1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are. — Sargon

This is problematic. The argument declares for determinism in the first premise, and then discovers it at the end as if it has proved it. But of course the cause of my actions is my imagination. I imagine the pleasant taste of beer and that might cause me to head to the fridge, or I might catch sight of my burgeoning beer-gut and think again. The causal path of thought cannot be predicted even if it is mechanical because of the halting problem. So the question is begged as it always must be.

But the argument is further disguised by talk of "ultimate responsibility" as if it is something deeper than ordinary responsibility. Which it clearly isn't. I choose to drink beer and then I am drunk, and I am responsible for the way I am - drunk. And if I get in a fight or run someone down, I am responsible for that because I am responsible for the way I am. And of course the law recognises that one attains an age of responsibility, one is not born with it, but develops the capacity to change one's state. It also recognises diminished responsibility, when circumstances are overwhelming. There is a lot of work being done by that weasel word, 'ultimate', that it has no permit for.

The freedom to say anything, like the freedom to pass gas or salivate, is a condition of life, something that we do by virtue of being a human. — NOS4A2

Tape worms are a condition of life; one to be avoided. Lies are likewise parasitic on truthful communication and likewise weaken it, by destroying trust. Trust is the very fabric of society, the foundation of the economy, of investment, and of trade. The thesis of Gibbon's Decline and Fall is that the collapse of the Roman Empire was first and foremost a moral collapse. I think we are heading for a second dark age, and for the same reason.

But the magic doesn't work because no matter how many times you repeat the word, the U.S. (for example) is still not N. Korea, Nazi Germany, or Stalinist Russia. — The Baden

That's a rather low bar you're setting, and one that fabulous wealth does much to lift a country over, even if the trickle down doesn't lift all boats.

Learn the language.

I think it indicates that the American population is traumatised and self-medicating with anything it can get to reduce the pain and get through the day. It is at best misleading to call that 'hedonism'.

They are taught that if they are not rich, beautiful and happy they are themselves to blame, and the weight of guilt they are made to feel for the structural inequality of society, which adds to the trauma of an isolating uncaring community rife with desperate poverty, homelessness and violence set amongst images of fabulous wealth and beauty unavailable to them.

But I wouldn't know really, I've never been there and never will.

We personify the sun as Sol, and the dog as Rover, the sea as Neptune, wisdom as Sophia ... It would be better to turn the question around and ask why we have started to depersonalise our world. It is the depersonalisation that leads to these absurd questions as to what or who exists or fails to exist. Can you believe that there are people who study philosophy, yet deny the existence of Sophia, who they profess to love? You have to laugh.

He is known by two names, both "Santa Claus" and "St. Nicholas". — Shawn

Also "Father Christmas". But he is an archetype, not a person.

Does justice exist?
Is life fair?

Life is patently not fair, and in the sense that justice does not prevail, it does not exist. It exists though, to that small extent that we live justly.

St Nicholas, according to the myth is related to good King Wenceslas; power employed to the benefit of the powerless. This is the non-existent truth behind the multi-billion dollar industry of Santa Claus. If you are looking for the real Santa Claus, you will find him at the homeless centre, treading down the snow, and delivering a little warmth to those with nothing, not just at Christmas, but every day - everyone knows that. Santa Claus is an idea you can live by, not an old man creeping about in children's bedrooms.

So you might be able to decipher that I am a poster on a philosophy forum, and yet not know what I had for breakfast this morning.

Smart dude, Kant, I can find no fault with his position.

There's a direct contradiction. You're advocating for both censorship by institutions controlling public discourse and the ability to freely call out, via public discourse, corruption in those institutions. That's a direct contradiction. You clearly cannot have both. — Isaac

I am advocating an absolute defence in law for the right to tell the truth. If you speak the truth I defend your right to free speech. But you don't speak the truth, you lie about what I have said to my face. That I condemn. No censorship of the truth, no penalising of anyone who speaks the truth, Penalties for liars like you. It really isn't that complicated. I advocate censuring and censoring lies and liars. I clearly cannot have either, let alone both, in a corrupt world, but I continue to demand the impossible because it is what we ought to aim for as a society.

But you are totally full of shit in everything you say because you know full well what unmoderated freedom on the internet results in, and you choose to pontificate and argue here precisely because the moderation actually increases the freedom and does not diminish it.

But you're arguing in favour of removing the means by which we could call it out. That seems contradictory. — Isaac

If you think your call out on twitter will change the judiciary or any other thing, then you are sadly deluded. If twitter even had a reputation for honesty, it would help. There is no contradiction in what I say, what is important is the truth, and I defend your right to tell the truth as best as my impotence allows. In the current situation where the truth has already been devalued and corruption is not merely allowed but actively lauded and supported, there is nothing much to be done, but I am still doing my bit to advocate for the truth. And you cry contradiction which is not true. For shame!

So explain how this would work. I write "the judiciary are all corrupt and accept bribes" on Twatter and it gets flagged as 'lies', but it's alright because unenlightened's brilliant scheme defends my right to speak the truth. Now. Who's going to check whether what I've said about the corrupt judiciary is true...? — Isaac

If the judges are corrupt as a whole, there is no solution. If everyone lies all the time, there is no discernible truth. If you are telling the truth we are fucked. Probably, you are, and we are. So then it is time for a revolution, or the collapse of civilisation until folk start to value truth again. The only answer to corruption is to call it out and end it.

Posterity tends to work out the truth even after efforts to censor it occurs. — NOS4A2

Freedom of speech is the only context in which proper trial and error can occur, and truth can finally work itself out. — NOS4A2

The story you tell is rather inconsistent; limitations on the freedom of speech are always limitations on speaking the truth in the interests of lies and deception, yet somehow the truth escapes eventually.

That certainly happens and needs to be prevented as far as possible. The means to do this is an absolute defence in law of the right to speak the truth, not the right to tell lies. such a defence could apply to wiki-leaks, to any whistle-blower, to cases of libel and slander, and so on. But this is not what America stands for, or you defend, or people here seem to support.

This becomes important with the supposed democratisation of speech by the internet, which turns out to be no such thing. What we got is the freedom to say anything, and the bombardment of lies and bullshit to the extent that no one can trust anything that is said. Thus communication of the truth has been reduced, not increased, and particularly in America, ordinary people are more bamboozled with complete nonsense than ever.

Now there is no infallible recipe from distinguishing truth from falsehood, as has been indirectly pointed out to me here. However, society relies on truth for every function, and must defend it or collapse. So we have law, that seeks the truth when it is disputed, and tries to make the distinction case by case.

We have fire alarms to warn us if there is a fire in the building, and if someone sets the alarm off for fun, or to get a break from work, they deserve censure for their dangerous deception that undermines the functioning of the alarm system. There is and should be no right to call fire when there is no fire.

There will always be people trying to deceive for personal gain or for a cause, and there will always be people deceived, and honestly spreading falsehoods. Perhaps everyone does their bit. But the inevitability of failure is the mark of every ideal, and no reason at all to abandon it. Defend the right to speak the truth, but defend also the right to hear it, which means to not have the truth drowned out by lies and bullshit.

So you are saying - that my talking about the importance of truth is irrelevant, because neither side values the truth?
— unenlightened

No. I'm saying you talking about truth is irrelevant because the issue - social media censorship - is not about truth. It's opinion that's being censored. The issue is about power, not truth. — Isaac

And you are wrong. But there is no problem with you expressing your opinion on any media. You have lost the truth as even a concept, and been reduced to mere opinion, and you cannot even see the importance. What a shame!

Neither side value truth. — Isaac

So you are saying - that my talking about the importance of truth is irrelevant, because neither side values the truth? You are complaining because I have not chosen which lie I prefer?

This is literally unbelievable.

The truth cannot be established here (insufficient data) and censorship is, in any case, completely unrelated to truth but rather is being used to further various political ends. — Isaac

Truth cannot be established, because it has historically not been sufficiently valued, has not been protected, and rewarded, but has been betrayed and actively persecuted. And that is why I am troubling to make truth the centre of my interventions here. The philosophy of freedom without qualification which I rather suspect you are still promoting, is the political philosophy that has produced a society in which lies flow so freely that the truth cannot be discerned.

America has valued freedom above truth, and is paying the price. Unfortunately, they have also exported their distorted values around the world. And if you cannot see the connection with the topic, I cannot think how to explain it to you any clearer.

What I didn't understand was how it was unnecessary. Emotions are part of who we are.
We are not necessarily 'attached' to hope or fear. Perhaps it is a fear or anxiety related to a potential consequence (success/failure) of entertaining hope that causes some to deny they have any. — Amity

I just came across this, that says more clearly what I was failing to say very well:

A mind that is indifferent, is aware of the shoddiness of our civilization, the shoddiness of our thought, the ugly relationships; it is aware of the street, of the beauty of a tree, or of a lovely face, a smile; and it neither denies it nor accepts it, but merely observes - not intellectually, not coldly, but with that warm affectionate indifference. Observation is not detachment, because there is no attachment. It is only when the mind is attached - to your house, to the family, to some job - , that you talk about detachment. But, you know, when you are indifferent, there is a sweetness to it, there is a perfume to it, there is a quality of tremendous energy - this may not be the meaning of that word in the dictionary. One has to be indifferent - to health, to loneliness, to what people say or do not say; indifferent whether you succeed or do not succeed; indifferent to authority.

Now, if you observe, you hear somebody is shooting, making a lot of noise with a gun. You can very easily get used to it; probably you have already got used to it, and you turn a deaf ear - that is not indifference. Indifference comes into being when you listen to that noise with no resistance, go with that noise, ride on that noise infinitely. Then that noise does not affect you, does not pervert you, does not make you indifferent. Then you listen to every noise in the world - the noise of your children, of your wife, of the birds, the noise of the chatter the politicians make - , you listen to it completely with indifference and therefore with understanding. — J.Krishnamurti

Public Talk 6 Bombay (Mumbai), India - 07 March 1962

Really? And this has bothered you for how long? — Isaac

It's the same political shenanigans, just now they've invented a new cudgel 'disinformation'. — Isaac

Are we having a conversation? I don't understand what you are saying. Americans cannot agree about their elections and do not trust the results. Their democracy is not working. Are we in agreement about that?

The things you think are false other people think are true. — Isaac

I assume you think that, and by and large I disagree. Obviously I cannot totally disagree. But I think we can, and that we need to, find the truth, agree what is true and enforce the truth. You know the warning, "don't buy a pig in a poke", (A poke is a cloth bag) The reason is that unscrupulous persons might sell you a cat in a poke, claiming it is a pig. If you let the cat out of the bag, you will know it is not a pig. We can agree, I think, that a cat is not a pig. At the point where we cannot agree such things, talk has become meaningless and the market unusable. And we ought to be able to agree that losing an election is not winning the election. and if we cannot, democracy has become unusable.

I'm absolutist about freedom to speak the truth. If there is a fire, shout fire, publish and be damned! Freedom to lie, to make promises and not keep them, to deceive, to manipulate, not so much.

I'm surprised that folks are so undiscriminating about speaking truth and speaking falsely. To tolerate untruth is to tolerate the undermining of all communication and the whole of society. Even capitalism cannot function without standards of truth in advertising without honest accounting, and so on. If politicians, salesmen, police, and ordinary people had the right to lie, society would collapse.

First off, the statement you quoted was directed at 180. — ToothyMaw

Were we not discussing together? My apologies for interrupting.

You just assert that moral facts don't exist because they just don't. — ToothyMaw

This is the way of facts. My keys are in my pocket. This is a true fact because my keys are in fact in my pocket, and that is the truth. It is self-evident to anyone who examines my pocket and unprovable to anyone else. If you have some moral facts in your pocket, you can describe them and we might believe you, or we might think you are describing unicorns. I have no argument that unicorns do not exist - they just don't.

However, I am definitely a moral realist. Humans will not long survive without attending to the moral world. You might think of morals as analogous to laws of physics. they do not exist as facts about the world, but describe the way the facts work - ethics as social physics.

{Promises are rather popular with moral realists: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/promises/ }

Irony means the opposite of what it means, unless it is being used ironically, when it should be understood without irony.

I'm not sure what you mean by the identification being unnecessary. Grateful for clarification. — Amity

That's a bit complex; here is not really the place to go into it, but very briefly, identification is making a connection of identity of any sort I am British, I am aphilosopher, I am going to win the lottery - the underlined are the identities, and the connection is an emotion pride or shame hope or fear. So when I say that the identification is unnecessary, I mean that I can acknowledge the fact that I am here, writing stuff that we might call philosophy or perhaps psychology, I don't need to have an emotional attachment to it, such that I am hurt if someone calls it nonsense. Of course there is a public aspect to identity, such that if the mods think I write nonsense all the time I get thrown off the site, but again, that is only a problem to me to the extent that I am emotionally invested in the identity of philosopher.

French is hard to learn. — Olivier5

It's a fairly simple language and has many root words in common with English, because the last invasion of the French was never repelled. Far from being hard, it is one of the easiest languages for an English-speaker to learn, and far easier than the reverse, because spelling and pronunciation and even grammar are so very inconsistent in English.

And of course the Welsh, The Scottish, The Northern Irish are expected to learn English and be grateful.
And this attitude (that everything not English is difficult and a huge imposition) does much to explain the appalling government that the UK suffers.


All of which is by the fucking by, to the point that the borders have to be drawn before you even know who to ask about who they want to be ruled and exploited by. This is a necessary and unavoidable democratic deficit: the UK apparently has an unassailable right to independence from the EU based on an internal referendum, but Scotland has no such unassailable right because [made up waffle]. So we now apply "made up waffle" to Donbas, Crimea, Ukraine, or whatever other region we like, citing the split up of Czechoslovakia , or the break up of Yugoslavia to taste. Shit happens, and then, with luck, we get a semblance of democratic control, or at least the illusion of it.

I fully recommend addiction to hope! — universeness

The triumph of religion over spirituality.

Hope is as hollow as fear. — Tao Te Ching - Stephen Mitchell

One projects oneself into the future, and identifies with the imagined future self. Thus hope and fear arise together as acts of imagination - one fears the worst and hopes for the best. Better to keep the mind silent and stay in the present. On a practical level, of course one has to foresee and prepare - it is the identification that is unnecessary and causes the suffering of hope and fear.

Spirituality is presence, secularity is absence of mind in thought and imagination.

Hope destroys fear. — universeness

No hope and fear always arise together; one hopes to win and fears to lose. What you claim here is the gambler's fallacy, that leads to addiction.

whether or not moral claims can be objectively true. — ToothyMaw

"Taking candy from a baby is wrong." has the grammar of a proposition, but it does not have the meaning of a proposition. It has the meaning of a command: 'don't do it!' Commands are not true or false, they are obeyed or disobeyed.

Morality is not made of claims of fact but commands, demands, exhortations, pleas, advice to act thus and not so. It is not 'truth apt'. But to conclude that, if something is not truth apt it is false, would be a serious mistake; commands are not falsity apt either. The justification for 'tell the truth' is that lies are worthless talk, no one wants to listen to lies.

Do you know what meta-ethics is? — ToothyMaw

A mistake. The very same mistake that is made by those that try to make the world conform to reason and logic instead of conforming their reason to the world - metaphysicians.

"Look both ways before crossing the road." "Don't eat the yellow snow." I am not offering any proof, but try the experiment if you are sceptical and get someone to report the results in your obituary. "Honour thy father and mother, that they leave not the estate to the cat's home and that thine own children learn what is expected of them." Some ways of life are better than others, and one of the worst for humans is a life that concerns itself entirely with its own benefit - the proof is in the joy and misery of life, not in the pontifications of logicians.

The "is" of morality doesn't address justifications for morality, which is the point of this thread. I know evolutionary psychology is great and all, but it is kind of irrelevant to this discussion. — ToothyMaw

I don't think it's irrelevant. It explains that, and why, murder is wrong but war is right, why there are the moral strictures there are and how they are not arbitrary in the main but sometimes they are, and why different environments produce different moralities in the same species. The justification of any morality is 'group interest' - nature demands it, the ancestors say it, God says it, everyone says it except the individual, who insists on asking "why should I?" as though they are not part of a larger whole. What other question are you considering?

Would antisemites be doing a good thing if they refused to bow to the will of people who aren't assholes? — ToothyMaw

Dilemma questions such as this (if I understood you) arise out of consideration of group conflict - ie conflict of scale. Family, tribe, nation, species, ecosystem, all have a claim on the individual's loyalty and self-sacrifice. We are seeing the result of the failure of traditional moralities to consider the interests of the environment. We have not been taught to make that identification in particular by Capitalist economics, which is founded on the merciless exploitation of environmental resources as slaves, as ancestor fossils, and as the living environment. 'Why should I not burn fossil fuels?' has a very clear, very cogent answer, that we need to learn to internalise as a species. Antisemitism, racism, the persecution of any sub-group, corrodes the cooperative functioning of society and prevents us from acting together to address global issues.

Incidentally, my good friend Hume did not deny morality, He merely denied the authority of reason. Thus you cannot get an ought from an is, nor a will be from a has been, nor an object from a sensation by any reasoned argument. But he was no more against morality than he was against science.

What does it even mean for a moral claim to be correct? "You ought not steal candy from a baby." certainly doesn't mean you don't steal candy from a baby.

It seems to me that morality develops out of conflicts between social and personal advantage, and represents the social advantage in the first instance. But this becomes complicated immediately by the fact that social and individual advantage are closely intertwined. Other things being equal, the group is advantaged by the individual being advantaged - just not at the expense of the baby. But the group functions as a group by means of convention. Language is a convention that allows coordination between members, and established habitual behaviour also allows coordination.

Anything that undermines the cohesion and coordination of the group for individual advantage we can call treachery, and the punishment of treachery is advantageous to the group.

Et voila, we have a naturalistic account of both crime and punishment, that sets out the difference between individual preference and social mores, such that torture can be possibly defended as beneficial to social cohesion under certain circumstances, but never normalised as everyday social interaction. In the first video, the beginning of lying as the undermining of communication for individual benefit; in the second, ritual ordeal as initiation into the group and demonstration of the ability to sacrifice personal advantage for the group.

Can you determine whether or not it is in one's "pragmatic favour"? — Janus

If one can feel their teeth, it's not one's pragmatic favour. Inappropriate link

You are here, after all. — Banno

No, I am not there. No I am not commenting. I am elsewhere and resisting.You reduce me to the words and then point out the contradiction, and that is the giant turd of analysis.

Like your mountain? — Banno

Imaginary mountains are definitely a (no)thing round here. Try this fictional one for size

The dance is a cure for those who would sanctify words. — Banno

I prefer my illness to your cure.

Oh, I'm still trying to, sir. — Moliere

Poetry seeks to overcome the weakness of words - easily given, but sometimes as easily broken - by invocation. One calls into being something that was not, by a creative verbal act. The weakness of this thread is that it does not even try to escape the dance of words - there's a red house over yonder, where even the blind can be seen to. Let there be Red!

And it was so, because the invocation was puissant. Thus poetry builds language as fast as doublespeak destroys it, and so builds the world anew, as @Banno would have it. What does it mean that in a century we have gone from a nature red in tooth and claw, to a nature that is the greenest of greens? (This is an observation intended to evoke a transformation, not a question to answer.)

[What is ineffable? {response} But look we are talking about it, so that isn't it.] That is a gigantic turd of analysis, or a pathetic joke of logic.

What is creativity? Only original answers will be considered.

A Valediction

If we must part,
Then let it be like this.
Not heart on heart,
Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss;
But touch mine hand and say:
"Until to-morrow or some other day,
If we must part".

Words are so weak
When love hath been so strong;
Let silence speak:
"Life is a little while, and love is long;
A time to sow and reap,
And after harvest a long time to sleep,
But words are weak." — Ernest Dowden

Eff that, Mothersuckers!

The argument is that moral claims are never true. But notice that truth is a value.

In the world of thought and words, truth is the value. A lie may have value to someone just to the extent that it is believed to be true. Thus in the world of words,if it is true that moral claims are never true, then it follows that moral claims have no value. Or at least, they only have value as lies that manipulate.

But notice the inequality between the lie and the truth. the lie can have value only by virtue of the dominance of truth. Without the dominance of truth, language itself has no value and hence no meaning; so the lie is always parasitic on the truth. the lie has meaning and value by virtue of the truth.

Thus even in the world of words, the truth must prevail, {by and large}, or else the world of words itself loses all value.

The world of words is a microcosm of the social world. Money has value to me because the nice people at Walmart collect it. Philosophers agonise, and then they go shopping...

The inequality applies to money too. If "we" do not trust the money, it has no value. Economists call it "confidence". I like money because you like it too. We all just stopped liking bitcoin so much...

In the case of money, the truth is a fabrication. What does this mean?

But there is another world, not the world of words or the social world, but the natural world. Here, reality bites. The torturer is the lord of this material world - allegedly. Being tortured, then, is what? It happens rather more often than I would like to admit. It has no meaning. It has no value. Eat shit motherfucker.

Or is there, perhaps, another way? You do not have to partake, you do not have to realise, you do not have to engage; thus freedom; thus virtue. The value of your virtue is not to you.

I'll see your 96, and raise you the roof.

There are no correct moral claims. — Leftist

Is correct not better than incorrect? If it isn't your claim has no force, and if it is your claim is contradictory.

Do it, now. — Krishnamurti

And then there is silence for a moment, until the answer is given: "It stops."
And when the answer is given, it is clear that it has not stopped.

And those 2 are the brightest and the best, so I rather doubt you will get much better responses in the forum. If only they could have managed the 4 minutes, the world would have been transformed, but thought had to come up with an answer - it stops, not seeing the performative contradiction.

It is like a Zen Koan, set up to block the road of thought; it is a question that cannot be answered with words or thoughts, but only with one's whole life.

I am an anarchist, and as such, I do not accept that there is any rule preventing the making or imposing of rules. If you don't want to obey anyone else's rules, that's absolutely fine, but you will probably get locked up or killed. And wipe your feet before you come into my house.

I have more than 50 discussions, and I cannot remember ever having a poll or a question.

If you don't want a question or a poll, I think the trick is not to tick either of the boxes.