Mingus

On the air here @The Great Whatever. Kind of nifty having a bluetooth hookup to the stereo.

@The Great Whatever, didn't know that one, thanks for sharing, it's hit the airways here.

Ouzo time.

Party

The mixed list is on tonight

Who the heck ever Forney are, they've now released a "Stud Master" record, that'll destroy your record player.

Stud Master

No, really it's not. — Barry Etheridge

I apologize for the simplfication with that comment.

Did the discussion turn religious?

Regarding the subjective versus objective thing, let me just ask what it's like to be you, the reader? [1]
You may describe it so others can relate, even though "being you" will always be out of reach for others to experience (barring genuine telepathy I suppose).
Cutting it short, self-awareness is more-or-less noumena (though not all noumena are necessarily self-awareness). [2]
So what? It's just a consequence of onto/logical self-identity (the 1st law, the law of identity).
In that particular sense, subjective versus objective is a real partition if you will, except still part of a larger environment/context. A focus on subjectivity is self-emphasis.

It seems to me that morals are (at least in part) subjective, with respect to mind-dependence, as argued in the opening post. Yet, surely that's still real?

Have a good weekend everyone.



[1] cf Nagel
[2] cf Kant, Brie Gertler (with whom I personally disagree)

So, in summary,
human existence is objective,
our moral attitudes and sentiments are part of us,
thus our morals are objective?

If ought (pre/proscriptive propositions) cannot be derived from is (descriptive propositions), then it seems we start out with ought (independently of is)?

(getting late here, but please carry on)

Came across some of this stuff:

Anyway, with this thread I intended to shed some light on the odd gaps

• reduction to self-interest versus social behavior
• subjective versus objective

Maybe @apokrisis is right; mostly mental masturbation (pardon my French).

Hm had hoped for some more direct objections to the pros and cons of the opening post.
Anyway, I guess this is how these discussions tend to go. :)

Be authentic. — Mongrel

Love and do what you will. — Mongrel

Well, why do we have (secular) law?
Why wouldn't suppressing an impulse to punch my boss be authentic anyway? :)

Indoctrination can also play a role in behavior, be it for good or bad (pun intended).
A degree of empathy can likely be cultivated (or taught), though even empathy might be reducible to self-interest.

Perhaps a more interesting question is then: how do we learn, understand and rationalize morals and moral behavior, as social matters?

I experience morality viscerally. — Mongrel

I guess I do as well, to an extent.
For me there's more to it, though.

You want maximum personal freedom - but within a global context which is stable enough, integrated enough, to underwrite that very freedom. — apokrisis

Right. Analogous to this old document (translated to English):

Article IV - Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the enjoyment of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law. — Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789

Social (or societal) sustainability, and a degree of cooperation, is kind of implicit for a society to flourish, which also tend to be a benefit for individual members.

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Perhaps the objective versus subjective dichotomy is sort of missing the point, or is a misleading line of inquiry.

________
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789; Wikipedia article
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948; United Nations

Things have existence, it's an attribute, a property of things, they exist. — Metaphysician Undercover

Maybe?
How can you have a thing already, except it doesn't "have existence"?
Predicate ontologization or existence as ground?
Something's amiss.

Formally, where φ is a predicate (no unrestricted comprehension), x is a variable, and S is a set, existential quantification is properly written as
∃x ∈ S [ φx ]
The ∃ and φ symbols are not interchangeable. Going by Quine, to exist is to be the value of a bound variable, x in the expression.

@Metaphysician Undercover ... which is to assume some sort of "free will" and that they're first causes. That's fine, you just have to sufficiently justify this hypothesis, and that they're "impossible to observe , or prove". (Can there be multiple first causes anyway?)

Believe whatever, but free will is notoriously strange (and controversial) in philosophy and other disciplines.

Theism tends to take substance dualism serious, where the mind part is associated with "soul" (or "otherworldly spirit"), which is thought to somehow inhabit and move (worldly) bodies. Some notion of "free will" is thought to reside in this "eternal" soul, as a kind of first cause, or an origin, in part. With this line of thinking, mind and free will are made to escape explanation, even in principle, since they're asserted fundamental, and, as such, inexplicable in terms of anything else.

Yet, religious substance dualism still cannot resolve Chalmers mind-body problems, cannot derive qualia, for example, and also runs into the interaction problem. It's a bit like simply deferring one mystery to another (proposed) mystery, and call it a day; it all seems suspiciously self-elevating or incredulous. Leaning on scientific findings, soul ideation of this nature, might be explicable as a result of introspection illusions, that are subject to an inwards self-blindness necessitating cognitive non-closure (exhaustive self-comprehension may not be attainable).

• Free Will Bibliography; Justin Capes; PhilPapers
• What Neuroscience Says about Free Will; Adam Bear; Scientific American; Apr 2016
• Free Will; Psychology Today
• Free Will; SEP article
• Free Will; IEP article
• Free will; Wikipedia article

Let me just expand a bit upon

2. if some God of theism created the universe from something already existing, then whatever comprise the universe "always" existed, perhaps "eternally" (to the extent that's meaningful), and we might as well dispose of the extras, i.e. said God

from the opening post, like creatio ex materia (or creatio ex deo).

An act is temporal, speaking of "to act" is only meaningful by presupposing temporality. (Can relevant counter-examples be presented?)

If said God created the universe out of something pre-existing, something as "old" as God perhaps, but merely transformed this pre-existing something into the universe, then spacetime (or temporality at least) could not merely be an aspect of the universe (the "created"), and said God could not be (wholly) atemporal, which runs contrary to the hypotheses.

if there was a definite earliest time (or "time zero"), then anything that existed at that time, began to exist at that time, and that includes any first causes, gods/God, or whatever else

There was no time at which something atemporal ("outside of time") existed. The atemporal never existed, never can.

I'm not sure how the hypothesizers can (pretend to) make sense of this?

Yet another side-track in continuation of some previous comments.

In the NPR article below, Devinsky (of NYU) mentions the example of love. Consenting couples often declare love for each other, thereby confirming love across people, an untold number of people at that.

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. — Berowne (Love’s Labour’s Lost)

And that's a common example of purely phenomenological experiences (identity).

We already know of all kinds of conditions — drug induced epic experiences, synesthesia, mild epilepsy, schizophrenia, whichever hallucinations and illusions, ... Homo sapiens is hardly the perfect perception-organism. And cats jump at shadows. A reasonably strong epistemic standard is warranted here.

________
• The serotonin system and spiritual experiences; Borg, Andrée, Soderstrom, Farde; PubMed, NCBI; Nov 2003
• Are Spiritual Encounters All In Your Head?; Barbara Bradley Hagerty; NPR; May 2009
• The Spiritual Brain: Selective Cortical Lesions Modulate Human Self-Transcendence; Urgesi, Aglioti, Skrap, Fabbro; Jan 2010
• The Sensed-Presence Effect; Michael Shermer; Scientific American; Apr 2010
• Listening to the inner voice; John Hewitt; Medical Xpress; Dec 2013
• Argument from inconsistent revelations; Wikipedia article

To seek "otherworldly" supernatural explanations, is to extend causation for the occasion.
Causation is temporal, and spacetime is an aspect of the universe, which is how we know causation in the first place.
It would then be natural to ask for sufficient and relevant (non-hypothetical) examples of violations of causal closure, in order to justify such extended causation (no special pleading please).

Stevenson always only claimed to present evidence that 'suggests the possibility of re-birth having taken place'. I think it does that. — Wayfarer

Fire up a new thread. Present your thinking on (justification of) it. Add a vote. (Isn't that what the site is for anyways?)

Here are a couple discussions on Stevenson's stuff, with both pros and cons:

• '20 cases suggestive of reincarnation' (2007); International Skeptics Forum
• Ian Stevenson’s Case: Are We ‘Skeptics’ Really Just Cyni (2013); The Skeptics Society Forum

And a couple references:

• Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (2003) » Reincarnation; Hines Terence
• Ian Stevenson (1918-2007); The Skeptic's Dictionary

Not that my own opinion matters much, but, without further information, I'm with Sagan; here's what he wrote in The Demon-Haunted World (1997), full snippet attached:

Maybe some undiscovered reptile left over from the Cretaceous period will indeed be found in Loch Ness or the Congo Republic; or we will find artifacts of an advanced, non-human species elsewhere in the solar system. At the time of writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study:
[...]
(3) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation
[...]
I pick these claims not because I think they're likely to be valid (I don't), but as examples of contentions that might be true. The last three have at least some, although still dubious, experimental support. Of course, I could be wrong. — Carl Sagan

Feel free to open a new thread if you think Stevenson proved supernaturals.

@Wayfarer, you don't have to be a "die-hard materialist" to come to such conclusions. :)
(Not that it matters much here, but I'm not in particular, whatever your impression may be.)

Admittedly it's been a long while since I read up on Stevenson's stuff, was going by memory alone.
Will have to check that "morphic resonance" stuff once time permits.

@Wayfarer, there are also many reports of alien abductions (and who-knows-what else).
None independently confirmed though, like abductions being examined, recorded and witnessed by outside, credible parties.
They're purely phenomenological experiences.

• non-identity: say I have a chat my colleague, then my experiences of my colleague ≠ my colleague, others may also experience the colleague on their own (phenomenological and empirical)
• identity: say I have a headache, then my experience of the ache = the ache, others don't have my headaches (phenomenological)

It would seem alien abductions belong in the identity category.
They're part of the experiencer when they occur, and nothing else (possibly related to sleep paralysis or mild epilepsy or something, well, unless they're hoaxes).
They still exist, they're just entirely "subjective", mind-dependent, much like hallucinations or dreams, which is not to say real abductions couldn't occur of course, but give it an honest evaluation please.
Humans aren't exactly perfect organisms, introspectively or otherwise.

What would, theoretically, count as supernatural? Something non-physical? Then, given Hempel's dilemma, what counts as non-physical? — Michael

Not sure I could say ahead of time.
The alleged miracles of Lourdes? Noah's flood?
It seems a prerequisite that a mind, and perhaps will, have to be behind something for it to be considered supernatural (e.g. witchcraft and sorcery, possessions, divine miracles and creatio ex nihilo, telepathy and -kinesis). Perhaps irreducibility (to something else) is also a prerequisite.
Was just trying to look up the Catholic church's prerequisites for miracles, but didn't find them.
May have to be exemplified before an assessment can be made.

I always took God on a leap of faith. — Marty

Honesty. It matters. (Y) (was about to hit "Like", but this will have to do)
And the freedom to entertain such beliefs are non-negotiable (in my opinion).

I'll just note on the side that various theisms can engender behavior that has impact beyond voluntary adherents (sometimes alienation from parents/peers, sometimes fatal, sometimes directed indoctrination, sometimes just within one sect/cult/denomination, ...). And sometimes actions are justified from their (interpretation of their) various scriptures, with notable social consequences. Therefore these beliefs warrant examination on this account alone.

Where we don't already have an explanation, supernatural explanations should have long ago been eliminated by a "We don't know what the natural explanation is yet, but we're working on it" response. — Terrapin Station

Yeah, some of those supposed explanations tend to be arguing from ignorance, and this is also where mentioned personification of the unknown can play a role.

Can anyone give a non-hypothetical example of something supernatural, magic, witchcraft, ...?

Poor examples include the horrible Salem witch trials a few centuries back (though apparently still going in Saudi Arabia, 2013, 2016); Noah's flood; possessions and exorcisms; most miracles that's been examined; ... How about telepathy or telekinesis (by will alone)? :D

* (4) seems arbitrary; it seems to be a non-sequitur. What would actually follow is "Therefore there was some-we-haven't-the-faintest-idea-what that was the cause, where somehow unspecified it would make sense to say that the cause in question was not a part of the universe." — Terrapin Station

You're right, as also noted by @Michael.
The central part of the argument is 1-3, which has the form of an ordinary syllogism.
4 should have been separated out, instead of my paraphrase.

the naive argument that the physical sciences have somehow eliminated the need to a 'supernatural' explanation, is not actually borne out by the current state of science, which feel compelled to appeal to 'alternative' supernatural explanations, such as the existence of infinite universes — Wayfarer

Neither naïve, nor eliminated, respectively.

Paraphrasing someone I don't recall, perhaps alluding to magical thinking:

quite a few supernatural explanations have been supplanted by natural explanations throughout history, little or no natural explanations have been replaced by supernatural explanations

Looking through the history books, break-throughs and striking advances have been conspicuously absent in theology, markedly in comparison to other endeavors, and professional theologians have been at it for centuries. Wouldn't it be cool to see news headlines with "Theologians make new ground-breaking discovery"? :D

Do you think modal realism (Lewis) and the many-worlds hypothesis (Everett) are supernatural...?

The Incredible Shrinking God; Skeptico; Dec 2008