Do you think we should be sending immigrants to an El Salvadorean prison? — RogueAI

These are complicated legal questions, and so I'd really have to read the court opinions on it. I generally know how the courts ruled, but whether I agree or not would require a deep dive into it before I said it made sense to me or not.

What I push back on is the idea that these questions are addressed through basic notions of fairness or decency. Those nebulous concepts don't control. So, if you have some analysis that suggests a misconstruction of the law and you want to debate various precedent, I don't know I'm up for it, but that would be the only argument I'd consider valid.

And the Constitution is just a piece of paper with some words, right? — RogueAI

No. That's a legal document.

Is that just talk to make us feel good, or are those words to live — RogueAI

I think it's a poem.

Entirely reasonable people have serious objections to the methods and process being used by Trump. — prothero

They do, but this was the platform Trump ran under. Elections have consequences. It is the will of the people.

There is a statute of limitations in criminal cases that will toll only if the person concealed their illegal status, which can result in the time limit not starting until discovery. Whether that would apply would be fact specific.

There are no limits on civil proceedings that would remove the person.

Properly understood being in the country illegally is a civil not a criminal offense — prothero

But see, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325

The problem is that the US has immigration law and immigration policy and the two aren't uniform. The law is clear, and it does not allow those that make it here in violation of the law to stay once they've been in the US a certain amount of time.

The policy reasons vary as @Benkei notes above, but whatever that policy is ought be embedded in the law. An argument could be made that it would be undemocratic for a chief executive not to execute the law as passed by Congress, particularly under the US Constitution's "faithfully execute" clause (the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed").

So let's abstract this: Under what circumstances do you wish to empower the chief executive to ignore the democratic will and engage in the wholesale refusal to enforce the law?

In the 1800s, the state of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) in the case of Worcester v. Ga. ignored the Supreme Court's ruling that the Cherokee lands within the state were soverign according to treaty and the state had no power to eject them from their lands. They did anyway and President Jackson didn't care. And the trail of tears followed. Any problem there with Jackson's use of discretion?

Properly understood, the argument that the President is afforded the power to evaluate Acts of Congress and decide whether he will honor them is an increase in his power, not a check on it. In fact, it's an elimination of a check. Unless you're willing to allow the President the power to ignore, let's say, civil right legislation under this broad power of selective enforcement as well, you can't take a principled stance on this except to say he should enforce the laws you like and not the ones you don't.

That doesn't really strike me as the rule of law though.

What I'm saying is that if you want the immigrants to be afforded greater rights, change the law. If we took this idea seriously, we would actually legislate when these matters arose, but we don't. We instead hold up signs in the streets and see if we can get someone in charge to buckle under the pressure. Then we shoot an Australian lady in the leg with a rubber bullet for good measure.

If by OK you mean, "Something I might feel ethically obligated to do": Sure. A foul regime imprisons me and my family and indulges its jailers' sadistic fantasies. (This example actually happened in Nazi Germany.). "Rape your daughter," they tell me, "otherwise we'll torture your entire family to death before your eyes." I emphasized might, above, because I don't presume to know what would seem right to me under the circumstances. But I might well decide that the rape was the lesser of two evils.

This highlights two important points. First, if that's not what you mean by OK -- if, rather, you mean "Rape becomes a good thing in this scenario" -- then I agree, this can never happen. Second, while we are helpless in the face of circumstances to rely on rules, that doesn't meant that teaching our children that rape is wrong should always be contextualized. I am not a utilitarian, but this is one area where the distinction between act and rule utilitarianism is useful. — J

The point of the question is whether there are objective, universal rules that have to be applied in order to determine morality. It's not relevant which moral dilimma you create in answering this abstract question. The question I posed was meant to just provide a very straight forward question, as in, is it morally wrong to rape someone without adding in a bunch of absurd facts with guns to people's heads and whatnot. But, to clarify, is it wrong to rape someone just for fun, who was otherwise just an innocent bystander.

Your example does not pose a challenge to my question. It just poses a very strange example we have to consider, as in "Is it wrong to rape someone if it is the only means to save the life of another," where we then have to get into a hierarchy of moral rules and how to prioritize them.

We can probably start with a goal, something like reducing suffering. — Tom Storm

I start with the goal of increasing suffering. Why choose yours? I'll answer that question. Because my goal is immoral.

None of this involves objectivity, it's more like a recipe made out of our shared judgements and hopes. — Tom Storm

Of course it involves objectivity. You're specifically stating that the advancement of "our shared judgments and hopes" is the Good. Notwithstanding that fact that "our" is undefined here because who "our" encompasses in the antebellum south, Nazi Germany, and in the various less than humanistic societies over time would arrive at very different "shared judgments and hopes."

So, is rape wrong? That is, regardless of how a society values women, regardless of what some dictator might say or do, are you willing to go out on a limb and say "rape is wrong, anytime, anywhere, and regardless of the consensus."

If you're not, tell me the scenario where it's ok.

I don't think you will. What that means is we need to take seriously the objectivity of morality and figure out what we're talking about and not suggest there is some sort of preference or voting taking place. If you think there are principles that apply throughout all societies, you are going to be referencing the objective whether you like it or not.

There's a key difference here. Hanover seems to be looking for a set of rules that are practiced. But what answers the question, and what you have provided, is a set of rules that ought be practiced.

So Hanover points out in triumph that they are not practiced everywhere, missing the point entirely. — Banno

No, I recognized his itemization was of the aspirational. I questioned if there were an objective anchor for those ethical statements, as in, is there something other than our agreement that makes the good the good.

If I say, we ought reduce suffering, I'm speaking in the objective. If not, then for some the increase of suffering might be good. But you disagree I'm sure in the proposition that we ought increase the pain of all redheads, for example. Why? They are a tiny little minority, and if the rest of of enjoy their pain, why limit it? Assert for me your principle. This isn't that hard.

Could we show ChatGPT what pain is? It does not have the mechanism required, obviously. But moreover it cannot participate in the "form of life" that would enable it to be in pain. — Banno

This is my problem:

“If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” -- Philosophical Investigations §223
“To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.” -- §19

Is ChatGPT a lion?

If we rely on §19 and say he is a lion based upon its failure to engage in "form of life," then we cannot understand it per §223, which is false, because we can understand it.

To say that AI does not engage in a form of life asks for a definition of "form of life," which I take to be:

"Only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious."-- §281

This seems arbitrary. Why must a form of life have these attributes as opposed to identifying functionality, meaning, why must it look like a person to be a person. Why can't it just not act like a person to be a person.

By requiring human like physical attributes to deny AI being a lion strikes me as a cop out. That is not behavior. But to do otherwise would lead to the problem of explaining what the non-lion does internally, and that is forbidden. It is a private state that cannot be described.

But should we say that the properly behaved AI model does pass the Turing test, we're left with it not being a lion and it engaging in real language.

This might be a long winded way of saying that if "form of life" is knowable only by what is publically available, and it is convincing, then AI is a form of life, and we can't say such things as it doesn't have real stakes in the outcome of things or whatnot because that is extrapolating the contents of the mental state. If it act like a duck, it must be a duck. We can't assume otherwise just because it doesn't have the physical appearance of a duck.

Several of my "vice behaviors" -- smoking, drinking, and promiscuous sex were PULLED. — BC

But how do you know you weren't manipulated by the marketing machine or by social pressures cast upon the young impressionable Bittercrank? The candy Camels of your v youth were part of the grooming process.

And like you say, this applies to everything. Demands are created and then filled. Maybe you have some of your unique demands, but most hit the marketplace first, then we run to get them, thinking we're pushing to get that new iPhone, but really we were reeled in by a shiny lure.

The private language argument does not conclude that we do not have sensations. — Banno

I didn't suggest otherwise.

Won't be the best first time, but I'll do a deeper dive into this and see what I come up with.

The private language argument against private sensations has got to be one of the most unconvincing arguments I've encountered. — Michael

I think it's contrived in order to avoid metaphysical converations that don't yield answers. It strikes me as a prescriptive use of the term "language" that violates the fundamental rule that language is derived from use. Internal states are not denied, they just can't be spoken about and they just exist alongside language.

By example, AI engages in language usage in a very precise way. This shows that having an internal state is unnecessary to assess words and to use them consistently. The fact that ChatGPT has no internal state and is able to use words precisely means that meaning is derived from word usage, not from what is going on in your head. Or so the argument goes.

Of course, that's not how we use the word "language." We mean it as a term that describes how we convey private mental states to other people. The words are not just epiphenomenon to our mental states. They represent the mental state, but that is what is rejected in this Wittgensteinian analysis.

The argument is that since we don't need a consciousness to describe conscious states, our descriptions are not of conscious states, but are just games we play with one another, for some strange reason. This idea dispenses with the messiness of the experience, the phenomenal state, and it allows an entire linguistic philosophy to emerge without having to deal with Chalmers and the like, which are, in my estimation, real philosophers dealing with real issues. I see the logical analytic linguistic enterprise as a complicated puzzle, like playing a chess match, figuring out rules and what not, but I don't find it convincing, or useful (ironically).

I'm fairly well acquainted with some of the literature. My basic objection is that if they are private experiences then they are unavailable for discussion, and if they are available for discussion then they seem to be just what we ordinarily talk about using words like "red" and "loud". — Banno

But this commentary leaves the confines of your Wittgensteinian box. "Qualia" has meaning. It's meaning is how it is used within the language game. You seem to want to say qualia is a hollow concept because it lacks an internal anchoring, but meaning under this theory is never assessed upon its internal anchoring. It's assessed by public use.

Qualia is available for discussion as the thing I guess you say is not available for discussion. That's your use, but I just want to be sure you aren't talking about qualia as an ontological entity, as if you can.

These last weeks the prospect of leaving behind years of discussions and interactions on these fora has reminded me that sooner or later this will be the case unless I self-delete my entire post history which is unimagineable to me at the moment. — 180 Proof

I would think if you were to delete all your posts, you would do it consistent with your style and cross through them all.

A joke, my friend. Glad you're back and hope you're feeling better.

This is to the point - ↪Hanover wants a "basis" so he can "condemn their art you find abhorrent"; and that basis is all around us and includes our community of learning and language. — Banno

So I'll respond to the greater Wittgenstenian allusion here, which if Davidson is following (and you know better than me), we end up with a profound shallowness, particularly in the area of aesthetics which, properly understood (I'd submit), is to identify the underlying internal meaning of the thing to that person experiencing it. I understand that it's not that Witt denies the internal meaning is there, but it's that he ushers it out as superfluous, a sort of epiphenomenon that might exist alongside our speech. That is to say, ChatGPT can discuss at wonderful length the beauty of any piece of art, convincingly and entirely, playing the language game like the pro it is in manipulating syntax and identifying patterns. But it lacks the experience. And that is the point of aesthetics. It has no necessary utility. The Mona Lisa doesn't keep the wall in place. It has internal experiential meaning, so applying the analytic tradition to beauty seems an oddity unto itself.

Yes, to all of the above. That’s the condition we’ve always lived in. It seems to me morality emerges from a shifting balance of perspectives, shaped by history, culture, conversation, and imagination. There is no final foundation, only the ongoing work of negotiation, persuasion, and a hope for common ground. And yes, some cultures do lose this fragile balance though war or vested interests and anarchy results.

But I can already hear some asking but what does common ground matter if there's no objectivity? We are motivated by the desire to live with others without constant fear or conflict, to reduce suffering (our own and others), to be understood, to feel belonging, to imagine a world less cruel or arbitrary. Even without objectivity, these needs and aspirations don’t disappear. We don’t act because we’ve found final truths, but because we live among others, and must find ways to manage that fact. — Tom Storm

You list out objective criteria for determining morality: (1) negotiation, (2) persuasion, (3) search for common ground, (4) avoidance of anarchy, (5) avoidance of war (6) reducing suffering, (7) increasing our feeling of being understood, (8) increasing feeling of beloingingness, (9) reduction of cruelty, and (10) reduction of arbitratry rule. You also impose an unspoken meta rule, which is that rationality is the arbiter of morality.

Does any theocracy adhere to any of these rules? Do they even apply your meta rule? The point here is that you can't assert there are no hard and fast rules, but then identify the hard and fast rules, and then suggest that your rules are not simply a recitation of Western values generally but are just obvious truths everyone takes to be self-evident. These rules are not universal and it is not a universal truth that morality is to be found through reason. That's not even the rule within traditional theistic systems within the West (i.e. divine command theory).

And this is the bigger question of moral realism. The question of moral realism is not whether we know for certain what every moral justification is, but it's whether there are absolute moral rules that we are seeking to discover. If the answer is that there is not, that it's just a matter of preference, then we are left asking why we can impose our idiosyncratic rules on others. If, though, you say there is an objective good, we can impose our assessement of what they are on others, recognizing we could be wrong in our assessment. However, to do this will require us to say that we assess morality based upon X because that basis is right, and if you don't use X, you are wrong. Once you've taken that step, you stepped outside of subjectivity and you've declared an absolute truth.

And how do you know your moral basis is right (whether it be the Bible, your 10 point system, Utliltarianism, Kantianism, or whatever), you just do. This is where faith rears its ugly (or clarifying) head once again.

Ah, better. A good comeback. But you've moved over to ethics, and we probably should remain in the area of aesthetics, for the sake of the theme of this thread — Banno

I took though Davidson's critique to be that objectivity is universally muddled thinking. If the point he makes is simply that aesthetic judgments in particular don't lend themselves to objective reasoning, then his is just a platitude that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." That's obvioulsy not what he's limiting himself to when he challenges objectivity.

There are different sorts of judgments: moral, aesthetic, and empirical/ontological for example. I think we must maintain objectivity to morality. I would agree that the aesthetic is largely if not entirely subjective. The empirical/ontological is the most confusing because it asks what the thing is devoid of subjectively imposed attributes, leading us down the Lockean path of trying to distinguish what properties are inherent in the object and what are imposed by the person. It's the whole phenomenal/noumenal debate that leads us to direct and indirect realism conversations.

Again, unless you're in one of the many war-torn countries where such horrors are treated as routine.) — Tom Storm

Then upon what basis do you condemn their acts you find abhorrent? You have your preferences and they theirs.

Where are your jurisdictional boundaries that define your moral community? Am I bound by the consensus of the West, the US, the Southern US, my ethnicity, my religious heritage, my compound of similar thinkers? Can't it be that the entirety of my community could be wrong, yet I am right? If not, must I sacrifice babies to the gods if my community says it is good even if I disagree?

Don't want to clutter with cut and paste, but let me know if this won't open.

It is wrong to murder.

Ice cream tastes good.

Two propositions, both with truth values. Do you ask "to whom?" when answering the first, the second, both, or neither when determining that truth value?

If you answer the first without regard to whom, you are seeking the objective.

No!

The objective/subjective dichotomy is a mistake. Much clearer to use charity and truth, after Davidson — Banno

Yes!

https://chatgpt.com/c/68464d0f-584c-8007-9245-f61243387086

So if someone does not doubt that 2+2 is 4, do we discount this as a belief becasue it is indubitable? — Banno

"Indubitable" summons Descartes, so from Mediations:

“I clearly and distinctly perceive that existence is contained in the idea of God, just as clearly and distinctly as I perceive that the equality of its three angles to two right angles is contained in the idea of a triangle.”

This speaks to the logically necessary and therefore indubitable (which he includes geometry and God), which i suspect is different from a Wittgensteinian hinge indubitable, meaning those things we can't question in a game playing arena. Those would be foundational rules. And I think of Kantian intuitions, also indubitable (e.g. time and space), but only insofar as necessary to provide us any ability to understand the world.

The point is you're asking about "on certainty" and how that is a different category than belief, and this question seems central to Western philosophy in terms of asking what we can debate and what we cannot across different founding father philosophers (as it were).

But nothing is straight forward because some do challenge whether the indubitable can be doubted. Consider transubstantiation, that miraculous concept pondered for thousands of years how the trinity can be a unity, leaving us with a word called 'triunity."

And I do think the major challenges will come from religion because it posits a very different view toward knowledge justifications (i.e. faith versus rationalism/empiricism).

Or do we say instead that because he will not act on what he holds to be true, that he doesn't really believe? — Banno

My father, despite his very scientific background, would not fly on airplanes, would not ride glass elevators, and insisted upon lower floors in hotels so he could make it out before being consumed by the one in a million hotel fire. I truly don't know what he believed. Curiously, he died a fiery death when an airplane struck him on the 40th floor of a hotel while, you guessed it, in a glass elevator (a joke). Phobias don't strike me as beliefs as much as just irrational fear, rooted in the psyche, maladapting to something in the past. I once asked him why he'd get on a ship and not a plane. He told me he could swim but couldn't fly, and he was super proud of that retort. Beats me.

Given her desire to stay with her lover, the decision to trust is rational. — Banno

Playing the lotto is rational if you wish to win because you can't win if you don't play. Believing you will win is a different matter. Maybe some believe they'll actually win, like some believe they'll one day become a princess or rock star or whatever fantasy one might have. And let's not overlook the pessimists who are sure they'll fail despite all they have going for them.

I suspect this has to do with the J of K=JTB, where it is inherently subjective. That is, if I give a justification for my belief, it can count as knowledge, and my justification is valid if I subjectively accept it. If I believe I'll win the lotto because I believe myself God's special creature, then it's belief. I dont think McCormick can deny certain justifications for belief as invalid justvbecause they contain an emotive basis. I can believe for whatever stupid reason i want. . That won't make a non belief. That will just make it a stupid belief. But a belief nonetheless.

David's belief is not to be subjected to doubt. What are we to say here - again, that it's not a proper belief becasue it is indubitable? — Banno

This is faith based belief, the topic of a whole other thread. Those of certain religious worldviews would see this one as so obviously intertwined with the mystical, the emotive, the super rational, that McCormick 's thesis would appear elementary. That is, no kidding, my belief in God relies upon justifications a non-believer would never accept?

The examples of these blended beliefs given in the article are:

"The following examples point to states which are difficult to characterize given the standard view: Anna, who suffers from [1] Capgras syndrome, believes her husband is an impostor even though she has no evidence for it and much against it; she also fails to take the kind of actions one would expect with such a belief such as running away or calling the authorities. [2] Balthasar believes the glass skywalk is safe and yet trembles as he tries to walk on it. [3] Charu believes that their lover will keep their promise to not betray them again even though past evidence indicates that they will, and [4] David believes that the God as described in the Bible exists, though he is aware of the evidence suggesting that such a God does not exist and claims his reasons for believing are not based in evidence."

Breaking then down:

1 appears to be a delusion coupled with irrationality, suggesting general confusion. It's not clear really what she "believes." Perhaps she doubts her delusion. Don't all beliefs contain doubt? We often do speak of the reliability of our beliefs, some more doubtable than others (particularly Descartes).

2 could be considered the same as 1 to the extent he doubts his belief as evidenced by his conduct. On the other hand, I'm not sure this one has much to do with belief. That is, his fear is just an emotional reaction. A person fearing heights doesn't stand away from the rail because he thinks he'll fall. It's just that heights scarec him. Stage fright isn't a belief you'll die. It's just misplaced fear.

3 is hope. It's what makes us take chances, to gamble, to chase dreams. It's the belief that belief makes things possible. Tracht gut vet zein gut as they say (and by they, I mean me). Of course, in the example given, it might be foolish belief.

4 sounds Kierkegaardian as a leap of faith, or perhaps James' pragmatic will to believe. The will to believe is an explicit combination of desire and belief and really forms the basis of his theory as to certain matters.

And Hume explicitly stated that reason is the slave to the passions. As in, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." Which i take to mean emotions set things in motion and we use reason to justify them. This would mean that our reason based beliefs had to start with some emotion.

I suppose my greater point is that I think McCormick is correct in her observation, but what's she's saying is fairly obvious generally and something historically recognized. That it is being treated as a revelation might speak to the rigidity of certain anglo analytic systems, where emotion had been extracted from the hyper logical methodology.

As in, we in the regular world knew all along our beliefs were messy.

Reminds me of Comfortably Numb. Super cool vibe.

I feel like if you don't read every page, then you can't honestly say you read the book. That includes the acknowledgments page, but that's typically very short, usually thanking one's wife for her support while he ignored her while writing the book, but the wife actually liked the time alone, saved from having to hear about the book he's writing. If a woman wrote the book, she probably thanked her friend Emily. I'm not sure why, but that sounds right.

I don't read endnotes, but I feel somewhat obligated to read the footnotes. I won't read the footnotes when they start taking up half the bottom of the page because that feels like they're trying to have a side conversation about something else. Not that I'm big on focusing my attention when I talk about things, but I do expect it from others. It's a do as I say and not as I do sort of thing. My issue with endnotes is that you have to search them out by finding the chapter you're in and then finding the corresponding endnote for that chapter. Sometimes you might read the wrong endnote, and you might end up seeing into the future of what is going to happen which will destroy your sense of surprise and your finger might slip and you'll lose your page to where you were in the book proper. You then have to backfill (I'm pretty sure that's the word I'm looking for) from the endnote to find the place you were at pre-finger slipping.

I got a copy of Brothers Karamazov that is in like 6 point font, which is just over standard microfiche size. It's difficult reading because of that. I ordered an oversized version, but now I fear it will be too large and will crush my chest with its weight. It's a weighty book. The weighty book joke is about as funny as the difficult reading joke. They're of the same genre.

What do you think is happening when a person grasps a concept? — frank

Understanding occurs. It's within the mystical parameters of consciousness which AI lacks yet seems to outperform us on.

I don't demand language for conceptual grasp. That strikes me as contrived to eliminate metaphysical messiness.

Equating cognitive grasp of propositions to an experiential event necessarily eliminates any non-empirically based propositions, with the obvious examples being the analytical and I'd submit also the modal, which was the topic of another thread with @Banno from which I've not yet recovered.

That is, you're going to suggest now that I know of the counterfactual possible world based upon the actual world despite the fact that the possible world is defined as the non-actual not experienced world?

This is just to say propositional truth need not be how-to truth, and taking the position it must be in 100% of the cases seems a task that will fail given the creativity of your opponent in offering counters. If though, as I suspect, there is a hidden tautology here, meaning I am searching for the white penguin when you define penguins as black, I'd like to fast forward to the big reveal so I can see where it ends.

Started Kripke's Naming and Necessity. I appreciate the preface begins on page 1. Often prefaces start with i then ii, then iii and so on and you have to read 20 pages before you get to the first page. I don't feel it gives enough feeling of accomplishment early on when things are most challenging. Someone should write a book on that alone.

. Very much so. Knowledge is embedded in what we do, in ways well beyond the place of information. — Banno

Do you take the assessment of the truth value of a proposition as knowing-how knowledge, equivalent to juggling balls? Seems evaluating statements requires cognitive grasp of concepts.

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy. Pow!

That sounds responsive to the question "Hey, Clarky what do you normally do, and what are your thoughts on the word "justified?"

But that's not what I asked.

This is my cross examination, not your chance just to share.

There are sex differences in psychology.

These differences drive the development of gender expression and gender roles in society – expressions and roles which have absolutely nothing to do with karyotype and almost nothing to do with phenotype. — Michael

The article you cited leads with the following sentence:

"Sex differences in psychology are differences in the mental functions and behaviors of the sexes and are due to a complex interplay of biological, developmental, and cultural factors."

This causually relates (i.e. "due to") psychology to biology. This statement seems obvious, so I don't follow your argument that gender behavior "has absolutely nothing to do with karotype." While it's obvious some biological individuals don't conform with typical expected gender roles, the high rate of conformity certainly suggests a causual biological/gender relationship that requires the existence of certain variables (i.e. developmental and cultural factors) to disrupt.

To argue otherwise just seems to create a radical environmental influence position, stating that gender expression and biology only correlate due to social pressure and nothing else. The observable affect of testosterone alone seems to contradict this, which is a direct product of karotype, coming from the XY created testes.

T=K/JB.

That's the formula for Truth because K=JTB.

Here’s my take - get rid of the requirement for truth. — T Clark

So we have two things:

A = justified true belief
B = justified belief

You propose we assign the word "knowledge" to B ( instead of to A).

What word do you now propose we assign for A?

Instead we should split the two.
Knowledge is information that is true.
For example ''Superman can fly in the fictional realm of DC''. Is true if stated as such and thus is knowledge. It doesn't require a belief to be true. It just is. — Jack2848

If knowledge doesn't require belief, then i can know Superman can fly even if I've never heard of Superman?

Instead of focusing on the weight of the information itself, people would focus on the motives of the messenger, questioning why now, why this way, and what else is being hidden. — schopenhauer1

This actually seems to be occurring now. For some reason Fox News and the right have a sudden obsession with UFOs. I tend to think the claims more bullshit because of this partisan leaning.

Either way, it’s the combination of high-level secrecy, the volume of eyewitness accounts, and the long timeline that makes it harder to dismiss the whole thing outright. Something’s going on. The only question is what-and why hasn’t it been fully acknowledged? — schopenhauer1

But this is just poor epistemological reasoning. It says not to look at any specific account for proof, but instead just look at the whole without looking too close. It's like if I brought you into a warehouse with thousands of boxes of evidence for alien existence and every piece I examined closely offered no proof, but you said "yeah, but just look at this warehouse of stuff" as if that's proof enough.

I don't want 1000s of blurred bigfoot pictures to prove bigfoot exists. I want one bigfoot in a cage.

Another possibility is that these aren’t accidents at all but highly controlled incidents, maybe decoys, or maybe a kind of data collection or seeding operation. Because if they’re smart enough to get here, you'd expect they’d be smart enough not to crash into a hillside in New Mexico. — schopenhauer1

If they're playing 4-D quantum mental chess, then sure, they've out foxed us all. But then again, I don't know what that even means.

If anything is being kept, it’s probably technological debris or biological samples-not live aliens. If these beings were as advanced as suggested, would they really just agree to sit quietly in some underground facility? If they’re that capable, couldn’t they have done far more already? Unless, of course, some kind of agreement exists. What the nature of that would be, I don't know. — schopenhauer1

You really believe in this? I think it horseshittery.

There are two bases I can decipher for why I would want to create an amoral system: (1) the imposition of morality within a system is immoral in itself because it imposes a particular morality upon others they may disagree with, or (2) it normalizes amorality, a condition from which you suffer, and so you would be more comfortable in such a system.

If #1, then you are arguing morality, which you've indicated you're not capable of doing.

If #2, then why would I be motivated to accept a position to accomodate someone who recognizes their moral limitations?

This is simply to say that if you are submitting that your position promotes the Good for whatever reason, then you are presenting to me your understanding of the Good, yet you prefaced this conversation with the self-awareness that you are not sure what the Good is.

I am working to construct a new me that is moral, friendly, and overall a chill guy, — Wolfy48

Why? I guess that's my real question. Why do you want morality, friendliness, and being a chill guy?

And if this were your objective, why wouldn't you just directly impose moral standards into the system?

I appreciate that this is a hypothetical, so it's not entirely right to question the premises that you've asserted as given, but we do need to consider the reality that Donald Trump (as an example) is not a reliable means for dispensing and withholding information based upon his reasonable assessment of what information can be handled by the populace.

And where I use "Donald Trump," I really mean anybody. This suggestion that information is controllable, and even if it were, that those controlling it have any idea what to do with it is a dubious notion. At the microcosm level of an office environment, for example, it seems impossible to control gossip, and those in charge of controlling it are particuarly bad at it. It's for that reason I find it hard to fathom how these alien beings have been able to surgically reveal their identity to the earthling leaders without tipping off any random jogger or pigeon feeder and those leaders then kept the information under wraps.

If that could happen, I would have much more trust in my government officials and I would likely be willing to submit to whatever gradual ontological shock process they thought was best because clearly they're playing 4-D chess that I cannot understand.

On the other hand, assuming most people are playing tic-tac-toe and sometimes even checkers, I would rather they just tell me everything at once because as they tried to control the information, all they would actually do is leak things they weren't supposed to and bring about confusion.

I'll go back to quaint adage of "thou shallt not lie," and just expect the people installed to represent the people to tell us the truth. It creates an interesting game to lie and dance around the truth, but the shit is going to hit the fan eventually, so maybe do it in a way that will maintain one's credibility once that happens. That is, I use ancient wisdom to answer your questions about futuristic dilemmas.

you are claiming that under Popper's thesis "that a scientific theory is one that can be falsified by empirical evidence," Logical Positivism and its Verification Principle meet the criteria required to be counted as a scientific theory? How so? How is the Verification Principle able to be falsified by empirical evidence? — Leontiskos

I wasn't arguing that Positivism meets the claim of a scientific theory in fact. I was saying it could in theory. This is a distinction between necessity and contingency.

The argument of the OP was that Positivism fails by necessity. It holds that it must be proved valid by empirical means to be sustained, and since it's lacking, it must fail.

My position is that Pooper's revision allows Positivism to be sustained until falsified, meaning it will survive contingent upon there being no facts falsifying it.

What makes it fail, as I alluded to, might be the lack of predictive value in such things as economic and psychological theories. That is the blow to Positivism I'd think meaningful, less so internal inconsistencies in its logic. That is, the proof is in the pudding of how it works.