Let's just look at this for a moment:

"A things nature is that which it ends itself towards."

I don't agree with that. Do you understand that I don't agree with it?

It seems like you're talking about concepts as if they're not something that individuals construct.

What kind of stupid answer is that? Where did I isolate the object from the rest of the world? — Riley

You're seeing x being in state y due causal interaction with z as indicative of something not in x's nature.

I'm fine with saying that I'm accepting teleology. It simply implies that teleology is positing that any and everything that something can do, any state in can be in for any reason, is teleology. You agree with that, right?

When we talk about what things can do, states they can be in, we're not talking about them in isolation from the rest of the world. I have no idea why you'd be thinking something like that.

Being crushable is something that's in a heart's nature. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to crush it.

Again,. ANY and EVERYTHING that something can do, ANY state it can be in--being crushed is a state that something can be in--is part of its nature. That doesn't imply that there was no interaction with other things. There's always interaction with other things.

No longer beating is something a heart can do. At which point it might start decaying, for example, which is something else it can do.

Both of those things are part of its nature. The nature of anything is any and everything it can do. You can't name anything that something can do, some state it can be in, etc. that's not part of its nature.

We already discussed that the eyes are for seeing, the heart for pumping - in which you made no objection. — Riley

What I said is that the nature of eyes is any and everything that eyes can do. That includes things like being blind. Everything.

Same goes for hearts. They can stop beating. That's part of their nature.

I don't know if you didn't understand my comment, but you said that per my comment, I accepted teleology. So that would imply that teleology simply says that the nature of things is any and everything that the things in question can do.

Yes that is what I’m suggesting. I’m asking whether the mental phenomena “will” is the cause or result of physical phenomena in your view and in either case how. How does your “will” physically move your arm. Or if you’re a determinist how (which I know you’re not) how would physically moving your arm cause the subjective experience of “will”. — khaled

I'm a physicalist. In my view, mental phenomena are not caused by or the result of physical phenomena. They're rather identical to mental phenomena. Will is a subset of brain states. It's the properties of the brain states in question from the reference frame of being the brain in question.

I never said I don’t believe others are conscious I said you can’t know they are. — khaled

Knowing they are is just a belief that they are where (a) you feel you have a justification for the belief, and (b) you assign "true" to the proposition "Other people are conscious."

I meant weird as in it could be said by a hairline determinist or someone who believes in free will. — khaled

Sure. Will would still be a phenomenon that occurs even if strong determinism were true. Hence the need for the "free" adjective.

That’s awfully vague. What if said robot I was talking about looked human and acted like a human but essentially just had silicon replace carbon. — khaled

Then it's not very similar structurally. It doesn't have a brain made out of the same materials that human brains are made out of. (And contingently, we haven't made things that are structurally and functionally similar to brains, just out of other materials, either.)

Emotivism is a species of noncognitivism.

Not as your personal feeling, but in whatever passes in you for a larger sense. — tim wood

What the heck would that be referring to? Whatever "passes in me for a larger sense"??

So, for everyone else, does Non-Cognitivism deny that Ethical value judgements can be made? — thewonder

No, not at all. It's simply that ethical judgments are not true or false under noncognitivism.

What reason do you have to believe anyone other than you is conscious — khaled

Similarity of structure and behavior. Your antinatalism sure wouldn't make sense if you don't believe that others are conscious, by the way.

Also, defining will as a mental phenomena seems weird to me. — khaled

It seems weird to me that that would seem weird to you. If you don't consider will a mental phenomenon, what the heck would you think it is?

Do you mean to say that the “will” somehow results in a different physical causal chain or that the feeling/mental phenomena of will results from a physical causal chain? — khaled

I'm not sure what you're asking here. If you're suggesting (strong) determinism, I don't buy that idea in general.

Feelings aren't made of particles — Harry Hindu

It's particles in dynamic relations (as are qualia and everything else).

Particles don't even exist. — Harry Hindu

Oy vey.

However, you can stop the goal of this species — Riley

Only individuals have goals.

If a goal can be stopped, then it's in the nature of whatever is stopping it to be able to stop it.

Oh my bad. I must not have caught that typo. Self-Consciousness possesses the ability to contradict the natural law because it manifests the will. But it Isn't inherently contradictory. As in "if this then that." It is also a non-sequitor to think that this disproves teleology and such. Considering they are not logically opposed. — Riley

Okay, but the nature of anything is always any and everything it can do. So if teleology is the same thing (any and everything something can do, which is its nature), and natural law is an expression of teleology, then how could self-consciousness or will do anything contrary to natural law?

Does a robot that determines what it will do based on random nuclear decay have free will? — khaled

The action is free, but it wouldn't have anything to do with will unless we have some reason to believe that the robot is conscious and has the mental phenomenon of a will.

So we have

(1) "self-consciousness, which manifests the will, is contrary to the natural law"

and

(2) "Hegels idea of self-consciousness for these matters. Especially since this concept is that which manifests the will. It does not contradict the natural law. "

Um, what???

But your 'choice' is severely limited, right? "Free" means unrestrained. — ZhouBoTong

"Free" in this case means "not causally determined." If you can choose between two options you have a free--that is, not a causally determined--choice.

First, speech can not literally cause the violent reaction. If that were the case, then people would not be able to hear the speech without having a violent reaction.

Some people might not be able to control themselves very well in the way they react to speech. But the problem in that case is their lack of control. They'd need to work on that.

Hmmm.... you just accepted the idea of teleology. Teleology is that which is the end of something in relation to it's ontology. Which you just verified. — Riley

So then how can anyone do anything contrary to natural law, which is what I asked you at the start?

F-off Terrapin. If you've an argument to make, I'll read it. - You obviously have either not read, or not understood, or both, my post. — tim wood

If that's not what you're saying, you could just say "No," and then you could clarify.

And it should be made clear: that the natural law is in relation to teleology. Not the will and not to the individual in-and-of-itself. But rather the parts to the whole than the whole to the parts.

The eyes for seeing, the heart for pumping. These all have their end. Which is why I see that you misunderstand precisely what is being said by the words 'natural law.' — Riley

Teleology is mistaken, though. There's nothing that eyes can do that's not part of their nature. Same for hearts, etc.

Yes. Anything else implies murder is not wrong. — tim wood

X is wrong if and only if "x is wrong" is a true statement.

That's what you're saying here, right?

Is that because you're reading "x is wrong" as necessarily being a claim about (or a statement of) a fact?

I am not certain it's possible to describe how reason works. There are arguments to be made about whether murder should be wrong. Those arguments must be logically valid and proceed from acceptable premises. — Echarmion

Would you say they could proceed from (or not include) premises that are not moral stances?

Just curious who you are addressing.

Has the understanding of teleology in relation to ontology escaped you? It Was my point that self-consciousness, which manifests the will, is contrary to the natural law. — Riley

It's my point that if we're talking about natural law, we can't have phenomena that operate in any way contrary to it.

I don't buy teleology at all.

Re the question, don't be a patronizing ass.

What is consciousness as it relates to Being? — thewonder

You'd probably have to write me a book to explain what "as it relates to Being" adds to the question. :-)

It seems like you keep telling me info that's not what it is for "murder is wrong" to be reason-able then.

I'm wanting you to describe how it can be reason-able.

This is such a ridiculous conversation. This is a debate? We teach CHILDREN better ways of thinking about this.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me”
We don’t need to make it illegal for people to hurt other peoples feelings with their words. Grow up.
Thats at the level of government and law.
On a personal or moral level...grow up.
Thats how far things have fallen, we have to aim for the philosophy meant for children. — DingoJones

:up:

Self-consciousnes brings are unnatural in-and-of-themselves because they can contradict the natural law. — Riley

It's not much of a natural law if you can do something other than it.

Words only have the impact that you allow them to have on you. Only YOU are in control of what you say and I am the only one that can control my response, — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Per his comments above, he doesn't believe that it's possible to control one's response, at least in some situations.

You're conflating speech and things like rape and bombings. For some odd reason you can't see the distinction between speech and other actions.

What would be the particles of the mind? — Harry Hindu

Haven't you and I discussed this many times? Mind is identical to a subset of brain functions. So the "particles of mind" are the same as the particles of brains.

How is asserting that everything is either "physical" or "mental" not just hand-waving themselves? What does it mean to say that something is "physical" or "mental"? What are the differences between "physical" and "mental" things, and then how do they interact? — Harry Hindu

First, remember that I don't think that the idea of nonphysical things is coherent.

Saying that everything is physical is saying that everything has properties like location and extension, that things are comprised of particles which are in dynamic relations with each other, etc. etc.

It's reason-able because the statement is processed by a part of the brain that operates on a reason-ruleset, so to speak. A part that we use for things that concern interpersonal relations. — Echarmion

So any phenomena in that part of the brain, and/or any phenomena focused on interpersonal relations is reason-able? (I don't know if it's also reasonable without the hyphen in your view.)

But there are attacks that no reasonable person should be expected to tolerate: — Pattern-chaser

What's to stop anyone from parsing any arbitrary speech that way?--as something that "no reasonable person should be expected to tolerate"?

Its only effect - its intended effect - is to cause so much hurt as to provoke a violent response. — Pattern-chaser

There's no utterance where any specific intent can be guaranteed, and there's no utterance where the intent might not be to cause so much hurt as to provoke a violent response. So intent were the motivator, you'd not be able to blanketly allow or ban any particular utterances.

This is degenerating into silliness. You know quite well the points I have made. You wiggle and squirm around to avoid my points with petty objections. Why not just admit that there is no human, moral, justification for your position? — Pattern-chaser

Maybe you could try to understand points of view that you're not familiar with?

Why have you not (also) said "I believe we have free will and that we can or at least should have the power to stop ourselves from spouting hate speech"? — Pattern-chaser

Sure, people can do that. But there's nothing wrong with hate speech, or any speech. It doesn't CAUSE violence. People choose to be violent, just like they choose to utter hate speech if they do.

You write like someone who values the freedom to speak hatefully toward others. — Pattern-chaser

Yes, that's definitely the case. I value the freedom of people to be able to say/express anything imaginable.

Your "ought" is that we "should have the power to stop ourselves from becoming violent". But the corresponding "is" is that we can't. The empirical evidence is conclusive. Do you deny this? — Pattern-chaser

They're divided by the word "or."

"I'm going to buy a house in Wyoming or Utah"--that's not saying that I'm confusing Wyoming with Utah is it?

Yes, there is. I think that's where we get 'freedom of speech' from - we (most of us) think it's a good idea. — Pattern-chaser

Free speech doesn't amount to much if it doesn't include people being able to say things that you'd really rather they didn't say, things that make you very uncomfortable, upset, etc.

But (some) humans are given to hate speech, and their targets are (sometimes) unable to endure the hatred aimed at them, and respond with violence. We can confirm this by simple empirical observation. — Pattern-chaser

Yes, but you don't observe that the responders didn't have a choice in how they responded.

Aren't you confusing ought with is here? — Pattern-chaser

?? "or at least should" is just an ought. What "is" does it seem to you like I'm confusing it with?

I mean being able to re-create the relevant brain-states in their own mind with sufficient accuracy. — Echarmion

So something like a resemblance nominalism sense then.

Okay so we're back to this, then:

But there are also things that are reason-able, like "murder is wrong", because these kinds of brain-states, whatever we want to call them, contain in them a connection to other subjects. — Echarmion

If "Murder is wrong" isn't "reason-able" as you put it because of the connection to other subjects (in other words, you explained that that's not actually what you are referring to with the term "reason-able"), then what makes it reason-able?