Comments

  • Morality=Sexuality
    ↪Judaka
    Well you've set a field of strawmen ablaze ... so I leave you to it, firebug. There's nothing to be gained from us flat and round earthers, respectively, talking past each other. (However, if you do manage to raise a nontrivial objection or question, then I'll respond.)
  • Morality=Sexuality
    You can create an ought by having people be obliged to a promise made unknowingly and by simply being? — Judaka
    e.g. Social contract theory ...

    What did I get wrong?
    Well, it surely ain't right to reject a non-trivial argument without countering it with a non-trivial argument. Unless, of course, you simply do not comprehend the argument ...

    I didn't say morally commensurate
    Yeah, maybe not, but here's the quote again from your post, Judaka:
    How is your view of morality commensurate with our human history of [ ... ] — Judaka
    :shade:

    The notion that there are objective moral truths confuses me ... — Judaka
    No doubt. And so my claim of your projection is well-founded: you reflexively reject what you say "confuses" – challenges – you and so refuse to patiently think things through.

    The Holocaust.
    It was not "morally justified" by any soundly reasoned ethical (or legal) principles of the day. If, however, you really do not believe "The Final Solution" was nothing but an 'explosion' of nihilism (however 'rationalized' by the perpetrators et al e.g. Arendt's banality of evil), then explain, Judaka, which 'moral system' – not which ideology/theology – you believe "justified" this industrial mass murder: e.g. virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontologism, emotivism, pragmatic ethics ... :chin:
  • Getting to Center. Meditation. God.
    I think the aim of meditation is just the first bit:

    I sit quietly
    — Art48

    The rest is the usual busy-ness ...     — unenlightened
    :100: :fire:
  • Morality=Sexuality
    Your post has the punchline of deriving an ought from a promise that suffering people were forced into making because of a dependence on each other that we clearly don't have. — Judaka
    You've torched that strawman pretty good! :sweat:

    How is your view of morality commensurate with our human history of morally justifying the unspeakable horrors we've inflicted on each other?
    That's like asking how jurisprudence is "morally commensurate with our human history of" crimes. Anyway, cite a single "morally justified unspeakable horror".

    An opinion that reads for what it is; an ideal.
    Ah yeah, finally, "the punchline" of your rant, Judaka: projection via argument from incredulity / ignorance. :roll:
  • The "self" under materialism
    ↪Agent Smith
    I'm not surprised. They've no idea what he's talking because @Gnomon apparently doesn't know what he's talking about either even while he'a trying to have everything "bothand" ways .
  • Morality=Sexuality
    ↪Judaka
    No, I don't think so. Read the post I linked re "ethical naturalisn" and tell me what "linguistic game utilising technicalities" I'm playing.
  • Innovation and Revolutionary Ideas
    ↪Joshs
    AB & C have "metaphysical presuppositions", so your "D" is redundant as far I can tell.

    ↪T Clark
    I think (B) works best with metaphysics as the dependent-variable.
  • Deep Songs
    ↪Manuel
    :fire:
    I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years, ...

    I've always been mad,
    I know I've been mad, like the
    most of us...
    very hard to explain why you're mad,
    even if you're not mad...
    :cool:
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    @Vera Mont & @punos – :cool: :up:
  • Innovation and Revolutionary Ideas
    ↪T Clark
    I more or less agree with you here (and disagree with @Joshs' position) if only because Western philosophy, by most accounts, began in the 6th c. BCE with Pre-Socratic proto-scientists who framed – grounded in reasoned-speculative observations of nature – the predominantly Platonic-Aristotlean tradition which followed. I read this empirical, or anti-supernaturalist, framing as happening again two millennia later in the 17th c. CE with the Cartesian-Newtonian disambiguation of natural philosophy from metaphysics-theology. Disputes nevertheless persist.

    Some (A) prioritize the latter over (or at the expense of) the former; some (B) prioritize the former over (or at the expense of) the latter; and some (C) do not prioritize either treating them as "non-overlapping magisteria". I think one's preference – A, B, or C – mostly depends on how one mis/reads (the) history of science & history of philosophy.
  • The "self" under materialism
    ↪Agent Smith
    I've never taken issue with the significant scientists he cites; I usually take issue only with @Gnomon's poorly reasoned interpretations of the work of those scientists and the mystical / metaphysical traditions on which his interpretations rely.

    Adios.
  • Was Socrates a martyr?
    ↪Shawn
    I don't know if you are wrong, but I disagree as I don't see "philosophy as a way of life" as a persecuted cauae (i e. political ideology or religious faith).

    As sometimes you quote, 180 Proof,

    I don't know how to do philosphy without being a disturber of the peace.
    — Baruch Spinoza     — Agent Smith
    :fire:
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    Monism is an ancient concept and I'll stick with that as more recent reformulations only complicate things unnecessarily. Also, I think it makes more sense to use monism in terms of epistemology rather than as an ontological concept.
  • The "self" under materialism
    ↪Agent Smith
    Silly me. I'm using 'information' in terms of contemporary information science and computer science (e.g. David Deutsch, Stephhen Wolfram) and the physics on which they are based according to my layman's understanding (it's been decades since university studies on these topics). "Enformationism", etc doesn't provide any nontrivial or coherent grounds to reconceive or reinterpret any aspects of those (or any other) contemporary sciences. As a philosophical speculation, it's woo-of-the-gaps idealiam rationalized with sophistical statements (i.e. "meta-physics", etc). Good luck with all that pseudo-stuff, Smith. :victory: :sweat:
  • Respectful Dialog
    ↪Pantagruel
    :smirk:
  • Was Socrates a martyr?
    ↪Shawn
    I don't see how "philosophy as a way of life" was a persecuted "cause". Besides, Socretes chose death rather than exile: assuming Plato's account is factual, Socrates did not have to die when he did and the way he did.
  • Was Socrates a martyr?
    ↪Shawn
    What "cause"?
  • Life is just a bunch of distractions
    When I was around 10 my Dad told me that life was just filling in time until you die. He winked and said, 'Make it good and be of use to others.' — Tom Storm
    Wise man.

    :death: :flower:
  • Was Socrates a martyr?
    Socrates was a victim of an ignorant system. — javi2541997
    :up:
  • Morality=Sexuality
    ↪Tom Storm
    You mean She's not?! :yikes:
  • Was Socrates a martyr?
    ↪Shawn
    Why does it matter whether or not Socrates is a martyr? :chin:
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    ↪Athena
    Hey, you were evasively rhetorical and then, when I requested you cut to the chase, you made it "personal" with this response
    If you do not want to think and answer my questions, why are you here? — Athena
    Feel free to clearly state your point from here
    ↪Athena
    or ignore me.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪NOS4A2
    :up:
  • Morality=Sexuality
    How do you get objective morality? — Tom Storm
    From my post the "ethical naturalism" link ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/695307 (Of course the devil's in the details, etc ... but that's the gist.)^^

    But this foundational goal itself would be subjective, wouldn't it?
    Are optimal (e.g.) health ... sustainability ... justice ... only "subjective"?

    I conceive of flourishing (wellbeing) as consisting of cultivated habits (capabilities, praxes) for reducing suffering.^^ Do you believe suffering is – the implicit demand, or imperative, that it ceases – only "subjective"?
  • Life is just a bunch of distractions
    While I thought I was learning to live, I have been learning to die. — Leonardo da Vinci
  • Bannings
    @Olivier5 – Au revoir, mon ami.
  • Morality=Sexuality
    Theists and idealists may believe in an objective morality (in theory) ... — Tom Storm
    I'm neither a theist nor idealist and yet I subscribe to "objective morality" (i.e. a form of ethical naturalism), so is that – am I – irrational or confused by your lights?

    No one gets out of subjectivism.
    True. Subjects, however, strive to, and often do, correct their subjective biases, interpretations, beliefs ... with objective methods, maps, models. I think, even though objectivity is always constrained to some degree by subjectivity, subjectivity without some degree of objectivity is always either naive or delusional (or both).
  • The "self" under materialism
    ↪Wayfarer
    No question was begged by me, Wayf.
  • Respectful Dialog
    ↪Pantagruel
    :yawn:

    All's fair in love of wisdom and war. And besides that, I'm an asshole (i.e. dialectical rodeo clown).

    ↪DingoJones
    :clap:

    ↪BC
    :up:
  • The "self" under materialism
    Notice that they're all artefacts. — Wayfarer
    DNA is not an "artefact"

    ↪Agent Smith
    Information (i.e. pattern) is not conserved as a fundamental law in physics because information (i.e. pattern) consists in differences-signals, not identity-noise. Information begins with symmetry-breaking (i.e. increasing net entropy); patterns are asymmetries bound by (apparent, or partial) symmetries. Thus, information is emergent and not fundamental, even though everything is informational (i.e. signal-to-noise ratios, entropic / dissipative).

    To the extent things are "enformed", as @Gnomon says, those things are "enformed", or transformed – made more informational (i.e. complex), by agents (e.g. humans) which are informational. 'Lit candles lighting other candles' – the mass (re: wick-stuff & wax), and energy (re: light & heat) are conserved but not the candle sticks (i.e. patterns, structures) because – they are emergent and not fundamental. It's we, for example, that "enform" (i.e. add (e.g. "copy & paste") information) because we are informational having emerged far enough along the cosmological entropy-gradient after (from) the fundamental symmetry-breaking of the planck era (re: quantum uncertainty).

    "Enformationism", like most other flavors of idealism / platonism, gets the relation of cause and effect backwards: "enformy" is (logically, if not physically) an effect of information, which is emergent signals from the noise (e.g. "big bang" ... white hole, quantum tunneling, etc) of acausal symmetry-breaking, and not the cause itself. If, however, "The Enformer" is synonymous with acausal symmetry-breaking (as "the uncaused cause" :roll:), then, okay, except that this is a completely physical concept and not in any explicable way "non-physical" (i.e. "Meta-physical") because, paraphrasing Laplace, there is no need for that speculation – it's a distinction without a logical or epistemic difference. :eyes:
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    ↪Athena
    I'm here to give and take reasons and not just opinions. Why are you on a philisophy site merely opining?
  • The God Beyond Fiction
    ↪Hanover
    To clarify, Fr. Sandström wasn't making a pronouncement of Catholic theology or Papal doctrine, just passing on his personal (existential) insight to an altarboy student (me) who Fr. knew was on the verge of apostasy. I was very fortunate to study NT scriptures, etc in high school with a double PhD (philosophy & theology) Jesuit teacher; so to the extent to which he "simplified" the Reason (learned "how") / Faith (revealed "why") distinction, I still believe he did so for my sixteen year old sake. Nothing I'd learned up to that age or in over four decades since about Catholicism in particular or Christianity in general has been inconsistent with the otherworldly orientation of "faith", and so I disagree with your interpretation, Hanover, on that point. :halo:
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    I don't think monism entails anything about "origins" (e.g. BBT) and seems to me more consistent with pertaining to a timeless entity or property.
  • Dawkins' Rule in Comparative Complexity
    Complexity is information. Less complex, less informational (i.e. lower entropy). :fire:
  • The "self" under materialism
    ↪Agent Smith
    No. A stone sculpture is informational. It's not merely a stone. DNA self-replicates because it is informational. It's not just organic compounds. An origami unicorn is informational. It's not simply paper. Etc.
  • The "self" under materialism
    ↪Agent Smith
    ???
  • The "self" under materialism
    ↪Agent Smith
    Information is physical e.g. DNA, circuit-switches, computer programs, heat, etc. Every physical transformation is information; translating (i.e. compressing) information into an algorithm is abstraction (i.e. code). Yeah, abstract = nonphysical (insofar as 'nonphysical' means not causally related).
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    The hard problem of consciousness is nothing more than self-imposed bewitchment. — creativesoul
    :smirk: :up:
  • The "self" under materialism
    ↪Agent Smith
    I provided a wiki link highlit over the words "conserved by physics?" Your google-fu is weak, padawan. :joke:

    Btw, I K.I.S.S. to avoid the fundamental physics topic of black hole entropy, which you mention, for @Gnomon's sake.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ... unmediated experience would be literally nothing or no-thing — Janus
    :up: Ergo my enactivist outlook.
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