The fact that nobody just answers his question is a sign that he's right.

I just take note of typical grifty tactics, like narrative shifting, and as the list grows my trust shrinks. — Tzeentch

I don't think it changed. The word climate has been central to it the whole time, like from the 1980s onward?

Did anyone ever wonder why they changed their brand from "global warming" to "climate change"? — Tzeentch

Did they? I hadn't noticed.

A big volcano in the S Pacific blew up this year. Volcanoes usually cool the climate (like during the 1990s), but this one is making it hotter because it's under water and it's blowing water vapor into the atmosphere.

Are moral truths the product of empirical scientific research? Do we go to the physicists with our moral questions? In many ways this whole thread is an ignoratio elenchi, and you've highlighted that fact with this post. — Leontiskos

Kripke agrees with you. There is no fact about what a moral realist intends at any given time.

But this issue doesn't answer the OP. You're pointing to the practical outcome of believing in moral realism, not the practical outcome of the existence of objective moral rules.

In that post I was arguing that the intention of the moral realist differs from the intention of the moral non-realist, for the moral realist understands themselves to be responding to a real reality. — Leontiskos

Could we verify this empirically? What sort of research project would we construct?

This is the answer you were looking for:

The change in climate over last 150 years or so (since start of industrial age) do not fit into any known previous pattern and cannot be accounted for by any theory or hypothesis that involves natural processes only. When you factor in the additional C02 and CH4 the numbers work out. — EricH

There's no fact about which rules anyone follows anyway.

You're arguing that moral realists behave differently from anti-realists. Even if that's true, it doesn't answer the OP. It's not the reality of the moral rules that matters, it's the psychology of believing realism. That said, I don't think it's true that moral realists behave differently. Again, it's all psychology.

I feel safe in predicting that Biden will again win the popular vote... But it remains to be seen if he can carry the swing states he needs to win. Biden's unpopularity may lead many to stay home rather than vote. Biden barely won some states in 2020, so it wouldn't take much of a shift. — Relativist

I predict low voter turnout. I think that will help Trump. GOP voters are old and reliable.

hen a regular guy cannot get a straight answer about why human activity has superseded natural causes as reason for climate change, — Merkwurdichliebe

You could get the straight answer if you felt like reading a wikipedia article about it.

I did not. And I never atttibuted any of the changes in the earth's climate to human activity. I'm just curious about why the prehistorical pattern of climate change is attributed to natural causes in every instance except for the present one — Merkwurdichliebe

I asked because you keep saying the cycle from the 800,000 year graph is happening now. It's not. You're overlooking the massive difference in scale between the glacial/interglacial cycle versus the few centuries of anthropogenic climate change.

I'm just saying, when I first started looking into climate change it was because of a book I read about Egypt. If you read about ancient Egypt, you find out that during the last glacial period, the Sahara was a prairie, not a desert. There were people living there. The history of Egypt starts when the glacial period was finally finishing, but there were still big rivers and lakes where now, there's only desert. And all this is just looking at changes over the last 12,000 years.

The graph that shows the milankovitch cycle covers eight hundred thousand years. That's gigantic. Our species has only been around for maybe 300,000. It's kind of mind blowing to get the scale of geological time. I found it that way, anyway.

I have to ask you: did you think the earth's climate had pretty much always been the way it is now?

what explanation does IPCC give us for the occurrence of the pattern of climate change over the past 800,000 years (which the current trend fits into perfectly on time), in which all prior events occurred in the absence of human industrialization and modernization? — Merkwurdichliebe

I don't even know what you're asking, but I have a feeling you're going to ask again, in spite of the video. :grimace:

So then, what explanation does IPCC give us for the occurrence of that pattern in the absence of human industrialization and modernization? — Merkwurdichliebe

It's partly the earth's axial wobble, and partly the way the earth's orbit changes from circular to elliptical. I haven't read a book about the climate in a couple of years, and that's long enough to get out of date. So, don't take my word. Look it up.

Nevertheless, it shows an obvious pattern. — Merkwurdichliebe

Yes.

That graph covers 800,000 years in 4 inches. You're just a tiny speck at the end.

And what is the IPCC explanation for why the current climate change is being blamed on human industrialization when the same pattern has occurred many times prior to the modern age? — Merkwurdichliebe

I don't know what you mean by "the same pattern." We're in a interglacial period. The glacial periods are the dips.

Why do you think current climate change is being blamed on human industrialization when the same pattern has occurred many times prior to the modern age? — Merkwurdichliebe

Basically a shit ton of computer modelling by a shit ton of scientists all over the world. It's called the IPCC.

Are you suggesting that there may be causal factors beyond the human? — Merkwurdichliebe

For climate change? Of course. The climate has been changing since there's been a climate.

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).