It's analytically always the case that there will never be only one way. — Pfhorrest
Not maximize, and not try to. A wholly good state of affairs is one where all appetites are satisfied. — Pfhorrest
Likewise, on my account something being moral is about it being a part of our hedonic experience, everyone's hedonic experience. Morality doesn't look like anything per se, or smell like anything per se, but it feels good, it feels comfortable, it feels like a full belly, it feels like all of your appetites are sated, and it feels like that to everyone, not just you. And if there was some state of affairs where everyone felt good like that, and yet someone wanted it to be different in a way that made someone not feel good, or said that there was something still morally wrong even though everyone's every need was met like that, then that person would just be incorrect. — Pfhorrest
THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS! — counterpunch
So you didn't know what you were commenting on... — counterpunch
Bu that isn't what I said, is it? — counterpunch
I don't know Issac. It's not merely a matter of distance run, but whether you are running in the right direction.
Have you actively sought to abandon your assumptions and base your arguments in solid realities, like epistemology, evolution and physics, and then see if your philosophical favourites can be sustained in those terms?
Or are you looking down the wrong end of the telescope - starting with some metaphysical concept, like being, or some moral purpose - like equality, and bending the world around it?
Do you have a tendency to think in terms of superlatives - highest, fastest, biggest, strongest? That's often a road block.
Are you unreasonably attracted to nihilistic despair? You know you can just turn your back, because nihilism supports no value that requires you accept nihilism. All these, and a thousand other things - I've had to force my way past. Have you? — counterpunch
and sought to make matters worse — counterpunch
There is never only one way. Appetites are data points: the states of affairs desired are curves fit to that data. And there are always infinitely many possibly curves that can fit any possible data. — Pfhorrest
I already said earlier that my notion of "the objectively correct morality" does not involve any compromise. — Pfhorrest
We're all stuck inside of our own subjective experiences, both descriptively and prescriptively. We can never know for sure that there is or isn't a physically existing elephant apart from our experiences of it, or that there is or isn't anything morally analogous to that. All we can do is choose whether or not to act as though there is some objectivity attainable, in either case. — Pfhorrest
You did not contribute to the discussion between Issac and myself. — counterpunch
Your understanding of it is flawed. — counterpunch
You also inserted yourself into an argument between me and Tobias and gleefully attempted to aggravate the situation. — counterpunch
Why do you do that? — counterpunch
I was sorry you felt condescended to. — counterpunch
Then be pissed off. I don't know how else to address the fact that you don't get it. Should I just let you go on and on - talking bollocks because you don't get the basic idea? — counterpunch
Now I'm sorry you're not willing to work at philosophical understanding. — counterpunch
You just sit there with your fucking mouth open. — counterpunch
What you're describing is a person who is suffering somehow (every unfulfilled appetite is a kind of suffering) and thinks that seeing other people suffer will alleviate his own suffering (satisfy his appetite): someone who has some appetite (his own suffering), and interprets that into a desire to see someone else suffer. — Pfhorrest
It does care to alleviate his suffering (satisfy his appetite), in some way. — Pfhorrest
But it also cares to prevent the suffering of others (to satisfy their appetites), so the alleviation of his suffering can't be done in the way he wants to do it. — Pfhorrest
Think about the parable of the blind men and the elephant, which illustrates the distinction between sensation and perception/belief, which is analogous to the distinction between appetite and desire/intention. Each blind man touches a different part of the same thing, and on account of what he feels, thinks he knows what he has touched. One man thinks he has touched a tree. Another thinks he has touched a rope. The third things he has touched a snake.
All three of of them are wrong about what they think they have touched. But the truth -- that they have touched different parts of an elephant, its leg, its tail, and its trunk, respectively -- is consistent with the sensations that they all felt when they touched it. They were all wrong in their perceptions or beliefs, but the truth has to accord with all of their sensations. One of them being really really certain that the thing they all touched absolutely has to have been a snake and cannot possibly have been anything else doesn't change anything. — Pfhorrest
Someone who wants to see other people suffer can get fucked as far as what he WANTS, but whatever psychological pain is probably behind that desire is something that deserves alleviation somehow or another — Pfhorrest
But it doesn’t at all demand that everyone agree, in their desires or intentions, about what is good in order for it to be good. It’s possible that everyone could fail, in different ways, to come up with a model of what concords with all hedonic experiences, and that wouldn’t change that such a model, whatever it is, is the universal good, even though nobody intends it. — Pfhorrest
A universalist phenomenalism is possible. — Pfhorrest
"Most inter-subjective" doesn't mean "utilitarian". As I said early I'm opposed to utilitarianism on the whole, I just agree with its definition of what makes for a good end; I disagree entirely with consequentialism as a just means. So utility monsters don't blow up the system I advocate. — Pfhorrest
So, now I basically look for a theory about other theories which has the power to organize the room of theories. From my understanding, I now want to learn about the meta-meta theory. — Trachtender
people who, like I fear you might be doing, rightly reject transcendentalism and “therefore” wrongly adopt relativism (when all they needed was phenomenalism, which you can have without relativism). — Pfhorrest
I am wholly on board with everything, reality and morality both, being “subjective” as in phenomenal, not transcendent — Pfhorrest
But conversely I’m also adamant that we take both to be equally “objective” as in universal, not relative: never accepting that anything short of unlimited intersubjectivity be taken as sufficient in our answers, though because we are limited in our knowledge and power we will often be forced to make do for the time being with just the most intersubjectivity that we can manage. — Pfhorrest
and the other of which I oppose because it’s a useless non-sense of the term that I would rather never be used. — Pfhorrest
The latter is the sense of “objective” as in transcendent, the opposite of phenomenal — Pfhorrest
there is no sense to speak of about either of them that is not grounded entirely in our experience of the world, and if there somehow was more to either, whatever that would mean, we definitionally could not ever tell, because to tell we would have to have some experience of it. — Pfhorrest
But conversely I’m also adamant that we take both to be equally “objective” as in universal, not relative: never accepting that anything short of unlimited intersubjectivity be taken as sufficient in our answers, though because we are limited in our knowledge and power we will often be forced to make do for the time being with just the most intersubjectivity that we can manage. — Pfhorrest
But there’s no sense getting on to that topic at all if we’re not even on the same page that there is some objective good that we’d be trying to approximate. — Pfhorrest
But an objective answer is an unbiased answer. So an objective morality is one that takes into account all such feelings (all appetites). — Pfhorrest
Sounds like you're there! So why do we not agree? — counterpunch
The subject - the mind that makes judgements, that names things and categorises things - is never itself the object of analysis — Wayfarer
for the obvious reason that it’s not ‘an object’ at all. — Wayfarer
Since time is just a measurement and nothing may be measured sooner then NOW, now becomes the starting point for all measurements of time. — Present awareness
Since it is NOW everywhere in the universe, there is nowhere one may go where it isn’t now. — Present awareness
Existence precedes all other contingent things and they inherit their existence from the necessary existence that is. — EnPassant
Only human beings have conscious minds. — Ken Edwards
Not at all. It might surprise you to know that Thoughts actually exist physiologically as Patterns or Arrangements of brain cells inside of human heads. — Ken Edwards
Go for it. I mean, by hypothesis, what you think is the case now is the case. If you tell yourself that contradictions are true, they will be - right? If you tell yourself that 2 + 8 = an elephant, that's true, right? — Bartricks
Or are you only responsible for one or two imperatives of Reason? In which case, which ones are yours? — Bartricks
Cos that person would be Reason - that is, God, right? — Bartricks
For why posit lots of minds when one mind will do? — Bartricks
So, given that we are aware of our own mind's existence (and have better evidence for its existence than we have of any other), we should start by assuming that the mind of Reason is our own mind. — Bartricks
Note, it would make no sense to suppose instead that I am the source merely of 'some' of the imperatives of Reason and other minds are sources of other imperatives. That would not be a simple thesis at all. — Bartricks
There's a burden of proof to discharge. One mind is the default, not multiple minds. — Bartricks
First, a bunch of minds isn't a mind. Imperatives can't be issued by bunches of minds. They have to be issued by individual minds. — Bartricks
he's very adamant we should believe it equals 4, for he tell us we 'must' believe that. — Bartricks
And why can't a solipsist be a realist? after all, the thought that the external world has independent existence is just a thought, and solipsists accept the existence of thoughts. — sime
What you mistakenly call "Dogmatic", in reality is an "Affirmation based on extensive research". — Gus Lamarch
Egoism is the human nature, and it can be studied and proven to exist by language, culture, the individual psyche, and history. — Gus Lamarch
Right? — Bartricks
God exists because imperatives of Reason exist and require an imperator — Bartricks
And that imperator will be able to do anything - including things he forbids - because they're his imperatives. — Bartricks
Just around the corner is vastly different from omniscience. No amount of infallibility will allow you to deduce the current population of earth for example. Or what I’m thinking of right now. You need premises and an established body of empirical observations for an infallible logician to be useful in the least. Which is, again, vastly different from an omniscient person who would know exactly what I’m thinking of right now without requiring any extra data (because omniscience is precisely possessing all the data there is and will be) — khaled
As for me, god's omnipotence is a matter of knowing how the universe works and working, as they say, within the system — TheMadFool
You may need to make adjustments to the story but not so much as to miss the point of this story. — TheMadFool
He knew that unborn calves in a fetal position would have their tails curled up with the end resting on the forehead [assume this is true] — TheMadFool
abilities explicable within the existing framework of knowledge. — TheMadFool
You need to be an expert to recognize one. — Bartricks
A mind free of fallacies never makes mistakes i.e. the art of gaining knowledge would reach its zenith. That being the case, omnipotence is just around the corner. — TheMadFool
Secondly, omniscience implies knowledge of how to produce a desired effect and that's just another way of saying that with omniscience one can become omnipotent. — TheMadFool