if you measured morality with nothing but numbers, what numbers would correlate with actions seen as traditionally "moral", what is this quantifiable, measurable, and objecitve benefit that is gained from actions that are traditionally viewed as moral or good. — Marzipanmaddox

There is none. The notion of an objective benefit is a category error.

You are correct in this. Just because we do not know of one, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. — Marzipanmaddox

Universal acceptance isn't objective at any rate.

By the way, I'm still waiting for you to give an example of ontology that isn't making a factual claim (re objective facts) in your opinion.

Causes are physically deterministic forces, where, if A is the cause of B, B must follow A, ceteris paribus.

For those who insist on finding case studies of empirical evidence of hate speech causing undue and unwarranted violence, I offer the example of Nazi Germany. The Jews and the Christians reluctantly had mulled about doing their own business, and more-or-less had strived within the situation of multi-religious nations. Then came a hate speaker, and as a direct result of his efforts, six million Jews were brutally executed, or horribly tortured or both. This is a direct result of having a single solitary person spewing out hate speech. If you need any more evidence than this that hate speech is effective, then first drive a dagger through my throat. — god must be atheist

. . . that's just evidence of not understanding how I use the word "cause."

You are missing the difference between using your senses and using your mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

?? Seeing something via using your senses IS using your mind.

Maybe you're referring instead to putting the difference into words or "intellectualizing" it?

Why wouldn't your argument work for something like the sun, or Mount Olympus?

My point is an epistemological one: — RogueAI

This isn't an epistemic argument: "1. The ability to make choices is a necessary condition for the evaluation of evidence."

That's saying that if we can't really make choices, despite the fact that it seems as if we can, then we can't evaluate evidence/we can't do science.

I did not ask whether one can or cannot distinguish between memories and anticipations, I asked what makes one different from the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

The only way it makes sense for you to wonder what makes one different from the other is if you can't distinguish them. Otherwise you'd know what makes one different from the other. That would be how you'd distinguish them.

I like to tackle small nuggets at a time, of course:

The hijab is an instrument of repression. It's not something else. — thewonder

In my view, meaning (or "meaning" rather) doesn't work so that something clearly has the same meaning for everyone. Hijabs can mean anything. We have to ask each individual to know how they think about it.

You can't really make enough money writing philosophy to make it a career. You can make some money with it if you're lucky--Daniel Dennett has made some money from his books for example, but even he wouldn't be able to make much of a career out of writing without teaching, too.

You'll typically make more money writing the less the writing resembles philosophy.

There are jobs that are kind of philosophy related like being a medical ethicist. Or there are some jobs with "ontology" and "semantics" in the title. But it's arguable just how much those sorts of jobs really have to do with philosophy. Most of the "ontology" jobs are really looking for software engineers, for example.

So yeah, pretty much you're stuck with teaching as the only long-term career avenue where you can do philosophy in general--you'll be required to publish at least a bit.

We all could become disabled in life, horrible Ill, or just experience poverty, and many more bad things. — Baskol1

You could, although "this could happen" doesn't equate to "life is full of suffering" does it? And it's not as if everyone with those statuses sees their life as full of suffering.

but it seems arrogant to me to say scientists know what happened in the universe billions of years ago when it can't be proven that "rewinding" the laws of physics is the way to go — Gregory

Neither science nor knowledge in general are about proof.

First, your experience would be no different than it is now. You'd be compelled to believe that evidence x supports hypothesis H where it seems to you as if you're freely believing that for reasons that you consider to be good reasons to believe it.

philosophy seems to give it no sure foundation — Gregory

Without addressing my comment above, here again you're asking about "sure" foundations.

The ideas behind both, which I'm not endorsing--I'm just reporting the idea of them, is that one has a belief either that there is or is not a god, but one would also say that whether there is or is not a god is unknowable.

Why you'd have a belief about x if you think x's status is unknowable, I don't know. But apparently that describes some people.

It might be that some folks have wonky views of knowledge, though, where they won't say that they know something if it's not proven or certain. Why they don't realize that no empirical claim is provable, again I don't know.

First, note that I buy that we have free will. So in the comment below, I'm not arguing that we do not. However:

The ability to make choices is a necessary condition for the evaluation of evidence. — RogueAI

How are you arriving at that premise?

What makes the memory of an event different from the anticipation of an event. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you honestly asking this? Your mind works so that you can't make out any distinction between memories of things that happened and imagining what might or will happen?

From my point of view, and probably yours too, they would be wrong. From *their* point of view, it would be right. Societies set their own laws, as they should, yes? — Pattern-chaser

Although the only way such laws change is via people in the society in question not agreeing with them.

Recently I had a little discussion with somebody who claimed that morality comes from within and that it is (therefore) totally subjective. — Matias

That's my view. (Not that I'm the person you had the discussion with.)

If they were, it would be up to any individual either to create or to sample his or her own morality, j — Matias

And indeed it is.

a moral system - unlike a piece of pop-music - has to be coherent and consistent. — Matias

No idea where you're getting that notion from. (Assuming it even works where we're talking about utterances that do not have truth values.)

Therefore moral values and rules exist "out there", they are not objective like the moon, but they have a status that is beyond personal whims and predilections. — Matias

What would that even mean? They're not objective like the moon, but they're not subjective either. What's the third option? (And if it's going to be "intersubjectivity," that doesn't amount to anything aside from the fact that people have subjective moral views that they can then utter objective agreement about, interact with other people with respect to, etc.)

I am (more or less) "free" to choose or adopt among existing moral systems (i.e. values and rules), — Matias

I don't think you are, really. Just as with beliefs, we don't really choose them. That doesn't mean that we can't influence them at all--although it's not necessarily easy to influence them, but it's not like picking an ice cream flavor or something like that. You're going to believe what you do, feel what you do (about moral issues, etc.) because of dispositions you have, because of deep-rooted other beliefs and feelings you have, etc., where you didn't simply choose your dispositions.

Another point liberal Westerners tend to forget: That we are able to leave the moral world of our family in order go "shopping around" in the market of existing moral systems is a privilege and an exception; it is not typical for morality as such. My guess is that if the vast majority of all people of the present or the past abandoned the moral system of their group (family, caste, class, village...) they suffered severe consequences, from being just the village weirdo, to being ostracized or even killed ("honor killings"). Those who take the moral world of the USA or Germany (as they are today!) to be representative for humankind in general must be really blinkered. — Matias

Here, you're confusing ways that one must behave publicly for practical purposes (to avoid being ostracized, jailed, lynched, whatever) with personal beliefs, feelings, etc.

Morality is a *social* phenomenon — Matias

People interact with each other in many ways that are related to their moral views. That doesn't make the moral views the same as that interaction. That's putting the cart before the horse. If you don't actually feel that such and such behavior is right/wrong, permissible/impermissible, etc., then it's not a moral view that you hold (even though, for practical purposes, you might publicly act as if you do hold that view). Such feelings can't obtain socially.

:up:

First I'm hearing of it, so :confused:

Even natalists cant deny that life is full of suffering. — Baskol1

I wouldn't say that my life is full of suffering. I understand if you don't want to share personal info, but what suffering is your life full of?

Why don't we just concentrate on trying to get someone better elected, someone who'll actually make practical changes that have a positive impact on folks' daily lives.

In my view, a metaphysical assertion is meta-cognitive speech-act whose intention is to influence perception, behavior and values, via a wholesale change of view. — sime

:smirk:

To pretend that we can successfully operate a human society without censorship is naive — Pattern-chaser

Holy moley.

f it "occurs as an illusion" (a conscious perception resulting in the misinterpretation of reality), the oasis is not a fact, it is a mirage. And in that case, it would be delusional to believe the mirage is an oasis. — Galuchat

What I wrote is "we can't say there's not the phenomenon of an oasis."

Are you saying there's not the phenomenon of an oasis?

No, it can't.

If a philosopher says "I philosophize that rocks fall to the ground when thrown into the air", it stops being philosophy and instead just becomes a fact. — Marzipanmaddox

Sure. So what's an example of ontology that isn't making a factual claim (re objective facts) in your opinion?

If there are changes/motion that happened, versus changes/motion that are happening, versus changes/motions that have yet to happen as an illusion, it seems as if there are changes/motion that happened, versus changes/motion that are happening, versus changes/motions that have yet to happen, doesn't it?

In other words, we can't say that there's not the phenomenon of of an oasis in the desert if that occurs as an illusion. The phenomenon would at least obtain as an illusion. We could say that the phenomenon doesn't correlate to something else, but in this case, we can't deny that there are changes/motion that happened versus . . . wholesale, because that would at least be the case insofar as the illusion goes.

Recognition and acceptance only seem possible if you retain a strictly flexible approach, don't you think? — Pattern-chaser

Um . . . I'm skeptical of that unless there's a good reason to believe it.

It seems silly to me to say that "almost nothing can be shown to be a fact" unless you think that some things can be shown to be a fact.

Almost nothing can be shown to be a fact. — Pattern-chaser

What would one of your exceptions be?

How come the bomb utterance is an exception to free speech? — Coben

I said I wouldn't make that illegal.

Proclaiming 'no God' as true for sure fails just as much as proclaiming 'God' as true for sure because neither can be shown to be fact; — PoeticUniverse

That would only be the case if nothing can shown to be a fact. But I wouldn't say that.

It seems like you're not literally asking what science is founded on, but what provable claims is it founded on.

A core tenet of science methodology is that empirical claims are not provable. They must be open to revision via falsification. That's one idea it's founded on.

"Metaphysics" in the "what goes beyond physics" sorta supernatural/mysticism sense gained a lot of traction in the latter half of the 19th century through the early part of the 20th century, with the rise of the spiritualism movement, the theosophy movement, awakened interest in the occult, gnosticism, various esoteric movements, eventually new age, etc. Those movements often co-opted the term "metaphysics" for their own purposes. All of this stuff was popular enough that I believe it had a significant impact on philosophers of that era "rejecting metaphysics" (as the logical positivists famously did, for example). It's not that those folks were not familiar with the standard philosophical sense of "metaphysics," but the spiritualist/etc. movements were popular at the time, and combined with the facts that philosophical metaphysics traditionally covered natural theology, as well as the desire to "scientize" philosophy, there was a desire to just trash metaphysics in general and cover the important (ontological) stuff as "philosophical science" instead, with "first principles" being relegated to logic/mathematics.

I think it's more than that. It wasn't on this site but when I argued with some real life friends about this they said "But that's just a mix of determinism and randomness, that isn't real freedom" or something to that effect. I think people would still disagree with your formulation here. Though I ask those people to define that third category of causality they claim exists. — khaled

Well, a lot of people think a lot of incoherent shit like thinking that their consciousness is something separate from the physical world, they think that somehow their consciousness is just "occupying" or "driving" their body while not being identical to it, and so on. So who knows what sort of vague nonsense they might have in mind by "freedom" re free will.

If you define free will like that then I agree everyone has free will (though I don't know whether or not brain functions are epistimically random, I hear they are on the microscopic level) — khaled

There has to be ontological randomness involved for it to be free will. Again, the point of bringing up that some choices are epistemically random above is to note that at least some people like making some "whim" choices. The choices that are not epistemically random would still involve ontological randomness if they're choices.

People probably have a problem with saying that it involves randomness because they think that's going to amount to saying that all choices are epistemically random. Many choices are not epistemically random. And those choices involve biasing the odds, based on reasons/justifications, which are (a) not usually decisions themselves (at least not at the point in question), and (b) not random themselves.

If we have a universe with just two particles, and particle A strikes particle B, then either particle B is causally determined to react with a certain velocity (speed & direction), or if particle B might react with one velocity rather than another, even if there are 99-1 odds for the two velocities, and there are no unknown forces at play, then by definition, there's some randomness in the resultant velocity. That's ontological freedom.

Okay, but that's what ontological freedom/indeterminism is. It's (not necessarily equiprobable) randomness. The only other option, logically, would be causal determinism.

Shouldn't you just call it "randomness" then? — khaled

Are you one of those people who has a problem with synonyms?