I'm glad you brought up the golden rule. I've spent some time thinking about how it fits into my formulation. I'm not sure of the answer. — T Clark

You follow your nature. Your nature changes when you learn how much pain others are in and how much they're just like you. It's the nature of a child vs the nature of the seasoned, right?

There is no thinking here, no conversation, no reflection, no philosophy. Ethical thinking, I suppose I mean, is more open than all that. — Moliere

But to finally act requires judgment, an end to discussion. Isn't that what it's all about?

Particularly in relationships, I've had the opportunity to be on both sides: the asshole and the wronged party. I know what the crime feels like from both sides. That's helpful for understanding the golden rule.

If Assange is not entitled to those rights on account of not being a citizen of the US, then it would seem to be inconsistent to claim that he should be subject to US law. — Janus

Life isn't fair.

:grin: The NYT is protected by the first amendment. In the 1970s, the Supreme Court ruled that this extends to embarrassing military secrets. We all know that has limits. We expect the NYT to restrain itself in cases where American lives or national security is at risk.

Assange is not a beneficiary of any of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. It would have been cool if he had stood up for the idea of a global free press. In doing so, he might have inspired his own country to make that right official. I guess he had personal issues that made that impossible?

That's interesting. I've never had it (knock on wood) in spite of being exposed to it quite a few times. Maybe I have that gene!

Is it the case that media outlets have never published leaked government documents? If it is not the case and leaked dicuments have been published, were the publishers prosecuted? — Janus

Yes, the NY Times published leaked documents. No, they weren't prosecuted.

from wh.gov:
"DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
The mission of the Department of Justice (DOJ) is to enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.

"The DOJ is made up of 40 component organizations, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Marshals, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Attorney General is the head of the DOJ and chief law enforcement officer of the federal government. The Attorney General represents the United States in legal matters, advises the President and the heads of the executive departments of the government, and occasionally appears in person before the Supreme Court.

"With a budget of approximately $25 billion, the DOJ is the world’s largest law office and the central agency for the enforcement of federal laws."

Nobody in the US takes the DOJ lightly. No one should.

The corpuscular view has many difficulties here. For one, in an a deterministic universe of little balls of stuff bouncing around, where the little balls define everything, information theory becomes difficult to conceptualize. There is no real "range of possible variables" for any interaction. The outcome of any "measurement" (interaction) is always just the one you get, there is no "potential." The distribution relevant for any system is just that very distribution measured for all the relevant interactions. You need some conception of relationality, potency, and perspective to make sense of it (Jaynes arguments for why entropy is, in some way, always subjective I think are relevant here). Arguably, you need perspective to explain even mindless physical interactions, but the legacy of the "view from nowhere/anywhere" is strong. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could you dumb this down a little for dummies like me? :grin:

I totally agree, and also with what you said about the universe becoming monolithic by virtue of the imperative of relationship. That shows up in Schopenhauer as well.

It's kind of curious then, when you consider what our most accurate physics says what an atom is, has nothing to do with the intuition that leads us to believe that atoms are these visible concrete things, that make the world up.

And atom is far from that, and perhaps should be considered more of a kind of "cloud" of activity, which is so far removed from anything we can visualize it starts to look like an idea of sort, which is NOT to say that the atom itself is an idea. — Manuel

I think physics is prompting a shift in worldview. Whether it catches on, I don't know.

It's in there. Otherwise, when kids point at things and ask "what is this?" we should have little idea what they are referring to, since it could be any arbitrary ensemble of sense data. But when a toddler points towards a pumpkin and asks what it is, you know they mean the pumpkin, not "half the pumpkin plus some random parts of the particular background it is set against." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I understand what you're saying. But if you tell me what things in the toddler's visual field she's pointing to, each one of those elements is a universal. Each one is an idea: orange, round, bumpy, etc. She's pointing to ideas. Yes, there's a visceral aspect to experience with the world, but the whatness of it isn't physical. It's ideas.

Yet if there were no objects (pumpkins, etc.) given in sensation, kids should pretty much be asking about ensembles in their visual field at random, and language acquisition would be hopelessly complex. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Unless the kid comes equipped with a smorgasbord of ideas ready to deploy? Are you familiar with Meno's paradox? I'm not saying the ideas are deployed at random. What I'm pointing to is that the world is a duck-rabbit picture. Whether it's duck or rabbit is not present in the picture.

Aren't they two sides of the same coin? We have evidence to tell us that a plant is different from an animal (universal ) — Count Timothy von Icarus

There isn't a scientific definition of life according to Robert Rosen. If pressed to come up with one, we'd have to say it has something to do with a final cause, but this isn't something we find in the physical realm. Plants have chlorophyl, but so do euglenas, which aren't plants or animals. We can't say plants don't eat, because Venus flytraps do. It's fuzzy boundaries.

We also have plenty of empirical evidence to support the idea that this pumpkin right here is different from the one "over there on the shelf," namely their different, observable histories, variance in accidental properties, and obviously their appearing to be in two different spaces (concrete). — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's true that pumpkin distinctions seem to be the sort of thing we discover. I don't recall deciding to divide the pumpkin off from the rest of the world, for instance. The distinction is there whether I'm looking at it or not. But look again. Look at the visual field that includes the pumpkin. Feel of the pumpkin with your hand. Smell the pumpkin. Where in any of this data is pumpkin?

f there was absolutely no physical evidence to demarcate particulars then decisions about them would be completely arbitrarily, and it should random whether I consider my car today to be the same car I drove last month. But our consideration of particulars isn't arbitrary, nor do they vary wildly across cultures, even if they can't be neatly defined. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The object is a fusion of idea and matter. We can hardly reject physicality. It's definitely there. It's just that the way we divide up the universe is conventional. It could be divided up differently.

I think the problem here is the same problem I referenced before, wanting to try to define objects, delineation, continuity, etc. completely without reference to things' relationships with Mind ("Mind" in the global sense since this is where concept evolve). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree. If an object is a fusion of idea and matter, then subtracting out idea, gives us something we can't imagine.

If physical basis means something else, then I would like to know. Until someone can present a convincing argument as to what "physical" must contrast with (and why is this so) we may do away with "physical" and speak about "objective basis" of objects. — Manuel

The cultural background of this discussion is the image of God as a clockmaker, who sets the world in motion, then leaves it to itself. Subtract out the God, and you have a mechanistic universe, which is part of our present worldview. Things like universals, ideas, abstract objects, etc. become ill-fitting phantoms . They aren't addressed by physics because they don't count as real in the sense an atom is supposed to be. So this worldview says the real is physical. It's contrasted to unreal ideas.

This is why it can be startling to realize that when I look around, I'm seeing ideas. It's just Plato back again, right?

There's no physical evidence behind the way we divide the world up.
I pretty much said that in my OP, yes. — noAxioms

You're correct.

None at all? It seems there is plenty of physical evidence behind the distinction between plant and animal, living and non-living, physical squares and physical triangles, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're talking about universals, there, so you're starting with a time-honored way of dividing things up. I was talking about particulars. For particulars, it's like this:

Then you've communicated the convention to it. The question is if 'object' is defined in the absence of that communication. — noAxioms

I don't think so. There's no physical evidence behind the way we divide the world up.

It could do that with AI directed actuation. Just tell the AI what you want to shoot
— frank
Again, that evades the question by using language to convey the demarcation to the device. — noAxioms

Still, an inanimate object can make distinctions you program it to recognize. You don't have to be a magic human to do that. I think the rest is just a matter of purpose. The phaser doesn't have any motives that aren't given to it.

If the question was whether our common worldview assures us that distinctions don't need conscious input, then dinosaurs would be on point. But dinosaurs are part of a worldview that is itself underdetermined by physical evidence (see here). As Quine would say, we believe there was a time when there were no humans because of psychological reasons, not physical ones.

So the question is whether our worldview should limit our questioning or not. I think we all agree it shouldn't, but in this case, that just leaves us where we started.

This presumes that the physical device (which artificially made to serve a pragmatic purpose) will be able to glean the pragmatic intent when being used — noAxioms

It could do that with AI directed actuation. Just tell the AI what you want to shoot.

. I'm personally pretty confident, for instance, that the measurement of the gravitational constant doesn't reflect our biases — mcdoodle

More controversially, it might be possible to extend this inherit relationality into an argument for an inherit "perspectiveness" to all physical interactions— relevant perspective (or something like it) without experience. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is an SEP article on underdetermination of knowledge. It's like a relative of the problem of induction. With regard to gravity, it means this: any attempts to explain gravity will run into issues with underdetermination, which are:

1. Any hypothesis makes sense as part of a web of already held beliefs. If a hypothesis fails, we have a choice between saying that the hypothesis is wrong, or saying that one of the background beliefs (part of the web of beliefs) is wrong. There's no way to make this choice beyond pragmatism.

2. For any theory that gains approval in the scientific community, there are alternatives that will also explain the available data. Again, it's a matter of pragmatism.

So tying this back to the OP @noAxioms, it means that if we question the makeup of a human (does it include the clothes or bugs on the sleeve), we'll find that however we approach the question, the conclusion will be an exercise in pragmatism. Any revision to our web of beliefs comes down to psychology (see in the above article where Quine says epistemology is basically psychology.)

Rocks also might be the wrong sort of thing to look at for a paradigmatic example of discrete objects. Rocks don't have much of a definite form. A rock broken in half becomes two rocks, generally speaking, and many rocks fused together become one rock, whereas "half a dog" is clearly a half. Rocks are largely bundles of causes external to them. They don't do much to determine themselves. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Any discrete object is discrete by virtue of standing out against a background. Think of this thesis:

The realm of the senses is all rabbit-duck and it's divided up into discrete-object-background complexes according to the organizing ability of your mind.

Is it possible to disprove this thesis?

edit: I think the main problem with it is that I'll need a higher power to separate me out from the the rest of the world. Plus, I might run afoul of the private language argument.