the OHCHR warned that their data is not reliable statistic but a count a minima. — Olivier5

The death toll would need to be 30 times higher to refute the argument, making this invasion one of the deadliest invasions ever, outpacing the Nazi occupation of Poland, the genocides in Congo, the Napoleonic wars, even the entire first world war... Is that the claim you're making?

On what grounds? Absolutely no one from any agency, official or otherwise, is giving figures anywhere near that magnitude.

Causing people to be is the moral problem if it leads to X, Y, Z negatives.. That is the argument at hand — schopenhauer1

That argument has already been refuted. One balances the negatives with the positives in any endeavour. If it is a moral problem if an action has potential negatives then all action is morally proscribed.

Causing it to be is the "force" I am talking about.. There is no strict use of force.. but it usually means in these cases, "imposing your will". — schopenhauer1

Yes, I agree with all that. If I push a rock downhill I am imposing my will on that rock. I'm forcing it to roll downhill. So what?

it has no merit to the claim that causing someone to be (forcing, making a life start that entails suffering, it DOESN"T matter the phrasing), is the point at hand. — schopenhauer1

Well then what's the moral case against doing that. Forcing a gamete cell to become a person. What's the moral case against doing that?

A gamete cell has neither a will nor any feelings at all, so forcing it to become something is not a moral issue on it's own. And, most importantly. The gamete cell already must satisfy the necessary conditions of its existence, so you're not even changing that.

The person you make will experience suffering, but the already living will experience suffering if you don't make them, so that seems a moot point. so long as you don't deliberately increase their suffering beyond that which you're alleviating.

Doesn't matter. You caused a soldier to be. — schopenhauer1

Of course the other very strong evidence that it does matter is the lengths you're going to to avoid just answering it.

Doesn't matter. You caused a soldier to be. — schopenhauer1

It matters intently because you lost the argument about simply causing people to be. Causing people to be has no moral problem. They'll probably be happy enough and its for the good of the already living community.

You want to say that some unjust, immoral 'forcing' has taken place against someone's will. But no such forcing has taken place. The entity that was forced had no will, no moral status, nothing more than forcing a rock to roll downhill.

It is that there was a state of affairs thus that you made a soldier. — schopenhauer1

Yep. I agree. But on whom did I impose, who did I force. Did I force a soldier to become a soldier, or did I force a civilian to become a soldier?

A wait time between the initial action and the outcome (a person) somehow makes the imposition null? How? Why does it have to be the exact immediate affect of conception and not the result 9 months later? — schopenhauer1

The wait time is irrelevant. It could be instantaneous. If I instantaneously make someone a soldier. Did I make a civilian into a soldier, or did I make a soldier into a soldier?

An action led to a person existing. That person existing has entailed necessary conditions. — schopenhauer1

Yes. I agree with all that.

None of that argues against procreation. Creating a person (with necessary conditions) is fine if it's for the greater good and you've good reason to believe they won't mind those necessary conditions.

Having lost the argument above, you then resort to it being unfair to impose that on a person without their consent (even if for the greater good and assuming justifiably they won't mind). But one didn't impose that on a person. One imposed it on a embryo, and there's no moral issue with imposing something on an embryo without its consent. So your counter fails.

In the examples we discussed the moral agent doesn't cause anything and therefore does not bear responsibility. — Tzeentch

The examples hinged on the fact that your mental state did not cause anything. Your only argument for that was that the causal chain was indirect.

It is imposing the state of affairs that entails that necessary condition. — schopenhauer1

Yes. It is. But not imposing them on a person. Imposing them on an embryo.

If I force someone to become a soldier, I'm not forcing a soldier to become a soldier, I'm forcing a civilian to become a soldier.

If I force a rich man to give away all of his money and become poor, I'm not forcing a poor man to be poor, I'm forcing a rich man to be poor.

If I force a stationary person to move, I'm not forcing a moving person to move.

... and so on.

According to your fake 'statistics' — Olivier5

They're from the OHCHR and the WHO. Are they part of the Russian propaganda machine too? They get everywhere those damn Ruskies!

If you mean that, then no, I don't think you can mind read. — Hanover

I did mean that, I was just wondering why not.

Under 1 it is impossible to be wrong about anything. — Isaac


You can be wrong about things other than your mind existing, e.g. God. — Michael

1 specifically states that nothing exists other than my mind. So how can I be wrong about the existence of other things under that assumption? I've already declared (by assuming 1), that no other things exist. I can't simultaneously hold a belief that some do (so as to be wrong about that).

I can be wrong about assuming 1, but even without any further data about the rightness or wrongness of 1, I can say that if I assume 1, I can't be wrong about anything else, following from that assumption.

Since I want to retain the possibility of being wrong about things I must reject that assumption.

Let's say that a number of coins are hidden in a house. I search the house and find 10 coins. If there are only 10 coins then I know where all the coins are, but I don't know that there are only 10 coins. As far as I know, there may be an 11th coin that is still hidden. Whether or not there is an 11th coin is independent of the 10 coins I have found, even if there are only 10 coins. And I'm wrong if I claim that there is an 11th coin. — Michael

This is just saying that the solipsist could be wrong about solipsism. That's not my argument. My argument is that the solipsist cannot be wrong about anything else, if they are right about solipsism.

Again, consider the two scenarios:

1. Only my mind exists
2. Only my mind and God exist — Michael

Under 1 it is impossible to be wrong about anything. If only your mind exists you would know everything there is to know, including whether only your mind exists.

The solipsist wants to retain the possibility of being wrong, so must reject 1.

Once the solipsist has rejected 1, they know 2 must be either possible (or necessary if you're imaging mutually exclusive scenarios).

Demonstrate time for me. — Hanover

Way above my level of understanding. I trust the scientists on the matter. If I'm wrong then we merely need to drop 'time' from my list. It doesn't affect the argument.

Because I don't think time and space are simply physical laws, but they are part of a most fundamental conceptual framework that nothing can be understood without their presumption. Existence is not a property of something and time and space are fundamental components of existence. If you have a dog without hair, you have a hairless dog. If you have a dog outside space and outside time, it exists no where at no time, meaning you don't have dog at all.

And this is part of the bigger question about objects generally in terms of how much is the physical object and how much is imposed by our perceptions and conceptual framework.

So, the reason you can't have an existing mind that does not occur in space or time is because such a mind is by definition not in existence. — Hanover

That all makes sense.

we don't read other people's minds. — Hanover

Don't we? When I feel I know what someone else is thinking, maybe I'm reading their mind. Why not?

I repeat: — Olivier5

Why would you do that? It's nonsense. Do corporations stop profiteering during war? No.

So why would the deaths caused by their doing so stop during war.

War involves a lot of death, on top of the deaths already caused by greed and profiteering.

The choices are profiteering plus war, or just profiteering.

There is a bit of an equivocation there though, the expanded conscription in that instance is a response to invasion, and so the trade off ought turn on the disruptive consequences of unresisted or successful invasion rather than the steady state of an established government's qualify of life statistics. — fdrake

Yes, that's true, and harder to predict. But my argument (in the general case) only requires a reasonable dispute as to the benefits. I think even if we accept your criticism here, there remains a reasonable scope for dispute as to the benefits of military resistance, although smaller?

Can you think of a case where conscription wouldn't be unjust? — fdrake

Yeah, I don't see any reason why it must be the case that there's sufficient reasonable dispute as to the merits of military resistance. There will always be disagreement, of course, but ethically, we're importing notions of reasonableness anyway, so...

One would be hard pushed to make a reasonable argument that life under the Nazis, for example, would be no less equitable than life under Churchill/Chamberlain. They had unequivocally unjust policies. So I think conscription might be justified to fight something like that. With caveats. I think the OHCHR guidelines are sensible with regards to the right to express a religious belief, for example.

How much of that is a romantic attachment to a culture being rationalised remains to be seen, in each case (like _db and their Graeber quote said — fdrake

Yeah. We owe our countries. But this is about a government's right to dictate how we pay that debt. We're not just passive recipients of benefits, we're the creators of them too.

I think it still comes back to the relationship between individual autonomous contributions to a common goal, and a government dictating that process. I think there's a balance to strike based on reasonable dispute over methods and the scale of the imposition. I don't think anyone could raise a reasonable argument that the imposition is small, so it's about how reasonable it is, in any case, to dispute the method.

It seems the alternative is to suggest the government can impose anything, no matter how severe, only on the grounds it thinks it will thereby improve things. I don't think anyone wants to go there.

They claim that if God exists then he is external to their mind, and they claim that God exists — Michael

Right, but being wrong about that entails being wrong about solipsism.

I'm arguing that they cannot be wrong about claims assuming "all that exists is my mind" (or some variation of that).

If they can't be wrong assuming "all that exists is my mind" (or some variation of that), and they want to retain the possibility of being wrong, they must reject the assumption.

I hadn't even noticed what thread this was, just responding to 'mentions'. My apologies.

Of course they can. If scenario 1 is the case then God doesn't exist and so their claim that God exists is false. — Michael

Their claim that God doesn't exist is lie, not false. They must know their own mind, so they must know whether God is in it or not.

If the distinguishing characteristic of spooky stuff is that which cannot be seen or touched, then your worldly examples of space and time would actually be spooky stuff. — Hanover

It was only intended to be rhetorical. The division I'm talking about (which is clear from the rest of my posts) is empirical science in general. I assume you're comfortable with the fact that we have empirical observations demonstrating space and time?

You assert without explanation why a thing that is constrained by some physical forces must be constrained by all physical forces. — Hanover

Not asserting. Asking. If a thing is constrained by some physical laws, why not all of them?

for a mind to exist, it must exist in space and time, but because it shares the requirement with brains that it exist in space and time doesn't mean it is subject to all the same scientific descriptions. — Hanover

Absolutely. I'm not making the claim that it must share all the same physical restrictions. I'm asking why people think is doesn't (or does - share some of them).

Do you not find it at all odd that the physical restrictions people tend to think the mind shares are all the easy ones they learnt in school (it's in a body, we can't read other people's, it stops when you're unconscious...) and the ones they reject are all the hard ones that only neuroscientists and cognitive scientists tend to understand?

The parents willfully initiated a process which they knew would result in a person being born and thus forced to live. — Tzeentch

Nope, still wrong. The person being born was not forced to live. they cannot have been because they didn't exist until after that event. A gamete was forced to live.

I only pulled a trigger, I never shot the gun. It's the bullet that killed him, but I am innocent! — Tzeentch

If I recall, that's your argument. Your the one who wants to avoid all responsibility for anything you didn't directly cause.

If my mind is the only thing that exists then "God exists" is false. If my mind and God are the only things that exist then "God exists" is true. The solipsist doesn't know which of these two scenarios is the case. — Michael

They do know, because if scenario 1 is the case then they cannot be wrong (we must know the contents of our own minds, as they conceive them) they find not being wrong about anything implausible, so they must reject 1. Therefore 2 is the case.

That's a false dichotomy. I've shown that with the example of God's existence. Under 2, whether or not God exists depends on my mind, which is false. But we don't then say that if God's existence depends on the existence of some mind-independent entity then God's non-existence depends on the existence of some mind-independent entity. — Michael

Yeah. I went through that as well. You can answer that nothing exists. If you want to say that anything exists (and all that exists is on your mind) then you cannot be wrong.

The solipsist entertaining the notion that "all that exists is in my mind" cannot be wrong (in that scenario) about whether God exists. They would merely check the contents of their mind. If they find God, he exists, if they don't he doesn't.

The solipsist wants to retain being wrong, so they must reject that notion, therefore they do know it cannot be the case that "all that exists is in my mind", it must be one of the alternatives.

The only alternatives are that "something exists outside my mind", or "nothing exists"

If war is 24 times less deadly than a regular peacetime environment, then it is a minor nuisance. — Olivier5

Why would the aspects of a peacetime environment all disappear during war? If gravity forms part of a peacetime environment, does it disappear during war?

They do, — Michael

2 says that all that is the case is in our minds. To reject 2 either some things which are the case are not in our minds (mind-independence), or nothing is the case (nothing exists).

The epistemological solipsist rejects the part that says "all that is the case is in our minds". They only say "all that can be known to exist is in our minds". I've made this clear several times now. — Michael

Yes, which reverts to my point made earlier. If the epistemological solipsist were to entertain 2, then they cannot be wrong. They want to be able to be wrong. therefore they must reject 2.

Can one be born without being alive? — Tzeentch

Depends on your belief about when life starts. It doesn't matter. Whatever point one becomes a person, that event cannot happen to a person as there's no person until the event is complete.

what difference does it make? Clearly an act of force took place. — Tzeentch

No it didn't. there's no one to force. You could claim that the parents forced a gamete to become a person. I'd accept that (sort of weird use of the word 'force' but let's not be pedantic). But what does it matter if someone forces a gamete to become something. Gametes don't have any moral status.

The solipsist can claim that God exists, and that he is wrong if God doesn't exist. — Michael

You're just restating your original claim, you're not addressing the argument.

1. We must know our own minds entirely - what is in them and what is not. If we don't then we cannot prove that part (the part we don't know about) actually exists. It must go exactly the same way as the external world, as it cannot be proven on exactly the same grounds.

2. If we know our own minds - what is in them and what isn't, and all that is the case is in our minds, then we cannot be wrong about anything being the case. all that is the case is in our minds and we know our own minds, so we know what is the case.

3. If the solipsist want to retain the ability to be wrong about what is the case then they must reject either 1 or 2.

Which point do you dispute?

To be born is to be forced by one's parents to live. — Tzeentch

Nonsense. There's no 'you' to be forced until you already live.

What mind-independent object needs to exist for me to be wrong? — Michael

None. As I said, one way out is that nothing exists. I don't think solipsists make that claim though.

Barring that, you must know your own mind. that means you know both what's in it and what isn't Which means you know God isn't so you can't be wrong. If you say "god exists" you're just lying because you already know he's not in your mind - you know what is and isn't in your own mind.

As such, there must be mind-independent objects in order for you to be capable of being wrong about the existence of anything. Or... nothing actually exists.

Whence the religious language? Angels? Soul? You are arguing with your fantasy of what I have been saying. — unenlightened

Fair enough. I thought the rhetoric was clear, but my apologies. What you've actually been saying is...

my mind pours out here and drips onto your screen, to be absorbed by your mind — unenlightened

Without embodiment there would indeed be nothing but a sea of mind — unenlightened

mind is like water; each of us has their separate cup of water, some muddy and some salty and so on, but the separation is temporary, and somewhere is the Great Sea of Mind whence we all came and to which we all return. — unenlightened

...are you claiming that is all empirical scientific fact? If not, then the argument remains the same. why constrain 'mind' by some empirical facts and not others?

I don't need a mind-independent object to exist for me to be wrong when I claim that God exists. — Michael

We're going round in circles. We've just demonstrated that. If god (should he exist) only exists in your mind, then it is impossible for you to be wrong about his existence because you know your own mind.

If you don't know your own mind, then you cannot prove the existence of the part of your mind you don't know (and so it falls under the same bus as the external world - assumed not to exist and so can't form part of a theory about how the world is). So all we're left with is that I know my own mind, and god (if he exists) is in it. Thus I cannot be wrong about god's existence. I simply examine my mind. If he's there, he exists. If he isn't he doesn't. Since I must know my own mind (to be sure it exists) I cannot be wrong about its contents.

It is implausible that God exists in my mind, therefore I know that God exists independently of me.

Obviously this is wrong. — Michael

No. It's implausible that if god exists he only exists in my mind therefore if god exists he must do so independently of me.

The only way out of mind-independent objects from there is that nothing exists.

ou say 'talking meat', I prefer 'embodied mind'. It's not exactly controversial or even original. — unenlightened

Neither it's controversy, nor its originality were my target. Meat is uncontestedly empirical. Bound by the laws of physics, chemistry, biology... We do not assume meat can detect angels, or have a soul.

Mind (as you're using it) is not so bound. People regularly do assume it can do all sorts of things our current scientific understanding denies of mere meat.

So why bind it to a body on empirical grounds? You've not constrained it on any other empirical grounds (such as the discoveries of neuroscience). I'm just trying to understand why you've picked some empirical observations to constrain the mind, but not others.

What's the problem? — Michael

I thought I'd explained that. If it is implausible that things only exist in our minds, then we can know that mind-independent objects exist. They must, we've just concluded it's implausible that they don't.

If the solipsist agrees it is implausible that they cannot be wrong, and we also conclude that the only way they can be wrong is if there are mind-independent objects, then they 'know' there are mind-independent objects... to the extent anyone knows anything...

The epistemological solipsist claims that we can't know that other minds and mind-independent objects exist. He doesn't claim that other minds and mind-independent objects don't exist. That would be ontological solipsism. — Michael

Yes, I understand that (primarily because you explained it earlier). But to claim we can't know that other minds and mind-independent objects exist, it must be plausible that they don't. Otherwise we can know. If it is implausible that X doesn't exist, this is one way we can know that X exists.

So if it is implausible that God is in your mind (because that would mean you couldn't be wrong...etc), then we can know that god cannot be just in your mind. We can rule out that option and so 'know' that what is the case must be one of the remaining options.

Why would God be in their mind? — Michael

Because all that exists is their mind, and so God must be in it.

No, they could honestly believe that God exists. They're just wrong if he doesn't. — Michael

How? If God is in their mind, how can they possibly believe one thing about him, when in fact another is the case. What would it mean for something in your mind to be the case, but for you not to believe it is (or vice versa)?

You'd have to separate the mind into two halves - that which holds what is the case, and that which holds beliefs about the other half (which can then be wrong).

But if that's the case then you've still got one half inferring hidden states. The very state of affairs the solipsist is using to deny the external world. So they'd have to deny the 'hidden half' too. Thus leaving them with no theory.

A falsehood isn't a lie. — Michael

Exactly. But if the solipsist says "God exists" when God doesn't exist, then they are just lying, not telling a falsehood because God (and his existence) is entirely in their mind, and so saying "god exists" is giving a false report of the contents of their mind - lying.

Am I talking to a piece of meat here? — unenlightened

Well yes. We argue about the properties that piece of meat has, but a piece of meat I certainly am.

Or... we could say I'm a mind, some metaphysical construct. I don't care which, I'm quite happy with the whole 'mind' narrative. But in this second case, why constrain the mind by some (but not all) of our empirical observations?