Those who chose the lever everytime to "save lifes" offer an interesting perspective — Kizzy

I agree with that, and that it highlights the difference between the choice “to save lives” and the consent to make that choice, by pulling the lever. Pulling the lever to save lives shows both aspects of ethics - the choice of five over one, and the willing consent to that choice by acting, by pulling the lever.

It’s right to turn over that perspective to move on to good versus bad in the one or in the five living or dying, as well as turning over the person who acted upon the world to bring about the one or the five or the good or the bad.

But the act of sitting there and doing nothing is not doing nothing - if your will is to kill the five, and if the scenario will permit the enacting of this will (which it does) then sitting there not letting anyone touch the lever is just as affirmative an act as pulling the lever.

The trolley case, for me, just doesn’t set up a strong question of whether your act was one of omission.

To your question (that has no real answer, im afraid), "Who is forcing the choice?" I offer another one: What if the chooser is the force? — Kizzy

You mentioned the person just sitting there, keeping a justifiable distance.

So what do you mean there is no real answer to the question who is forcing the choice? It’s a hypo. Someone has built a hypo. If it was a real trolley, someone else set the whole thing in motion, and put you in control of 1 or 5 deaths. They are the ones forcing you. That is where we search for ethics - between the trolley trap maker and really all the unwilling participants (willing ones would be on the trap maker’s side).

↪Apustimelogist - :up: Essential to the trolley problem is the possible distinction between an act and an omission, and ↪Fire Ologist excluded that distinction from the problem. Regardless of what the trolley problem was to begin with, it has now become a stock argument for consequentialism. It is essentially the cultural reaction to deontology. — Leontiskos

I did address that above but probably badly. But I’ll do better.

Sometimes when you are driving you take your foot off the gas, maybe down a small hill; that doesn’t mean you aren’t driving the car forward because you need not push the gas pedal to move forward. So doing nothing is moving forward at just the right speed..

Or better, sometimes on your Xbox controller you press A and sometimes B or sometimes nothing at all, but yet you are in total control.

Sitting on the trolley may as well be button A and pulling the lever may as well be touching nothing at all on the controller; whether one or five die is completely in your control.

This scenario does not include a sin of omission if you will. Sitting there is enacting the death of five people. You have the simple choice of what outcome, what effect you can choose to bring about.

A wrong by omission occurs when you already recognize an affirmative good deed (saving a baby that falls in a fountain) and omit the action, choose not to act. You might be able to fabricate a trolley scenario where there is a wrong of omission (maybe with babies and pedophiles on the tracks or something), but choosing to stay seated is choosing not to pull the level, as much as pulling the lever is choosing not to stay seated. I only see acts of commission in leaving 5 alive or leaving 1 alive. No acts of omission.

This highlights what I was talking about with .

The trolley case here is a bit more simple and cuts off the element of consent. 5 or 1 will die. There no other options. But in addition, you must give your consent by either staying seated, or pulling the lever. You do not have a choice but to consent to one or the other, unless you can protest the whole thing, denying any and all responsibility.

If we are able ever, to take any responsibility, we are able to take none. So there is no way to judge the one who stays seated ethically, because they could be either participating by actively avoiding the lever, or they could not give a damn what anyone else thinks is going on, they have nothing to do with this.

The trolley example has to judge what the person is consenting to in their act.

If you strip away everything of their consent and tell them: “

to either watch five people be killed or pull a lever so that only one person gets killed. — Captain Homicide

, then there is nothing to consider of their consent behind either choice.

I actually think the moral choice here is to confront the trolley trap maker and say “I choose neither so all that follows remains your doing.” You could say that I am choosing not ro pull the lever, but no - if we are to judge my lever pulling as good or bad, we have to know what I would consent to, am consenting to as I act.

If I choose to pull the lever, I am choosing to save five people, and I am consenting to this as exemplified in my physical act of pulling the lever. So I am also consenting to participate in the experiment.

If I choose to stay seated, I may be consenting to kill five to save the one, or consenting to kill five with no concern about the one, or consenting to save the one, with little concern about the five, but if I choose to stay seated I might also not be consenting to any of this at all. This heart, my consent, that I alone can generate, must be considered in ethics.

Maybe consent is in the trolley case, by omission. And I’ve been remiss in failing to give it credit for spurring the conversation.

Speeding trolley and you have kill five arguments in favor of the trolley case or kill just one argument, what would you do …go!

On the other hand, does forcing really exempt you from moral responsibility? — Apustimelogist

I don’t know about exempting, so it’s a good question, but force certainly creates a distance for responsibility to cover.

I'm inclined to think that framing it this way makes the situation different to a simple choice of 1 vs. 5. Viewed this way you could also argue that there is not so much a forcing element here. — Apustimelogist

Maybe I did over simplify. Well, I see there is a choice between 1 and 5, “I can save or kill five or one” and in that sense am not forced. And after giving me the instructions about the pulling the lever or not, no one forced anything further to happen, the rest is up to me. And that’s where the trolly case starts.

But isn’t there still a third element in any situation like the trolly vital to the conversation? There is also my willing participation in the choice and its effect enacted (as with the one person being hit by the trolley). The choosing act, about which we say “I am responsible.” And it is in that willingness, that consent, that we find something vital to ethics, but greatly diminished in the trolley case.

The trolly has clarified for me that, my consent, and my choice are two different pieces; I can choose to kill the five or kill the 1, and we can debate goodness among those choices, but to do either, to act, to kill 5 for instance, I must consent to the choice as I act. That consent, can only be freely given. Home of radical freedom. Maybe?

Only in a world of willing consent, (better, a world of many willing consenting ones), can there emerge an ethics. Not just a world of choices and options like one and five.

Now we look for freedom in this, freedom versus forcing a choice (by controlling the options) or forcing your consent (by commanding participation).

But mixing up actual stairs with models of stairs just produces a confusion, so the paradox is just an illusion - in my opinion. — Ludwig V

Exactly. There is no paradox caused by an infinite staircase, because an infinite staircase is a square circle, barely conceivable if conceivable at all.

What if every time I bit an apple and ate it, in the time I chewed the bite, the apple grew in size bigger than the bite I just took? Do I need to figure out the math here to see how to prevent the apple from eating me?

Despite the staircase being endless, he reached the bottom of it in just a minute. — keystone

Staircases are always, and only, actually, finite, as any object is. The endlessness of the staircase is brought to an end at the bottom, so it is not endless, so there is no sense to the word “despite”.

This is not a paradox, but a confusion of concepts (like the number 1 or infinitely) with actual things (like a one step down one stair, and never reaching the bottom or doing so in a minute).

The heart of the trolley problem is this:
“Without any context or explanation, if you were forced to kill either 1 person or 5 people with no other options, which would you do?”

Everything else is a distraction. Trolleys, levers, instructions given to force you to make a decision, no brakes or time for brakes, etc) allow you to start to picture the scene, but these facts introduce the real world, which introduces many new questions. These questions influence what the basic hypo actually is, so they have to be answered before one could say whether they killed 1 or 5 people was right or wrong.

So to avoid the creeping presence of real world questions, and stick to the hypo, the question becomes: is it worse to kill one person or five people.

Depends on what you think of people. If it’s bad to kill a person, then, since you are forced to kill either one person or five people, it seems a no brainer. And since you are FORCED to kill one or five, neither choice is immoral or moral for you. One might be better or more practical, but it’s not your fault someone has to die.

Who is forcing the choice?

there's much better ethical considerations to be had than which 'choice' one would make. The focus ought be upon how we ever got to that point to start with... — creativesoul

Exactly the point of my last post. :ok:

mathematical modelling of movement is infinitely divisible — Heracloitus

Modeling is not physical, so the models built with infinity will never pose a problem when descending stairs. There is no paradox because the paradox seeks to mix actual stairs with modeling.

where there are no other options. — Philosophim

Kill 1 or kill 5. In this scenario, I choose whether the trolly stays left and kills 5 or goes right and kills one. I have the same control in my choice whether 5 or 1 dies, so sitting there and doing nothing is making the this one choice one way (by selecting left towards the five), as pulling the lever and selecting right and killing one. It’s one choice and to effectuate the one choice I either leave the lever alone or pull it. So the fact that I can sit there changes nothing about the responsibility for either choice. If I sit there, I can’t say “it was not because of me that the five died, I just sat there.”

It’s one choice with me responsible for it. That is a very poor scenario (sitting still or pulling lever) to analyze the issue of taking responsibility.

Now 1 or 5. Obviously kill 1 instead of 5.

But, is that a moral choice? Did I choose rightly? Could I have chosen wrongly?

But here is the moral question: did I know which was the wrong choice and yet choose it anyway? Did I act immorally in making my choice?

In order to judge whether choosing to kill 1 or 5 was immoral or good, I need more facts. There is no morality inherent in this choice. Why did I choose to kill 5? Why did I choose to kill 1? Because 5 is greater than 1, killing 1 equals saving 5 which is greater than killing 5 to save 1? So I am moral now?

We need reality here.

In reality, I would hope I would have the courage to say “I refuse to participate at all. If you think that means I am choosing to kill 5, I ask you who set this trolly in motion, who won’t let me stop the trolly, who is trying to force me to participate? Who chose the 5 and the 1 man? Who is giving me this choice of who dies, but made all of those other choices without me?? THEY are killing 5 people and forcing me to see it. They have arranged to save the one person.”

You can’t ignore all of that and seek the morality of me playing along and thinking for a couple seconds, do I sit still or pull the lever? The only morality to question in me is any participation in the trolly ride.

We can try to play along to see if killing one person to save 5 is the right and moral choice, but not in these circumstances.

But if I didn’t think of the sickness of the situation and recognize all of the apparatus and planning that had to be in place to put me here, and I just played along, that doesn’t make me a hero or murderer for pulling the lever. It makes me quick at math under some pressure. It demonstrates the immorality of telling someone to make that choice in that fabricated situation. It doesn’t make me any better or worse if I made a choice that someone else would have made differently.

Truly, anyone in that circumstance could not be held responsible for any outcome. (Sitting versus pulling is how the trolly goes / that remains true. But responsibility for the outcome here, sitting versus pulling is one small act in what is happening here, like the trolly wheel turning is another small act, and the engine racing is another.)

So it produces very little understanding of ethics and morality to think about whether choosing to kill 5 or 1 says something good or bad about the person forced to ride that trolly. Despite the confines of the scenario, I would not be responsible for any outcome. I am a cog in a wheel someone else put in motion. And if you thought about the trolly engine starter who gave the instructions about the lever or the sitting, don’t you think we’d have more to discover about ethics there than in the person nail-biting over whether 5 is greater than the number 1?

Is was just told not to add anything by Philosophim.

So the trolley driver thought that the single person was the son of his neighbor and he hates his neighbor so he intended to hurt his neighbor by pulling the lever.

And he was thrilled that he woke up and found himself in this situation.

Some people are just interested in morality just because they are interested in morality, regardless of practical application.
— Apustimelogist

Ok, but I don't understand. Moral philosophy describes how we should treat other people. How can you talk about that without talking about how it works in the real world? — T Clark

Completely agree. That’s what makes these thought experiments of such limited value. It’s an unreal scenario and doesn’t factor in intent, which is essential to defining an ethical act between people.

Morality has to do with intent.

So is the variable here inaction of watching people die, or affirmative action pulling the lever to kill one of them? Is this inaction versus action?

Or is the question whether it is better to kill one person or five people in this scenario?

The trolley problem is a thought experiment where you’re asked to either watch five people be killed or pull a lever so that only one person gets killed — Captain Homicide

All of the variables and so many more facts are important to understand before we can judge morality from this.

Did I just wake up and find myself at the controls of the speeding trolly somehow knowing what levers are for and immediately I’m also aware that I had a few seconds to act? Or am I a seasoned trolly driver, responsible for whatever happens on either track and just having a bad day at work as a seasoned trolley driver. How did I get to be in this predicament?

Are there passengers on the trolly?

If the trolly driver thought I am less likely to derail if I hit one person, and I have to protect the passengers and other people standing near the tracks, so I’ll pull the lever, would that make the driver more moral for affirmatively killing the one person? Or did they affirmatively avoid the five people?

If I found out someone was magically transported into the driver’s seat of a trolly and within seconds of arriving they killed somebody or five people or twenty, the thought of blaming that person for any of their decisions, or making that person responsible for any outcomes, wouldn’t even occur to me.

Who put that person in that position? Who rigged the experiment? Find that person and we can start to analyze what may have been moral and immoral. Or add all variables that would enable us to pass judgment or right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral regarding that trolly driver.

And we all have to assume we all think people are valuable and good, and that we know what good means, and what immoral means, and that our judgment of this scenario has any value or itself could be a good judgment or an immoral judgment.

I’m just saying the notion of an infinite staircase is impossible to conceive as steps and groups of steps are unitary wholes, and infinity never unifies or finishes multiplying. You can’t apply infinity to finite things. There is no infinite number of steps between the 1 yard line and the 2 yards line. There is a single yard. You can mathematically take the single yard and mathematically divide it in half, and take one of the halves and divide it…infinitely. But that has nothing to do at all whatsoever with taking a one yard physical step on a football field.

Yes, but once you have defined your half, you can treat it as a unit and define a half of a half... and repeat indefinitely — Ludwig V

Exactly! You have to take the thing you call a “half” as a single whole unit before you can take some measure again. A half is just a measure conceived of after there is a unit. Only unitary whole things can be touched or stepped on, like a step.

You need to grab that finite whole thing first from the physical world to then posit the concept of half of that whole. The half wasn’t grabbed from the physical world.
— Fire Ologist
"Grabbed" from the physical world is a completely inappropriate metaphor. Nothing is grabbed. Something was defined. In any case, if the whole thing was "grabbed from the physical world", it follows that both halves of it were "grabbed". If they weren't, nothing was "grabbed". — Ludwig V

A single thing that can be grabbed is defined as you say as a unit. A single thing. Like one whole step.

So now we have conceived of the unit. We’ve defined it as 1. As a whole.

Only now can we posit or “define” infinity. Only now can you keep the conception of the unitary whole and define half. Only once you have a single unit can you add to that unit more units infinitely. But at each step, if you refer to the physical thing, you have a finite number of units. And you can’t posit or define or conceive of half without reference to half of some other defined, conceived thing, and that thing must be a whole unit.

There is no infinity apart from the mind that conceives it. There are things apart from the mind that conceives of the unit.

There is no infinite thing to begin with. Only unitary wholes. And infinite staircase is an infinite finite unit - a square circle. There is no infinite thing, so pondering the paradoxes that arise from traversing an infinite distance, or descending and infinite staircase misapplies infinity to unitary whole, single, definable things.

Infinity applies to numbers. Numbers aren’t physical things, like stairs.

But if you think of the distance between my eyes, you can certainly divide that by 1/2 or 1/4 — Ludwig V

The distance between your eyes is a whole. You need to grab that finite whole thing first from the physical world to then posit the concept of half of that whole. The half wasn’t grabbed from the physical world. Otherwise it would have been a smaller whole distance to start again. The half-distance comes after a whole is firmly in hand. Let’s say it’s two inches between eyes. You can’t identify half that distance by referring to your face. You call some smaller distance half, numerically, in reference to the numerical value the refers to the whole distance. The whole distance refers to your eyes.

Imagine someone says in order to walk from the goal line to goal line in football, you first have to walk one-hundredth of a distance, but before that you have to walk one-third of the distance to that first one-hundredth mark, etc. etc. infinitely.

Calling these smaller distances fractions is semantics with reference to mathematical concepts. No fraction ever exists. What exists would be one whole distance from goal to goal, one whole yard, one whole foot… we can rename the measures fractions by referring them to some greater whole, but then we need to have the greater whole first before we can measure a fraction. We must walk the entire football field first before we can conceive of a whole yard being 1/100th.

Infinity is like that. It can’t refer to a physical, identifiable thing or be contained in an object. It can only refer to numbers, which are concepts. There are no infinite series of steps.

He lingered on the first step, marked "1," for 30 seconds, soaking in the enchanting energy coursing through his veins. Moving to step "2," he paused for 15 seconds, feeling lighter and quicker, like a feather in descent. Driven by an irresistible urge, he continued to step "3," then "4,", and so on, each time halving his rest period. — keystone

The rest periods at step 1, instead of being 30 seconds long, is that really just 2 times as long of rest than at step 2? Or is it 4 times as long as step 3, or is it 6 times as long as step 4? In which case, this story has as much to do with increasing speed between steps as it does shortening rests on each step. So rest and motion are needed to place steps in flight beneath you. Is it the increasing speed that shortens the rest, or the shorter rests that increase the speed? How can any rest cause motion to increase?

And why not a bottomless pit if you are to reach an impossible bottom?

This whole image is that of a square circle. I don’t see what there is to resolve.

There can exist no infinite anything. Thingness, such as a step or a series of steps, is finitude. Infinity is not a thing to which you can add 1 or subtract from, certainly not when describing actual steps. Calling a thing or a series of things infinite, removes the thing or things from your sight, removes them from the chalkboard, and shows you the same infinity as imagined in the infinite series of fractions between step 1 and step 2. There is no such thing as a half step. Not is there a such thing as an infinite series of steps. There is only a whole distance later conceptually halved, as when you conceive of halving some existing whole step infinitely.

“The infinite” or “infinity” as a noun, is best used for dramatic effect. It’s not a thing, like a noun is best employed. “Infinitely” as an adverb, sets out some activity that, by definition, cannot conclude. Thereby banishing all finitude, which marks conclusion, such as a step, or a series of steps, or a noun.

“Halving” as a verb, like “stepping” as a verb, can be conceived of as continuing infinitely. But you never find the infinite. There need be no infinitely small fraction. Saying the stars and the atoms in the multiverse are infinite in number means you don’t know how to count them, so for dramatic effect, we invoke “the infinite”. But the infinite finds no home, no place in the physical world, in the form of the finite, save the mind that conceives of some activity that can continue infinitely.

We might as well start this by saying, “there were three steps to the basement, but before he took the first one Icarus had to get off the couch, but as he did so, he realized he had to first sit up, and then realized he had to move his legs to the floor, and increasing his effort between each new realization, he realized he had to move his first leg, by first turning his foot, after ending his knee… etc. infinitely, as he turned his eye and saw a corpse on the couch with him….

The infinite staircase appears to only allow one to traverse it in one direction. It simultaneously exists… — keystone

No it doesn’t. There is no infinite “it” that could simultaneously do anything, such as exist.

Imagine some world of the future where people are picking up the pieces from some cataclysm and they develop a collective. No one owns anything. Everything that's produced is pooled and shared. — frank

Trying.

It’s communism. We don’t have to imagine that. — Fire Ologist

I can imagine some states of affairs where property is not an issue, and yet people have physical and emotional integrity, autonomy, personal possessions and amicable relations — Vera Mont

Good example. That’s a realistic conception of communism. No ownership, the theory or imagination, applicable in reality.

Yes, we do have to imagine it, because we don't know any real life examples, only grotesque travesties and caricatures. — Vera Mont

I agree, the real life examples of communism, certainly all of the ones on a large scale, have failed. But I believe there have been smaller groups who lived in a close knit and communal fashion who could imagine a realistic goal “where property is not an issue, and yet people have physical and emotional integrity, autonomy, personal possessions and amicable relations.” That’s as close as I can get to the OP notion of “no ownership.”

But absolutely “no” ownership? Seems impossible to imagine.

You (Vera at least) admit “personal possessions” are part of the picture. Which is the right admission from my view. Maybe such property is “not an issue” (which is also fine), but all I was saying is the fact you included personal possessions in the picture sort of justifies my simple point that I can’t imagine a world where there is no ownership, no possessions. You imagined a realistic world where possession was not coveted, and shared freely, and received gratefully, etc. But possession is still an integral part of this world. No one can share what they don’t possess; no one can borrow someone’s shoes, for instance, in a world without any ownership. No one can demand an equal share of what belongs to the community except when demanding it from the community, who possesses and own it.

I guess it’s a small point.

Why did you quote me?

I am physically trying to imagine a society of people where there is no concept of ownership. The best I can do is imagine a society of naked people who live on an island where cheeseburgers and soy milk grow on trees, and there are warmly lit caves everywhere to sleep in peacefully, no concept of work or labor, no concept of privation or awareness of satisfaction, so no concept of need or want so that one might invent the concept of labor to obtain the need or want or the concept of possessing the object of need or want.

Otherwise, show me how you could make any commune where no one has a concept of ownership. Can anyone imagine it?

Just saying “Imagine no concept of ownership, where everyone shares everything” creates no clear picture to me, other than fantasy world, or chaos, and an immediate need for ownership to regulate resources.

Communal ownership takes individual decisions out of ownership, but it doesn’t take away ownership. It just creates a committee and voting process behind every allocation of resources. I can imagine that easy. It’s communism. We don’t have to imagine that. But it’s not a world where there is no concept of ownership or a world where everything is shared.

Physical individuation.
In humans becomes identity formation.
Which becomes a “mine” by the time anyone can speak.

Maybe.

I think we have to resist and overcome the concept of ownership when we get old enough to provide for others and give away ourselves and the things we labor over. Charity, giving to others what is owned by me, is a more realistic goal to temper the inequities of ownership, not communal pooling and sharing (which is bound to simply move inequity and ownership around as opposed to eliminate it).

Problem solved.

1. Imagine a possible world W where there is no concept of ownership. — frank

This means, we live in a world drenched and submerged in the concept and practice of ownership. From here, soaking wet, we have to imagine a possible world where there is no practice, not even a concept, of ownership.

I can’t do it. Tried. Too wet.

John Locke defined personal property as one’s own body first as a counter to the concept that our bodies are subjects of the king. He said all have a right to property, that property being their personal selves/bodies and the fruits of their own labors. This was a counter to slavery - no one can own another person.

I agree I not only have a right, but an unavoidable relationship to my own body. And to say this sentence I said my “own” body.

To skip to the end, in order to imagine a world where there is no concept of ownership, I’d have to imagine a world where there is no concept my own, or no concept of me.

Can’t bring myself to see myself as not myself. Similarly, saying all things are pooled and shared doesn’t eliminate ownership, property, and personal property.

Got it.

So if everything is pooled and shared, how is that an example of no one owns anything? What happens to things after they are pooled and shared? Aren’t they then still owned, now personally, after the sharing?

No one owns anything. Everything that's produced is pooled and shared. — frank

Isn’t the idea of communal ownership a counter to individual ownership? It’s not a counter to ownership.

If everything is pooled and shared, ownership is claimed by the poolers so they can share those things with everyone.

In other words, the debate between communism and capitalism isn’t a debate about ownership, it’s a debate about who are the owners. People still claim ownership over the resources and fruits of labors, they just either claim it as an individual or by committee.

I don’t see how personal property can possibly be avoided. If I pick ten apples and bring them to the pool of ten people, and we communally share them, each of us get one apple each. Now that the pooling and equal sharing is done, each person has one apple. Must not that one apple now belong to each person as their personal property? Who else but the individual is now accountable for whatever happens to that apple? It’s theirs now. No one else’s.

Over time, pooling everything and distributing everything equally, you will get people who conserve and people who don’t. So you would have to pool everything everyday all anew to keep the community equal. Or never give anyone anything that they can take out of the rest of the community’s sight, where they could conserve it, amass it, etc.

Just as long as you don’t hope to see it, because hope is more of a religious thing. But yes, any day now. Nuclear holocaust, rogue AI, weaponized virus. Trump. Biden. Putin. Lot’s of possibilities.

religion to be eradicated — Vera Mont

As soon as humans are eradicated.

What difference does it make whether something you might choose to call God exists in a non-empirical dimension? — Vera Mont

None. We are bodies. If God had no relation to the empirical world, God would have no use for us, and we would have no use for God and no reason to seek God or evidence or any content to refer to in any discussions using the term “god”.

In fact, I support free everything — Truth Seeker

Surely, sharing would work everywhere? — Truth Seeker

Let's ban money and let's ban private ownership. — Truth Seeker

This is a contradiction. If no one privately owns anything, no one is in a position to share anything.

If we make everything free, we need to take everything away from everyone first.

Once we share everything and ban private ownership, there will be no more sharing ever again. The idea of sharing would just become redistribution of equity - which is not sharing, just administration.

Gate-keeping rebuttals to disagreement.

I think a big part of it is that Wittgenstein gutted metaphysics (the gutting starting with Hume, and Kant, then Nietzsche and Wittgenstein). So if you display disagreement with Wittgenstein, you are thought to be some kind of primitive thinking essentialist, metaphysician, who is totally missing Wittgenstein’s point. And therefore you should go read or read again

But someone pointed out this sort of gate-keeping happens with Nietzsche too.

Which I agree.

We all need to show our Wittgenstein or Nietzsche bona fides these days, certainly before any proponent of either of them would entertain a disagreement with them.

Ironically (and why he admitted the nonsense) what I see happens when people gatekeep arguments against Wittgenstein or Nietzsche, in a raw simplified sense, they turn Wittgenstein’s or Nietzsche’s position into a sort of gospel truth - where the meaning objectively is - which is the opposite of what either was purporting to demonstrate. (They forget to throw away the ladder when they point to the words, which points to maybe a reason the words need more investigation.)

Do they mean to say that God had decided I would recover slowly but, because THEY are asking, God will speed up my recovery? Do they think they are that important? Isn’t that egotism? — Art48

Personally, I do think God thinks each one of us is that important. I think he died for me, and my sins (not even something good I did). And for each one of us. He showed us how important we are to him. That's the God I pray to. And egotism would just get in the way of that relationship. I better approach the person who died on a cross for me, who invented space-time before that, with some non-egotistical humility, and thankfulness, and praise for greatness, if I would think he would do me any more favors, such as "give us this day our daily bread" or "speedy recovery".

You are right. I guess I was eluding to my debate tactic, that Wittgenstein himself provided for us: even Wittgenstein understood arguing Wittgenstein was nonsense. So no kidding no one understands Wittgenstein, neither did he.

“My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical when he has used them — as steps — to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.”
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.54

That sounds deep, and there is wisdom in it - words really do get in the way of what they are trying to do, sometimes - but I sum up Wittgenstein as saying "Let me explain to you how there is no such thing as an explanation."

Indeterminacy and thrownness, what do these mean? Indeterminateness refers to the lack of settled position — Constance

It’s where things resist even identity, ever undetermined, questioning “thing” itself. I get indeterminacy, and agree, it can be called “lack of settled position” or just the flux and frictions of being, in our case, human (whatever “human” means…. Always an important recognition of the predicament that is being human.

Already we have left the comfort zone of ready to hand assumptions, for how many of us entertain such ideas? This can be argued: is a concept a principle of synthetic inclusiveness? Is it a pragmatic way to achieve an end? Perhaps a concept is the very way finitude is defined and delimited. But is it historically structured? Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world? Or, my favorite: how can a concept be understood given that the understanding itself is inherently conceptual? The worst kind of question begging. — Constance

I know what you are saying, but it feels too metaphysical too fast, or epistemological, asking “Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world?”. We no longer need the content, such as the “the essence of religion”, to continue the conversation this inquiry might become.

All the color is set aside to behold the coloring itself.

As where you first said this inquiry suspends all concepts of “faith, atheism, theodicy, God, first cause, teleology, and so on;”

But it feels like we could easily head into a digression away from statements like “the world IS religious.”. Perfectly good questions but, we now need never talk about religion.

But then again, I think there is a reason a discussion of the indeterminacy of existence for us, bumps into epistemological as well as ethical, radical indeterminacy.

To me, as metaphor, we looked through a window you called “the essence of religion” for something prior that is “real” and “in the world”. What did we find? You said “radical ethical indeterminacy that is our existence.”

If it was ever possible that “we have left the comfort zone of ready to hand assumptions” to see the prior, perhaps we can keep what you found here, and keep looking.

The same indeterminacy of our existence could also be said to have given birth to science. (I see this is why Nietzsche could say academic science could lie as much as religion could).

Science and religion are equally concept making, indeterminacy regulators. It’s why they always wrestle for the same space with the “why” the how, the what, the whether.

It’s just indeterminate. Our existence.

We fill this indeteminacy with laws.l. They could be rational, scientific laws. Be it ethical or not, or only ethical, or scientific or not, or only scientific, it’s all still mixed with the indeterminate.

I can’t argue what I see in where this is going, but I can describe it.

What I see is that, somehow (and I leave that to epistemology to figure out), and for some reason (and I’ll leave that to the poets and prophets), what I see is, like you said “existence IS us.” We are each, the world. But this also means something. What it means, adds to this world, moves it”self” (the existence IS me), ahead of the world, in to the world, like being thrown. We throw our”selves” into this world.

We participate in our own thrownness. We interrupt ourselves into “our” existence.

I don’t know how, mind you. (I just said “mind you” twice to serve two difference functions, having two different meanings in the sentences - so indeterminate of me.)

But only then, after by some means being thrown to throw our selves back might we start to look for what this becomes, such as a vision of indeterminacy, be it radical ethical, or rational, or ethical first, or rational with ethical color first…etc.

So I’ve lost your point again about religion qua religion. Something making use of the word “essence” about “religion.”

Or does the overlap between scientific objectification (the rational, yielding speech itself). like ethical objectification (yielding religion) show I’m at least standing in the same vicinity as you?

So you just think God is not fully or always accurately reflected in the Bible. Well I just say good for you! You have God too! You see the hugeness of it all and give it all back to God too.

Why do we need to see which God is bigger though? Doesn’t God, to you, mean the one that by definition must be the biggest, must touch all things, must incorporate the “All”?

Means the same thing to me. I see him speaking directly to tiny grain of sand me, in the Bible, not because of the wisdom in it, but because He wants me to see it. You don’t. You see God elsewhere. Show me what you see, not how what I see is wrong, because I see a God that belittles everything, including all of our philosophies and thoughts about what we think we know about God. A God for whom all the grains of sand and all the stars add up to a rain drop in his ocean.

For sake of inquiry,

we suspend the standard conversational themes generally presented here, themes that center on concepts like faith, atheism, theodicy, God, first cause, teleology, and so on; and certainly authoritative texts like the bible or the koran, and the personality cults these inspire. I mean, we put out of inquiry all, or nearly all, that circulates though typical religious mentalities, in an effort to determine if there is something "real" that religion is truly about; something that is not simply a historical fiction conceived in an ancient mind. To do this, one has to ask basic questions about the world, forgetting even the word 'religion' — Constance

Look for “something real”, that later gives rise to the words "religion" or "God", but not yet. Great metaphysical question for this forum.

I hold that religion actually has a foundation discoverable in the essential conditions of our existence. Something PRIOR... — Constance

"discoverable" "foundation" "essential" "prior" - these are all objective references, almost empirical. Good for metaphysical inquiry.

Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. — Constance

The "indeterminacy of our existence." That which is prior, that which is the condition of our existence, involves indeterminacy, and to us, as a condition of human existence in particular, a condition of "our" existence, we find ourselves thrown into an ethical indeterminacy. And this begets religion.

Am I in the ballpark?

I would break it down like this: "religion arises out of our sense of the indeterminate. It does so in three steps: We sense the indeterminacy of things. We sense ourselves, like the other things, are indeterminate as well. And we sense an ethical indeterminacy when those other things are humans like ourselves."

But I now changed it to "a sense of" the indeterminate. I use "a sense of" the way you use "our". It is the human part that particularizes "existence" into "our existence." Human sentience applied to the thrownness of objects, creates a particular sense of things. We sense in a particular way. We sense "our" meaning ourselves, in existence. Our mere presence in the universe is the presence of a particular sense of things, and this is tied up with the prior reasons we use the word "our" when discussing existence.

So along with indeterminacy, comes the "our", or the sense of indeterminacy, or the discovery of indeterminacy, which only arises in ourselves, as humans.

Our mere human presence in the universe, brings with it a sense of the indeterminacy. The indeterminacy of things, for us, must therefore include the indeterminacy of what we ourselves are. This, to me, now makes a radical indeterminacy.

And all of these beget religion. I like it.

I obviously love the word "thrown" you use later, and the seeking something "prior". Every good metaphysic must incorporate thrownness.

I do not see the thrownness itself as something determinate or indeterminate. You might bias it towards the indeterminate, but the thrownness itself doesn't create the indeterminacy. The determinate and the indeterminate jostle for position in the thrownness, but the thrownness is just there, it's the prior, the condition of existence itself.

The indeterminacy, is ourselves thrown in the mix - we are the introduction of indeterminacy in this mix.

So something human starts to look prior to the indeterminate. This creates circular reasoning. We use "our" existence to discern "radical ethical" of the "indeterminate." But if it is "our", it might automatically include the "ethical" - and existence itself might beget the indeterminate from "our" presence in existence. So I still have to wonder what was prior, what is the condition of existence at all that begat the "our" - the self-reflection in the thrownness that found radical ethical indeterminacy.

For now, we are already thrown, among the given, subject to the prior condition, and where the human and so many humans are thrown in such condition, at least, there is ethical indeterminacy.

To do this, one has to ask basic questions about the world — Constance

I want to keep the sense of indeterminacy as one facet of our existence that begets religion, but see other ingredients to the bread of religion (pun intended).

I would add that religion arises not only out of our sense of indeterminacy, but also our sense of impossibility. We have to sense it, as a real object, like the indeterminacy. But it is a sense not of the indeterminate, but the determined impossibility.

We've all experienced something that cannot be, yet it is. It's anything we can't explain, such that every explanation we construct may be impossible. Those moments of paradox, where you can say "I don't believe it!" while staring at it. That real sense of the impossible, gives rise to religion.

Both the indeterminate, and the impossible, can be called the mysterious. They both give birth to "why" and "how" and "what" and "whether real".

Both of them make a predicament out of action. Ethical indeterminacy undoes any sound ethical judgment of how to act. Impossibility undoes any commitment to taking action as well.

Impossibility deserves more consideration, along with indeterminacy, and ourselves in it.

Another prior condition may be our sense of time. Seems too simple, but somehow, we sense the eternity of time itself. Now we have a sense of time that is opposite of time, something always present instead. This is an impossibility contained within time. This makes the beginning and end of time indeterminate. The present, as eternity. We may find every eternal thing impossible in all of this changing motion and thrownness, but we sense it as part of the mystery.

The eternal and the impossible equally give rise to science. We ask how about the impossible, to understand it and show how it is possible, how it fits with the eternal laws that allowed it to be possible in the first place.

There is much that needs to reworked here and developed, but I was being too ambitious for a Tuesday night. Maybe you can make more of this.

Indeterminacy, impossibility, and time as eternity - human senses of what is thrown before ourselves taken as a community (therefore ethical indeterminacy) - giving rise to religion.

I think another missing element is language itself. Without it, we have no way to distinguish the indeterminate for the other ethical relata (other humans). It's all too indeterminate without the anchor of language to make the community. Language itself becomes a prior condition of shared indeterminacy. Language is part of the thrownness.

So indeterminacy, impossibility, maybe time as eternally present despite change itself, and the language that captures these things among the various communal selves as in "our existence" - all beget religion.

From the radical ethical indeterminacy, we get the ten commandments and the laws.
From the impossibility, we get walking on water and rising from the ashes
From eternity we get Omni-presence.
From language we get the word of God, prophesy and a way to mediate all of this.

Good post. Hope I gave you some things to think about, because you did to me.

I’ll assume I am not understanding you and start over.

You are claiming to show that:

(5) There are prayer-induced experiences of observations that correspond to Bible-specific propositions, therefore they are evidence Christianity is true — Hallucinogen

I see 4 distinct things where I may be misunderstanding your usage. Can you clarify, maybe with some examples or rephrasings, what you mean by:

“Prayer induced experiences” - what is that to you?
That’s really two things - “prayer” (which I think we all understand) and “induced experiences”.

“Observations”. Maybe the above is attached to what I see as the second variable being “of observations”. I’d like to see how you distinguish “prayer induced experiences” from “experiences of observations”.

“Bible-specific propositions” - probably just need an example, one that cashes out with the other terms using an example would help. “Jesus brought sight to a man who was blind from birth” so “God can work miracles” might be an example.

“Christianity is true”. Do you mean objectively, verifiably true, like the earth revolves around the sun type truth?

I think I need to see an example that shows how a person’s prayers are answered so to speak in a way that verifies a connection between the prayer and the observable experiences of that person, with the Biblical proposition thereby showing objective truth of Christianity beyond that person.

I’m like Thomas. I need to put my hands in the wounds. But you aren’t asking me to trust you that Christianity is true, or even to trust God. You are asking me to follow your logic, and so Thomas in this case is asking for the right experience before agreeing to the conclusion.

They don't get the option of "working with it". — Vera Mont

The other antelopes do.
The lions do.
The vultures do.
The bacteria do.
The grass does.

Someone giving a specific account of a prayer leading to proof of a Christian proposition in themselves, that is evidence of faith at work.
— Fire Ologist
I'm not sure what you mean, do you mean to contradict the argument? — Hallucinogen

Yes, because a logical argument has to show something multiple third parties can use to see the same thing, to see whatever is the conclusion of the argument. All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is a dead man someday. That is something a third party can demonstrate to fourth parties and so one getting the same result due to it being a sound, scientific/logical demonstration of a proof.

I’m saying to the third party scientists running tests on believers and taking as objects things like Christian propositions, and prayer-induced experiences, all the scientists are left with (if they believe in the honesty of the test subject) is someone who is demonstrating faith. They don’t see the reason that test subject sees a reason to connect the Christian proposition to the prayer. You don’t see the reasons as a third party, you just see their reasons (that the scientific observer didn’t directly access), and would be better to call this evidence of what faith is, namely, someone in the act of believing something) rather than any proof about Truth of the thing they believe (how the christian proposition relates to their own prayer.)

The believer trusts God. That can only look reasonable to someone else who trusts God.

I know you’re merely clarifying a finer distinction with Vera, and who the atheists and the believer(s) are here, and maybe I’m misreading things, but using pain to show how God was dumb or evil or non-existent, leaves us right back in a position to asses the role of pain in the mix, and I agree with your assessment.

It's coherently and consistently dismissive of the idea of intelligent design by a benevolent deity. — Vera Mont

Pain sucks. But if we want to live at all, we’re going to have to work with it. I didn’t say like it, I said work with it.

(5) There are prayer-induced experiences of observations that correspond to Bible-specific propositions, therefore they are evidence Christianity is true. — Hallucinogen

I like the attempt, and I’m a believer in God, but this argument basically means “because I experienced God, I know God is true.” That argument only works for that one person.

That person certainly has a reasonable, logical, syllogistic basis to demonstrate the truth of Christianity (if I follow you at all), but for anyone else, aside from trusting the witness, there is no testable evidence for the truth of God there.

So it’s a good argument that the one who is praying can make to themselves, but without firsthand experience of this prayer induced evidence, the praying one is asking the other scientist/logicians to take his word on it.

Someone giving a specific account of a prayer leading to proof of a Christian proposition in themselves, that is evidence of faith at work. This faith can be inferred by others. We know what faith looks like now. But the link between Christianity and prayer-induced experiences is as invisible to the scientist as cause and effect are invisible to David Hume.