i think artificial intelligence could kill everyone like in the terminator series, but other than that it's an extension of the kinds of technology we already use (computers, for example, are like artificial intelligence). I also think we should be careful about believing we can fully remove the human element in artificial intelligence, or believe that it really can act on its own.

sure, but with preaching, it's always about what the person means: the Nietzsche morality he was using to replace christian thinking is pretty far from clear-cut.

i personally think N tried to avoid preaching simple morals, for that reason trying to "know the truth" about his ideas is almost impossible.

, i accept that and will let it stand because a much bigger part of his critique was slave moraliry (the inversion of master morality), because of how it relates to christianity, but it should be known to people reading this thread that Nietzsche phrased this issue very differently than we have, and it's up to them to read Geneology to interpret Nietzsche themselves.

Don't we actually have laws to not discriminate, as in treating people differently because of their sex? Then what is gender as an expectation of the sexes, if not discrimination? — Harry Hindu

that's an excellent point that gender itself is a form of sexism: however, the laws to discriminate only apply to jobs and services, and the discrimination has to be openly spoke. Any employer can refuse to hire a pregnant woman ("she may not be as useful as someone who isn't expecting"), but the employer can't tell them it has anything to do with them being a woman.

Transgenderism is like religion in many ways: It's a mass delusion and it makes people talk in non-sensical ways as they abandon all reason and logic in their discourse. — Harry Hindu

this very well may be the case, yet as you were basically arguing in the quote of yours i just used, the more normal ways of looking at gender are also religious mass delusions. For example, women have always been prized by their societies for their effeminate looks, yet now adays the beauty standard is so high for some people that it basically alienates everyone (women and men included). I think our extreme attachment to youthful looks and beauty also has negative side effects like encouraging pedophilia, which people are ironically too childish to talk openly about....

Also, outside of school age I've found the expectations people have about me "being a man" are pretty much trivial and non-existent. However, there's that domineering attitude that men are supposed to be regularly having sex with women and that masturbating is the sign of "a loser". Luckily I don't have to talk to make friends with guys like that anymore. "Toxic masculinity" is one of those things where men tend to weave their own webs of destruction through more brutal attitudes about themselves and others, and it has a lot in common with the extreme attachment towards youthfulness and effeminate beauty.

When I declare a communist/anarchist state I will call the public holidays by generic names such as 'festivity day x3827.5'. — unimportant

You should look into modern day anarchist culture, they've got their own holidays but they relate to anarchist history, not festivus

So you're advocating a progressive conservatism? I am very sympathetic, yet that's basically what gets achieved by clashes in ideology. The issue with conservative positions in general is that they often cannot be defended logically, the issue with liberal traditions is they only have the strength of science and rationality behind them, and the ideas of science are always subject to change.

It would seem then, with the clashes of irrationalitities, that one must ignore politics to the greatest extent they can, but I just speak for myself. I'm definitely supportive of your desire to discuss cultural idea, but count me out if it must be defended by some sort of institutional or bureaucratic reasoning. I've found in my life that the wisdom of authority can't be relied on in full.

Being sweet has nothing to do with gender. — Harry Hindu

Uh, im going to have cry fowl on this: when i was a teenager, i liked girls...so sometimes i would say stuff like "sweetheart" to them with sexual overtones. I realized later i sounded like "a creep", but the point is, my kinda grubby/masculine appearance is what made it look malicous. It doesn't carry the same overtones when a 40 yo woman says that to people affectionately, regardless of their sexual feelings.

The coding with is subtle in modern times, and is far from universal, but it does exist. Trans seems to be about personal preferences...

It's not even that interesting of a question, really. Anyone with eyes to see can tell that the teachings of Christ are completely incompatible with the Old Testament, and that the two should have never been conjoined in the way they have been. — Tzeentch

this is a pretty interesting point; i remember in christian school the logic was that "Jesus fulfilled the word of God", but seems pretty empty, no? What the hell does that even mean? In 6th grade, at a 7th day adventist school, i was confused about how enternal hellfire could be a just way to punish the wicked. They were nice enough that they set up a meeting for me with the preacher so I could talk to him, and he could clarify what their religion. The preacher said it was the Catholics who believed in that, but THEY believed that the hellbound are currently in some sort of holding pattern until the next return of Christ, and the wicked would simply be obliterated while the fallowers would join God in heaven. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are simply too nonsensical for me to take them seriously.

but I am finding the choices and actions God makes in the Old Testament to be littered with blatant atrocities. I would like to get other peoples' opinions on it. — Bob Ross

it's really hard to know what went through the minds of people who wrote ancient documents, but the old testament was likely part of some ruling class's doctrine on why they are superior; one part of the old testament that supports this is how Lot's daughters got him drunk in a cave and had sex with him to continue the bloodline of their family. It's a blatant appeal to lineage.

there are of course logically consistent and different theories:

1. The existence of a jealous, controlling, and evil God. Whether or not this makes sense is entirely up to you, it's not exactly a comforting belief in my opinion.

2. The people who wrote the old testament were simply crazy and delusional.

3. The documents representing the "Old Testament" are not being translated properly, and we impose our modern ideas and agendas on these ancient people. Lots of people talk about the bible as it is truth, but i have little sense of what the sources are. I think translation error is pretty unlikely because jewish people have been passing down these ideas as traditions. Maybe things got distorted along the way for selfish purposes.

I think it has to be a combination of my theory on it being used as part of a social control scheme and number 2#.

The old role of myth making also wasn't to speak the truth bluntly, but people seem to have a need to condense things into narratives. If you have observed children, you'll see that they have spontaneous imaginations: when humanity was early, they just didn't have access to the type of accumulated knowledge we have today, so they stayed more childlike in terms of belief and explanation.

I still think it's naive and idealistic to think a person of low status could correctly measure or evaluate the words and actions of a person of high status. — baker

the biggest issue is not that you are wrong, but the same can be said in reverse. For example, the racist trope about african americans being lazy came into being because the latter would be tired after working all day, and white people thought that this was a sign of their inherent laziness. Where great distance exists between two people, the ability to properly judge them diminishes. If a low status person attended a university, it could happen that they have all the tools they need to judge the words and actions of other people, but this of course is never guaranteed....it could be an awful university, it could be that the lower status person will feel too alienated by the culture and curriculum to get very far, yet i don't see how someone could get through there life without being open to different possibilities...

I still think it's naive and idealistic to think a person of low status could correctly measure or evaluate the words and actions of a person of high status. It's naive and idealistic to think that the same measurments apply to everyone, regardless of status. — baker

i think you're conflating and assuming way too much. Who is the ultimate judge of "correct"? Here's a John Cage quote to further elaborate on what i'm saying:

“A ‘mistake’ is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is."

It should be noted that John Cage largely got famous for making very weird and unconventional music, some of it isn't even "music" in the technical aspect. His interest was re-writing the classical music standards: you can complain that a person of "lower status" couldn't have done what he did, but the truth is that we are creative animals, and what we do is what we do: it doesn't apply to a standard until we use them. I get you feel anguished that double standards exist, yet i do not need to internalize them, nor do i need to except some horribly slavish existence. Some will, some people will have it so bad they can't think of their life in any other way, but you don't need to bring every other person into it. It's very, very naive to think the rich and powerful are always happy.

You are talking about status...but what type of status are you talking about? People apply measurements, but the measurements themselves have absolutely no objective value. I personally don't want to go down your train of thought of trying to impose an objective truth, to me that's really depressing, because i can no longer judge a situation for myself. I can't go through my life using the opinions of others as a reference ONLY, while assuming that i can't know or judge at all. That's pretty viciously masochistic yet seemingly common.

Yes, that's physics getting in the way of free will. I cannot get out of this jail because physics compels me to stay here. Nobody can do everything they want to. — noAxioms

or in other words, you're in a state of relative inertia: you know getting out would be hard, you know the charge isn't that severe (and don't want the extra punishment), so you sit there until someone says you can go. It's mild fear mixed with resignation.

However, in the other scenario among many, energy and angst compel you to get out because you see an opening, which is arguably still not anything you have control over...

It does amazing things with anything related to computers...yet sometimes it makes poor guesses about what should work in a certain situation.

for example (just sharing my experiences), it's excellent for verifying claims from random internet users (it immediately calls out their BS) and helping you write computer programs, but pretty aweful at helping with musical creativity, and i've gotten mixed results with organizing wildlife information. With text, it's easy for it, but with photos, it still struggles a little.

guard against confabulation by asking for sources and checking them. — Banno

yes, and overtime you can kinda intuit accuracy of what it's telling you based on subject matter and topic. For example, it's pretty much 100% accurate if you are asking it for common knowledge in popular subjects, but if the subject is more obscure, or relies more on analogue information, then it's much more likely to fail.

i can't comment on what's best for anyone else here, but i find the most productive way to use it is using it for very specific purposes, rather than generating a whole body of thought...like if you need to verify something you or someone else is saying, that is appropriate, but don't use it to write an essay as that could easily backfire (unless it's an experiment). You can also use it reasonably as creative innovation, even if it never gets off the ground.

Interestingly, geocentrism most definitely expressed anthropocentric values and Galileo paid the price for extracting those values from astronomy. In the end it's all about power. — praxis

It was actually Nietzsche who argued this in "Geaneology of Morality", that "the good people" are just the powerful imposing what is "good" on the basis of what is good for them. To me, the point of how to make life better for everyone with a loss of moral absolutism is an interesting one, yet i'm pretty it's impossible currently given that human psychology tends to be more motivated by fear and anxiety than pleasure.

It's not sustainable to ascribe to and abide by a moral system that disregards how the world really works. Idealism like that drives people crazy. — baker

I personally don't think think it's impossible for those things to happen, and it really depends on what attacking and punishing looks like. It's not idealism to know that the hierarchically powerful are not all powerful or godlike.

Maybe you can't assassinate a president and expect to get away with it, but i would suspect a president's cabinet members do hurt them sometimes, but in a much more minor way. I would argue that believing in the social infallibility of leaders is crazier than thinking it's impossible to harm them without getting away with it.

As an example: let's say a single parent is abusing their kids. Wouldn't it be possible for that kid to kill the parent and get away with it? It would be much easier for the kid to do that if there weren't police, and it wouldn't necessarily be good for the kid's future, but i'm just saying that it's possible.

This strange idea that philosophy should be cut off from real life ... — baker

nah i'm unfortunately just a sensitive person and sometimes i don't want to talk about specific things on the internet ;-) I don't think it can be fully cut off from other things you do, even though it's always the case that people are like "let's not talk about this, let's do something else", and sometimes that approach appears necessary for group cohesion. I was having some thoughts about how punishments for extreme crimes could be improved to be less harmful and less hypocritical, but i am not quite ready to start a discussion on that kind of a rabbit hole here yet.

"Anti-realism" in meta-ethics just refers to the claim that there are no facts about values; which is quite popular as a position. Plenty of people embrace this term as a label for their own ideas; I am pretty sure it is coined by anti-realists themselves. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, for me the phrasing instead would be "subjectivist", which states moral truths exist, but ONLY subjectively. So that still means i can use moral values if they are beneficial to my selfish interests, or ignore them if they appear harmful or immoral. I don't know if Ayn Rand ever called herself that, her excuse was rationalism.

I think claiming there are "no facts about values" is confusing, because facts tend to imply shared information, and there are plenty of those. However, i guess some folks see anti-realism as the best framing for their suspicions on morality.

anti-realist generally cannot justify this distinction because they don't think "moral goodness" is real in the first place. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You see, this another i had with your previous discussion: anti-realism is not a coherent perspective, it's just a means of labeling a position one finds threatening. The real problem is that people are constantly what they imagine with reality, and one of the biggest ways they do this is with moral value systems.

For example, i have been having issues with social media and message boards for years. The moderators do not really care, and expect only me to behave myself. That isn't an example of anti-realism, it's just a system that makes empathy impossible.

I have tried lots of advice to deal with my nicotine and internet addictions, but none of it works better than what i have discovered. The issue isn't my anti-realism, its difficulty dealing with a reality that requires facing manipulative advocacy and facing the information super highway.

Thanks for responding to my thread everyone: enjoy what you can.

Where there are cars and other motorized vehicles and machines with internal combustion engines, there is antifreeze. Cats sneak into people's garages and sheds, and find all kinds of things there, some of them not safely stored. To say nothing of cars leaking antifreeze. — baker

I think i may figured out why my winshield wiper fluid ejector stopped working: some ice probably cracked the container. But this is false, you never strictly need antifreeze to operate a car...you don't need to mix oil with antifreeze.

It's absolutely vital to know one's place in society, and to actually internalize it. The criticism whispered quietly to the side with one's face down is a sign that one hasn't accepted one's place in society.
Those below have no business criticising those above. — baker

however, i think this would be too self-limiting, to think of this in absolute terms: it's rather easy to "punch up" in some circumstances, it doesn't even always get met with retaliation. There's also a big difference between criticizing what someone does/says (for example, i do it all the time on here, as i think it's necessary for philosophy), and criticizing them as a person, the latter often being counter-productive. I think a discussion on revenge and punishment could be interesting, yet I'm not so interested in the technicalities of that due to the emotional affect of it, and the one who punishes tends to entrench themselves in their own justifications (i think as the Joshs post shows), so it doesn't make for great discussion...

This is a good example. The philosopher character is an extreme comic example of indecisiveness. It is not excellent to have this level of indecisiveness; that is what makes the character humorous. One need not "blame" him to think he could benefit from a change. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm glad you responded to the show I mentioned. I even remember his name...Chiri. Quite a silly philosopher character, i am assuming the moral is a jab at the extent arguments can really move anyone forward...i guess ill have to ask AI about the scanlin book.

Cats love antifreeze too. — Count Timothy von Icarus

this is good to know, because i have several cats and abhor the thought of any of them drinking anti-freeze. Interestingly enough, cats do not like beer, which is a good thing because it's also bad for them. Luckily, i do not have any anti-freeze (what would i use it for, and aren't there alternatives?), but i do like beer, so this is the perfect combination!

Plato. Protagoras and Meno (Penguin Classics) (Kindle Locations 875-887). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition. — Mark S

i'm wondering what Plato was basing this on: the book I read on Protagoras was "The Greek Sophists" by John Dillon (also published by Penguin). It's not very good to be honest with you, as the fragmented way they talk about the texts makes it kinda annoying to read, but it does comment on the evidence we have on the real life Protagoras. I would recommend ordering that book from your library, and only reading the section on Protagoras since you're unto this stuff. It does clarify where the documentation comes from, but information on Protagoras is hardly reliable or extensive(i don't think it's much more valid than your Plato account, if better at all...). I look forward to reading entire books written by Heraclitus and Parmenides (they go back even further), yet the little I learned from Protagoras was pretty satisfying.

Your use of the word morality is as an answer to ought questions such as "How should I live?" — Mark S

that is very true: morality is ultimately a "should". I personally, as "ProtagoranSocratist" do not really have strong opinions on morality. I think honesty helps, yet it can also be dangerous to be honest, so it's not really a "should". Probably the most important rule i vaguely fallow, is avoiding unnecessary harm. I do harm (the byproducts of my life are inevitably pollutants, sometimes my very presence irritates others), but if i can benefit myself and avoid doing harm to someone else as the same time, then this is desirable. However, it's still not a should, as i recognize that doing harm is part of life on this planet...and while i may judge someone for harming me, I may have to do harm in order to survive...but that is a worst-case scenario, like having to kill someone who is trying to kill me.

That Protagoras story certainly isn't true in a historical sense, but it does show that a society is made up of different kinds of people who rely on each other...the dire emotional implications of "right and wrong" (put the wrongdoer to death!)...and other things.

From this perspective, indirect reciprocity is encoded in the biology underlying our moral sense and I would say it is therefore encoded in our DNA even if no one knows how to find it. — Mark S

And this takes me back to what i was originally was criticizing: a lot more than "the human body" is encoded in our DNA (another example is the growth trajectory of a human, "the healthy growth"). Morality is clearly not one of them: the moral aspect tends to come from human creation and assent. If you look at a DNA sequence in a lab, you will see absolutely nothing about morality, religion, philosophy, or political ideology. The DNA sequence can help someone deduce reasons for human behavior, and it may be true or false, but "thou shalt not kill" did not directly come from your DNA.

What likely occurred is these moral ideas came out of desire for survival, and the instructions for brain development are in fact encoded in your DNA. That's an enormous difference from saying your culture or groups moral ideas are encoded in your DNA. I grew up with christian moral ideas being preached to me, a muslim grew up with islamic moral ideas being preached to them. Since i disagree with both religions about morality, i can't possible agree with your ideas on DNA encoding...

Is your screen name a reference to the pre-Socratic philosopher Protagoras? I am an admirer of Protagoras. He patiently explained to Socrates that the function of morality was enabling cooperation and, if you replace "Zeus" with "evolution," you get a remarkably accurate account of the evolution of morality. Socrates did not respond to that claim at all, perhaps because it was too common at the time and therefore not interesting. — Mark S

Yes, my screen name is a commentary on the ideas i like that came from protagoras, but also acknowledgling the inability to arrive at a neat conclusion in philosophy (socrates loved to contradict others), but your comment on Zeus and evolution seems not to be relevant to Protagoras. Protagoras largely commented on the subjectivity of all things, "Everything is true, contradictions are impossible." He also commented on civic morality, i.e., how affairs should be conducted. He also got in some trouble because he said something like "...i don't know whether the Gods exist, the matter is vague." According to writings from the time period, the greeks burned his books in response to his agnosticism, and he fled the city out of fear.

I don't know why on earth Protagorus would have, or could have, discussed the evolution of morality. It seems like you are just trying to argue your paper instead if improve it...but i could be wrong.

I agree with the basic premise that morality is a cooperation tool. However, this seems false and dangerous:

They will be more harmonious with our moral sense than other options because, for the most part, the cooperation strategies they employ are already encoded in the biology underlying our moral sense. — Mark S

I think here we risk confusing "specific x moral law is encoded in our biology" with "our biological encoding to nuetralize threats and shoot for personal equilibrium leads us to develop moralities". As can be easily confirmed, there's nothing encoded about morality in DNA. If that were the case, there would be no disagreements about how to punish rulebreakers. Things would be much easier.

Nor is there any shared sense of strategy in DNA, which is what makes that statement confusing. I ain't no geneticist, but thats not how it works...

Took out my first Opossum just a couple weeks ago. It wasn't a conscious choice to do so. — noAxioms

...and you did so with a car, correct? Then it's possumslaughter, and not murder...

You know, Ayn Rand, Gordon Gecko "greed is good." Or even a Sam Harris: "reasonable individuals want to maximize their well-being and that's why justice can be justified," or a Rawlsian elevation of the abstract chooser's reasonable self-interest vis-á-vis a wholly procedural "justice" as set over the presumed unknowability or irreducible plurality of the good. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, i get where you're coming from now, but Ayn Rand posited new ethics based on her irrational arguments relating to capitalism ("self-reliant strength is good, perfectionism is good"). I think Gordon Gekko himself was meant to be the moral set up against the "greed is good" ideology. I want to point out that these are just specific kinds of justifications for selfish behavior, when there are potentially infinite possibilities...but as you say, phrasing is crucial for success.

With what, the examples themselves? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, i was saying that i highly doubt any teacher beyond an elementary school teacher would accept "we should all be selfish" as an argument on a philosophy paper...because the only way you could back it up is by giving examples of how your preferences benefit you...and schools never put individual preference over the curriculum outside a process that allows that (i.e., disability related concerns)

Are you arguing that anti-depressants have no positive effects? — Jeremy Murray

no, read what you quoted again

Tobacco is interesting - I've seen studies that suggest smoking is beneficial for the mental health of schizophrenics. — Jeremy Murray

tobacco is like coffee, it's a mental stimulant: so it's not surprising it would have benefits for schizophrenics because the source of their problem seems to be alienation from a reality they want to engage with. There were also studies suggesting that nicotine/ciggs are good for people with dementia as well, but overtime these studies are always changing in how the information is phrased: it's still argued that nicotine itself helps dementia patients, but i think the researchers argues realized the issue with damaging the body to help the mind (like is done with cigarettes, at least when it's more than a little bit every week).

Another interesting thing you might want to look into is how native americans treated tobacco: it was more social, it wasn't packaged for addiction (they didn't have the technology to do that), and i read somewhere that the elders spent much of their time smoking (because what are else are they going to do)?

As far as heroin in concerned, the origins were in temporary pain relief, and the positive effects of heroin can be rather extreme...but I wonder at what point you can use things like opioids and anti-depressants without it turning into a form of self-destruction. I have a friend who has been on various psychiatric medications for years, and hasn't been able to get off of them. It seems these medications, from my point of view (and i don't lecture him on it, even though i've gently criticized some of his other drug use) have been assisting in physical degeneration for him, even though he's a very coherent person for me to talk to.

-ethics is wholly bunk and we should just act selfishly; or
-ethics comes from God by command and anyone who tries to justify it otherwise is kidding themselves
-ethics is a wholly formal, Kantian duty
-ethics is absolutely unknowable and everyone who says anything is unjustified

Would all probably lead to fine grades if they were well written and well argued. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I disagree, because the blunt framing: "-ethics is wholly bunked and we should just act selfishly" is confused and hypocritical moral preaching. The third point about Kant is similar to what Nietzsche has argued about ethics, with the former's "categorical imperative", but overall he respected that Christianity was an origin for moralism, and Kant was a re-framer, and that is why Nietzsche was mostly respected in the academic circles he was a part of, even though i don't totally agree with his ideas...there's a pretty extreme degree of nuance that gets lost with "ethics is bunk" and "we should just act selfishly". My judgements about 1#, apply to point 4#: it can't be "absolutely unknowable" because our use of the word "ethics" proves otherwise.

[edits: i had skipped over point 2# for whatever reason first time around, probably because i was using my phone, i can't really comment on 2# as it does depend on the religion/ideology of the school, it's a pretty standard christian/judaism/muslim argument though]

The self-help industry is huge, wellness terminology has flooded our everyday speech, novels and media focus on these questions, etc. Explicit moral philosophy is banished from most curricula however because teaching any positive content is anathema to liberal individualism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The therapeutic and pedagogical discussions you bring up are a form of informal moral philosophy, but i would argue explicit moral philosophy is not taught in schools because it involves young people who don't really want to be there...explicit moral philosophy is very hard, it's spoken about with incredibly abstract terms and systems, my tiger and monkey lesson is simple and has more of a resemblance to self-help logic. The very kind of supple and valuable lessons you can learn from formal moral philosophy are swept under the rug, so to speak, because our liberal/individualist system places more value on christian-based moral teachings, productivity at work, and achievements...these have some scattered elements which prepare children for office work, hierarchies, and manual labor. I think the basic format ("go sit down in a desk, kid") is more of an issue than what is taught. Someone brought up torturing children as a vague moral example of...something...but the very school system does torture children "compassionately".

Have you seen the television show "the good place"? The difference I'm trying to illustrate between informal philosophy and formal philosophy is plain in the show: it's about questioning the absolutist notions of heaven and hell, and as a result of creator preference, the characters keep name dropping Jame's Scanlan's "what we owe each other", as an obvious attempt to get viewers to buy the book. However, "what we owe each other" is a little misleading, because the title says "i know exactly what we owe each other", yet the actual contents are very convoluted and not pleasurable to read. Much of formal philosophy is like this, and we embrace it still because of the logical challenge and desire to creatively express our ethics and narratives. Formal philosophy is for people who like to think and argue, not for people who want simple answers, not for people who launch Machiavellian schemes (even though machiavelli was arguably a philosopher). The demagogues use formal philosophy temporarily and move on, but rarely do they write a peer-reviewed philosophy publication or wind up as professors...

Thus, the real question is a more global "values anti-realism." Nothing is good or bad in any sense. Yet this is prima facie way less plausible. Is it not truly bad for a bear to have its leg crushed in a bear trap? Is it not truly bad, at least ceteris paribus, for human children to be lit on fire? — Count Timothy von Icarus

sorry, my other response got posted prematurely: i hit enter and it posted, but i was just using it to make a new paragraph. It probably has something to do with my browser or hidden setting:

the subjectivity aspect of "good and bad" also goes beyond predation, especially when it comes to situational responses. Doing one thing in one situation will lead to positive results, and other times negative responses. While i can't give any specific examples at the moment like i did with the tiger, this becomes painfully true when you consider what you should and shouldn't say to other people...but i would assume that if you're being honest, and you're not intentionally trying to hurt people with your words, there can't be anything morally wrong about it.

You also mention Plato: my understanding with him and other Greeks is they largely believed moral righteousness was correlated correlated with the happiness that you feel, and that independent of the latter factor, that there was no basis for talking about morality or justice. However, the question becomes: to what extent can this be established objectively and scientifically. What behaviors lead to happiness, which ones lead to unpleasantness? I believe it's possible to answer this to a limited degree. One could argue that the mere studying of moral philosophy could improve people's lives, but you would have to acknowledge that this lack of study in moral philosophy has more to do with people not wanting to do it more so than a systemic failure in education.

Thus, the real question is a more global "values anti-realism." Nothing is good or bad in any sense. Yet this is prima facie way less plausible. Is it not truly bad for a bear to have its leg crushed in a bear trap? Is it not truly bad, at least ceteris paribus, for human children to be lit on fire? — Count Timothy von Icarus

But who is saying that nothing is good or bad in any sense? Are you maybe hinting that someone was implying it here? Are you hinting that Nietzsche and Stirner were saying this? Because the quote Nietzsche gave that i posted directly contradicts that, and many of his other aphorism do as well. The whole reason i posted that was to advertise that this is NOT i'm trying to argue, but it seems that people try to project that onto philosophers who criticize morality in a more general sense, rather than technical issues with specific standards.

Even though i'm not willing to provide quotes at the moment, Nietzsche places a value on honesty in multiple places in his texts, so to me it would seem he thought that was one of the more important ideas when practicing a rational morality. Stirner, however, did not blatantly posit values: his style was more concerned with showing that there's a problem with assuming any of them are objective. However, you can still infer some vague things about his preferences from his philosophy alone.

My personal orientation to good and bad is that it's subjective 100% of the time: when the tiger eats the monkey, it's good for the tiger, bad for the monkey. The tiger gets nourishment, the monkey feels unpleasant and dies. The tiger can't be "morally wrong" because it can't question its behavior. However, this subjectivity gets extremely complex when you have humans who believe in free will and compatibilism.

I do take SSRI(Fluoextine) medication myself. — Jack Cummins

I tried SSRIs a long time ago, but the best positive effect they had for me was i felt a little calmer and smoothed out. There were multiple side effects, but the only one im willing to mention is it seemed to make me want to engage in other recreational drug behaviors more than when im not taking them.

Ha, you've pulled Nietzsche: each of these ideas stand on their own in a way, and they do relate to truth and identity. You've done a pretty good job of this kind of exercise as well, it's hard to argue with these (which is pretty rare for this forum).

The insuperable nakedness of existence demands the axiomatic facts of science and art. — ucarr

Yeah, it's basically like saying that to human is to need creativity, even if it seems "pointless". However, as far as science an art are concerned, to a high degree, they result from material accumulation to sound like a Marxist for a second.

But even a cultural relativist would say that moral truths can be verified simply by referring to the norms of the societies in question. — Colo Millz

Alright, this is a much more interesting and workable response. One can extrapolate a moral truth from the people they know, and even if a society violates a moral truth (two examples being: capital punishment is arguably "cruel and unusual punishment", and so is a life sentence for being found with a bag of marijuana), it's something to go on as a naturally selfish person.

I’m capable of engaging in Philosophical discourse, but I want to being able to critically engage; for my own sake, better than the above average laymen — KantRemember

Okay, here's how i look at it: there's informal philosophy. This is anything: "What is life"?

And the there's formal philosophy, related to specific thinkers, which ends up being academic philosophy.

The two are not totally separate practices, but what we can call "non-philosophy" are specific and technical matters. "Did you wash the dishes?" is not philosophy. Philosophy deals with general ideas and abstractions primarily...and that's why your "average person" tends to hate it.

It seems to me that there are moral facts (e.g., “torturing children for fun is wrong”) that are true regardless of what anyone thinks. — Colo Millz

Seems like pretty blatant emotional manipulation to me: you start by insinuating that moral truths are separate from human opinion: then you try your best to project the image of children being tortured.

What's wrong with saying that moral truths exist independently of human opinion. — Colo Millz

What's wrong?

I can't verify moral truths.